Ubud is a beguiling place. When you arrive – even in the dark of night – you can’t help but be charmed by the place. The streets are lined with shrines and standards; every house has a carved stone entrance and tropical flowers blossom astride ubiquitous offerings to the gods.
As you drive the streets (or if you are sane, your driver drives) looking for your guest house, you snatch glimpses of massive temples. And then finally you turn down what looks to be a dreary alley and suddenly you’re in the comfort and pleasure of a Balinese hotel.
But this blog post will not be hagiography as Ubud is not without its warts. The place has some of the worst traffic on earth, the most aggressive touts and, in July/August is packed with obnoxious southern Europeans (Italy-I’m looking at you!). Plus the side streets are thronged with semi-feral dogs that seem to have been trained to bark vociferously at tall white males.
2.
Everyone who visits Ubud has to go see the numerous temples that dot the town. The craftsmanship in the stone carvings and the doors is incredible.
3.
From the moment you arrive, Ubud is obviously a charming place, but it’s also a bit of a trickster. For the more you explore, the more you realize that its real charms are hidden and won’t be given up so easily.
For example, you’re walking down the main street. You come to a set of stairs that lead down to a small stream. You walk down the stairs and find that it’s a canyon where two streams come together.
Overhead a rickety concrete bridge (I didn’t think you could say that until I saw this one) links a cafe that has been terraced into the hill and the street. It crosses one of the streams, which also runs through a thicket of morning glories that are cascading down from the trees above.
As you walk along the banks of the stream, you come to a temple that can only be accessed by wading across the stream.
Later, while sipping a delicious ginger tea (just ginger root in hot water) at the previously mentioned terraced restaurant, you’ll watch an old lady place offerings in the temple.
4.
The gender roles in Bali seem to have some hard and fast rules. Any carpentry/construction will be done by men. Any manual labour will be done by women (you see them shoveling or carrying firewood on their head all the time. We even saw one carrying steaming corn).
If something is to be sold and it’s a perishable or dry good, it will be by a woman. If it’s transportation, it will be a man.
And when it comes to smoking, that’s for the men only. In fact, we were on a plantation tour and one of the offerings being placed had a cigarette in it. I asked about it and the (male) guide remarked “we treat our gods like men!”
5.
Another charming scene:
You’re standing on the bridge in Ubud. You notice that down below you there appears to be a temple in the jungle next to the river.
You walk back and try to find a path down. The first route is a dead end, taking you directly to the river’s edge, but it suggests another route.
You successfully find the temple but then notice that there’s a path alongside it.
It turns out that the temple is built at the junction of two streams and the path climbs the ridge behind it. Soon you’re walking amongst grass and palms and gazing down the jungle on either side of you.
You keep climbing and the landscape finally opens up into a series of rice paddy terraces. This being Ubud, there’s a restaurant where you can grab a drink and sit next to paddies to enjoy the view . (This being Ubud there are also countless art galleries nestled amongst the rice paddies).
6.
In fact, sometimes it feels like all of Bali is just a giant irrigation project.
If you look at a map of central Bali, you will see a lot of water:
And as you walk around the towns, you’ll turn a corner or pass a house and suddenly find that you’ve been walking over a stream without realizing it:
When you’re in a town you can wonder about why there’s so much irrigation, but it become obvious when you hit the countryside and see all the rice that’s been planted:
This island is the perfect place to grow rice and the locals have built a complex network of dams, canals and waterways to do so (perhaps that’s why the Dutch wanted them as a colony).
7.
We took a tour of a coffee plantation to see how all the local drinks are made. Other than tourism, Bali’s economy is based on exporting coffee, cloves and a few other spices.
At the place we visited, they roast small batches of coffee by hand:
We also learned the difference between the male (top photo) and female coffee beans. Every bean has to be sorted and then the stronger-tasting male beans are blended with the female to flavour the coffee:
This place also happened to make Lewak coffee. That’s a much pleasanter way of saying “coffee made from the dung of civets who ate coffee beans:”
Entertainingly, the guy who runs the place used to throw away any civet dung that they found. Then one day he was watching the Discovery channel and saw a program saying that civets only eat the best beans and an enzyme in their stomach flavours the coffee uniquely. Now they process the dung and sell it at premium prices.
You can’t make this shit stuff up.
8.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the drullet. Or maybe the mullock if you prefer. Basically, this guy had the silliest haircut I’d ever seen: bangs on the front, dreadlocks at the rear of his mullet, so I had to snap a photo.
Now before you start saying that I’m mean, let me admit that I have bad hair and it takes one to know one. Or perhaps, I should say that I had bad hair.
I didn’t shave for a while and then turned it into a dodgy stache just to bug Wen. This worked, but she promised never to kiss me until I shaved it; it was gone the next day:
Since then, I’ve gotten a haircut as well (always a unique experience in a country where you don’t speak the language), so take a minute to appreciate the above photo and what could have been.
9.
Bali is one of the most colourful places you’ll ever visit – and I mean the flowers, not the language:
10.
Hello! Hey sir, you need taxi? How about tomorrow? Maybe just look? Good price for you! You like sarong/t-shirt/carving/massage/<insert good or service here>?
Bali has a couple of issues. First, there’s no free land; that was exhausted years ago.
Second, there are too many people. The average couple has four children; the government is trying to get that down to two but finding it hard going.
Combine this with a society that has a complex culture (architecture, food, ornamentation, clothing, etc.) but no technology (other than irrigation ditches, everything’s imported here) and you’ve got an employment situation.
There’s no free land and the existing plots can’t be split much smaller. There are no manufacturing jobs so you’ve got to work in the tourism industry.
And the barriers to entry there are pretty low. After all, taxis/massages/crappy t-shirts are basically fungible: one is the same as the other. As a result, everyone tries to get to you at the moment you might make a purchase decision so that you won’t accidentally go elsewhere.
Hence touts are everywhere.
You walk down the streets of Ubud and ever thirty feet someone asks you if you want a taxi. Some bastard taught the locals that if you don’t get it now, ask the person if they want the taxi tomorrow instead. One guy even had this on a sign: one side said “taxi?” and when you said no he flipped it over to reveal “maybe tomorrow?”
In Lovina Beach we had guys bicycle up to us and ask us if we needed taxi service. Throngs of women offered us massages on the beach – even though they could see that we had turned down their compatriots – and insisted that “we come to them” if we needed one.
