Many, Many Motorbikes

Told you! The really impressive thing about all these motorbikes, though, is that when they are being ridden on the street, the riders all wear helmets. Of all the things that surprise me about Jakarta, I think that might be the most surprising. I thought I would see people hanging off bikes in all sorts of crazy poses, most without helmets. But no. The most I have seen on a bike is two, and all riders wear helmets. I'm not sure if this a sign of the obeying of rules, or of just how dangerous the streets are here.

Jakarta

I like Jakarta. The article in Wikitravel makes Jakarta sound like some sort of dungeon, dirty, dangerous, difficult. It's not the cleanest place, and it's very crowded and hard to get around in as a pedestrian, but I really quite like the city. I arrived at about 8 at night, flying in from Singapore. I got a bus to town and then set out to find this street with a bunch of accommodation. I'm going to have to get better at getting maps and the like before I do things like that, for I was basically wandering around hoping to bump into one little street in a city this size. In other words, I was lost. After a while, it occurred to me that I was lost and I eventually stopped and asked for some directions. I happened to ask a guy, Jonev, who was going to the same place, as he lived there, and he took me. These Indonesians are a friendly bunch. He got me set up and we ended up going out for a bite and a drink.

The next morning, I struck off on my own to find the center of town. I followed Jonev's directions, but I guess I turned the wrong direction, or at least I didn't really recognize what Jonev had told me was there. In any case, I walked for an hour and a half before stopping in a shopping mall to buy a map and get some info about a tourist information place. Following the map, I worked my way all the way back to the very building where I had had breakfast. Had I just asked there, they probably would have saved me the whole walk. But I would have missed out on the guys at the information desk in that mall standing around the desk with my map spread out, pointing out where I was and where I wanted to go and trying to tell me how best to get there, and just generally being helpful and friendly. I would have missed out on seeing Jakarta's answer to the subway, called the busway. In the center of some of the busy roads in the city are dedicated bus lanes. There are stations along the way. Transjakarta buses move along the lanes and stop at the stations and let people off and take on new passengers. 

There are even transfer stations and you can transfer from line to line. I think it's fantastic. Now, having taken one of them back to here, there are cracks in the system. The buses can be fairly few and far between, and they get pretty crowded at rush hour, so it's hard to get on and you can wait for a while. But the concept is great, and it's a very interesting set-up.

After returning to my starting point and getting some information about things to do in Jakarta, I headed out to the Independence Monument. Under the monument is a museum with a whole bunch of dioramas and explanations about the history of Jakarta and Indonesia. It's really well done and very interesting. The monument is 135 meters tall and you can take an elevator all the way to the top, but I arrived too late. The elevator was closed for the day.

Then I saw this spire in the distance, so I headed off toward it and found a mosque. As I was looking at it, a man came up to me and told me the entrance was on the other side. I hadn't actually planned to try to go to the mosque. I was only in shorts and a t-shirt and I didn't want to offend anyone, but the man told me it would be no problem as there were robes that could be lent to visitors. So he took me in. (I knew it was going to cost me, but I figured it would be fairly reasonable.) The mosque was really nice. And inside it's cool, even though it was over 30 outside, and humid. I was really impressed. In the end I wound up donating about 20 dollars to the mosque, and my guide squeezed 30 dollars out of me, but I didn't really mind. The mosque was interesting and the man was quite a good guide. I would have preferred 20 dollars though. :)

A Walking Tour of Colonial Downtown Singapore

In the lobby of my hotel in Singapore, there were a number of brochures. There was a brochure for the zoo, one for the Night Safari, and there was also one for The Original Singapore Walks. I thought it would be interesting so I joined the one on Monday, “The Time of Empire.” I met the guide and what was apparently the largest group they have ever had for a tour at one of the MRT stations. Off we went for a two hour tour of some of the colonial structures of Singapore. Unfortunately, as Singapore is one of those cities that seems bent on modernizing at the expense of history, there are precious few old buildings left standing in the downtown area. Unsurprisingly, these are churches and hotels, the two sorts of things that keep being used and have a loud protest against being taken down.

