AMONG THE VILLAGE PEOPLE – ethnotourism, Riau Islands, Indonesia

Fishing boats, Pecong village

This week a poor Indonesian fisherman will become rich. The two brothers say it happens to someone every year, so they’ve left a bowl of sticky rice on the ground, hoping their offering to the gods will make them the lucky ones. The dingkis fish are running now, and if they swim into their trap, the pair may catch hundreds of kilos of them, worth a fortune in nearby Singapore.

I hear the fishermen’s story through my interpreter Idaman, as I sit cross-legged and uncomfortable on the floor of their rough wooden stilt house over the sea, drinking sweet tea. The setting is unfamiliar, but the people are like any other fishermen, dreaming and lying about the big catch.

I’ve joined the end of a two-week trip organised for American college students and a group of friends from New Jersey. Island Connections International (ICI) runs these ‘ethno tours’, bringing visitors to stay in fishing villages in the Riau islands, south of Singapore.

Tonight we’re on Pecong Island. Pecong normally has no tourists, being just a few hundred metres long, with no visitor accommodation, no restaurants and no souvenir shops. It’s also beautiful, with brahminy kites soaring above coconut palms and mango trees, and the South China Sea lapping gently at its shores.

Pancung boat

But we’re here to meet its people. We divide into small groups to live in village houses for 2-3 nights. Men stay with one host family and women with others, even married couples being split up. My host is Pa Udin, son of the village leader and assistant to the government administrator.

He has hosted six ICI groups over a period of three years, so although Pecong people are used to visitors they’re certainly not overrun. ‘We were nervous about foreigners here,’ says Udin, ‘but now we know they are interested in us, so we are excited and proud when they come.’

It’s a two-way street. ICI tourists work on community development projects, which in Pecong has meant digging a well and building garbage incinerators. Host families are paid small amounts to cover guests’ food, but not enough to give up their day jobs to become B&B operators.

ICI interpreters stay with us. They teach us basic greetings and polite phrases, as well as cultural etiquette like pointing with the thumb rather than the finger, using the right hand when eating and sitting with legs tucked in (not easy for flexibility-challenged westerners!)

Breakfast is served.

We sleep on rubber mats, wrapped in sheets or sarongs. Meals are taken sitting on the floor and eaten with the hands. We men eat alone, served by Udin’s wife Ibu Melati, while his children watch shyly through the doorway. They’ll eat after we’re finished. ‘Back home we only get fish without bones,’ a student from Ohio tells me, ‘and kinda breaded. But this is great.’
Our food is indeed good – rice with spicy prawns or coconut fish curry, green beans and hot sambal on the side, and slices of green mango. There’s a touching incident when one host fisherman, having caught no dingkis fish all day, buys some at great expense for his guests to try.
Any awkwardness is broken when tourists join the locals in raucous games of soccer and badminton. Wrestling coach Tom and his friend Mike give a demonstration of their sport, which causes much amusement.

Wearing shorts or sarongs, we take open-air ‘mandi perigi’ showers with buckets at the communal well. Toilet facilities in the houses are just a small hole in the floor over the sea – tricky for all of us, and especially for corporate executive Callen, who somehow drops his passport down there. He has to dive into the water to retrieve it and comes ashore with a soggy passport and an excellent story.

In the village there’s no shortage of people wanting to talk to us. A mother thrusts her children at me – ‘Photo! Photo!’ I line up a shot and the kids immediately burst into terrified tears. It’s a knack I have.

The warm sense of community is obvious and impressive. No doors are locked and there is no police force. Pecong is a relatively prosperous village for the area and is changing, says Pa Udin. A new concrete road, paid for by the government, runs around the island and already seven motorcycles use it; surprising to us, since the road is barely a kilometre long. A teacher proudly rides his motorcycle 200m to school each day, ‘To save time,’ he says.

