Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

As the plane lifts off from the runway, you’re reminded of how tiny Singapore is: the entire country fits in your aircraft window. No wonder it’s so well managed.

In the picture here are Sentosa, Singapore’s official recreational getaway island; the harbour; and part of downtown Singapore, literally “down”, for the central business district is at the southern end of the island. The strip of land you see at top left is Indonesia.

Changi airport was the first I’ve been where they do not x-ray baggage prior to check-in. Must be done after. The airport’s pretty nice, but I much prefer Bangalore’s: it’s just a little building with an aeroplane on one side and a taxi on the other. No endless miles of dragging your luggage past duty free shops that you don’t want to give your money to; no gate after gate leading to planes not waiting for you; no queuing up at position #8 on the runway, sitting there hot and sweaty, waiting for takeoff, when the air conditioning will finally kick in and overpower your neighbour’s armpits.

Bangalore’s is a no frills airport that specialises in the business of getting people in and out of the city. There’s only one gate and miraculously it’s always the one where your flight is waiting. Okay, there are two, but they barely count as distinct gates.

I like small airports for the sheer quickness of passing through them. I will miss Bangalore’s when the forces of metropolisation finally take it down.

First impression on arriving in Bangalore: “My god, what have they done to the roads?” Then I realised they had done nothing at all, the roads were just like when I had left. What’s changed are my expectations of them.

A few days ago, I mentioned a gender activism video from Kuala Lumpur. jhybeturtle kindly consented to my hosting it, so here it is now. Watch the video (37.3 MB) »

Some of the participants you see here got arrested for their efforts. For more information, see the katagender blog or send them email.

Note: For unknown reasons, the katagender blog displays an unrelated page on “Amazing Bible Studies” to some browsers and the original site to others. It doesn’t appear to be ISP-level filtering since I get both versions. We suspect the site may have been hijacked and programmed to appear right to web spiders and certain audiences, while showing the hijacker’s site to others. Please leave me a comment indicating what you see: it’ll help figure out what’s going on.

Commuting on Singapore’s MRT can easily take over twenty minutes for common destinations, so I’ve taken up listening to podcasts. I’m currently catching up with the archives of Venture Voice, “a podcast that explores how entrepreneurs build their businesses and live their lives.”

I especially enjoyed the interview with Fabrice Grinda of Zingy, who made his latest fortune selling ringtones. Fabrice is unusually open about all the mistakes he’s made and how’s learnt from them. When describing successes, he also states the figures. I found it very informative.

Singapore is one big gated community.

Colin and I were at Titiwangsa in KL, looking for the Centre for Independent Journalism. We were lost and, after some circumambulating the block where we expected CIJ to be, we gave up and asked someone for directions.

The fellow responded in Hindi, which Colin didn’t understand. He saw the blank look on Colin’s face and asked if he spoke Hindi; once again in Hindi. At this point I was too amused to butt in, but Colin gleaned that one critical word and turned around to me, and I reluctantly carried forward the conversation.

Colin’s Malaysian, but could easily pass for an Indian. The fellow we spoke to looked Indian and must have taken us to be recent immigrants. To visit a foreign country and be spoken to in your own language, unasked for, is surreal. This was hardly an isolated event. Waiters at restaurants have attempted to chat me up in Tamil, to which I’ve mournfully responded “Tamil teriyaadu. Kannada, Telugu.”

Of all the places on this trip, KL’s easily the place I felt most at home in.

Wikipedia’s entry on Bangkok says it is the largest city in Thailand, with an estimated population of 8,538,610 (measured in 1990). The second largest city is Chiang Mai, with a population of 250,000 (source unknown).

#1 Bangkok has 34 times the population of #2 Chiang Mai. Not twice or thrice as many, but thirty four times. What does this tell you?

Another of jhybeturtle’s friends, whose name I can’t recall, said he had spent three months earlier this year backpacking around the region. Laos was the highlight. “It’s beautiful, man.” He spent several weeks there, exploring the far corners of the country.

That’s three people who’ve gushed about how incredible Laos is. Now I really want to go see the place.

