Kuala Lumpur in broken finnish (14/11-2000)
.. af Arne Runge
Hi folks
As usualy plenty of food when travelling with Aeroflot - 4 times rice and
chicken - and as usualy I landet pretty confused after 20 hours traveling
and a time difference of 7 hours - this time in Kuala Lumpur the capital of
Malaysia.
It was rather scaring to fill out the arrivalpapers tellin wit big 26
points bold types: Forewarning Death panalty for drug traffickers.
Fortunately I did not bring in a single miligram to the country. I eat the 5
grams I had in my pocket just before landing. Actualy I better like to smoke
it, but under this circumstances.
Anyway I had a great evening touring around in chinatown speaking broken
finnis as nobody understood neithet danish nor english.
Yksi kaksi kolleme.
After 3 beatifull days in KL and a single day in Johor Bahru I crossed the
causeway to checkpoint Singapore terrified to enter this "Nosmoking and all
forbidden country" where I had to overnight at least one night to conquer
New country no 72 and what a surprice. Here was certainly sometying to
write home about. But that is quite another story.
Do you think I smoked - do you yhink I got drunk - do you think I went to
jail or maybe passed 4 days in a church or do you yhink I just sleopt the
time away. GUESS = and read my next mail comming soon
Singapore - not so bad at all (18/11)
There is a 500$ fine for smoking in the elevator, but it is allowed to smoke
inside the hotel.In the streets there is rubbish bins with ashtrays on the
top, everywhere. No problem with smoking at all. The city (Island)is
extreemly beatifull, with a mix of mighty skyscrabers and old pictorial
quarters, like Arab street, China Town, Little India etc. There are 80%
chinees, 10% malays, 10% indians and a danish colony wiyh 350 familys (1100
people). A rainforest in the middle of the town, Shopping streets with
aircondition and Broadway musicalls in the theaters. I had dinner with chop
sticks on a banana leaf. Amazing right?
The flag was on half when I arrived at the danish seaman church on the top
of Mount Faber. The danish queen Ingrid had passed away. I was welcomed with
danish coffee, pastry and newspapers. The priest and his wife, Hans
Christian the assistent, the consul, George the captain on the danish ship
Northsea Anvil, and the danish schoolteacher sang along when I played "Alle
gaar rundt og forelsker sig" on the old upright piano. The children sang
along on "Se den lille kattekilling" but they did not know "There is a
gracefull country" the danish national hymn.
The priest told me all about seaman churches, the consul about the danish
colony and Maersk, Hans Christian showed me the city, and captain George
invited me for dinner on his ship - porksteak with sauce and potatoes, and
proudly showed me his ship. We drank Carlsberg can beer and altarwine en
masse, in the church, and smoked taxfree cigarets.
I visited the church four days in a row, experied all the city, I did not
sleep very much those days, and of couse I never went to jail.
Did you guess right?
Sumatra - One large rainforest (hold keft hvor det regner) (23/11)
From Singapoer - The Lioncity - I Went on a boat - together with a
fellowtraveler Mr. Kiwi - to Batam an indonesian Island where i got a 60
days visa and "Conquered new country no 73". And what a lovely difference
from OK, but alittle "overclean Singapore"
Next day the kiwi went back to New Zealand and i went with another boat to
the continent Sumatra wich actualy is an island too, but 2000 km long and
the 6. th largest island in the world., dotted with wonderful lakes and
small mountain towns. To me it seemed to be one large rainforest, and
certainly it rains - its the monsoon time you knoe. There are more than 100
volcanos 15 of the still active and a lot of wild animals like the two
horned sumatran rhino, the sumatran tiger the honey bear and more than 500
wildliving orang utans (meaning forestman) and billions of malaria
mosquitos. I only saw the monkeys and mosquitos, but for sure the other wild
animals was watching me from inside the forest, all the time. I could feel
it.
On the boat i met another fellowtraveler mr. Justin Gage (funny name right)
from Bath, England, and together we explored the Island.
Pekanbaru a halfboring oiltown and after crossing Equator we arived at
Bubuttinggi - meaning high mountains - a real backpacker paradise.
Here we stopped and relaxed for 4 days, trecking around the volcano crater
lake "Danau meninjau" with the worlds largest flower - the meat aeting and 2
meters in diameter "Rafflesia arnoldii"
Here in Bukittinggi happened the same as in Bangladesh last year - I found
myselv being a Superstar, writing autographs. This time only Sundays, when
the schoolchildren from the nearby villages with their english teacher came
in to the backpacker town, to practice english.
Hello Mister, whats your name, where are you from, can i have your
signature. This time I was Tommy Steele, if you know him, Justin did not.
But he is only 28 years old.