At first it’s kind of funny but ultimately it’s sad. If you’re Balinese, a lot of your life is going to be spent alternating between pitching services nobody wants and waiting around for someone to pick your service. Such are the limitations of a tourism-based economy.
11.
There’s actually one manufacturing industry in Bali: textiles. It’s a cottage industry making sarongs and custom suits for tourists and locals alike. However, it really is just a cottage industry – take a look at the sewing machine used by one of these places.
I literally think my grandmother may have used that machine. And I saw these everywhere I went; they were in all the different seamstresses’ shops.
12.
Driving in Bali is an interesting proposition. The island, which is only 150 km long, has a population of over one million and not a single highway. The streets are clogged with diesel trucks and buses battling with an army of scooters.
Since the island is basically a ridge of volcanoes, a straight rode is a rarity. Your driver (and again, I highly suggest that you leave the driving to someone else) will demonstrate his manhood by bravely overtaking all traffic.
The unspoken rules of the rode state that a bus or car has right of way over oncoming scooters, so he will not hesitate to face them down in a game of chicken. Sometimes he may even play chicken with an oncoming bus. This game is substantially less fun.
At times you’ll approach a three or more way crossing that is not marked. If the gods are willing, you will not stop. If they are less happy, you may find yourself cut off by scooters. Just close your eyes.
If you’re particularly lucky, as we were, your driver will also serenade you with music. Our driver chose to forsake traditional Balinese folk music for European techno. Between the techno, coffee and cigarettes, we got to our destination in what must have been record time.
13.
Sunset at Pura Tanah Lot is a bit of a cliche that every tourist must do. And, since you’re a tourist, make sure you do it. It’s spectacular.
14.
If you’re looking for a good meal or food experience, I suggest the following:
Ubud: grab a coffee at Tutmak
Ubud: try the chicken curry at Murni’s Warung down by the river. Sit on the balcony with a 60 foot drop to the river below; the jungle sits across from you
Ubud: have dinner and watch a show in the temple next to the lotus pond of Cafe Lotus. Remember, you’re a tourist and are allowed to do this without shame. Spend the extra $10/person to sit at an outdoor table. Revel at the Balinese’s mastery of the xylophone
Lovina: try the coconut and lemongrass ice cream at Jasmine Kitchen. They claim it’s world famous and, if not, it should be
Lovina: have breakfast at Akar. The croissants and coffee are great; sit in the back next to the pond
Lovina: walk down the beach at night until you find a place that will make you dinner on the beach. If you eat early you can catch the tail end of the sunset. And remember you’re there for the experience, not the food
15.
Bali is a combination of Hindu and Buddhist. Unfortunately, this means that they consider the swastika to be a sacred symbol. It is everywhere, but please don’t think it’s for a certain type of tourist…
16.
Indonesia’s currency is the Rupiah. It has been devalued massively over the years, to the point that everyone seems to carry a calculator around because there are three unnecessary zeroes at the end of every note.
in fact, inflation has been so bad, that the government has had to reduce the value of the metals in their coinage. Here’s a shot of the old and new 500 Rupiah (between $0.05 and $0.06 depending on the prevailing exchange) coins:
What you can’t tell from the photo is that the newer coin is taped to the table as it’s lighter than air and would otherwise float off.
17.
This island is a special place. Come visit, just not during August.
Wen and I have spent the past few days in Semporna. It’s on the eastern tip of Sabah (Borneo) and, for most people, is a gateway to the diving on Malbu and Sipadan Islands.
We didn’t get our act together for Sipadan (only 120 people get to dive per day; you either go with a high-end resort or a local dive company that makes you dive many times on Malbu before giving you a Sipadan permit) so we did a day trip to Malbu Island.
(That’s not actually Malbu; it’s the mainland on the way and I just like the photo)
It’s an interesting place as it (and to a degree Semporna) is full of Filipinos; almost no Malaysians live there. They’re also Muslim Filipinos who have fled to Borneo because of Abu Sayaf in the southern Philippines. Now they live in stilted houses on the islands and offer homestays/teach diving:
The diving’s not bad. On one side of the island there are some man-made reefs where they’ve sunk various mesh containers into the ocean. Unfortunately, Wen couldn’t clear her ears, so I ended up doing all the diving by myself.
I saw moray eels and some of the biggest angel/sail fish I’ve ever seen. At one point a massive group glided by. The highlight was swimming through a school of over 1,000 Jackfish. At one point they completely enveloped our group and were performing figure eights around us.
In the afternoon we dived on the opposite side of the island where there are natural reefs. The coral was not stunning, but the wildlife was. I saw a weird fish that was camouflaged with the ground, maybe three inches long and had webbed iridescent blue wings (possible a dragonet?). There were multiple eels, crabs, scorpionfish and a lionfish.
The best part though, were the turtles. One was sitting under a piece of coral; I was able to swim down and stare into its eyes and look at its shell, flippers and beak. Just after seeing it a large turtle came gracefully swimming by, appearing from and then disappearing into the murk. As we were rising we saw another turtle and then one was swimming on the surface just as we were coming back in the boat. Beautiful animals.
Tourism is small potatoes in this sleepy city of 133,000 (only in Asia can you find sleepy cities of this size). The real business is fishing:
Most people do not fish on these major boats though; instead they’re literally living on and farming the sea. Stilt houses are everywhere, even in the middle of the ocean.
I was left with the sensation that these people are one typhoon away from having nothing and the government only tolerates it as they’re Filipino. I can’t help but think that in 15 years they’ll have moved everyone off the water and onto land or back to the Philippines.
Every day, the fish are brought into a central market in the Semporna harbour. The central market is also the main dock that the locals use to come into the mainland. There’s a fish auction hall, a few cheap restaurants and lots of stalls selling everything a local might need (food, clothing, sundries and dried sea things):
The harbour itself is great. It’s surrounded by numerous islands – some mountainous – and continually trafficked. Boats – almost every single one different as they’re all handmade – fly around taking people to and from all the different islands/stilt houses:
I wouldn’t recommend spending a lot of time in Semporna, but you can easily spend a day exploring it and another diving on Malbu.
If the 20th century was the decade of the automobile, the 21st century is going to be the decade of the cell phone (yes, there were cell phones in the 20th century, but penetration tipped in the 21st. There were also cars in the late 19th century, but mass production didn’t come around until the 20th). That’s been rammed home to me here in Borneo.
