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Tour Part 1
My apologies for my lack of regular posts and comments in people's journals (which I enjoy a great deal). Been a little busy; the journey so far:
Dili to Denpassar to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Penang.
Well, here I am early morning in Penang about half way through the tour and with plenty of interesting tales already.
In brief
August 28
Departed Dili at 1100, Rico and Kiki (my fellow IT workers) gave me a lift to the airport. By 1350 Denpassar time I was in Bali. The scammers at the airport tried their various tricks. "Sanur? 50 000 Rupiah! Very cheap!" I laughed. I'm wise to these people I know how much airport to Sanur is.. (it's about 30k)
Here's the trick. Walk out of the airport, avoid the "taxi" services and hail down a metered cab. Make sure they turn the meter on, otherwise your journey can be very expensive indeed.
Anyway, I went to Sanur, which is a much quieter and more beautiful version of Kuta. I stayed at Yulia's Homestay 2, whose street frontage is called Billy's Cafe. The enormous inexpensive room (7000 Rupiah) with library and courtyard at the back which I stayed in last time was available and the staff remembered me. The homestay is on the main Sanur road and the corner of a side street which proudly proclaims the direction to the Honorary German Consulate. Behind that is the retaurant entitled "Swastika's".
Considering that the display of the swastika is illegal in Germany I found it amusing. I also pondered on what Balinese Hindus, to whom the swastika (the wheel of the sun) would do in Germany.
That evening I put my film in to be processed and killed time by window shopping and trying to find a favourite restaurant from my last visit. I ran into Graham (an IT worker for Oxfam), whom I spend some time with in East Timor and Peter, a software engineer who was quietly spending his savings from work in Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, it didn't take long to realize (after ordering an arak and ice) that this was indeed the restaurant. So it was dinner, drinks and conversation! Peter informed me (in the perspective of the last subchapter in my thesis), Internet censorship in Saudi Arabia is falling apart at the seams.
August 29
Spent most of the day with Graham, or rather, lounging around at the swimming pool at his hotel which seemed to be a German enclave. After sampling some local wine (rose), which was surprisingly good, we meandered along the beach, visited a couple of coffee shops, a software/dvd/vcd store (I picked up Autocad for 20000 rph) and conversed about the various ways and means IT work can be and is useful in developing countries. We really are birds of a feather in that regard. After a brief visit our respective hotels (where I discovered my film was stuffed and did a bit of work), the evening was spent with more conversion and dining.
August 30
Left Bali. The taxi driver tried to rip me off three times! Poor bastard, all over a couple of thousand rupiah. I mentioned in passing that for the sake of a couple of dollars he runs the risk of people deciding to take their holidays elsewhere and that's a loss of thousands of dollars. I thought Hindus understood karma?
With a marvellous flight with Singapore airlines - who serve a decent meal and French wine in their economy class - I arrived in Singapore. The hostel I stayed in, with the rather cheesy name The Inn Crown in the aptly named "Little India", has small dorm facilities and is expensive in comparison to everywhere else I've stayed, but not for Singapore itself. The places is inhabited by a range of backpackers (mostly British) and the owners keep the place very clean and organize evening tours and so forth.
Hunting a few electrical goods for some comrades back in East Timor, I visited the five storey electronics market Sim Lim towers. A couple more plazas like that and I was beginning to think the entire country was a shopping centre. That evening, wandering aimlessly through the pristine streets I was diverted by some road works through to the Art Museaum. What a find! They were showing, that night, a performance of the famous Accidental Death of An Anarchist. It was a good show and in beautiful surroundings. This "accidental find of an anarchist" will be subject to a review in the near future.
