Sabah and Sarawak, Eastern Malaysia

We stopped twice in the Borneo part of Malaysia. What struck us is that it hasn't been that long since this part of the world was full of jungles and head hunters. The best part of the visit was a trip to the cultural village, Mari Mari. Though these are often touristy, this one gave you a great look at four tribes and their way of life. There may still be villages living like this in the mountains, but very few.

Tribes typically lived in long houses, like the one shown below:

This one is relatively small. They were often 100 meters long and home to 30 families. Inside there was a common area and one private room for each family, like the picture below:

Head hunting was outlawed by the British in the 1930s. Our guide told us, however, that his father talked about one occurrence in the 1950s. Heads, like the one below, were hung outdoors to scare off enemies. 

If a young man was ready for marriage, he had to have at least one head to his credit. No one would want him without one. Men often had bands tattooed on their fingers for each head. 

These people grew and hunted their own food. They were not cannibals. They used bamboo for cooking, putting a casserole-like mixture into the bamboo and cooking over an open fire. The results looked like this:

They did like their sweets. Using a coconut with holes poked into it, they created their own "fried dough", like the example shown here:

To sweeten things, they used honey. They used bamboo with some honey at the entrance to attract the bees. Once full, they would split the bamboo and dig the honey out with their hands. Their bees aren't like ours, however. The next picture shows a bee about ready to enter the hive:

It's hard to imagine this life, but our guide wishes they could go back to it. Great cultural lesson!

Brunei

Today's number is 92. That's the number of euros (almost dollars too!) the Sultan of Brunai earns per second! That's a bit over $3billion per year for spending money! His home is the largest royal residence in the world with over 1700 rooms. The garage in the basement holds 1000 of his cars. The residence is shown in Picture 1. 

The Sultan was coronated in 1967, using the chariot shown below. 

In 1992 he celebrated 25 years on the throne, built the Royal Regalia Museum which houses the chariot and the gifts he receives and built the royal mosque shown below.

The mosque has 29 domes to represent the 29 sultans who have ruled for the last 600 years or so. Another view of the opulence of the mosque:

Meanwhile, his citizens love him because he provides, housing, schools and jobs. And how does he pay for this? He sits on a huge reserve of oil. He has signed a deal with Shell, where they bring it up, refine it and sell it and the government gets half the profits. Shell owns all the gas stations in the country. 

Last year the Sultan declared that the country would follow Sharia law, whether you were a Muslim or not. Our guide told us that Sultan can overrule this, however. Seems like he has a brother that's a bit of a playboy and needs bailing out occasionally. Hmmm....

It's an interesting place to visit. Don't think we'd like to stay!

The Rest of the Philippines

Sailing among the Philippine Islands is amazingly beautiful. Cities become smaller and the scenery can be breathtaking. We made 4 stops outside of Manila, mostly beaches. Since the Hubers aren’t “beachy” people, we just enjoyed the scenery!

Tagaytay is a resort area 60 km from Manila in the hills, where it’s cooler. Unfortunately, Manila’s pollution has reached there and it’s a constant haze. Picture 1 is a picture of Lake Taal, which is a volcano within a lake within a dormant crater. Since 1572 there have been more than 30 eruptions, the most recent in 1976, when lava reached Manila. Picture 2 is a close-up of the volcano in the lake. During eruptions of the original crater, seawater entered the crater and later eruptions created a lake, which has sea critters that have adapted to fresh water. It’s a really unique place.

Pictures 3 and 4 are from Coron, southwest of the main island of Luzon, although we saw fishing villages on stilts in other places too. The motorized outrigger canoe, shown in the forefront in Picture 3 is the main mode of water transport, although non-motorized canoes are also used, like the one used by the family in Picture 5.

Many of the islands have steep cliffs that tumble into the sea. Pictures 6 and 7 show examples we found leaving Boracay. If you turn up your zoom, you find that hidden at the bases of these remote cliffs are small private beaches, like the one shown in Picture 8.

