Asia – Page 21 – BitsOfMyMind

March 16, 2014

Thailand Part 1: the south

At the border between Thailand and Malaysia, my two travelling companions had decided to catch a train so I figured it would be best for me to do the same. Trains, as oppposed to buses which always tend to resemble each other are a mean of transpiration with a bit more personality. We boarded the 14 o’clock to Bangkok and took out seats in a car that must have been build around the 60’s with ceiling fans, refurbished seats and … no windows, just openings. At least that took care of the ambient heat, but made the voyage very noisy and windy. Something that was easily bearable at the beginning of it, but which became unsupportable after 12 hours. Alas, around two in the morning, we alighted in Surat Thani, where we checked in the only hotel around the station.

A few hours of sleep later, Georgia (from Canada) parted way with us as she had to proceed to Bangkok while Greta (from Italy) and I stuck together as we were pretty much taking the same route from then on: Koh Phangan and then Koh Tao, two very popular islands in South Thailand. After an hour or so walking around and getting confusing directions to the ferry terminal, we finally figured out that it was an hour’s bus ride outside of town. There our choices were also sort of limited and only found a way to our island by transiting through Koh Samui, the bigger island on the south, full of resorts and things we both could not afford. Originally, I had intended to go directly to Koh Tao, the diving island, but Greta had convinced me to stop for a few days on Koh Phangan, the debauchery island, famous for hosting the full moon parties, where all the young travelers in the region converge for a drug fueled night of dancing on the beach. My schedule could afford this deviation.

Koh Phangan

Finally, after two full days of transportation we arrived at our intended destination. There we made the decision to share an hotel room as it made more logistical sense at the time, checked into one and left for dinner. Finding a restaurant provided to be quite a challenge as on top of being vegetarian, Greta was also Italian but eventually, she settled for a place that had a large selection of meat-less dishes and we both ordered a tofu pad thai. Later, a very stereotypical Italian by the name of Daniele that she had met at the airport in Malaysia turned up and we got together for drinks. There, Greta started complaining about stomach pains which progressively during the evening, got worse. Back in the hotel room, she rushed to the bathroom and emptied herself in such a jet of liquid that for a moment I thought she was actually taking a shower. While asleep and thanks to my ability to snooze through jackhammers, I had imagined her ailment had only been transient but felt disappointed to learn in the morning that she had barely gotten any rest and spent much of the night hugging the toilet. We had had the exact same meal, which had most likely been cooked simultaneously in the same pan and I felt normal. My ramblings about the complexities of the human digestive system did not really console her, we had came here to party off the moral righteousness of Malaysian and instead, she was to be bed ridden and weak who god knows how many days.

That morning, Daniele turned up with his new roommate, Steven a pretty cool Irishman. Villages in Koh Phangan are almost made entirely of restaurants, hotels, bars, tattoo shops and clinics, which sort of gives you a rough idea of the kind of activity people indulge in on that island. Steven, inebriated like a proper Irish person often is had asked the barmaid the night before to draw him a picture of “boy meets girls”, which he then promptly had tattooed on his shoulder at the next door parlor. Obviously very hangover the next day, he had forgotten about this little adventure but got his memory refreshed by the avalanche of derogatory comments about his drunken stupidity on his Facebook feed. What amazes me was his ability to take the whole situation with humor, which for a moment distracted Greta away from her stomach issues. He first came across to me a drunken foreigner idiot out for a bout of binge drinking in Thailand, but the more we discussed the more I discovered the intelligent side of him. He actually worked for the Game of Thrones TV series and anyone who watches the least bit of television has heard of this magnificently executed production. Steven had loads of crazy stories to tell about the filming and gave me some pretty cool insider details on how they manage to turn papier mâché structures into awesome castles.

That night was the night of the black moon party, the reason we had come to the island and luckily, Greta began feeling better and better as the day progressed. Since the full moon party can only happen once every 28 days or so, the locals organize a black moon party (no moon) and two half moon parties to make sure the influx of tourist to their island stays relatively constant. So that evening, after some pretty good pizza at an Italian joint chosen by none other than Daniele, we boarded a taxi and made our way to some undisclosed location in the jungle. I’m not going to do into lengths describing the event because 1) it sort of sucked and 2) it’s not my sort of thing, but it had a setup made of funky sculptures and large mushroomy dome covering the dance floor. Fluorescent body painting stands greatly outnumbered those where you could actually purchase (overpriced) liquor at and the music was of the psychedelic trance type which to the untrained hear sounded like the exact same beat looping over and over again. Obviously, half the people there must have been on shrooms (drugs). We left pretty early considering the event was to end at 10 in the morning but at least we got that box checked.

Not much happened the following day but at night, we had planned to try the famous mushroom shakes, which ended up falling through as only Steven and I were up for it. This evening though, we were finally informed about the place to be for that sort of think on Koh Phangan, a bar only accessible by boat, open 24/7 and which tips off the police to stay away. Basically a drug supermarket, where weird things happen and from which people don’t really come back, but most likely because having spent all their money on psychedelics, can no longer afford the steep cost of a longboat back.

Koh Tao

Already quite fed up with the climate on the party island, I was anxious to get to Koh Tao, the diving one. Rimas, a friend, was expecting me and Jesse, an American I had met while in Seoul and with which I had planned to do some motorcycling around Thailand was also arriving on that same day. I left the others behind and took the ferry where I met a girl who upon laying her eyes on my Utila t-shirt, told me she had also spent a month there and after a few minutes of conversation, we realized that we had been following each other’s footsteps in Central-America by a week’s interval. She had been at the same diving school as me and had met and befriended the people I knew there; small world, good memories. Once in Koh Tao, my two friends were staying at opposite ends but I immediately took a cab to Rimas’ side of the island, where within a couple of minutes of meeting him he kindly offered me his couch in a small apartment he was renting. With accommodation sorted out for the next few days I unpacked my things and set out to rent a scooter for me and Rimas to drive to Sairee beach, a town some kilometers north where Jesse was staying.