August 31
Having discovered the arts and cultural centre of town I cut loose. A visit to the two Asian Civilization Museaums (highly recommended, really comprehensive), which included an interesting feature on the Indian National Army, a anti-imperialist force established in Singapore after the Japanese took over and with the express aim of kicking the British out of India. After that a walk along the Singapore river, the rather hedgehog like Theatre's on the Esplanade I wondered into the famous Raffles Hotel. Shared a table with a sophisticated and stylish French plastics marketing executive (who sent my gaydar beeping very loudly) and enjoyed a superb buffet lunch (could I eat more lobster?) and, of course, a Singapore Sling (the Raffles is where the drink was invented). That afternoon I went back to the Art Gallery and checked out a rather silly exhibition of sculpture from Japan, a zero out of ten exhibition on computer art and some reasonable Australian photography. In the evening I caught up with Rohan from the aus.politics newsgroup and his partner, Hilda. Good value, smart character and an equally cluely partner.
Oh, and my camera is broken.
September 1
Visited the harbour front and bought my tickets to Malaysia. Went to China town where the markets had an array of interesting foods, including dried seahorse, lizard on a stick and turtle. Around the corner I sampled some turtle soup, which I have just found out is not exactly on the thriving populations list. Whoops. I must confess however, it was pretty damn tasty. Oh well, no more turtle for me, or at least not until the numbers are up.
Making use of the excellent and inexpensive public transport network I decided to traverse the entire island. This included a stopover at the Kranji war memorial (my comment in the "guest book" : 'A soldier lost is a soldier lost forever') and a visit to the Singapore zoological gardens night safari. This is possibly the best zoological gardens in the world, with an open plan rather than cages. The night safari gives great opportunity to see all the animals which of course are mostly nocturnal. I had a very close encounter with a vampire bat (cute li'll thing), a staring contest with a leopard (the leopard won) and of course, the various lions and tigers and bears, oh my (and rhinos and hippos and tapirs etc etc). They even had one my favorite animals, the Asian Golden Cat: a medium-sized felin, built like a weightlifter and with an attitude.
In a nutshell, Singapore works. There is no smoking in public ($1000 fine, bars and restaurants excluded). Chewing gum is illegal. The public transport system is brilliant. The public housing system is brilliant. The place is clean, almost to the point of sterile. The taxes on cigarettes and alcohol are prohibitive (a glass of wine is $8 SNG dollars - about $9 AUD). Their system of censorship is intense and woe to any politicians from an opposition party. But somehow, among these notable infringements to civil liberties, they have produced a vibrant economy that has a higher GDP per capita than Australia and a better distribution of income. And their dollar is worth more. I remember back in the early 1980s when lifestyle shows would feature Australians ladden with electronics coming back from Singapore with idiot grins exclaiming "everything is so cheap there!". Yeah, well that was twenty years ago. Today, the taxi driver remarked to me "Australia? I hear that everything is so cheap there!". Ha Ha. They're eating us alive. Good luck to 'em.
September 2
Taking the slow method to Penang in North Malaysia - the train. The first thing you notice crossing the causeway is the sudden appearance of litter and the lower quality buildings and materials. Taking about an hour longer than schedule, the train actually broke down prior to reaching Kuala Lumpur. From the derisive laughter from the locals this is not an uncommon occurrance. Anyway, spent a couple of hours in Kuala Lumpur, not exactly long enough to get any sort of feel for the place apart from a half-decent view and mentally mapping where to go when I come back.
I should mention that the train ride itself was fine. The place is very green, very wet, really like jungle. Surprisingly the in-journey movies were excellent - a murder mystery in which the 'bad guys' (in this case a woman who played at having multiple personality disorder) won, an undercover police operation into a really creepy pedophile gang (which included the severe psychological stresses on the undercover agents) and a feelgood true story of a group of environmentally concerned mothers and housewives fighting a Japanese petrochemical company who wanted to build in a poor area of Louisana.