When we went to Mulu park there was cell phone reception. You have to fly there as there are no roads. But you can use your phone. Similarly, the guides love to hike to the top of the mountains because inside the park they get better reception. (They did the same at Maliau Basin)
I also like that even the local taxi driver, who drives a beater of a car to the airport for $1.50 had a cell phone on his dash:
Even Mabul island – which lacks almost a single building that’s not made out of wood and has maybe a few hundred residents tops – had cell phone reception. Note the tower in the image below:
Moreover, not only are these people connected, they’re right on the bleeding edge of technology. Android phones are everywhere. Print ads that include an iPhone are almost as common as the billboards for those Android phones. You can check in for Malaysian Airlines via your cellphone or iPad. And you can buy all sorts of awesome wireless accessories, like the MiFi portable wifi hotspot.
People are also creating. Check out this cool app put together by a Malaysian developer:
It’s going to be a great century!
2.
Flying over Borneo is an amazing experience. I’m writing this (part of this) post on the plane from Kota Kinabulu to Tawau and looking at the mist filling the valleys between different jungle-covered mountains. There are also so many layers of cloud here – on the ground, bumping into mountains, soaring above your plane – that it’s incredible.
It’s a sensation and perspective you just can’t get from the ground.
3.
Flying also gives you a great chance to see how Malaysian Airways has personalized the experience to their own tastes. I love seeing the banalities of life played out in different cultures. Here are a few gems from here:
When you get on the plane, the greeting is “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and Enrich club members.” Wendy commented that it’s like a carnival.
The safety announcement on MAS Wings states that “we know you love your cell phone very, very, very much…” Yup, three “very’s”. Similarly, you’re asked “to take off your heels, even if they’re very expensive” in the event of an emergency landing.
Soft rock is played on MAS Wings flights. The soothing sounds of Michael Bolton and post-Genesis Phil Collins torment you as you long for the flight to end.
4.
And, if it’s MAS Wings, you will want the flight to end. Because MAS Wings has the worst pilots of all time.
Flying with them isn’t dangerous, it’s just that they mastered the science but not art of flying.
As a result, you get on a plane and it is constantly accelerating and decelerating. First your stomach is rushing to your feet and then your head. Your pilot pitches you forward and back in a tug of war to see who on the plane will vomit first.
At one point flying from Mulu (I think this is the “my first route” of Malaysian pilots) the pilot managed to combine an acceleration with a change in direction at the same time resulting in all the blood in my body rushing to my head at over 1G. Amazing.
(Editor’s note – our pilot must know I’m writing this as he just decided to hit the air brakes on us in solidarity with his MAS Wings brethren. He must be newly promoted).
5.
Malaysia is a muslim country, but in a much more laid back way than, say, Saudi Arabia. This is especially visible on the magazine stand. I doubt anywhere else on earth do you get such a variety of covers:
6.
Malaysians love to smoke. I’m impressed by the depth and breadth of their smoking.
They smoke before breakfast, while working, lunch, back at work again and then during and after dinner.
Nothing will get between a Malaysian man and his cigarette (and it’s only men who seem to smoke). I was in the shower in the jungle and when I looked at the divider between the stalls, someone had carefully rested a cigarette butt on the top. So yes, they even smoke in the shower here.
7.
If Borneo had a national football team, it would be Manchester United. Everywhere we’ve gone on this island it’s been Man U. Our ranger wore their shirt for three days. We stopped in a tiny restaurant on the way up to Maliau Basin and there were supporter flags on the walls. We passed cars with Man U stickers and in Semporna they were selling Man U footballs.
8.
The roads outside Tawau (in the East) are pretty bad; many aren’t paved. The locals rip around in Toyota Hilux (the Taliban’s favourite truck!) and have to wash them before they come into the city (it’s the law: no dirty cars).
The paved roads (like the one to Semporna) have a nasty habit of washing away. It’s the unintended consequence of cutting down all that rainforest to plant palms. They just don’t hold the water like the old jungle.
What’s the solution? Don’t cut down the jungle? Build better roads with, perhaps, gravel, below them rather than just dirt? Nope, just put a warning sign and a merge sign and some paint on the road.
In fact, maybe that’s symbolic of driving here in general. After taking a couple of long bus and taxi rides, I’ve come to appreciate that the markings on the roads are really more of a guide than a rule. Why should feel constrained to drive on the left (the British influence) when you could drive in the middle of the road or even on the right? And when you’re passing, as long as you miss oncoming traffic by a second or two you probably did a good job.
9.
I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘globalization’ and ‘westernization’ and ‘development’ while here. Semporna is full of open markets but nowhere were people happier shopping than in the Giant supermarket or the Guardian drug store. Over the next ten years, these chains will almost certainly put a lot of Semporna’s mom and pop stores/stall out of business.
But is that a bad thing? The locals get higher quality goods in a safer environment (do you really know where that market chicken has been?) and probably at lower prices. The chains may even be better for the environment as they’re much more efficient and potentially cut out some middlemen.
So globalization in that respect raises the bar for society.
A much more challenging situation arises with the local people here. I posted earlier about the Penan. Recall that they were forest nomads; of the 10,000 of them, only 300 still live in the forest; the rest farm rice. Palm plantations mean less rainforest to roam.
The same scenario is playing out in the Sarawak highlands around Borneo. The locals (I think the Kelabit) used to live in long houses and hunt; now they’re farming and their kids are moving to the cities.
Both of these cultures likely won’t exist in a couple of generations (when you hear the UN talk about languages/cultures going extinct, this is where it happens).
And that’s a shame. Survival of the fittest-style globalization and development is great when it comes to bringing people safe, high-quality consumer goods. It’s terrible when the price is the loss of entire cultures. I want to live in the world where the Penan can hunt in the forest and have six different words for the notion of “we”.
This is where the notion of “Westernization” comes in. We take for granted the notion of “progress” – that every generation should have it better than the previous. Our tool of progress is technology: more, better, faster and cheaper and we’ve built our entire society around it; we regularly eat our old society to produce the next one.
And when our technology runs into cultures where nothing changes generation over generation (i.e., the Penan), it steamrolls them.
This is just a rant. I don’t have a solution to this (and it’s definitely not forcing people like the Penan to live in the forest against their will). Maybe all we can do is document these cultures and store their memories for when we’re ready to really appreciate them.
I’m sure some very smart people are working on this somewhere.
10.
Malaysians have a huge sweet tooth. You cannot buy any bread that is not coated in sugar. I thought that the Hong Kong bakeries used a lot of sugar, but here they even put sugar on top of their cheese bread.
11.
