Of all of greater Vancouver’s generally boring suburbs, Richmond has historically been my least favourite, though the truth is, all of the suburban cities rate relatively equally compared to the much-preferred Vancouver proper. There’s no single reason for my particular disdain for Richmond; rather, a complex web of accumulated, interrelated flaws has hardened me against feeling affection for the town that serves as the final output for Vancouver’s sewage.

Richmond’s most obvious flaw is its flatness. For most, this is probably a minor characteristic, possibly even an overlooked one, but for me that flatness is evocative of my adolescent years in Winnipeg, though at least Richmond has a habitable climate and considerably fewer mosquitoes. The feeling of flatness is enhanced by the traditionally low height restrictions of buildings and signs, owing to the city’s close proximity to the international airport. When in Richmond, I feel as if the sky is mere inches above and the urge to duck follows me everywhere, as if I were seven feet tall and wandering around in a door shop for dwarves.

Then there’s the traffic plan. Or lack thereof. I suspect that the only reason they thought to lay down any sidewalks at all was so that the car stereo and crap furniture stores that inhabit the strip malls have somewhere to put their sandwich boards that don’t inhibit the flow of cars through the narrow parking lots. The roads are generally too narrow for the volume, since early city managers neither planned for future right-of-way expansion nor tried to foster a pedestrian- and transit-friendly community. If you plan to drive down No. 3 Road, bring along a book. If you plan to walk, bring body armour and a good insurance policy.

Speaking of No. 3 Road, I’d be lax if I failed to mention the lack of creativity in street naming. I’d expand on that, but it gives me a headache trying ponder all the various combinations of names that can contain the word “bridge”, or to sort out the otherwise identically named Crescents from the Cul-de-Sacs from the Closes, all of which seem to intersect, abut, and sidle each other in an endless series of dead-ends and misunderstandings that make me avoid all but a half dozen known routes out of fear that I might be lost forever in a subdivision of identical bungalows.

But that’s enough criticism – let me say something positive.

Though I have for many years actively avoided going to “Ditchmond” (as the locals derisively referred to it back in the day), it has in recent years undergone a major demographic shift, and lately I have been making some tentative forays across the river to see what’s up. This wasn’t completely intentional – I was picking someone up at the airport a while back and the flight was quite delayed, so I had a choice of hanging around YVR or going to Richmond for a couple of hours, and even downtown Kelowna contains more tolerable amenities than the airport, so off to Richmond I went. I’ve actually been back a couple of times since, by choice.

On the initial visit I found myself in what is now known as the “Golden Village” district, a commercial strip that contains a number of Asian-themed shopping malls, and through which a rapid transit line was recently opened that connects the area to downtown Vancouver.

Actually, I’m not all that keen on the expression “Asian-themed”, for it makes it sound like a bunch of white executives over at Cadillac Fairview opened a regular old mall full of Gaps and Grand and Toys but hung giant paper dragons over the escalator. No one ever refers to Cadillac Fairview’s Pacific Centre as a “Caucasian-themed shopping mall”.

At any rate, I kind of like the Golden Village malls, at least as much as someone can who can’t stand malls to begin with can “like” one. I started with Parker Place, based primarily on the great name. In a way it is my favourite so far, for it seems most foreign to my learned idea of what a mall is. The hallways are narrow and (relatively) rabbit-warren like, and the stores generally seem to be independent in nature rather than the bland and predictable chains that inhabit typical North American malls. In fact, I believe that Parker Place is unique in malldom in that its tenants have strata title over their spaces. Perhaps because if this, it has a bit of the ambience of a public market, say, an upscale version of the Mercado Publico in San Jose but with more glass and tile and fewer muggers.

From there, I made my way to Aberdeen Centre. This mall is much more in the western style, a little more upscale and shiny than Parker Place, and the store spaces are rentals, but the stores here are also likely to be unfamiliar to those who know only the typical North American mall. Like any other mall, there are plenty of stores in which I have little consumer interest, but there is one that I like quite a bit: Daiso, the Japanese department store.

Daiso is a sort of upscale “dollar store”. Products tend to be, generally, of a quality on the lower end of the scale, but much of it is far better than what is usually sold in what we typically know of as dollar stores, and products are often aesthetically unique and pleasing. I find it a good place to buy notebooks and assorted office supplies, as well as affordable but nice looking and practical dishes. They also sell replacement rubber ear buds to fit the ear-bud style headphones (that Future Shop will tell you don’t exist as they try to sell you a whole new headphone for $30). The price of replacement ear-buds at Daiso? Four for $2.

One also can’t go wrong with the “Food Court”. Typical malls usually have all the same grease-trap joints as any other mall – bad food at low-ish prices. The food in the Aberdeen Food Court is actually pretty good, though. On my most recent visit, I had a slice of “Teriyaki Chicken Mochi” pizza at the peculiarly named “Strawberry Cones Japanese Pizza & Pasta”. Though pretty tasty, and of a quality vastly superior to any standard discount pizza joint, this was probably the junkiest food offering available in the court.