The traffic on this island is crazy and unsurprisingly, you see people bandaged up all over from falling and scraping and still you see most of them riding in flip-flops and without helmets. To be honest, I would have rather not rented a scooter, but the taxis there run a cartel and fix the prices. Going to Sairee beach from the southern tip of the island is 400 baht (14$) one way while a scooter for 24 hours is 150 baht. It’s easy to guess which is he more economical option. I met up with Jesse and two other guys he had met on the way there, an Italian and a Portuguese, we all had dinner and went to a beach bar for some fire shows. Around 2 in the morning, I hoped on my scooter and slowly drove back to Rimas’ apartment, knowing that in spite of having limited my alcohol intake, if I was in Canada I would probably be over the legal limit but this being Thailand and on Koh Tao in particular, the police turns a blind eye to drunk driving.

Rimas was diving with Buddah View so I figured I should give them a try. I took the morning easy and in the afternoon booked a UV night dive with them and proceeded to visit the island on my scooter. While it was for the most part driving on steep dirt roads, the island had a few mountains which offered some great panoramas. Later, my ride surrendered back to its owner, I prepared my equipment for the night dive and hoped on the pick-up truck which took me to the boat dock and boarded the diving vessel. This is also where I was told the dive was not UV, it was just a normal dive. A UV dive is done at night and is the underwater equivalent of being in a club full of UV lights. You where a special lens on top of you mask and carry an ultraviolet torch in lieu of a normal one and supposedly, it makes the wildlife and plants down there glow in very psychedelic ways.

There is a staggering number of dive shops on Koh Tao, more than 40 I think. Since most of them cannot afford to have direct access to a dock, their ships all moor at the island’s main pier and they transport their customers between there and their shop on trucks. Some have air compressors on board their ships, but most of time, the crew has load and unload all the tanks as well. Quite a pain in the butt compared to what I am used to. Anyway, we sent to site called Junkyard, which is flat sand patch with a bunch of metal structures, a truck and some other items like a gym set scattered around. Not that interesting, but that night, I set a personal record of 70 minutes under, probably owing to the fact that since there was nothing to get excited about, my air consumption remained low due to boredom. On the way back to the shop, I put my name up for the morning’s two dives and met up with Rimas for dinner and some drinks (lots in fact).

Up bright and early, same routine of getting to the boat for diving. A ship it should be called actually, as it can take about 50 divers at once and even provides lodging for part of its crew, which while we were returning from the first dive, was chopping up squid and cooking rice. Neat I thought, what a nice snack but no, it was not for us. The first site we visited was named Green Rock and it was only me, Rimas, and the guide. It was fun, lots of swim throughs and little caverns to crawl around, but I came back up with several cuts and scrapes from trying to fit myself into small orifices. In case your wondering blood looks green underwater To my great disappointment, the location of the second dive got changed to Junkyard again, which was day or night, ended up being junk.

I rented a scooter again to visit Jesse and his friends and on my walk to the restaurant, stopped at a small dive shop named New Wave Diving to inquire about their pricing. Instantly, they welcomed me in a very friendly and professional way and right off the bat offered me a decent discount due to my experience. When I asked if they were going to the wreck, they replied that no but they would try to accommodate me by maybe selecting a nearby dive site and dropping me off there. Since I felt I had to give another opportunity for Koh Tao to surprise me, I told them there was a 90% chance I’d be there. Not much happened on that night as my friends were recovering from a Thai whisky hangover so I made home early. The following afternoon, as promised I showed up at the dive shop and just like the previous night, were very welcoming. Much better already, the previous company had became much to large to provide any sort of personalized service and contented itself on churning out divers like a factory, just living off a reputation of excellence in teaching but certainly not in customer service. Some do not really mind but in my case, since I’m almost always going along, I expect to be able to socialize a bit on the dive. Added bonus, I was alone with my guide, who was actually was only a dive master in training so in effect, I was the one taking him out.

This afternoon, we started with a dive at Green Rock, of which I did not see much for my rental mask was fogging all the time. Normally I carry my own. Masks are sort of like underwear, they are adapted to your morphology and being in close proximity with eyes, nose and mouth, can actually transmit diseases and infections if not properly cleaned between users. Stupid me though, I had lost mine on Koh Phangan. For the second dive, my guide kindly offered me his own and we were dropped of at the wreck while the rest of the group kept going to a nearby site. The HTMS Sattakut, an almost 50 meters long ship sunken to make an artificial reef lied almost 30 meters down below. Again the visibility was not that great, especially where the ship contacted the sea floor and we could only stay down so long as my guide had been diving in the morning and would hit his no-decompression limit way before I did but it remains that I really enjoyed my time under. Large fishes, and lots of cool stuff to see down there. After 25 minutes or so, we rose to a shallower depth and started finning westward to another dive site, which would get us closer to the boat. The site, a pinnacle, provided a scenic ascension to the surface from its bottom at 20 meters or so to its top at 5.