Speaking of food, here’s a quick rundown on what we loved:
a) Nasi Goreng. Fried rice. The staple of the Malaysian diet. Nasi Goreng Ayam (chicken) is a personal favourite. I never was able to figure out what the Nasi Goreng Kumpang (country style) actually was.
b) Mee Goreng. Fried noodle. The ying to Nasi Goreng’s yang.
c) Roti Ayam. There is a large South Asian population here and they’ve brought their food with them. This particular one comes from the delightful Al-Nafisah restaurant in Semporna. It’s a great place to get a tasty meal, surf the free wi-fi and watch a Bollywood flick. They also have Suntory Boss latte in a can!
d) Tosai (aka Dosai or Dosa). More South Asian influence:
e) Tawak. This is the local rice wine and it is strong. It is also deceptively smooth so if you have more than one glass you’re in for it:
f) Kopi (Coffee). The local coffee (and make sure you ask for it or you’ll get NesCafe) is delicious. It is some of the smoothest coffee I’ve ever tasted. The taste creeps up on you after you’ve finished your sip and then glides down the back of your throat.
g) The “local vegetable”.
Someone must have told the Borneans that tourists want to eat local food (they were right). As a result, many restaurants offer the mysterious but ubiquitous “local vegetable”. When we were in Mulu it turned out to be a sort of fern, sauteed with some garlic:
Note the fresh-squeeshed lime juice in the background. Another fantastic local treat.
h) Curry.
On the way up to Maliau Basin we stopped in a little restaurant where I had the following delicious curry (it had been cooking for hours) and a spiced hard boiled egg. Yup, it was breakfast:
The chicken curry is also fantastic:
12.
The call to prayer this morning came at an ambitious 4:45am. Shockingly early. Thankfully we had to be up at 5:15 for a flight.
13.
When we were in Semporna we stayed at the Dragon Floating Inn, a hotel on stilts. Every morning sunlight would reflect off the bottom of the sea and through the cracks between the floorboards onto the ceiling. It was like a private avant garde cinema.
14.
I received some change that included two different versions of the 50 Ringgit note:
The old ones contain a picture of a palm; the new one has an oil rig. Similarly, the 10 Ringgit note has a modern train, plane and container ship. This reminds me of how the Canadian bills used to show signs of proud industrial heritage. Lumber. Petroleum. I’m getting carried away…
Given that the latest versions of Canadian notes have poems and dead politicians, I wonder if I visit Malaysia in 10 years whether I’ll see the local equivalent.
15.
Let me close with one more dig at Malaysian Airlines (I know I should close on a positive note, but what the heck). It is left to the reader as an exercise to identify all the mistakes with the map below (from their inflight magazine):
(I have an eye for these things, witness this post from a few years ago)
If you find yourself in Kota Kinabalu one day after dark, you should head over to the night market. In the shadows of the Meridien hotel and on the flight path for the airport, you’ll find a market that’s been going on for ages.
Vendors from around the region come to sell virtually indistinguishable produce, spices, meat and cooked foods (my inner economist thinks this is one of the few examples I’ve seen of “perfect competition”). The sights are salivating and the smells are delicious.
Make sure that you go hungry as you can stop at one of the countless stalls and watch your dinner get freshly cooked for about $1. I had a fantastic mee goreng (fried noodles) and it came with a delicious soto ayam (spiced chicken broth soup):
The market runs every night – rain or shine – from about 6:30pm to 11:00pm.
1.
15 million years ago a roughly circular plot of land in Borneo, about 390 square kilometers in size and 25 kilometers wide, was pushed more than a kilometer above it’s surroundings. Shortly (at least in geological terms) thereafter, the middle and southern parts of the circle began to collapse, creating a network of ridges and valleys all of which drained via one river. The Maliau Basin had formed and was cut off from the rest of Borneo.
Fast forward to 1947. A bush pilot rediscovers the basin when he almost crashes into its outer escarpment (1676m above sea level). According to the map, it shouldn’t be there.
In the 1960’s a geological team makes it to the edge of the basin but does not enter. It becomes evident that no one has ever lived there; there are no forest-dwelling natives.
In 1976 the first attempt to ascend the rim takes place. It ends in failure after many of the team catch Malaria. In 1982 the first successful reconnaissance into the basin takes place. It’s very likely that no human had ever been there before that.
This is followed by four people entering in 1986 in preparation for the first scientific expedition that takes place in 1988. Maliau Basin has now been explored-however, to this day there are parts that have not yet been visited and mapped.
Fortunately, the Malaysian government realized that they were onto something unique and the whole area is a conservation zone. This is especially commendable given the quality of the timber and the estimated 200 million tinned of coal that may sit below it.
2.
Since the basin has been so cut off from the rest of the world it has developed some it’s own species. In fact, it has its own fish, water beetle, crab, moss and tree.
And it’s the trees of Maliau Basin that really clue you in to how remote it is.
Before you enter the basin you do a canopy walk (oddly enough sponsored by IKEA). This was quite different from other canopy walks I had done as the trees were all four to six feet wide and you were easily 60 feet off the ground-and nowhere near the top of the tree.
We spent the first night of the hike at the Camel Trophy camp where they have a ‘treehouse’ built almost 120 feet above the ground (Don’t worry, you don sleep in the treehouse).
Climbing up to it is terrifying. As you stand at the bottom of the ladder it seems to recede to infinity and be buckling under it’s own weight.
As I climbed it I noticed a spider on the bark, staring at me with its fangs on the defensive. Fortunately, it didn’t know how to jump and I defused the tension by climbing away.
A few more comments on the trees.
As you walk through the park you notice how very dark it is and then you realize that all the trees around you are at least 100 feet tall. Sometimes they trees that grow straight up with almost no roots, other times a mature strangler dig who has completely eroded the host and other times buttressed with roots up to 25 feet long and 10 feet tall.
The night before we entered the park we went for a ‘night ride’. This mean riding in the bak of a slow moving 4×4 while the guide paints the trees with a spotlight in search of wildlife. When you see the forest one tree at a time while it is simultaneously silhouetted against the full moon, you get a true sense of just how massive it is.
3.
One of the reasons we did the night ride is that Maliau Basin is a pretty good place to see wildlife. On our way into the park we saw this Buntang (water buffalo) and it’s mother:
Moron that I am, I thought a local farmer had lost his cow (this despite not seeing a farm for miles).
