Lion City

It was the 8 am bus that almost left without me.  I took a taxi to the Malacca bus station, quickly bought a ticket (by being a little pushy), and was the last passenger on board.  On my way to the Lion City was I:  an express 4-1/2 hours, border crossing included.  The cost was about $7. 

Arriving in Singapore:  Only a short bridge connects Johore, Malaysia, to the Republic of Singapore.  Then, a green parkway leads traffic into the city.  All I can say is Wow!  I wasn’t expecting so much lush vegetation, but for many kilometers we traveled through a forest and past the Singapore Zoo.  Then, the high-rises began to appear on the horizon.  But, Singapore is not a city (or country, since they are one and the same) of high-rise canyons.  They have done more than any city I have seen to create and preserve open space, parks, gardens, greenways, and street buffers.  The first thing I saw when I got off the bus was a mahogany forest.  Actually, it was less than a dozen mahogany trees (brought from Africa in the 1970s) that provided shade for an urban park.   My first observation of the cultural landscape confirmed my supposition that Singapore was an English-speaking country.   Signs and billboards seem to be tightly controlled (along with everything else here), but almost all were in English.  Three-quarters of the country’s population is Chinese, but they have taken to English, the language of international business, which is what Singapore specializes in.

Orchard Road:  The bus dropped us all by the side of the road, not at a station, and I had no map.  The driver pointed everyone to a taxi station (so far in the distance I couldn’t see it), but I had a better idea.  Coming in, I had identified a metro station (Paya Lebar), so I hoofed it back there and boarded the Circle line to “One Orchard Road.”  That was the address of the YMCA, and I just hoped they would have a room for me.  They did.  I never knew much about the micro-geography of Singapore, but I did know Orchard Road, the city’s main shopping corridor.  To me, One Orchard Road sounded like the most prestigious address ever.  I wasn’t disappointed.  I was amongst the buildings of Singapore Management University, a beautiful urban campus; the commercial corridor began a few blocks away.  Like the Malaysians, Singaporeans are in love with shopping malls:  that’s what lines Orchard Road, some of the biggest malls you have seen, and all air-conditioned, of course, which has to be one of their attractions.  As for its name, the road used to lead from the civic precinct into the orchards that supplied the city with fruits and vegetables, just as Von Thunen would have predicted.  Laid into the sidewalk now are medallions commemorating all those wonderful tropical products from mangoes and bananas to star fruit and pomegranates. 

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Repeat After Me: Orang Asli

Freeways and Malls:  Kuala Lumpur has allowed itself to be gobbled up by freeways.  They criss-cross the city in every direction.  I can see why mass transit patronage is not as high here as it is in other cities.  The Malaysians have taken to the car in a big way.  They have also taken to ‘The Mall’ in a big way.  It seems like you are never very far from a shopping mall.  My comfy little hotel, in an older part of the city, was a block away from ‘The Mall.’  That was its name and it was writ large in English on the side of the building.  With it were offices and hotels.  This is the form that new development takes in KL:  lots of vertical development that seems divorced from its surrounding neighborhoods.  In fact, getting from one old neighborhood to the next is a very pedestrian-unfriendly ordeal.  The woman I met with her baby in a stroller was not too happy about the difficulty of taking a walk.  And as she pointed out to me, motorbikes seem to think it is OK to park on the sidewalk, making her and her stroller descend to the street to get around the blockage. 

Street Market:  Early this morning, I discovered a street market not far from The Mall.  Food for the family, some clothes, a newspaper vendor, and breakfast on the street: all there for the people of Putra.  Eating breakfast from a vendor or a sidewalk shop seems to be popular here.  This was not Chinatown, but there seemed to be lots of Chinese in the mix.  One man told me his family had come from China four generations ago during a time of troubles (I asked what the troubles were about, but got no answer I could understand).  He loved being a Malaysian and hated the Communists.  He told me Malaysia was a poor country, so I pointed at the skyscrapers only three blocks away and said I disagreed.  I am still not sure what he made of that, but I do think he was delighted to be speaking English to an American visitor.  The image that will remain longest from my market morning?  A live chicken getting his throat slit for a customer.  I flinched and looked away. 

