WORLDWIDE 2006/7 >GST
ISSUE #11 $6.95 INCLUDED
TRAVEL CULTURE
WIN!
A RETURN T TO THAILANRIP D! SEE INSIDE FOR DETAIL S
SPRING FEVER CARNIVAL
BLACK RUN RIOT
THEPESCADORES TAKE A WALK ON THE WEIRD SIDE
BUKIT BLISS
HANGING OUT
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SECRET TREASURE
SHIPS AHOY
L AIDBACK DARWIN ECCENTRIC EATING IN JAPAN THE GRATEFUL DEAD DO EGYPT PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM HIGH TO LOW
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WIN!7
NIGHTS ACCOMMODATIONON THE BUKIT PENINSULAINBALI SEE INSIDE FOR DETAILS
BANGKOK BIZA RE Oliver Benjamin schedules 24 hours of outright weirdness in Southeast Asia’s strangest travel hub.
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HERE IS A LOT OF HUBBUB HAPPENING IN Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok are all billing themselves as the “travel hub” for the continent: competing not only for tourism, but for attention from transit passengers en route to other destinations in the region. While most find themselves in those airports for a few hours only, some have an opportunity to venture out into the city to “go native”, if only for a day or less. While Kuala Lumpur and Singapore may provide some modern Asiatic charms, those with a taste for the exotic would do well to make Bangkok their hub of choice. Forget well-known postcard pit stops like its grand palace and floating market. The city offers the short-term but intrepid tourist plenty of unadulterated weirdness.
text: oliver benjamin images: oliver benjamin
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get in the know! Red Bull was created by Dietrich Mateschitz after he discovered a Thai energy drink that cured his jetlag.
thailand in Bangkok. But if you also want to have a fortuitous day, you should visit some of the city’s more interesting shrines. Aside from the giant ones in front of shopping centres, where young women pray for cell phones and young men pray for young women, one simply must visit the Penis Shrine on the grounds of the Raffles Hotel. It hosts an amazing collection of lingams in all shapes and sizes, and clearly size does matter here – some are as big as a person. The steady stream of families praying for fertility annoyed Hilton, the hotel’s previous owner, so much that he demanded its removal. Instead, the landowner cancelled the hotel’s lease. He knew that, above all, one must not piss off the god of the penis.
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Get Suited, Mate –Tailors Throughout the City In as little as eight hours, Bangkok’s manic tailors can whip you up an outfit every bit as crazy as you are. Bring a photo from a magazine and get that leopard-skin kimono you always wanted. Or a powder blue tuxedo. Or a crotchless unitard. For a pittance, they’ll set you up with anything you can imagine and usually without laughing directly in your face.
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...an amazing collection of lingams in all shapes and sizes, and clearly size does matter here – some are as big as a person.
9:00am Get Sent Up The River – Chao Phraya River Boat To Bangkwang Prison
5:30am Tastes Like Victory–Lumpini Park Bangkok rises with the sun, especially those with a yearning for physical fitness. In Lumpini Park, the city’s vast “green lung”, you can watch people getting the blood pumping. After performing tai chi, lifting weights at Lumpini’s own goofy “muscle beach” and beating the crap out of each other in Thai boxing training, the truly hardy line up for a glass of freshlysqueezed snake blood. It’s said to be uncommonly invigorating, though that might be because it’s normally mixed with Red Bull.
7:00am
We All Shrine On–Penis Shrine Most Thais are extremely spiritual – they close their eyes and pray at each shrine they pass. This custom may explain the number of traffic accidents get in the know! Thai tuk-tuks are named after the sound of their engine.
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You could read The Damage Done to get an idea of what goes on in a Thai prison. Better yet, you could actually see for yourself, while simultaneously brightening the day of some poor foreigner rotting away inside. Call up your embassy to get the name of an inmate and prepare yourself for some gruesome stories. Some prisoners hardly get any visitors and will be immensely grateful for your visit – especially if you buy them some goodies from the prison gift shop. Be sure to bring your passport and to dress conservatively – Thai police are no easygoing bunch of baton-swinging bureaucrats. The return trip up the Chao Phraya River will give you plenty of time to ruminate on how lucky you are to be on the outside.
