My parents tipped me off to an article about Singapore in this month's National Geographic. More specifically, the article is about Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister and current "minister mentor" of Singapore. After reading the article, I think that that it does quite a good job of representing the current growing pains of Singapore, and the constant push and pull between government control and freedom of expression here. The article poses an interesting question: how does a country weigh the pros of government censorship and social control (low poverty, clean streets, safety, efficiency) against the natural cons?
Also, apparently Singaporeans have the least sex of anywhere in the world. Just a fun fact.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Picasa Link
Check out more Vietnam pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/l.l.baranowski/Vietnam?authkey=Gv1sRgCITX0JC00YTW7QE&feat=directlink
Friday, January 15, 2010
Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon
As promised, here's the first of my two entries about my recent trip to Vietnam with Chris. We started our journey by flying from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City, which is still called Saigon by most locals. Saigon is intense. I don't think I've ever seen a more crowded and chaotic city than Saigon. Here's a picture of some light traffic on a regular day in Saigon:
Pretty much the first thing that we realized is that crossing the street was going to be a challenge, to say the least. There are no crosswalks in Vietnam. To cross a busy street, you simply starts walking, slowly and at a steady pace, into the flow of traffic. The general idea is that the motorbikes will dodge around the pedestrian, and you won't get hit unless you suddenly change course or speed. However, this approach requires nerves of steel! Unfortunately, the few cars that are on the road didn't seem to pay much attention to pedestrians, so there were still plenty of opportunities to get hit. We survived, but came away from the experience with a much greater appreciation for crosswalks!
We arrived in Saigon on New Year's Eve, and it seemed like the whole city was out and about to celebrate. Huge fairs and carnivals had been set up in all the city parks and many major streets had been blocked off. At most of the carnivals, there were all sorts of food and drink vendors, as well as entertainment such as singers or dancers. We enjoyed wandering around the city, sampling some cheap Vietnamese beer, and trying to figure out what was going on with the various entertainers. We were so tired from traveling that we didn't even make it to midnight, but then again New Year's has never been all that exciting anyways.
The next day, we woke up bright and early to take a bus tour to see some sights outside of the city. We had several moments of panic when I thought that I had lost the receipt for the tour, and when our bus/tour guide didn't show up until almost 45 minutes after they said they would arrive. But, we eventually made it on the bus, so all was well in the end. Also, I was an idiot and found the receipt in my wallet shortly thereafter. Our first destination for the day was the Cao Dai Temple complex, about 2 hours away. Cao Dai is a Vietnamese religion that was founded in the 1920s. Cao Dai is basically a catch-all religion - they worship everyone from traditional religious figures like Jesus, Buddha, and Brahma, to modern "saints" like Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, and Victor Hugo. The goal of the religion is to break free of the cycle of reincarnation, to die once and for all. I'm reading more about it on wikipedia right now, and apparently they also believe that there are 72 inhabited planets in the universe, with number one being the closest to Heaven, and number 72 being the closes to Hell. Earth is number 68. Here's a picture of the main temple:
Here's the inside of the temple, where we saw a daily service. This mainly consisted of a lot of chanting and some bell ringing:
In the inside of the temple, they have statues of three of the most important figures in Cao Dai: Buddha, Jesus, and Brahma:
And here are several of the modern day saints - Victor Hugo, Sun Yat-Sen, and Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, a Vietnamese poet from the 15th century:
I think the most amazing part of all this was that this religion has over 2 million followers in Vietnam. I guess it's sort of like the Scientology of Asia. The other big question we had was where the money to build the temple came from. They didn't charge admission for visitors, and the figure for the temple construction was quite astronomical (can't remember the exact number our guide told us) - sort of a mystery as to where they got all the funding for the construction/maintenance.
Our next stop on the tour was the Cu Chi Tunnels. These tunnels were used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War as hiding places for guerilla attacks on South Vietnamese and American troops. Although there were VC tunnel networks all over Vietnam, the Cu Chi ones were particularly significant because they were used as a base to capture Saigon at the very end of the war. Our tunnel tour started with our tourguide showing us all the different booby traps that were built by the VC and used to injure and demoralize American soldiers. Here's an example - a "fish trap" that would catch the foot and leg of any soldier unluky enough to step on it:
Next, we saw how the VC guerillas entered the tunnels and camouflaged the entrances. Here's a soldier entering the tunnels:
The tunnels were incredibly small - the only way to travel through them was to crawl on your stomach. In spite of this, people lived in the tunnels for days at a time. We got to walk through one tunnel, which had been specially enlarged for tourists:
Yay, we made it out! Some random Chinese guy wanted to take our picture, so I made him take one with my camera too.