What is it with toilets in tropical countries using tissue paper instead of water? Tissue paper is disgusting. It scrapes bottom and doesn’t clean thoroughly. It makes sense in a cold country where water at room temperature will freeze your arse and warm water may be unavailable or uneconomical.

But in a tropical country? It seems the swankier the place I’m in, the more likely the place abhors water in favour of tissue. A case of culture creep? Why not design toilets to handle both?

My bottom’s hurting from the abuse.

In KL, Zee put me in touch with her acquaintance Julie Tan, who works with the NGO Action for Life. Julie took me out to lunch, where I learnt that “Chinese” and “vegetarian” put together do not make a paradox. That ended my run of Indian meals.

Julie noticed I was sniffling and asked about my health. I said I had picked up a cold in Cambodia that refused to let up, and had two mouth ulcers that made eating and talking painful. She said it must be heat. Not heat as in temperature, but body heat caused by poor diet and exertion from my travels. She said it was a concept from Chinese medicine. I told her it was the same in India. (People not familiar with this may find it hard to understand.)

Julie insisted on feeding me fruit and said I should get some medicine to relieve the heat. We went to the neighbourhood Chinese medical store where she explained it to the store manager. The item she wanted wasn’t on the shelves. The manager asked if I had a fever. I said it was only a cold. He disappeared into the back room and returned shortly with three warm bottles of coloured liquid that he explained as being made of herbs that would flush out my heat. One bottle for the afternoon, one for the night, and one for the next morning. I had to take them with warm water. Nine ringgit per bottle of 100 mL each.

I didn’t know what to make of this. The bottles were unlabelled. Their contents had been concocted in the back room. Anything could be in there. And twenty seven ringgit (Rs 325) isn’t exactly spare change. I looked at Julie apprehensively. She said it was Chinese medicine, very reliable. There was a doctor in the back room who could tell what my ailments were by looking at my hands and face. He didn’t charge for consultation, but I’d have to pay for whatever he prescribed. The manager handed me a card for a Goh Boon Cheow (Ivan), Acupuncturist & Physician. Apparently he’s Vice President of Acupuncture Society of Malaysia. Would I want to meet him?

I declined and asked about the concoction again. What did it taste like? Sweet? The manager shook his head vigourously and handed me some Chinese plums. They were wrapped like toffees. The print said they had been packaged in China. So it was going to be bitter.

There I was, about to pay a good deal of money for a bitter concoction of unknown composition that would supposedly cure me of ambiguous ailments. Did I really want to do this? What the heck, it was a new experience. I could write about it!

It was only mildly bitter. Whether it was the medicine or the genial atmosphere of Kuala Lumpur, I cannot tell, but by the time I left I was feeling much better. The nose block’s nearly abated. The ulcers are still there, but they don’t burn anymore. I feel good.

Popagandhi has nifty pictures from the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Check them out, yo.

Whatever creaky infrastructure Reliance uses to bring text messaging to a non-GSM network isn’t well oiled. Messages I’ve sent Reliance users from Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have all failed to deliver. Potential Reliance users with global aspirations, please note.

And then again, Zee complains messages she’s sending me on the Singapore number don’t deliver, but messages to Airtel roaming on the same provider (Starhub) get through.

New number in Singapore is +65-8203-0690. Card cost four times as much as in Malaysia and messaging costs twice. They also wanted identification and put me in a queue half hour. In KL I could buy it like any other commodity at a convenience store.

From grand experience of one day, Malaysian telecom is better than Singapore’s.

I fired up my news reader for the first time in three months and it promptly fetched me 582 headlines off 82 feeds. I hadn’t missed a single one all this while. Some serious pruning is in order.

We watched television last night. The dialogues were so dramatic, I couldn’t bear to keep looking. Real people never speak like that.

And then again, in KL Friday, I hung out with jhybeturtle and her friends, who speak to each other in English. Their accents were curious, so for a while I stopped listening to the conversation, listening to the sound of their voices instead.

You know what? It sounded exactly like a Hong Kong movie dubbed into English. Maybe not exactly the same for someone intimate with the accents, but my ear isn’t that tuned yet. Real people speak like that after all, it seems.