Our final stop was in Puerto Princessa on Palawan Island. We wandered around the city and found Immaculate Conception Cathedral, shown in Picture 9. Like most public buildings, large louvers left it open to the outdoors to allow fresh air to circulate. Outside of Manila, we found little air conditioning.

Across the street from the Cathedral we found a grim reminder of WWII in Plaza Cuartel. There were tunnels built here for air raids. When the Japanese took over the island, they would send POWs into the tunnels, along with gasoline and toss in a grenade. Picture 10 is the monument describing what occurred and identifying the few who survived the conflagration. Picture 11 is a haunting statue that shows a skeletal man, wrapped in barbed wire, with flames forming below him.

Ending on a happier note, we found this lady rocking her 2 babies, a toddler on the right and a small baby on the left. A rope stretched horizontally near the ceiling and by gently pulling on the sling around one baby, she could rock both, who were contentedly asleep.

Life is slower outside of Manila, the skies are bluer and the scenery is gorgeous. But the only job opportunities are farming and fishing, so people are flocking to Manila, much to its detriment. There are 100 million people in the Philippines, spread over more than 7000 islands. 50 million people are on the island of Luzon, where Manila, with a population of 20 million, is located. While Filipinos are leaving these islands, however, tourists are discovering their beauty, especially in and under the water. One hopes this provides employment for the local people, without destroying the environment. Unfortunately, history shows that will probably not be the case….

Manila

We spent 2 days in Manila and feel like we have a good understanding of what goes on there.  Like so many other large cities in Southeast Asia, the city is overflowing with people and traffic. They build roads on top of roads in an attempt to alleviate traffic problems, but so far it’s not working.  Population control does not seem to be a consideration in this devoutly Catholic country.

The Philippines were a Spanish colony until the Spanish-American War in 1898. Following that they became America’s first colony. But American didn’t really want to have colonies, so we helped build the country up, promising independence in 1945. The Japanese occupied the Philippines in WWII. (Note—WWII is actually called the Japanese-American war by a lot of the people here. They had little or no contact with what was going on in the remainder of the world.) Following WWII, American once more built the country up and gave them independence in 1946.

Our first stop was an interesting one. At St. Joseph’s Parish Church in a Manila suburb we found the bamboo organ, shown in Picture 1. Not only is its case bamboo, but the pipes are too. Picture 2 shows some of the pipes in the rear.  It was built in 1824, outfitted with an electric air source (instead of hand operated bellows) in 1932, fell into disrepair, was sent to Germany in 1973 for a 2-year restoration and is now fully operational. In some of the larger bamboo pipes they added a metal insert, but otherwise, it’s all bamboo. It sounds pretty good.

We visited the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, which is shown in Picture 3, against the modern Manila skyline. It’s beautiful and a grim reminder of what happened in the Asia/Pacific Theater of WWII. In the arched galleries on either side of the memorial tower are mosaic maps of the battles that occurred in Asia and the Pacific—from India and Burma in the west to the Pacific Islands in the East. Our guide told us that he had read the books and seen the movies about the atrocities that occurred in Europe, but he reminded us that the Japanese committed terrible atrocities too and we often forget that.  Over the course of the next few days we visited a couple sites that emphasized this—more later.

We have met a man on the ship, who is 94 and served as a WWII Army Air Corp pilot in the Pacific, flying bombing missions from the island of Tinian to Japan—12-14 hour missions. When we asked if that was the island from which the Enola Gay took off, he told us yes, it was parked two planes over from his. A truly great man and, if we live to be 94, may we be as sharp, healthy and gracious as he is.

The remainder of the 152-acre site is filled with rows upon rows of crosses and stars of David, like the portion shown in picture 4. This reminds us of the cost of wars. We must only choose honorable and just causes.

Picture 5 shows the site of one of the WWII atrocities mentioned above. This is Fort Santiago, originally built by the Spanish. The fort was used as a prison during Spanish and American periods. During the Japanese occupation, the Japanese held prisoners of war here. For Filipinos, the Japanese killed 300 a day by beheading. They would bring someone out, toss a coin and that would tell whether the person lived and went back to prison or was beheaded. For Americans, they were placed in dungeons below sea level. At high tide, the dungeons were flooded and the bodies brought out at low tide.

