ScandAsia South East Asia - August 2013

AUG 2013

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Opinion

The future of expats in Asia

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here is a growing debate about the future of expats in Asia with an increasing number of observers taking the view that time is running out implying that expats will not be much use here anymore.

Your FREE ScandAsia Magazine ScandAsia is the only magazine that covers all the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish residents in South East Asia.

We also publish a ScandAsia magazine in China, Thailand, and Singapore.

Please sign up for your own FREE copy: www.scandasia.com Publisher : 211 Soi Prasert Manukitch 29 Prasert Manukitch Road Chorakae Bua, Lad Prao Bangkok 10230, Thailand Tel. +66 2 943 7166-8, Fax: +66 2 943 7169 E-mail: news@scandasia.com Editor-in-Chief : Gregers A.W. Møller gregers@scandmedia.com Assistant Editor: Wachiraporn Janrut wachiraporn@scandmedia.com Advertising : Finn Balslev finn@scandmedia.com

To my mind this is an all too rigorist almost mechanical view of current trends.

Admittedly the costs of expats combined with the rising performance level and competence of Asians living here or coming back from the U.S. or Europe makes the traditional expat enjoying extremely lavish treatment and high salaries dying specie.

But this is far from the same as saying that the expat does not have a future in Asia.

Only it will be another and different expat having adapted to new circumstances.

The plain fact, visible in all statistics about education in Asia, tells that an increasing number of Asian graduates from universities, technical universities, and business schools enter the job market including segments hitherto reserved for expats. The statistics and various surveys also shows that not all of them, actually a share much under half depending on which country we look at, has an education comparable with the standard set by Western universities and finds it difficult to be employed by Western multinationals operating in Asia.

So the crux is whether the buoyant Asian market calling for higher production, bigger consumption and investment needing more qualified people will outweigh the number of qualified Asians bidding for jobs in Western multinational companies. Add to this the trend that many Asian companies are now entering Western markets. We see the contours of Asian companies transforming themselves into big multinational companies competing with Western multinationals and consequently entering the American and European market – a process that obviously opens job opportunities for expats, maybe not in a Western company doing business in Asia, but for an Asian company doing business in the U.S. or Europe.

These tendencies or trends will generate job opportunities in Asia. But it also follows that the job opportunities will be different and no expat can expect conditions offered say ten or fifteen years ago.

Wages, holidays, school allowances, and insurance will gradually be brought in line with what an Asian employee costs. The difference between an expat and an Asian in costs will reflect the difference in performance and competence and there is no doubt that Asian graduates are catching up albeit there may still be some way to go.

The Western expat must hone skills to perform in other kinds of jobs and increasingly spot opportunities for job openings in Asian multinationals looking at penetrating Western markets.

Adapt and accept wages and working conditions to be more Asian in the future. If so there is definitely a future for expats in Asia.

Piyanan Kalikanon piyanan@scandmedia.com Nattapat Maesang nattapat@scandmedia.com Graphic Designer : Supphathada Numamnuay supphathada@scandmedia.com Distribution : Wanvisa Rattanaburi wanvisa@scandmedia.com Printing : Advance Printing Services Co., Ltd.

Daily news and features here: www.scandasia.com

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

Adjunct Professor Singapore Management University & Copenhagen Business School. Author of: • HOW ASIA CAN SHAPE THE WORLD, from the era of plenty to the era of scarcities, 2011 • Political Economy in a Globalized World, 2009.

Immigrants and their children now 14 pct. of Norway’s population

News Brief

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mmigrants make up 12 percent of the population – 593,000 people according to the annual report of Statistics Norway (SSB). If you include children of immigrants born in Norway, the number is 710,400 similar to 14 percent of the total population. The number of people in this entire group of immigrant grew by 55,300 people last year.

The group who were Norwegian-born to immigrant parents increased by 8,700 people last year – 17 percent of all births in Norway.

The three largest Asians group Looking at the Asian countries covered by ScandAsia, there are roughly 72,000 persons - or roughly 10 percent of the 710,400 persons who are either immigrants themselves or children of immigrant parents.