Orang Asli:  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Malaysia may be going through a cycle that all modernizing nations go through if they have an indigenous population.  The tentacles of development are taking hold of every part of peninsular Malaysia (Malaya) and strangling the forest peoples out of existence.  Of course, this has been going on for at least a century, but now the Malaysian government seems to feel bad about it (my interpretation), so they are anxious to publicize the nobility and wisdom of the Orang Asli (‘original peoples’), the collective term for dozens of different native tribes.  I visited the National Museum which had both a permanent exhibit and a special exhibit on the country’s indigenes.  The theme of the temporary exhibit was beliefs and traditions; it took you into the Orang Asli’s spiritual world in the setting of a recreated forest village.  Animists, they are, but to some extent the earth might be better off if we were all animists: Malaya’s original peoples believe that large rocks and open spaces such as swamps, lakes, and water holes have their spirits and guardians who must be respected and appeased.  Western religions have killed off the spirits of nature, and western civilizations have done a fine job of destroying so much of the natural earth.  This may apply to eastern civilizations, too.  How the Orang Asli see some of the spirits that co-inhabit their world is the subject of much contemporary sculptural art that was on display.  It was some of the most creative I have seen.  Orang Asli:  I just love saying those words!

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

New Day, New Country

Leaving Thailand:  It’s a travel day.  I leave Phuket today.  I am going to Kuala Lumpur (KL, for short), Malaysia.  Air Asia makes winging your way around this part of the world easy and relatively cheap.  It’s cheaper if you can buy a ticket online, but I can’t, at least with Air Asia.  I have tried several times, but they will not take my credit card information.  I asked at the airport and the airline says it’s the credit card company.  I email my credit card company and they send a canned response that says it is the airline.  It doesn’t really matter, though.  At every airport, the airlines all have ticket counters where you can walk up and buy a ticket up to the time of departure.  It seemed to me that the prices were only about 15 dollars more expensive.  It is mighty convenient, but if you did it in the US you would pay premium fares.  Let me say it out loud:  US airlines are the least progressive on the planet and spend most of their time thinking up new ways to charge for their tickets and other services.  Here’s another example.  I might attend a conference in Montreal in the fall.  So I went on line (while in Patong) and priced a ticket:  over $700.  I then sent an email to my travel agent in Virginia:  same price.  By comparison, I will cross an international boundary flying from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur and pay about $100 (for advance purchase, it is less).  How do the US airlines get away with it?  My backup plan (if I actually choose to go) is to fly to Burlington, Vermont, and rent a car for the Canadian portion of the trip.  Maybe on a slow day soon, I will write more about budget airlines.

I can’t say that Phuket was one of my favorite places, but it has come to feel like home over the past five days.  I now have a favorite restaurant, a favorite coffee shop, a favorite ice cream parlor, and a favorite deck chair by the pool.  Oh, I shouldn’t have admitted that!  Just remember, this is a resort island, so accommodation prices are low.  I would certainly return here, but I think tourism is gobbling up the island, which is the very resource that attracts visitors.  Some restrictions on development are badly needed.  Returning to the airport by taxi (a 50 minute drive), I became even more away of how sprawl has crept along each and every road.  The airport, though, is right on the beach; it is very modern and welcoming.  I bought my ticket, passed through border control, and waited for my departure.  From the air you get a broader view of the Andaman Sea and realize what a tropical paradise it is. 

Arriving in Malaysia:  A little more than an hour later, we landed in KL.  As usual, there was a landing card to fill out.  Here is what it said in red caps at the bottom of the card:  BE FOREWARNED DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER MALAYSIAN LAW.  I wondered if I should get rid the aspirin in my backpack.  I think I arrived at the Budget Airline Terminal, which is separate from the main terminal.  And, it did seem a little ‘budget.’  Thirty US dollars to get into the city by taxi.  Nix that idea.  Where’s the bus?  Finally figured out the answer to that one.  Price?  Less than US $3 to the Central Station (and it's really far away).  From the station, I paid about 30 cents (US) to take the train to the part of town where I had identified a place to stay.  Of course, everything was priced in Malaysian ringgit.  (Yes, the currency used to be the Malaysian dollar, which is what I was expecting.)