Mrs Ajiza’s shop sells snacks, drinks and household items. She tells how she teased a tourist last year – ‘He was 33 years, with no hair, and you know, he was not yet married!’

At night a band performs with the volume turned to levels endangering eardrums and sanity. A keyboard player and singer belt out Indonesian joget music, while eight bored girls brought from Sumatra sit in a row on plastic chairs, waiting for a daring village boy to pay 40cents for a dance. The bands know fishermen will have money when the dingkis run and it is considered unseemly for local girls to dance in public.

Next morning we’re woken at 4.30 by the roosters and the amplified call to prayer from the village mosque. After breakfast of chilli noodles we pile into a long flat-bottomed ‘pancung’ boat to visit fishermen working out at sea.

Raising the fish trap

Pecong fishermen build a ‘kelong’, a funnel of poles and nets, which corrals fish towards the narrow end. We help to haul up the traps and find that no-one is rich yet, though most have caught enough dingkis to keep them smiling. They smile easily on Pecong.

Too soon we have to leave these generous people with heartfelt thanks and a few small gifts, and ride the boat to a debriefing session at ICI’s resort at Telunas Beach, an hour away. We’re still in paradise because the white sand is backed by hillsides of dense jungle (‘just like a screen saver!’ says a student). In the thatched huts are comfortable beds, flushing toilets – and chairs!

Chatting about what we’ve learned, the man from Kentucky sums it up, ‘Our lives are about what we’re doing and where we’re headed; village life is about who you’re with.’

Richard Tulloch was the guest of Island Connections International

TRIP NOTES:

Getting there:

Ferry from Singapore to Batam Island takes one hour and costs $S40 (about US$30) return.

Further information:  ICI group ethno tours cost about $150 a day for 10 days or more, including transport from Batam, and all meals, guides and accommodation. School groups, families and individuals can stay at Telunas Beach Resort, from which shorter village visits can be arranged. www.telunasbeach.com.

THE GREAT OUTDOORS, KOREAN STYLE

I’ve clambered up a few mountain peaks, but this was the first time I’d had a cheer squad applaud my arrival at the top. And I’d never before conquered a mountain where a gentleman sits under an umbrella by the summit engraving medals for people as momentos of their achievement.

Koreans love the great outdoors and Gangwon-do province, or “heavenly blessed land” as it is described in the tourist brochures, is their adventure playground. But getting back to nature here means anything but being alone in the wilderness; this is a social activity to be shared with your family, friends and work colleagues. Strange Australians are welcome too and, as long as you’re not looking for peace and quiet, it’s great fun.

Inje County, a couple of hours’ drive east of Seoul, is a hot spot of Korean adventure tourism, with a range of simulated near-death experiences on offer year round. People are winched up a crane to Big Bungy, and play Inje Sudden Attack, a live version of a shoot-em-up computer game which I was told is massively popular (I’m not very up with such things, I’m afraid).

I settled for more sedate activities; a bone-jarring ride over rocks and through rivers in an amphibious Canadian army ATV (All Terrain Vehicle), followed by a drenching raft trip in wild rapids. Then to cap it off I climbed the aforementioned mountain.

Naturally I shared my fun with others. Beside the Naerincheon River, home of the 2007 World Whitewater Rafting Championships, rafting guides were preparing excited groups of families, workmates and corporate bonders to ride the rapids for a two-hour, six-kilometre trip downstream.

White water rafting for beginners

I was assigned to a raft with a family of four, and discovered that Mum and the 10-year-old daughter couldn’t swim. This would have disqualifed them from taking to the water in many countries, but apparently the rules aren’t so strict in Korea. We strapped on life-jackets and a young guide with a taut body and even tauter briefs gave us a quick floating lesson. Then we were on our way.