The three largest immigrant groups from this area are from Philippines (16,335 persons), Thailand (14,988 persons) and Vietnam (13,422 persons). The Vietnamese are by far the most reproductive group of the three. If you combine the children born in Norway where one or both of the parents are from Vietnam, the number is roughly 9,500 persons. The Philippines come in next with 8,700 children. The Thai or half-thai children are 6,500 persons.

East Europeans are Largest Group As for the bigger picture in Norway, the Poles are the largest immigrant group (77,000), followed by Swedes (35,600) and Lithuanians (28,000). In the overview of how Norwegian-born children of immigrants are distributed, Pakistanis, Somalis and Vietnamese lead with respectively 15 200, 9100 and 8000 people.

Oslo’s eastern and southern districts stand out as areas in the country with the largest immigrant share, up to 50 percent. In the capital as a whole, immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents represent 30 percent of the population.

Immigrants in Norway have backgrounds from 220 different countries and territories. Forecasts of SSB presented last year proposed that immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrants will account for almost half of the population of Oslo in 2040.

August 2013 • ScandAsia.South East Asia

5

News Brief

Volvo Malaysia appoints Mark Hallum as managing director

M Strong demand for Pinoy nurses in Finland

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he Nordic health care service provider Attendo says it has had only positive experiences with nurses coming from the Philippines. The company plans to recruit more overseas nursing professionals to plug the gap in the Finnish labor market.

The group of Filipino nurses recruited by Attendo to work in Finland took their vows of service. Many of them graduated with high honors.

“Half of those who graduated did so with commendable grades in areas related to nursing and caring for others. Many have also attained Grade B in Finnish language studies, which can be considered an exceptional accomplishment,” said head instructor Eija Wellman.

The nurses had already received their professional certification in the Philippines before leaving for Finland. Since last October they have worked in Attendo care homes across the Helsinki metropolitan region. Now that they have received Finnish accreditation, they will continue to work with aged patients in the same facilities.

Helsinki Central University Hospital (Hyks) has also hired nursing staff from the Philippines to fill in on surgery and in-patient wards. The Hyks nurses are completing Bachelor’s degrees while they work.

Originally Hyks hired 20 Philippine nurses, 15 of whom have decided to continue working at the hospital. The remaining five returned to their native countries either for family reasons or because of difficulties with the Finnish language.

The nursing profession in Finland has been hit by a severe labor shortage. According to estimates from the Economic Affairs Ministry Finland will need at least 20,000 care professionals by the year 2025.

Swedish faith in the Philippine economy

ark Hallum will take over as managing director of Volvo Car Manufacturing Malaysia Sdn Bhd from David Stenstrom, who has moved on to the role of senior director of Manufacturing Engineering Europe at the Volvo Car headquarters in Sweden.

On July 17, a statement said the appointment has taken effect from April 1 with Hallum having been in control of the reins at Volvo Car Manufacturing for three and a half months of his three and a half year contract.

Prior to this position, Hallum has gained widespread automotive experience as Volvo’s vice president for manufacturing strategy, after positions working with Toyota and Honda, as well as with McKinsey Consulting.

Hallum’s remit will be to ensure luxury quality and increase volume of Volvo’s locally assembled cars for the Asian market whilst bringing operations in line with the “Volvo Cars Manufacturing System”, which sets the global way of working across all Volvo manufacturing sites.

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atrik Brummer, founder and chairman of the Swedish hedge fund Brummer & Partners, expressed his faith in the Philippine economy over the next decade when he on 9 July introduced a new $120-million Navegar Fund dedicated to invest $10 million to $20 million each in eight to 10 mid-sized Philippine companies over the next five years.

“I would rather be investing in the Philippines than in the west over the next 10 years,” Brummer was quoted in Manila Standard July 17.

The extraordinary 7.8 percent gross domestic product expansion of the Philippines in the first quarter drew a lot of attention especially among fund managers.

Who should be interested in the new financing opportunity?

“We are looking at businesses that are already up and running and profitable,” he says.

“In the normal case when we are supposed to be the minority, if we invest $10 million to $20 million in a minority position, then the value of the company should be $30 million to $50 million. You have to be a profitable company, you have to have a critical mass, depending on your margins,” he says.