My favourite part of Aberdeen Centre, though, is also the cheesiest: the musical fountain. It’s a smaller version of the same sort of fountain found outside of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. When I was in Las Vegas I wasn’t at all interested in it, but at Aberdeen I find it fascinating. Perhaps the smaller scale makes it a more intimate experience. The first time I went, the fountain was sending jets of water in all directions in time with the song “It’s a Small World”. On my most recent visit, the jets were syncing with a medley of classical themes, ending in a crescendo with the conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It’s really quite silly – I stand there with all the six year old girls, enthralled.

The Musical Fountain

It occurs to me now that if the most exciting product of my recent trips to Richmond is a fond reminiscence of shopping malls, either Richmond still has depressingly little of note to say about it, or I’ve recently been lobotomised, since under normal circumstances I feel as if I’m being smothered by an asbestos blanket if forced to spend 15 minutes inside a mall. I’ve been known to walk four blocks down Granville Street in driving sleet rather stroll through the dry warmth of Pacific Centre, and I’d rather be eviscerated than go to Metrotown Mall.

I’m sure that what makes the Golden Village malls tolerable to me is the extent to which they are “foreign” to what is familiar to me. Visiting them is not like wrestling alligators or hiking across the Brazilian Highlands, but there’s still a sense of adventure to be had in discovering them, the sort of adventure one gets from travelling to another country and immersing oneself in a culture different from one’s own. It’s a shame that more Vancouverites – Caucasian Vancouverites, I mean – don’t feel inclined to that sort of adventure, or so I deduce from the relative rarity of pale faces at Aberdeen, or some other “ethnic” enclaves in the Lower Mainland. It’s much more pleasant to get out an embrace difference than to sit around complaining about it. Isn’t that what multiculturalism should be all about?

As for the rest of Richmond, the city is not without some signs of progress, such as the previously mentioned rapid transit line, which is surely the best thing to happen to Richmond in decades. I also noticed that a number of bike lanes are now appearing on major routes. Overall, though, I’m still a ways from feeling affectionate toward the ugly urban areas outside of the immediate vicinity of the Aberdeen Skytrain station.

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A small restaurant just outside the city centre. At a table in the middle of the room sits a beefy young man with t-shirt sleeves rolled up, a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo on the table in front of him. On the wall behind him, a poster, one of those old black and white pictures of dirty young men digging into their lunchboxes while sitting untethered on a girder hundreds of feet above what will become Rockefeller Center. Over the restaurant’s sound system comes the voice of Elvis Presley crooning Always on my Mind. In the corner, a man with a sweaty forehead flicks a cockroach off the wall behind him while he waits for a cheeseburger, fries, and a lemonade.

Brooklyn, 1972? No, Tokyo, 2011.

Specifically, the “Freshness Burger” just up the road from the Nakano JR station. Nakano is an off-the-beaten-track neighbourhood not frequented by the mainstream tourist. I’ve been sticking with Japanese food (well, Asian food – I think I had Korean last night, but since I couldn’t read the menu, I’m guessing about that), but after spending an hour wandering around the Broadway Shopping Arcade, my blood sugar was low and I felt the need for something fast and easy.

It’s not that Japanese food is that difficult. After all, I live in Vancouver and have probably eaten at least five times my weight in sushi already. The challenge is largely linguistic. Most of the restaurants I eat at have no English on their menus, but they usually have pictures of the food, so I just point to things that look appealing.

Twice now I’ve eaten in restaurants that had no pictures, so I had to pick something by pointing at text that, for all I knew, might have said, “Federal tax will be applied to all checks”. There is some risk involved, though I suspect it’s not serious. My fear, though, is that in my ignorance the waiter will bring me a plate on which a large pufferfish sits staring balefully up at me while the other patrons, all locals, look at me admirably, mumble amongst themselves, and then go back to eating their yakisoba. As it turned out, the first of these attempts resulted in a very plain, but tasty, bowl of noodles. The second time, I got a bowl of rice and sashimi (tuna, I think) and miso soup. Here it is for your enjoyment:

From what I’ve written so far, it seems to me that two things demand explanation. One is my use of “checks” instead of “cheques”, which under normal circumstances I would be loathe to do. At the risk of offending my American friends, I consider their spelling of the word for a promissory note to pay as a “check” to be a sign of wilful illiteracy of the worst example. I think it’s admirable to establish one’s new republic based on the sort of egalitarianism not practised by one’s former colonial master, but a new country should aspire to “be”, not to “not be”, and adopting ridiculously simplistic and confusing spelling just to be different seems absurd and, potentially, destructive to one’s ambitions. If the American empire is in decline – and given the line-up of proposed candidates for the leadership of the nation’s apparently ascendant party, one must conclude that the decline is now one of free fall – I would assert that the fault lies entirely with the unfortunate decision to adopt language that confuses financial instruments with the patterns on one’s boxer shorts.

I won’t go on about this subject, except to say that I’m extremely disappointed in the Japanese – the people who dress their daughters in British sailors suits for elementary school – for adopting this American misspelling over the clearly superior British one, for I see it all over the place. “Where?” you might ask. Usually at the bottom of menus, though they are frequently the only English words on them, besides “Menu” and “Drinks”.