11:00am Macabre Museums – The Siriraj Medical Museum & The Corrections Museum
The Siriraj Medical Museum preserves for posterity that which everyone else has chosen to pretend never existed. The centrepiece of the museum is a room filled with jars of birth-defected babies, complete with plenty of Siamese twins that have their little intestines hanging out. A famous cannibal’s corpse, shelves of deformed body parts and an incredibly lifelike diorama of surgeons ISSUE #10 get lost! #19
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get in the know! Musician Jack Johnson, a former competitive surfer, made an acclaimed surf film titled Thicker Than Water prior to releasing his debut CD.
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text: damien mcaloon images: oliver needham
The Bukit Peninsula came to international attention courtesy of a schoolboy surfer, a budding filmmaker and a mysterious surf break.
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N THE EARLY 70S, AUSTRALIAN SURFER AND photographer Albert Falzon made his first feature film Morning of the Earth (1972). It is a blissful surf flick that is now regarded as a classic of the genre. Unlike the American films that inspired it, Morning of the Earth had no plot, no narration and no titles identifying the surfers or the featured locations. It did, however, have some of the most memorable surfing footage captured on celluloid. One sequence showed two surfers paddling into long, peeling walls at a mysterious Indonesian surf break. The location was Uluwatu on Bali’s Bukit Peninsula. When thousands of wide-eyed, Australian surfers filed out of surf clubs and school halls after screenings of Falzon’s film, the destiny of Uluwatu changed forever. The Bukit Peninsula stretches south of Bali’s capital Denpasar in the shape of an upturned mushroom. With rain scarce in the dry season, its arid landscape contrasts with the mainland’s lush rice paddies. At its southwest tip is Uluwatu, named after the temple Pura Luhur Uluwatu or ‘Temple Above the Final Stone’. It is perched above a coral reef surf break that has captured the imagination of surfers all over the world since Falzon put the location on their collective wish list. Falzon had been staying at Kuta in 1971 with Australian schoolboy surfer Steve Cooney and Californian Rusty Miller when he ventured south to the Bukit Peninsula in search of waves. He returned to Uluwatu with Cooney, Miller and his camera the following day and confirmed his discovery. “When we walked to the edge of the cliff there were lines all the way to the horizon...it was about ten feet.” Steve Cooney, only 14 years of age at the time, paddled into surf mythology by taking the first wave. Falzon has described the group surfing and filming
Dreamland Beach, a pristine stretch of white sand that is a gem of the Bukit region.
all day, “much to the amazement and amusement of the locals, who had never seen surfing before”, and then spending the night “against the cliff on the small beach next to the cave”. The cliff at Uluwatu has hosted many surfers in the following years. The wave regularly features in lists of the world’s finest and has prompted a self-sufficient surf ghetto. For a handful of dollars a day, travelling surf junkies can eat and sleep in one of the many bungalows that overlook the ocean swells. You can surmise the visitors’ priorities by comparing some of the more rudimentary accommodation with the surf shops, which are tiled, brightly lit, immaculately clean and full of gleaming new surfwear and boards. Such is the reputation of Uluwatu that there are often up to one hundred people in the water jostling for waves. Fortunately however, it is not the only drawcard for surfers on the west of
get in the know! While it featured in surf films from as early as 1977, the location of Padang Padang was not disclosed in the surf media until 1980.