In bukkittinggi we bought a ticket for a 38 hours bustrip to Java. So next
time I will tell you about Java and the young extreemely beatiful and very
willingly girtls in Jacarta. So keep online.
Java - Ola la and much more (26/11)
38 hours in a bus is a fucking long time - but a good travelingpartner
shorten nthe traveling-time. Justin and I spent the time telling dirty jokes
and learning indonesian. With the help from guidebooks. So when landing in
Jacarta we spoke pretty good indonesian bouth of us. Saya orang Denmark -
jam barapa. I'm from Denmark - what's the time. Therefore it was no problem
to find the citycenter and a nice hostel even it was 4 oclock in the
morning.
Next day we was attacked by a lot of young extremely beatiful indonesian
girls. Hello Mister - whats your name - where do you come from - do you need
a girlfriend. And who don't need a girlfriend after being on the road for 3
weeks. So. After 4 days I needed a break in a more quiet place and went to
Solo. Justin kept staying - but he is only 28 years old - you know.
Despite the girl attacking, we got time to explore the city and the old
dutch port - sunda kelapa - with more colourfull sailing ships - the
magnificent buginese macassar schooners - than you ever thought existed.
They are still carrying timber from other indonesian islands to jacarta and
are onloaded with manpower. hundreds of dockers walking in a row down the
plank with timber on their shoulders.
Solo was a quiet town - it was here they discovered the javaman who lived
here 500.000 years ago. and it was here i discovered a lokal restaurant
serving boiled potatoes with real french bread, and they even provided salt
pepper, knife and fork. can you imagine how happy i was after having eated
rice 3 times a day for 3 weeks. so now i changed to potatoes 3 times a day.
completely full and satisfired i went on to Bali and i can tell you that
bali was completely different from the 3 other island i have visitet untill
now. It's a hindu island, and you probably know my opinions about hindus but
untill now i did not have an opinion about ausatralians.
-but that's another story. Keep online.
Bali - the australian mallorca (5/12)
i felt the difference immediately when landing on bali. first i did'n
understand why people lookong alike people in java was so dfferent. then i
realized - there was no mosques, but temples. very large temples - hindu
temples with figures of all their funny but interesting gods, like shiwa,
the elephant man etc. i had come to a hinduland, and ofcourse they tried to
cheat me, but i was alert. hindus are ok as long as you know with whom you
are dealing.
from gilimanuk i went directly to denpassar - the capital of bali, where i
net more australians than ever before. howdi and okey dokey, they realy like
beer those guys the prices was the dobble from java and sumatra for boles -
whitr people because of all those drunken kenguros on short-stay package
trips.
jysk rejsaebureau from whom i bought my fly tickert was suppose to have a
service center in sanur 8 km from denpassar, so i went there, but it was
nothing but a lokal funiture shop who worked togethercvwith jr - and the
danish agent carl jacob friis jensaen was in hollyday on java. the only
danish thing i saw was the sign jr - and the danish flag. no info, no
newspaper, no danish coffeee and pastry. on the hostel where i stayed
i met roger a kiwi who tryed to come to balibarefood, but the captain did'n
let him onboard. so the airport police lent him a pair of boots from the
lost and find office and he went onboard. A real crocodile dundee.
Well - there are more than 17.000 islands in the Indoniesian archipelago so I
will have to choose or hurry if I want to be home for christmas. So now I am
heading for Sulawesi trying to experience one of the famous funeral
ceremonies of the Tana Toraja tribe. If they let me in.
Sulawesi - among lokal friends (5/12)
to come to sulawesi - the octopus formed island next to borneo - i had to go
back to java - surabaya from where there was a connection with pelni - the
National ship compagni and what a crowded city Surabaya was. millions of
cars and mc and no trafficlights. I just had to follow the locals and
strange enough i survived 2 days in this hectic city waiting for the boat.
Because of that I didn't buy a ticket on the economy class as usually - but a
ticket on 2 class - with a nice cabin and free food in the luxery upperclass
restaurant. 24 hours in luxery a wonderful trip surabaya - ujung pandang
where i made a lt of friendships with lokal people. actualy i did'n meet a
single bole in the whole week i spent in java. a good new friend from the
ship mr. haramrudin a botany working for the forest dep. invited me to stay
in his house in bantimurung, where hi showes me the jungle and the old
caves with handprints made of cavemen half a milion years ago. we had a
shower in the big waterdall and he explaned everything about the flora an
fauna around us. plenty of bats and butterflyes as big as bats in bahasa
indonesia - which i now understand a lot of. its a very simple language like
pidgin english - tarzan english.
From bantimurung i went north to tana toraja and YES - they invited me to
participate in a funeral ceremony , but a very long story i will write a
book about when i come home.
