A touch of class in Singapore - August 26-29, 2007

For such a tiny place, Singapore is a city of superlatives -- it has the world's busiest port, its airport recently was ranked by world travelers as the second best airport (just losing out to Hong Kong, their Asian rival), its beautiful zoo rakes in tourism awards every year (including the coveted 5 Stars Happy Toilet Awards for cleanliness, functionality and creativity!). It's also the cleanest, safest and most expensive city I have visited yet and in my opinion far from being dull or sterile. I spent three jam-packed days wandering through excellent museums, sipping cocktails at the historic Raffles Hotel and sampling yummy cheap street food.

As a trundled through the skyscrapers and 19th century British colonial buildings I found myself comparing Singapore not with other Asian cities but with Toronto. Just how does Toronto stack up?

Food - Singapore's street food is delicious and cheap, specializing in Indian, Chinese and Malay, and although I didn't partake, I'm sure its high-end restaurants are world-class. But Toronto wins points for its sheer diversity -- Jamaican jerk chicken, Greek souvlaki, Mexican mole, etc. I'm waiting for the day that Toronto starts serving this stuff on the street!

Zoos - I like Toronto's zoo, but the Singapore Zoo is hands down one of the best zoos I have ever visited. Beautifully landscaped, enclosures designed to look like the animals' natural environment, but what makes Singapore's stand out is the proximity of the animals with the spectators. At one point, I wandered into a biodome, looked up and two feet above my head hung a sloth, starting down on me and slowly chewing on leaves. In another area, the gibbons swung freely in the trees along a path, with no fences or barriers. And at night, you can visit the Night Safari, where you can walk along paths lit by soft lights to visit nocturnal animals at their most liveliest.

Museums - Singapore's museums are interesting, diverse and engaging - with an emphasis on using creepy wax dummies to recreate moments in history or to highlight the cultures of Singapore. In one memorable museum in Chinatown, the curators have constructed a life sized 19th century Chinese shophouse, which you can wander through and peak into the tiny rooms that housed dozens of poor immigrants. You really get a sense of just how horrible the living condition were for the earliest settlers, and you can't help but admire what they managed to build in today's sparkling city. By contrast, I find Toronto's museums to be static, a bit sterile with items encased behind glass. It would be hard for a visitor to get a taste of Toronto through our museums.

People - the people of Singapore are courteous, decent and exceedingly helpful. As a traveler, I was helped numerous times by the friendly locals whether it was getting change from an elderly couple when I boarded a bus with only a $10 bill, or when I misplaced my camera (yikes) at a museum and had the manager and all of his staff scurrying around to look for it (I got it back, phew). I'm trying to think about how helpful Torontonians would be toward a lost tourist? I'm actually not sure...

Freedom - no contest, Singapore is one of the most regulated, restricted places with severe penalties for littering, spitting etc. Drug dealing receives an automatic death penalty, possession garners lengthy prison terms and homosexuality is outlawed. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression - these do not exist in Singapore. You really have to appreciate Toronto's openness and tolerance!

Here are some of my favourite photos of Singapore:


A blustery view of Singapore's busy harbour


A Buddhist temple in Chinatown


The Singpore skyline


White tigers going for a swim at the zoo

A historical snapshot in Melaka -- August 21-23, 2007

After almost a week in KL, I decided to head down to Melaka, a port city seeped in Malaysian and colonial history. Located halfway between China and India and close to the spice islands of Indonesia, Melaka became the trading hub for merchants from Europe, India and China in the 14th century. It's also considered the birthplace of Islam in Southeast Asia -- Indian merchants brought the religion to the Melaccan rulers, who in turn helped to spread it to Indonesia. The colonial aspirations soon washed up on the shores, with the Portuguese, Dutch and British each taking turns of controlling the city over 300 years.

So it's not surprising that the city is a hodge-podge of architecture with a smidge of everything thrown into the pot. This is a Dutch influenced building.



