Ah Meng or a story to pick

A few days ago we came across this nice story. A shame we didn't know earlier when we were in Singapore. But we could have been suspicious and could have explored a bit further. Our guidebook told us that the zoo in Singapore is well worth a visit. Lying in the North of Singapore, the zoo is one of the world's few open zoos, where moats are preferred to cages. There are some 3200 animals, representing more than 330 species. The zoo manages to approximate the natural habitats of the animals it holds, and though leopards, pumas and jaguars still have to be kept behind bars, this seems like a nice place for zoo-animals. As a special treat at Singapore's zoo, one can have a breakfast of seasonal tropical fruits with an orang-utan. We actually thought about this, but travel advice tells you not to have fresh fruit which you haven't peeled yourself on the first days in a tropical environment. So we didn't go.

Some days ago we found Paul Carter's first book at our favourite bookshop, Kinokuniya, in KL. The title is kind of catchy: Don't tell mom I work on the rigs: she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse. Worth a try, we thought. Paul Carter has worked on oil rigs in the Middle East, the North Sea, Borneo, Tunisia, Sumatra, Vietnam, Thailand, Nigeria, Columbia and Russia. In his book he tells some of his stories, some terrifying and violent, but most of them utterly funny. Little D. loved the book and couldn't put it down once had started reading.

Here is one of his stories (summarised by us, it is really fun to read his whole account):
One drill ship in South-East Asia had a very special crew member. Ah Meng, a young orphaned orang-utan who the drill ship's captain found in some harbourside market. He brought her back to the rig and there she stayed for many years. The bar on the rig became Ah Meng's domain, since she ran the bar on the rig for the next fifteen years. According to Carter, the bar was always clean and organized, and Ah Meng mixed the cocktails as well. "And in this bar was never any fighting because everyone had too much respect for Ah Meng [...] and if she wanted to, she could pull your head off and throw it over the side. Whenever the rig was in Singapore getting work done in dock, the boys would take Ah Meng out into town. Some older taxi drivers still remember driving her, they will tell you she was just like any other tourist. [...] When the drill ship was sold to a new drilling contractor, the company said Ah Meng had to go. The crew was in Singapore at the time, and decided to phone the Singapore zoo for advise. The zoo had heard of Ah Meng, and immediately asked if they could have her. In a cab Ah Meng left the ship, the crew was in tears waving her off." Barely in her twenties, she started a new life at the zoo. Because of her bizarre circumstances and gentle nature, she became a kind of meet 'n' greet ambassador for the zoo.

Here is the story that the zoo favours:

"Born in Sumatra, Indonesia around 1960, Ah Meng came to the Zoo at the approximate age of seven in 1971 when she was confiscated from the Chinese family who had kept her as an illegal pet. In 1982, the Zoo introduced ‘Breakfast with an Orang Utan’ programme and Ah Meng was the star. She shot to fame instantly and became a celebrity both at home an overseas. By 1986, she had featured in almost 30 travel films and had appeared in more than 270 articles in newspapers and travel magazines.

For her outstanding contributions in promoting the Zoo as a tourist attraction, Ah Meng is the first and only non-human recipient of the ‘Special Tourism Ambassador’ award conferred by the then Singapore Tourism Promotion Board in 1992."

Now you can choose which story you like better...

Sadly, Ah Meng died on February, 8th this year. She was 48. A devoted mother, Ah Meng leaves behind two sons, two daughters and six grandchildren. You can see here how popular she was! We feel sorry for not having met her.

When we got to Malaysia - Part I

After 3 1/2 weeks in Malaysia, we thought it might be interesting to write down a few impressions.

It's raining, man!

Since we are living in London for quite a while now and the Brits love talking about the weather, we have to start this post with impressions of this important topic. The weather is mostly as we expected it to be, but not as predictable as we thought. Warm, usually around 32°C, very humid, with heavy rains and fierce thunderstorms in between, mostly in the afternoons. Rain and thunderstorms are very welcomed here, bringing a bit of cooler air. Of course, when the sun comes out again after the rain, it gets more humid than it was before, at least until all the rain water has evaporated. If, on a given day, there has not been a thunderstorm until 4pm, we start longing for one, especially when it is really hot and sunny. But neverthless, we cope unexpectedly well!

Da hood

The university guys rented an appartment for us. It is on the 11th floor of a 23-storey block, in a complex with 4 other blocks like ours. Recently built, not all appartments in the other blocks seem fully equipped or rented out yet. It is an enclave for foreigners here. We are probably the ones with the longest way home, most people here are from the Middle East or other Asian countries. We already met a very nice Iranian guy, who is here with his family, and a Japanese couple. And some others we don't know where they are from. People are nice, we tend to meet them on the 7th floor. The 7th floor is quite sociable, meaning there is internet access, snooker tables, the pools, the launderette and the childrens' playground.