Satisfied with my afternoon, I gave farewell to the staff and went purchasing tickets to Bangkok with Jesse. Got back to Rimas’ apartment, dropped my stuff, desalinized, changed, met him for dinner and came back into town for my last night on Koh Tao. We remained for some hours at Jesse’s hostel where they had a party going but later went to a beach bar, where I was supposed to meet Greta. Being the Italian that she is, she was more than an hour late. While looking for her, I ran into a group of Danish guys I had met in the Pehrentians so that was a bit of a coincidence. The night out ended late and I drove my scooter carefully to my end of the island for one last night on the concrete floor. Rimas did not have a mattress, so all I had to rest on was my sleeping back and a couch that soon provided to be too short to sleep on. Early the next day I took my leave from my host, but not before thoroughly thanking him for his hospitality. Since both of us are into the same activity I guess, the chances of seeing each other again are pretty high, especially that he might end up working in Mexico, which thanks to cheap discounted flights is basically next-door to Canada.

Soon I was aboard the high-speed ferry and Koh Tao was retreating in the distance. Certainly happy I had visited the island, I was nonetheless relieved to leave it. Me and Rimas had discussed this at length some evenings ago and both agreed that we each vastly preferred Utila in Honduras. Understandably, before coming there we had projected our previous experience onto Koh Tao as this is what we had to compare it with. Regrettably, we had raised our expectations too much as for the both of us this island did not deliver (or it did in too great quantities): too much partying, too much people, too much traffic, too big, too many dive shops, too touristic, in short, too much everything. Too bad, since we had both been considering the place for work in the near future. Enough complaining.

Dammit, this was way too much writing for such a short period of time, but I’m in a bus towards Pai at the moment and don’t have much else to do.

March 10, 2014

Malaysia

On first impression, due to its similar cultural constitution, Malaysia appears to be a poorer and larger version of Singapore, but on close inspection, it is not. A very large amount of the population is Muslim, which gives everything a slightly different allure. Women walk around wearing the hijab, at certain hours cities fill-up with the imam’s calls for prayers and alcohol can sometimes be difficult to find. Not that Islamic countries around Asia are a rarity, but Malaysia was the first one I got to experience and I must admit that albeit it sort of lacks many positive aspects that I have found during my visits to other countries where this religion prevails, namely architecture, art and vibe, the cohabitation with more conventional Asian cultures is interesting.

Kuala Lumpur

Abbreviated as KL by its inhabitants and the Singaporeans, its your typical bustling Asian metropolis but this time with a Muslim twist to it. My bus from Singapore arrived much earlier than I expected and dropped me along with two younger Germans in the middle of the city and a long ways from where I had booked a bed. Early in the morning, the Imam’s first calls filled up the air, waking in the process all the workers from the countryside, who not able to afford a room in the city, have to sleep on cardboard boxes in parks and alleyways. After a couple of kilometers’ walk we made it to the hostel but not able to check in for a long time still, I collapsed on a couch on the lounge and completed my night there.

Originally, I had booked three night at this hostel, but not entirely convinced KL was worth staying so long in, I preemptively cancelled my last night, which turned out to be a smart move. An afternoon spent walling in the city’s central park, a visit to the national mosque, where I had to endure an Islam conversion speech that would make anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of logic and basic human psychology cringe and that was it for my first day. On the second day, I went to Batu caves, an Hindu complex on the outskirts of town, visited some caverns and upon heading back to KL, made a detour through the Petronas Towers and the modern downtown area which unsurprisingly was just a very large shopping mall. Funny story, while walking in the Chinatown, I ran into a fellow traveler I had met more than two months ago in Beijing, quite an unlikely coincidence but contrary to what my wannabe Islam teacher would have wanted me to believe, not a miracle.

Kuala Lumpur is dirty, messy, noisy and badly polluted (the amount of thrash floating around after a rain storm was staggering) so I quickly got fed up with it’s dense urban environments, but one of its definitely positive aspect was again, the food, which is good, varied an cheap and the only moment of which I did not enjoy so much was the time I seriously choked on a piece of bread in the middle of a restaurant. Regardless, I began considering my options pretty soon into my stay in the city and soon found the destination that would give me the contrast in my travels I needed so much: the Perenthians. Two islands several kilometers off the eastern coast of peninsular Malaysia, with cabins set in nature, hiking, beaches and diving. With this new destination in mind, I began searching for accommodation there but soon had to give up as the options were either too expensive or unreachable. Disappointed, I turned off my computer and was soon engaged in a conversation with other travelers about the things travelers usually first speak about: their travels, where they have been, where they are going, and things in between. There, I learned that the Perenthians shut-down entirely during the monsoon season and might at the moment only be partially open and also that most had really good things to say about Penang, an island on the west coast and the location of Georgetown, and old British colonial hub now a UNESCO world heritage site and a foodie’s paradise. With this fresh new travel intelligence in mind, I figured that I could go to Penang for some days, which would get me closer to the Perenthians, would give me more time to contact hostels there and should I not be able to reach the islands at all, would at least get me nearer Thailand.

Penang (Georgetown)

A six hour bus ride, which was made longer by incessant stops to let the Muslim passengers carry on their praying duties, and I found myself in Georgetown. Not as pretty as I thought but given the amount of night markets and restaurants, the food scene looked promising.

A food stall at the night market in Georgetown

Upon entering my dorm to set my backpack down before heading for dinner, I ran into Mike (his real name is Mikaj) from Vancouver, one of my roommates. Within one minute, I had established that he wanted to go to the Perenthians, that he had med two girls that came back from the islands saying that they were indeed partly open and that he had spent the last two weeks in Penang because he liked the food and got too lazy to move anywhere. Both coming to the realization that each other was exactly what we needed, me the information that he had and him a kick in the ass, we quickly came to an agreement that in two days we shall leave for those much sought-after islands, but keep on looking for places to stay there.

