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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…

Posted in Asia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Thailand, The Philippines, Vietnam | 3 Comments »

The Sultanate of Brunei

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

An exchange that took place yesterday:

Brunei Immigration Officer: “What is your job? Student?”
Me (wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, and looking a bit unkempt having spent previous night on a bus): “Project manager.”
Him (looking me up and down): “A very simple project manager.”

And so we entered the Sultanate of Brunei. Questions about my appearance aside, the entire process of arriving from Kota Kinabalu was somewhat of an ordeal. To get to Brunei overland from Sabah, you need to first cross a state border to Sarawak, which is bizarrely considered to be an international border, so you get stamped out of Sabah (i.e. Malaysia) and then 10 metres up the road you fill in an arrival card and get stamped in to Sarawak (i.e. Malaysia). You can imagine our confusion when we had to fill in the ‘Port of Last Embarkation’ question on our arrival cards (What was the last country we were in before arriving just now in Malaysia? Why, Malaysia!). You then enter a small strip of Brunei that is unconnected to the main part of Brunei, then re-enter Sarawak (another arrival card), then re-enter Brunei. All told, I got nine new stamps in my passport in one day (including three Malaysia exit stamps!), a new personal best.

Having come all the way from Semporna to Kota Kinabalu on a night bus, then taken another bus to Brunei straight away, we were pretty tired by the time we arrived in the capital Bandar Seri Begawan, or BSB for short. Besides, entering tiny, oil-fuelled Islamic sultanates (or emirates, kingdoms etc) is a bit nerve-wracking for someone who once lived in one of them for more than a year, but thankfully, Brunei is a long way from the Arabian Gulf in distance, and a shorter but still reasonable way in culture, and in any case hopefully they’ll let me depart tomorrow.

MosqueSo far, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by Brunei. The town centre does have a bit of the Gulf to it in the wide, heavily-planned but mostly empty streets, the somewhat contrived architecture and the Arabic signage (though this is just Arabic script spelling out words in Bahasa), but that’s about the end of the comparisons. The Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque that dominates the centre of BSB is grand in its ambition and design, and with its huge golden dome it is one of the most beautiful modern buildings I have seen in a while.

Kampung AyerBut what’s most remarkable about Brunei is that literally a stone’s throw from the country’s centrepiece building (a pretty decent throw, but a throw nonetheless), the 28 stilt villages that make up the Kampung Ayer begin, and a completely different life begins with it. We spent this morning wandering along the boardwalks that connect some of the villages, and they really do seem to go on forever. It was by far the largest stilt village we’ve ever seen, and one of the most intriguing as well – it really is something resembling an actual village, rather than just a residential area, and some of the houses are quite large and most of them look pretty comfortable. After the government originally tried to move everyone out of the villages so it could demolish them, only to have the villagers refuse to move, the Kampung Ayer seems here to stay for the long-term, and indeed a quarter of BSB’s population (30,000 people) live on stilts. This is an interesting contrast with the development that we’ve seen overtaking and marginalising stilt villages in certain places in Malaysia, notably Kota Kinabalu. Here, there are schools and restaurants on stilts within the villages, the villagers have postal services, garbage collection and public transport in the form of water taxis, and there are even advertising billboards on stilts that can only be seen from those water taxis. All in all, it’s a pretty remarkable place.

Tomorrow we get to fill in our fourth Malaysian arrival card of the past two weeks and get two more passport stamps as we re-enter Malaysia. Our main goal in this, our third ‘trip’ to Sarawak in the past three days, is to actually get off the bus…

***Late breaking news update: We just discovered another, not so pleasant similarity between Brunei and the Arabian Gulf: no cold, or even room temperature, water out of the taps during the day – only hot.

Posted in Asia, Brunei, Southeast Asia | Comments Off on The Sultanate of Brunei