Jhybe and friends were making their (bi-?)weekly trip to the police station, having all been arrested for various acts of activism and subsequently released on bail. Including one person from the ASEAN summit protest I got pictures of. The station near Masjid Jamek looked remarkably like an Indian government office. One young officer gestured me aside and asked something in Malay. I didn’t understand. He tried again. “What is wrong with your friends?” I said I didn’t know. Jhybe turned around and asked what was up, at which he mumbled “nothing” and hurried away.

I have a video of their gender inequalities demonstration that I can host if they don’t mind it circulated. It’s a little under 40 MB; about 4 minutes. Jhybe?

Later in the evening, Dennis, who is trying to make a career out of activism, asked if I was an activist too. I said I would have been, but I don’t have a cause. There are things that bother me, like the state of mass media (including blogs pining mass reach) and their role in (mis)education, but I’m far too lost making sense of the landscape to be any sort of activist. The best I can do is hang out with them and understand their concerns.

You’ve got to take the day train from Kuala Lumpur to Singapura.^† The Malaysian countryside is gorgeous.

Singapore immigration was the first place they insisted on scanning bags. Sniffer dogs inspected the train. Among the list of items needing declaration are books and magazines. Certain categories of publications are not welcome here, you see.

† As far as the Malaysian railways are concerned, the place is called Singapura. What fun if they decide to rename the country to lose its colonial hangover.

Today I took to wandering the streets of Kuala Lumpur. This place could easily pass for some forgotten corner of Madras.

I wandered into a random restaurant near KLCC and asked if they had vegetarian food. The woman gestures at the items in front of her and says “all these items are vegetarian” in a clear Tamil accent. “Except that is fish over there. And that there is rasam.” While I’m standing there wondering what to do next, she thrusts a plate of rice at me and points at the rasam again. I help myself.

Happiest meal yet.

Sham’s wife has been making rasam daily, but it’s an entirely different experience getting to eat it at a restaurant. If this continues, it won’t be long before I fully recover from the poor diet in Bangkok.

The nice people at the Singapore embassy gave me a multiple entry visa. That’s another first for this trip. Now I want to make full use of it, but there’s nowhere to go around Singapore.

Sorry, folks, but I can’t afford another trip to Cambodia. I’m broke. I will do Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos together another time when I'm better stocked up in the bank and there are fewer tourists around.

This morning Iqbal and I were at KLCC when we saw a commotion.

Photographers falling over themselves; video cameras hoisted above heads. It wasn’t clear who was in the middle. The ASEAN Summit was in progress and this was the last day. Did it just end? Were the press attempting to get final statements from some important speaker?

I looked for where all the cameras were pointing at. Two or three girls, maybe in early twenties, surrounded by cops, surrounded by the mob. The crowd had gathered for them? It didn’t make sense. Then I noticed the cops were far too close to the girls for dignity. They weren’t protecting them from the mob, they were escorting them somewhere, and not being very friendly.

The mob passed and another presented itself. The one in the picture. There was less ambiguity here. The cops were clearly manhandling someone, dragging him away. He didn’t seem to resist. Iqbal said he looked familiar; maybe he was an opposition leader.

I wanted to get into the mob, get a better picture, see what was happening in there. Some streak of rationality demanded I not. I had just arrived in a country with unfamiliar civil liberties and no longer had my passport on me. No point risking a fling with authority pandering to fantasies of photo journalism.

When we returned home, I got online to look for news of what had just happened. A report said some people had been arrested for protesting at the ASEAN summit about something related to Burma. The site wanted me to pay up to read the rest. That was all I could find.

jhybeturtle now has a fuller report on what happened. Six people were arrested for a peaceful gathering to highlight unresolved and long standing issues such as human rights abuses in Burma and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, among other issues. They were arrested even before they began their protest, for just being on the scene. The man Iqbal identified is Tian Chua, Information Chief of the opposition party, Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Angkor Wat at sunrise.


Here’s the same scene from twelve minutes earlier:

Read on...

