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Southeast Asia in a Nutshell

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Angkor ThomAfter four trips and 11 months of travel in Southeast Asia over the past six years, we’ve pretty much exhausted the region. There are a couple of places we wanted to go to but never made it to – Camaguin in the Philippines and Sulawesi in Indonesia – but other than that we’ve seen and done just about everything Southeast Asia has to offer, and it’s time to move on to different parts of the globe.

So, as we prepare to fly from Singapore to Sydney tomorrow (but first: the bus from Malacca, and a fifth Malaysian exit stamp this year alone) for a brief rest and some catching up with family and friends, we find ourselves reflecting on the region, and to that end I’ll offer some of the best (and worst) of Southeast Asia – enjoy:

Best Country: A toss up between Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos and Burma (Myanmar). I still firmly believe that Indonesia has the most to offer but the distances are long, the transport is difficult and the food is ordinary. I’m almost ready to hand the crown to Burma – it has one stupendous historic site, plenty of Buddhist places of interest and lovely, sincere people (this despite them being among the most oppressed in the world, so much so that some of them are even trying to flee to Bangladesh, of all places, in search of a better life) – but it does lack some of the main natural highlights of some of the other regional countries like volcanoes, karst scenery and easy wildlife viewing. Virtually all of Laos is extremely nice but not much of it is spectacular, while the Philippines ticks almost all the boxes but it doesn’t have any pre-colonial sights, and while Christianity offers something new in the region, I found that I missed the eastern religions when I was there.

Best Large City: Singapore or Bangkok (Thailand).

Worst Large City: Jakarta (Indonesia).

Best Small Cities: Four spring to mind: Luang Prabang (Laos), Hoi An (Vietnam), Malacca (Malaysia) and Georgetown (Malaysia).

Best Instance of Wendy Getting Growled at by a Tiger: Seven Mountains Lake, Sumatra (Indonesia).

Best Food: Singapore. (Owing to a momentary brain freeze, I originally wrote Thailand as the answer to this one. One prawn laksa and one fried kway teow later, my senses have been restored.)

Worst Food: Indonesia.

Best Historic Sight: The Angkor temples (Cambodia), followed by Bagan (Burma) and Borobudur (Java, Indonesia).

Best Karst Scenery: The Bacuit Archipelago in Palawan (the Philippines), followed by Krabi (Thailand), Halong Bay (Vietnam) and, on land, various places in Northern Laos.

Most Surprising 6:40am Knock on a Hotel Door Accompanied by Huge Plates of Nasi Goreng for Breakfast: Kota Agung, Sumatra (Indonesia).

Best Wildlife Experience: A two-day Orang-Utan-themed boat trip through Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan (Indonesia); then Bako N.P. or the Kinabatangan River (both Malaysia).

Cheapest Room: US$0.50 for a double room in Ban Huay Baw (Laos).

Best Underwater Experience: Sipadan (Malaysia), then Donsol for whale sharks (the Philippines) and the islands west of Flores in the Komodo National Park (Indonesia).

Best Meal: Snapper hot plate at the Gardenia in Labuanbajo (Flores, Indonesia), hawker-stall prawn laksa on North Bridge Road (Singapore), anything at Mai Kadee (Thailand).

Most Out-of-Place American Coffee Shop: Pyin-u-Lwin (Burma).

Best Instance of Wendy Getting Chased by a Fighting Bull: A bull-fighting arena somewhere near Bukkitingi, Sumatra (Indonesia).

Best Volcanic Scenery: It has to be Mt. Rinjani on Lombok with its extraordinary volcano-within-a-volcano (Indonesia), followed by Kelimutu on Flores (Indonesia) and Mt. Pinatubo in Luzon (the Philippines). Mt. Bromo (Java, Indonesia) gets all the hype but it’s too popular for its own good.

