The peninsula and the insula

Namaste. Our most recent post hasn't even celebrated it's two-day birthday yet but here we are once again stealing your precious time with this new post. To make it more bearable, we'll try to keep it short. The reason for this unusual buzz of activity is that we are heading out from our current location in Kathmandu to go on a 2-3 week (!!) trek around the Annapurna mountain range in the Himalayas tomorrow. I don't expect an awful lot of internet access there.

Anyway, this little post will cover our limited time in Malaysia (the peninsula) and Singapore (the insula – I know that's not even a proper English word, but hey, it sounds clever).

Having landed in Kuala Lumpur (please note that we didn't take a bus for a change), Judith & I were thrilled to be in a developed developing country. The big advantage of a developed developing country like Malaysia is to have the best of both worlds: the benefits of modern civilisation (like clean toilets, wohooo!), while maintaining low prices and an exotic feel (like spices seriously testing your facial perspiration).

From our shabby hostel in Chinatown, we went to explore the city. The one thing immediately capturing our attention was the wide diversity of people, cultures, and food in KL. Close to Chinatown, there is Little India, next to that you find Malay mosques, and a few blocks down the road there are skyscrapers which make most Western cities look ridiculously old-fashioned. While modern Malaysia is a functioning multi-ethnic state, not all is perfect, though. The government, run by the Malay majority, has a range of affirmative action policies in place – making the Muslim part of the population “more equal” than the others. We indulged in the diversity by sampling the different cuisines available (like this as-cheap-as-it-gets Chinese food place). When not eating, we engaged in a two day power-sightseeing tour, including visiting the formerly highest skyscrapers in the world, the Petronas Towers.

The next stop on our route was Melakka, some three hours South of KL. Owning Melakka must once have been fashionable among the world's colonial powers, since the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British all decided to run it at some point in time. Today, the importance of the city as a trading hub might have faded, but the beautiful colonial heritage makes it a favourite tourist destination for Malaysians and foreign tourists alike. Again, the mix of influences, this time including more European stuff, was cool. In one of the streets, we found a mosque, a Christian church, a Hindu temple and a Chinese Buddhist-Confucianist temple virtually next to each other.

Originally, we had planned to spend more time in the rural parts of Malaysia including some quality beach time, but we had to change our plans on short notice and leave for Singapore earlier than anticipated. 

We got a first taste of the impressive structures in Singapore at the freakishly huge & modern border station (entering on, guess what, a bus!). Singapore is different – the state is run by a very strong government, which is world famous for imposing fines and sometimes limiting civil liberties of its underlings. Critics have referred to the city state as “Disneyland with a death penalty” and say it is as much fun as “a Californian beach resort run by Mormons”. However, if you come to Singapore, you will notice that most things run extremely smoothly, and it seems like most voters are fairly happy. For example, the city is as clean as a conservative Southern German village (i.e. very), it's safe, there are plenty of playgrounds for young families, it's an economic powerhouse, and public transport even beats Japan – just to name a few! The most interesting feature of Singapore, at least from my perspective, is once again the melting pot atmosphere and international flair. We had long discussions about the pro's and con's of Singapore's approach, but I won't get into this here. For one, I haven't really made up my mind yet, and second, as promised, I'll try to keep it short today.

Anyway, for the first few days, we stayed in Little India, which really reminded us of our time in India some four years back – just a lot cleaner. Actually, we were kind of relieved to see that not everything in Singapore is glass & steel - there are some old parts of town as well. Tststs, sentimental Europeans.

On the third day, I had to fly back to Frankfurt to take care of some bizness (that's why we had to come to Singapore earlier than originally planned), while Judith would stay in Singapore. The only problem with that was my looks: you might recall some of my more recent pictures... I didn't really look fit for business, with all that lavishly long hair, worn out shorts, and flip-flops marks on my feet. To tackle this, I managed to get my hair cut and buy a suit, shirts, ties, shoes, a belt, cuff links, and a proper wallet, all pretty much within one day. Thankfully, Singapore appears to be the place with the highest density of shopping centres in the world.

While I was feeling important flying back and forth to Frankfurt for just two days, Judith spent some more time enjoying the city. She particularly loved the Botanic Gardens (actually, Singapore is very, very green, and native tropical rainforest covers a substantial part of the island) and the world-famous Zoo (see the first picture of this post). There are some very strange-looking animals in that Zoo – for example, what the heck is that thing on the right hand side below? The Zoo also offers a popular night safari, which is really worth seeing.

