Queen of the Arabian Sea: According to local history, Cochin grew into a trading centre after the so-called great flood of Periyar wiped out without a trace the legendary Malabar port of Muziris in 1341. Before the arrival of the Europeans, Cochin was already a regular port of call for Arab, Greek, Jewish, Chinese and other great ancient traders who sailed into its harbour and channels to purchase pepper and other aromatic spices from India .
Old Portuguese churches, clean tidy streets, and women in floral dresses. These are few of my favourite things that imbue Fort Kochi, Cochin’s historic heart, with an almost monasterial vibe and weirdly out-of-era nostalgia. By faith, temperament and looks, Cochin is more evocative of the Caribbean than Indian. Many older travelers like me yearn for places like Cochin. But after many trips missing, not finding, and unaware, we serendipitously discover them either by discernment or chance.
Not even the fanciest Instagram post nor the finest blog can fully describe Cochin. It seems true that it is part place and fully feeling. Which partly explains why I have only scant memory of my first visit about ten years ago, dropping by for one or two days before leaving for business to Hyderabad. I can only remember the sweaty heat, spices stored in historic houses and flashing sunset scenes of Chinese fishing nets along the lagoons on my way to the airport, with a taxi driver who enthused over the daily digestive benefits of consuming pineapple.
Cochin Lite: India at its cleanest, most civic-conscious and civilised.A shop showcasing its prime Kerala produce of pineapple, pumpkin, jackfruit and the popular mango – a fruit that is grown in the front garden of nearly every home in Cochin. Unripe mango cooked in fish curry is a house specialty on many Cochin menus.Smiling sweethearts at the train stationKerala bananas sold by bunch or 5 rupees per piece wrapped in newspaper and tied with thin jute strings.
Diverting from my original plan of a modest loop around Malabar I end up spending my whole trip just in Cochin with a side train trip to Thrissur. For almost a week I allow myself to linger languidly in Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, taking in Kerala’s top sights and it’s five hundred years maritime history of enticing Europeans to Asia, starting with Vasco da Gama who landed on a beach north of here in Calicut on 20 May 1498.
To get beneath the harbour-city’s Malayali sheen and savour her true spirit, I must learn quickly to slow down my steps, my food and my thoughts.
Discussion with a school friend over the gate.A Kerala-wide strike happens on my third day in Kochi obliging businesses to pull down their shutters leaving travelers like me with nothing to eat except fruits, biscuits and fried snacks. Thankfully, a kind woman coconut seller serves me at the roadside a breakfast of idli and chickpea curry that she prepared for her family.Garland makers on Palace RoadA wall portrait art of Pinarayi Vijayan, the Communist Chief Minister of Kerala, who mysteriously resembles a former Malaysia Prime Minister.Cochin’s three-wheeled chauffeurs in smart khaki shirts.Fresh catch of the sea are sold by daily vendors on bicyclesmoving from door to door along the tree shaded lanes of Fort KochiReflections on the afternoon ferry to ErnakulamPupils from a school across the road play outside the Indo-Portuguese Museum during their recessChurch of Our Lady of Life near Jew Town in Mattancherry. Built in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Portuguese Style, it is one of the oldest churches in Cochin. In 1622 in an act of religious defiance a congregation of St Thomas Syrian Christians gathered in front of the church to resist the Portuguese colonial authorities move to latinise their rites and liturgy. A lucky seated passenger in the crowded unreservedcoach on the train bound for North Kerala.Disembarking from the 6 rupee government-run ferry at Ernakulam TerminalFort Kochi, the historic heart of Cochin, is home to an unrivalled assemblage of European colonial buildings and low rise homesconnected by pedestrian and bicycle lanes. Kerala means land of the coconuts in the local Malayalam language.Maria’s kitchen helperDog days in Fort KochiWaves and warm smiles every few meters in CochinCochin’s architecture is an empire mix of the elements of Portugal, Holland, England and native India.Spices and ayurvedaThe majority population of Cochin are Christians followed by Hindus and Muslims.Peeling shop fronts near the ferry jettyGrandpa George with his pride and joyForeign tourists especially Europeans and noticeably the French flock to Cochin and Kerala in huge numbers from November to February when the weather is at its most pleasant and least hot.The pull of Malaya in MalabarMaking-upAnd after
Photographs and text copyright Kerk Boon Leng February 2024. All Rights Reserved
Angkor is not one lone iconic wat but approximately a hundred temples, major ones not counting the many more smaller sacred sites and shrines, rock-strewn ruins scattered across the water-logged and sun-baked plains of northern Cambodia.
When Europe adumbrated its future greatness through the Middle Ages, Angkor became the fertile fulcrum of a succession of God-kings with fantastic Indian names who built magnificent monuments, planted civilisations and lorded over Southeast Asia’s original and oldest inhabitants – the Khmer.
A few years back Tripadvisor, the online travel site, voted Angkor Wat the world’s number one destination. Today locals lament that tourists are arriving in lesser numbers despite the opening of a big brand new airport an hour’s drive away. Every day carloads of foreign tourists are regularly herded into a museum-looking building to be processed, photographed and charged a hefty ticket to get into Angkor. Despite the air-conditioned efficiency, Angkor is no tourist park or ancient temple ruins of a dead and forgotten civilisation. Unlike Egypt’s Giza and Valley of the Kings or Peru’s Machu Picchu, in Angkor Cambodians still eat the same food, dance to the same music and pray to the same stone statues like their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Marvelling at the mysterious beauty and mystical artistic genius of Angkor, I murmured a prayer that more hand-crafted monuments like these be preserved for our grandchildren and that historical places around the world be protected from globalisation’s destruction and defacement in the name of economic progress and cultural tourism.
Angkor is very much alive and has been pretty much so continuously since its construction, contrary to popular history that was written by colonial Europeans about mysterious lost and abandoned faces of idols that they discovered peering at them from the jungles. Angkor still pulsates and breathes particularly through the modern day descendants of artisans, farmers and slaves who live their simple lives around and outside the small touristy city of Siem Reap.
I took these pictures during the dry comfortable season of Christmas 2023.