Then, we had a snack of tapioca root and tea, which was a typical meal that the tunnel dwellers might have eaten. Mmm, just look at how much I am enjoying it:
Finally, we watched an 1970s propaganda video about the Cu Chi region. At this point, we were beginning to realize that the perspectives on the Vietnam War were very different here than the ones that we had been taught in the US. The video portrayed the people of the Cu Chi region as hardworking, simple peasants, who were eager to do their part to contribute to the stuggle against the invading Americans. However, this probably was true to the thinking of many of the local residents - they were just minding their own business until the Americans showed up and started bombing and killing. So, I guess I can see where they were justified in their resistance.
We headed back to Saigon for the night and enjoyed some more wandering around the city before turning in. Many of the New Year's fairs were still set up, so we enjoyed some more local beer and some amazingly delicious pho (beef noodle soup), before heading to bed.
The next day, we checked out several sights in downtown Saigon. Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, which used to be named the Museum of American War Crimes. This former name was indicative of the sentiments of the museum. It was pretty gruesome - especially the Agent Orange display. The various exhibits in the museum really drove home the atrocities committed by American troops during the war, and the lasting impact that they've had on Vietnam and it's citizens. Again, a very different perspective than we were taught at home. I know that I'd heard about some of the subjects before, such as Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre, but they definitely weren't emphasized nearly as much as they were here. One interesting exhibit showed the course of the war through photographs taken for newspapers and magazines around the world. I thought this was interesting because it showed the role that the media played in the war, especially in the shaping of the public's opinion of it.
After some lunch and a refreshing coconut, we headed to a Taoist temple.
The temple had lots and lots of various shrines, but, unfortunately, no signs or explanations. However, it was quite peaceful and had a nice garden where we relaxed in the shade for awhile:
Finally, we visited the Reunification Palace, which was the site of the South Vietnamese government. Architecturally, the palace was really strange looking and not at all what I expected it to look like:
Much of the palace has been left as it was when the South surrendered in April 1975. Most of the upper floors of the palace were various state rooms and meeting rooms. The basement was more interesting, as it housed all the military command rooms which still contained lots of old technology and maps. On the roof was an American helicopter:
Apparently, they used to let visitors out to the helicopter, so that they could have a "last helicopter out of Saigon" photo-op, but not anymore.
After that, we hurried back to our hostel and to the airport to catch our flight to Da Nang, a city in central Vietnam. Flying domestically in Vietnam was...interesting. When we arrived at the airport, we were told that our flight departure was delayed two hours, from 6 PM until 8 PM. Later, I checked my email and had been sent an email telling me that the flight was delayed until 11 PM (which it wasn't). While we were sitting waiting to board, I noticed that our boarding passes (which were actually just receipts) listed our flight time as 3 PM, so I had a bit of a momentary panic. But, we eventually made it on the plane and to Da Nang - but I'll save that for the next post.
Pretty much the first thing that we realized is that crossing the street was going to be a challenge, to say the least. There are no crosswalks in Vietnam. To cross a busy street, you simply starts walking, slowly and at a steady pace, into the flow of traffic. The general idea is that the motorbikes will dodge around the pedestrian, and you won't get hit unless you suddenly change course or speed. However, this approach requires nerves of steel! Unfortunately, the few cars that are on the road didn't seem to pay much attention to pedestrians, so there were still plenty of opportunities to get hit. We survived, but came away from the experience with a much greater appreciation for crosswalks!
We arrived in Saigon on New Year's Eve, and it seemed like the whole city was out and about to celebrate. Huge fairs and carnivals had been set up in all the city parks and many major streets had been blocked off. At most of the carnivals, there were all sorts of food and drink vendors, as well as entertainment such as singers or dancers. We enjoyed wandering around the city, sampling some cheap Vietnamese beer, and trying to figure out what was going on with the various entertainers. We were so tired from traveling that we didn't even make it to midnight, but then again New Year's has never been all that exciting anyways.
The next day, we woke up bright and early to take a bus tour to see some sights outside of the city. We had several moments of panic when I thought that I had lost the receipt for the tour, and when our bus/tour guide didn't show up until almost 45 minutes after they said they would arrive. But, we eventually made it on the bus, so all was well in the end. Also, I was an idiot and found the receipt in my wallet shortly thereafter. Our first destination for the day was the Cao Dai Temple complex, about 2 hours away. Cao Dai is a Vietnamese religion that was founded in the 1920s. Cao Dai is basically a catch-all religion - they worship everyone from traditional religious figures like Jesus, Buddha, and Brahma, to modern "saints" like Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, and Victor Hugo. The goal of the religion is to break free of the cycle of reincarnation, to die once and for all. I'm reading more about it on wikipedia right now, and apparently they also believe that there are 72 inhabited planets in the universe, with number one being the closest to Heaven, and number 72 being the closes to Hell. Earth is number 68. Here's a picture of the main temple:
Here's the inside of the temple, where we saw a daily service. This mainly consisted of a lot of chanting and some bell ringing:
In the inside of the temple, they have statues of three of the most important figures in Cao Dai: Buddha, Jesus, and Brahma:
And here are several of the modern day saints - Victor Hugo, Sun Yat-Sen, and Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, a Vietnamese poet from the 15th century:
I think the most amazing part of all this was that this religion has over 2 million followers in Vietnam. I guess it's sort of like the Scientology of Asia. The other big question we had was where the money to build the temple came from. They didn't charge admission for visitors, and the figure for the temple construction was quite astronomical (can't remember the exact number our guide told us) - sort of a mystery as to where they got all the funding for the construction/maintenance.