When I stepped out of KL Sentral Stesen looking for the YMCA, the Petronas towers were visible behind it. “Ah! They’re just around the corner,” I thought happily.

Later in the evening, halfway across the city, they still looked just around the corner.

So I’m in Kuala Lumpur and wondering where to go next. When I started this trip, I had no clear agenda beyond that I was going to visit four neighbouring countries and experience a slice of local life. I was making it up as I went along.

It’s one thing to read about these places and see pictures. It’s another to walk the roads of a strange new city, fending for oneself, experiencing first hand the sights, sounds and grime.

Bangkok was a metropolis, and full of character at that. In Bangkok I found a theme that could carry me through the trip: visit all the metropolises in the region and experience the subtle differences to their characters. On the surface, all big cities are the same: they have wide roads and flyovers and mass transport and rush hours and traffic jams, and are different only for the topography they were built on.

Yet, deeper, each city has unique character. It’s fascinating. In Bangkok, for example, English is a distant second language, used only because it makes for contact with the farangs. It’s otherwise unwanted. Leave the city and even road signs no longer use it. Contrarily, In Kuala Lumpur practically everyone speaks it, in an accent perfectly intelligible to my South Indian upbringing. English is native here.

It makes sense therefore, to round off the trip with another metropolis, using Singapore to counter observations from Bangkok and KL. Cambodia was to be just a side show, visited because its monuments are world famous and it’s so close from Bangkok.

I didn’t expect Cambodia to be a love affair.

I didn’t expect to be so moved by the warmth of the Cambodian people. I didn’t expect to cry learning about their recent history. Now I’m torn between going ahead with visiting Singapore versus returning to Cambodia. There isn’t enough time for both.

Singapore makes rational sense. It’ll round off the study and it’s cheaper. I have friends there for accommodation and a plane ticket out of the place. Changing that ticket at short notice is going to cause a big dent in my budget. To get to Cambodia from Malaysia, I’ll have to fly; another significant expense. It doesn’t help at all that Cambodia runs on USD. (“Hey mister, you wanna buy a cold drink? Only one dollar.” Only, my foot.) And I’ll have to pay for accommodation again. I had no budget for accommodation for the second half of the trip.

I’m staying at Sham’s place here in KL. Sham had to make an unplanned trip to New Zealand and will not be back while I’m here, but was kind enough to put me up with his family. Yes, it’s a bit awkward landing up on unfamiliar people.

For either Singapore or Cambodia, I have to apply for a visa. Each will take at least three days. With one and a half weeks left, it can only be one of the two.

Either I postpone the love affair for another time, or I go for it, and return to Bangalore looking for income rather more desperately.

What should I pick?

Kuala Lumpur looks great from the sky. It’s covered with Palm groves that look like the curls on a Thai Buddha’s head. The horizon’s framed with a mountain range peeking through clouds. There seems to be a lot more open space here than in Bangkok.

I’m at Kuala Lumpur Sentral Stesen, where they have free wi-fi and a Starbucks. Looks like I can finally upload pictures.

KLIA immigration was the best ever. It took about 2 minutes. I walked up, found myself alone in the queue, handed over passport and arrival card, said “yes” when the fellow asked “holiday?”, and that was it!

The arrival card needed an address. Since I had no planned accommodation, I asked the fellow next to me. He had no clue either—he declared “Crown Plaza Hotel, Kuala Lumpur”. I used the same.

New number in Malaysia is +60-16-321-4530. yawhatever and jackol, thanks for your messages last time. It was too expensive to respond there, but is cheap here.

The travel agent called back. He was open today after all. I made the trip and explained that I hadn’t stayed at the place he had booked in Siem Reap, so could I please have a refund? He made some calls, apologised that the place was not willing to refund, then made up for it by giving me another day at the current hotel free.

My hotel booking is up to the 11th. My flight out of Bangkok is on the 14th. My visa expires 12th. Half my baggage is with Klaikong, who returns from Chiang Mai 11th.

So I called Air Asia to reschedule the flight, paid three times as much for the new fare (original was a mere 499 baht plus taxes), then went down to the manager to tell him I was going to stay one more day. How much did it cost?

