Travelogue 2018/3, On familiar grounds (Penang & Satun) (Malaysia & Thailand)

Penang, Malaysia

 

We stayed 6 days on Penang, Malaysia. We’ve been here before and again we enjoyed the great facilities and the variety in cultures. We paid tribute to all three population groups.

We visited a large Chinese temple in the mountains, a mix between a building site and an amusement park.

We visited the floating mosque, a mosque built on stilts over the sea. It was a  peaceful and serene place.

Everyday we visited Little India for a touch of the real India. The sari shops,  Bollywood music blaring from the dvd shops,  grocery stores with all Indian ingredients and spices, ladies in sari and jeans walking hand in hand, restaurants where the food is better than anywhere in India.

An inherent part of Penang’s history is its colonial past. We visited a guided tour around the Protestants cemetery. There were 15 people listening to the funny and knowledge guide. Lots of little stories about Penang’s history and its inhabitants. One of them was the Scottish lawyer James Richardson Logan, who invented the name Indonesia, as he believed its people had the right to have a name that was not made up by or connected with its Dutch colonizers. It wouldn’t be until early 20^th century that “Indonesia” was picked up by the independent movement. And so Indonesia stays with us this trip, just like India.

Penang was as cloudy as Sumatra, but much warmer, in the low 30s. Two and three years ago we saw nothing but blue skies here.

Satun, Thailand

This was the fifth time I went from Penang to Thailand. And again I found a new route and a new transport mode. This time it was the super fast ferry via Langkawi. Despite the long wait on Langkawi it was an easy and relaxed route.

As soon as we arrived in Satun, walking to the hotel, we looked for things we recognized, things that were new, things that had changed, things that were gone. Considering the dusty old town it was, surprisingly much had changed. Fortunately not in our hotel. That was as pleasant, quiet and comfortable as we knew it.

Qatari, Indonesians and Malaysians have almost always been very friendly and helpful to us. But the radiant heartiness of the Thai exceeds it all. The famous  Thai smile still is a joy to see.

We were often called at and greeted by passers by. Sometimes when they were on a bike. Like these three young people on one bike, shouting “hello”. We cheerfully waved back at them. The two girls on the backseat did the Thai greeting with hands folded in front of the chest while making a small bow. And they did so in perfect synch. On the back of the moving bike.

As far as understanding goes, it is the opposite. Very few signs are in English and English is hardly spoken. It takes a lot of sign language.

Our favorite lunch restaurant was gone. A search around the new, relocated market was in vain. We inquired with the neighbors of the shed where it used to be, with a picture of the woman, pointing at the former place, and looking puzzled. After some talk amongst themselves we were put on the back of a motorbike and driven to the new location!

Our friends in Satun, the owner of the hotel, the lady of the restaurant, the girl of our favorite coffee shop (who worked somewhere else now) all looked very pleased to see us and they all gave us food.

And so we enjoy having a coffee on our veranda, taking a walk in the countryside or the mangrove forest, cooling down by the pool, reading a book, eating a delicious Thai curry.

At last the skies turned blue and sunny and it got seriously hot. We were lucky to have a clear sky during the lunar eclipse. We saw the shadow of the earth slowly cover the moon that got more and more red, more and more round (in the 3d sense) and in the end looked like a semi-see-through egg with the rabbit inside.

PS Preview of the upcoming Satun info sheet *link*

Satun is a small provincial capital in the far southwest corner of Thailand. It has a definite end-of-the-road feel to it. A dusty little town where nothing ever happens. On the surface.

8km further south is the port and jetty of Tammalang. It has ferries to Langkawi and Koh Lipe, but for neither island this is the main gateway. So Satun sees very few tourists passing through. You may see some people living in Malaysia on a visa run or having their yacht maintained at the wharf. And there’s a hand full of western men living here with their Thai wife.

Satun is part of the Islamic south of Thailand, that used to be part of the Kedah Sultanate, until that was divided up between Thailand and then British Malaysia. Satun has none of the troubles the other (southeastern) Thai provinces have. It is largely Muslim but with a strong Thai influence. People speak more Thai and Malay than English.