Wandering through the small city core is the highlight of any trip to Melaka, especially Chinatown where the narrow streets are lined with shophouses with Dutch, Chinese and British flourishes like plasterwork, intricate tiles and Tudor style roofs. It is pretty touristy with plenty of expensive antique stores and Western style cafes, but wander off from the main streets, and you'll be rewarded by glimpses into tiny shops that still make rubber stamps, elderly Chinese men tottering along on their bicycles and families huddled over benches slurping up noodles.



My favourite thing about Melaka, however, is the food! In addition to the usual Chinese, Indian and Malay flavours, the intermarriage of Chinese traders and Malay women has given birth to Nonya cuisine, a succulent fusion of spicy creamy coconut sauces, tamarind, noodles, fish and chicken - yummy!

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Just an added footnote about the "seamless diversity" of KL -- a tourist's first impression can sometimes miss the subtleties. I've been lucky enough to hang out with my friend Sugee in KL, who has been eager to show me all the hidden hotspots of this fun city. She and her friends have also given me more insight on the tensions that do exist between the cultures in Malaysia. Sugee, who is Indian, has many Malay and Chinese friends, but there are definitely issues. Malays resent the Chinese, who overall hold the most wealth in Malaysia, own the businesses and have higher standards of living. In an effort to boost the economic fortunes of Malays, the government has a policy that favours Malay companies for contracts, lowers taxes for Malays, provides different university entrance exams for Malys etc. These practices are deeply resented by the Chinese and Indian populations. But Sugee agrees that there is a high degree of tolerance among the people for differences in religion, cultures etc. And in all of the museums and glossy tourist brochures, the government is very careful to showcase all three cultures as being part of Malaysia.

The wildlife of KL - August 19 , 2007

This weekend, I traveled 15 kilometres north of KL to the Batu caves, three enormous caverns that have become a place of worship after Hindu shrines were placed in the main cave. Every February, 1.5 million Hindus walk from the middle of KL to the Caves as part of the Thaipusam procession, but at all other times of the year, tourists of all backgrounds flock to the caves, mainly to watch the monkeys scramble up the limestone walls and snatch food from unsuspecting onlookers.





Right in the centre of KL is a one of the world's largest covered bird park, housing 150 different species.

KL's beautiful diversity -- August 16-18, 2007

After spending five months in two of Asia's poorest countries (Laos and Cambodia), touching down in Kuala Lumpur was a bit of a shock. Multi-lane highways in pristine condition, sparkling office buildings, high rise condos, shopping complexes, Macdonalds and Starbucks, English billboards -- if it weren't for the tropical vegetation lining the roads, we could have been in Toronto. They even have a freestanding structure (the KL Tower at 461 metres) that kind of looks like the CN Tower!

But this feeling of familiarity disappeared as soon as I got out of my taxi and threaded my way through the Chinatown night market to find my hotel. The sights, sounds and smells pulsated around me: Muslim women covered head to toe in black picking through piles of T-shirts, Indian street hawkers shouting out to passersby ("Miss, miss, do you want a Rolex -- it's a REAL COPY!"), the pungent aroma of barbecued duck and roasted chestnuts. I was a bit disoriented after a full day of travel and was sweating profusely by this time, but I knew within minutes that I would like this city.



After a few days of wandering through the city, I can safely say that KL is one of my favourite cities. The multitude of religions and cultures have given this city a beautiful mixture of architecture and religious monuments, cheap delicious street food and vibrant night markets and neighbourhoods. These colourful shophouses can be found everywhere in Chinatown, and this glittering mosque stands at the apex of where KL was founded in 1857 by a band of tin prospectors.





Complementing the cultural attractions is a highly efficient, prosperous city with an excellent subway and monorail system, gleaming national monuments and five star hotels. But unlike some concrete nightmares, KL's urban planners have had the foresight to incorporate beautiful old trees, patches of jungle and numerous parks in amongst all the skyscrapers so weary tourists like me can pause to rest their aching feet. Here's me soaking my tired feet in the park at the base of the famous Petronas Towers.





