Border Identities

One of the more embarrassing memories from my fieldwork on the island of Langkawi concerns a trip that my relatives in the village of Sungai Cantik planned to make by fishing boat across the border to southern Thailand. Pulau Langkawi forms part of the northern Malay state of Kedah. It lies off the west coast of the Malay peninsula, just south of the border between Malaysia and Thailand. The purpose of the trip was to do some cheap shopping, to visit friends and relatives, and to stay for a few days of enjoyment before returning loaded up with bargain Thai merchandise. The excursion was planned with considerable excitement – this was an out of the ordinary event, although not altogether unheard of – and I was invited to go along. Without thinking too hard about what might be involved, I accepted.

In the following days, doubts about the trip itself – on an overcrowded fishing boat – were reinforced by doubts of a more bureaucratic kind. Were there risks involved? What about my status as a foreign researcher if we were apprehended without proper documentation – visas, licences, passports? I demurred at the last moment, on the pretext of feeling unwell. The puzzlement and disappointment of my relatives, and particularly my foster mother's look of scepticism over my supposed illness, still bring back a sense of embarrassment and inadequacy undoubtedly recognisable to most anthropological fieldworkers.