The parallel universes of Hong Kong

View of Hong Kong island from Kowloon

I always imagined Hong Kong as a mythical place that was created to be a backdrop for action movies starring the likes of Jackie Chan or epic novels such as James Clavell's Tai-Pan. Now that I'm here, I feel like I've entered that mythical world. It's so surreal it's hard to imagine it really exists.

View of Hong Kong island at night

I knew there would be skyscrapers, I just had no idea how high they really are. I knew the view across Victoria Harbour at night would be breathtaking, I just had no idea the buildings participate in a light show performance. I knew there would be vast shopping malls, I just had no idea that Armani shops could span over three floors or that a mall could be more than a kilometer long. I knew the internet would be fast, I just had no idea how super lightning fast.

Endless shopping malls, decorated for Chinese New Year

View from Victoria Peak

I knew the city would be crowded, but for some reason, it's not as crowded as I expected. That's probably because the city is sectioned into layers, like parallel universes, each with a unique purpose and a life of its own.

Underground passageway

There is the underground layer with the metro and the myriad of underground passageways so convoluted that a map is needed to be able to understand how to exit a metro station.

A public park

Then there is the street level with the buses and taxis and surprisingly few cars that is shared with pedestrians. It's clean, smoking and spitting is prohibited in public areas, there are sidewalks and traffic lights and friendly reminders which way to look before crossing the street. There are so many public parks and green areas, it's hard to believe how they fit them all in among the skyscrapers.

Friendly reminders to ensure safe crossing

And then there is the upper layer, consisting of escalators, overpasses and all weather walkways that wind through shopping malls and end up in fancy hotels or bank headquarters.

Entering the upper layer

The Apple store is on the upper layer

Upper layers for pedestrians and cars

An upper layer walkway may easily flow into a public park or a children's playground or a tai chi court.

Walkway continues into a public park

Since most of Hong Kong island is on a hill, they have the Travelator, an escalator that carries people uphill. It would be a fun free ride if only you didn't have to walk back.

The Travelator

Once I enter a layer, it's like I'm caught in it, living the life of that universe, going with the flow, following the signs at intersections to get me where I want to go. But getting out of a layer is an exciting adventure of finding my way out of the maze of passageways.

Shops advertise to each of the layers

Last, but not least, there is the Star ferry that has been carrying passengers across Victoria Harbour between Kowloon and Hong Kong island since 1880. They have renewed their fleet since then, but still, the boat I took was built in 1958, before I was born. It's like history is mixed in with the futuristic look and feel of the skyscrapers.

View of Kowloon from the Star ferry

Impressions of Malaysia

City mosque in Kota Kinabalu

Malaysia is an easy country to travel. “Easy to travel” usually translates into the fact that it is more touristy therefore also more expensive and there is more pressure to buy whatever is forced upon the tourists. My experience is that I was generally able to avoid the more touristy areas and focused more on remote parts which I explored using local transport. Yes, I had to pay for the tours I took, as they don’t allow you to climb Mount Kinabalu outside of a group and you can’t do a Kinabatangan river safari on your own. But the rest was easy and peaceful. My average cost per day if I exclude the tours is comparable to the costs in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia.

Hindi temple in Penang

What also makes it easy to travel in Malaysia is that they use the Latin alphabet which is always helpful in a foreign country. Even if I don’t understand the language, I can read signs such as the names of places or names of food items on street stalls. Almost everyone speaks at least a little English in Malaysia so it was easy to get around. Even young schoolgirls chatted me up in basic English. I spoke with a local woman who told me that she went to university in India. She said that although there are many good university programs in Malaysia, some people decide to study in India. According to her, India has the best medicine programs because they have so many dead bodies that no one claims it’s easy to practice medicine on them. I think this might be a myth although with India, you never know. Do they really pick up dead bodies by the side of the road to use them for studying medicine?

Another aspect of the more developed countries of southeast Asia such as Thailand and Malaysia as compared to the less developed Laos and Cambodia is the amount of hassle they give you when entering the country and their visa requirements. The less developed countries make you fill out elaborate forms and pay a fee. I wonder if they believe that there are millions of foreigners lining up to take residence in their countries. The more developed countries just stamp your passport and in you go, no questions asked.