We started at St. Andrew's Cathedral, and Anglican church with a Scottish name, owing to the Anglican church being the dominant religious force of colonialism in Singapore, but Scottish donors having provided much of the funding for the construction of the church. It was all done at the behest of Sir Stamford Raffles (Incidentally, what kind of a name is that, anyway?), rebel, visionary, and colonial con artist. He worked for the British East Indies Company. He was sent out to find and set up a new port to bring goods out of the south Pacific and send it on to Europe. He was specifically told not to go to Singapore. He could go anywhere, but not Singapore. So, he went to Singapore. What a rebel! He did this because there was a disgruntled fellow there who had been shafted out of being king in the area. His father (the king) had sent him north to get married, but the father had had the temerity to die while the son was off doing his duty. The second son, johnny on the spot that he was, took over. And the Dutch East Indies Company was on hand to tell the second son that they would support him in being king, but only if the second son would allow them to have a monopoly over the area and be able to do business. The second son thought for a good two or three seconds before signing on the dotted line and the rightful successor, the first son, the newly married son, was left gnashing his teeth in the Singapore area. Along came Stamford Raffles with an offer he couldn't refuse. Give the British East Indies Company access to Singapore and the port (which was apparently perfect due to its being protected from almost all natural disasters), and they would support the son in his claim to the throne. And he would certainly be allowed to be king in the Singapore area. (I have been reading a lot of the colonial histories of these countries down here in museums and such. It's hard to believe how underhanded, devious, dishonest, and unethical colonial countries were in their dealings with native populations in these pacific nations. And the hubris involved in thinking they were in the right to behave that way is equally stunning.) Well, the Dutch East Indies Company people were rather dismayed by this arrangement and sent an angrily worded letter to the British East Indies Company, who had expressly forbidden our man Raffles against going to Singapore to set up the port, about the situation. The British East Indies people, based in India, sent the letter to Britain, sent a reprimand to Raffles, and then let it all be handled in diplomatic circles. As there were no phones or computers, and the Pony Express only operated on land, the communications had to go via the sea, which took months. By the time people got around to making settlements, Raffles the rascal had had the brilliant idea to make the new port at Singapore tax-free. Nobody had to pay taxes to use the port. I assume there were other fees involved, but the government got nothing out of the deal. Naturally, this encouraged everyone to want to use the Singapore port, and the port enjoyed a meteoric rise in importance in the region. By the time Raffles got his reprimands, there was no turning back and the British weren't about to give it up. So the Brits and the Dutch boys in the drawing rooms back in Europe settled the matter by drawing a line that roughly delineates the division between Malaysia and Indonesia. North of the line was given to the British, and south of the line was given to the Dutch. (Hubris! Hubris, I tell you.) And Stamford Raffles became famous. His name is everywhere in Singapore. It's on buildings, roads, bridges and probably an animal or two. As our guide told us, if one were to throw a rock, you'd probably nail at least one thing with the name of Raffles on it.

We learned all of this in the first church we visited. The stained glass windows you see here have Raffles coat-of-arms in the middle pain, as well the coats-of-arms of two other prominent people who played a part in the formation of Singapore. (But I forget who they were.)

Here is a table with two big candles on it. When war broke out in the Pacific, the British sent a grand total of two warships to patrol and defend the entire Pacific theater. (It could be argued actually that Britain sent one and a half. One of the warships had been commissioned during World War I and was thus inadequate to the demands of naval warfare in the Second World War.) Both were sunk and the candles memorialise the loss of the two ships.

We moved on to the Supreme Court of Singapore, the place where if you are caught with drugs, you have your last chance to argue your point before they tell you are going to be hung by the neck until you are dead.  (If you are going to try and bring drugs to Singapore, you should also know that you are guilty until proven innocent, in this one case only, so make sure you have an innocent way about you.)  I wish we would have a law like that in Canada. On the way to the Supreme Court, we saw this ugly building. Fitting place for crooks, I mean politicians, to house the government. While inside the Supreme Court, we weren't allowed to take photos, so I can't show the amazing view of downtown that is given from the vantage point of the almost top floor. But it was amazing, and you can see it too, if you visit Singapore and put on some nice-ish clothes.

Then we headed to the Armenian Church. There were only about 100 Armenian people who came to Singapore (currently there are only about 85, but only 5 are not there on work visas), but the first thing they do when they get to a place is to set up a church and a school. Because there weren't many Armenians, they only had funds to put up one, and they chose a church. And I guess some newspaper editor wrote an editorial ripping into the European community as the Chinese donated most of the funds necessary to finish the construction of the church. One of the Armenian patrons is reputed to have been visiting a cemetery that was being removed (a regular occurrence in a place like Singapore with a population that keeps growing, but land does not). He noticed the gravestones of many people who had had a hand in the formation of Singapore, just lying about. (Nobody collected the leftover gravestones, only the bodies.) He felt it wasn't proper, so he gathered some of them up and had them placed on the grounds of the Armenian church in what is called the Garden of Remembrance.