The other thing that perhaps deserves amplification is my reference to the “Broadway Shopping Arcade”. Normally, a mall is the last place I’d be found anywhere, even in my own city, but I heard about this one while reading about Nakano and decided to take a look. The arcade itself is nothing to write home about (though I suppose that is, in effect, what I’m doing), but off to the side of it is a small network of winding alleyways full of tiny restaurants and bars, many of which would only hold a dozen people at most, some fewer. It was pretty quiet during the day, but I suspect that it’s probably a hopping place at night.

Best of all, though, is that at the far end of the arcade is a dingy old mall consisting of several floors laid out like rabbit warrens. The place is full of small shops that sell all kinds of oddities, dolls, clothes, comics, and food. The largest retailer, it seemed, is something called “Mandarake”, except that it wasn’t just one store. The were all kinds of peculiar little shops, which may or may not have been Mandarake-specific (some seemed more like small museums), seemingly independent of each other but maybe weren’t really. According to Wikipedia, Mandarake is “one of Tokyo’s largest vendors of used anime and manga-related products”, and their own site claims that they are “the biggest and busiest manga and anime place in the world.”

While in the mall, I picked up a couple of t-shirts of a type that seem to be worn by young people all over Tokyo: shirts that have English words on the front that make no sense whatsoever. It’s like someone generates phrases comprised of random English words and makes shirts. I haven’t been taking a lot of pictures in Tokyo, which is not unusual for me, for I tend not to want pictures of things that I can find 30,000 different views of on Google Image, but since I got here I’ve felt like photographing the shirts that I see people wearing on the street. I don’t of course, for that would be a little intrusive (not to mention lechy).

It’s not a shirt, but here’s a minor example of English oddity: an advertisement for some sort of building renovation:

I’ve been gallivanting all over town, since I bought a refillable transit pass that lets me ride all the trains, subways, and buses in metro Tokyo. I’ve ridden at rush hour several times and I haven’t found things as crowded as western media makes it sound. Yes, there are white gloved attendants in the stations, but I haven’t seen them shoving people into trains. I can also safely report, with some disappointment, that no one has yet groped me in a crowded train car.

Considering that the the population of metropolitan Tokyo is roughly the same as that of all of Canada, the level of cooperation and the efficiency of transportation is highly impressive. I have seen not one incident of road rage or expression of anger by anyone, anywhere. I have seen only two vehicles being driven in what I would call an aggressive manner, and both of those were being driven by Caucasians. The metro station in my neighbourhood, Ikebukuro, handles a million passengers a day. I’ve been through that station several times a day since I’ve been here, and it’s a model of social cooperation. There are people walking in all direction – it looks like the inside of a beehive. Compare that to Vancouver’s SkyTrain: the entire system handles only 380,000 passengers a day, but if two people are riding an escalator at the same time, the odds are good that one’s going to be irritated by the other in some anti-socially apparent way. I realise that they have their own unique cultural issues, but we have much to learn from the Japanese.

Among the other places I’ve wandered is the garden of the Imperial Palace. Here’s a picture of the wall and moat, as well as the Fujima-Yagura. A yagura is a building for storage, and this one, apparently, has a limited view of Mt. Fuji from the top:

I also went to Akihabara, which is the traditional neighbourhood for electronics. It has become a bit of a mecca for gamers and anime enthusiasts so it’s full of young (and old) geeks and nerds (the Japanese word, apparently, is otaku). I found a narrow, six floor mall stuffed full of tiny stores that were themselves stuffed full of every electronic part or component you might seek, from capacitors to server cases. Alas, I was unable to find (at a price I was willing to pay) what I came looking for: a battery operated, pocket-sized cellphone signal blocker.

Here’s the entrance, ’cause I know you’re as fascinated as I:

As I was leaving there, a huge thunderstorm descended on the city, with thunder so loud it echoed deafeningly between the buildings, and everyone on the street stopped to look up. Then, the clouds opened and a deluge of rain fell. People ran to awnings and the elevated train tracks for shelter. I personally ducked into the nearest store, which turned out to be the “Love Merci Adult Amusement Park”, five floors of every sex aid you can imagine, including one floor containing nothing but inflatable, anatomically functional dolls. Curiously – or not so curiously – all the dolls were female. The sex shop was unlike Canadian ones. It was clean, had friendly staff, there were male and female customers who seemed to be shopping without shame, and there were no peep show booths in the back with sticky floors. (I’m not sure if that last bit is an endorsement or a complaint).

Speaking of cellphones, this is another area in which Tokyoites are superior, in my opinion. Everyone, it seems, has them (as is the case almost everywhere in the world now) but they are very polite with them. Not once have I seen anyone talking into a cellphone in a restaurant or on the subway. In fact, there are signs on the subway asking people to put their phones on ‘silent’ and refrain from making or receiving calls. They’re all texting, to be sure, but it’s quiet. In fact, for the world’s largest metropolitan centre, Tokyo is surprisingly quiet. Car horns are seldom heard. People converse in civilised tones. The only place I’ve noticed an inordinate amount of noise is inside the ubiquitous pachinko parlours, which appear to be casinos full of slot machines. According to my friend Guy, from Sechelt, whom I met up with here, it’s all just in fun, and that gambling isn’t legal, but that if you know how it is possible to redeem your winnings for cash on the black market. I won’t be finding out, of course, for I’m too cheap to gamble. If I wanted to throw my money away I’d just flush it down the electric toilet with the heated seat in my hotel.