I am a card-carrying member of Hostelling International, so for this leg of the trip, I decided to go back to budget accommodations.  I checked the HI website and found a place in Kuala Lumpur, and it seemed rather centrally located (a priority for me).  It turned out to be a two-star hotel (Wira Hotel).  Instead of dormitory quarters, I got a private room and a nice one at that.  Price?  About $30 US, breakfast included and free wifi, too.

The journey to KL was fun.  In fact, it was more fun than usual because when I left the hotel in Thailand, I had neither a plane ticket nor a place to stay in Malaysia.  Whenever there are some unknowns in the equation, it makes travel exciting.  I have often said that there is nothing more exhilarating that arriving in a city where you have never been with no advance planning.  You have to figure it all out from scratch.  But, as the ‘unknown’ becomes the ‘known,’ you feel like you have learned so much and another city has been added to your collection.  By the end of this trip, I will have visited 37 of the 101 largest cities on the planet.  My hobby:  collecting places.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Sunday in Patong

Green Season:  We are in what is called the “green season” here.  It extends from June to September, and it is the monsoon season.  It has just begun.  Obviously, it is not the tourist season, but I get the sense that Phuket is doing everything it can to up their visitor totals this time of year.  80,000 people on the island work in the tourist industry.  The European languages are heard everywhere; now, it seems the Thais want to encourage more Asian tourism.  Here’s a riddle for you:  A new Center for Language Skill Development has just opened up here on Phuket.  It is offering free language classes to those 80,000 workers.  What five languages will initially be offered?  (I’ll tell you later.)  My assessment is that English is neither well-understood nor well-spoken here.  Part of the problem, I think, is that so many languages are spoken by the tourists who populate this island.  English, though, is spoken by more than Brits and Australians; it is spoken by everyone else who visits (a slight exaggeration) as a second language.  Then, there is the international language of the global corporations which communicate in signs and symbols.  They offer a heavy dose of Western culture but often try to tailor it to local sensitivities.  What is difference about Ronald here on the beachfront in Patong?

They Fed Me:  This was the hardest Sunday for picking a church to attend; in fact, I was first told there were none in Patong (the largest town on the island).  I couldn’t believe that, though, so I hit the Internet and found the House of the Lord Church, which advertised itself as an international church.  It was close, half a block from the beach in an arcade of shops and restaurants.  It had occupied this space for a year, and there was room for maybe 40 people.  The service lasted two hours (yes!).  In fact, we stood to sing for so long that half the congregants sat down half way through.  It was spirit-filled singing with a guitarist and song leader up front.  Words were projected onto a video screen (including their English translation).  I had a surprise, though.  All visitors were called one by one to the microphone to tell a bit about themselves.  I was the first.  Then the Australian woman, then the Swiss man married to the Brazilian, then the Finns who were on their honeymoon.  Then, the Australian man said he would pass; I talked to him later, though, and he told me to call him when I got to Australia.  He didn’t seem to be shy.  No one seemed to be in a rush, including the preacher.  The sermon was on Jehoshaphat, but I caught only bits and pieces.  It was delivered in Thai, then translated into English by a Thai man who goes by ‘Joseph.’  This is the first church that handed out lunches (fried rice with fried egg on top) after the service, so we all sat around and talked for a while. 