Then it was on the Church grounds of Chijmes. Nope, it's not a typo. Chij is an acronym for (Something) of the Holy Infant Jesus. It used to be a church, orphanage, and school. There were some five or six schools at one time in the general vicinity, but with it being downtown and all, the congestion at home time was crazy. So Singapore relocated all the schools and tore most of the schools down for new buildings. But the people at Chijmes spoke a language the government of Singapore understood, money. They put together a business plan to have the area be preserved, and businesses be able to use the building as well. It was accepted and now it's a trendy nightclub/restaurant area. Savvy sisters!

Finally, it was on to Raffles Hotel, the poshest hotel in town, with a nice little museum housing photos and old letters and other memorabilia about the hotel. The hotel is also the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, and for a mere 30 dollars, you can have one there, too. But if you don't ask the bartender to make it personally, it apparently comes out of a bottle and it tastes like crap. I would think that if I was going to be paying 30 dollars for a drink, I could be kind of expecting that it would be done properly. If you ask the bartender, he'll even give you the recipe. Or you can go to another bar, where the Sling wasn't invented, and have one for 5 or 6 dollars. If I were a drinker, I don't think I would feel the need to shell out those kind of bucks for a drink. But that's me.

And with that we were set free and sent off to entertain ourselves. The tour was over. I was very impressed. The guide was very knowledgeable and entertaining. I highly recommend the tours as a great way to learn about the city/state of Singapore. I wish I had had time to do more another of their walks. Next visit, I guess.

Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! - The Singapore Zoo and Night Safari

I don't like zoos, as a general rule.  I find it a bit depressing seeing animals pacing around in little cages with nowhere to go and not much to do and not really being where they are supposed to be.  And I guess it also has a bit to do with the animals being so familiar.  So I went to the Singapore Zoo with the idea that it would take 2 or 3 hours and I would move on to something.  By the end of the day, I was flagging a bit, but I had spent 7 hours there and found it very interesting.  It's not like a zoo that I think of.

There are not really cages.  They are habitat enclosures.  The animals have lots of room to roam.  Many times there are more than one animal in an enclosure.  There are barriers, water moats, fences, and the like, but overall, the seem to be far more natural barriers than metal bars.

There are also lots of opportunities to interact with animals.  They can sometimes pretty much reach out and touch visitors.

And there are animal feeding times, when instead of the handlers and zookeepers doing that duty, visitors are allowed to do it.










It was a very pleasant experience.

And there were other usual characters as well, like the chimpanzees.












Hmmm... I wonder what this one is doing.  There is no smoking in the zoo, but it looks like maybe someone saw something anyway.
















Another feature of the Singapore Zoo is the nearby night zoo.  Most tropical animals are nocturnal (humans being a notable exception, where instead of doing the smart thing that most other animals do, which is sleep and rest during the hottest part of the day, we continue working and tiring ourselves out), and are most active at night.  So the Night Safari gives people the chance to see animals in a nighttime setting.  Now, my camera isn't the best for night photography, so you will have to mostly take my word for it.  The enclosures are the same sort of arrangement, with animals able to come right up to the tram we rode in.  And there are plenty of animals to see.  There is even a show to see called Creatures of the Night, with animals performing some of their natural behaviours and being generally amazing.  Although, I preferred to zoo, just for being able to move about more, and for generally higher value for the money, the Night Safari was also very interesting.

This serval was a part of the show.

If you don't like zoos, I think you might like these ones in Singapore.  I sure did.

