Asia Exile - Times Online - WBLG

Burning Bright

Four of us were driving on Sunday from Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, to the town of Calang on Aceh’s western coast. It was a seven hour drive; we were five hours in. The road ran along the coast past wide empty beaches of pale sand, and then over high cliffs where gibbons dangled from the trees. It had been almost three years since I was last in Aceh, in the weeks immediately after the tsunami. At that time the destruction of the towns and villages here was complete; even now, there were stretches of the coast which looked as if a disaster had just struck them, with the tall skinny stumps of palm trees jutting up out of inundated marshy swamp.

One hundred and seventy thousand people – the number is no exaggeration – died along this coast in the space of a few minutes on Boxing Day morning. It was the largest single tragedy any human being alive has ever seen. Emotionally, it’s an experience that I hardly began to digest.

But three years later, what had been destroyed was being restored. Houses had been rebuilt, and rice fields had been cleansed and replanted. It was stirring and touching to see it all around. I met a woman whom I had last seen in a refugee camp, stunned with grief after the loss of her three children; now she had a new home and new 16 month old daughter. I saw the mosque which had been the only thing left standing in her village. The community had left a corner of it broken and unrestored, in case people should ever forget about the tsunami.

It had been a long, exhausting journey and the four of us in the jeep were quiet as the sun set and darkness came down. But I was filled with thoughts of how lucky I was to be here, how thrilling it was to be driving along this bumpy road through the bush – here, now, alive, with friends, surrounded by the timeless sea and trees. The road turned away from the coast and up through the forest, with a steep cliff above to the right and a thicketed plunge below to the left. The lamps of the jeep cast a wide oval on the road ahead. I was daydreaming (I really was) about travellers of long ago, who spent days and weeks rather than mere hours making journeys like this, and of the dangers and monsters which threatened their imaginations.

To the right of the road, a dim shape became suddenly visible. At first I took it to be a dog – but it was much too big to be a dog. Quickly it moved across the road and its shape and colour flared up in the illumination of the headlamps. At the same moment, everyone in the car exclaimed.

A pink oasis in the rush hour

I rarely have to leave home early enough to travel during Tokyo’s notorious rush hour, and for this blessing I thank the Shinto gods. We’ve all heard the ghastly stories: about the station staff whose job it is literally to squeeze commuters onto the trains; about carriages so packed that they would choke a sardine; and about the notorious chikan, or gropers, whose filthy fingers inflict misery on female passengers. So it was with trepidation that I rose early the other morning for the 7.30 Tube journey to work.

The train was on the platform as I bounded down the escalator, and the doors were closing as I slipped between them. I gripped the overhead strap and buried my nose in my newspaper. And quickly I became aware of something that surprised me – that travelling on the Tokyo subway in the rush hour isn’t half bad.

There were none of the discomforts I had anticipated, and in several ways the journey was positively pleasant. Instead of a fetor of armpits and bad breath, the carriage was infused with a light haze of perfume. It was certainly full, but there were no arms poking my ribcage – in fact, my fellow passengers seemed to be going to some trouble to make space for me. A few them, it’s true, looked a bit unfriendly – but at least they weren’t shedding dandruff over my jacket or exhaling last night’s saké into my face. It was only when the guard arrived and firmly escorted me off the train that I understood the explanation for all this – they were all women.

The Choc of the New

One of the most depressing things about travelling in Japan is how bland and indistinguishable its towns and suburbs are. The same shops, the same restaurants, the same kind of buildings, the same clothes on the same people. Blindfold me, drop me off in front of the station in a medium-sized Japanese city and, if it weren't for the weather, I wouldn't have a clue whether I was in Shimonoseki or Asahikawa.

One of the charming things about travelling in Japan is that the inhabitants of those bland, bring towns don't find them bland and boring at all. They regard them as dazzling, fascinating and unique - in their history, their attractions and above all their food. Wherever you go, the most insiginificant of halts will have a souvenir shop and a restaurant serving the "famous" regional crafts, sake, sweets and noodles. This belief has been institutionalised in the omiyage, the souvenir which all conscientious travellers are expected to bring back for family and colleagues after even a brief trip out of town. Every station has stands selling representative local produce which to the proud locals are inevitably the finest in all of Japan.