We like our appartment, finding one like that in Frankfurt for little D. next year would be superb. But this will probably not happen, and surely not for 360€ a month. ;-)

The only thing that left us startled a bit in the beginning was that there was NOTHING in the flat when we moved in except for the furniture. No bed covers, no bed linen, no towels, no glass, no spoon, no telephone. That is OK for someone who moves in for longer, but we will stay only for 2 months. Anyway, stuff is quite cheap here and we have a shopping center in 5min walking distance, so we went on a shopping spree right away.

After half a day, we moved in with all the necessary stuff. And it is cosy now, especially during the thunderstorms. ;-)

Meal deal

A highlight in Malaysia is the food. It took us a few days to figure out what halal means. Most of the restaurants have a little sign, saying their food is halal. Halal food is basically the food a Muslim is allowed to eat according to his beliefs. It means of course no pork, no alcohol and no blood. Not too bad for us, too, since little D. became allergic to pork recently. :-(

We love the Malay and the Thai food, the Vietnamese and the Japanese food here. Luckily, we live close to the shopping center which houses a lot of restaurants. That comes in very handy! There are not so many places which offer Malay food. Probably, the residents want to eat something special when going out for dinner and not the stuff they get at home. What we miss so far is a Malay restaurant where you eat with your fingers. We were really looking forward to this. According to our guide book, this should be the waypeople here eat. Well, not around our place, but we will find such a restaurant. We mostly use fork and spoon (knives are very rare), and occasionally chopsticks. Surprisingly, the latter are much less common than we thought. A meal for two including drinks and service in a decent restaurant comes at 40-70 Ringgit, i.e., 7-12 GBP.

Our shopping center is so urban that it has a Delifrance café. They do very good coffee and "Stückchen" (German for small pieces of sweet pastry)!! (Better than in London actually - that is, ignoring Paul!)

They come in all shapes and (small) sizes

Malaysia is an interesting country with a mix of races and religions. A bit more than 50% of the people here are Muslim Malay, 23% are Chinese, 11% are Indian and the rest are non-Muslim Malay and people with other South-East Asian roots. We were a bit surprised how dominant Islam is in public life. If you don't know the figures you could easily suspect that more than 70% are Muslim. The mix of people is interesting: you see all kind of different people when walking around a bit. The men simply dress as they like, there is not too much difference to Europe, but some tendency to wear loud shirts and, on the other hand, some Muslim attire, of course. The women are more remarkable. You occasionally see Muslim women with this whole-body-coverd-black-veil, accompanied by a (presumably) Muslim husband in shorts, muscle shirt, sandals and cool sunglasses. (Remember, 32°C). Then there are a majority of Muslim women with scarves and the traditional shapeless, but very colourful dresses, then the younger women with jeans and modern long sleeved shirts and scarf, finally the ones without scarves. This is also reflected in the shops. You have shops for clothes to sew at home, many shops for scarves and those shapeless dresses, and then many, many ultra hip shops for younger people. And a lot of shops with very sexy, very short dresses. We haven't seen anyone wearing this. But no one would wear these dresses in daytime anyway. Many young Chinese women are dressed in a sexy way, showing a lot of skin (but they very well can, all very slender!). Of course, there are also the business type of women in suits. This should give some impression of the mix here.

Curiosities of Malaysia

As Europeans, some daily routines in Malaysia are quite unusual for us. Here are some of the funny and strange things we have stumbled upon (sometimes literally).

Malaysia, land of little steps

Malaysia, or at least the area around KL, seems to be full of small, irregular and unexpected steps. You walk on an even surface, and suddenly there is a heightened floor. Or an uneven kerb. Or some loose cobblestones. Or some water drainage which actually is a mantrap. The Malaysians seem to be very fond of steps and very often build some without any obvious necessity. Another topic are stairs: they tend to be uneven. The first step is often huger than the others, which really can make you stumble.