All rights reserved photographs and text copyright Kerk Boon Leng (c) January 2024
Zanskar is frigid, forbidding and faraway. A place with a geographical character of its own. A land of bizarre mountains, treeless valleys and rocky plains zig zagged by narrow blue rivers where, even in the milder parts, the growing season is only from end of April to the second half of September.
Autumn is a season of calm and uncomplicated beauty in Kashmir. Something out of a children’s tale. We spent only 24 hours in Srinagar, on a houseboat, enchanted by the goldening leaves of the chinar trees, ducks waddling in single files, coots and moorhens pecking on the water hyacinth, eagles spreading their wide wings soaring through the evening sky, and especially when night fell, the mid autumn festival’s full moon reflecting on Dal Lake from a shikara.
But there was no time to linger. It was the last day of September. We must leave for Zanskar or Ladakh before the winter snow closes the mountain roads in one to two weeks time.
A celestial first sight from the car windscreen of the great Drang-drung Glacier below the Pensi-la. Karsha, visible for miles and probably the biggest gompa in Zanskar, is situated on a mountainside high above the central plain. The abbot and monks were making their way down to the village for prayers as we arrived.Young mother and her baby in a sling, Sani village
In the morning I gave Firdaus, the houseboat owner, a quick excuse to cancel the car he said he had arranged for us to Leh. I had found a driver who called me on whatsapp to offer his “new” car – a four wheeler to take us to Padum, the nub of Zanskar valley for 34,000 rupees, stopping a day in Kargil to acclimatise.
Politically, Zanskar is governed from Kargil, one of two halves of Ladakh after that region was separated from Jammu and Kashmir on 31 October 2019 to become a Union Territory under direct rule from Delhi. Put another way, Zanskar is a predominantly Buddhist district of a Muslim county inside a Buddhist province that was previously part of a majority Muslim state but now answers directly to a Hindu majority secular republic.
Rocks and stone wall fragments around the Zangla Palace summit site School kids at a road junction prayer wheel shrine in Padum. The Nunnery in Zangla
Ever since the modern road through the Pensi La pass completed in 1980, Zanskar had been on the travel list of those in search of ethereal landscapes and heart-stopping terrain. As far as Himalayan journey goes, Zanskar is the real deal. Covering an area a bit bigger than the US state of Delaware but slightly smaller than Selangor in Malaysia, the Zanskar Valley lies between the Great Himalaya Range and the Zanskar Mountains at an altitude of between 3,500 meters to 7,000 meters. Protected by high mountains and deep snow, this remote region had been a fortress of Tibetan culture and a sacred millenium hideaway for monks, manuscripts and mysticism. Books, online stories and youtube videos have helped paint a vivid picture of a place that was as tantric as it was tantalising.
Pilgrims and visitors snack on maggi noodles in the cafe at the bottom of Phugtal GompaYoung guest at a wedding, Pipiting villageZanskar means white copper in the local Tibetan language.The culture of Zanskar is an interesting mixture of Tibetan and Non-Tibetan elements. Zanskar is the western extension of the great Tibetan plateau. The people are mainly of Tibetan stock with some amount of Central Asian and Indo-Aryan genes.Colourful prayer flags fluttering in the wind on the abandoned hilltop ruin of Zangla Palace. A hundred years ago the Hungarian philologist Sándor Körösi Csoma stayed here from 1823-24 where he studied Tibetan, compiled a dictionary and slept on sheepskins in a 9ft by 9ft room in the old palace.Afternoon samosa and chai in a Padum teashopVillage elder at a wedding in Pibiting The Tsarap river (a tributary of the Lungnak) flowing through the gorge as seen from the high level trek to the Phugtal Gompa.The cook and caretaker of the Gompa, Phugtal Road to Stongde Monastery. Zanskar is dotted with gompa (secluded monasteries) and chörten (roadside shrines) and is known across Ladakh as the Land of Religion.A shy guest outside the window of the wedding hall, PibitingLate season flowers at Omasila Hotel located just a road turn from Padum Despite its secludedness and harsh environment, Zanskar wears an air of wholesome self-reliance and modest sufficiency.Blazing fall colours, Stongde MonasteryA delicious free lunch of simple nutritious rice, beans and tomatoes at the community meal room of Zangla NunneryThe main street and market in Padum, the capital of ZanskarAsking for direction from a helpful villager in Zangla. Zanskari is mutually intelligible with Ladakhi, both belonging to the Balti-Ladakhi subgroup of Tibetan. Most Zanskari can also speak and understand Tibetan, Hindi and Urdu.Himalayan flowers sunning on the rocks. A surrealist landform sculptured by wind, snow and iceThree women carrying loads on their back walking back to their village near Zangla. With 20,000 people inhabiting 7,000 square km of land (much of it is uninhabitable), Zanskar is one of the least populated places in India with one person to an area the size of sixty soccer fields. Zanskar is the domain of ibex, wolves, markhor, sheep, goats and the elusive snow leopardDzongkhul Gompa, a monastery of the Drugpa Order of Tibetan Buddhism, is situated in the Stod Valley near a side valley that leads to the Omasi-la, an important pass across the Great Himalaya range.Stoic and content without material comfort . Sociologists studying happiness in countries like Finland, Denmark and Bhutan as well as longevity in places like the Greek Islands and Okinawa should spend some time in Zanskar where they might find the answers.Finally Phugtal, by far the most dramatic monastery in Zanskar and maybe the whole Himalaya
All photographs and texts copyright Kerk Boon Leng November 2023
Padang looks over the tall waves of the Straits of Mentawai and beyond, to Samudera – the vast blue yonder that in centuries past brought proselytisers, traders and colonisers to these smiling shores.
Padang is on the west coast of Sumatra. It is a city that generally attracts two kinds of overseas visitors : Malay families who come to search for their deep roots; and Westerners arriving, in small groups, in pairs or often solitarily, to look for tall waves. For other intrepid types, this rain-soaked, creaky former Dutch colonial port town does hold a certain off-beat allure as I discovered almost a fortnight ago when I dropped by over the Chinese New Year which in these parts is called Imlek.