I haven’t done any cycling here, but it seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult to steal a bike if I were so inclined. Tokyoites seem to leave their bikes unlocked, or with minimal security, all over the place, and there are a lot of them, everywhere. In fact, today I happened across this peculiar scene in Nakano:

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Okay, I’m a little behind in my travel blogging. Maybe it’s the heat. Or maybe it’s the food. There’s been a lot of food. In fact, this whole trip has mostly been about eating. Of course, one can’t eat continuously throughout one’s waking hours, so we’ve filled in the non-eating periods with other activities, like digesting, researching new places to eat, and visiting cultural sites. I’m not much of a ‘foody’, generally, but I do like to eat, so my companion has been the driving force behind the relentless pursuit of food and I’m quite happy to participate.

A brief historical preamble: Unlike the rest of Malaysia, a slight plurality of Penang’s population is ethnic Chinese, closely followed by ethnic Malays. Also well represented are Indians, primarily Tamils. Ethnic Chinese arrived on the Malay peninsula sometime in the 14^th century and their descendants are referred to as ‘Peranakan’. The culture and unique language have largely disappeared, as their numbers have been dwarfed by the influx of larger numbers of Chinese since British colonisation. What has not disappeared to the same extent is Peranakan cuisine, also called ‘Nyonya’ cuisine, which comes from the term ‘Nyonya Baba, which is more or less a combination of the words for ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’.

That’s enough dry history. On to the wet food. Some of the Peranakan dishes I tried I thought we’re okay, but the one I liked best is ‘Laksa’, which can be found all over the place, in various forms. The most common, perhaps, is ‘Assam Laksa’. Essentially, laksa is a bowl of soup noodles. Nothing unusual about that in Asian cuisine, of course, but as far as I can tell, it is the spices and other ingredients that make it unique – some combination of Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, and possibly Thai influences. I ate assam laksa several times. It’s a seafood soup, typically (I think), not exceptionally spicy, though it does have some small hot chilies in it. It is sort of sour, presumably from tamarind.

Another dish I soon came to favour, though not Peranakan, was Char Kway Teow, which is rice noodles fried in pork lard with assorted other ingredients, especially cockles and pieces of sausage. I can’t imagine that one would want to eat this on a regular basis, unless one wishes to develop a physique in the style of Mao Zedong, but it sure is tasty.

Char kway teow, Joo Hooi

My favourite place for both of these dishes was a little hawker market on Penang Road called ‘Joo Hooi’. I didn’t take a picture of Joo Hooi, but here’s one I stole from the internet:

(photo credit: Jazz)

I also enjoyed an ample supply of Mee Goreng, another fried noodle dish, a bit spicier and – possibly – a bit healthier, and of course, thanks to the Indian population, plenty of dal, tikka, and tandoori. I tried a bowl of chendal, which is sort of a dessert that I didn’t think I’d like much, but turned out to be pretty good. I think it contained tapioca, coconut milk, and taro, and I don’t know what else. But that’s not all I ate. There was also Pangan chicken, a betel leaf salad, sea bass with lime and chili. The only ‘western’ thing I’ve eaten is breakfast. My hotel provided each morning a staid English breakfast of eggs, ham, beans, fried tomato, and toast. Since I skipped most of the monuments to colonial imperialism in Penang, breakfast was my token acknowledgement of that part of the history.

Of course, there’s more to Penang than food. There’s drink. At Joo Hooi I had the only thing in Penang that I did not care much for: a glass of olive juice. It wasn’t horrible, but it seemed an unsatisfying combination of sweet and salty and wasn’t particularly refreshing. After that, I stuck to lime juice with lunch. Though not much of a coffee drinker generally, I also discovered a taste for the local “kopi”, which is a thick, strong, sweet, creamy brew apparently made from coffee beans that have been fried in butter instead of roasted traditionally. Owing to the heat, I’ve also taken to drinking ‘ice cream coffee’ after lunch and, occasionally, a mojito in the early evening, especially when sitting at an oceanside cafe at a place called “Beach Blanket Babylon” and, once, at the “Eastern and Oriental Hotel”. It’s an absurdly colonial place where some members of the staff actually wear pith helmets and stirrup pants, but we stopped for a drink in the hopes that we’d plunk our asses down in the same chairs that Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad once sat in.

We also visited the Peranakan Mansion and Khoo Kongsi, both of which represent aspects of Peranakan culture as well as cross-cultural influences. I’ve already mentioned the trip to Batu Ferringhi. We also took a day trip out to Balik Pulau, a small town somewhere mid-island where we failed to find whatever it was we’d set out to find but ate some more laksa, and on the way back from there stopped at the Kek Lok Si temple. Apparently it’s the largest Buddhist temple in southeast Asia, and parts of it are impressive, but it’s also riddled with gift shops which, while I suppose they help fund the upkeep, seem to detract from things by their numbers.