Lok Kawi Wildlife Park - The "hard" way vs. the "easy" way

After the tour to Mt. Kinabalu, and then my impromptu visit to the islands just offshore, I decided that I would attempt to get to Lok Kawi Wildlife Park on my own.  Everyone had been telling me that the only viable way to get there was to hire a taxi in town and have the driver take me to the park and then wait to bring me back.  Even the people at the Malaysian Tourism Bureau advocated this course.  This was to cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120 to 150 Malaysian Ringgit, or 40 to 50 dollars.  If I were traveling with somebody it wouldn't be a great cost.  We share the taxi cost and it isn't so expensive.  Or I could have gone traipsing around to a hostel or two and found someone willing to go and share the cost.  That would have worked as well.  But I'm traveling alone and I really didn't want to take the time to find someone to go along.  It had to be possible to do it another way, a way that wouldn't cost so much.  I saw on the map that it was right near a train line.  Could I take the train?  Well, yes, but it would be rather complicated.  I finally just went to the bus/van depot and asked around.  Yes, there was a van that would go to Lok Kawi, the town.  I could then hire a taxi out to the park, 5 kilometers away.  Or I could walk.  Taking the van was going to cost 2.80 Ringgit, less than a dollar.  Okay, now we were talking.  I got to the town and started wandering aimlessly.  There were some guys just hanging out.  One of them called me over and asked if I wanted to go to the park.  When I asked him how much it would cost, he told me 20 Ringgit, one way.  I took him up on it.  And I went out to the park.  The ride was really nice.  The countryside was lovely with some interesting buildings and such.  And I got there for about a sixth of the cost of doing it the "approved" way.

The park itself was really well done.  It is placed on a converted rubber tree plantation.  It runs up into a valley, at the end of which there is a rather sad little botanical garden.  But the animals were in large enclosures that gave them plenty of space to roam around and live.  Not a typical zoo.  And the most interesting part of it all for me was the animals that I had never seen before.  In fact, there is a game I play on Facebook called Zoo.  There are a lot of animals in my zoo that I had never heard of.  I thought maybe they were made up animals.  But here I was faced with some animals that had the names of my "fictional" zoo animals.  That was cool.

There was the binturong, just hanging out in a tree.  The day was really quite hot.  I kind of wanted to just lie around in a tree, too.










There was a sun bear, sitting to greet his visitors.  They have a white "v" on their chests.  These are the smallest of the 8 kinds of bears in the world.  I was surprised by that.  I thought there would be more kinds of bears than that, particularly when they catalogue umpteen kinds of beetle or thousands of different kinds of horse-like creatures.  But no, only 8 kinds of bear.











There was also a serval, a very well-adapted big cat.  It can swim, climb, and run.  It can hunt in all kinds of ways and is quite powerful, so it is quite successful among the great cats.  But, like most species these days, it seems, under pressure because of the activities of us humans.

There were also the usual assortment of animals one might see in most zoos, and zoo-like places.  There were elephants.  This one was doing a remarkable impression of a submarine.  I was convinced.









There were tigers.















There was also this little guy.  I don't know what he was, exactly, but he had really big eyes.
















There were emus, who could get up close and personal.  (And to my disgust, despite the signs everywhere saying not to feed the animals because it would harm them, people were feeding them candy in order to get them to come close and be right beside them for a photo.  I just waited by the fence and waited for one to come close enough for a look.)











And ostriches as well.


















The star of the show, though, was an orangutan.  His name was Mowgli (yes, after the Jungle Book character), and he had been rescued from an illegal situation where he had been a pet.  He had been badly cared for and was quite sick when he came to Lok Kawi.  He had stomach trouble and it took a long time to rehabilitate him.  Even now, he is not very well, and he is very small for his age.  But was he ever cute.  I wish I could put up the video of him eating the sunflower seeds the handlers gave him.  Unfortunately, the orangutan habitat at the park was undergoing renovations, so we were not able to see more than Mowgli, and we couldn't see him living as an orangutan lives, but it was enough to see him up close and well-cared for.

I had a good visit to the park, and though it took the whole day to accomplish it properly, I did it my way, the "hard" way, but the ever-so-rewarding way.  Tours have their uses, but they have their limitations as well.  I much preferred this trip to the trip up to Mount Kinabalu.  It was a good way to leave Kota Kinabalu.

Island hopping on my own

Mount Kinabalu was nice.  I enjoyed seeing it, but I wish it had been more on my own terms.  I would have liked to investigate the park on my own more and spent more time on the mountain.  The botanical garden had been ho-hum, to me.  The same with the canopy walk and all the rest.  The mountain was what I had wanted to see.  So after that tour, when I was on someone else's timetable, I decided that I would visit the islands of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park on my own terms.  The park is located about 15 minutes by boat ferry off the shores of downtown Kota Kinabalu.

See?  There it is.