Continuing the culture in Lubok Minturun. Padang and its hinterland is the original home of the Minangkabau people – a Malay sub-group known for its matrilineal laws, mouth-watering curry and chili cuisine and migration tradition termed as Merantau.Catch of the evening, Teluk BungusMany hands make light work – fisher folks hauling in the afternoon catch in Teluk Bungus. With its 17,504 islands and 99,093 km coastline, Indonesia is the second largest exporter of marine fish in the world. Fishing is an important source of income and protein for coastal communities in West Sumatra.Neighbouring food cities such as Singapore may claim fish head curry as their very own but judged on freshness, lightness and aroma, nothing compares to Gulai Masin Kepala Ikan cooked and served on the beach in its place of origin.The probable inspiration behind Seven Eleven and other convenience stores.
I went to Padang for four nights and five days, keeping close to the city, traveling south to Teluk Bungus and north to Lubok Minturun, triumphantly resisting (thanks mostly to the wet weather) the magic and temptation of the Minangkabau Highlands and offshore islands despite powerful pitching by Erison – a newly-made friend who drove and guided me through the potholed and puddled lanes of Padang on his butt-punishing scooter.
Padang is one of oldest cities in Sumatra. The Dutch came in the 17th century and built warehouses and a fort there in 1667 to gain a foothold in the Indies.Village elder, Teluk BungusAngkot (from “Angkutan Kota” the acronym for an urban ride) is still the preferred means of getting around for the population of Padang estimated at 1,265,000 in 2023. The Padangnese trait brings out the best in the Minangkabau Malay culture of learning, respect for older people and genuine hospitality and kindness to strangers.Nasi goreng with a view.The crumbling charm of Old PadangSea critters from Mentawai for sale at a beachside stall A sand fight with friends at high tide.School kids in front of Masjid Raya Ganting or the Ganting Grand Mosque. Built in 1805, it is the most historic mosque in Padang City.Clove cigarettes (keretek) and Padang are buddies The curries that made PadangLubok Minturun a popular rest spot during the fasting month of Ramadhan.The sea defines the port and estuarine city of PadangRiding with granddad in the old city of PadangDrenched in Chinatown by a heavy noon downpour
Copyright (c) Kerk Boon Leng 5 February 2023 All Rights Reserved
Around 1342, when Western seafarers were swapping alehouse stories about mermaids and sea monsters, the famous North African adventurer Ibn Battuta sailed into Maldives and described it as one of the wonders of the world.
He seemingly spent two years on the islands where he made friends and acquaintances of important members of society and royalty, dispensed advice on religion and gained position as an Islamic jurist. Although he complained about his frustration in trying to get the stubborn females on the islands to cover up their nubile forms, the journal of his wandering lifestyle as a slave-owning expat male cum casual polygamist may stir unintended social media outrage in today’s woke-sensitized readers.
He said:
"On the 2nd of the month of Shawwal I agreed with the vezir Sulaiman Manayak to marry his daughter. Then I sent word to the grand vezir Jamal-ud-din with a request that the nuptials should take place in the palace in his presence. He gave his consent, and in accordance with the custom, betel as well as sandalwood was brought. The people assembled but vezir Sulaiman delayed. He was called but he did not come and when called a second time he excused himself on the ground that his daughter was ill. The grand vezir, however, said to me secretly, ' His daughter refuses to marry and she is absolutely free to have her own way. But since the people are now assembled, would you like to marry the step-mother of the sultana, the wife of her father—that is, the lady whose daughter was married to the vezir’s son. 'Yes', I answered. Then the qazi and witnesses were summoned, and the marriage was solemnized and the grand vezir paid the dower. After a few days she was brought to me. She was one of the best women and her society was delightful to such an extent that whenever I married another woman she showed the sweetness of her disposition still by anointing me with perfumed ointment and scenting my clothes, smiling all the time and betraying no ill humour. After this marriage the grand vezir Jamal-ud-din compelled me against my will to accept the qazi’s post."
From The Travels (الرحلة, Rihla) or A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling (تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار, Tuḥfat an-Nuẓẓār fī Gharāʾib al-Amṣār wa ʿAjāʾib al-Asfār)
Morning at the Jetty in Mahibadhoo Island where the black flowing niqab flutters incongruously with the sun, sea and sand.Clumps of Octopus Bush (Heliotropium Foertherianum) on the beach sands of Bodukaashihuraa.A late morning hermit crawling out of his hand-held home.Sailing to Omadhoo on the local ferryYoung female football fans, Omadhoo Island Arriving in Hangnaameedhoo Island Striking the Maldivian Beach Pose, Omadhoo IslandThe postcard perfect high tide view of Maldives, Bodukaashihuraa
With a bit of sailor’s luck, a present day castaway may find himself washed ashore, to one of its 1,190 islands and lagoons (only about 30% are inhabited) if he is shipwrecked halfway between the coasts of Sumatra and Somalia. The chains of coral reefs running two-by-two, that form the islands of Maldive are actually the tops of a giant undersea ridge that runs north from the Lakshadweep Islands off India’s Malabar Coast, to south at the Chagos Archipelago deep in the Indian Ocean.
The Maldives are like the tiniest ticks off the giant continental body of Asia. The physical size of all the 26 Maldivian atolls combined is a shade smaller than even Penang, but these fantasy islands sparkle and shine, like sprinkled glitter dust, scattered across a dreamy blue expanse of waters the area of Portugal.