Our next stop on the tour was the Cu Chi Tunnels. These tunnels were used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War as hiding places for guerilla attacks on South Vietnamese and American troops. Although there were VC tunnel networks all over Vietnam, the Cu Chi ones were particularly significant because they were used as a base to capture Saigon at the very end of the war. Our tunnel tour started with our tourguide showing us all the different booby traps that were built by the VC and used to injure and demoralize American soldiers. Here's an example - a "fish trap" that would catch the foot and leg of any soldier unluky enough to step on it:
Next, we saw how the VC guerillas entered the tunnels and camouflaged the entrances. Here's a soldier entering the tunnels:
The tunnels were incredibly small - the only way to travel through them was to crawl on your stomach. In spite of this, people lived in the tunnels for days at a time. We got to walk through one tunnel, which had been specially enlarged for tourists:
Yay, we made it out! Some random Chinese guy wanted to take our picture, so I made him take one with my camera too.
Then, we had a snack of tapioca root and tea, which was a typical meal that the tunnel dwellers might have eaten. Mmm, just look at how much I am enjoying it:
Finally, we watched an 1970s propaganda video about the Cu Chi region. At this point, we were beginning to realize that the perspectives on the Vietnam War were very different here than the ones that we had been taught in the US. The video portrayed the people of the Cu Chi region as hardworking, simple peasants, who were eager to do their part to contribute to the stuggle against the invading Americans. However, this probably was true to the thinking of many of the local residents - they were just minding their own business until the Americans showed up and started bombing and killing. So, I guess I can see where they were justified in their resistance.
We headed back to Saigon for the night and enjoyed some more wandering around the city before turning in. Many of the New Year's fairs were still set up, so we enjoyed some more local beer and some amazingly delicious pho (beef noodle soup), before heading to bed.
The next day, we checked out several sights in downtown Saigon. Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, which used to be named the Museum of American War Crimes. This former name was indicative of the sentiments of the museum. It was pretty gruesome - especially the Agent Orange display. The various exhibits in the museum really drove home the atrocities committed by American troops during the war, and the lasting impact that they've had on Vietnam and it's citizens. Again, a very different perspective than we were taught at home. I know that I'd heard about some of the subjects before, such as Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre, but they definitely weren't emphasized nearly as much as they were here. One interesting exhibit showed the course of the war through photographs taken for newspapers and magazines around the world. I thought this was interesting because it showed the role that the media played in the war, especially in the shaping of the public's opinion of it.
After some lunch and a refreshing coconut, we headed to a Taoist temple.
The temple had lots and lots of various shrines, but, unfortunately, no signs or explanations. However, it was quite peaceful and had a nice garden where we relaxed in the shade for awhile:
Finally, we visited the Reunification Palace, which was the site of the South Vietnamese government. Architecturally, the palace was really strange looking and not at all what I expected it to look like:
Much of the palace has been left as it was when the South surrendered in April 1975. Most of the upper floors of the palace were various state rooms and meeting rooms. The basement was more interesting, as it housed all the military command rooms which still contained lots of old technology and maps. On the roof was an American helicopter:
After that, we hurried back to our hostel and to the airport to catch our flight to Da Nang, a city in central Vietnam. Flying domestically in Vietnam was...interesting. When we arrived at the airport, we were told that our flight departure was delayed two hours, from 6 PM until 8 PM. Later, I checked my email and had been sent an email telling me that the flight was delayed until 11 PM (which it wasn't). While we were sitting waiting to board, I noticed that our boarding passes (which were actually just receipts) listed our flight time as 3 PM, so I had a bit of a momentary panic. But, we eventually made it on the plane and to Da Nang - but I'll save that for the next post.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
More Singapore Tourism
Chris arrived in Singapore last week, and we had a little over a day to spend in Singapore, so we had time to see a couple fun tourist sites before we headed off to Vietnam.