The river was gentle at first, winding between thickly forested hills, then picked up speed as we neared the rocky bits. Following the barked orders I added to my Korean vocabulary, building on ‘Hyundai’, ‘kimchi’ and ‘Samsung’ which, let’s face it, are of little use while shooting rapids. Now I speak fluent raft-paddling Korean; ‘Hana – dul! Hana – dul!’ (One – two! one – two!) and ‘Jeongchi!’ (Stop!). There’s also a handy phrase for ‘paddle backwards as hard as you can, you idiots, we’re going to hit that rock’, but I can’t exactly recall it.

Having survived our first rapids and reached a flatter section of water we swapped high fives and were feeling quite cocky. Until the guide lined us up on one side of the raft (we were used to taking orders now, so we did as we were told), then promptly shoved us overboard.

Much hilarity followed as we splashed him, he splashed us and other guides dunked the pretty girls till they squealed for mercy. When we came to a waterfall we took turns at being ritually held down under the freezing stream. It was all taken in good spirit, and it made me reflect on how laws about safety, insurance and harassment, necessary though they may be, have put a damper on such fun in other parts of the world.

Mt Seoraksan National Park

The next day I went for a walk. Seoraksan National Park can fairly claim to be Korea’s most beautiful natural area, with azaleas blooming in spring and leaves turning red and gold in autumn. I was there in summer – misty and sweaty, with the threat of showers. Nonetheless, the park’s rocky peaks, waterfalls and lakes are a magnet for Koreans, so I knew I wouldn’t be alone on Mt Gwongeumseong.

There was a queue for the cable car to take us half-way up the hill, with an hour and half to wait before our turn. That was no great problem; below the mountains was the lovely Sinheungsa Temple, with the World’s Largest Buddha statue – just a few years old, but nonetheless impressive.

The world's biggest Buddha

Then it was up on the cable car to join the line of ants scrambling up a rocky outcrop known as Gwongeumseong Fortress. My hiking boots gave me a good grip but some were attempting it in flip-flop sandals and even stiletto heels. It wasn’t technical rockclimbing, but it wasn’t so easy either and the last part of the climb was beside a seriously dangerous drop. Nobody seemed concerned. A father was carrying a toddler on his shoulders.

A well muscled climber swathed in ropes and carabiners had positioned himself between the death fall and us wannabe mountaineers and was directing traffic up the safest route. I seemed to be the only foreigner on the mountain that day so those waiting at the top gave me a rousing reception. The clouds completely blotted out any view, but no matter. I know how it was supposed to look – stalls were selling postcards of the mountain complete with snow, azaleas and autumn leaves.

Seoraksan has many kilometres of hiking trails leading to mountain huts and temples, and possibly I could have escaped the crowds by doing a longer walk, but why should I worry about not having the nature to myself? This was a great cultural experience.

The writer was a guest of the Korea Tourism Organisation

TRIP NOTES:

Getting there: Buses from Seoul to Sokcho near Seoraksan National Park leave every hour, take about 2.5 hours and cost 23,000won (about USD20) one way.
Staying there: Kensington Stars Hotel under Mt Seoraksan (with great views of the mountain) has double rooms from 116,045won. For other accommodation in Gangwon-do province, see visitkorea.or.kr.
Further information: Entry to Seoraksan National Park costs 3200won. Cable car up Mt Gwongeumseong costs 8500won. For a summary of adventure activities and guiding companies, see injejump.co.kr ( unfortunately in Korean only, but with good pictures) or english.visitkorea.or.kr.

ANIMAL ATTRACTIONS – Singapore’s zoos

Each time the tortoise sticks his head out of his shell and takes a tentative step, the curious monkey pokes him with a leathery finger. The tortoise pulls his head back in. The monkey rocks the shell, then sits back and waits for the next move.
The little drama is playing out right at our feet, on a bridge in the Singapore Zoo. The monkey is a macaque, according to the information board. ‘Avoid threatening eye contact with macaques,’ it adds, so the tortoise seems to be doing the right thing.