The disappearing jurassic landscape of Bodukaashihuraa, an uninhabited islet that has been sold for development into a high-class resort.Picking salad leaves from beach plants on the reclaimed island of HulhumaleThe Stingray feeders surveying the shallows at their sunset rendezvousWith an average elevation of around 6 feet, the Maldives is the lowest country in the world.The Hulhumale ridersMahibadhoo the capital of South Ari Atoll has a population of 2,500 living in well-swept single storeyed houses with small but tidy courtyards. Coconut, watermelon, banana and some greens are grown but most food are imported Bikinis and skimpies are only permitted in a limited beach area on inhabited islands where traditional mores prevail.Pillion in the after-work rush. The capital Malé is the crowdiest city on earth with 78,000 people packed into one square km of urban space. Manila comes a distant second with 43,000 per square km.Sun-dappled pathway to the beach, OmadhooDisembarking at Mahibadhoo from a neighbouring island by the morning local ferry.Brothers on a buggy ride with mother, Omadhoo IslandMaldives is by law 100% muslim. No other religion is allowed on the islands.The Tree of Life: Traditional Maldivian culture, folklore and of course cuisine are centered around the coconut palm.Maldivian women are conservative in attire but the young especially are moderately secular in outlook and attitude.Paragliding foxesSchool girls on their way home after classAn Edward Hopper moment in MahibadhooThe football obsessed island of Mahibadhoo where many of the national players come from.Smiling siblings on the sandThe grand Sea Hibiscus tree of Omadhoo IslandThe bashful and beautiful young face of Maldives belies centuries of racial intermingling from across South India, Ceylon, the Malay Archipelago, Arabia and East Africa.The hardy and salt-resistant vegetation of Maldives, Omadhoo IslandFinding Neemey: Our amazing guide and new friend who derived his maritime knowledge and love from his previous job working on live-onboard vessels scouring the ocean for prized Yellow-fin tuna.
Travel Tips
Maldives is world-famous but a latecomer in tourism. The first tourists were Italians who came fifty years ago in 1972. Now almost everyone dreams of Maldives as a paradise of blue waters, white sands and romantic celebrity-type getaways. This image is true to a large degree, but Maldives is not just a cluster of luxury resorts but a real and authentic country. It is a nation of oceanic people with a unique history, culture and language called Dhivehi.
For a full and true taste of Maldives, staying and spending time on local inhabited islands is recommended. If you do, even a romantic and comfortable trip for two to Maldives can be fairly affordable with some planning.
To find cheaper accommodation (from $60 a night) go off-season during the months of choppier sea and cloudier skies from April to October. Island-hopping will significantly inflate costs, unless you travel within one to two atolls (there are 26 atolls in total spreading over 800 km north to south) using the slow and infrequent service of local ferries. You will need to travel by the more flexible and faster private speedboats at least once or twice during the trip but pop a seasick pill 30 minutes before the ride if the sea is rougher than 22 knots.
Download the traveller declaration Imuga before you arrive at Velana Airport to save time, hassle and avoid paying extortion roaming charges.
Maldives is a jaw-droppingly beautiful and amazingly friendly country. To experience this, dress sensibly, show humility and respect local customs, as you would anywhere. It is simply the best sea paradise there is, even for non-beach lovers (I am talking about me here). The time for Maldives is now, go sooner before the crowd gets bigger, when people fully and finally wake up to the truth about the pandemic flu.
In our trip we stayed at these lovely accommodations:
I have all but lost my way lugging my worldly belongings to the Mosaic Home Hostel by Google map when Jessica calls me on Whats App. I tell her my location – a quiet restaurant with a bar and half its tables and chairs outdoor under an awning.
While we wait for our lunch to share, of roast wild boar with potatoes, Jessica pulls out a wonderful surprise of presents for me and the family! Mine is an expensive book we browsed in the bookstore at Skanderbeg Square last night on Enver Hoxha – the communist dictator who ruled Albania and locked her people away from the rest of the world for 40 odd years.
And once again Albania cowered in a hut
In her dark mythological nights
And on the strings of a lute strove to express something
Of her incomprehensible soul,
Of the inner voices
That echoed mutely from the depths of the epic earth.
She strove to express something
But what could three strings
Beneath five fingers trembling with hunger express?
It would have taken hundreds of miles of strings
And millions of fingers
To express the soul of Albania!
Ismail Kadare, “What are these Mountains thinking About”
Of the countries in Europe, including former feudal statelets known by their postage stamps and large new nations that arose from the collapse of Communism, none is as mystifying and hard to get your head around as Albania.
On my first visit, to the southern city of Sarande sixteen years ago by boat from Corfu, I was warned that Albania was a dangerous place full of criminals and crazy people. Today although Albania’s fortune and standing have vastly improved, its oddball image remains tangled up with its lingering badass reputation
Gjergj Kastrioti or Skanderbeg – the epic hero of Albanians epitomizes the national character: brave, loyal and vengeful. He was born a Christian, converted to Islam and then reconverted to Christianity to save his people from the invading Turks.
Everything about Albania marks it out as an oddity. It is Europe’s only officially atheist, muslim majority, ex-socialist, now staunchly pro-American country which once only friend and close ally was Mao Tse-Tung’s China. Albanians, or Shqiptare as they call themselves, claim to be the most ancient people in the region and are the direct descendants of the first humans in the Balkans. Their language is obscure and fabulously unique being the sole member of an isolated branch of the Indo-Aryan family that has survived the influence and onslaught of Greek, Latin, and Slavic.
Tirana like a third of Albania on the coastal plains, enjoys a Mediterranean climate but for the rest of the towering two-third of the country winters are sharp and snowy.The center of Tirana is dominated by the Skanderbeg Square, a 40,000 square meter public space designed and built by Italian architects in the Neo-Renaissance and Fascist stylesAlbanians are majority Muslims, many are Christians, most do not make a big deal of the God they pray to or what meal they consume with one another. Pork along with beef is eaten a lot in Albania.
Jessica’s family comes from Kukës, a picturesque lakeside town surrounded by mountains in the country’s northeast. Home for them is now Tirana – a city where she was born and brought up. Jessica sacrifices time to show me her city; supplementing my bookish knowledge with stories about her proud, wonderful but historically traumatised country.
Tribal geography, blood honour coupled with centuries of subjugation, neglect and misrule have gone into creating today’s Albania : a marginal and poor land that is disproportionately abundant, welcoming and generous in human spirit and possibility.
My three nights in Tirana have been tantalisingly short – barely sufficient time to scratch beneath the city’s surface to uncover its hidden past and apprehend its overt idiosyncrasies. But I am closer now to understanding the true meaning of Buk’ e krip’ e zemër (bread, salt and our hearts) – the old Albanian offering to any guest who comes purely and in peace.