First, we visited the Haw Par Villa, originally called the Tiger Balm Gardens. The inventors of Tiger Balm were two brothers, Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par. Although not originally from Singapore, the Aw brothers eventually settled here and in 1935 purchased the land on which the villa was constructed. The gardens took two years to construct, and cost around two million (US) dollars to build! According to wikipedia, the park "contains over 1,000 statues and 150 giant dioramas depicting scenes from Chinese folklore, legends, history, and illustrating various aspects of Confucianism". Many of the statues in the park are supposed to teach children about traditional Chinese values and morals, especially the Ten Courts of Hell portion of the gardens.
The gardens have gone through several iterations over the years - for awhile in the early 90s, the gardens were converted into an amusement park with rides - but today they are in the process of being restored to their original state.
Here I am getting ready to enter the Ten Circles of Hell:
The Ten Circles of Hell showed the different punishments that would befall various types of sinners in the afterlife. The statues were incredibly gruesome, like this one!
Our favorite punishment was the one for prostitutes, who were to be drowned in a "filthy blood pond".
The rest of the statues depicted all sorts of different legends, myths, and stories. Some had explanations posted, but for most, we were left to puzzle out what the stories behind the statues could have been. For example, this lady with a crab head:
This rabbit vs. rat war was also one of the more confusing ones:
Also on display was a "tiger car" owned by one of the Aw brothers at the height of their fortune. The horn, of course, made a roaring noise!
Later that day, we visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, in Chinatown. As the name would suggest, the temple contains a piece of a tooth from the Sakyamuni Buddha (this is the Buddha that most people just know of as "Buddha", but I guess there actually lots of Buddhas). This temple is crazy! The tooth relic is contained in a stupa (altar) made of solid gold, apparently weighing 420 kg. There are also a total of 10,000 small Buddha statues around the temple. Although the relic is from the Sakyamuni, or Supreme, Buddha, the temple is actually dedicated to the Maitreya Buddha, who is known as the "Future Buddha". We weren't really sure of how this future Buddha thing worked, but we did enjoy imaginging a robotic future Buddha. Here is the main shrine, with the Maitreya Buddha in the middle:
In the next couple posts, I'll be writing about our trip to Vietnam - but this may take while because, between Chris and I, we took several hundred pictures, so I need to sort through all those first! But, it was a really awesome trip, and hopefully I can get all the pictures up on Picasa, and post a link here to see all of them.
First, we visited the Haw Par Villa, originally called the Tiger Balm Gardens. The inventors of Tiger Balm were two brothers, Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par. Although not originally from Singapore, the Aw brothers eventually settled here and in 1935 purchased the land on which the villa was constructed. The gardens took two years to construct, and cost around two million (US) dollars to build! According to wikipedia, the park "contains over 1,000 statues and 150 giant dioramas depicting scenes from Chinese folklore, legends, history, and illustrating various aspects of Confucianism". Many of the statues in the park are supposed to teach children about traditional Chinese values and morals, especially the Ten Courts of Hell portion of the gardens.
The gardens have gone through several iterations over the years - for awhile in the early 90s, the gardens were converted into an amusement park with rides - but today they are in the process of being restored to their original state.
Here I am getting ready to enter the Ten Circles of Hell:
The rest of the statues depicted all sorts of different legends, myths, and stories. Some had explanations posted, but for most, we were left to puzzle out what the stories behind the statues could have been. For example, this lady with a crab head:
Also on display was a "tiger car" owned by one of the Aw brothers at the height of their fortune. The horn, of course, made a roaring noise!