Travelogue 2018/2, Negotiating North Sumatra (Indonesia)

From Doha we travelled via Kuala Lumpur to Medan. A rollercoaster of cultures, levels of development, climates, time zones and day-and-night rhythm.  Sumatra is roughly the size of Spain and has a similar number of inhabitants, but its infrastructure is way less developed. So we designed a non-ambitious tour of the province of North Sumatra.

Medan city

At first sight Medan is large, busy, dirty and noisy. At second sight too, but then you also see the relaxed and cheerful people, always willing to give you a big smile and have a chat. Nobody gets upset, everybody is helpful. There are nice vegan eateries and trendy coffee shops. The mood is pleasant, and if the noise and air pollution wouldn’t chase you away, you’d happily stay for a while.

One could measure the degree of development of a country by the number of meters one can walk on the pavement. In Medan the sidewalks are usually blocked by shop fronts, parked cars or motorcycles, or heaps of building materials, mud or dug up sewage sludge. There are holes big enough to fall into the sewer, unexpected steps, loose slabs or ends of reinforcing steel sticking out.

So mostly you walk on the street, between parked cars and the traffic, hoping the drivers will see you. Traffic mainly consists of relatively new cars, motorbikes and becaks – bikes with a side car that you rent for a ride.

One morning after looking at old colonial buildings and Little India, we took a becak home. It was the oldest and most ramshackle one of Medan. The engine stalled all the time, the front wheel wasn’t in line, petrol came via a tube from a jerry can hanging on the steering wheel. When the driver lit a cigarette he held it in his hand right next to the jerry can. We drove slower than the flow of traffic, which was a real problem as weaving in and out of lanes is crucial for negotiation traffic here. Because of the one way system we had to make quite a detour. All in all we took half an hour inhaling exhumes for what would have been a 2½km walk. Still, we survived. And most drivers were relaxed, gave each other room to move, hardly used the horn and didn’t dive into non-existing spaces.

Bukit Lawang jungle

Usually I don’t feel at home in places that are purely touristic. Bukit Lawang is such a place. It’s a village on the edge of a National Park where an orang utan rehabilitation center used to be. The feeding platform used to be a great spot to watch the mighty animals. The platform is closed now and the only way to see the semi wild orang utans that stuck around is on a long, overpriced jungle trekking – and that is what all the tourists do here.

(Here is the story of my 2000 jungle trek)

Bukit Lawang survived thanks to the treks, the river, the fresh air and as a backpacker hangout. We stayed a couple of days in the strip along the river, in the one guesthouse / restaurant that was busy, cozy and had good food.

Then we moved upstream for a couple of days to a rather remote guesthouse, 1km over a small footpath. There we found the real jungle feel. The place was well designed and decorated with lots of wood and bamboo, the Australian-Indonesian couple that ran it made you feel relaxed.

The raging river,  the green wall of jungle on the opposite shore, the monkeys and the butterflies, one more cup of coffee on the veranda – I could get used to that.  Dinner with our hosts in the evening, total darkness at night, the sounds of monkeys and crickets in the morning. After a rain shower water vapor would slowly rise from the forest and form clouds.

Berastagi volcanos

Berastagi is a former Dutch hill station at 1400m. Now it’s an agricultural town, the center of growing non-tropical vegetables. The wholesale market where the farmers bring their produce was a fascinating chaos where huge quantities of carrots, cabbages and potatoes where hauled around in old trucks that got stuck in the mud.

In the weekend Medan people come to escape the city. The dozen western tourists vanish in the crowd. There are two active volcanos nearby, one of which can easily be climbed – and that is what all the tourists do here. We went straight to the hot springs at the end of the descent to soak up the sulphur.

A trip to the foot of the other, even more active volcano was canceled due to the weather. There were daily eruptions, but they lasted just 5 minutes, so you had to be lucky to see one. After one such eruption the mountain had totally hidden itself behind its own cloud of ash. When it started raining a thin layer of volcanic ash covered everything, including our roof terrace.

Just like the rain forest, volcanos create their own clouds. Steam rising from the cracks in the rocks rise and form a cloud that will stick to the top of the mountain.

The weather. The monsoon lasts long this year, it’s cooler than usual with just 23-26 degrees and mostly overcast. Sometimes the sun sort of breaks through, and most rain is at night.