Malaysia is a mixture of Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures and religions. I was so glad to have the option of Indian food although the Indian ethnic groups are more populous on peninsular Malaysia and less so on Borneo where it’s predominantly Chinese. It’s fun to watch the coexistence of the Muslim population which doesn’t drink alcohol or eat pork with the Chinese culture which is quite the opposite. But they seem to make it work. I’ve seen Chinese restaurants that display “serve no pork” signs to be able to cater to the Muslim population. And I noticed a group of Chinese tourists who went to a Malay restaurant where they ordered Cokes and spiked them up with liquor from a small bottle that they brought along.

Performance at a Chinese New Year Bazaar
(looks and feels just like Christmas)

Out of all the countries in southeast Asia that I visited so far I noticed quite a number of fat people in Malaysia as opposed to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, where practically everyone, young and old alike, is either skinny or bordering on emaciated. It probably correlates to the standard of living which is higher in Malaysia and also to the number of fast food places that can be found everywhere in Malaysia, even in very small remote towns. I sometimes had difficulty finding fresh fruit which I had become accustomed to eating for lunch and which was always readily available in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. In Malaysia, it’s much easier to find street stalls that sell baked goods, waffles or pancakes. The fast food is also quite cheap therefore it is accessible to the entire population. For example, in Cambodia and in Thailand, a meal in a fast food place would cost about three times as much as a meal from a street stall. In Malaysia, the cost is about the same. So even the poorest can eat a greasy burger and fries for the same price as a noodle or rice dish with meat and vegetables. It’s sad to note that a better standard of living goes hand in hand with less healthy eating choices.

Seafood galore

Seafood restaurant or aquarium?

It's impossible to avoid seafood in southeast Asia. Even in Laos, a landlocked country, food often includes fish sauce or dried shrimp. I'm not much of a seafood lover but out of necessity I have become accustomed to the taste. It still doesn’t mean I love seafood, it’s just that chances are that whatever food I order they will probably add something fishy to it. For example, the variation of nasi lemak, a traditional Malaysian dish, unexpectedly contained squid in addition to the mandatory dried anchovies.

I came across an amazing seafood restaurant in Kota Kinabalu that could easily pass as an aquarium. They keep live sea animals in tanks and they prepare them fresh when a guest orders. I asked for permission to take photographs, but then I sneaked away before they could ask me to order. Here are a few details:

Despite my unenthusiasm for seafood I was drawn by delicious smells that wafted from countless seafood grills while I was strolling through the night market. There is something inviting about fresh seafood that just made me stop and eat grilled tiger prawns. They were served with rice and a very spicy sauce. Fresh, tender, delicious. And unbelievably inexpensive.

Seafood grills at the night market

Visit to a dairy farm

Desa dairy farm

There isn't much of a dairy industry in southeast Asia. Milk and dairy products are scarcely available. The few times I was served butter for breakfast it came from New Zealand. Since I'm lactose intolerant, I don't really miss dairy products but sometimes I hear from other travelers that they wish there was yogurt or sour cream.

I was quite surprised to discover that there is a dairy farm in the area around Kinabalu National Park in Borneo and that they advertise it as a tourist attraction. Or perhaps that's exactly why it's a tourist attraction: because dairy farms are so rare around here. I wasn't all that excited at the prospect of seeing cows but it made a convenient hiking destination so I decided to pay them a visit.

Platform for viewing cow milking

Whenever I visit this type of tourist attraction I marvel at how the entrepreneurial owners make extra income. For example, at the dairy farm, they charge an entrance fee, they offer bunches of grass for sale so that children can feed the calves, they charge a hefty fee for wedding photographs (maybe I lost them here, who wants to take their wedding photographs on a dairy farm?), they have guided tours through the production plant and tourists may view cow milking every afternoon (I was there in the morning so I missed it).

They also sell milk at 1,30 EUR per liter which is rather expensive, chocolate milk, and homemade ice cream. There weren’t any dairy products such as cheese but I’m guessing they sell all the milk and don't have any left over to make cheese.

Chinese influence in Malaysia

Chinese cemetery in Sandakan

The Chinese influence in Malaysia is evident especially since almost a quarter of the population is of Chinese descent. Most of the Chinese practice the Buddhist religion with the remainder primarily Christian. It's therefore not surprising that there are so many Chinese people, their temples, cemeteries, restaurants and dwellings. While there is also a significant Indian population on peninsular Malaysia, it's not so on Borneo. Here, it's predominantly Chinese and even a few roadsigns and menus in restaurants are in Chinese.