Shampoo and "excessive scalp oil"

Then there is the issue of shampoo. We had to buy new shampoo, and the supermarket has a whole row of shelves to offer. We didn't find one that promises to give more volume to the hair, but thousands against dandruff. (Seems to be a massive problem here. ;-) ) We chose one called "Clear", which promises "refreshing with cooling sensation". After all, it contains vitamins A, C and E. And what is good for our bodies might be good for our hair as well, we thought. The effect of the shampoo is an excellent distribution, yet not removal of the scalp oil with every wash. No dandruff. (We didn't expect dandruff anyway, but let's give the shampoo at least some credit. Although we think that the essence of being a shampoo is the removal of scalp oil. Maybe we are wrong.) Not quite satisfied with "Clear", we started a second attempt to find a suitable shampoo. After many minutes of browsing thoroughly through the shampoo shelves we found a promising product. "Sunsilk clean and fresh". "Remove excess scalp oil build-up in one wash" it says on the bottle. We will keep you posted. :-)

No-nos

When using the commuter trains to KL, you will soon find out that a lot of things are prohibited. Whereas we are well used to the no smoking and no eating or drinking sings, the imagination of the Malaysian Komuter [sic!] train authorities goes much further. In every carriage you will find 7 prohibition signs in a row which forbid the following actions: smoking, eating & drinking, littering, chewing gums, indecent behaviour, carrying dangerous & flammable materials (no cigarette lighters are allowed, but you wouldn't need them anyway because you are not allowed to smoke, so what) and bringing animals. Our favourite, of course, is the indecent behaviour sign. Encircled in red you find the heads of a woman and a man, maybe kissing. We can't really tell if they are kissing, because the heads are crossed with a red line. Our interpretation after all: in the train the very dangerous behaviour of kissing is not allowed. Some rebels, usually young couple still very much in love, dare to hold hands. Don't let the morale police see this, fellow friends. (Yes, there is a morale police in Malaysia, we think they are only in charge of the Muslims here, but we don't know exactly.) Anyway, we think Malaysia is not really suitable for honeymooners. Boy, have we been indecent in the past...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Another very strange thing is that 95% of the women and men in advertisments in this South-East Asian country are Westerners. How strange is this? Even with plenty of whitening creams, a Malay or Indian or Chinese woman will never look like Gwyneth Paltrow or Kate Moss or Avril Lavigne, who are all very popular here. (Our desperate attempt to find a night cream WITHOUT skin whitener finally succeeded.) Moreover, there are not only actresses or other stars posing in ads, but also many unknown Western models, women and men. As if they would not have plenty of pretty people here. Just think of the beauties of Singapore Airlines... The Malaysian men, at least, partly succeed in imitating David Beckham's hairstyles.

Stopover in Singapore

A lot has been going on, and finally we find some time to report it here. On Sunday, September 21st, we took a night flight from London to Singapore. T. had suggested to fly with Singapore airlines, in order to find out if the stewardesses really are as pretty as in the ads. (We did not expect this to be the case.) Well, they are. Most beautiful. A bit depressing actually for little D. ... But in the end, she spent much more time staring at them than T. And making admiring comments. In any case, the flight was comfortable, the food was good, the movie program included Keinohrhasen (a flick with Til Schweiger, the master brain of German film), and after all the excitement, we could even catch a little sleep.

Immigration was extremely simple, and we took a taxi to our hotel on the island of Sentosa, which lies south of the main (is)land. We had a really nice hotel with an especially nice pool and beach.

Our room had hillside view, which just meant that we saw 180° of this:

And yes, it is quite humid, but not too bad, we whitebreads could cope with it. It is also not too hot. Around 30° or less, which is OK. Singapore is interesting, but very modern and westernised. You can find all the shops from London's Oxford Street there as well. And prices in these shops are nearly the same as in Europe. We had only two whole days and an afternoon in Singapore, which of course is not enough to get a real impression. We very much like the Singapore Sling (kleiner versteckter Hinweis an unseren Freund H. aus B.), the famous cocktail invented by the Raffles Hotel in Singapore in the early 20th century. Very nice ;-) Of course, we had it in the Raffles Hotel. Beautiful building, restored in the late 80s, and just as colonial as you would expect from history books. We enjoyed our evening on the verandah there anyway.

The short time given, we still saw quite a bit of Singapore: Chinatown, the Indian district, some restaurants near the Singapore river, some Buddhist temples, all very nice. It was exam season for pupils when we were there. And you can make an offer in a temple to let your son or daughter get A grades. Funny. It was reported in the newspaper as well. I am not so sure if this is really Buddhist thinking or just a practical way to believe in good grades and the potential of your children. Or for the Buddhists to make some money.

If we should get back to this area of the world some time, then we will surely try to stop over in Singapore again.

Our Singapore discovery

Golden Rain, 2005

The artist is Li Chen, a Taiwanese sculptor, who currently has an exhibition in Beijing. We are not the only ones loving these sculptures. Recently, one was sold by Sotheby's Asia for 200.000 US$. Leaves us with the pictures only.

We think the sculptures speak for themselves:

Cultivated by Mist and Cloud, 2000

Cause, 2003