Lemons on the rooftop Expat websites and retirement gurus consistently rank Tirana among the worst cities in Europe to live, but I respectfully disagree with their findings Morning caffeine the civilised way in Tirana Tirana away from its usual traffic Late evening pedestrians at a traffic crossing in central TiranaA breakfast of omelette with olives and everything nice, freshly prepared for me by the lovely duty person at the hostel Beer for one Mother and daughter skipping across Skanderbeg SquareFast and friendly food and drinks at a busy roadside grill The face of Tirana across the ages. The tall building in the center is Alban Tower (ATTI) a green glass skyscraper by Archea Associati of Italy that serves as the city’s premium business address.Albania’s population remains below the three million mark despite a positive birthrate as high number of young people depart annually for better jobs and higher pay overseas.Although Italy ruled Albania for only a short period in the first half of the twentieth century (as a Protectorate from 1917 – 1920 and as union colony from 1939 – 1943) it left Tirana with its urban design, many beautiful administration buildings and a Southern European feel.Blloku – the once privileged precinct reserved for Enver Hoxha and his inner circle of communist party loyalists
PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXTS COPYRIGHT KERK BOON LENG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FEBRUARY 2022.
Bang Bang! My talkative driver suddenly sounded out, gesturing his finger gun at an unremarkable bridge in the dark across the road on the right hand side of our Mercedes Benz taxi. We were getting to my hotel in the Austro-Hungarian city of Sarajevo at night time, just a minute or so before approaching the narrowing streets of its sixteenth century oriental Ottoman quarter called Baščaršija.
For most of the people in the West, Sarajevo is something of a civilisational outlier – a product of 400 years of conquest of their Christian continent by an alien culture and religion. A hybrid city that is essentially but inadequately European. I saw third world highways and vaguely Middle Eastern shopfronts in their ambience and signage blend smoothly with stately Habsburg edifices. Saudi-built shopping mall and buildings in glass and concrete with giant LED screens juxtaposed with drab and bomb damaged Yugoslav communist era apartments. Catholic cathedrals and Orthodox churches that had stood for centuries next to and opposite neon-lit mosques with tall sharp minarets.
My mind quickly recalibrated to this change in mood, environment and scenery. I had just flown in from Ukraine with barely an hour of breath-catching transit through Istanbul’s large and confusing airport.
I was charged 20 Euro for the 10 km trip from the airport. Fleeced but happy that I arrived, I was literally a stone’s throw away from Sebilj -the wooden cylindrically-shaped Ottoman fountain that is the postcard symbol of Sarajevo. My lodging, Hotel Villa Orient was a two-storey mansion defined by soft yellow tavern lights with a pizza restaurant next door and a quiet traditional kafana beside the entrance. It was a view that reminded me of a homely chalet of a ski resort. Sarajevo lies around 2,000 feet above sea level – defended and surrounded by the mountains of West Balkans known by an appropriate and evocative name – the Dinaric Alps.
It was cold but not unpleasant, with lumps of snow lingering on roofs and pavements like leftover unkneaded flour on a kitchen table. I stood with my luggage for a while at the roadside for a last cigarette, wondering if the nice kind girl, Lejla who had helped me just now on the phone was still on duty at the reception; and whether it was destiny or decision that had brought me here.
The Illyrians were here first, then came the Romans, Goths and Slavs. Bosnia was taken by the Turks in 1463. Saray Bosna (the Palace of Bosnia) – an Islamic citadel surrounded by Slavic Christianity and culture became their center of administration and learning. Women in headscarves outside the Emperor’s mosque or Careva džamija, built in 1459 and named for Sultan Mehmed, four years after his Ottoman armies conquered Constantinople Although the war has altered this once famously multiethnic city and made it almost entirely bosniak and muslim, Sarajevo is staunchly secular and inclusive.Ćevapi, Sarajevo’s version of the kebab. Sausage-like, grilled and served with sliced raw onions and kajmak or clotted cream in a chewy bun.Young family feeding flapping flocks of pigeons at the Sebilj – the iconic Ottoman public fountain at the entrance to BaščaršijaThe street on a Friday in front of Ali Pasha Mosque built in honour of the Ottoman governor after he died in 1560 utilising funds from his legacy endownmentThe Latin Bridge – the ‘bang bang’ on 28 June 1914 that said ‘bye bye’ to Europe forever.An out-of-season flower stall on the pedestrian only street in the old quarterWaitress at the cafe nearing closing hoursThe preserved bricks next to newer structures showcasing the city’s antiquityHouses above Stari Grad, Sarajevo’s historic district.Markale – the scene of two mortar attacks on a busy market during the war. The first on 5 February 1994 killed 68 people and injured 144. The second time on 28 August 1995, 43 people died and 75 others were wounded. View of the 16th century Gazi Husrev-Beg MosqueA whiff of Istanbul “Objectively, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, and nothing in Sarajevo can be compared to Paris, but my heart never trembles in Paris like it does here in Sarajevo, when I wait in line at the post office.” – Goran BregovicSarajevo’s Catholic church Crowded dinner dates at Ćevabdžinica Željo – a Sarajevan favourite named after its national soccer team that grills the city’s most mouth-watering ćevapčići.Young people in Sarajevo face a precarious future in a country paralysed by religion and race as envisaged by the American-sponsored Dayton Peace Accords of 21 November 1995 that abruptly ended the Bosnian War.European time warp – a city that flaunts its modern Islamic credentials to the world is ironically also the one that has successfully kept the fine traditions of the Old Continent breathing and alive. When Austria-Hungary ruled Bosnia from 1878 until World War One, Sarajevo was turned from a classical Ottoman town into a quintessentially fin de siècle European city. This mood and era of Sarajevo can still be keenly imagined when sipping beer or coffee in the dark, wooden and tobacco filled intimate interiors of Caffe Von Habsburg – my favourite spot after sundown.Redevelopment of ”Hastahana” now an open area for skateboard, sculptures and children soccer is part of the plan for the rejuvenation of Sarajevo. Citizens voting in May 2022 gave first prize to the Live-Out proposal by Van Tan Quyen Le and Thi Anh Nguyet Tran, two young landscape architects from Sydney.Vijećnica, the Sarajevo City Hall designed in Moorish style by Czech-born Karel Pařík in 1891 when Austria-Hungary ruled Bosnia.