September 3
Have just arrived in Penang, taking the overnight sleeper carriage. According to Lonely Planet: "Penang has always attracted adventurers, dreamers, artists, intellectuals, scoundrals and dissidents". I should fit right in. The famous Eastern and Orient hotel ("The Premier Hotel East of the Suez") which features in several stories by Someset Maugham and Bilainkin's "Hail Penang! Being the Narrative of Comedies and Tragedies in a Tropical Outpost Among Europeans, Chinese, Malays and Indians", has reopened after being derelict for many years. And after a very fine breakfast there, I have meandered to this Internet cafe...
Next stop, the Buddhist Snake Temple...
Dili to Denpassar to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Penang.
Well, here I am early morning in Penang about half way through the tour and with plenty of interesting tales already.
In brief
August 28
Departed Dili at 1100, Rico and Kiki (my fellow IT workers) gave me a lift to the airport. By 1350 Denpassar time I was in Bali. The scammers at the airport tried their various tricks. "Sanur? 50 000 Rupiah! Very cheap!" I laughed. I'm wise to these people I know how much airport to Sanur is.. (it's about 30k)
Here's the trick. Walk out of the airport, avoid the "taxi" services and hail down a metered cab. Make sure they turn the meter on, otherwise your journey can be very expensive indeed.
Anyway, I went to Sanur, which is a much quieter and more beautiful version of Kuta. I stayed at Yulia's Homestay 2, whose street frontage is called Billy's Cafe. The enormous inexpensive room (7000 Rupiah) with library and courtyard at the back which I stayed in last time was available and the staff remembered me. The homestay is on the main Sanur road and the corner of a side street which proudly proclaims the direction to the Honorary German Consulate. Behind that is the retaurant entitled "Swastika's".
Considering that the display of the swastika is illegal in Germany I found it amusing. I also pondered on what Balinese Hindus, to whom the swastika (the wheel of the sun) would do in Germany.
That evening I put my film in to be processed and killed time by window shopping and trying to find a favourite restaurant from my last visit. I ran into Graham (an IT worker for Oxfam), whom I spend some time with in East Timor and Peter, a software engineer who was quietly spending his savings from work in Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, it didn't take long to realize (after ordering an arak and ice) that this was indeed the restaurant. So it was dinner, drinks and conversation! Peter informed me (in the perspective of the last subchapter in my thesis), Internet censorship in Saudi Arabia is falling apart at the seams.
August 29
Spent most of the day with Graham, or rather, lounging around at the swimming pool at his hotel which seemed to be a German enclave. After sampling some local wine (rose), which was surprisingly good, we meandered along the beach, visited a couple of coffee shops, a software/dvd/vcd store (I picked up Autocad for 20000 rph) and conversed about the various ways and means IT work can be and is useful in developing countries. We really are birds of a feather in that regard. After a brief visit our respective hotels (where I discovered my film was stuffed and did a bit of work), the evening was spent with more conversion and dining.
August 30
Left Bali. The taxi driver tried to rip me off three times! Poor bastard, all over a couple of thousand rupiah. I mentioned in passing that for the sake of a couple of dollars he runs the risk of people deciding to take their holidays elsewhere and that's a loss of thousands of dollars. I thought Hindus understood karma?
With a marvellous flight with Singapore airlines - who serve a decent meal and French wine in their economy class - I arrived in Singapore. The hostel I stayed in, with the rather cheesy name The Inn Crown in the aptly named "Little India", has small dorm facilities and is expensive in comparison to everywhere else I've stayed, but not for Singapore itself. The places is inhabited by a range of backpackers (mostly British) and the owners keep the place very clean and organize evening tours and so forth.
Hunting a few electrical goods for some comrades back in East Timor, I visited the five storey electronics market Sim Lim towers. A couple more plazas like that and I was beginning to think the entire country was a shopping centre. That evening, wandering aimlessly through the pristine streets I was diverted by some road works through to the Art Museaum. What a find! They were showing, that night, a performance of the famous Accidental Death of An Anarchist. It was a good show and in beautiful surroundings. This "accidental find of an anarchist" will be subject to a review in the near future.