Here are some of my temple pictures:

Avalokitesvara - Goddess of Mercy

A 'Disnified' version of some Buddhist icons...

I can’t really talk about Penang without mentioning the traffic and the sidewalks. There’s lots of the former and almost none of the latter. The place is a honeycomb of narrow, winding little streets that presumably were built for horses and rickshaws, and since the buildings were built right to the road’s edges, pedestrians are often forced to dodge in and out of doorways and porches to avoid the cars, trucks, pedicabs, taxis, bicycles, and of course the motorcycles that seem to be the dominant mode of transport. The only real sidewalks are on major thoroughfares, but there are rarely any crosswalks or traffic lights on these routes, so crossing them often involved waiting for a rare break in the flow and then making a suicidal dash across to the other side.

Despite the apparent anarchy of the traffic, things seemed to be moving quite efficiently and I was surprised not to have seen any accidents despite the obvious craziness, like the motorcycle I saw weaving in and out of fast moving traffic that had two women sitting on it with a small child standing, helmetless, on the gas tank, or the man on a motorcycle squeezing through a narrow space between a bus and a taxi at 30 km an hour, steering with one hand and talking on a cellphone with the other. The illusion of efficiency somewhat dissolved, however, at the bus station in Balik Pulau, where the bus company has posted, on a sign board next to the bus schedules, graphic pictures of accident scenes that involved buses. I suspect that the pictures were meant to encourage safer driving by motorcyclists, who seemed to be the primary victims, but I’m not sure that showing your customers pictures of severed torsos and dismembered limbs is an ideal marketing tactic.

The photographer, two degrees shy of heat stroke

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Three years ago in Thailand, on my first visit to Asia, I thought my skin would melt off. I like heat, but I’m accustomed to the Pacific Northwest variety, where in summer one can be comfortably hot in the sun, but kind of chilled in the shade. The vast bulk of my DNA likely originates from seafaring barbarians from above the 60^th parallel who raped and pillaged their way down through Scotland, which accounts for my red beard. Of course, the Romans were there first, but even Caesar knew a thing or two about chilly winters. The point is, tolerance for extreme heat does not come to me naturally, genetically speaking. This time, at least, I knew what to expect and I was somewhat mentally prepared for it. I was pretty proud of myself in Singapore, for I wandered the city extensively and didn’t crumble into a cranky heap once.

Then I arrived in Penang.

I generally try to avoid air conditioning, for it’s a huge drain on energy, and there’s something sort of weird about sitting inside a refrigerator, and constantly moving from too cold to too hot can’t be healthy either. However, I find I have no hesitation about turning on the machine in our Penang hotel room every time I come in the front door. I also find plenty of excuses to wander through air conditioned shops that normally would have no appeal to me. (“Why yes, I think we should browse in this polyester track suit store.”)

Normally in this sort of heat, I would opt to wear the least amount of clothes possible, but since the majority of the population of Penang is Muslim, I feel an uncommon urge to dress more conservatively than I might otherwise. I’m making good use of my linen and seersucker shorts, and have abandoned underwear altogether as an unnecessary burden of superfluous insulation. Fertility specialists tell men who are trying to conceive to avoid hot showers and hot tubs, in an effort to prevent sperm degradation, but I wonder how useful that really is? After all, I’m not aware that the people who live here have extraordinary problems with fertility, and if the men of Penang have testicles half as roasted as mine and can still reproduce, perhaps heat is less a factor than we imagine. Is that too much information? Just be glad I’m not providing pictures.

Midweek, we decided to take a day trip out to Batu Ferrenghi. This particular section of the island isn’t a major draw, as it’s the primary destination for white western tourists (and I didn’t come to Malaysia to be immersed in my own culture) but it did have two things going for it. One was a spice garden, where we were able to wander trails through the jungle and look at a vast array of the plants from which many spices are obtained, as well as many other varieties of tropical flora. We had lunch in a gazebo and then swung on a large bench suspended by ropes over a stream while monkeys passed through the trees overhead.

Here are a few spice garden images:

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On my final day in Singapore, I once again ventured out to the north end of the island in search of the Changi Prison Museum, this time equipped with a more detailed map and the freshly viewed Google Street View image in mind. As it turned out, I was only a couple of blocks off on my last attempt.

For all of my effort, the result was somewhat mediocre. I skipped over the chapel portion pretty quickly, for I’ve already seen umpteen monuments to Christian hocus-pocus in umpteen countries, and after a while it gets to be like watching reruns of a show you never liked much in the first place. The museum itself was sort of interesting, but the whole thing was obviously designed by and for the (primarily English as well as Australian and American) colonisers who were victimised by the Japanese occupation. That’s not to say that those victims didn’t suffer horrendously, but I wondered if perhaps the emphasis was a bit Eurocentric given the incomparable scale of atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese. On the other hand, I can hardly be an expert on a subject I knew almost nothing of before my visit.