On the night ride we saw a jungle deer (doesn’t ‘jungle deer’ sound so much fancier than just ‘deer’ even though they’re the same thing?) and numerous flying squirrels. Our guide made one jump by flashing the light at it. Another one jumped before he could get a light on it; as it soared, it was like a wedge of darkness silently soaring above the rainforest. It would be very freaky to run into one.
When we stayed at the Camel Trophy camp we had a nighttime visit from the local civet. Two shiny eyes emerged from the darkness to reveal a black and white striped throat and then a spotted body and black tail. He looked like could eat a domestic cat.
When we hiked from that camp to Maliau Falls we saw quite a few monkeys. In my mind I’ve the frozen image of a gibbon jumping between trees. He has his right arm raised behind him; seconds prior it had been holding a branch. He’s staring ahead as he casually jumps to the next branch; he hasn’t even extended his left hand to catch himself.
On the return leg of that hike we startled a few red leaf monkeys who had been collecting fruit on the ground. At the sight of us, the began scurrying up the trees, hand over hand, all the while keeping their eyes on us. They then jumped from tree to tree to flee us, calling back and forth to one another as we walked along the trail.
4.
The one creature we saw far too many of was the forest leech. These little bastards are everywhere:
They crawl all over your shoes and you are constantly flicking them off. Sometimes they stick to your finger mid flick and then you’re forced to distract them by rolling them in a ball before depositing them elsewhere. I took great pleasure in using my blood-filled finger to lure them onto leaves and then tossing the leaves as far into the forest.
Despite my vigilance, two still got me. I got into the shower and discovered that one had crawled into my shorts and feasted. He must have hid on my bag’s waist straps; I never heard or felt him.
Another used a lull in my flicking to nestle into the hollow between my ankle and heel. Only when I took my sock off did I find the little parasite.
Fortunately they cause no pain.
5.
The leeches live in the lowlands, but quite a bit of your time is spent in the mossy Heath forest that starts around 1,000 meters above sea level.
There, the trees are skinnier, shorter and the forest denser. The bottom three feet of each tree I covered in moss and nepenthes, better know as pitcher plants. They come in a variety of collies and sizes. Sometimes they appear by themselves and other times in clumps.
6.
The pitcher plants are beautiful, bit they’re not the ultimate destination on your hike. You’re hiking to waterfalls.
The geography of the basin is such that this area has the highest concentration of waterfalls in Malaysia. On our first day we hiked to Giluk Falls.
You approach it from above and can stand right beside it, getting vertigo and a sense of how far it drops.
Afterwards, you can climb a plateau and see a set of fall that feed into it. Note that the ’soap’ is not pollution, it’s caused by a chemical in the plants.
Maliau Falls is the biggest waterfall in the basin. You arrive there and realize that you’re standing next to a 28 meter cliff with a second set of falls on it.
The falls themselves are beautiful, although the water is a bit stained due to the tannins in the soil. Our accompanying ranger wouldn’t let us swim (despite a schizophrenic sign that said: “No Swimming. Swim at your own risk”) otherwise I would have loved to swim up to the base of the falls.
7.
So, the hiking itself. It’s tough.
The distances aren’t far (the longest day is 15km) and the elevation isn’t too much (maximum daily climb is about 500 meters) but the trail is rough. Every day in the forest feels like fall as you’re walking over piles of (leech-infested) leaves. That are hiding mud underneath.
They don’t get too many people in the basin (I think our group of eight had it to ourselves for four days) so the trails aren’t maintained. We were accompanied by a ranger who spent a lot of time clearing brush from the trails.
There are many bridges that consist just of logs and look like they came from a rummage sale at the Indiana Jones film lot.
Since it’s the jungle, everything is wet and rotting and aging fast. I had one rung of a ladder give out as I was hiking, sending me for a short spill. Another time I could hear individual branches snapping as I crossed a bridge.
Part of the joy of hiking the park is descending the web of ridges that crisscross the park. You can walk along a ten foot wide ridge and see palm forest on one side, deciduous trees on the other. Alas, they all come to an end and then you have to climb down a steep, windy, muddy limestone path to your next section of trail.
The trails are also oddly blazed. The trail markers count distance up, not down, and are of questionable accuracy. Most glaring is the one that states “500 meters to Ginseng camp”.
As I passed this and ten minutes later found myself crossing a river after having scrambled down a near-cliff and a switchbacked muddy trail, all the while in pounding rain and pre-thunderstorm darkness, I found myself cursing the inability of Malaysian trailblazers to properly articulate distance.
The challenge of hiking is compounded by the heat and humidity. Everything is always wet and after 7 am it’s always hot. To give you an idea of how humid it is, when we stepped out of the rainforest onto a hilltop clearing, we couldn’t take photos as our camera fogged up-inside the lens! You sweat continuously.
It’s not the hardest hiking I’ve done, but it can be unpleasant at times (although a few years ago a 72 year old woman did it).
8. In order to make the hike a little easier, the folks at Borneo Nature Tours and the park conservancy set you up with quite a few people.
You are accompanied by a forest ranger. There’s a guide. And at each camp (which are permanent buildings, no tents for you), you’re cooked a meal by two guys whose existence is to truck food from campsite to campsite.
Our ranger was amazing. He pointed out innumerable hidden jungle charms. Countless different types of fungi and insects. He would playfully call out to screaming monkeys. He found birds eggs lodged in a rotting stump. And he’d pick jungle fruits and pass them on to us.
Our ‘guide’ on the other hand was something else. On the first day it became clear that his fitness level left something to be desired as he struggled up the hill almost ten minutes behind the group.
On the second day he did not force people to drink or bring enough water. One guy in our party got heatstroke. The entire group ran out of water.
The kicker was that when we got to camp, I had to go get water for everyone; he was just hanging out like nothing was wrong.
I could go on and on about his woeful guiding abilities (e.g., telling people he didn’t know where the trail was, answering distance-related questions with platitudes like “not far”, not having a first aid kit, etc.) but then you might get the impression that I didn’t have fun. But I actually had a lot of fun; our guide was just a complete and utter clown.
9.
While the Malaysian government has done a great job of protecting Maliau Basin, the road up is basically one long palm plantation. It’s frankly scary how much rainforest has been cut down to plant only palms. You get the feeling that they’re one new disease away from a wasteland.
10.
As with Mulu park, we found ourselves surrounded by weird bugs and fungi:
11.
One of the cooks at Maliau Basin wanted to practice his English with me. He was from a small country village in the foothills of Mt. Kinabalu; he’d gone to Maliau Basin in search of a job.