It’s one of the delights of Singapore’s three major wildlife attractions that we can get very close to the animals. In the zoo a family of orang-utans free-ranges over our path and swings its way up a high ropes course. Out at the Jurong BirdPark screeching lorikeets gather to suck nectar from containers held by shrieking kids, and at the Night Safari the dark shape looming on the road in front of our tram turns out to be a Malayan tapir.

Like many people I have my doubts about zoos. Yes, they play useful roles in research, breeding and education programs, and I understand that some animals enjoy a less stressful life in captivity. The gazelles’ enclosure may not be the wide savannah, but there’s plenty of hay and it’s a cheetah-free zone.

However I feel uncomfortable watching a leopard pace back and forth on a five-metre trail, and I don’t like seeing polar bears in the tropics, even though the signs emphasise that they have air-conditioned quarters. Maybe when global warming kicks in polar bears will live under palm trees, but meanwhile I prefer to see fauna in a more convincing approximation of natural habitat.

For the most part, Singapore does that extremely well. The Zoo, Night Safari and Jurong Bird Park have the great advantages of being new (all established since the 1970s), well funded, well planned and above all, tropical. The lush foliage that lines the winding paths ensures that we’re often screened from other visitors. Palms and tree ferns form a dense canopy under which bright ginger plants and orchids bloom. The gardens alone are worth the admission price.

The animals have the run of relatively large areas with few obvious fences. Moats and cattle grids rather than bars separate the enclosures.

Our favourite zoo exhibit is the one housing dozens of Hamadryas baboons. They’re a long way from North Africa, but they look very much at home on their cliff, with a waterfall, caves to shelter in and rocks to frolic on. A scuffle breaks out as a young upstart challenges the big fella. The boss cuffs him away, and he scoots off to find a lower caste baboon to give him an ego-boosting grooming. We wouldn’t see more natural behaviour on a crag in Ethiopia.

Every half hour the zoo stages a different animal show. We don’t much enjoy watching animals demonstrate their ‘intelligence’ by obeying instructions from cheesy game-show hosts. If the animals were really smart they’d grab the bucket and force the keeper to beg for snacks. However the shows are naturally popular with the kiddies and the elephants and seals look as if they enjoy their work.
Next to the zoo, the Night Safari kicks off at sunset, and it’s very much a show too. As we board the tiger-striped tram, flaming torches, staff in khaki shorts and piped African drum music suggest we’re off on a dangerous expedition where someone could be taken by an anaconda at any moment.

The commentary is very ‘wow, this is just sooo amazing!’ though at night elephants, giraffes and rhinos stand round much as they do during the day, only in worse light. ‘And please ladies and gentlemen, no flash photography – we’ll sell you the photos later.’

This being commercially-minded Singapore, the wildlife parks must have an enterprising sponsorship department selling naming rights. Plaques by the displays tell us the penguins are sponsored by Penguin Books, the crocodiles by Crocs shoes, and the sugar gliders by, you’ll never guess…Coca Cola.

The stars of the Night Safari are the smaller animals we see when leave the tram and walk – giant squirrels and civets (something like pointy-faced otters), natives of South-East Asia, which zip around the trees.

We also love the fruit bats. We’ve seen plenty in Sydney, but never come so close to them as in the Mangrove Walk, where they flap and crawl a metre from our faces, chewing on dangling banana bunches.

Our favourite attraction of the three is the Jurong BirdPark. It’s a half hour ride west of central Singapore, home to 9000 birds, brilliantly displayed. Unavoidably there are more corny shows. We go to a lecture on hornbill behaviour (‘The hornbill can eject its faeces a distance of two metres so stand well back ha ha ha!’). We see a talking parrot demonstration, and watch Pikasso (sic) the suphur-crested cockatoo paint pictures.

Shoebill stork

But there are also lovely gardens, huge aviaries and great wetland areas. We particularly like the flocks of flamingos and spoonbills and the Maribu and shoebill storks. I’ve decided the shoebill is my current favourite bird – it looks so improbably ugly and disapproving.