In Nagasaki, it's the sweet sponge cake called "castella", in Hiroshima it's oysters, and in Hokkaido it's tins of local bear meat. So what might it be in Tokyo - the greatest of all Japanese cities, a civilisation-within-a-civilisation, where the greatest artisans, cooks and inventors have converged for centuries? What is the one product above all others that can stand as the emblematic souvenir of Tokyo?

See the photograph below, taken at Tokyo station the other day (click on image for enlargement):

Journey to the Carterets (Words and Photographs)

This month the photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and I travelled to the Carteret Atoll, a collection of tiny coral islands far off the coast of Papua New Guinea. For at least 20 years now it has been obvious that the Carterets, and their population of 2,600 people, are sinking into the sea. As usual, it's difficult to state with absolute confidence why this is happening. Is it because of a submarine volcano which is causing changes in the level of the sea bed? Or is because - as this research demonstrates - global warming is causing sea levels in the South Pacific to rise steadily?

You can read my piece from Thursday's paper here; Jeremy's put a few of his photographs on his blog here, here and here; and a few of my own follow.

Click on any of these images to enlarge. (All photographs are the copyright of Richard Lloyd Parry.)

Podded

In February, I spent a happy few days as a guest of 'Words and Ideas', the writers' and readers' segment of the Perth International Arts Festival, sponsored by Curtin University. One of my contributions, a conversation with the journalist, David Cohen, followed by questions and answers, can be downloaded as a Podcast here. (I hope that this link works - if not download it from this page.)

It last about an hour and consists mostly of a discussion of my book, In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos (click on the image above for enlargement), although at one point, for no very good reason, I also start talking about my career as a teenage UFOlogist. A bit cringe-making in parts, but it could be worse. Interestingly, my voice becomes lower in pitch towards the end of the hour than it is in the beginning. Not smooth and cholcolatey exactly but less ... piping.

Ten minutes from the end, it goes completely silent for a while but that's because some damn fool member of the audience failed to speak into the microphone. The other effect of this is that the reaction of the audience is almost inaudible. You'll just have to take it from me that they were almost constantly applauding or issuing forth chortles of appreciation.

US Amazon link for the book is here, Japanese Amazon (for the English language edition) here. It's also been translated into Dutch as Indonesia: Tijden van waanzin.

Here's a smattering of reviews from The Times, TIME magazine, The Observer, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian and a long and well informed one from the Columbia Journalism Review.

Your Christmas present problems, solved at a stroke! Buy, buy, buy . . .

Pyongyang Busted

Haneda airport in Tokyo, at 10.45 yesterday morning. I have just landed back in Japan after my jaunt to Mt Kumgang-san in North Korea last week, and a night in the South Korean capital, Seoul. At the customs desk, the uniformed officer asks me how long I've been away.

'Four days."

"Have you been to any countries other than South Korea?"

"Well, yes ... North Korea."

"North Korea,” he said slowly. “North Korea. Did you buy anything when you were there?”

“Just some souvenirs."

“North Korean souvenirs, eh? Could you show me?”

And then it dawned on me – I was a sanctions buster!

Into the Diamond Mountains

[Here's my piece from yesterday's paper about my trip last week to Mt Kumgang in North Korea.I'll try to post more on this in the next few days, along with some pictures by The Times photographer, David Bebber.]

The cosy, the frightening, the cute and the sinister

From Richard Lloyd Parry

At a tourist resort at Mt Kumgang, North Korea two worlds collide

The journey to Mt Kumgang in North Korea, the world's most bizarre mini-break, begins at dawn in an atmosphere of menace and confrontation. Electrified fences and tank traps line the road on the South Korean side of the border, and the forest on either side is strewn with mines. Travellers are given stern instructions about conduct on the far side: don't take photographs from the coach windows; don't speak to the North Korean officials at immigration; whatever you do, don't talk about politics.