Two weeks in Georgetown though, there must be loads to do here, so I asked Mike what his recommendations were but sadly he had none in particular, he just felt that the vibe was great, and that he had discovered a luxurious hotel into which he could sneak in to enjoy the pool and jacuzzi without the staff having second-thoughts about him being a customer. I told him lounging around water surfaces was not my thing, but we still got a laugh out of this case of inverted racism. Penang is very touristic and outside of Georgetown, it’s resort after resort, but it was touted as having a great national park so I decided I should check it out and then afterwards take a walk around town. The park was somewhat of a deception, but the city tour provided an explanation as to why Mike had qualified the place as “chilled-out”. No hustle-bustle, lots of street life, sidewalks (an all to often absent concept in Asia), excellent food, a good crowd of backpackers and a city that is big but not unmanageable by foot. Back at the hostel but exhausted from a long day of walking around in the Malaysian heat, I sat down for a beer with Mike and Adam (from Sweden) which turned into two beers, which turned into three beers, which turned into a night of drinking and talking about diving between me and Adam as Mike had stuffed himself with too much Indian food and retired much earlier than us. As I am writing these lines more than two weeks later, I have had the chance to spend numerous evenings having many of those Asian beers and the curious fact about them is that if you stay away from the cheap brands, you will not get a hangover no matter the amount that you drink. You will certainly wake up dehydrated and tired, but no headache, no nausea. Perhaps these brews have been engineered specifically not to give tourists bad morning afters? So that they can have many and still be able to go out and spend money around the next day? I am digressing.

Colonial Gorgetown — Colonial Georgetown

Fearing that I would be out of reach of an internet connection in the Perenthians, I spend my last day in Georgetown doing some work and that night, Mike and I hopped in a night bus to Kuala Besut, the coastal town from which the ferry boats depart. Obviously, Mike and I were unsuccessful at securing any affordable bed on the island, but we reminded ourselves that just showing up somewhere hoping for a place to stay always ends up working out in some way or another.

Pulau Perenthian Kecil

The buses in Malaysia are actually quite roomy. With only three seats on the width, there is ample space for the elbows and shoulders. Still, in spite of a sleeping pill, I could never quite get proper rest and spent the majority of the night waking up to change position only to realize that sitting was the only option.

View of coral bay at Pulau Perhentian Kecil

I arrived very early at the ferry dock and after a bit of waiting, was on a small craft hopping waves towards Pulau Perenthian Kecil (“small stopping point island” in Malaysian). The ride was certainly bumpy, and indeed some other passengers appeared not to have a particularly enjoyable cruise, but it was nothing compared to what I had experienced in the past. Once on the island itself, me and Mike set out to explore the area to see what our lodging options were and as expected, there were not that many: some cabins and a resort. We reserved a chalet at the one that seemed to be the most sensible choice regarding location and price, but had to settle for a double bed which we would have to share. At 40 ringgit (6.6 $CDN) a night between the two of us, no big deal.

While scouting beds, I had also stopped by the three dive shops that were there as well and booked an afternoon dive with one of them so a quick nap and a short lunch later, I was in the water with the local marine population. The visibility was not great, not more than 10 meters, but the diversity of wildlife compensated and I got to see during that dive more species of fish and invertebrates through all my time in Honduras. Satisfied with the experience and the price (30$ for a dive), I booked another dive for the following morning, which was set to happen on Sugar wreck, a cargo ship that capsized twelve years ago during a storm and is now resting on its side in 20 meters of water at about 30 minutes by boat from the island, weather permitting of course. The season having just started, the seas could still be a bit rough and visibility poor, but that morning, mother nature decided to cooperate and made the dive possible. At a 100 meters long, Sugar wreck was to be the largest ship I would have ever dived on so I got pretty excited.

Once under, I was sort of disappointed that I could only see down to a couple of meters but soon had my attention diverted by the sheer size of the boat, all the junk that was lying around it and how nature had reclaimed the ship. The site of the sinking, originally a flat sandy plain, was now teeming with corals, anemones, bamboo sharks, carpets of sea urchins, barracudas and cuttlefishes. Even lion fishes, one of which visibly annoyed by this early morning intrusion, decided to get between me and the rest of the group, delaying my passage to the point where I almost lost them and challenging my buoyancy skills by forcing me to hover between walls of urchins, pieces of rusty metal sticking out and the roof of the cargo hold. How much more impressive must this dive have been in better conditions, but definitely satisfied, I would dive two other times around the island, but with another shop, not that the first one was inadequate, but I like spreading my business around. Although I would not be going back to Sugar wreck, I was the only customer on one dive, which really afforded me the time to properly look at things. I also did not get a chance to visit the other wreck, which apparently was guarded by a titan trigger fish with a very bad temper.

Mike occupied his time between napping and lounging on the beach so occasionally, I would join him for a game of frisbee or volleyball. The west side of the island, not yet open and essentially deserted, provided us with a lot of room to throw things at each other. Night time activities, as is to be expected in such a place, pretty much revolved around drinking and making friends at one of the few beach side restaurants or at the bonfire which some locals would make every night. Nothing unusual there, but what set this island experience apart was that the community was very small so you could make acquaintances one night and see them the next day. Soon enough, Mike and I had made buddies with a large portion of the foreigners, composed overwhelmingly of Scandinavians (and Finnish + Estonian), which made our efforts at building hype towards the Sweden-Canada Olympic hockey final that much more easy.