We had a great conversation (albeit slowly) about life in Canada vs. life in Sabah (the region of Borneo where Maliau Basin is). He couldn’t believe that it got so cold in Canada and was shocked that we eat so much cheese – but glad to hear that the Bornean bananas are better than Canadian bananas.
He also asked me how I met Wendy and warned me to watch out for girls in Semporna – and that Wendy would be watching me when I was in Semporna. I told him I’d wear sunglasses in Semporna and he thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
Hong Kong is a ridiculously busy city. It is packed with people. Despite having a population of only ~1/4 Tokyo, it has a mere fraction of the usable space. It’s a city built on mountains ringed by seas and as a result, there are people everywhere:
2.
I’m guessing that the population of Hong Kong has exploded over the past few decades because nobody seems to know how to live effectively in a big city.
It’s a terrible city to grow old in. We watched a teenager bowl over an old lady and then not even apologize; he just didn’t care.
Similarly, if you wanted to create a perfect random number generator (not an easy thing to do), you could do so by trying to guess which way a person on the street will turn as you approach them. Sometimes it’s left; sometimes right. They also walk on all sides of the sidewalk so there’s no cultural norm you can learn to figure out which way they’re going to go.
You do not relax in public in urban Hong Kong.
3.
It’s also a city where nobody talks but everybody yells. People here are loud and don’t so much talk as shout. Especially the older women; they yell at talk to their husbands who silently walk ahead of them, head bowed.
4.
But don’t get me wrong – Hong Kong’s a great place. And you can relax, you just need to get out of downtown Hong Kong and Kowloon.
One great place to go is Tai O (ferry from Central to Lantau; bus to Tai O), where descendants of the Tanka people fish and live in houses on stilts.
I was last here in 2006 and tourism has now arrived. There are now signs that guide you around the village – although they’re a bit hit and miss.
One path takes you to a lookout where you can purportedly watch dolphins. Except that someone took down or never installed the sign to the actual lookout; the path instead takes you to a water filtration plant.
Similarly, one of the sights is “the old police station”, except that it’s not marked and under restoration. When you get there, there’s no sign, but there is a trail.
As you follow it you get quite confused. The trail is new and looks like every other trail on the island. But there’s also a sign saying that you’re about to trespass onto a military base. However, you’re still looking for that police station – and maybe it’s on that military base and there are no soldiers around. And hey, now a really scary looking dog is barking and running towards you. Time to shuffle backwards and get ready to run because that dog is getting closer and it looks hungry. I guess the police station isn’t here after all.
5.
The other very relaxing thing to do in Hong Kong is to hike. The islands are mostly forest and are criss-crossed with trails. We actually spent half of our time hiking.
One day was spent going up the peak, around it and then dropping down to Aberdeen via Lok Fu Ko (check). It’s a great hike as you pass through jungle on one side of the mountain, more temperate forest on the other and then suddenly the city appears again:
Similarly, after going to Tai O we hiked along the coast to Tung Chung (where you can catch the train back to Kowloon/Hong Kong). It was interesting as what is marked as a ‘road’ on the map is actually a concrete path at tops a meter wide. You pass through villages that contain only a few houses and not a single service. It’s a reminder of what Hong Kong was and how far it has come.
There were also a few more entertaining examples of how they’re attempting to improve tourism. In one nameless village there was a sign to the ‘beach’. We walked down and found ourselves on a tiny little strip of sand that overlooked the takeoff runway for the airport.
One more comment on hiking in Hong Kong. Along the way you are going to pass hundreds of Golden Orb Weaver spiders. If you are scared of spiders that can easily span six inches, don’t hike here:
6.
One of the most unique experiences we had was at the aviary. The birds are great…
…but much more interesting was running into hordes of rural Chinese school kids visiting the city. We’re pretty sure that many of them had never seen white people before because they kept staring at Wendy’s blue eyes.
A bunch of them actually wanted their photo taken with us. We felt like the strangest pop stars of all time, being mobbed by this crowd of Chinese tweens. We probably could have stayed for ages taking photos with every single one, but we had to let them go after a few minutes.
7.
The food in Hong Kong is great. Yes, there is every type of western food if you want it (and we gave in at times), but the real joy is the dim sum and noodles.
We had dim sum at a random place on Tung Choi road in Kowloon. It was great – except for the soup dumplings which were lacking. The rice noodle dishes were perfectly cooked and almost fell apart between our chopsticks; the lamb and pork inside were delicious. We also enjoyed that the char siu rolls came with a light dusting of sugar on the outside.
There are also great noodle dishes to be had – and in Kowloon they’re cheap; this one only cost about $3:
There’s nothing like a great dish of egg noodles topped with a couple of pork slices.
Another amazing culinary aspect of Hong Kong is their love affair with baked goods. There are bakeries everywhere. In the subway. On the streets. Right next to one another.
Every morning we would purchase something from this place right around the corner from our hotel:
They had a great mix of western favourites like croissants and all sorts of sweet Chinese buns. You can get buns topped with baked pineapple or minced pork, stuffed with custard, red bean paste (an asian favourite), cherries or roast pork.
And we never saw the place empty; there was always at least one person in the store.
8.
I mentioned earlier how Hong Kong is packed with people and has little space. This means that they’re building up and the apartments are small.
This was hammered home to me when we got to our hotel room. It was only 6’ 3” wide. It just so happens that I am also 6’ 3” tall.
I know you’re doing the math in your head and wondering how I slept. The answer is: “snuggly”.
Our room was at most 10 feet long, meaning that we actually had less room than we would have in a prison (cells are 8’ x 8’). However, it was cheap and clean and we’re on a budget.
9.
In case you weren’t sure whether China is out to dominate the world, the government propaganda television commercials will remind you that they are. There’s a lovely one that starts with a few kids farming only to have the landscape evolve into a modern town with fancy factories, wind power and lots of smiling, orderly, servile people. Pan to a battleship cutting through the sea (racing towards Taiwan?) and then a solitary climber bagging a peak. Subtle it is not.
10.
Despite their self-held inexorable rise to global dominance, the locals are not without their moments of self-doubt. On the way to the airport there’s a massive billboard that reminds us all that “even a confident man sometimes needs reassurance”. In the context of status-obsessed Hong Kong it’s quite entertaining.
The flight into Mulu National Park in Borneo is unique. You take off from Miri, are given a drinking box of Milo and 15 minutes later you find yourself landing. In that brief time you see jungle being destroyed to make palm plantations that are so big you can probably see them from space, the dense lattice of logging roads that criss-cross the forest and then the park itself.