“We have already gotten quite a lot of interest. The challenge for us is to make sure with do the business with the right people, good executors, and those who want to grow their businesses,” says Brummer.

Navegar Fund is looking to invest in consumer finance, food, apparel, retail, healthcare, real estate, business process outsourcing, tourism, education and manufacturing.

The 64-year-old former banker established Brummer & Partners in Stockholm in 1996 with a $50-million capital. The group’s total assets now amount to $15 billion.

Before establishing his own company, Brummer worked for 22 years at the Swedish investment bank Alfred Berg.

6 ScandAsia.South East Asia • August 2013

News Brief

Indonesia and Norway sign agreement on bilateral cooperation

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n July 3, Indonesian and Norway foreign ministers signed a MoU on the Establishment of Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation that facilitates intensification of bilateral cooperation between the two countries in facing regional and global challenges.

“We are convinced that we will have stronger bilateral partnership in various arrays that comprised of politics, economy, trade, investment and people-to-people relations,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told a joint press conference in his office with his visiting Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide.

The signing of the MoU was conducted by the two ministers on the sidelines of their meeting in Natalegawa’s office. In the meeting the two ministers reaffirmed the two nations’ joint commitment in further developing bilateral relations between the two countries as mandated by “Joint Declaration on Cooperation towards a Dynamic Partnership in the 21st Century” document signed in Jakarta on 8 November 2010.

It facilitates Indonesia and Norway partnership in improving their relations in democracy, human rights, security, trade and investment, environment, energy, fishery, infrastructure and education.

The two ministers also discussed environment issue, particularly on Indonesian efforts in reducing CO2-emission through Indonesia-initiated REDD Plus scheme that is partly funded by Norway.

Maersk signs $54 million contract with Malaysian Petronas

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anish oil and shipping group A.P. MollerMaersk has signed a jack-up rig contract worth about $54 million with a unit of Malaysia’s Petronas.

Maersk Drilling, a unit of the Maersk group, said on July 12 that Petronas Carigali, the exploration and production subsidiary of Malaysia’s national oil company, had exercised a right to extend the contract for the Maersk Convincer rig by one year.

Consequently, the rig will be on contract with Petronas until mid-November 2014, and with the signing of the extension, Maersk Drilling’s forward contract coverage for 2013 is now 100 percent, it said.

August 2013 • ScandAsia.South East Asia

7

News Brief

Norway commends Malaysia’s strategic focus to achieve high income nation status

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alaysia’s Government Transformation Programme (GTP) and the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) have been commended by Norway.

Norway’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Espen Barth Eide, said it was very important for Malaysia to have such a strategic focus, to achieve the goal of a developed and high-income nation by 2020.

Describing Malaysia as an easy place to do business, he referred to the World Bank Report 2013, where the country was ranked the 12th most business friendly country globally and first in terms of ease of getting credit.

“This places Malaysia on a better footing to achieve the developed and high income nation status,” he told Bernama recently.

Malaysia recorded a GDP growth of 5.1 percent in 2012 and has projected growth of between 5.0 to 6.0 per cent this year.

“When a country’s total GDP and GDP per capita increases annually, it is a good thing, as more people are moving from the lower to middle class and so forth,” Eide said.

He said however, that this also meant that Malaysia had to keep transforming, as one of the issues of being a low income nation, was obviously cheap labour.

“When the GDP grows, you don’t have that cheap labour. This means you need to work on something else, such as the need for more automation, less manual, or maybe move from one sector to another,” he added.

Touching on bilateral relations with Malaysia, he said the 42 years of fruitful ties, is expected to grow on the economic front as the Norwegian business community based in the country is keen to further expand their businesses.

Eide said that Norway was increasingly moving away from just looking at exports and imports, while more focused on global value exchange.

There are about 50 Norwegian companies in Malaysia, in sectors like oil and gas, shipping and information and communications technology.

SKAGEN DENMARK The White Label collection of timepieces from the Danish lifestyle brand SKAGEN DENMARK stands out for their unique design and functional qualities.

