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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…

Last days in Vietnam

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

After leaving Halong Bay, we were lucky to make a connection in Hanoi and board a sleeper train to Lao Cai in the very northwest of Vietnam, from where, if we had visas, we could have literally walked into China. That’s the second time we’ve been within 20km of China and not managed to get across the border (the first being in Pakistan 3 1/2 years ago), but something tells me we’ll make it to China one day soon.

Instead, we took a connecting bus to Sapa, a mountain village famous for its nearby scenery and ethnic villages. It’s an incredibly touristy place these days, but still very enjoyable if the weather’s right. We arrived at about 7am, having left Halong Bay at 12:30pm the day before, and would have liked nothing more than to get under our cosy blankets and sleep the morning away. But it was shaping up to be a glorious day with no clouds in sight, something rather unexpected as other travelers we had talked to said they often couldn’t see 10m in front of them in Sapa because the place was enveloped in mist and cloud.

So instead we trudged off down the hill for a 12km round-trip walk to the village of Lau Chai. Our guidebook says you need to have a guide and permit to do this, but we managed (rather skilfully, I thought) to avoid these restrictions and walked unhindered to the village. Largely because of Sapa’s popularity with foreign tourists, the ethnic Vietnamese villagers in this area, especially the women, have retained their traditional garb, unlike in other parts of the country. They really do look very pretty in their different outfits, depending on what ethnicity they are. The most striking are the Dao women, who shave their eyebrows and head and wear brilliant red headresses. It’s also pretty amazing to hear how well some of these women speak English, owing to the giant tourist trade. Many of them walk down from Sapa with the foreigners, chatting about their families etc. This invariably leads to offers to buy handicrafts once you get to Lau Chai, but it’s a nice way to converse with the villagers and learn a little about their lives all the same.

Once again we were disappointed to have arrived in such a place at the wrong time of year to see the rice fields at their best, but the mountain scenery was still quite lovely, and we really were blessed to have such a fabulous day. The next was very overcast (though not as bad as what had been described to us earlier) and we couldn’t see any of the mountains around Sapa that had been so clear the day before. It’s very cold in the mountains at this time of year, especially on days like that, so we considered ourselves lucky to have had one nice day up there and made our way back to Hanoi.

After a visit to Nimh Binh, where we saw some old royal temples, took a boat trip through Tam Coc, which literally means three caves, and met a group of five cyclists trying to make it overland to Europe (check them out: http://www.fueledbyrice.org), we went back to Hanoi for one final time and, after nearly four weeks in Vietnam, decided to fly back to Bangkok to spend the last couple of weeks of our trip exploring parts of Thailand that we have yet to visit. We arrived two days ago and will spend the next week or so in the central plains and northeast area. If time permits, we’ll head south to enjoy the scenery of Krabi and some other places.

Halong Bay … twice

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

After taking an all-night bus from Hue to Hanoi a few nights ago, we were suddenly hit with the realisation of being in north Vietnam as the temperatures were the coldest of our trip so far and had us ... [Continue reading this entry]

Christmas in Vietnam

Friday, December 28th, 2007

A few days ago we arrived in Hoi An, a delightful small colonial town in central Vietnam at a good time for two events: the full moon of Dec. 23, and Christmas.

Each full moon night the street lights ... [Continue reading this entry]

Impressions of Vietnam

Monday, December 24th, 2007
With Laos and Cambodia's Angkor temples being the focus of this trip in Southeast Asia, we arrived in Vietnam a week ago without having really given the country much thought. I'd sort of forgotten how much of this country's modern ... [Continue reading this entry]