The park sits in a valley with a few misplaced humps of mountains on one side and the towering Mount Mulu (~2,300m) on the other. If your captain is feeling excited/coming in too fast – as ours was – he may (without warning) decide to perform a corkscrew to lose both altitude and speed, thus allowing you a full view of the landscape. It’s heady to see that much jungle, although it may also have had something to do with the g forces throwing you back in your seat.
2.
When you get to Mulu National Park (it’s a five minute ride from the airport), the first thing that strikes you is the humidity. The rainforest is an endless cycle of water being shifted between the land and the sky. It rains 280 days a year in Mulu and each tree sheds 1,000L of water a year. This leads to the rainforest creating 75% of its own rain simply due to transpiration.
It had poured before we got here and much of the land was flooded; fortunately a raised catwalk connects everything. There was water everywhere; overnight the water dropped at least one foot and was practically gone.
Technically most parts of the park are actually swamp. You frequently find undisturbed pools of water:
Moreover, it doesn’t so much rain at the park as the sky erupts. When the rain comes down you can’t actually hear the drops on the tin roofs; it’s more of a continuous roar.
3.
The humidity is reinforced by an eerie lack of wind. In the five days we spent in the park, there was maybe ten minutes of wind. The sky is alive with constantly shifting clouds, but on the ground there’s nothing but stillness. Flags hang, the trees don’t move and your clothes almost never dry.
4.
Once you get past the humidity, you’re struck by the green of the place. It’s as though the world was created with the most subdued colour palette of all time. At night, the sky doesn’t fall, insomuch as the green is gradually replaced by black; it’s like the remaining colour is sucked out of the forest.
5.
After the green, you begin to notice the height, particularly if you take a canopy walk, which affords you the jungle from the opposite perspective. It’s the only way to really get a sense of the volume of flora surrounding you.
6.
The forest is a great example of how fabulously complex systems can arise out of simple rules. Since the soil beneath the jungle is so crummy – and below it is just stone – , the plants in the forest must get all their energy from the sky. From this simple constraint, the jungle has evolved many solutions.
Trees have roots that branch fractally (and sometimes grow back together) to buttress support.
Liana have developed the ultimate redundancy. They grow up into the canopy, then across and back down. Eventually they can interconnect with hundreds of trees so that they are never dependent upon one node:
And anywhere possible, plants piggyback off the trees to get to thy sky:
7.
There is a bit of colour, you just have to look for it. It’s hidden below leaves, around corners and in nooks and crannies.
8.
There are a lot of bugs, and they come in all shapes and sizes. You could have a field day developing your own personal classification system based upon colour or size or shape or whatever dimension you want.
Life in the rainforest is nasty, brutish and short, so many are camouflaged to better catch prey/avoid being eaten, brightly coloured to warn away potential predators or hiding where they won’t be seen.
Almost all of them will be missed unless your guide decides to point them out to you.
9.
The ants are the janitors of the rainforest and they are constantly at work. There are giant ants and tiny ants you can barely see. Red, black and black & red; some with wings; some without.
Their pathways – including some that are covered – litter the jungle. You’ll see them traveling in great packs and sometimes you see them all working together to bring a treat home. We watched as twenty ants, some five of them chained together with two more pushing from behind, carried a dead bug back to their hill:
10.
Occasionally, you’ll see a flash of iridescent blue out of the corner of your eye. It’s not the first sign of a stroke, rather it’s the flitting wings of one of the dragonflies. I literally thought I was going crazy the first time the light flashed in my eyes.
11.
An unexpected pleasure is that butterflies (and sometimes moths) of all colours constantly cross your path. There are tiny little yellow ones that travel in packs of up to 30:
Elsewhere you might find a large white butterfly with black polka dots slowing gliding towards you. Or perhaps you’ll see the red ones or the black ones with red bodies and shining blue stripes. Or the ones with grey downward facing wings hiding blue top facing wings. Or the black butterflies with white polka dots. The variations are endless.
12.
Since there are so many humans around, there are few animals. However, there are a few birds (including hornbills) and the odd pygmy squirrel. What would be a pest in North America becomes a treat to see over here (seen in profile in following photo). These squirrels are also great jumpers; we watched one teach its children how to jump about ten times the length of their body (and yes, pigmy pygmy squirrels are incredibly cute).
If you’re lucky you’ll also come across a snake:
Undoubtedly you’ll see many salamanders (particularly around dinner):
13.
I lied when I said there were few animals. There are very few animals besides bats. There are over four million bats in the park and you can find them everywhere.
Nestled in a leaf:
Hanging beside the trail:
But mostly they’re found in Deer Cave where they stream out by the millions at sunset every night (unless it’s raining). There are twelve species of bat in the cave and each sticks to its own. The fly out in separate groups (and not just twelve groups), forming ornate patterns as they leave.
The bats move up, down, left, right, forward and backward, but from the ground you perceive it as being projected onto the flat sky. This means that the bat groups appear to change shape like a slinky as it rockets forward. Pockets appear and then are immediately filled; the group veers one way and then momentarily back.
Some groups are only a few hundred and last a few seconds; the longest group we saw took a full six minutes to exit the cave.
Here’s a video:
The reason the bats group together is to avoid being eaten by eagles. If an eagle is nearby, they will frequently form a ring in order to make it more difficult for any individual bat to be eaten. These bat-based Cheerios then meander across the sky:
14.
The bats themselves live in the many caves in the park. The mountains are made of limestone and they’ve gradually eroded to form a spectacular set of caves. There are over 300km of caves and they’re still being explored.
Deer cave is home to the most bats and it consequently smells like a violently abused, permanently unwashed toilet. Once you get used to this, it’s actually a beautiful thing to take in:
Stay on the elevated trail, as between those rocks is an ocean of cockroach-covered guano.
At the end is a spectacular opening that looks onto the “Garden of Eden”:
The scene is one of impossible beauty – and also impossible to properly photo.
You’re on a hunk of rock in a giant cave as wide as it is tall looking out towards the lush jungle. The jungle is trying to invade the cave and only the lack of sun holds it back; it bleeds a river into the cave. From the ceiling, at least three miniature waterfalls have formed from water falling hundreds of feet from the ceiling; the water is so sediment rich that it’s formed its own spigot for each waterfall.
Further into the park is Clearwater cave, which actually has a river running through it.