Lake Toba

Travelling in Sumatra isn’t harder than in say India, but over there I know my way around things better. A night in a lousy hotel, a sick day, serious harassment at a bus station, a meal that doesn’t go down well, a credit card that gets rejected – it can be tough and exhausting at times.

All the more pleasant that we could relax at the shores of Lake Toba – and that is what all the tourists do here.

We stayed there for a week and it was the first place on Sumatra where we really felt at home. The mood was relaxed, nature was beautiful. Even though it is rather touristy, there’s enough couleure locale in the small shops and cafes. And it just takes a couple of steps off main street to be among rice paddies and water buffaloes.

Travelogue 2018/1, Stopover in Qatar

Arrival

2018 didn’t kick off easily for us. We were standing in a long queue for immigration at Doha airport when the clock struck twelve. We wished each other and the Malaysian mother and daughter in front of us Happy New Year, but other than that, the thousands of other people remained rather quiet and subdued.

After a pleasant flight with Qatar Airways, Doha airport was a disappointment.  All the glitter, glamour, marble and luxury couldn’t make up for the bad organizing. With only two immigration counters open, the arrivals hall quickly filled up. Serious looking men with walkie talkies were running up and down and putting passengers in line, but they would have been more useful stamping passports. Occasionally an extra counter would open, but that only benefitted the people at the back of the line. We were stuck in the middle. After one and a half hours at last we got through.

By then I was so dazed and confused that I forgot to take my luggage after using the atm behind the carousel. I only noticed once we were through customs. It wasn’t easy talking my way back against the one way system through security and customs. But I managed and fortunately the bag was still standing  - the bomb squad hadn’t been called yet.

Looking around

Apart from being a bit tired after that night, we enjoyed looking around Doha for the next three days. We walked a lot, mainly in the old city center, that had been enriched with a new souk and the impressive Museum for Islamic Art.

Nights and mornings were cool and hazy, but afternoons were sunny and pleasant.

Most Qatari wore traditional dress. Men in white dresses with shawls on their head. Women with thin black robes over their other clothes – maybe high heels or tight jeans. Head scarves and big sunglasses couldn’t hide the care they took for make up and looks. Not all Qatari women wore headscarves. We saw some young mothers in a café smoking a waterpipe, while their Philippinian nannies took care of the kids.

Eating vegetarian in the Middle East takes you to an Indian restaurant or Lebanese fast food place. It takes some searching, but then you can enjoy delicious  hummus,  falafel, foul and  pita bread.

Qatar development

A fascinating and varied city with old and new, rich and poor, east and west, north and south. People seem to come from all continents and shops and restaurants are as varied as that.

Doha is trying to catch up with Dubai and  Abu Dhabi, investing oil dollars in trade and service industries. They still have a long way to go. The old city center is a patchwork of 25 year old high-rises, a couple of modern buildings, lots of building sites blocking streets and sidewalks, wasteland turned into parking lots, a couple of forgotten 50 year old two-story shops – and in-between all of that sit all these cute tiny old mosques. There isn’t a lot of street life, except at night  in the side streets with old shops and restaurants for the migrant workers.

At first sight the Saudi boycott doesn’t seem to do much harm (though the paper said house prices are falling). Our little neighborhood shop running out of yoghurt rather seemed a logistical issue. And that seems to be the sore spot all over. Building an airport, buying a new fleet of city buses, painting a pedestrian crossing on a six lane road, designing a metro route – all that is doable. But to organize it well, to get enough immigration officers in place, to publish a consistent bus route map, to teach drivers to stop for pedestrians – that is a lot harder. Metro works are going on all over town  but nobody dares to commit to a year it will run.

If I were FIFA, I’d be worried about the 2022 World Cup, given that only one stadium is finished.

India connection

In Qatar the India connection is obvious. Almost half of the 2 million inhabitants is from former British India. When we walked down the aircraft steps a group of Indian cleaners was waiting to board. They tend to do the hard labor and building. Cleaners, cooks and shopkeepers mostly are from South Asia as well. Female laborers tend to come from the Philippines and work as a receptionist, maid or nanny.

New Year’s night we had dinner at Saravana Bhavan, the international chain of Indian restaurants. It was full with indian families, we were the only Non-Indians. The food was authentic South Indian served on a banana leaf, and delicious.