On a lead-coloured January morning this year, precisely six weeks before America and Russia went to war over Ukraine, I arrived in its capital Kiev to spend five weeks in that country. The Ukrainian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had narrowly but helpfully, two days prior to the departure date, issued me my visa.
It was the dead of winter in Ukraine. Perhaps not the ideal season but I had timed my visit there for the Orthodox Christmas Day and Eve which sadly I would now miss by just a couple of days according to the Julian Calendar. Anyhow, as I luckily found out, the carolling mood and yuletide spirit would still go on till the end of month past Epiphany.
Kiev is a sizeable metropolis. With 3 million people, it ranks amongst Europe’s ten largest cities.
Although it is hard to tell from the city’s mainly 19th century façades and 20th century soviet structures, Kiev is a pretty ancient place that is anchored to a long lost past.
According to a twelfth-century Russian chronicle, Kiev was founded by three brothers – Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv who built on the site a settlement each on three separate hills. A town soon flourished around those hills and was named after the eldest.
Putting aside nationalistic legends and slavonic myths, the real history of Kiev according to archeology goes back nearly two thousand years, maybe even longer. Records tell us that it was settled in the 6th or 7th century by the Polyanians, an East Slavic tribe who roamed the northern grasslands and woods of the Dnieper basin.
Called the ”Mother City of Rus”, Kiev is where it all started – the site where Russia was born eleven centuries ago .
My friend Tatiana warned me about Kiev’s airport touts so I rehearse my basic Russian and haul my luggage up the airport marshrutka (taxi bus) number 322. I pay the 100 Hrivna fare to the driver, a good-natured and pleasant man about sixty and he issues me an old-fashioned printed ticket. We wait for about 30 minutes for more passengers then depart on the one-hour long journey from Boryspil on the left bank to the city centre on the right crossing one of the bridges over the Dnieper.
Along the way, tall, bare and twiggy roadside trees intersperse with housing and commercial blocks alternate and dominate the view in various shades of grey.
We are disgorged finally at a stop that looks like a back entrance to a large station. Golden domes of a new cathedral glisten in the frosty sunlight, snowflakes fall sharply on naked faces and commuters wrapped up in overcoats and hats stand waiting, stamping their boots in the cold.
I was exhilarated and shivering. Like the feeling after downing a glass of fine frosted vodka – instant, intense and head swirlingly unforgettable.
Street art at Velyka Vasylkivska – a lovely street name that flows from the tip of tongue with a bit of practiceTasty and generous local meals at Puzata Hata – a chain of canteen style eateries found in Kiev and other main citiesThe Russian shapka is still the best head covering in winterHot and fragrant Glintwein in Sofiyska Square where food and craft stalls, nativity figurines and a large tree with lights draw revellers day and night during the month-long Christmas seasonThe proud and resilient young faces of a city emerging from its long hard historyLast light at the subway entrance Although outsiders particularly the West like to paint a picture of Ukraine as a multi ethnic place destined for irreconciliable division and strife, the country is in reality remarkably homogenous where 95% are white, slavic and Orthodox Christians. Coffee and oreshki outside the Besarabka, Kiev’s historic meat and vegetables market at the end of KreshchatykSmokers at the steps to the entrance of an underground shopping arcade The universal language of empathy and kindness, Taras Shevchenko BoulevardFrom Centre to Periphery. Kiev in the 10th century gave birth to both the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox religion. Although Ukraine is not Russia the two share a common religion, history and culture.Podil – the lower city was Kiev’s centre of commerce and trade up until the nineteenth centuryLvivski Plyatski, a popular bakery located near the Kontraktova Ploshcha Metro station that serves freshly made pastries kneaded, tossed and baked before your eyes at the shop window.The irrepressible Kievan spiritKiev’s Blue Church – St Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery built in 2001 on the site of an original church which was pulled down and dynamited to pieces in 1935 and 1936 by the Soviets for having “no historical value”. The brave and faithful dip themselves in the freezing Dnieper River on Epiphany Day on 19 JanuaryYoung diners spending time together over a meal of fusion Asian noodles and beer in the Podil district of KievSweet and Savoury : stalls selling inexpensive and delicious cakes and pastries are found in around 50 stations across the city’s vast underground metro.Skates, ferris wheel rides and Christmas lights at the Kontraktova Square in Podil Andreevsky Spusk the charming and historic street in Podil that many say is Kiev in miniature. Kreshchatyk – Kiev’s main boulevard and commercial street Kiev’s stylish and creative side is evident in its many beautiful cafes, boutiques and especially people.Cosy coffee and hookah bar in KievTrains in Ukraine are no-frills but clean, comfortable and respectably fast including this one that makes the 468 km journey from Lviv to Kiev in under 6 hours.School trip to the MaidanStatue of Vladimir, the prince and saint who brought Christianity to Russia in Kiev The first law passed after the 2014 coup is that removing Russian as an official language in favour of Ukrainisation. This discriminatory and ill-advised move is described by a Swiss writer as “a bit like if German putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.”Epiphany day blessings in Dnipro Park “I was born in Russia, but ethnically Ukrainian. I don’t speak the Ukrainian language and don’t have Ukrainian citizenship. So I’m a Ukrainian to Russians and a Russian to Ukrainian “ according to Andrew Gloe, the author of Ethnicity map of Ukraine (2016)Besarabsky Market or Besarabka – built in 1912 in the center of Kiev with stalls selling meat, fish, vegetables, dried goods, cheese and caviar on its modest 9,640 square feet of floor space.One of greatest engineering achievements and lasting legacies of Soviet Kiev is its efficient, elegant and very far below the surface metro. Arsenalna station on the red M1 line at 105.5 meters (345.1 feet) is the deepest train station in the world.The Kiev Funicular built in 1905 carries passengers paying the UAH 8 (USD 0.30) fare for a 3 minutes ride that connects the lower station of Poshtova in Podil with the upper station of Mikhailivska in front of the Blue Church.Kiev’s magnificent metro stations are individual works of art and architectural gems in their own rightClosing hours chat in the cloak room of the Kiev Opera House after an enchanting evening of classical music and ballet
Roughly around the time of Chinese New Year this year, Jakarta leapt to my mind spontaneously. The spectre of a gargantuan city that is a poster child for cataclysmic third world dysfunction played continuously in my head like a kafkaesque daydream.