Normally, I would not care much about a hockey game, but the fact that I was in Malaysia on an island surrounded by sand, palm trees, tropical water and Swedish people made the whole event too extraneous/exciting to pass. So the night of the game, our cabin neighbors, a Swedish couple, had arranged with a local convenience store owner who happened to have a satellite TV to show the game. He probably had never head of the sport, but knew very well that so many customers at once would mean good business for him. Both them and Mike and I spread the word around that we should all meet there so at the rendez-vous time, the little shack was overflowing with Scandinavians and three of us Canadians, as we had only been able to find one other fellow country-woman. Naturally, we had a bet going with some supporters of the opposite team and naturally, we came out winners. Two beers per goal of difference, so six beers (Canada won 3-0), which we happily took over to the bonfire on the other side of the beach. The night ended with an infructuous quest for nesting turtles on the west-side beach and a swim, which I quietly sat out on the beach, because one person leaving the party without the others knowing could cause a major panic; someone had to play the lifeguard.

Mike had drank himself out of commission for the next two days, but I thankfully had managed my alcohol intake pretty well and only felt tired for the impossibility to sleep in the morning heat but otherwise fine. Well enough to go diving again during the day, hike to the fisherman’s village on the southern tip of the island and certainly sufficiently in shape to make it to the bonfire that night again. The following day was built around the same structure of diving, beach and bonfire, but that would as far as the routine went, I had to leave the next morning.

I had expected the Perenthians to be more “rural” than they actually were. For instance, before leaving I had told those who might need to get a hold of me that I would be disconnected for the next couple of days but to my surprise, the Internet had made it there and in fact, there were a lot of modern luxury that had reached those islands so much so that it was possible to indulge in a full-fledged resort experience. Still, the island (in its pre-high season state) provided to be an ideal compromise between size and amenities. For those that wanted a true “cabin on the beach” experience, all it took was a short taxi-boat ride to another more remote beach. And if you felt more social, the small crowds gathering at the handful of restaurants for the evening barbecues were a good way of making some interesting encounters. It suffices to say that my time on the Perenthians has been the highlight of Malaysia for me.

Moving North

Malaysia is split in two between the actual continent and the island of Borneo. Obviously, it was not practical for me to the latter as well, so sadly, there is a whole part of that country that I missed. I might come back to it if ever I do go to Indonesia, but while I’m immensely glad of having passed through Malaysia, I found that it generally lacked in charm and that at the end of the day, there was not a whole lot of things to do or places to go that seemed appealing to me.

Anyhow, I left the Perenthian Islands on the first ferry with two ladies that were both going up to Thailand, very relieved to be tagging along to someone that knows the way since that time, it was a pretty complicated journey and I had not done my homework. As for Mike, he replaced me with a Norwegian “friend” he had made himself earlier during his journey and that happened to be arriving on the very same ferry that was about to take me back on the continent. Let’s say that I fully understand why he did not seem terribly unhappy to see me go.

I’m sort of thrilled to go to Thailand, partly for the hype that has been building up during my whole trip but also for the fact that my time constraints are far looser here that they have been so far. I’m only suppose to meet a friend visiting me from Canada in Vietnam mid march and in Thailand itself, I should meet-up with two different travelling buddies, Rimas, my old diving instructor whom I saw in Hawaii and Jesse, an American I befriended while in Seoul.

At the Thailand - Malaysia border — At the Thailand – Malaysia border

March 1, 2014

Singapore

Singapore is simply fascinating. It’s like few other countries in the world, first because it is the largest city-state there is, but also because there four distinct cultures, Indians, Chinese, Malaysians and Westerners all seem to cohabit in relative peacefulness and mix themselves to form the social fabric of this peculiar nation. Earlier in my travels, when I was in Seoul, I met these two Singaporean girls, and not that we spent a lot of time hanging out back there, but I found their depiction of their homeland very interesting and told them I may come one day.

And after two months, that day finally came. When it became time for me to leave Hawaii and come back to the Asian continent, I figured I had some days to spare before I had to be in Thailand and the tickets to everywhere in South-East Asia were really expensive. Except for Singapore. For those reasons, I decided to take the long way up to Thailand and visit this little island of ultra-modernity.

Hindu template in Singapore's Chinatown — Hindu template in Singapore’s Chinatown

The city

Singapore could be a foretaste of what the big western cities will be like a couple of decades from now, where the rising price of gas will have put a halt to urban sprawling and where the cost of real estate will have made densification and public transportation the way to go and car-centric designs obsolete.

The city is clean, well urbanized, parks, sporting facilities are abundant and the transportation network is cheap and efficient. Not one piece of trash on the ground, not one cigarette butt, not one act of vandalism, not one advertisement taped to a telephone pole. However, there is this lingering feeling of mistrust in the air, this coldness in spite of the searing hot weather. In many regards, Singapore is an example to follow and in many others, not. The state appears to be really repressive, fines are hefty; any misconduct and civil disobedience I bet is dealt with in a swift and brutal manner. In fact, upon entering the country, in bright big red letters on the customs form is written: Drug trafficking is punishable by death in Singapore. You get the idea.

Still, if me make abstraction of the barely tolerable temperature, aimless wandering in downtown Singapore is pure pleasure, a feast for the eyes, with great architecture everywhere, a bunch of colorful Indian shops selling their wares or a Chinese kitchen catering to its daily load of customers, the city is as I said, fascinating. On one street I was randomly walking on, I came across a mosque, an Hindu and Buddhist temples and I would not be surprised if there was a christian church nearby. Thanks to my Singaporean acquaintances, I also got to see what the city is like outside of its core and away from the shopping centers. While everything remains very much the same, the architecture takes a very communist turn. Understandably, there is not a whole lot of space in the country so the lower classes, those that cannot afford the exorbitant cost of property ownership, are stacked in large concrete apartment blocks. From what I understood, if you do not have a family it’s not really possible for you to buy a house until you are 35 years old and once you do, you can only sell it after five years. As for rentals, I imagine the waiting lines are very long. Consequently, both of my 29 year old friends were still living with their parents.