The best thing about Singapore for us, though, was that we knew some true locals: Raj and his wife showed us around Little India, including taking us to a very interesting temple, and treating us to some lovely Southern Indian food. Kuan Wai even spent a whole day with us, including inviting us to a fabulous all-you-can-eat-but-very-high-quality lunch buffet on the 70^th story of a high-rise. We've never been in a 70-story skyscraper before (I don't think there even is one in Western Europe), let alone had we had lunch there. The views were stunning. Barely being able to walk after all that food, we explored some more parts of the city, among others visiting the new casino complex. In the evening, Kuan Wai's wife joined us as we headed to a local beach and, once again, had some great food. Come to think of it, all Singaporeans seem to be crazy about food.

Sadly, we eventually had to leave Singapore, flying to Kathmandu via Bangkok. I've just noticed that this post isn't that short after all. Sorry, but there was just so much to write about... Malaysia and Singapore are great places. My present to Judith for her b'day tomorrow is another hazardous bus ride, which regular readers will know she loves. After that, we'll start our 3-week trek (Annapurna Circuit) right away. If you don't hear back from us before let's say five weeks from now, please send a rescue team. So long and goodbye.

The land of Angkor and Angkar

After our great time in Laos, Judith & I knew that Cambodia would have a tough time to convince us of its beauty. Nevertheless, despite its cruel history and poverty-stricken present, we managed to leave Cambodia with some positive impressions in the end.

We had booked a bus from Laos to Siem Reap, the hub for tourist-paradise Angkor. However, the bus which was supposed to pick us up in a town after the border allegedly had broken down – yeah, right. The mini-van substitute sped like crazy, and we were kind of relieved to change yet again into what turned out to be a complete disaster of a bus with broken windows, holes in the floor, and trash and spare parts flying around. The landscapes we passed were either flooded (that's what you get for being a flat country in rainy season) or full of signs warning of land mines. Anyway, we were astonished to see that the bus did make it to Siem Reap eventually. After having successfully avoided a couple of tourist scams, we finally managed to check into our guest house. Actually, the guys trying to pull the scams did it in such an obvious way (the hostel you have booked 1. “is full”, 2. “is closed”, 3. “burnt down yesterday”) that it was almost cute. 

Siem Reap, aka Siem Reap Off, is a fairly big city which exists for one reason and one reason only: extracting money from the more than 1 million tourists who visit the world famous temple of Angkor Wat every year. As a result, the city only consists of hotels, restaurants, dirt cheap bars (24 hour happy hour featuring beer for US$ 0.5, wohoooo!), and massage parlours, some of which offer “happy endings” for their clients. This might sound horrible, but Judith & I very much enjoyed being in a place providing everything a tourist could wish for (excluding the happy endings, of course). For our six-month travel anniversary, we even managed to find a German restaurant featuring sausages, sauerkraut, and most importantly, nice beer. Hmm, Erdinger. 

On day two, we headed to the ancient city of Angkor. Angkor comprises a lot more than Angkor Wat itself. There are dozens of huge temples, palaces, and urban structures, which were built at the peak of the Khmer empire in the 9^th to the 13^th century. In fact, many historians think that the construction of Angkor itself eventually was responsible for the downfall of the mighty Khmer rulers, since it overstretched the available resources. Kind of like Western welfare states today, just with more temples. Anyway, Angkor is really, really impressive: it is to man-made ancient structures what Alberto Contador is to the Tour de France, just without the doping. In the evening, Judith & I headed up a little hill to see the sunset over the many temples, alongside 1000 friendly Japanese travelling in tourist groups. We felt like being back at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.

The next morning, we got up early to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. At 5 am. Usually, I only get up that early when somebody pays me to do so. Sunrise at Angkor Wat is a tourist mass event, but after our Japanese tour group friends had left, Judith & I had large parts of the massive compounds to ourselves. Beautiful. Actually, Angkor Wat had first been built as a Hindu temple, but after Buddhism gained the upper hand in the Khmer empire, they simply blocked the entrance to the inside of the temple, where the massive Shiva statues used to be located. That's Khmer pragmatism for you. After Angkor Wat, we headed on to many of the other temples & palaces, accompanied by our funny Tuk-Tuk driver. The most memorable things we saw were the “tree temple” (an Indiana Jones-esque structure with trees & tropical vegetation rising from its massive walls) and the “face temple” (featuring, you wouldn't have guessed, dozens of Buddha busts carved into massive bricks). Rather than boring you to death with endless descriptions of what we saw, we will let the pictures below speak for themselves... Attentive observers might also notice that we have discovered the monochrome-function of our camera – simple, but nice.