I needed an excuse to go to Jakarta for a weekend, to get it out of my system. I reasoned that I could take a closer look at this city which author and film-maker Andre Vltchek describes as “the most depressing city on earth” to try to imagine how life must be for majority of its estimated 11 million inhabitants who have to eke out a daily existence in its desperate, polluted and collapsing urban environment. **
[ ** Jakarta combined with its satellite cities Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi known by its threat-sounding acronym ‘Jabodetabek’ has a population of more than 32 million making the city the second largest in the world after Tokyo]
The ideal time to go was I reckoned between January and March – the season of lead-coloured skies and unrelenting rainfall, when the rivers, canals and drains in Jakarta bloat and often overflow. I also needed to make this trip before the coronavirus closes in, shutting off as it has done now all air travel and borders.
A wet vision of my weekend from the hotel window
Soto Ceker or Chicken feet soup is a popular street diners option in Jakarta.
Fresh produce in a market lane in Glodok including here at the bottom left the stinky Petai or Pete (Parkia Speciosa) bunched up and in their pods.
Jakarta’s fertility rate has fallen from 3.99 children per woman in 1980 to 2.3 in 2012. To combat poverty the Government wants to reduce the rate further with family planning but faces religious oppositions.
The Dutch bequeathed on Indonesia not only buildings, bureaucracy, and political borders but also an ethnicity. The Betawi indigenes have their own creole language and customs moulded by centuries of mingling of peoples from across Java, the outer islands of the archipelago and beyond.
The old Chinese area of Glodok is not far from my hotel which is located close to the corner of Jalan Gajah Mada – 2.2 km away according to Waze. I decided to walk there under a looming sky after a hearty buffet breakfast. Keeping to a northerly direction on the sidewalk, I looped gingerly around puddles, hawker carts, and helmeted Gojek delivery boys on their shiny scooters; now and then darting between shop awnings, dripping tree canopies and tarpaulin banners to avoid the rain.
History books recount the city’s origin as the Hindu-Buddhist port of Sunda Kelapa. To its harbour ships arrived from near and far to trade including during the 16th century fleets from Portugal that were fitted with cannons and guns. To stop the Christian Portuguese from gaining a foothold in Java, Fatahillah a part-Arab military commander sent by neighbouring Demak burned and captured Sunda Kelapa. The town was renamed Jayakarta and became part of the Banten Sultanate.
Despite the official commemoration of Fatahillah’s victory on 22 June 1527 as the city’s birth date, in truth it is to the Dutch that Jakarta to this day still owes most of its history, architecture and cultural melange.
In 1619 the ambitious Dutch governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen seized Jayakarta from its muslim rulers. He razed the town to the ground, evicted its native inhabitants and built on the site a capital and home port for the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).
The new harbour’s strategic location on the northern coast of Java between South China Sea and the Indian Ocean would help the Netherlands gain a dominant position in the valuable Indies trade.
Coen wanted to call the settlement Nieuw Hoorn after his birthplace. But the Board of VOC who represented powerful shareholders known as de Heeren XVII (the lords seventeen) vetoed his plan. Instead the Directors decided to name it Batavia after an ancestral Germanic tribe from their boggy windswept estuarine homeland in Europe – Batavieren or Batavi as they were referred to during the Roman period.
The city kept its Dutch-given name for over 320 years until 1942 when the Japanese Imperial Army rolled in during WWII and took over. The lightning speed at which the Japanese went about destroying and dismantling Europe’s empires in the East convinced them of their divine destiny not just to become the new masters of Asia but also its liberators in freeing Asian people from the subservience and mental grip of centuries of white men’s rule.
Japan restored back the name Fatahillah gave to the city in a move to win over the hearts and minds of native Indonesians and in doing so inspire and embolden them to rise up against their former colonial overlords.
The city’s waterways described in 1897 by an American visitor E.R. Scidmore as places “where small natives splash and swim, women beat the family linen, and men go to and fro in tiny boats, all in strange travesty of the solemn canals of the old country” are today clogged with all manner of rubbish and refuse. About 20% of Jakarta’s daily waste ends up in its rivers and canals contributing to recurring floods and yearly loss of lives.
Lemongrass, a key ingredient in Indonesian cooking, is sold fresh and bundled up in stalks at a morning market.
Jakarta’s unofficial symbol: the omnipresent ‘Gerobak’- hawker carts that sell cheap, delicious, although not always hygienic food at every curb and corner (‘kaki lima’) any hour of the day.
Costumed model in Taman Fatahillah (formerly Stadhuisplein), the old administrative heart of Batavia now a theme park with painted street performers, palm-reading key-chain sellers and congregating youths.
Art and Dissent. Some may disagree but Jakarta leads Southeast Asia in its creative freedom and output, breathing truth to the saying that bad times produce good art.
I don’t yet know of any city in the world with the population and problems the size and magnitude of Jakarta that can better this place in the openness, geniality and positive spirit of its people.
Old-styled ‘Sate’ grilled patiently over smoking charcoals on the back of a bicycle before a small crowd of waiting customers.
Inundating thoughts. By the time this girl becomes a grandmother, half the area she is standing now will be under the sea. Jakarta is sinking at an alarming rate (up to 6.7 inches a year) due to over-development, population growth, and climate change.
Recent report suggests that other Asian cities like Manila and Kuala Lumpur have overtaken Jakarta in traffic nastiness but the city’s legendary ‘Macet’ should never be underestimated, even on a Sunday.
Jakarta’s fashion spillover
Delman or horse-drawn carriages at the city’s iconic Monumen Nasional (Monas). In 2018 they were once again allowed to take tourists despite complaints by animal activists of accidents, cruelty and maltreatment.
Saturday shoppers in Glodok
Young woman with face mask seated beside colourful recycling bins outside a tourist shop in Kota Tua, Jakarta’s Old City.
Batavia was built mainly by the labour and commerce supplied by the Chinese who in the early years accounted for a quarter of the entire population.