August 31
Having discovered the arts and cultural centre of town I cut loose. A visit to the two Asian Civilization Museaums (highly recommended, really comprehensive), which included an interesting feature on the Indian National Army, a anti-imperialist force established in Singapore after the Japanese took over and with the express aim of kicking the British out of India. After that a walk along the Singapore river, the rather hedgehog like Theatre's on the Esplanade I wondered into the famous Raffles Hotel. Shared a table with a sophisticated and stylish French plastics marketing executive (who sent my gaydar beeping very loudly) and enjoyed a superb buffet lunch (could I eat more lobster?) and, of course, a Singapore Sling (the Raffles is where the drink was invented). That afternoon I went back to the Art Gallery and checked out a rather silly exhibition of sculpture from Japan, a zero out of ten exhibition on computer art and some reasonable Australian photography. In the evening I caught up with Rohan from the aus.politics newsgroup and his partner, Hilda. Good value, smart character and an equally cluely partner.
Oh, and my camera is broken.
September 1
Visited the harbour front and bought my tickets to Malaysia. Went to China town where the markets had an array of interesting foods, including dried seahorse, lizard on a stick and turtle. Around the corner I sampled some turtle soup, which I have just found out is not exactly on the thriving populations list. Whoops. I must confess however, it was pretty damn tasty. Oh well, no more turtle for me, or at least not until the numbers are up.
Making use of the excellent and inexpensive public transport network I decided to traverse the entire island. This included a stopover at the Kranji war memorial (my comment in the "guest book" : 'A soldier lost is a soldier lost forever') and a visit to the Singapore zoological gardens night safari. This is possibly the best zoological gardens in the world, with an open plan rather than cages. The night safari gives great opportunity to see all the animals which of course are mostly nocturnal. I had a very close encounter with a vampire bat (cute li'll thing), a staring contest with a leopard (the leopard won) and of course, the various lions and tigers and bears, oh my (and rhinos and hippos and tapirs etc etc). They even had one my favorite animals, the Asian Golden Cat: a medium-sized felin, built like a weightlifter and with an attitude.
In a nutshell, Singapore works. There is no smoking in public ($1000 fine, bars and restaurants excluded). Chewing gum is illegal. The public transport system is brilliant. The public housing system is brilliant. The place is clean, almost to the point of sterile. The taxes on cigarettes and alcohol are prohibitive (a glass of wine is $8 SNG dollars - about $9 AUD). Their system of censorship is intense and woe to any politicians from an opposition party. But somehow, among these notable infringements to civil liberties, they have produced a vibrant economy that has a higher GDP per capita than Australia and a better distribution of income. And their dollar is worth more. I remember back in the early 1980s when lifestyle shows would feature Australians ladden with electronics coming back from Singapore with idiot grins exclaiming "everything is so cheap there!". Yeah, well that was twenty years ago. Today, the taxi driver remarked to me "Australia? I hear that everything is so cheap there!". Ha Ha. They're eating us alive. Good luck to 'em.
September 2
Taking the slow method to Penang in North Malaysia - the train. The first thing you notice crossing the causeway is the sudden appearance of litter and the lower quality buildings and materials. Taking about an hour longer than schedule, the train actually broke down prior to reaching Kuala Lumpur. From the derisive laughter from the locals this is not an uncommon occurrance. Anyway, spent a couple of hours in Kuala Lumpur, not exactly long enough to get any sort of feel for the place apart from a half-decent view and mentally mapping where to go when I come back.
I should mention that the train ride itself was fine. The place is very green, very wet, really like jungle. Surprisingly the in-journey movies were excellent - a murder mystery in which the 'bad guys' (in this case a woman who played at having multiple personality disorder) won, an undercover police operation into a really creepy pedophile gang (which included the severe psychological stresses on the undercover agents) and a feelgood true story of a group of environmentally concerned mothers and housewives fighting a Japanese petrochemical company who wanted to build in a poor area of Louisana.