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fter more than twenty four years in the accessories design world, the watch collections of SKAGEN DENMARK has in the opinion of many designers reached a level of contemporary culture of their own. The White Label watch collections displays Danish design at its best, with graceful styles, slim lines, subtle, inspiring colors, and a quality that will make the time piece last year after year.

DENMARK’s KLASSIK collection combines the enduring qualities of Danish design with the pure elegance of Denmark’s natural landscape. Offering a slim profile and expertly crafted bands, this collection proves that simple can be altogether striking.

AKTIV The Aktiv collection pays tribute to the pride the Danish people take in an active lifestyle. Favored for its sharp, minimalist look, these sport-inspired timepieces are certain to score high marks among the fashion conscious and adventure enthusiasts.

PERSPEKTIV The Perspektiv collection offers a combination of uncomplicated, minimalist design with a sophisticated style. From the renowned Designer Series to timepieces inspired by elements in nature, this collection presents itself with more daring colors, distinctive materials and new evolutions in Danish Design.

For further details, please visit the website www.skagen.com PERSPEKTIV

KLASSIK

The White Label watches are available in three main collections:

KLASSIK This is the timepiece to consider if you want to invest in a timeless style that will look as great many years from now as it does today. SKAGEN 8 ScandAsia.South East Asia • August 2013

All three collections reflect the qualities of traditional Danish design: Light, Pure, Clean, Tailored and Enhanced by Color.

SKAGEN DENMARK has since the beginning focused on producing authentic, high-quality Danish lifestyle products at prices that are accessible for design enthusiasts around the globe. The brand has a distinct design – a quality that design enthusiasts call the “design DNA” – rooted in simplicity, natural elements and modern design.

The mix of natural and modern design makes them desirable function-driven objects for today, tomorrow and beyond.

The watches are available in over 220 concession stores throughout China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand, India, Vietnam, and the Philippine.

AKTIV

News Brief

Nordea opens private banking branch in Singapore

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o serve the growing community of Nordic individuals in Asia, Nordea has opened a private banking branch in Singapore.

Nordic businesses are growing in Asia and are thereby attracting more Nordic professionals to live and work in the region. The Nordic expatriates in Asia are also staying longer than they used to.

Singapore is the centre for private banking in Asia, and Nordea offers private banking services to the growing community of wealthy individuals from its newly opened branch in Singapore.

“Asia-Pacific is an engine of growth for the world”, says CEO Jhon Mortensen of Nordea Bank S.A. “To present the growing number of Nordic individuals in the region with the same high quality private banking service as we do in Europe, we have opened a branch in Singapore, thereby making their access to the financial markets easier, more efficient and more secure.”

For five consecutive years, Nordea was named the best provider of private banking services in the Nordic & Baltic region by the international financial magazine Euromoney. Nordea

is the leading Nordic provider of international private banking services, and the Nordea Group is Northern Europe’s leading universal bank, with around 11 million customers, more than 1,000 branch offices and EUR 224 billion in assets under management.

Nordea is one of the leading international banks in shipping, providing a diversified range of services for that sector. The company has a dedicated team in Singapore with strong market knowledge and structuring capabilities to assist clients in several Asian countries.

The new branch will be headed by Eric Pedersen, who started as an analyst in the Bank’s Treasury department, and, since 2000, has worked in senior roles within Asset Management and Private Banking. “Besides our reputation for seeing things from the client’s point of view, Nordea’s financial strength and the retained AA-rating is clearly an added attraction for wealthy clients looking for a safe and reliable private banking partner,” he says.

The Singapore team is composed of experienced, senior private bankers with financial market expertise who are supported by highly qualified operational staff. In the team of account managers are Jonas Bergqvist (Swedish), Haavard Farstad (Norwegian), and Kim Osborg Nielsen (Danish).

For further information: Eric Pedersen General Manager, Nordea Bank S.A., Singapore Branch Phone +65 65 97 10 81

Jhon Mortensen

Eric Pedersen August 2013 • ScandAsia.South East Asia

9

Dep Dec Danish artist Charlotte Donvang Parks and Pakistani photographer Ahsan Qureshi are scheduled to open a joint exhibition at the Westin Kuala Lumpur on Jalan Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur on 3 October 2013.