Tana toraja is a christian area with a lot of pre-christian traditions - the
death person goes very well dressed to their graves as they believe you can
take it with you. the landscapes is unbelievable beatiful. there was
christmas music everywhere comong from thr shops and cafes. i had babi dan
balok - pork and palmwine and i even played christmas psalms in a church on
the very old piano. the interesting week untill now. after i went to mamuju
- where i hope to get a boat to borneo - the island of my childhood dreams.
Remember you'll never know till you have tryed.
Kalimantan - and good buy Indonesia (11/12)
In kalimantan - the indonesian part of Borneo i still did'n meet any white
people. But in Samarinda i met mr. Dongles a young christian methodist, who
invited me to stay in his house - a wonderful place at the riverside.
In the evening we went out to a little village - visiting his girlfriend,
who lived in an asramah, together with 30 female students. And what a night.
Off course I was the middlepoint, as non of them had ever met a white man
before.
I told them about Denmark, H.C. Andersen - Peter Schmeikel and ouer welfare
system (in bahasa indonesian) and showed them my family foto album.
Everybody wantet to touch my hair, and asked me to take them vith me to
Denmark. Fortunately I am not 20 years anymore. But I promised to keep in
touch via postcards.
A couple of days later I went with a local riverboat to Berau crossing
equator and via Tanjung in the jungle I ended up in Tarakan, situated on an
island close to the Sabah border. Here I spent the time teaching tarzan
english to the staff in the local tourist office. They fotocopied my at the
time very large - handwritten english-indonesian - word and phrase book. Ten
words a day now had become about 200 most useful words. They drove me around
in the town - helped me finding a boat connecting for Tawau in Sabah -
Malaysia and with the migration office permision, to leave the country. The
morning I had to leave, they came to my hotel with food and drinks for my
journey - and took me to the harbour.
Selamat jalan - salam aleicum - may god bless you and please come back next
year, they said.
I have never in my entired life met so many friendly, helpfull and
caretaking people, than here in Indonesia. They have simply carried me on
there shoulder, all the way around the huge country. A paradise on earth.
Certainly, we people in the "developed" west have so much, to learn from
those "primitive people" in the third world.
So good buy, all my new indonesian friends. I will try to keep in touch. And
I will tell my people back home that outthere - beyond our world - there are
people, who live in the way the holy books tell us to live.
In peace, understanding and tolerance, with each other, the nature and there
god. - what ever they call him -
Sabah - back to civilisation (14/12)
Tawau is like all bordertowns - very international and very busy.
But still no white people and nobody speaking english. But as Bahasa Malayu
is very similar to Bahasa Indonesia I actualy had no language problems
crossing the border. I stayed in a very basic chinees hotel
- with bedside spittoons - in chinatown. NBi how ma - where the
people didīn faste, like the muslim people does in all this mounth ramadan.
So I neither had coffee or smoking problems, in Tawau.
Life is wonderful sometimes right.
From Tawau I went with an a/c bus - with smoking area - to Kota
Kinabalu (the town of the chinees widow) passing the highest mountain
between Himalaya and New Guinea - Mt Kinabalu - 4101 meter and
still increasing in hight. In Kota Kinabalu i checked in "trekkers lodge" and -
what. Not only white people - but 4 swedish and 3 danish people.
I couldīn belive it. Hejsan Sverige and Hej Danmark.
Kota Kinabalu, the capital of sabah, is a wonderful city.
The second day I met the local ombudsman, mr. patric sindu.
He was so impressed of my Bahasa Malayu, so he invited me
for dinner, to teach me something about the, in a matter of fact,
very simple gramma. And of couse we talked about the danish
wellfare system, which he knew very well.
But in the background i could hear brunei calling from the mosque
- come to Brunei Darussalam, the abode of peace - to experience
the true Islam.
And so I did -
Negara Brunei Darussalam - the abode of peace (16/12)
Like when entering Singapore, I was a little scared to enter Brunei.
It is a very strict muslem country, and the ministry of religios affairs, foster and promote islam. They have special officers who investigate breaches of islamic law, and government men, prowl the streets after dark, looking for unmarried couples standing or sitting too close to each other. Getting nailed for this crime, known as khalwat, will mean prisonment and a big fine. The sale of alcohol and porkmeat is banned and smoking is consideret - legal - but a very bad thing. People not dressed decently and men with long hair, had been deniet entrance to the country.
Allready on the boat from Kota Kinabalu, i got to know, that Brunei
was not, just a bad joke. There was a sign saying: no smoking - penalty $5.000 or two years inprisonnent. uha da da. And another thing. We are just in the middle of the muslim fasting month - ramadan, when all muslims are fasting.
And of course there are death penalty for drugs. OF COURSE.