The best way to enjoy a city like KL is to throw away your map and simply lose yourself -- you'll come across a hidden Hindu temple, a classical British colonial building, a side street filled with vendors selling cheap curry. KL's beauty is in its seamless diversity.

Images of Laos - August 2007

Here are some of my favorite images of Laos, a country whose desolate and rugged beauty has firmly grabbed me by the heart.

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On an incredibly twisty eight hour drive from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. My eyes were glued to the window the entire time watching the mountains whizz by.


On a kayaking trip in Luang Prabang, we stopped at this meadow for lunch. A group of young girls were busy catching fish, washing clothes and generally horsing around, but this little girl paused to pose for this photo.


Kwang Si Waterfalls near Luang Prabang - and yes, the water really is this turquoise!


In Viengxai, I spent the afternoon in one of these little bungalows with some fellow backpackers from Austria, England and Spain, playing Uno and drinking BeerLao.


The morning view from my veranda in Nong Kiaw. By afternoon, the sun usually burned away the mist.


A view onto the rice fields from inside a cave near Nong Kiaw. Because it's the rainy season, the fields all over Lao were this brilliant green colour.

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But now, it's time to leave Laos so tomorrow (August 15), I fly to Kuala Lumpur to continue my adventure in Malaysia. I'm excited about the "new-ness" of it all - the mix of Malay, Indian and Chinese culture, the predominance of a different religion (Islam), and the footprints left behind by the once mighty English colonial empire. But most of all, Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it) has always been the city of my childhood dreams - back then, it seemed so utterly exotic, as far from my little hometown of Courtenay as you could possibly get. And now, in a little more than 24 hours, I will finally be there! Woohoo!

The heart of the Pathet Lao - July 30, 2007

The conflict in Laos is often referred to as the "Secret War," largely because the U.S. involvement was such a highly classified operation throughout its duration from 1964 to 1973. But it could also easily be called the "forgotten war." There are no iconic photographs of children escaping napalm attacks or Hollywood directors excoriating their guilt on celluloid. Even in Cambodia, the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge have been well documented -- walk into any bookstore or souvenir shop, and you'll see shelves of firsthand survivor accounts and historians contemplating the evil of Pol Pot. In Laos, I would be hard pressed to find books of any kind that talked about the Lao experience during their war.

Yet, the recent history of Laos is fascinating in its own right -- a battleground of ideologies, a small pawn within a larger worldwide struggle between superpowers, the sheer firepower unleashed on the Lao people. I decided to go to the heart of the story by traveling to Viengxai near the Vietnam border and the site of hundreds of caves that were home to the revolutionary forces of the Communist Pathet Lao during the war.

As the U.S. carpet-bombing intensified over eastern Laos, the Pathet Lao moved into the caves, which were almost impossible to reach from the air. With up to 20,000 people living in the caves, an underground community sprung up -- school, a hospital staffed by Cuban doctors, market, print shop for publishing Communist propaganda. Here is the concert hall in which they held rallies, plays and other forms of entertainment -- often from Vietnam, Cuba and China in a show of Communist solidarity -- to boost morale.



The caves were also the base from which the Pathet Lao conducted the war and planned the future of Communist Lao - the top military officials all had their homes in the caves, including Kaysone, Lao's venerated hero and leader. As we walked through the Politburo meeting room, I tried to imagine the passionate debates and intense strategizing that took place here almost 40 years ago.

Finally, we climbed up to the artillery cave which provided a sweeping view of the skyline over the western mountains. Men with anti-aircraft missiles were positioned in the caves, but it was also the site from which they could signal the first alarm - a loud siren -- of incoming airplanes, sending the 20,000 inhabitants scrambling into the caves. I wonder what nine years of constant aerial bombardment and the accompanying panic and fear does to your psyche? Now, the view from the artillery cave is an idyllic green meadow, quiet with water buffalo and cows grazing.