In 1740 the Dutch, fearing unrest due to low sugar prices and closure of mills, unleashed a pogrom that killed 10,000 Chinese in the city in an orgy of retributive murders and mass slaughters. A year on, Chinese were moved to a ghetto south of the city walls called Glodok that became today’s Chinatown.
Jakarta is the toughest place in the world to be a bin man where rubbish carts are pulled by human muscles.
Vihara Tanda Bhakti also known as Klenteng Tan Seng Ong was renovated in 1974 from an older structure that had stood here for 200 years. This temple is secluded behind Kali Besar, the 18th century canal built along the Ciliwung River to ship goods from the port at Tanjung Priuk to the old city of Batavia.
Success and disproportionate wealth have contributed to Indonesian hostility towards their fellow Chinese citizens. Triggered by an economic crisis, horrific violence against Chinese broke out across Indonesia in mid-May 1998. In Jakarta Chinese shops and homes were burned and 130 women, many stripped and paraded naked, were gang-raped.
After decades of discrimination, in 2000 laws banning Chinese culture and language were finally repealed and Chinese New Year or ‘Imlek’, was at last declared a national holiday in 2002.
Volunteers for an Islamic charity with donation boxes.
Hope lies with the young. In a country where religious intolerance is perceived to be on the rise, a whopping 89.1% of those aged between 20 to 35 years prefer diversity to conservatism according to the Indonesia Millennial Report in 2019.
Mindful sharing at a temple courtyard
Riesa Tan and her friend preparing for Saturday evening mass at the Santa Maria de Fatima Catholic Church in Glodok which looks on the outside every bit like a Chinese temple. Nearly half of all Chinese-Indonesians belong to the Christian faith with Catholics making up 15.76 %. according to the 2010 census.
All pictures and texts copyright Kerk Boon Leng March 2020
Fresh from the family farm: Girl selling vegetables in Fautkolen
Wifi-ed and waiting without dinner plans at the lobby of the Victory Hotel in Kefamenanu, a major town in inland West Timor, I struck up a conversation with a man I knew was Chinese-Malaysian by the way he spoke Bahasa with the reception. He told me he was in town to mass recruit workers for his oil palm plantations in Sarawak. “What are you doing here?” Mr Hong enquired of me in Mandarin. He said he had never before in his many visits to West Timor spanning over ten years met a person from Malaysia, especially one who was there with no specific reason or mercantile purpose.
Aside from sourcing for discounted labour, he was there also for lizards. Timorese catchers supply him with geckos when they can. These spotty arboreal reptiles with specimens up to a foot long, are sold for boiling with ginseng and herbs into a kind of Chinese witch soup. The geckos (tokek in Indonesian) are now hard to come by because much of their homes in the forests have given way to mining and agriculture.
“I don’t know what brings you here. There are no places to visit or things to do; no nice food, no KTVs or women to enjoy. Last time there were a few places that had ladies from Java but nowadays not anymore” he lamented before excusing himself to go upstairs to his room. A male middle-age outcall masseur the hotel had arranged for him had just checked-in at the front desk.
I had my reasons to be there. October is three-quarter period through the long dry season, a time of thirsty fields and half-empty stomachs in West Timor. Even so fuzzy-haired children in school uniforms and skinny villagers with Afro-Malay faces outside their thatched huts wave to our passing car with welcoming looks of cheerful stoicism in an immense landscape of bereft and desolate beauty.
Fatumnasi
Timor is an island (almost equal to Taiwan in size) located at the far side of Indonesia, a mere 300-mile hop over a cerulean sea from Australia.
Geographically, it is the most easterly of the Lesser Sundas – a necklace of volcanic islands strung across the eight to nine degrees latitude south of the Equator which begins with Bali to the west. The Indonesians call these parts Nusa Tenggara. Of this group of isles, Timor’s history is the most interesting and complex.
Divided since the early age of the spice trade by vying European empires, the west of the island fell to the Dutch and the east to the Portuguese.
Today West Timor is a part of the Republic of Indonesia; and East Timor, after a torturous and bloody struggle, is now the independent nation of Timor Leste.
The fate and fortune of Timor has been inextricably linked to the aromatic sandalwood tree (Santalum album). In the 14th century Chinese merchants, followed by Arab traders, were lured to Timor by this fragrant and precious commodity.
Not long after Vasco da Gama discovered the sea passage to India by rounding the bottom of Africa, the Portuguese raced to conquer Malacca, expanded to the Moluccas and set up base on the coasts of the Oecusse-Ambeno Kingdom (now the autonomous Timor Leste enclave of Oecusse) making themselves the dominant player in the export of this rare wood, later to be supplanted by the Dutch.
Despite the depletion of its forests by the heedless harvesting of sandalwood and territorial bisection of the island for commerce and Christian conversion, the interior of Timor was not so long ago still a place of petty kings, tribal warriors and betel nut chewing headhunters practising their traditional lifestyles and beliefs .
A British handbook prepared and printed in 1920 by His Majesty’s Foreign Office provided readers living in the early age of motorcars and cameras with a Marco Polo-like description of then Dutch (West) Timor:
“The future of the colony depends entirely upon the successful pacification of the native tribes or ‘kingdoms’. Of these there are about forty, usually in a state of enmity with each other. There are certain number of nominal Christians among the natives, but the bulk of both the Timorese, in the south-west of the island, and the Belonese, in the centre, are pagans, and most of them are dangerous and vindictive savages. The most troublesome people on the island are the black Christians, descendants of Portuguese half-breeds: they are proud, treacherous and cruel. The mountainous interior is not likely to be law-abiding for many years to come. The native hate strangers, and mostly live in small hill kampongs of a dozen huts.
The numerous Rajahs are constantly fighting amongst themselves, and, although most of them are pledged not to buy or sell slaves and to refrain from torturing and mutilating their subjects, such pledges are in most cases unfulfilled. These Rajahs are nearly all blood-thirsty tyrants. Even the tractable Rajah of Kupang claims to be closely related to the crocodiles in Kupang Bay, and till a few years ago virgins used to be flung to them, so that the family ties might be maintained”.
Soe
on the way to the foot of Gunung Mutis
Batu Putih
Azowaki
All Photographs and Text Copyright Kerk Boon Leng October 2019
Kerk Boon Leng Photographs & Notes 