September 3
Have just arrived in Penang, taking the overnight sleeper carriage. According to Lonely Planet: "Penang has always attracted adventurers, dreamers, artists, intellectuals, scoundrals and dissidents". I should fit right in. The famous Eastern and Orient hotel ("The Premier Hotel East of the Suez") which features in several stories by Someset Maugham and Bilainkin's "Hail Penang! Being the Narrative of Comedies and Tragedies in a Tropical Outpost Among Europeans, Chinese, Malays and Indians", has reopened after being derelict for many years. And after a very fine breakfast there, I have meandered to this Internet cafe...
Next stop, the Buddhist Snake Temple...
no subject
"Singapore works." I believe that Churchill said something similar about Mussolini's Italy.
That is a rather extreme comparison. Yes, Singapore has the death penalty and imposes it even for relatively minor drug use or possession (so does Malaysia). They practise corporeal punishment in the form of caning. Political opponents are always coping civil defamation suits (the ruling party controls 80 out of 83 seats). Practising homosexuality is illegal ("unnatural sex", $1000 fine). The internal security act allows detention without trial (so does Australia now, iirc). There is no civilian alternative to conscientious objectors to military service, which has meant almost 30 Jehovah's Witnesses are in jail.
But compare this to the neighbouring countries of Malaysia and Indonesia.
What does trouble me is for the degree of economic wealth and economic justice, Singapore has comparatively bad human rights. Considering that fourty years ago it was felt the entire country was going to fall apart what they have achieved economically and academically is very impressive. As one commentator put it: "The Singapore Lion has a gained a head and a body. Now it needs a heart".
One other thing I noticed is that with expensive drinks, cigarettes and no chance of any mind-altering substances the only music life is jazz and disco. Why doesn't that surprise me?
Yes, you get good food, but they order you about.
I had no problems like that whatsoever.
Gini coefficient..
I was wrong. Latest report is that the Gini index in Singapore is a relatively high 42.5 (i.e. worse than China, the U.S., Indonesia, Australia, etc etc).
Changes my opinion about the place substantially.
Re: Gini coefficient..
Re: Gini coefficient..
Re: Gini coefficient..
The dumbing down of Singaporeans is a strategy that surely must backfire in the long run.
no subject
China has been under one form of dictatorship or another for thousands of years (and still is)... and the usual result of a poorly run dictatorship over that period has been a bloody revolt (usually run almost exactly the same way as the Maoist one), followed by replacement of the ruling crowd with some new blood, who do a much better job for a while.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Citizens of Singapore are unwilling participants... They are mostly making the conscious choice to support the party in power, because the party is power is doing good things, mostly, for Singapore. Yes, there are some excesses, but they're nothing when compared to the overall gains. And if the excesses got too bad, there would be a revolution (possibly a bloody one, if necessary), in doublequick time.
no subject
"Human Rights" are a tradeoff with "Security".
It is somewhat troubling to those with a liberal disposition but I know what you mean. In some cases it seems that Singapore has engaged in Bethemite calculus "the greatest good for the greatest number" - the no chewing gum and no smoking in public places is an infringement on personal freedom, but dammit if that city ain't clean.
In other cases, such as being a little to willing to use the death penalty (far more per capita than Indonesia or Malaysia) it is more troubling.
I guess the bottom line is, as Benthem pointed out, "happiness".
... and that cultural group of Chinese have always been much more willing and happy to trade off "freedoms" for "security" than the norm
Yep, they're about 77%... and double true on the security/freedom concern. If I may mix the east and west pacific cultural metaphors, happiness is a full rice bowl and freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
no subject
As long as your excesses are against people that nobody much cares about, then nobody much notices. Especially if potential political opposition is dead, in gaol or not in the country. Singaporeans have been brought up on a diet of 'don't rock the boat or you'll get trouble'.