A clump of grass trees and a boab tell us we were entering Australia. In the café you can buy pies and chips, but we give them a miss and step into the Lory Loft, an enormous walk-through aviary with viewing platforms above the treetops. Flocks of bright green and red lorikeets flash up out of the foliage to perch on visitors’ heads and shoulders. Everyone’s having fun, especially the birds.

Many of the birds seem to be in open enclosures, with nothing to stop them flying off and heading for the wilds of Madagascar. Maybe from time to time an adventurous free-range flamingo does fly out of the park to explore Singapore. The escapee then no doubt comes back and tells the flock, ‘I’ve seen the world, guys, and it’s all apartments and shopping malls. The best part is right here.’ We tend to agree.

TRIP NOTES

A combined pass to Jurong BirdPark, Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari costs Singapore $45  per adult. The pass is good for one month, so the attractions can be visited on separate days.
Jurong BirdPark entry is S$18 (A$15) for adults, children half price.

Singapore Zoo entry is S$21.50 (children S$11) including hop on/hop off train around the zoo.

The Night Safari including tram ride costs S$32 (children $16).

There are various bus tours to visit each park separately, including transport from the city centre and park entry. Tours cost between S$35-$45 per person, but for two or more people it can be cheaper to share a taxi. Rides from the city centre to Jurong or the Zoo take about half an hour and cost S$15-24 depending on traffic.

SAINTLY PURSUIT – tracking Templar gold, Portugal

Convento de Christo, Tomar

Simon Templar, the Saint, helped gorgeous damsels in distress. That was all I knew of the mystical Knights Templar, in the dark ages before The Da Vinci Code enlightened us all. Now I’ve visited their Portuguese headquarters in the small town of Tomar, and learned how Templar gold changed the world.
Tomar, 135km north of Lisbon, is a quiet town, and sensibly closes each day for a long lunch. It ticks all the charm boxes – swans on the river by the spillway, lush parks along the water’s edge, pretty church towers and whitewashed houses with terracotta roofs. To these it adds those special Portuguese touches – facades decorated with azulejo tiles and striking cobblestone patterns in the narrow streets.

Statue of Gualdim Pais, Templar Grand Master, Tomar

There’s also an entertaining museum. Mr Mota Lima from Tomar, on his way to watch Elizabeth II’s coronation, swapped matchboxes with an American lady he met on the steamer. This started an obsession, not for American ladies but for matchboxes. The Museu de Fosforos now boasts Europe’s largest collection, nearly 50,000 of them. We enjoyed spotting ancient Redheads and the packs Qantas issued to smoking passengers in times long past.

Tomar’s history goes back even further than that. Perched above Tomar is the Templar Castle, founded in 1160. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, so we tramped the rocky path up the hill. The castle and monastery may be a little run down, but of course after centuries of history you expect some wear and tear on your gargoyles. I’m not sure I want them fixed anyway. I like my ancient parapets crumbling and mossy, rather than scrubbed and sparkling.

Adjoining the castle, the Convento de Christo (Cloister of Christ) is beautifully preserved and plaques in Portuguese and English tell its story. The Templars were a sort of mediaeval private security firm ostensibly formed to protect the route to the holy lands. Depending on whose account you read, they were devout warrior monks or greedy privateers, beating up Moors and Spaniards. They took vows of poverty and became mega-rich.

When the Templars were declared heretics and extinguished in most of Europe in the 14th century, in Portugal they were cannily reinvented as the Order of Christ. The new regime inherited Templar money and invested it in voyages of discovery, sending the likes of Vasco da Gama out with orders to take Christianity to the world and to bring back to Portugal any gold and spices they found lying around.