So I got up early and headed off to the free shuttle from the hotel/shopping complex where I was staying to downtown.  But, oops, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.  Rain, rain, and more rain.  Hmmm...  Well, I thought maybe a Starbucks cup of juice would help matters.  And by the time I had finished that the rain was letting up.  So I headed towards Jessolton Point, the ferry pier.  Along the way, I met a couple of guys who asked if I was heading out to the islands.  I said yes and they started to offer me their services.  When I said I was headed to the ferries, the one guy told me it was an hour away.  Hmmm...  I had walked to the ferry pier the other day and I don't recall it being an hour.  Maybe if I was crawling, but I remembered it being only 10 minutes.  He shut up immediately and just kind of mumbled something about it might be so.  And he lost any chance he had of getting me in his boat.  Don't these sorts of people realize that they are only making themselves look bad when they lie to us "unsuspecting" travelers?  And on something so trivial, too.  He could just have told me how much he would charge and have had a decent chance of getting a customer.  Oh well.

At Jesselton Point, I went in and looked around at all the different groups offering trips out to the islands.  I just picked one at random and made my arrangements.  I purchased a ticket to go to an island called Sapi Island.  I was offered snorkel and fins, but since I am alone and have nobody to guard my stuff, I figured I wouldn't be doing any swimming or snorkenling.  The woman at the window seemed a bit miffed at that, like it was some kind of horrible thing that I wasn't availing myself fully of the services offered by her company.  Well then offer me a solution to protect my stuff, you silly twit.  I would love to do some more snorkeling.  But she didn't.  So I took my ticket and went to the information desk to pay the pier fee.  In some ways it's nice to know who all gets money that I am paying for all the various services and how much it is at each station.  On the other hand it's also very nice to just pay the total fee to someone, and not have to stop every few feet to pay another fee for something or other.  Anyhow, off I went to catch my boat.  And we went sailing off over the waves to Sapi Island.  And at the pier at the island, I was faced with yet another fee, this time some kind of environmental fee for using the resources of the island.  These fees are getting much mroe prevalent these days.  But I am wondering if these various environmental fees are actually being used to protect the environment (or re-vitalize it) in all, or even most, cases.  This is despite them being a really good idea, in principle.

In any case, Sapi Island was lovely.  Not going swimming, I took the trail around the island through the mini jungle.  I found a rocky beach with waves crashing ashore.











Then I found a cliff looking down on more crashing waves.










Then I pushed onward following a lesser used path.  As I was walking along, not really paying much attention, I was startled by a sudden huge smashing crashing sound in the jungle.  I caught a glimpse of something quite large leaving the trail and moving around behind me and down the hillside.  It was big lizard.  And by big, I mean large.  It was longer than I am tall.  I don't know what it was doing being afraid of me, but it was, and it scurried away.  It was fast, too.  I wish I had been quieter.  I would have liked to take a photo of it, or at least have gotten a better look.  But I will have to let this stir the imagination instead.  Just imagine it as big as a large dog and you can get the idea.

After the lizard sighting, I pushed on along the trail, but was shortly stopped by some plant with really sharp thorns.  So I turned back and that's when I found my beach.  I think of it as my beach because nobody was there.  It was secluded and quiet and really nice.  So I decided that I could go swimming after all and set my stuff down and went for a dip.  The water was nice and the waves were soothing and it was serene and peaceful.





By this time I had decided that I would like to visit another island, but I had only paid to visit one island.  I enquired about the possibility of being able to go to another island and was told to ask the boatman.  When I did, it was just a matter of paying him the fee and being taken to the next island.  This island was called Manukan Island and it was much larger.  There was a resort on the island where people could stay (no doubt for a handsome sum).  And across from the beach on Manukan, downtown Kota Kinabalu was visible.  I took a walk into the jungle here as well (and that is where I saw the little fellow pictured above, the cousin of the large lizard I saw at Sapi Island), along to Sunset Point.  I only had until 4:15, so I didn't get to see the sunset on Manukan Island, but I had a great time on the islands in the marine park before heading back to Kota Kinabalu and a sit on the shoreline deck with a vanilla cream iced drink from The Coffee Bean and watched the sun set over the park out to the west.  It was a much better day than the one spent in a van going to see Mount Kinabalu covered in clouds and climbing over a canopy ropeway.  And I got to see a rather nice sunset to boot.