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the Bukit Peninsula. The stretch of coast back towards Jimbaran Bay is equally blessed with the combination of dependable southeast trade winds and coral reefs that produce world-quality waves. A couple of kilometres north is Padang Padang. Reached by descending a crevice in the cliff, it has a small beach and a testing reef break that offers left-breaking tubes. Few visitors would dispute the verdict of surf photographer Aaron Chang, who has described it as a “rare, treasured and magical spot”. Paddle further up the peninsula and you reach ‘Impossibles’, another challenging left-hand break renowned for the speed of the waves crashing along the reef. Immediately north of Impossibles is Bingin Beach. The wave at Bingin is famed for its barrelling shape that seemingly permits surfers to get tubed at will. When the tide retreats, it breaks on an increasingly shallow ISSUE #11 get lost! #33
reef and has a take-off area so small that a tablecloth could be thrown over the line-up of surfers. The local surfboard repairmen, Jerry and Jelly, scour the waves and confirm the damage that Bingin can inflict on both board and body. It is a reminder, if one is needed, that inexperienced surfers should treat the Bukit Peninsula with respect. During a visit earlier this year, we met a local surfer who sported a nasty facial gash courtesy of a close encounter with the Uluwatu reef. Injuries can be considerably more serious. In 1972, the year Morning of the Earth was released, Californian surf adventurer Bob Laverty drowned while surfing at Uluwatu. On 29 July this year, Bukit witnessed another day of very
large surf and a 30-year-old Melbourne surfer disappeared while out at Bingin Beach. His body was recovered some days later, over a hundred kilometres further north. For the less adventurous, being a surfer is not a prerequisite to enjoying a stint on the Bukit Peninsula. Its relative solitude has made it an increasingly popular destination for yoga studios and a place to enjoy stunning views from the cliff above Bingin. As the sun disappears, the horizon becomes littered with lights from fishing vessels as they stream out of Jimbaran Bay in search of a catch. During daylight hours, it is mesmerising to watch Indian Ocean swells charging in and then reeling off for hundreds of metres as they hit the reef at Impossibles.
There is also Dreamland Beach, a pristine stretch of white sand that is a gem of the Bukit region. From Bingin, Dreamland can be reached at low tide by scrambling beneath the cliff. The alternative at high tide is a scenic walk around the grassed cliff top past tethered cows. Its sandy bottom and comparatively gentle waves make Dreamland a popular destination for beginner surfers. Bungalow accommodation is available on or close to the beach and a peerless seafood feast can be arranged at one of the beachside cafes known as ‘warungs’. Compared to other areas of Bali, the west coast of the Bukit Peninsula remains relatively remote and undeveloped. Access roads to the ocean are often unsealed and most places that
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...being a surfer is not a prerequisite to enjoying a stint on the Bukit Peninsula.
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get in the know! The Hollywood film Point Break features Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent who pursues a surf-obsessed bank robber to Victoria’s Bells Beach.
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offer accommodation, food or entertainment for tourists operate on a relatively modest scale. Since Falzon and Cooney first stayed overnight at Uluwatu, visiting surfers have been more than happy to bed down in basic accommodation, saving their travelling dollars for extra days by the ocean and post-surf Bintang beers. For those who prefer comfortable accommodation, there are now boutique hotels. The cliff above Bingin Beach in particular has simple but stylish places of unsurpassed hospitality. You don’t need to be interested in the surf to enjoy the cliff-top panoramas, the delicious food and relaxing in the landscaped
private grounds. Dreamland Beach and its beachfront bars are on your doorstep. The sunset is equally impressive, whether viewed from your own private bungalow or while sipping a cocktail from the plunge pool. A week of indulgence comes at such a meagre price that you are almost embarrassed when you settle the bill. One man that does not need to be persuaded about the charms of the Bukit Peninsula is Steve Cooney. Thirty-five years since he paddled into that famous Uluwatu wave as a schoolboy, Cooney’s attachment to the region is unique
therideof the
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get in the know! Peruvian surfer Felipe Pomar won the World Titles when they were conducted in his homeland in 1965.
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text: andrew watson images: andrew watson
On a Peruvian beach, Andrew Watson watches local fisherman returning to shore astride their ‘little horses of reeds’.
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HE SUN IS DISSOLVING GENTLY INTO THE Pacific as the first of the riders returns. Rounding the pier, the barrel-chested figure of Alfredo Ucañan looms quickly, darkened arms whirling tirelessly as his paddle churns through the water. With eyes squinted against the sun, he turns his weathered face toward the sea as his golden steed bobs on the incoming swell. Moments later he is gliding swiftly, rocking back in his seat, riding the surf just as his ancestors did over two thousand years ago. Alfredo is a pescador (fisherman) from the village of Huanchaco in northern Peru. As such, he is one of the custodians of the local tradition of building and riding the fishing crafts known as totora (reed) boats. It is a tradition under increasing pressure as both the coastal marshes – the fragile habitat of the reeds – and those willing to follow in their forefather’s footsteps, slowly diminish. Huanchaco, 550km north of Lima, is renowned for its tranquil setting and laidback ambience. A short bus ride from Peru’s third largest city of Trujillo, it’s a popular hangout for surfers, day-tripping beachgoers and those wanting to witness the local fishermen at work.The village is also at the heart of some of the region’s greatest pre-Inca civilisations, including the Moche and the Chimu. Impressive archaeological sites dot the parched, coastal landscape and date back to 200 BCE. While eroded by time, these cultures
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The reeds are carefully selected, cut and laid out to dry... tightly wound into bundles of varying sizes before being bound to form two cigar-shaped bundles... The unusual design allows the rider to clear breakers and ride waves into the shore in the fashion of a surfer.