By Gregers Moller Photos: Sarah Mia Haagerup

10 ScandAsia.South East Asia • August 2013

pth& ception D

epth and Deception is the name of the exhibition, which Danish artist Charlotte Donvang Parks and Pakistani photographer Ahsan Qureshi are putting up from 3 October to 31 October 2013 at the Westin in Kuala Lumpur.

Charlotte Donvang is not afraid to touch upon the obvious differences between herself and her fellow artist.

“He is a muslim Pakistani and I am an atheist Dane - at least in the sense that I do not tie myself to one single religion,” she says.

The two met incidentally in a coffee shop, brought together by an entrepreneurial friend.

“From my side I will contribute with 12 paintings in the exhibition,” Charlotte explains.

“We have also talked about making one of the exhibits a combined creation. It would be one of his photographs that I will be painting on. We would create this piece of art together, bridging our two different backgrounds both culturally and artistically, two artists - Danish and Pakistani – far apart, yet open for cultural exchange,” Charlotte explains.

To further bridge the differences, the exhibition will be officially opened by the two ambassadors – the Danish and the Pakistani.

The Depth and Deception exhibition this October is special to Charlotte as she is increasingly experimenting with combining her art with other forms of art. When ScandAsia visited her in June, she was going through a series of art jamming sessions with friends who would create music taking inspiration from her paintings while she would paint based in inspiration from their music – simultaneously in a mutually interactive creative process.

An intuitive artist “I am an intuitive artist. I download what comes to me. Then I ask the painting “Who are you?

What are you here to tell us?” It is an inspiration, a help to stop and relate to what they see.”

“Ultimately, art is about making people stop and think,” she continues.

“A painting can be seen in as many ways as there are people looking at it. You tend to think you can describe a painting because we think we are dealing with data like the combination of certain colours, certain symbols, a certain form. A painting is all that as well, but it is also energy.

Energy influences us as individual beings because we generate our own energy. Then the energy of the painting merges with your inner energy. You as an individual will always perceive a piece of art differently from any other individual.”

Plenty of artistic example Charlotte started her artistic career a bit late in her life, considering that he mother is an artists and that her grandfather taught her how to paint from childhood. But instead of following the example she decided to study economics at Copenhagen Business School and made herself a career in the field of advertising and marketing. She helped launch the Sprite brand in Denmark and also worked creatively with major international companies such as Colgate-Palmolive, Kodak and Skoda.

Later she fell in love with a British Engineer and got married. He was working for one of the biggest engineering consultant firms in the world and had to travel a lot, which suited Charlotte well since she loved to travel and had always dream of working and living abroad. First they moved to England and since Thailand.

During her years living in Thailand, Charlotte established one of the first companies selling jewelry online and as a board member of Danish Thai Chamber of Commerce she helped the Chamber establish a presence online.

Eventually, she and her husband David in 2007 moved to Kuala Lumpur, where he had entered a 4 year contract. Charlotte closed her business in Thailand and became attracted to the health and wellness industry before she eventually followed her real “calling” to become an artist.

Self deception “I grew up in a family of artists, yet I believed that I was going to be a businesswoman. The self deception stayed with me throughout my adult years. I was also successful as a businesswoman, but I was restless, unsatisfied.

“I like to think of it as “a calling” as the religious people call it. This was in 2007 and I was on a path that in 2008 led me to become a Reiki Master. That was when the word “acrylic” repeatedly came to me.“ “Eventually, I felt I couldn’t continue ignoring it. It coincided with the flop of a business venture that I had gone into. When I started painting in acrylics, it all came rolling like a wave. Two month later I had two of my paintings decorating the walls of a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur,” Charlotte recalls.

“Shortly after, former Danish foreign minister Uffe Elleman Jensen visited Malaysia and at a dinner in the Danish community I could present him with a portrait of himself. It was a turning point for me, because it was the first time I had “come out of the closet” as an artist,” she adds.

The next year, Charlotte opened her first major solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. Since then a series of solo and group exhibitions in Malaysia and overseas have followed. Her latest solo exhibition “Colours of Life. A Celebration of Life, Art and Culture” took place in 2012 in Kuala Lumpur.