Contrary to the Malay Muslim and Indian restaurants that typically don't serve alcohol and pork, the Chinese have everything. Beer as well as animal entrails are readily available in Chinese restaurants.

Detail on a Chinese grave

I wandered into a Chinese cemetery in Sandakan, a city on Borneo where I spent a few days. It's different from any cemetery I have ever seen before, but then I have never been to China so I probably don't have a mental image of what a Chinese cemetery is supposed to look like. At the side edge of the cemetery there is a section where I could see graves marked with crosses, obviously the part of the cemetery where the Christian Chinese are buried.

Chinese New Year decorations

With the significant Chinese population it's also not surprising that everyone is getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year which falls on February 10th this year. There are decorations in public places that remind me of how we decorate for Christmas.

Palm oil production at the edge of the jungle

Palm oil plantation

Out in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of a Borneo jungle lies Sukau, a village on the banks of the Kinabatangan River. It's booming with a growing tourism industry as river safaris are becoming more and more popular. They are much more pleasant than walks through the jungle so it's no surprise that tourists choose boat rides over going on foot.

In addition to income from tourism the village makes a living by growing palm trees for palm oil production. Malaysia is one of the world's top palm oil exporters and 30% of Borneo's exports last year were palm oil. Palm oil has many uses, such as for cooking, for animal feed, as an ingredient for cosmetics as well as for producing biodiesel fuel and many more.

Palm oil fruit

However, world demand for palm oil is declining due to increased palm oil production in neighboring Indonesia and general global economic crisis. The current production of palm oil in Malaysia is somewhat higher than demand. It is also difficult to find laborers to work in the plantations. Until recently, Indonesian immigrants were hired for these jobs but now that Indonesia is increasing palm oil production on its own, workers stay at home.

The Malaysian government has therefore put a stop to expanding palm oil plantations which were an environmental problem anyway as they reduced the natural habitats of wild animals in rainforests. They are now thinking about building plants for processing the crude palm oil into biodiesel fuel for both domestic use and for export.

Leeches and elephant dung

Path into the jungle

I didn't really want to go into the leech infested jungle again, but my Kanabatangan river tour included a morning walk through the jungle. So I went, wearing full protective uniform: long pants, long sleeves, shirt tucked into pants, long socks pulled over pant legs, tons of bug spray all over me, borrowed rubber boots.

Ready to face the leeches, snakes and poisonous plants

Our guide didn't speak much English but the owner of our homestay filled us in: watch out for the leeches (as if I didn't know already), don't touch anything because there may be snakes behind trees or poisonous plants that would give us rashes. He also assured us that our guide is the best, he knows his way around the jungle and was sure to get us back safely. Hm, that's good to know. I'm glad he didn't send us into the jungle with a guide who didn't know his way.

There aren't any photographs from this jungle walk. I thought it best to keep my arms close to me so that I wouldn't touch any leeches or snakes or poisonous plants and I didn't want to expose my skin to the elements in order to take out my camera. Besides, there wasn't much that merited camera attention anyway. The highlights of this walk were:

1. A giant leech climbing up a tree. I'm not kidding. It was huge. Our guide saw it and pointed it out. I'm glad he did so that I could duck out of the way, otherwise I'm sure the leech would have jumped on my face.


2. Elephant dung. They told us that a native species of pygmy elephants live on Borneo and that there have been cases where the elephants trampled tourists. Whenever elephants are known to be in the area, the jungle walks are canceled. So what was elephant dung doing there and why were we walking in the jungle? I rather didn't think about it.


3. Abandoned orangutan nests. We saw many of these nests up in the trees indicating that orangutans come to sleep quite close to the village. I was hoping we wouldn't really meet any orangutans face to face in the jungle.


4. Probably a wild boar. It was far away, we heard its sound and our guide pointed it out, there was something running away.


5. Millipedes. I've seen many of these in southeast Asia by now and I know that they aren't really dangerous.


6. An eagle and an hammerbill. The birds were up high in the trees.
   


7. Probably a macaque monkey as there was something jumping in a tree.

And that's it. I didn't catch any leeches (yay!) and came back out of the jungle alive and well.