Later that day, we visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, in Chinatown. As the name would suggest, the temple contains a piece of a tooth from the Sakyamuni Buddha (this is the Buddha that most people just know of as "Buddha", but I guess there actually lots of Buddhas). This temple is crazy! The tooth relic is contained in a stupa (altar) made of solid gold, apparently weighing 420 kg. There are also a total of 10,000 small Buddha statues around the temple. Although the relic is from the Sakyamuni, or Supreme, Buddha, the temple is actually dedicated to the Maitreya Buddha, who is known as the "Future Buddha". We weren't really sure of how this future Buddha thing worked, but we did enjoy imaginging a robotic future Buddha. Here is the main shrine, with the Maitreya Buddha in the middle:
In the next couple posts, I'll be writing about our trip to Vietnam - but this may take while because, between Chris and I, we took several hundred pictures, so I need to sort through all those first! But, it was a really awesome trip, and hopefully I can get all the pictures up on Picasa, and post a link here to see all of them.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Borneo
As promised, here's a continuation of the last entry about my parent's visit. After we spent some time in Singapore, my parents and I headed to the city of Kota Kinabalu, on the north coast of Borneo. Because Borneo sounds super exotic and you may not know where it is (I probably didn't until I moved here), here's a map:
As you can see, the north coast belongs to Malaysia, and the rest belongs to Indonesia, except for that tiny sliver that is Brunei. (Brunei was actually supposed to join the federation of states that merged to form Malaysia in the early 1960s, but pulled out at the last minute.) Here's another map showing Borneo in the context of Southeast Asia (ignore the random German writing on Borneo):
As you can see, it's not too far from Singapore. So, after a quick two hour flight, we landed in Kota Kinabalu. We did a bit of exploring around the downtown (consisting of a couple blocks - it's not that big of a city) and the harborfront. Here there was an enormous "wet" market with stalls selling everything from fruit and freshly butchered meat to local handicrafts. However, the food section of the market smelled terrible! So, we wandered the handicrafts portion instead. Here are some statues we found on the waterfront:
And some boats that were in such disrepair that they looked like they belonged to a scrappy pirate gang:
The next day, we learned about the various cultures of the Bornean natives, with a visit to a resurrected tribal village that had once been inhabited by headhunters! The man who rebuilt the village is descended from this tribe, and all the tribal artifacts (including 42 skulls) have been passed down through the generations and have ended up in his possession. Here are some of the skulls:
We also got to do all sorts of fun activities that the villagers would have done in their daily life. We saw how the natives made rice wine - and we even got to sample some. It didn't actually taste like much, although if you drunk enough of it, I imagine it would have done the job. We also got to try shooting blowguns! Here is my dad showing off his expert skillz.
Later that day, we went to a wildlife park, where we saw proboscis monkeys and orantugans. The proboscis monkeys were actually sort of disappointing - their noses were not nearly as large as I had hoped. But, they did have some babies, which are always super cute. The orangutans were more interesting. The park helps to rehabilitate injured orangutans (I guess they are injured due to poaching? I was not sure about this), so the ones that were in the zoo were the ones that were too injured to be released back into the wild. Here's one with a mangled hand - he seemed to be managing ok.
Also, we saw a bird of paradise! Most people only think of these as those poky, bright orange, flowers, but the original birds of paradise were actual birds. These birds used to be incredibly common in Borneo, but were hunted to near extinction because of the desire for their beautiful tail feathers.
The next day, we headed out to a group of small islands off the coast to do some scuba diving. I recently learned how to dive about a year ago, so I was eager to go! Unfortunately, the visibility was quite bad, the maximum visibility was only about 5m. However, I did see a huge moray eel and lots of flourescently colored nudibranchs. My parents saw a turtle, so I was quite jealous. One of the coolest parts of the trip was when we stopped for lunch on one of the small islands. The island was inhabited by water monitors! They were huge - some were over 5 feet long! The lizards were almost completely tame, because they were used to getting food from the tourists, that they were just lounging around in the sun and begging food scraps. Like very large, very spiky, house cats.
On our final full day in Borneo, we took a bus several hours to go hiking around Mount Kinabalu. This is one of the tallest mountains in Southeast Asia, and is very popular with climbers because it's quite easy to climb - pretty much like a two day hike uphill. Not having time to climb all the way up, we contented ourselves with some jungle hiking around the mountain. There were a lot of very pretty plants and flowers that we saw, like these beautiful red flowers.
We realized while we were hiking that we were "hiking the jungles of Borneo", and that that sounded totally badass (it sounds extra cool if you say it in that movie-preview-announcer-deep-male voice. Really. Try it, right now.). Here I am in the jungles of Borneo:
On our last day, we managed to have time to make it to the Sabah State Museum before we had to be at the airport to catch our flight. A unique feature of this museum was that it had recreations of the many different types of houses that the various tribes of Borneo used to live in. Here's a picture of a few, surrounding a picturesque (but completely mosquito infested) lake:
Also, it had silly animal statues, and I'm a total sucker for hokey dioramas, like this fake water buffalo standing in a rice paddy:
That afternoon, we headed back to Singapore and I said goodbye to my parents, who were off to Tokyo for a couple days before returning home.
Overall, I thought Borneo was a really interesting place, for both the culture and the unique jungles. I enjoyed being in a more rural setting, away from the huge city of Singapore. However, I think that Kota Kinabalu is begining to experience a tourism boom, and will probably grow much larger in the coming years, especially as they promote themselves as an "ecotourism" site.
It's interesting to note that in my two visits of Malaysia, I'm always surprised at how developed it is. It always seems much cleaner and safer than I expect. Overall, I think it's a good place to travel to get exposed to Southeast Asia (I'm assuming Singapore doesn't really count), without encountering too many issues. People are quite nice and helpful, and I rarely felt like they were trying to scam me. So, all in all, a good trip.