The Cathedral is new and pretty uninteresting, but the church in Picture 6 is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites.  It is the oldest structure in the Philippines, built between 1587 and 1607. It’s baroque and noted for its Trompe l’oeil painting that makes the decoration look like carving, rather than painting (Picture 7).

We also visited the park honoring Jose Rizal, the national hero. The monument to him is shown in Picture 8. He wrote encouraging Philippine independence from Spain, was arrested for treason and executed by firing squad. Statues showing the execution (Picture 9) mark the spot where it actually occurred.

Of course we also had a few slices of life in Manila. Our guide managed to show us the “good” spots, but occasionally the poverty of the people came through, like in Picture 10. Part of Manila is new and shiny, but if you look down the side streets, the problems quickly appear.

Picture 11 shows 2 Manila institutions. The vehicle, the Jitney is the common mode of transportation for local people. For about 20 cents you can get anywhere in Manila in a cramped, open vehicle. Originally based on old Jeep chassis left behind by Americans, there are now chassis from other companies. The second institution is the Jollibee fast food restaurant chain. As we understand, the company is owned by Tony Tan, who applied for a McDonalds franchise, but was turned down and decided to start his own company. Today, wherever you found a McDonalds or Burger King, a Jollibee will be less than a block away. Filipinos love hamburgers, but prefer them with a mixture of beef and pork. Jollibee has met that need and is wildly successful, enabling the owner to branch into other kinds of fast food.

Finally, the Filipinos were delighted that we stopped in the Philippines (5 stops in all). As we left Manila, Picture 12 shows the young people, playing musical instruments and dancing, who performed for us as we sailed form Manila.

Hué and Hanoi, Vietnam

We took long rides to get to the final two places we wanted to visit in Viet Nam: Hué and Hanoi. Hué was the capital of the Nguyen dynasty—the 1^st emperor of a united Vietnam. The dynasty came to power at the beginning of the 19^th century and lasted until 1945, at the end of French colonization. Hanoi is the capital of today’s united Vietnam and was the communist center during the Vietnam (or as they say, American) War.

The country is still a mystery to us. We asked our Hué guide if everyone was happy with this government. His response was “Yes, everyone is happy. We have jobs and everything we need.” No one else in the world is that happy! When questioned further, he told us that if you don’t have a job, you’re identified as a farmer and now you have a job—no land, no work, but you do have a title! When we asked the same question of our Hanoi guide his answer was “No”. He doesn’t want to be a communist, but you have to be one to get a good job. His wife is a teacher and until she joined the party, she got the worst jobs and had to change classrooms or schools every couple months. She joined the party and now has a much better job. He told us Ho Chi Minh was a great man, but he had the wrong idea. He thinks that without communism, the country could have avoided 4 wars. Don’t know if that’s true, but the contrast between the 2 guides was amazing.

Hué has some beautiful sites, but they’re not as old as expected. All of the amazing sites were built in the 19^th century. We started at the Citadel, which is protected by 6 miles of ramparts, 40 feet thick. Picture 1 shows one of the gates and gives some idea about the thickness of the walls. Once inside the Citadel, if you are important enough, you can enter the Imperial City. Picture 2 shows the entrance to the Imperial City. The center door was reserved for the Emperor. The door on either side for the trusted advisors and guests and the doors on either extension were for soldiers and horses. Inside was a large hall where the Emperor received visitors and offices.

Finally, inside the Imperial City was a walled compound called the Forbidden Purple City. This was the area reserved for the Emperor, his family, his concubines and his eunuchs. One emperor had so many wives and concubines that they say he died from exhaustion! The male servants were all eunuchs, so as not to attract the women and compete with the emperor. Being a eunuch was a privilege with all the advantages, except one…. Picture 3 shows the entrance to the Forbidden Purple City, which was patterned after the Forbidden City in Beijing. Picture 4 shows one gallery that has been reconstructed to its original style and lavishness. Unfortunately, the remainder of the Forbidden Purple City was heavily destroyed, first by the French when they fought the communist insurgency, then by the Americans during the Tet Offensive. Picture 5 shows how it looks today.