Best Beach: A hard one for us to answer, since we avoided most of the celebrated beach hangouts of the region. Of the ones we did visit, some favourites are Pero on Sumba (Indonesia), Gili Air off Lombok (Indonesia) and any strip of sand in the Bacuit Archipelago (the Philippines).

Best Sign: This one (Bali, Indonesia), and the one that read: FRESH RABBIT MEAT / PET RABBIT SOLD HERE (Kuching, Malaysia).

Most Surreal Experience of Being Mobbed by Dozens of Touts at a Bus Station: Siem Reap (Cambodia).

Best Filipino Fast Food: Biggs Diner, then Jolibee.

Best Rice Terraces: Batad (the Philippines), Bali (Indonesia). And, for something different, the Spider Rice Fields in Flores (Indonesia).

Village Most Completely Overrun by Tourism: A photo finish between Vang Vieng (Laos) and Ubud (Bali, Indonesia) – I’d say the former.

Most Claustrophobic Underground Hideout: Cu Chi Tunnels (Vietnam).

Best Markets: The floating market in Banjarmasin (Kalimantan, Indonesia), the fish auction market at Bandar Lampung (Sumatra, Indonesia), various markets in South Vietnam.

Most Picturesque Drying Chillis: Luang Prabang (Laos).

Country You’d Least Expect to be so Rampantly Capitalist Given its Recent History: Vietnam.

Fish Market Containing the Most Finless Sharks: Hoi An (Vietnam).

Weirdest Alms We Ever Gave to Buddhist Monks
: Uncooked rice and toothpaste (Thailand) – it turns out you’re not supposed to give them uncooked rice because they don’t cook their own food. Surely the toothpaste was useful, though.

Most Remote Places Visited: Wae Rebo on Flores, the Lingga Islands off Sumatra and Tambong Malahoi in Kalimantan (all Indonesia).

Best Decisions We Made: Choosing to wait in Semporna for three-and-a-half days to go snorkeling in Sipadan rather than giving up and skipping it (Malaysia); doing the same trip in Halong Bay twice to get a nice weather day (Vietnam); running away from the aforementioned growling tiger (Indonesia); making the effort to reach out-of-the-way Kong Lor Cave (Laos).

Best Train Ride: The journey over the Goktiek Viaduct (Burma).

Worst Decisions We Made: Going overland through South Sumatra rather than flying over it, and then not visiting football-playing elephants or Krakatao, for reasons unknown (Indonesia); not closing the zipper on Wendy’s bag while it lay on rocks near a river near Krui in aforementioned South Sumatra, and shortly thereafter seeing her camera cruising down the river (Indonesia); going to the so-called Tiger Temple (Thailand); setting a combination lock to an apparently easily guessable combination, resulting in disappearing money (Indonesia).

Toughest Hike: Mt Rinjani on Lombok without a doubt – on Gili Air the day after descending, we were so sore that we literally could barely move (Indonesia).

Best Value Activity: Tubing down a river for hours in Bukit Lawang (Indonesia) – US$0.30 for the tube rental.

Best Festivals: Funeral Ceremony on Bali (Indonesia), Ati-Atihan in Kalibo (the Philippines); That Luang in Vientiane (Laos).

Local Food You Wouldn’t Touch With a 10-Foot Pole: Balut eggs (the Philippines), these delicacies (Laos), 1000-year old egg (and it tastes like it’s been rotting for that long too – Thailand)

Best Caves: Kong Lor Cave (Laos) and Sumaging Cave in Sagada (the Philippines).

Best Photo: This one (Laos). Or this one (Vietnam). Perhaps this (Thailand). Or this one (Malaysia). I’ll let you choose, and I hope you enjoyed the tour.

Meanwhile, the journey continues…

Leaving Southeast Asia

Monday, January 28th, 2008

It’s been a while since I wrote anything in this space, and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind tour for us in that time.