Also, Merry (late) Christmas to everyone! I enjoyed a delicious German lunch at a local brewpub with some friends, before heading home to skype with various friends and family. Now, I'm just about to head out to meet Chris at the airport here in Singapore, and we'll be continuing on to Vietnam in a couple days. Hope everyone has a very happy New Year!
As you can see, the north coast belongs to Malaysia, and the rest belongs to Indonesia, except for that tiny sliver that is Brunei. (Brunei was actually supposed to join the federation of states that merged to form Malaysia in the early 1960s, but pulled out at the last minute.) Here's another map showing Borneo in the context of Southeast Asia (ignore the random German writing on Borneo):
As you can see, it's not too far from Singapore. So, after a quick two hour flight, we landed in Kota Kinabalu. We did a bit of exploring around the downtown (consisting of a couple blocks - it's not that big of a city) and the harborfront. Here there was an enormous "wet" market with stalls selling everything from fruit and freshly butchered meat to local handicrafts. However, the food section of the market smelled terrible! So, we wandered the handicrafts portion instead. Here are some statues we found on the waterfront:
And some boats that were in such disrepair that they looked like they belonged to a scrappy pirate gang:
The next day, we learned about the various cultures of the Bornean natives, with a visit to a resurrected tribal village that had once been inhabited by headhunters! The man who rebuilt the village is descended from this tribe, and all the tribal artifacts (including 42 skulls) have been passed down through the generations and have ended up in his possession. Here are some of the skulls:
We also got to do all sorts of fun activities that the villagers would have done in their daily life. We saw how the natives made rice wine - and we even got to sample some. It didn't actually taste like much, although if you drunk enough of it, I imagine it would have done the job. We also got to try shooting blowguns! Here is my dad showing off his expert skillz.
Later that day, we went to a wildlife park, where we saw proboscis monkeys and orantugans. The proboscis monkeys were actually sort of disappointing - their noses were not nearly as large as I had hoped. But, they did have some babies, which are always super cute. The orangutans were more interesting. The park helps to rehabilitate injured orangutans (I guess they are injured due to poaching? I was not sure about this), so the ones that were in the zoo were the ones that were too injured to be released back into the wild. Here's one with a mangled hand - he seemed to be managing ok.
Also, we saw a bird of paradise! Most people only think of these as those poky, bright orange, flowers, but the original birds of paradise were actual birds. These birds used to be incredibly common in Borneo, but were hunted to near extinction because of the desire for their beautiful tail feathers.
The next day, we headed out to a group of small islands off the coast to do some scuba diving. I recently learned how to dive about a year ago, so I was eager to go! Unfortunately, the visibility was quite bad, the maximum visibility was only about 5m. However, I did see a huge moray eel and lots of flourescently colored nudibranchs. My parents saw a turtle, so I was quite jealous. One of the coolest parts of the trip was when we stopped for lunch on one of the small islands. The island was inhabited by water monitors! They were huge - some were over 5 feet long! The lizards were almost completely tame, because they were used to getting food from the tourists, that they were just lounging around in the sun and begging food scraps. Like very large, very spiky, house cats.
On our final full day in Borneo, we took a bus several hours to go hiking around Mount Kinabalu. This is one of the tallest mountains in Southeast Asia, and is very popular with climbers because it's quite easy to climb - pretty much like a two day hike uphill. Not having time to climb all the way up, we contented ourselves with some jungle hiking around the mountain. There were a lot of very pretty plants and flowers that we saw, like these beautiful red flowers.
We realized while we were hiking that we were "hiking the jungles of Borneo", and that that sounded totally badass (it sounds extra cool if you say it in that movie-preview-announcer-deep-male voice. Really. Try it, right now.). Here I am in the jungles of Borneo:
On our last day, we managed to have time to make it to the Sabah State Museum before we had to be at the airport to catch our flight. A unique feature of this museum was that it had recreations of the many different types of houses that the various tribes of Borneo used to live in. Here's a picture of a few, surrounding a picturesque (but completely mosquito infested) lake:
Also, it had silly animal statues, and I'm a total sucker for hokey dioramas, like this fake water buffalo standing in a rice paddy:
That afternoon, we headed back to Singapore and I said goodbye to my parents, who were off to Tokyo for a couple days before returning home.
Overall, I thought Borneo was a really interesting place, for both the culture and the unique jungles. I enjoyed being in a more rural setting, away from the huge city of Singapore. However, I think that Kota Kinabalu is begining to experience a tourism boom, and will probably grow much larger in the coming years, especially as they promote themselves as an "ecotourism" site.
It's interesting to note that in my two visits of Malaysia, I'm always surprised at how developed it is. It always seems much cleaner and safer than I expect. Overall, I think it's a good place to travel to get exposed to Southeast Asia (I'm assuming Singapore doesn't really count), without encountering too many issues. People are quite nice and helpful, and I rarely felt like they were trying to scam me. So, all in all, a good trip.