Once done there, I took the MRT out to Pasir Ris, a community on the other spur of the East-West line. Pasir Ris Park was my destination, the third largest park in Singapore. Much of it is like any other urban park, with playgrounds, fields, picnic areas, and a small amusement park. However, it also contains a five hectare mangrove swamp through which has been built a series of boardwalks, and that’s where I spent all my time. Here’s a sampling of some of the wildlife:

The park had quite a few people in it, but the mangrove swamp, despite being fully board-walked and easily accessible, was virtually deserted save the occasional jogger. Not that I’m complaining – after all the hubbub of the central city, I relished the peace and tranquillity of the swamp. The only thing that marred the peace, really, was oddly entertaining. The amusement park is quite close to the swamp, though you can’t hear anything from it – except, that is, for one ride which features the amplified opening bars of Strauss’s Also Spracht Zarathustra, the sound of which echoes spookily through the swamp and invokes a degree of the supernatural.

I had unconfirmed plans to meet some people in Little India for dinner at 6:30, but by the time I got back into the city centre I didn’t have time to go back to my hotel to check for messages, so I just headed straight to Little India station. The group of workshopping academics – the indirect reason that I am here – were supposed to be taking an audio tour of Little India before dinner, so I figured I’d run into them somewhere. I strolled around for about half an hour and then decided that I was probably better off sitting in one spot and watching for them to amble by. After all, how hard could it be to spot a pack of mostly white academics wearing headphones?

I chose as my aerie a small outdoor bar which was in reality a bunch of tables set up in an alley near the Indian arcade. It was an oddly comic scene. All of the other patrons, except for the six year old daughter of a Chinese man who’d interrupted his shopping for a beer, were men. I sat in direct view of two 60ish white guys, one of whom had hair dyed the colour of ginger and wore an AC/DC concert shirt but had a face like a desiccated crab apple. His friend wore a ‘Thailand’ t-shirt that looked like it had been cut out of a velour painting. Call it stereotyping, but all I could think of was ‘sex tourist’. The rest of the patrons were single men, mostly Indians and a few elderly Chinese.

The music that was amplified through the alley was some sort of power-ballad collection, featuring songs such as “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” and “I Will Always Love You”, which went along very nicely with the televisions mounted on the wall that were broadcasting some sort of violent American wrestling program that, as far as I could see, no one was watching except the six year old girl.

I ordered a Guinness, which I managed to save in the nick of time from being poured over ice by the waitress, and watched the stream of people passing through the alley. Indians must surely be the most beautiful people on the planet, whatever the gender (and there were at least three genders represented), even – or especially, perhaps – all of the young Indian men sporting 70s gay-porn moustaches. I’m usually in the habit of making eye contact with people wherever I go, and most of the time people look away, but Indians, I find, typically look straight back, with deep, dark eyes that seem to bore into you, neither threateningly nor over-amorously, and often they will smile.

Shortly after I’d ordered my second Guinness (which I almost never do – one and a half is usually the optimal quantity beyond which I start to get a little silly), the television switched over to women’s wrestling, which seemed even more violent than the men, though undoubtedly it’s all just theatre. After several minutes during which a black-haired woman and a blonde-haired woman – naturally wearing some sort of absurd, revealing sleepwear – slammed and hit and limb twisted each other with little noticeable reactions, the blonde woman cornered the other woman against the corner, stuck her ass in her face, and jiggled it back and forth. The dark haired woman howled in agony in a way that she had not when her face had been slammed against the mat. The six year old and I looked at each other and I rolled my eyes, prompting a giggle.

I finished my beer and continued wandering the streets until I found a wall to sit on and took up the watch once again for the touring academics. My perch was across the road from the Maxi-Cash Pawn Shop and the Jewel Palace, both of which were lit up like an Esso station. Next door, at The Church of the Eternal Light, the porch light flickered erratically.

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A couple of weeks back, as I was cycling out to Wreck Beach, my front fender started to make a hell of a racket, so I pulled over to check it out. As it turned out, I’d run over a piece of chewing gum that someone had coughed up onto the roadway. It was firmly stuck to my tire, and with each revolution it hit the edge of the fender and caused a clatter. In order to solve the problem it was necessary to pull the spitty, gritty lump of gum off with my fingers, which was surprisingly difficult for a warm day. After that I had to dislodge it from my hand which, in the absence of any useful implements, involved rubbing my fingers against the curb on Highbury Street. (If that doesn’t move you to search out a trash can the next time you need to dispose of your gum, then think of all the people with wheelchairs who experience the same trauma but with less convenience.)

Of course, the trauma was not so great that I now belatedly feel compelled to blog about the subject, but I thought of it now because I’m once again visiting Singapore, the only country in the world – that I know of – that has banned the import and sale of chewing gum. I remember when the ban was first implemented, in the early 1990s. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about Singapore and thought the ban an absurdly draconian example of Orwellian excess. I envisioned secret police sneaking around in trenchcoats nabbing schoolgirls with suspicious jaw movements, girls who were then dragged off to Room 101 for interrogation.