 

 

Soon, it was time to move on to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Again, we felt relieved to have survived the bus ride. Judith in particular grew so frustrated at the concept of riding on a bus that we decided to skip one or two other stops we had initially planned. Pmonh Phen is a strange place: besides being shockingly dirty & poor, the city has a strange atmosphere to it. Somehow, despite some 1-2 million inhabitants, Pehn Pmhno doesn't feel urban at all. This is where the Angkar comes in. “Angkar” in Khmer means “organisation” and it's the term used for the Khmer Rouge, the world's most brutal regime in recent decades. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Angkar tried to establish a form of communism using extremely cruel social engineering measures. Their aim was to build a completely uniform, rural, agrarian society, renouncing all scientific and mechanical progress. To achieve this, they killed everybody who didn't fit into that picture. People with a secondary or tertiary education, monks, non-Khmer Cambodians, people living in cities, people wearing glasses (suspiciously intellectual) – they all got killed. I presume that everybody reading this blog would have been killed, too. Only 4 years of terror (1975 – 1979) were sufficient for the Khmer Rouge to kill roughly 25% of the total population – either by beheading their “enemies” (to save precious bullets) or by starving to death the rural population to buy weapons from China in exchange for rice. Allegedly, by 1979, there was not a single architect left in the country. 

Judith & I went to visit the Toul Sleng Museum of Genocide, a former school-turned-torture-prison. The place definitely is a shocker, particularly considering how recent those events were. Coming back to my point on Pnem Ponh: basically, it's a large city, but its inhabitants really are rice farmers from the countryside, since the original population has been exterminated. No wonder it doesn't feel urban.

Since the fall of the Khmer Rouge (its commie neighbours from 'Nam eventually invaded the country and ousted the regime), Cambodia has improved, but is still quite unstable. The opposition leader has just been sentenced to ten years in prison in absentia, and corruption is rampant. The huge number of armoured luxury SUVs speeding through the country next to people not being able to earn a decent living is shocking. Since there is no proper industry or service sector in Cambodia, I wonder how those rich people got rich in the first place. On a totally unrelated matter, Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (2009) ranks Cambodia at an impressive 158 out of 180 countries. That's worse than Mugabe's Zimbabwe (rank 146), and just a wee bit better than the Central African Republic (rank 159), which I didn't even know existed. Compared to most of its South East Asian peers, that's just appalling. 

Ooops, I got carried away. Apologies. Anyway, we ended up making one more stop after Pnem Pohnh after all. We took a bus (sorry, Judith) to the coastal town of Kep, a former beach resort built for the French colonial elite. In Kep, we enjoyed the very friendly people, the good seafood, fresh pepper, and a day of driving irresponsibly fast with a little scooter we had rented. 

Soon, though, it was time to say goodbye to the thirteenth country on our trip. To summarise: Cambodia definitely left a strong impression on us: both in good ways (e.g. fabulous Angkor) and in bad (e.g. horrific Angkar, corruption). From Phnom Penh, we took a pleasantly cheap Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur. Flying felt great again after weeks on break-neck bus rides. I'm not sure if the guy next to us (who obviously was on the first flight of his life) thought so, too. Our next two stops, Malaysia and Singapore, were very different to Cambodia and featured some big surprises. I'll try to post again over the next two days (!!!), this time for reals. Muchas gracias, senoritas. 

The small country

I have received a number of complaints concerning the lack of blog posts over the last three weeks. Not accepting any responsibility for this as usual, I blame the unbearable heat and the fact that I have been away on holidays.

To make it up to you, here's our latest blog post, this time on Laos. Laos? Well, were it not for the massive surge in its popularity as a tourist destination in recent years, many people on this planet probably wouldn't have heard a lot about this small and landlocked country in the middle of South-East Asia. And to be honest, the veil of ignorance in front of my face was just as obscure in that I didn't even know the name of the capital of Laos before planning this trip. It's Vientiane, by the way.

Anyway, Judith & I started off our time in Laos in the aforementioned Vientiane. Because of its rural character, this city of a whopping 200,000 inhabitants is sometimes referred to as “the world's most relaxed capital”. In our view, that statement certainly holds. Except for the local Mafia consisting of 10 Tuk-Tuk drivers, there's not a lot of hassle to be experienced by foreigners. The French as the former colonial power have left a distinct mark on the city, most notably in the form of nice cafés (there are at least three of them around) and delicious baguettes (“sorry, don't have”). Apart from that, there are many, many temples in the city, which we, ehem, of course all visited. Despite the typical anonymity prevailing in many mega-cities like Vientiane, we got a first taste of how very friendly the locals are. Wherever we went, we got greeted by constant cheers of “Sabaideeeeeeeeee”, which, surprisingly, means hello. 

The only thing big in Laos is its currency. Not even being 30 years old, Judith & I finally managed to become millionaires.

After two days in the “city”, we continued on to the tourist hotspot of Luang Prabang in Northern Laos. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site and even has its own airport. As a result,  the tourists in town are either young backpackers looking to add in some culture into their South-East Asia beach time or older people being able to afford proper flight tickets. Luang Prabang very much deserves its popularity: it is a beautiful city with many colonial style buildings lining the Mekong river bank and dozens of temples and monasteries all over town. 