To give you an idea of scale in the above photo, there are actually people at the end of that shaft of light. They’re barely visible in this photo.
15.
The other major geographic feature of the park are the pinnacles. These are a series of craggy, sharp limestone formations. They were created when the park’s limestone came to the surface, cracked and filled in with soil which then washed away (and the process took millions of years).
You climb a trail that’s only 2.4km long – but includes a staggering 1.2km elevation gain and you’re there:
The trail up and down is treacherous. It’s all wet roots, spiky limestone and there’s not a single flat part. At the top you pass through a mossy forest and it becomes near vertical. There are over 15 ladders and countless ropes. At times you find your self stepping on the spikes of pinnacles to get ahead; you check your footing and pray you don’t fall.
Here’s a shot of what one part of the trail looks like. Needless to say, it’s basically invisible:
16.
While the trail might be miserable (the pinnacles are worth it though), getting there is a blast. You stay at a camp that’s in a valley between mist-covered mountains:
You can’t see it in the above photo, but there are actually another set of pinnacles at the top of those limestone cliffs. Our guides told us that they have never been explored. It’s hard to imagine, but here in Borneo there are actually spectacular geological features that have never been visited by anyone (I see a National Geographic special looming in the future).
To get to the camp you take a longboat up a jungle river:
It’s a great ride.
17.
On the ride up to the camp, you stop off at a Penan village. The Penan are the former nomadic hill dwellers of Sarawak. There are 10,000 of them, but their forest forefathers carrying blowpipes have been replaced by tourists clutching cameras; only 300 still live in the Jungle. (For a great overview of these people, read the remarkable Stranger in the Forest)
Their language gives you a sense of just how they lived. They had words for every forest plant and creature but no word for the forest itself as they could not imagine anything but it. Similarly, “thank you” and “goodbye” were not found in their language as they were nomads who constantly saw each other again and shared everything.
Their society was extremely communal and there were over six words for describing different levels of consensus amongst groups (i.e., “we”). In fact, they’re challenged to speak other languages as “we” for them is not simply the 3rd person plural and they lack our cultural context to explain the concept.
Their society was also shockingly peaceful. There is no record of a war ever occurring and there was no word for thief.
Unfortunately, the modernization of Malaysia has not been kind to the Penan. Many now live in dog-filled villages like this one:
The government is training them how to grow rice (which can’t be a great future). Some sell trinkets to tourists, but few buy anything beyond the odd European picking up a blowpipe. Thankfully, a few are employed by the rapidly growing park.
18.
In closing, you should go to Gulung Mulu National Park. But go soon. Since 2005 (when it got a world heritage designation), tourism has exploded. It’s now constantly booked and they’re adding more facilities to a park that’s already at capacity. Get there as soon as you can and be sure to book ahead; you won’t regret it.
It’s not on most tourists agenda, but I would highly recommend that if you go to Hong Kong you check out Kowloon Walled City Park.
It’s not the park that’s so interesting, rather it’s what used to be there.
First, some history. In 1841, the Brits took over Hong Kong Island. Understandably, the Chinese were concerned about losing more territory, so they took a small Kowloon fort (dating from 1810) and upgraded it to a walled garrison in 1847. The actual walled area was tiny; only 6.5 acres.
In 1872, the British banned gambling from Hong Kong. The enterprising gamblers simply moved across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon. It was the beginning of that city’s notoriety.
In 1889, the Brits took over the New Territories and gained the land surrounding Hong Kong Island. The Chinese troops were expelled and that was the end of the rule of law in the “Walled City”. Squatters moved in.
In World War II, the Japanese tore down the walls of the city and used the stones to extend the airport runway (the walled city is almost right next to the old airport).
In the 1950’s, heroin boomed and a lot of it was produced in the Walled City and exported throughout the world. Along with it came strip clubs, brothels, casinos, opium dens and – tastiest of all – dog meat stalls.
Since there was no rule of law, hundreds of mom and pop factories opened up in the city. Noodles and candies were made, as well as 80% of the territories fish balls. The tallest smoke stack in the entire city was in the building; 13 stories tall, but you couldn’t tell from the street.
Perhaps the oddest unregulated industry of all was dentistry. In the 1970s, the streets outside were lined with dental clinics:
From the ’60s on wards, the population of Hong Kong boomed and the Walled City followed suit by building up. The whole complex was a giant network of buildings built one on top of the other. At it’s peak, there were 40,000 people living in over 500 buildings on only 2.7 hectares. This entire warren was navigated by 20-30 alleys; there were only 3 working elevators and no running water (It was quite a business to sell water to residents). The tallest buildings were 16 stories tall.
There had been many attempts to tear the site down over the years, beginning in the 1920s by the Brits. In the late ’80s it was finally agreed that it was time to tear the damn thing down as it was becoming a threat/embarrassment to the city. Eviction started in 1992 and in 1994 the site was torn down. Here’s a shot of what it looked like before it was destroyed:
Also, a few years before demolition, a German camera crew shot a documentary about it. Fascinating:
The site is now a park and interpretive center. Where people used to shoot up, locals now do Tai Chi in the morning.
The interpretive center has a few gems in it. Before demolition, the government hired a team of Japanese anthropologists to create a cross section of the site, demonstrating what life was like inside it. Here are some shots of their drawing. Keep in mind that most of these apartments are ~200 square feet in size:
There’s also a bronze model of the site which gives you a sense of how it must have stuck out from the rest of the neighbourhood:
When they were demolishing the site, the wreckers discovered that the original fort, and the cannons (from 1802) next to it, were still there. The entire city had been built around them. They’ve preserved the building (called the Yamen) and it’s now the home to the interpretive center and the heart of the park:
Hong Kong – and especially Kowloon – is a city of markets. You can buy almost anything.
There’s a flower district…
…a bird market…
…and a fish market.
In fact, you can go down to the local food market and the butcher will sell you pieces of an animal that you didn’t even know you want:
This makes for a fascinating trip around the city as you walk from market to market. The first three markets in this post are all within walking distance of each other. If you approached them from our hotel, you’d also find yourself walking through the leather interiors, sewing and building materials districts:
However, all this selling comes at a price. After a while, Hong Kong begins to feel like Manhattan with mountains instead of cultural institutions. You begin to realize that this is a city that exists solely for the sake of commerce. It’s the market for the market’s sake.
As Hong Kongers become very wealthy, they’re adopting some of the shallower trappings of an upwardly mobile society. You can see this in the incredible number of subway ads for plastic surgery:
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