Singapore’s colonial past and cosmopolitanism certainly has made it stand out among other Asian cities, in the end however, there is only a couple of days’ worth of sightseeing to be done there. Unless you have a very deep wallet and a taste for shopping, the cost of activities is sort of prohibitive as is the nightlife; it starts to feel very artificial pretty fast. No other traveler lingers either. Some are just arriving from elsewhere, some are returning home to their respective country, but no one remains there for a long time.

The food

When I questioned my Singaporean friends about one aspect of their country/city they really liked, they were unanimous: the food. As you might have predicted, so many cultures cohabiting leads to a wide variety of cuisines and fusions, certainly, but in Singapore, it’s also the format into which it is delivered, its accessibility and let’s not forget, the price. It appears that the inhabitants there don’t cook very much for themselves. All over the city you can find large food courts, or hawker centers, set up very much like those found in shopping centers except that they do not consist of your very popular fast-food chain, but of many small specialty kitchens. One serving Korean food, the other Chinese noodles, one dedicated to turtle soup, Indian fare, halal dishes, freshly pressed juices, etc. and in the middle, a larger stall catering to your need in beverages. The diversity is staggering, the one near my hostel must have housed at least 30 kitchens and for a good couple months I could have gone there without having the same meal twice. At a handful of dollars for every dish, no wonder it’s Singapore’s highlight.

My time there

Not so careful reading between the lines will give you a good idea of how my time in Singapore was spent: walking around and eating. Well, eating does not normally count as an activity since you’ll most likely be doing it three times on any given day, but in Singapore, my daily routine got structured around it, walking to the spots where the best restaurants were and always looking forward to the next meal. I did obviously hung out with my friends. We went out one night for Malay food, then translated to a nearby bar for a couple beers and subsequently headed for someone’s apartment (her parent’s actually) for some more drinks and discussions. There, the plan became to climb a hill for a view of the city and possibly a sunrise, but exhausted at 3 am, I took to taking a nap on the floor. At 5, they woke me up to go to this park but once there, no chance, it had been abandoned for some years so whatever viewpoint there might have been, either we could not find or had been overgrown with vegetation.

I made it back to my hostel at 9 and went to bed without bothering to brush my teeth or anything. Still, I managed to make the day a rather productive one by visiting the Singapore modern art museum and touring the Marina Bay Sands and Garden’s by the Bay, both very impressive in their own regard. At that moment, I already sort of had enough of the city and needed to move on so I booked a bus ticket to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next evening. The next day, more wandering in the city and at the end of the afternoon I met my friends one more time at a small live-music type of event at a park in the city for a beer. Coming back in time for one more last-meal at my local food court, I boarded my bus for Malaysia and in no time I had left Singapore but not without marveling one last time at its impressive skyline and gigantic shipping port.

February 21, 2014

Manila, the Philippines

The Pacific ocean is wide, wider than a look a world map would suggest. My travelling time to Singapore from Honolulu was to be 23 hours first through a 11 hour flight to Manilla and then a 3 hours and a half flight to Singapore with a good 8 hours of layover in between. Since spending the better part of my day killing time in the Manilla airport international terminal did no sound very appealing, I decided to pass the customs and go walk around the Filipino capital for a couple of hours.

I had to negotiate my taxi ride pretty hard with several threats of opening the door and getting out but eventually I managed to reach the city. My apologies for being an asshole tourist mr cab driver, but the fact that I’m leaving from the airport does not justify multiplying your fare by 8. The make a short list short, all I had time to visit was the Rizal park, the Intramuros (old town), a UNESCO world heritage church and the Chinatown. Add to that a few intrusions into the local life at markets, street food stalls and churches and that was it for my excursion into Manila. Much to the disappointment of all these very feminine looking men that seem to have a keen interest in me, that was all I could cram into the couple of hours I had away from the airport.

Jeepneys, Manila's most popular way to get around — Jeepneys, Manila’s most popular way to get around

Manila, being situated in a developing nation and having had a long history of Spanish colonial rule, had much in common with state capitals of Central-America I found. It smells, its dirty, its hot, save a couple of nice older buildings, its full of ugly, circulation is a huge mess, manifestation of abject poverty are abundant (the amount of street children…) and I bet it can be visited in a day or two. But on another level, its exhilarating to be in and its an overwhelming feast for the senses. It’s definitely a departure from Honolulu and a nice foretaste to what is coming my way in South-East Asia. I’m travelling again.

See you another time Philippines.

January 22, 2014March 10, 2014

Taiwan

Even the Taiwanese people identify themselves as being Chinese. As a matter of fact, the official name of the country is the Republic of China, which also very much pleases their mainland big brother, who in effect still considers the island of Taiwan to be one of its provinces. All aspects of the culture are strikingly similar, so is the official language and there seems to be consensus among part of the population that one day reunification should occur. However, only under certain conditions, namely that actual China shifts to a democratic political system and cleans up its act when it comes to human rights, freedom of press and wage disparity.

This confirms my original impression that Taiwan was an improved version of China, where people are more welcoming, friendlier and helpful; where cities are safer (not that the continent was particularly unsafe) and cleaner; where tradition and modernity mix in interesting and anachronistic ways; where in general, the inhabitants make you feel that they are happy and grateful you are visiting their country. Owing to its smaller size, one cannot really expect as much variety as can be found across the Taiwan strait when it comes to sights and people, but this also means that distances are smaller and consequently that travelling around is not as much a grueling task as it is in China.

Making a stop in Taiwan was not part of my original plans, but upon hearing positive comments from a variety of people I had met up north and noticing it was halfway between Japan and South East Asia, I figured I should break my journey south in two and explore what this little island is all about besides manufacturing computers and cell-phones.