How easy and mind-numbing it is to enjoy the material goodies and not think about the pariahs.
no subject
Mainland China has always (as in, for thousands of years) been highly population dense when compared to rest-of-world. That security-freedom tradeoff is precisely why it has managed to do so for thousands of years and continues to succeed at it. Compare with India, to see what happens when you have that many people without the same willingness to trade freedom for security.
Singapore is really very much a little island of mainland Chinese, stuck off the end of the peninsula there. And its pop density is way off scale... the population of Sydney, crammed onto an island not much bigger than the size of Sydney's CBD. You just can't have that many people rubbing elbows and retain the personal freedom to spit on the sidewalk.
no subject
And its pop density is way off scale...
Yet there are still very significant areas of open space. With the public housing and the transport system I wouldn't be surpised if the calculations worked out that Singapore has about 1/2 (or less) of the actual roadspace to say Melbourne or Sydney.
Of course, many Australians are still fixated on the increasingly improbable quarter acre block.
no subject
Actually Belgium, Java, the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam are all more densely populated than huge entities like China and India - though I agree that parts of those countries would have comparable densities.
Population density is not an excuse for political repression.
no subject
I don't think the comparison is extreme. Political opponents get law suits, yes, but that's only the acceptable opposition. Go outside certain bounds and you will be gaoled. Being a Catholic activist can get you in as much trouble as being a civil libertarian.
I also used to know some people (one a refugee from Suharto, due to his relationship with Sukarno - half Dutch, half Chinese - now deceased) who would have been incarcerated had they dared to set foot in the country.
The political passivity of the population today is the product of ruthlessness in the past.
Singapore is way, way more repressive than Malaysia. The difference is that Malaysians do dare to speak out.
And, btw, the music scene is no accident. You can't experiment until you know whether what you do will be allowed or not. Innovation in Singapore comes from foreigners.
no subject
The difference is that Malaysians do dare to speak out.
They certainly do! The place is abound with posters opposing Malaysia becoming an Islamic state (even though Sunni Islam is the official state religion) and stickers proclaiming that certain banks are unfair to workers.
You can't experiment until you know whether what you do will be allowed or not.
That is certainly true. The other side of it is that jazz and disco is "harmless". I follow Theodor Adorno's comments on this matter.
"Their ecstasy is without content.... The ecstasy takes possession of its object by its own compulsive character. It is stylised like the ecstasies savages go into in beating the war drums. It has convulsive aspects reminescent of St Vitus's dance or the reflexes of mutilated animals. ... The same jitterbugs who behave as if they were electrified by syncopation, dance almost exclusively the good rhythmic parts" --Theodor Adorno "On The Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening"
Sex sells, apparently...
..despite the blatant use of sex to sell tickets
Ahh, I missed that bit because I bought the tickets online..
However your comment had me thinking about the issue over the last 24 hours or so. I mean as much as I appreciate seeing beautiful people (
Jean Seaberg for instance always makes me go giddy), the use of it in advertising products (well, let's make that "nonsexual products") has always struck me as a bit odd.
I mean, there's a Carlsberg poster I noticed in Penang. Bottle blonde, improbably sized breasts, extremely well toned wearing nought but a bikini with a bottle of beer next to her. And that was it. What is that supposed to mean? If I drink enough Carlsbergs one of these lasses will magically appear next to me?
Dammit, I want information, not purile inducement. Give me a beer tasters report, tell me the ingredients and alcohol percentage, the awards it's won (if any) etc.
I honestly don't know who is worse: advertising agents (the children of Satan) who are so unimaginative that they appeal to base desires, or people who purchase such stuff because of the advertising.
Or do they?
Re: Sex sells, apparently...
I don't get the beer ad either, but I expect it is based on careful market research.
Anyway, SQ use their (female) flight attendants a lot in their advertising. I remember quite some years ago, there was industrial action at United because their agency had made an ad depicting a flight attendant with the slogan 'Fly Me'. Soon after, SQ had a similar ad running!