When I first visited Singapore in 2008 I wasn’t too worried about the chewing gum law, since I don’t chew gum. However, I remember that in grade six (that would have been about 1975 or so) I was accused by my teacher of chewing gum and told to come to the front of the class to spit it out. The trouble was, I wasn’t chewing gum. Somewhere along the line I’d picked up the nervous habit of making chewing motions with my mouth, unconsciously acting as if I were chewing gum. I didn’t even know I did this, but one of my classmates apparently did, for he spoke up in my defence, explaining that I always chew my tongue.

I know, a little weird. What’s even weirder is that I still do it. Not constantly or anything, in some kind of way that screams for a lithium prescription, but every once in a while I notice that I’m chewing nothing. It’s usually when I feel like I’m being observed in a moment of inactivity, such as when I’m on my bike at a red light and there’s a car full of people next to me. I suppose it’s the same social akwardism that makes me put my hands in my pockets, or reach for my key ring or some other handy object, when standing at a crosswalk waiting for a light to change, as if I’m somehow more vulnerable and exposed with empty hands. (Interestingly, I can’t recall ever having felt this sort of exposure when naked in public).

Anyway, I was on a bus yesterday, one of many buses I was on yesterday in a three-hour attempt to locate the Changi Prison Museum (thanks for the great directions, Lonely Planet), when I noticed that I was busily chewing nothing at all, and it occurred to me – possibly because right above me there was a sign encouraging citizens to call the police immediately if they see anyone suspicious – that possibly this mock chewing of mine could attract unwanted attention.

I never got hauled off to the gulag, but neither did I find the museum. Toward the end I spotted an imposing white building surrounded in chain link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire, with a heavily fortified guard shack, and thought I’d finally found it, but it turned out to be The Japanese School, which was sort of ironic since the Changi Prison Museum’s primary focus is the atrocities committed against POWs during the Japanese occupation in World War II. In the end I gave up and left it for another day, and made my way back to Little India for an afternoon snack.

Today I was much more successful in my quest to visit the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve for a little jungle birdwatching. With 600% humidity I was already well-moistened by the time I walked the short distance from the bus stop to the reserve gates, and by the time I’d ascended to the summit of Bukit Timah – Singapore’s highest hill at 165 or so metres, I was dripping wet. After traipsing all over the reserve, I’d only spotted three birds, and managed to identify only one of those (a Crimson Sunbird). I’d seen more birds outside of the Plaza Singapura shopping mall on Orchard Road, but I still enjoyed being in the jungle for a while, listening to the cicadas and looking at all the unusual insects, like Giant Forest Ants and something that looked like an earthworm with 100 legs that moved like the wind. Now I’m back at the hyper-colonial Raffles Town Club (where I feel more like a trespasser than a guest), preparing for a dip in the pool before I head out in search of a hawker stall for my evening meal.

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I wouldn’t want to be employed by the cabling company in Bangkok:

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While travelling in the eastern US and Canada this summer, I only had my point-and-shoot, and no mini-USB to transfer the images to my laptop. In Asia, I had the DSLR, but no laptop. Thus, I was unable to post any photos. Now that I am back in Vancouver, here are a few to catch up. Click thumbnails for larger image.

In Concord, Massachusetts, I went to see what Thoreau saw. The bath house is, of course, a new addition at Walden Pond:

Also in Concord, Thoreau’s grave. There’s a larger family stone with all the full names and dates, and this small marker on HDs actual pile:

The good burghers of Concord apparently saw fit to memorialise the road they paved over the weir of the indigenous fishers they vanquished, if not the fishers themselves:

On to the commune. Here’s the view of the middle pond, from the lodge house. If you squint you can see white-tailed deer in the water:

The lodge itself, centre. To the right is the temple; to the left, the guest house:

The desk in my cabin. It faced south, toward the pond and was very bright. I didn’t do a lot of writing in it, since there was no power, but it was a great place to wake up:

A side trip to Vermont:

One of the great things about the commune is the casual dress code. Here I am doing dishes:

By the time I got to New York City at the end of July, I was getting a little grizzly, though I fit right in while watching HAIR in Central Park the night before. This was taken on the Hudson, with Jersey in the background:

On to Asia…

Singapore was the first stop. This image appears on a map of Fort Canning Park, a lush historical site downtown. Chewing gum may be forbidden in Singapore, but apparently public sodomy is just fine:

The next stop was Ko Samui in Thailand, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This photo is at Big Buddha Beach, where we stayed. The clouds look threatening, but it was actually sunny most of the time:

Here’s Larissa at Zazen, our favourite restaurant in Samui. Or at least, our favourite rich, white tourist restaurant. Food was good, but I especially liked the little cubbyholes built into the wall outside, looking onto the beach. Nice and quiet:

Here’s a restaurant we didn’t try, the Mr. Poo Barbecue (a rather unfortunate transliteration of Mr. Phu):

The ferry dock at Big Buddha Beach:

The beach was very nice, and great for swimming, but an unfortunate amount of trash marred it in areas, such as this Fanta can, which had become an intertidal condo:

I have yet to identify this somewhat common bird. This one was seen in Angthong Marine Park:

Angthong Marine Park is an archipelago at which we hiked, kayaked and snorkeled. Here are some of the many small islands:

Next stop was Bangkok, but just for one night. Our room at the Shanghai Inn looked a bit like the Hollywood version of a Chinese bordello. Despite being in the middle of a human and automotive jungle, it was remarkably quiet.