“1200 baht.”
But I went to a travel agent and paid only 600 baht, I protested.
“So you go back to T.A.T. tomorrow and get voucher,” he smiled.

T.A.T.? I recalled noticing that travel agents had a ‘TAT Authorized’ statement on their shop fronts. Tourism Authority of Thailand?

This didn’t make sense. If I went back to the travel agent, he would take a commission, so the hotel gets lesser than 600 baht. Why not just take that amount from me? The manager didn’t speak enough English to get this point across.

This morning as I prepared to leave, it dawned on me it was a Sunday. Most of the Pranakorn neighbourhood is closed on Sunday. I called the agent. No answer. Phone’s switched off. Shop’s shut too, likely.

I’m going to have to pay the manager what he wants.

I went to the lobby again to ask about laundry. I have a Cambodia-trip worth of clothes needing washing. The rate card said 50 baht per shirt. If I submit before 12pm, I’ll get my clothes back tomorrow at 6pm. If I want my clothes today, there’s a 100% surcharge. I leave at 4 in the morning. At 238 Guesthouse, Ton charged 100 baht to wash all my clothes and returned them dry in under two hours.

If there’s a clear message in this, it’s that guest houses are far more economical than hotels, even if the hotel is offering a substantial discount. I think I’m carrying my laundry to Kuala Lumpur.

udhay suggested I post to Silk List about Cambodia, and AMS wrote in asking for travel advice. I thought I should post it here too.

Avoid the tour operators. You’ll pay way too much. Here is what it cost me for a trip from Bangkok:

Read on...

In Cambodia I met Pete. We were on the same bus.

Pete’s a Brit who, after eight years as a recruitment consultant in London, decided he needed an adventure before settling down. Driven by an interest in Byzantine history, he bicycled from London to Istanbul, camping in open fields and cycling an average four hours a day. The ride took five months.

After a few weeks in Istanbul, he flew to Bangkok to spend sixteen days in the region before heading to Sydney, where he plans to find a job as a bartender in the seediest place possible, likely a strip club. As long as the income covers expenses, he won’t be eating into his savings. When he’s bored of it, he plans to head to the tip of South America, hiking north, finally returning to London.

Pete found me quite curious because I’m the first Indian backpacker he’s met, not counting West-settled Indians. We chatted for a few hours on our respective backgrounds and on what’s changed since he last visited India in 1996 (for six months, then having just graduated). Unfortunately, we couldn’t talk longer. I had to retire by nine since I planned to wake at 4.30 to shoot the sun rising behind Angkor Wat.

That conversation was the first proper one I’ve had since leaving Bangalore. It was energising. I had trouble sleeping. It was also to be exemplary of my overall experience in Cambodia, where everyone I met, whether tourist or local, showed genuine curiosity and regard for well-being.

The travel agent I got my tickets to Siem Reap from also booked me a hotel for my return. It cost the same as the guest house I was in earlier and offered better facilities.

When I checked in, the porter who carried up my luggage showed me around the room, then said “Girlfriend in Bangkok?”

“No, no girlfriend, don’t want,” I hastily responded. It took him a moment to register. As he prepared to leave, he turned and asked again, “Should I send massage girl?”

Truth be told, I sorely wanted a massage. Having spent three hours standing in line at the border with two heavy backpacks (and having stupidly used the waist belt on the lighter one), my shoulders now ached so bad, they hurt to even touch. A shoulder massage was just what I needed.

The porter waited expectantly. “No, don’t want,” I said. I didn’t trust him. Even this hotel looked downright seedy.

It is the day after tomorrow now and having not been solicited since, I am starting to get accustomed to the place. It is located a kilometre from MBK Center. The building’s visible out my 9th floor window. Establishments around here don’t shut shop at six. I can eat dinner at a comfortable ten. It was a pretty nice deal for 600 baht.

This afternoon I encountered the porter again in the lift. He didn’t remember what floor I was on.

“Where you go today? Shopping?”
“No, stay in room. Busy today.”
“Girlfriend come back?”
“No, no girlfriend. Don’t have.”

I think I will not be staying at Tong Poon hotel again.