This year, Charlotte participated in the “Aalborg in Colours” exhibition in the city Aalborg in Northern Jutland in February together with 40 participating artists. Charlotte was there as a member of a group of artists known in Denmark as FurKunst.dk – named after the island Fur, where Charlotte’s family has a summerhouse and she has many fond memories.

Now she is back in KL again after a energizing summer break in Denmark, where she also conducted training courses in creativity for individuals and groups. Colourful as always

August 2013 • ScandAsia.South East Asia

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A Segway to the sights of Fed up with temples?

Can’t wait to see the next one? Regardless of how you feel about the old architecture of Thailand, a Segway is one way of going about it that suits everyone.

By Sebastian Buur and Ida Holt

I

f you’re anything like us, in the past you have looked at a guy on a Segway thinking how much you would want to try one, but never actually going up to a rental agent to try, scared of how silly you might look. Fear not. People around will probably look at you the same way you have looked at others on this slightly weird, futuristic means of transportation, but you will have too much fun to pay any attention.

The tour offered by Segway Gibbon (part of Flight of the Gibbon) starts out with a crash course outside the main office. We had a few laughs as we stepped up for the first time, ready to have our go at taming the weird beast that is the Segway, and was surprised to find it just as easy as the brochures told us it would be. No exaggeration there, and within minutes we felt like we had been doing this forever.

Luckily, the first stop of our tour was the plaza just outside the main gate going into the old quarter of Chiang Mai. Here we were allowed to put our newfound skills to the test. So we did.

Racing up and down on a large open space was amazing fun, to say the least. And a Japanese tourist took a picture of us for his scrapbook.

More temples than one can fathom In Chiang Mai, there are more than 300 temples.

Walking around by yourself it’s impossible to figure out which signifies what, who built that and why did they have to build so many in the first place. But that’s why you hire guides, and our two were first class. One functions mainly as a safety guide, blocking traffic with a rather hilarious sign

saying ”Segway crossing” and forming the rear end of our small cortege, while the other shared his knowledge on Chiang Mai and its sights. As it turned out, he was very knowledgeable. It was impressive what he could tell about monuments and stupas and temples every time we had a stop.

And so we stopped at temples, at the monument of the three kings who founded Chiang Mai and different points of interest. At all the places it was possible to get off and go in or around to take pictures. Or both. One of the highlights for us was a collection of meditating monks, realistically formed in wax. These guys could have been at Madam Tussaud’s.

About two thirds in, we got to stop at a small café. A drink and a small snack is part of the tour.

And it may seem like a small detail, but the homemade brownie we had there was to die for. Seriously, it was the mother of all brownies, and we might never have a brownie that good again.

After that, it’s one more temple and then back to the office. Two hours had whiskered by without us noticing it. Giving up the Segways was not an easy task, and hopefully this wonderful machine will one day overtake cars at the main means of transport. Or bikes as a minimum.

You’ll never want to get off Temples is probably not the main attraction for everyone. Still, in a town like this, you can’t help but feel like you’re missing something important if you just hang out at the cafés or go on some of the many adventure style tours on offer here.

And you should go see the temples because the setting is just ripe for some temple hopping. And that’s why the Segway Gibbon is so great.

We did the two hour tour, but we can recommend taking the three hour version which is also an option. It will not only give you more time at every stop, but also give you more time riding around town, not caring how people on foot perceive you. Because you’re on a Segway, sucking up culture on the way, and that’s all that matters.

By

Test Team

Operator: Segway Gibbon is run by Flight of the Gibbon Address: 29/4-5 Kachasarn Rd., Chang Klan, Chiang Mai, 50100 Thailand Website: www.segwaygibbon.com Price: 2 hour tour – 1599 baht, 3 hour tour – 1999 baht

12 ScandAsia.South East Asia • August 2013

Chiang Mai

By

Test Team

This travel report was delivered

by Ida Holt and Sebastian Buur who are members of ScandAsia Test Team. Ida is a freelance writer for an advertising company and Sebastian studies Photo Journalism at Danish School of Journalism in Denmark. Together they are taking five month tour of Southeast Asia. The article was sponsored Segway Gibbon which is run by Flight of the Gibbon.