Taipei

Taipei may be the capital of a bustling economical power, it has managed to stay relatively relax and in spite of the spurious growth that has affected most Asian urban centers in the past decades, is well urbanized and pleasant to walk around. True to my travelling habits, lots of urban exploration on foot I did. First to find my hostel. Due to strong lobbying by hotels, hostels are not allowed to advertise at all their location. All you get is an address and mine pointed to the fourth floor of an apartment building. Not really knowing they were so hard to find, I had decided to use the “show up and see if they have room” technique. Luckily, as I was climbing the stairs, the owner was going down so in the end I managed to secure accommodation for my stay in Taipei.

Over the next days, I simply walked around the city and visited a museum or two, checked out the famous Taipei 101 and walked some more. Obviously, I also entered some temples, which to my surprise are generally very extravagant in this country as a whole and a nice departure from those I had seen thus far in Asia. The hostel was practically empty so I spent most nights being productive in front of my screen, but one evening my roommate, Shab, a girl from the UK, offered me to follow her to a Couch Surfing meetup, where through the famous website/social network, foreigners gather around at a bar to exchange about various things related to not being home at present. The following evening, we linked up with someone we had met at that meetup to have some drinks and plenty of them were drunk, the last ones on the steps of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial, which even at 3 am looked impressive.

After four nights, I had decided I had had enough of concrete and cars and left the capital for a more nature oriented experience. David, the owner, had been very thorough in his briefing of all that there is to do for a stranger in Taiwan and strongly recommended that I go to Taroko National Park. Upon him suggesting that it was possible to rent scooters and ride them around mountainous roads I was pretty much sold.

Hualien and the Taroko National Park

After short train ride to the east coast of the island, I disembarked in Hualien, a regional capital and my basecamp to the Taroko National Park, famous for its mountainous landscapes and spectacular gorges. It was too late to go there when I arrived so all I did for the remainder of day was to borrow a bicycle from the hostel and ride it around the city. As planned, the next morning, I got up as early as I could (still late by most people’s standards) and got to the scooter rental shop that I was recommended by the hostel, the only one that will rent machines to foreigners.

The kind of road that you can expect in the Taroko National Park

Riding a scooter is quite easy and instantly I got the hang of it. Much easier than motorcycles in my opinion, but that also makes them very treacherous at high speeds as their small size and wheels do not provide as much stability nor braking power. Still, scooters should be driven like their bigger counterparts, in other words, not like bicycles with engines. They are not as fun, but provide a convenient way to get around, especially that my objective was at least 20 km away and the park being set in a gorge so essentially linear, this also meant that sights and trails could often be separated by several minutes of driving.

Aside from having to share the road with massive convoys of Chinese tourist buses on occasions, I had a blast riding on the only and sometimes single-lane road that winds its way up the gorge. Along the route where different trails and sights and I managed to see the better part of them; I even found a natural hot-spring that you could bathe in for free. Everything that I saw was just spectacular but about the trails themselves I’m slightly ambivalent as most were in such a state I never even got close to be able to call was I was doing hiking. Some high heeled tourists were probably very relieved that there was pavement everywhere, but I was sort of expecting a closer to nature experience. Then again, with the amount of visitors the park gets and its geology, classic dirt paths would not last very long. Whatever, I got to walk on several scary suspended bridges and found trails far away enough from the helmet wearing hordes (yes, some had helmets on to protect themselves from falling rocks) and surrendered my scooter after two days pretty satisfied of having admired such spectacular landscapes, especially while driving in them.

One last night at the hostel where I stayed up very late with the staff, their friends and some guests drinking all sorts of alcoholic beverages and that was it for my time in Hualien. Funny anecdote: Chinese people, during their very of first class of English in school, get baptized with a name foreigners will have an easier time remembering. Most opt for something classic like Kelly, John and so on, but some choose to elect their own and one Taiwanese girl that night had picked Jelly. Jenny? I replied. No, Jelly, as in jellyfish, or jellybean (incidentally the comparison she prefers). Sure that could provide to be an hindrance to finding serious work abroad, but in her case, it befitted her personality very well and if anything, with the kind of job that would employ her, a silly name could actually provide to be an advantage. Her real name was Jin Xue and I’m most likely not writing it correctly.

Kenting National Park

Located at the very southern tip of Taiwan, Kenting National Park was another thing David back in Taipei strongly recommended in his lengthy and thorough tourism briefing. Apparently, you can do surf there and given the large quantity of surf shops, it was probably the case, but not really into gliding on the surface of the water and bragging about it for hours afterwards, what closed the deal on Kenting was the fact that you could do diving there … and rent scooters.

Different park, same formula. I rented a motorized two-wheeled mean of transportation as soon as I could and got to all places that were apparently hikable in the park. Once again, where I was hoping for a good solid two hours of proper trails, I got half an hour walks in the park on concrete or brick layed pathways. Since most Taiwainese and Chinese live in cities and are not really used to moving themselves around on uneven and loose surfaces, they come very poorly prepared for actual hiking, both physically and logistically speaking. It seems to me that given their long history of civilizations and millennias of human influence on the landscape either through road-building or agriculture (rice cultivation being the most obvious example), the Chinese have lived removed from true wilderness for much longer than the average North-American. For this reason most go to parks for the same reasons that they go to zoos, to get a glimpse of nature in a safe, controlled and convenient environment. It was not bad per se, but travelling all this way just for this would have been thoroughly disappointing.