We also visited one of the oldest temples in Hué. The Chua Thien Mu Pagoda was built in 1601 and the 7-story octagonal tower showed in Picture 6 was added in 1840. Each side represents a different reincarnation of Buddha.

Our final stop was at the Mausoleum of Emperor Tu Duc, the longest reigning emperor (1848-1883). He had 104 wives and countless concubines and no male heirs. This is a huge park with numerous building, including a lake that was dug by hand. The area took 6 years to build and 10,000 workers died in the process. Picture 7 is the entrance to the tomb area, which is shown in Picture 8. The decorations on the tomb entrance and other areas were made with broken pieces of porcelain.

Two days later we took an even longer ride (3.5 hours) with our guide from Ha Long Bay to Hanoi. The entire countryside is made up of rice paddies, like the ones shown in Picture 9. The planting is done by hand—back-breaking placement of rice seedlings in shallow water. It was planting time and they do this twice a year.

Our first stop was at the Hanoi Hilton—the prison made famous to us during the Vietnam War. The official name is Hoa Lo Prison and it was built by the French. It’s where the French imprisoned communist insurgents. Picture 10 shows how the prison looked during the Vietnam War. American prisoners were kept in the wing that swings out from the main buildings. John McCain was held close to the corner on the right. Today, the building looks like Picture 11. The “American wing” has been taken down and a high-rise building put in its place.

Picture 12 is Ho Chi Minh’s letter to his countrymen during the New Year’s celebration (Tet) in 1969, discussing their great victories. While most of the museum today focuses on the French period, there are 2 small rooms focusing on the “American War”. Picture 13 shows the sign explaining that during that period, even though it caused financial hardships, the Americans were treated well. There were also pictures of some of the Americans eating holiday dinners, playing basketball, etc. I guess when it’s your country and you won the war, you get to say whatever you want!

Piece of trivia—there is a Hanoi Hilton Hotel today, but it’s called the Hanoi Hilton Opera to distinguish it from the “other” Hanoi Hilton.

Our second stop was at Van Mieu, the Confucian Temple of Literature. Built in 1060, it was the first university in Vietnam. Picture 14 shows the statue of Confucius in the worship hall. Between 1484 and 1779 graduates with doctoral degrees created stone turtles (sign of longevity) carrying stele on their backs that outline the doctor’s goals in life. Picture 15 shows a couple examples. Today families take their children to the temple prior to the school year and make an offering for a good school year.

We also visited Ho Chi Minh Square, where his mausoleum (Picture 16) is located.  He wanted to be cremated, but those in power after his death had him embalmed and placed in a glass casket, so that people can parade by, similar to what the Russians did with Lenin.  Today, Ho Chi Minh’s body is sent to Moscow for a couple months of treatment each year to preserve its status. Once an hour the guard is changed and Picture 17 shows the ceremony ending.

Around Ho Chi Minh Square you will also find the Parliament building, the Presidential Palace, the Ho Chi Minh Museum and the headquarters of the Communist Party.

Finally we visited old town. Each street specializes in selling one thing. Picture 18 shows the view down Shoe Street. You’ll also find a small street restaurant set up on about every corner, like the one shown in Picture 19. People eat on low children’s stools and a single luncheon choice is served from the central pot.

Both Hué and Hanoi were interesting places to visit. Even after 40+ years, reminders from the Vietnam War are still hard to see—especially from the eyes of the Vietnamese. We asked our Hanoi guide how the Vietnamese felt about Americans and he thinks most people have pretty much forgiven the Americans. “But never the Chinese,” he said, “We hate the Chinese”. In the 900s, the Chinese were driven out after 1000 years of occupation. They don’t like the fact that the Chinese are taking over resources in the South China Sea (which they call the Eastern Sea) and I think they feel perpetually threatened by the Chinese. Interesting people….