The monastery at Tomar is a testimony to Templar wealth and power. The octagonal fortified church in the middle of the cloister is considered the Templars’ most beautiful creation, though when we visited it was shrouded in renovators’ tarpaulins. But the cloister’s dormitories, kitchen, library and washing areas gave us a sense of what a monk’s life was like; slow, contemplative, cold and, as the sign informed us, there was ‘no smocking allowed’ in the cloister. Monastic, in other words.

Rosemary spilled out of garden boxes and fruit ripened on the citrus trees in the tiled courtyards. A poster advertised an upcoming theatrical presentation of The Name of the Rose and it was hard to imagine a better setting.
Outside we patrolled the battlements and admired the Manueline window, Tomar’s most photographed icon. It’s state of the art 16^th century masonry. A tangle of stone ropes surrounds an ancient mariner clutching the Tree of Life, while beside him stone explorers stare into the distance. The orange lichen crawling across them adds to the appeal.

Tomar

The next day we drove out into the countryside. It’s pretty rather than breathtaking. Logging and bushfires have clear-felled the forests, leaving small stands of pine and eucalyptus surrounded by purple heather and yellow gorse. Small olive groves, vineyards and orange orchards dot the hillsides.

Most villages are plain. The Portuguese generally don’t bother renovating cute stone cottages – they knock them down and replace them with something less draughty. An exception is the tiny village of Dornes, on a spectacular site overlooking the Zezere River. Winding paths lead up to a lovely little church and an imposing Templar watchtower.

Many roads round here are narrow, so our progress was often slow, and this part of Portugal could well be a world leader in one aspect of traffic control. Villages have a 50kph limit. An overhead eye registers your approaching vehicle and if you’re speeding, traffic lights ahead switch to red. If you want a good run with the lights, take it easy.

Just under an hour from Tomar we came to a more modern religious site. In 1917 the Virgin Mary appeared to three peasant children in Fatima. I confess to doubts about such claims, but the Catholic Church took their word for it, so now Fatima has a major tourist industry.

Fatima souvenirs

In Fatima’s souvenir shops you can buy Virgin Mary statues, small, medium or large. You can shake her in a snow dome full of sparkly plastic if you think that makes her look holier.

The square in front of the cathedral is twice as big as St Peter’s Square in Rome, and caters for crowds of football final proportions on May 13, the anniversary of the apparition. In the Chapel of Apparitions is the bullet that nearly killed Pope John Paul II. Fortunately Our Lady of Fatima intervened just in time and the would-be-assassin’s bullet missed his heart. He’s a hero in this town, and his images are on sale in the shops next to Our Lady’s.

A little further on is Batalha, an unassuming little town dominated by a fabulous monastery and towering Gothic church, the Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitoria, in which Templar Prince Henry the Navigator is buried. His heroic statue in Tomar depicts him as the visionary instigator of the Age of Discoveries, but after reading about his leading role in introducing the African slave trade to Europe, I was glad to see him dead.

We continued our own Voyage of Discovery, this time in search of food. Prices in this area are a delightful step back in time. In the cafes coffee and wine are dangerously cheap, as are the famous tarts in the patisseries.

By now we were almost locals, so we settled into one of those long lunches in the Café Fronteira in the tiny village of Poco Redondo. No menu, no choices, but our hostess Manuela served huge dishes of pork cheeks, piles of potatoes and spinach, carafes of red wine, then coffee with a shot of local paint stripper to spice it up.

The bill was around 8 euros a head, so we could keep our vows of poverty.
The Templars would have been well satisfied. We certainly were.

TRIP FACTS:

Getting there:  Trains run every 1 – 2 hours between Lisbon to Tomar. The trip takes about two hours and costs 8.20 euros.

Staying there: Camping Redondo, at Poco Redondo, has self-contained cabins from 50 euros a day. www.campingredondo.com

Entry to Tomar Castle and the Cloister of Christ is 4.50 euros.

Entry to the Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitoria in Batalha is also 4.50 euros.

Fatima is 30km west of Tomar and Batalha 30km further.