Passports and bags are scrutinised and x-rayed, and one by one we are admitted to the world's most impenetrable country, a rogue state notorious for oppression, xenophobia and most recently, for nuclear proliferation. And there among the granite-faced soldiers, waving his paw in a gesture of cheery welcome, is a man dressed as a giant brown teddy bear.

The Whale of London

Saturday morning. Thirty-six hours after flying in from Tokyo, I woke up in London at 5.30 in the morning, jet-lagged and ill-tempered. I turned on the TV; later, I walked out for an early morning coffee and a read of the papers. The breakfast news and front pages were dominated by the same story, about the Northern Bottlenose Whale which had strayed far from its ocean home and swum up the Thames where, increasingly ill and exhausted, it was struggling to swim back out to sea.

Police and animal welfare officers in reflective jackets tracked its spout from motor launches. People gathered on the bank to watch with their children. The ticker at the bottom of the TV screen carried lines such as ‘Whale almost beached twice’ and ‘Whale swam past Houses of Parliament’.

Viewers were invited to phone in with suggestions. Why not use recordings of whale songs to lure it back out to sea? Why not zap it with sonar and drive it towards the estuary? How ridiculous, I thought: all the suffering and corruption and uncertainty in the world, and the entire country finds itself fixated on a lost fish (sorry, mammal). I formulated a sarcastic viewer suggestion of my own: why not place on stand-by a team of Japanese sushi chefs so that, if the rescue efforts should sadly fail, at least the deceased cetacean will not go to waste?

Camera in the jungle

For thousands of years, our of the plants, trees and animals of the forest, the Iban people of Borneo have created a beautiful and delicate art. Rattan vines from the jungle are woven into strong, supple baskets with geometric patterns. The bony casque of the hornbill bird is carved into tiny sculptures of men and creatures. Softwoods are shaped into the famous Iban war shields with their symmetrical designs of Iban heroes. But last week, on a visit to an Iban longhouse in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, I discovered a new accomplishment of these remarkable people: Iban photography.

The Laughing Skulls of Fort Margherita

Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, is one of the most fascinating small cities in south-east Asia, and like most of Borneo it is a place of ghosts, spirits and magic.

It was founded two hundred years ago by James Brooke, the British adventurer who established himself as Raja of Sarawak and ruler of the Chinese traders, Malay merchants and native Dayak tribesmen who gathered in Kuching from all over south-east Asia. On the north shore of the Sarawak River, Brooke built a palace, the Astana, and a miniature castle, Fort Margherita, which I visited a few days ago.

It is an appealing place, like a child's vision of a medieval castle, with white walls and square crenellations. To the south, it overlooks the old Chinese shop houses and modern hotels and shopping malls ok Kuching; beyond are the rivers and forests and mountains of Borneo. At the northernmost point of the walls is a small round turret with a shingle roof and a white skull painted on its black door. And inside is a mystery.

Headhunter in the town on the river

Kapit is not exactly the end of the line in Borneo, but it is half way there. The Rajang River is the longest in Malaysia, 350 miles from its muddy mouth in the South China Sea to its source in mountains close to the border with Indonesia, and Kapit is as close to the mountains as the sea. There's a flight once a week in a little prop plane, but otherwise the only way in and out is by boat. So at least part of the reason for writing this is simply to demonstrate that at the fag end of the year 2005, half way to the end of the line in the rainforests of Borneo, I can still make a posting to my weblog.

We were in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and the choice was whether to spend the days between Christmas and New Year going into the jungle or on the beach. But you don't come to Borneo for the beach.

Christmas in Borneo

The Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam, where I passed a relaxing and tranquil Christmas Day, is the least conventionally festive country in the world.

Climatically, it is as far from Lapland as it is possible to get – a small humid enclave between the tropical rain forests of northern Borneo and the South China Sea, where reindeer, or anyone dressed in a thick red overcoat with white fur trimmings, would quickly collapse of heat exhaustion to die slowly of dehydration within a few hours. Its religion is orthodox and faithfully observed Islam – in the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, most of the women wear head scarves, and the city is dominated by two huge and opulently beautiful mosques. But one thing above all militates against the traditional British Christmas –