So with clean jeans, clean shirt, with long sleeves, new shaved and with water in my hair (I had a haircut in Indonesia, one month ago) I enteret the passport control. Salam aleicum, I said.
Wo aleicum salam, said the young beatuful girl, with police
uniform and the obligatorian scarft on her hair. She stamped my passport 14 days tourist visa, without a wink, and I conquered my "new country no 74".
Being a non muslim, I had no problem at all. All countrys in
the world, have hindu and chinees restaurants, and even brunei.
Here I could eat, smoke and drink coffee, as much as I wanted,
like inside my hostel.
Actualy I was very lucky to get a room in the only youth hostel
in the country, Pusat Belia, for $10 a night, the next cheapest
was $100, for a singleroom in a hotel.
Brunei is an expensive country, and the people are very rich.
There are no mc and, no bicycles, everybody have at least one car.
I spent the first day sightseeing the city, Bandar seri Begawan,
the capital, with all the very very beatifull houses, five stars hotels, shopping centers and mosques. It was a GREAT EXPERIENCE.
The next day I went on a rivercruz, with crocodiles along the
riverside, in the eastern part of Brunei, with jungle walking
among monkeys. Fantastic.
But one thing hit me. The people did not look happy. They did'n smile like in Malaysia and Indonesia. So again, again i realizes that -
money don't make people happy. They actualy make people cerious and unhappy.
Indonesia was the poorest, of the four countrys I have visited
this time, and defenetly the country where people was most happy.
So all you fattig-rove (poor- ases) back home in denmark.
Don't worry - be happy.
Sarawak - and merry christmas (19/12)
With so many cars in Brunei, it should'n be difficult to hitchhike. So i left BSB, walking along the country road towards the checkpoint to Sarawak singing - "er du dus med himlens fugle". The monkeys followed me curiously in the trees, watching me like they never saw a viking with a pipe in his mouth, and the danish flag on his backpack.
Outside BSB there are not the same amounth of cars, so I walked about 10 km - crossing two rivers with small ferrys, before I was taking up by a young christian chinees buisinessman, Mr. Steve Young - in his brand new four-wheel-drive. He took me all the way to Miri.
On the way, he told me about the wild life of the bruneians. The christians have a kind of underground culture, with hidden discoteks, serving alcohol. But you won't find them unless you know, where to look, he told me.
The muslim buinessmen go to Pulau labuan a taxfree island in Sabah Malaysia, where there are no problems having mistress, or drinking alcohol.
When asking him about his very long fingernails, he explaned that, like buinessmen in Europe, wear suit, white shirt and tie, as a kind of uniform, the bruneians have long fingernails and wear a 10.000 $ goldwatch, to show they are in the business branch.
In miri a stayed in a very basic chinees hotel. Everybody slept in the same room, as the reception. A dormitorio with bunk beds and a spittoon for each bed. A very social place, where I made a lot of new friendships. Actualy i'm becoming very chinofil, very nice people the chinees, and there food is very delicious, special the fish soup - laksa - and the kway teou.
On thr bus from Miri to Sibu, we stopped at longhouse cafes and I met people, from many different tribes. Ibans, Dayaks, Didayuhs etc.
Actualy, there was a mother with her little son, in the "non smoking" bus, who was a very heavy smoker, like me. We became very good friends, allways first out of the bus, when it stopped - to smoke - she did'n speak malayu, but an Iban tribe language, but with signs and smiles we understood each other very well.
In sibu i re-met Henrik and Helle, the two danish medicin students. We stayed at the chinees methodist church in cheap, but very luxery rooms with ac, european bathrooms hot shower ect, and together, we explored the town and later we went together, by river express boat, to Kuching - the capital of Sarawak.
Sarawak has so many contrast - the citys are very developed allmost like europe, but with the charming chinatowns, and the wonderful hindustreets and a few km, inside the jungle, the many different tribes, Darwin might have called, the missing link between the apes and the modern man of the west.
In kuching I visited a lot og museums, e.g. the cat museum, the only one in the world - Kuching means cat and there are cat monuments, and pictures of cats, everywhere in the city.
To morrow I'm flying back to Denmark via Kuala Lumpur and Moscow, arriving in Kastrup the 22th December 18,10 o'clock, and with these last word from Kuching I want to thank all of you, for reading my travel-letters. It has been a pleasure to share these "huge" experiences with somebody from home. Actualy, when writing the letters I sometimes felt, that we was sitting, just next to each other, at the same table, smoking cigarets and drinking coffee.
And now, when the milleniun is running out, I won't miss the oportunity, to wish all of you a merry christmas and a happy and prosperous new year 2001.
-may your god bless you-
The traveling man
in Sarawak - east malaysia
-heading home for christmas
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