We flew to Bangkok about 2.5 weeks ago and spent the next 10 days or so in Thailand. We visited a floating market an hour-and-a-half away from Bangkok, which was actually better than we expected, as we stayed the previous night in Nakhon Pathom and woke at dawn to walk to the market area along the town’s canals. There were plenty of produce boats about, making for a picturesque scene and plenty of good photos, and the tourist trade hadn’t really started yet. By nine o’clock, the buses started to arrive from Bangkok and our day was over…

We spent the next few days in Kanchanaburi, which was unfortunately a bit of a disappointment. There’s a ‘Tiger Temple’ nearby where monks live with rescued tigers – it featured on National Geographic or another similar TV channel two or three years ago. But there’s not really a temple there anymore (or at least you’re not shown where it is), and the odd monk or two you see are just there for show – it’s basically a tiger zoo run by international volunteers, and nothing like how it was portrayed in the video clip and how it’s continuing to be portrayed by the current management and Bangkok/Kanchanaburi tour companies.

Our second disappointment was that we took a bus for more than an hour to walk along one of the most interesting stretches of the infamous WWII Death Railway from Thailand to Burma, built by Allied POWs and local slave labour at the hands of the Japanese. But the 4km route was closed for a three-day period for maintenance, so the trip out there was wasted. We still took the train part of the way on the Death Railway line back to Kanchanaburi, but this was a tourist trap and a disappointment, and the bridge on the river Kwai is not nearly as impressive in real life as the one depicted in the 1957 movie.

With Wendy’s birthday approaching, we took a bus south and wound up celebrating on a small island called Ko Chang on the Andaman coast, close to Burma (not to be confused with the Ko Chang on the Gulf coast!). It was not paradise-like but was a quiet, untouristy island with maybe 7-8 bungalow operations, and we spent a peaceful day there drinking cocktails and swimming in the ocean. The following day we returned to the mainland and continued south, taking a boat trip on the Phang Nga bay (near Krabi) which was the highlight of either of our two recent sojourns in Thailand. The bay is similar to Halong Bay, but a mangrove forest at the start of the trip (prettier than it sounds) added an extra aspect to it, and I was able to get lots of great photos.

With the timing of the start of our next jobs uncertain, we gambled a little and decided to continue south to Malaysia. We only managed to spend three days there unfortunately, but it was enough to explore the island city of Georgetown, which is a fabulous melting pot of Indian, Chinese and Malaysian cultures that, I suppose, represents Malaysia as a whole, and also spend a night in Kuala Lumpur, a pretty interesting large city by Asian standards.

On Tuesday night we flew out of KL, and we landed in Sydney five days ago, an unexpected trip that is a bit of a bonus for us as we get to visit family and friends here. We’re going to be based here for the next few weeks, doing what work we can from here while waiting for the green light to go to Beijing, where we’ll live for the next seven months as part of a planning team for the Olympic News Service for Beijing 2008.

I’m starting to put up more pictures from all of the countries we visited in Southeast Asia, so you can check them out here.

Monks and Chiang Mai

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

We had a nice moment two mornings ago when we were forced to wake up at 5:15am to catch a 6am bus (and no, that in itself wasn’t the nice moment…). We walked outside the guest house onto the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Something New

Monday, October 29th, 2007

After a third set of ruins yesterday - Si Satchanalai, possibly the best of the three and certainly the best situated, in jungle-like scenery that recalls Raiders of the Lost Ark - we decided it was time for something ... [Continue reading this entry]

Walking around Sukothai

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Another day, another set of Thai ruins. This time we're in Sukothai, a more popular - and more impressive - insight into Thai history and culture than Ayutthaya.

This morning we rode in the back of a pick-up truck ... [Continue reading this entry]

The ruins of Ayutthaya

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

Double rooms for less than $5, meals for less than $1, Buddha images everywhere ... yeah, it must be Southeast Asia. We’re into day four of our little journey, and after a couple of days in Bangkok sleeping and ... [Continue reading this entry]