One highlight for tourists is to watch the alms giving ceremony for the monks. Sadly, the ceremony has become so popular with tourists that it has turned into somewhat of a Disney attraction by now. We ended up not watching it – the fact that it takes place at sunrise might also have contributed to our decision. For my part, I started to wonder where mankind would be today had it not poured all those funds into the construction and maintenance of temples (or churches or mosques for that matter), but invested it in schools, universities, and hospitals instead. Oh well.

Fortunately, our time in Luang Prabang coincided with the annual boat race, the local equivalent of the Oktoberfest. For us, watching the animate spectators was as much fun as watching the boat race itself. We even got invited by the town drunks to join them at their table and share a drink (which we gladly accepted) and to sample some of their delicious fried fat bugs (which we politely declined). We concluded our stay in Luang Prabang with a very nice cooking course – more on that in our next (and last) separate post on food. All I will say here is that I got to kill an animal. 

After Luang Prabang, Judith & I continued North to the villages of Muang Ngoi and Nong Khiauw. Muang Ngoi is pretty secluded as it is reachable by boat only. Electricity is limited to a few hours at night when the village-chief puts on the generator. The town is located in a truly beau-ti-ful valley covered in very dense tropical rainforest. Our boat ride to Muang Ngoi reminded me of the helicopter scene in Jurassic Park, just without all the flying and them dinosaurs. 

During our time there, we took a boat to an even smaller minority village further upstream. The only monetary income that village generates seems to come from selling hand-woven silk scarves to the few tourists who show up there from time to time. It was fun to see how excited the locals got once they saw us entering the village. Hmm, tourists. On the way back, we had a great time tubing down the river. We had the big river pretty much to ourselves, only sharing it with a nice and fellow round-the-world-couple from Canada. Once again, a fabulous day. It seems like tubing has become a major industry in Laos, it's offered everywhere. That's what you get for visiting a country without beaches. 

The second village we stayed at, Nong Khiauw, is more developed, featuring a proper bridge, a paved road, and 24h-electricity. Accommodation once again came in cheap at only US$ 3 per night for a bungalow with an en-suite “bathroom”, naturellement including the usual giant spiders.

And now for something completely different: random excerpts from Laotian history. The region North of Muang Ngoi and Nong Khiauw is also where the collateral damage of the Vietnam war was the strongest. In fact, to this day, Laos holds the unfortunate title of being the world's most bombed country per capita. During the Vietnam war, some of the North-Eastern provinces sided with the communists and allowed parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply network of the Vietcong, to pass through Laotian territory. Not liking this at all, the CIA had the shit bombed out of the region. Since the US officially had never declared war on Laos, it became known as the secret war. Wiki claims that on average, one B 52 bomb load was dropped on Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours – for 9 years from 1964-1973. That's 260 million bombs (!!), the legacy of which still lies hidden in the jungle until this day. In addition, Laos, like so many other countries, became the staging ground for a long-lasting commies-v-capitalists battle. Ironically, most Laotians themselves didn't really care too much about global politics and often frustrated their “sponsors” with a lousy attitude towards fighting. That's the spirit.

After our time in the North, we decided to follow the flow of the Mekong river towards the South. Even though the bus rides themselves were tiring (we did 10 hours back to Vientiane plus another 12 hours to get to Southern Laos), we got to see some amazing landscapes. Check out the picture below: spectacular mountains & abundant vegetation. In your face, Dubai.

Our next stopover was in Pakse, a medium-sized and not particularly attractive town. From Pakse, we visited Wat Phou, the predecessor of Angkor Wat. Since 900 years of tropical rain and the need for construction material of the local villagers have left their mark on the compounds, the temple turned out to be not that impressive. However, we thoroughly enjoyed our Tuk-Tuk ride there, as literally every person we passed smiled and waved at us. So this is what the Queen must feel like. In addition, we managed to fit in a bit of thrill, as we watched how a van overtaking our Tuk-Tuk hit a motorbike on the dirt road right in front of us. Nothing serious, though.

Our last stop in Laos was on one of the famed 4000 Mekong islands. Actually, we thought 4000 islands is a gross exaggeration, it's more like 40. From the island, we did a few day trips, including visiting the biggest waterfalls in South-East Asia in terms of water flow. At 15 meters in height, the falls are, well, cute. Judith & I also rented some bikes and cycled around our island – a wet experience during Monsoon season, as we found out later. Nevertheless, exploring the local area by bike was a great way to catch a glimpse of the rural lifestyle (which is a lot more traditional than in, let's say, Vietnam) and the endless rice fields.

Sadly, our time in beautiful Laos soon was to come to an end. Next stop: Cambodia – a country, which, despite several superficial similarities, is very different from Laos. This time, it won't be three weeks before you hear back from us, promise! Thank you for your attention. So long, readers.