get in the know! Peruvian waters abound with fish such as mackerel, sea bass, tuna, swordfish and shark.
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ISSUE #11 get lost! #57
confessions
smile!
LIKE YOU MEANIT text: toby marsh
This is the first thing Ilearnt about hitchhiking:getting a ride really comes down to your smile. Smile too much and you look suspicious, not enough and you could be the escaped convict just mentioned on the radio!
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’D DONE A BIT OF HITCHING IN AUSTRALIA, BUT I’D never tried it in a country where I didn’t speak the language. My first attempt came after three weeks spent picking grapes in France. I was headed to Oktoberfest and free transport meant more euros devoted to developing my beer palate. So, equipped with some useful phrases – “Are you going to...?”, “Can I pay for petrol?”, “Please don’t kill me!”, I hit the road. My first lift was with a pig farmer. In broken attempts, I told him about my country and asked him about his goats. Next was a guy in an old Fiat. He wasn’t going far, but he spoke English and was easy to chat to. I never quite worked out what he did, but after half an hour of listening to his tales of the French Foreign Legion and his brief stint in jail, I bailed at the nearest on-ramp. After two hours by the side of the road, inhaling toxic fumes and dodging missile-like stones thrown up by traffic on the autoroute, I started walking. I figured the stones stood less chance of hitting a moving target. Not more than 15 minutes into my stroll, I heard a car slowing down behind me. I turned to greet my newfound friends. Unfortunately, they were six gendarmes, who made it clear that they had enough friends. I got the impression they were
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At one point in desperation, I even tried doing a little dance. This seemed to scare people, so I went back to stationary begging.
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saying something about hitchhiking on autoroutes being illegal, and making reference to a huge, hairy Albanian they had in the back who was willing to be my friend. But, after a while of playing ‘dumb Aussie’, they agreed to give me a lift to the next town. Here, things got tough. As the day wore on, I started weighing up my options. Keep hitching or go for a beer? No one was even looking at me. At one point in desperation, I even tried doing a little dance. This seemed to scare people, so I went back to stationary begging. I was on the cusp of heading pub-ward, when a Renault flung itself from the other side of the road, across three lanes of rush hour traffic and came screeching to a halt beside me. It was possibly the most perilous, life-threatening piece of driving I have ever witnessed. Was taking this ride a smart move, or was this one of those moments where it’s best to run with commonsense? I took the ride. The driver was a small, middle-aged French woman and it became apparent that she had no intention of taking me any closer to my destination. Instead, she decided to give me a lesson on how to travel for free in France. Years travelling around her country on a shoestring budget had taught her everything there is to know about fare evasion. For instance, in light of the upcoming presidential elections, I should be taking the trains. Instead of paying the fares, I should just collect the fines safe in the knowledge that, come election day, all minor infringements are waived! However, given I was intent on hitchhiking, she was going to take me to the best place in town to get a lift – the long-haul truck stop. We pulled in and she started knocking on truckies’ windows. Before too long, she found me a driver who could take me further than all the rides I’d had combined. I followed the trucking routes all the way to Munich, where the money I’d saved was soundly invested in steins. From then on, I became a professional tight-arse traveller thumbing down Chevies and shitboxes, janitors and Jehovah’s witnesses. I learnt three important things as a veteran freeloader: pick your spot carefully, try to mask the stench of your “hitcher-pits” and smile like you mean it ... (unless you land the Jehovah’s witnesses – then you’re buggered).
get in the know! Hitchhiking is illegal in Australia, but is an acceptable method of travel in Botswana.