Also, Merry (late) Christmas to everyone! I enjoyed a delicious German lunch at a local brewpub with some friends, before heading home to skype with various friends and family. Now, I'm just about to head out to meet Chris at the airport here in Singapore, and we'll be continuing on to Vietnam in a couple days. Hope everyone has a very happy New Year!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Playing tourist in Singapore
Last week, for the first time since I've been in Singapore, I got to play full-time tourist, as my parents were in town to visit me! It was lots of fun and I found out a lot more about Singapore - often the places we visited were locations I had frequented before but had not realized the historical significance/cultural value behind them.
My parents arrived late Monday night and I met up with them on Tuesday morning. After a failed attempt to visit a crocodile farm, we settled for a visit to Arab Street and the Malay Heritage Center. Arab Street is one of my favorite places in Singapore, for it's chill vibe, good food, and funky shops. The Malay Heritage Center was somewhat interesting, but I would have liked for it to focus more on the historical areas of Malay influence in Singapore - the present-day exhibits were much less interesting. For dinner, I introduced my parents to the very common Singaporean dinner location: the mall food-court. Like an indoor, air conditioned, hawker center, but more crowded. The extreme crowds made it a bit difficult to navigate, but a friendly Singaporean family ended up sharing their table with us - everyone here is so much nicer to me when I'm with my family (more on this later)!
The next day, my dad had to fly to Jakarata for business, so my mom and I headed to Chinatown. We visited a really cool Taoist temple - the first in Singapore, built in 1826. Here's a picture of the inside of the Yueh Hai Ching Temple (Temple of the Calm Sea):
The temple was built by the Teochew community of Singapore (one of the main Chinese groups during those times) to thank the gods for safe passages over the ocean, as the Teochew were historically sailors and fishermen. Besides the main shrine, there were lots of other shrines that I'm sure had very interesting stories behind them, such as this one (especially the guy on the right):
The next day, my mom and I headed to Little India, another very interesting neighborhood in Singapore. I like Little India because it provides a glimpse of what Singapore was like in the past - like this spice mill in a sundry goods shop:
The whole shop smelled delicious and barrels of ground spices were stacked along the walls:
We also checked out a Hindu temple, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple. Like most Hindu temples, this one was gaudily decorated and had a tall tower, called a gopuram, which is similar to a church tower in that it is designed to help pilgrims find their way to the temple. Taking a break, we ate some kulfi, which is the Indian version of ice cream. It's slightly thicker than normal ice cream and flavored with all sorts of nuts. Seriously, if you ever get a chance to try it, do so! It was madly delicious. Finally, we rounded out our Little India explorations with a trip to Mustafa's department store, a 24-hour madhouse full of all sorts of cheap merchandise.
The next day, we decided to explore the British influence in Singapore by visiting the civic district and the waterfront. (Apparently, this is also the point at which I stopped taking pictures for several days - sorry!) The massive, stately government buildings look quite out of place against the lush, tropical background of Singapore. We also visited the Philatelic Museum, which, for a museum about stamps, was pretty great! Surprising, I know.
On our last day in Singapore, my parents and I went to the National Museum. I had never been there before and it was probably the most extensive and through museum I've ever been to. The exhibits in the Singapore history gallery were accompanied by an audio/visual "companion" that gave you audio snippets about historical events in Singapore's past. After listening to these general snippets, you could choose to read more about specific artifacts, listen to discussions by various historians, or hear first-hand accounts of the (more recent) events in question. I think our visit took about 3 hours - but we could have spent all day there!
That night, we went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. This is a special nighttime exhibit that features nocturnal animals. It was really cool! The prize for most adorably cute animal goes to the Lesser Mouse Deer. Here's a picture (not mine):
Seriously, how retardedly cute is that?!? (For a scale reference, their max height is about 18 inches, their mature weight is under 5 lbs.) The award for most bad-ass animal goes to the Malayan Flying Fox, which was a large bat about one foot long. Part of the Night Safari contained a walk-in bat cage, which was a very very large cage that you could walk through and be up close and personal with the bats. It was so cool being only feet away from these huge bats! Observe (again, not my picture - my camera sucks at night shots):
The next day, we woke up super early to get to the airport to catch our flight to Borneo - but I'll save that for another blog entry.
Overall, seeing Singapore from a completely tourist perspective was interesting. Seeing all the things that surprised my parents made me realize all the little differences that I've adapted to in the past four months. I think that what made the biggest impression upon me was how polite other people were to us - no pushing to get on the bus, offering their seats on the train, helping with locating various places. I don't really know why this is - my only theory is that Asians are always kind of confused when a single woman is travelling alone, so maybe when I had my family with me, we seemed more like tourists. Anyways, I enjoyed it while it lasted!