Bangkok is astoundingly crowded and noisy (at least, compared to Singapore), but I loved it, even if I did have to duck into a cafe occasionally to desensitize:

A sample of the electrical work:

Not all streets were a maddening crush. This passage in Chinatown was comparatively sedate, and check out those paving stones:

On the way home I stopped in Korea to see my cousin, Jennie for a few days. She toured me all over Seoul, despite being six months pregnant, and her husband Kevin filled me with meat and Soju. By the time I left, Jennie and I had similar waistlines:

Those Koreans love their signs. Most of the urban areas I saw were built very densely, with lots of apartment buildings instead of sprawling suburbs, and at night they glow with neon and other lighting:

I’d say more, but I’m jetlagged. Off to bed.

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I arrived in Singapore on July 28 – my first trip across the date line, and my first journey to Asia – where I met up with Larissa, who was attending a symposium on electronic arts.

Singapore has a reputation for being a pretty rigid place, where gum chewing is against the law. From my brief visit, it didn’t seem so bad. I only saw one cop in the four days I was there and he wasn’t caning anyone for jaywalking. As I understand it, most of the dictatorial power of the state is applied to discouraging opposition to those in control of the government. This has apparently been quite successful, as the same party has been in charge since 1959.

Although we had done no planning ahead of time, we’d intended to take a vacation while in the region. After considering Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos, we settled on Thailand, and flew to the island of Koh Samui on August 1, where we checked into a small, middle-brow resort called The Secret Garden.

I was excited about visiting Asia for the first time, though now that I am here I am less excited about it. Samui, which once consisted of a bunch of fishing villages, is pretty much one big resort where the locals cater to the tourists in standard colonial fashion. Every town is comprised half of resorts, one quarter bars and restaurants, and one quarter tailors who make clothes cheap that bear labels of big designers, like BOSS and Armani. What sort of person would have so little self-esteem to buy an ‘Armani’ suit in Thailand and seriously add it to his closet, I don’t know. If you aren’t rich enough to buy the real thing, it just seems white trashy to try to fake it. Kind of like a labourer putting plaster lions on the fenceposts of his 33 foot lot in East Vancouver. Oh well, to each his own.

I am also disappointed by the amount of garbage on the beaches. I’m not sure it originates directly from tourists, or from poor disposal infrastructure. On the other hand, it seems generally safe here.

I did not bring my laptop on this trip, so I am using Larissa’s MacBook, which I am finding a challenge. Linux has spoiled me. I cannot even figure out how to resize an image or start an FTP client, so there will be no photos uploaded until after I get home.

On Monday, we’ll be flying to Bangkok for one night (where the world’s our oyster), and then returning to Singapore for another night. From there, Larissa will head for Toronto, via Vancouver, and I’m off to Korea, to visit my cousin Jennie for a couple of days in Seoul. Back to YVR on the 16th, the Aeroplan gods willing.

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Here I sit in La Guardia airport, where I’ve been for the last six hours waiting for Air Canada to come up with an idle 767 to clear the surplus bodies abandoned after a couple of flights were cancelled this morning due to thunderstorms. La Guardia was apparently named “greatest airport in the world” (quotes not mine, LL) in 1960, but in 2008, it leaves a bit to be desired. Specifically, services. The only place after security that sells hot tea is sold out, and anyone looking to drink themselves silly to combat the boredom is out of luck, too. The universe (ie: Robert Milton) willing, I’ll be out of here by 5:30 tonight.

This wraps up part one of my summer vacation. I left my friends at the commune on Monday and made my way to Manhattan with Tim. On Tuesday, were got up at 5:30 am and cycled to Central Park to sit in line outside the Delacorte Theatre to wait for the scheduled distribution of free tickets to the 41st anniversary opening of HAIR. Seven hours on a blanket in Central Park was infinitely more pleasant than the same at La Guardia, and we got the tickets we sought. They even turned out to be great tickets. The show was great – with the Central Park setting, it was like being in the 60s again. And how oddly relevant it all seems, once again.

Also on Thursday, Tim took me out to a few Chelsea galleries. Most memorable were pieces by Zhang Huan at the PaceWildenstein Galleries. I have since discovered that there is an exhibit of some of Huan’s work at the VAG right now, so I’ll have to check that out too.

Wednesday night, after a day of cycling in Manhattan and dinner at an Indian restaurant, another sort of culture: Mamma Mia (the film, not the play). We’d read an amusingly critical review in the New York Times, and decided to give it a go. It was, as the review promised, awful but entertaining. I suspect that it might be an ideal candidate for viewing under the influence of mood altering substances.

I should be back in Vancouver late tonight, unless Air Canada abandons me in Toronto for the night. I’ll not have time for much more than re-packing, though, as I’ll be off to Singapore on Sunday.

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