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

The Anadaman Sea

Monkey Cave:  As you know, monkeys thrive in this part of Asia.  Near Phang-Nga (on the mainland) is monkey cave, the site of Wat Sawan Kuha.  In the cave is a huge reclining Buddha made of gold.  (Why am I suspicious that all these Buddhas are made of real gold?)  Of course, a temple requires a monastery, so monks are around to tend to the needs of their lord – and the monkeys.  Geographers know that caves indicate limestone lithology.  Here in the wet tropics, there is plenty of water to dissolve calcium carbonate and huge pockets form underground.  Roof collapse often opens the caverns to the outside world.  That’s what we have here, a huge cave with two fine entrances and an abundance of stalactites and stalagmites.  Actually, I found the cave much more interesting that the Buddha.  Am I allowed to say that?  The monkeys seem to know enough not to go too far into the cave, but they love the trees outside, though they seem to be a little scarce when it is pouring down rain, as it is today.  Yes, today is proof that we are in the monsoon season.  Not that it rains all the time, but there are always clouds in the sky and today there has been complete cloud cover and periodic rain.  The advantage of thick clouds?  It is cool and pleasant. 

007: I got on a long-tail boat at the port town of Phang-Nga.  It was propelled by a powerful motor and captained by a skilled mariner driving from the rear.  Out into Phang-Nga Bay we went.  Much, if not most, of the bay is part of Ao Phang National Park.  One of its 42 islands became world famous in 1974:  James Bond Island.  Go back and watch Man with a Golden Gun; you’ll see it.  I walked that beach today and saw the offshore islet, Ko Tapu, standing tall and proud.  You wouldn’t believe the number of long-tail boats that visit each day; it has to be one of southern Thailand’s most famous attractions.  Fortunately, everyone docks on the opposite side of the island and visitors walk to the famous beach.  Khao Phing Kan (the real but never-used name of James Bond Island) along with the others were formed from the same processes that created Monkey Cave.  The bay is studded with limestone islands, remnants of a karst landscape that was drowned by the sea.  Each island (really, large sea stacks with vertical sides) is covered by tropical forests and fringed by mangrove swamps.  It is magnificent and mysterious looking in the rain and mist that enveloped our boat on this afternoon’s voyage. 

Koh Panyee:  None of the islands have enough of a coast for settlement.  Their sides plunge into the sea.  Nevertheless, a village of about 200 homes has developed off the island of Panyee. Every structure is built on stilts and they are all connected by boardwalks.  As a fishing village it is several centuries old, but now it is also a tourist destination you can even take a room here for 500 baht.  Panyee's population is Muslim and they are raising funds to build a mosque (though they have always had a masjid, or praying place).   It must be wild to be a kid here.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Into the Hills

Excursion Day:  Chiang Mai is geared up for travelers.  You can rent bikes and scooters, take hiking excursions into the mountains, or arrange shorter bus tours.  Today, it was time for a brief excursion into the mountains to visit a hill tribe village.  It turns out the tribe was the Hmong, one of five or six tribes living in northern Thailand.  Until a few decades ago, the basis of their economy was poppies.  After all, this is the ‘golden triangle.’  Now, they have transitioned to tourism and handicrafts.  In fact, to get to the real village everyone must pass through a gauntlet of shops offering lots of embroidery, traditional clothing, hats, and some jewelry; food, too.  I spent a few bhat on handicrafts in the hope of quashing any idea of returning to poppy cultivation, especially since the village had very few visitors today.  But, again, this is not tourist season here.  

We were fortunate to see a funeral taking place in the council house.  A body I could not see, but I could see the crowd of people gathered around the opposite side of the room.  Not much mourning, and I suspected a ‘celebration’ would come later because food was being prepared in lavish quantities on the back patio and decorations (I suspect for a funeral procession) were being made down a side alley.  The Hmong here are Buddhists, but they came to Thailand centuries ago from China.  So, they practice Chinese burial customs:  they bury their dead.  Thais follow the Indian burial customs: they cremate their dead, the Hindu practice. 

In Doi Pui we were maybe15 miles away from Chiang Mai, but you get to the village via a switch-back road that climbs and climbs into a rainforest.  It is both cooler and mistier in the mountains; I can see why we passed one of the King’s palaces on the way; it’s a relief being up in the hills.