A cemetery (full of dead scooter drivers maybe)

In Taiwan, there is so much scooter traffic that the authorities thought wise to build special lanes for them which on some roads materialize themselves as bike-paths sized side roads where all the small engined two-wheeled traffic gets channeled. Quite dangerous if you ask me. Motorcycles go as fast as cars and in consequence require nearly as much space for breaking and for reacting to unexpected events or obstacles on the road. Coupled with the tunnel-vision effect created by speed the requirement for space is even further justified and since people in Taiwan drive like idiots, close calls are a normal occurrence. Crashes? not as common as one would expect. I passed a lady with a severely damaged leg she broke while swerving to avoid a truck that suddenly pulled into the motorcycle lane, but that was it. I guess you get good at driving like an idiot.

Anyway, for supper, I went to the nearby night market, which are quite the thing in Taiwan and very popular with both tourists and locals. A large number of small stalls set up shop along the street or in a dedicated lot and sell a wide variety of food from all over Asia. The one in Kenting was quite conservative as it catered mostly to tourists; the most original food you could have there was fried oreos, the rest was generally your average Asian fast-fare. In Taipei however, I was told that at one night market snakes could be ordered.

Second day was diving day. Woke up really early, drove to the dive shop and found out I was the only customer. Excellent, this meant I would be diving alone with their divemaster. I got my equipment, which was in poor general conditions but working fine otherwise, hoped on the car and we drove to the first dive site, which was located in a artificial cove created by a large wave breaker. Popular with snorkelers, the site apparently boasted a wide variety of hard and soft corals along with a good population of fishes and other creatures of the sea. Compared to other places I have been, it was nothing to write home about, the flora and fauna appeared to be in rough shape and there was thrash all around. The highlight of the dive were a giant clam, very large pufferfish and some clown fishes swimming around in their anemone habitat. Otherwise, most would have found the dive to be somewhat boring but since I get a kick out of breathing underwater and had not been diving for some months, I enjoyed it. Next dive was done at a deeper site, which provided interesting topography and wildlife and was in fairly good conditions due to its remoteness from human activity but once again, nothing extraordinary except for a sea turtle, which according to the divemaster, are quite a rare sight these days. Having been accustomed to hanging around with sea turtles, I found the sea snake more exciting to watch. it may sound like I was let down but in reality, I’m quite thrilled with having had the opportunity to experience Taiwan’s underwater world. The majority of animals and plants look similar to those I got accustomed with in the Caribbean, only differing slightly in shapes and colors, but there definitely were some newcomers to my repertoire. If only the divemaster would have known their name in English, but sadly, a bunch of Chinese characters are not of much use to me.

The afternoon was devoted to riding the scooter around the area, but out of the touristic roads. The driving was quite spectacular and so was the scenery. A stop at the Sichui grasslands scenic area to stretch the legs provided me with the best views of Taiwan I have had on my entire trip, the lighting was perfect, it has just rained so all the vegetation was glittering with water droplets and thick clouds were rolling up and down the hills. In the distance, I realized that the many abandoned concrete buildings I had been passing on the way there were part of an expensive decommissioned military complex occupying the whole top of a nearby hill, with coastal gun batteries protected by large bunkers and radar arrays. Had I had the time and prior knowledge of this place, I really should have trespassed for a bit of exploration. After I got back to the hostel, I worked for some time and then went for food at the night market again. This was my last night in Kenting but given my discoveries of the day, I wish I could have spent a bit more time in the area. It always pays to veer of the beaten track once in a while.

Tainan city

Unsure of what my next move would be, I decided not to return to Taipei just yet. I could go to Hawaii, get stuck a couple more days in Taiwan and then go to Hawaii, or have some weeks to spare, go somewhere else than Taiwan, and then go to Hawaii. In every cases, it was best to spend whatever time I had left in the country to visit another place, even if it was for a couple of hours. That morning, I woke up to find that in fact, Melissa really had enjoyed my company in Japan and wanted to see me in Hawaii, so I quickly booked my plane ticket and proceeded to Tainan, a middle-sized city that apparently had a nice old quarter.

The "small" night market in Tainan — The “small” night market in Tainan

At least that is what I remembered from David’s briefing. He had circled Tainan on my map and wrote a bunch of Chinese characters near it. Once there, no old quarter to be found, but the lady at the hostel kindly redirected me to the night market, apparently the largest one in Taiwan, where after dawn every day of the week stalls set up shop to provide clients with food, carnival type of games and cheap clothing. Indeed the market was big and it took me a solid hour to explore it. Later on during the night, I befriended an Indian guy who told me he had been to two markets this night. What? I asked the staff that had provided me with directions about this conspiracy and her answer was that I had gotten to the small one. The other, the largest in Taiwan for that matter, was only two blocks away. Whatever, the market I visited fitted the bill so I did not really bothered going again. Let’s go for a drink the Indian guy proposed and so we did. Himself a software engineer as well and working in Taiwan, we had some interesting discussions … but not about computers.

That was it for Taiwain. Up at the crack of dawn the next day (Sunday the 19th), bus to high speed train station, high speed train to Taipei, flight to Osaka, flight to Honolulu and at 9 am I landed in the Hawaiian capital, crossing the international time delimitation and going back in time to an extra long Sunday.

In retrospect

So you want to experience China but not the Chinese? Go to Taiwan. So you want a country you can actually properly visit in less than a month? Go to Taiwan. So you want cheap and tasty food? Again go to Taiwan. So you are in Asia but don’t really know where to go next. Go to Taiwan. Enough said.

As for myself, I’m off to Hawaii, where I intend to soak in the island lifestyle and not do (comparatively) much for the next couple weeks. It’s an unplanned destination, but after all, what is travelling? An escape from the ordinary.

Back in Japan! At the Osaka Kansai airport