So, that about sums up the Singapore visit. Next time: our trip to Borneo and my awesome German Christmas lunch.
My parents arrived late Monday night and I met up with them on Tuesday morning. After a failed attempt to visit a crocodile farm, we settled for a visit to Arab Street and the Malay Heritage Center. Arab Street is one of my favorite places in Singapore, for it's chill vibe, good food, and funky shops. The Malay Heritage Center was somewhat interesting, but I would have liked for it to focus more on the historical areas of Malay influence in Singapore - the present-day exhibits were much less interesting. For dinner, I introduced my parents to the very common Singaporean dinner location: the mall food-court. Like an indoor, air conditioned, hawker center, but more crowded. The extreme crowds made it a bit difficult to navigate, but a friendly Singaporean family ended up sharing their table with us - everyone here is so much nicer to me when I'm with my family (more on this later)!
The temple was built by the Teochew community of Singapore (one of the main Chinese groups during those times) to thank the gods for safe passages over the ocean, as the Teochew were historically sailors and fishermen. Besides the main shrine, there were lots of other shrines that I'm sure had very interesting stories behind them, such as this one (especially the guy on the right):
The next day, my mom and I headed to Little India, another very interesting neighborhood in Singapore. I like Little India because it provides a glimpse of what Singapore was like in the past - like this spice mill in a sundry goods shop:
The next day, we decided to explore the British influence in Singapore by visiting the civic district and the waterfront. (Apparently, this is also the point at which I stopped taking pictures for several days - sorry!) The massive, stately government buildings look quite out of place against the lush, tropical background of Singapore. We also visited the Philatelic Museum, which, for a museum about stamps, was pretty great! Surprising, I know.
On our last day in Singapore, my parents and I went to the National Museum. I had never been there before and it was probably the most extensive and through museum I've ever been to. The exhibits in the Singapore history gallery were accompanied by an audio/visual "companion" that gave you audio snippets about historical events in Singapore's past. After listening to these general snippets, you could choose to read more about specific artifacts, listen to discussions by various historians, or hear first-hand accounts of the (more recent) events in question. I think our visit took about 3 hours - but we could have spent all day there!
That night, we went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. This is a special nighttime exhibit that features nocturnal animals. It was really cool! The prize for most adorably cute animal goes to the Lesser Mouse Deer. Here's a picture (not mine):
Seriously, how retardedly cute is that?!? (For a scale reference, their max height is about 18 inches, their mature weight is under 5 lbs.) The award for most bad-ass animal goes to the Malayan Flying Fox, which was a large bat about one foot long. Part of the Night Safari contained a walk-in bat cage, which was a very very large cage that you could walk through and be up close and personal with the bats. It was so cool being only feet away from these huge bats! Observe (again, not my picture - my camera sucks at night shots):
The next day, we woke up super early to get to the airport to catch our flight to Borneo - but I'll save that for another blog entry.
Overall, seeing Singapore from a completely tourist perspective was interesting. Seeing all the things that surprised my parents made me realize all the little differences that I've adapted to in the past four months. I think that what made the biggest impression upon me was how polite other people were to us - no pushing to get on the bus, offering their seats on the train, helping with locating various places. I don't really know why this is - my only theory is that Asians are always kind of confused when a single woman is travelling alone, so maybe when I had my family with me, we seemed more like tourists. Anyways, I enjoyed it while it lasted!
So, that about sums up the Singapore visit. Next time: our trip to Borneo and my awesome German Christmas lunch.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Travel Plans!
It's finally time for a holiday! I am excited to take a few weeks off from work and spend some time with my visitors. My parents will be arriving in Singapore soon (as in, a few hours) and we'll be spending some time here and then heading to Kota Kinabalu, in Borneo (the Malaysia part). I'm pretty excited to go to Borneo; it will be nice to get out of the city and be able to do some trekking and exploring. Hopefully we will see monkeys - orangutans and proboscis monkeys!
Then, Chris is coming to visit me! We'll be heading off to Vietnam, to check out Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and the central coast. I'm really excited to see all the interesting history there - ancient monuments from early tribes, remnants of French colonialism, and of course all the Vietnam War artifacts.
So, it may be a couple weeks before I update again, since I'll be in and out of Singapore. But, I promise awesome pictures and travel stories when I do get around to updating!
Then, Chris is coming to visit me! We'll be heading off to Vietnam, to check out Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and the central coast. I'm really excited to see all the interesting history there - ancient monuments from early tribes, remnants of French colonialism, and of course all the Vietnam War artifacts.
So, it may be a couple weeks before I update again, since I'll be in and out of Singapore. But, I promise awesome pictures and travel stories when I do get around to updating!
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