Wat Prathat:  On the edge of the mountains that overlook Chiang Mai was Wat Prathat Doi Suthep temple.  A wat is a monastery temple. I cannot vouch for all these facts but essentially this is the story.  A monk discovered a relic of the Buddha and took it to the Lanna King.   The king put the relic on the back of a white elephant which was sent into the mountains around Chiang Mai.  The elephant stopped and died at what became the site of the temple here.  The first shrine built was to house the relic, a bone, but lots of other temples have been added to the site.  The aspect of the story that does not get mentioned prominently is that the monarch who commissioned the elephant and built the first part of the temple complex was the King of Lanna.  Any use of the word Lanna here in Chiang Mai hearkens back to the time when northern Thailand was a kingdom of its own.  When you visit Wat Prathat, you are seeing Lanna history, not Thai history.  The people of Chiang Mai take pride in their royal past. 

The most interesting part of the temple compound was the “cemetery” that surrounded a bodhi tree.  Remember that most Buddhists in this part of the realm are cremated, so the cemetery provided individually-size cubicles for the ashes.  The cubicles were arranged around the tree trunk.  The names of the individuals, including some Americans, were inscribed on the “front door” to each compartment.  Now, their souls are in heaven with Lord Buddha.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

It Tickles

I chose to stay in a hostel here in Chiang Mai, but I took a private room with air conditioning.  Breakast on the front patio is included.  It is inside the moat, meaning in the old city.  Most of the tourist hotels are well outside the historical core.

Doctor Fish:  My feet took a leap into the deep today.  I couldn’t resist a fish massage; that is, I let a tank of fish massage my feet.  I had never heard of this before arriving in Chiang Mai, but on the very street where I am staying, I discovered Fish Spa.  I read the sign, walked past, laughed out loud (lol), went back.  In the window was a tank full of ‘guppies’ that looked like tiny catfish; they were the doctor fish.  First, the proprietress washed my feet on the front step.  In I went, hopped up on a bench behind an aquarium, and dangled my feet in the water.  The little guppies started a feeding frenzy.  It tickled.  They scoured all dead skin and who knows what else off my fleshy phalanges.  Especially the areas between my toes did they like.  This lasted half an hour.  Now truthfully, I can’t say my feet felt any better, but it was an experience I will never forget.  I wonder if a franchise in Virginia Beach might find a market.

Serendipity is wonderful.  A fish massage was not my objective this morning.  Getting a haircut was.  Be assured, though, that I did get my hair cut right outside the main gate to Chaing Mai.  (Yes, all the old gates survive!)  I was the only customer.  I got a shampoo, a head massage, and a haircut for $5.  Now, I look Thai and I have added to my international collection of haircuts.  Remember:  “The haircut is the souvenir that doesn’t take up any room in your luggage!”  Where did you get your last haircut?

Chiang Mai:  Chiang Mai is a big city with a small town atmosphere.  I can see why Americans like it here.  There are thousands.  I hear they get together and celebrate July 4 every year (sponosred by the VFW).  I met a teacher who had given up on California (where he wasn’t even a teacher), moved to Thailand, and got a job in a government school.  Instruction is in English.  He says there is a plan in the offing to provide all instruction in English for all students.  Not verified, but it does make sense.  Thailand has its own hill tribes that do not speak Thai, plus none of the neighboring countries speaks a mutually intelligible tongue.  English will help modernize and knit the region (southeast Asia) together.  If you need a job teaching English as a second language, come to Thailand.  You will need a certificate, but you can get one here.  There are flyers all over.  In India, the role of English may be explainable by England’s overly long colonization.  In Thailand, however, there was no colonial period, and English has no history.  I suspect the first infatuation came during the Vietnam War when Thailand meant R&R for American troops.  The Thais learned that English meant money. 

The cost of living here is very low, and the city has apparently become a mecca for retirees, from both the US and Europe.  Housing is cheap and foreigners can own property (but not the land).  Plus, all the amenities are here or a quick hour-flight-to-Bangkok away.  Coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, sidewalk food vendors are ubiquitous.  I am finding free wifi here much more easily than in Bangkok.  I like this laid-back town.  Judging from the newspapers available, so do the French, Germans, and Italians.  The newspapers look like they have been printed on a large-format printer and stapled together.  News stands abound, and there are at least a dozen used book shops.

 

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.