If you are interested in joining our test team and supplying articles in exchange of free trips, please contact Editor Gregers Moller at gregers@scandmedia.com

August 2013 • ScandAsia.South East Asia

13

Adventure in the canopies

Zip lining through unspoiled rainforest is in itself a true adrenaline rush. Add the view of wild gibbons, and spice it up with a spectacular staff and superb safety. What do you get? An experience of a lifetime.

By Sebastian Buur and Ida Holt

E

xperiencing monkey life, swinging from the towering trees while looking at gibbons deep in the jungle is a dream come true for adventurous nature lovers. Flight of the Gibbon offers this adventure with high professionalism not too far from Chiang Mai. With 32 zip lines in total, rappelling and walking on sky bridges, everybody’s appetite for adrenaline will certainly be satisfied.

Our small group, ranging from 7 to 65 in age, arrived at the starting point not shaking of fear after a pleasant bus ride. Everybody put on the wellmaintained high quality harness and helmet, and was ready to set off. Our two guides, called sky rangers, told us the do’s and don’ts of zip lining, and made sure that everyone was aware of all rules and precautions before we were on our way.

Outstanding sky rangers and diverse fun We felt perfectly safe at all times, as there would always be one sky ranger at the receiving tree and one at the platform behind. And not once would anyone be untied from a rope, not even our sky rangers. Safety was their number one priority, and at the same time the sky rangers managed to make a relaxed and funny atmosphere surrounding the experience, cracking jokes and teasing in a friendly manner.

At one point, a guy from our group, who was scared of heights, got his fears put at ease with help from the attentive sky rangers. In the same caring manner, one of the rangers would go zip lining with a little girl, who didn’t weigh enough for some of the longer lines (the longest being 800 meters!).

Each tree offered a new and different view of the jungle. At one platform, we had to jump off with a rope connected to a carabiner on our backs. For the faint of heart though, it was possible to just take a normal zip line. For us seeking thrills, this short free fall had our hearts racing, our adrenaline was pumping and made it impossible not to scream in exhilaration. We even saw gibbons a couple of times, each time equally impressive.

The whole package Back at the starting point a delicious local meal was served, and the cook kept on refilling our plates to the sounds of live music until we were full.

The day ended with a waterfall trek. We walked along the beautiful and winding waterfall for about half an hour, before we returned to Chiang Mai. After an exciting day in the forest, we both felt like going back and do it all again. It was a lot of fun and a great mixture of nature and adventure. And when it comes to safety, Flight of the Gibbon delivers total perfection. If you are keen on tickling your inner Indiana Jones, this is certainly a must do.

By

Test Team

Operator: Flight of the Gibbon.

Address: 29/4-5 Kachasarn Rd., Chang Klan, Chiang Mai 50100, Thailand Website: www.treetopasia.com Price: 3299 baht

14 ScandAsia.South East Asia • August 2013

Medium

Danish meatballs

Frikadeller

By Anders Holm Nielsen

Evil

Ingredients • 1/2 pound ground veal • 1/2 pound ground pork • 1/4 cup milk, or as needed • 1/2 cup finely grated onion • 1 egg • 1/4 cup bread crumbs, or as needed • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour • 1/4 cup seltzer water • Salt and pepper to taste • 1/4 cup margarine

Directions

Are you done?

W

hen you have completed the above puzzles, please send your solution by fax to +66 2 943 7169 or scan and email to puzzles@ scandasia.com. We will make a lucky draw among the correct answers. Five lucky winners will receive a ScandAsia polo shirt.

Name:

___________________________________________________

Age: ________________________

Mobile:

___________________

Address:

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

Email:

__________________________________________________

Deadline for submitting your solution is 15 September 2013

• Mix the veal and pork together in a bowl, and stir in the milk, onion, and egg. Mix the bread crumbs into the meat. Sprinkle in the flour, and knead well to mix. Stir in the seltzer water, season to taste with salt and pepper, and mix well. The mixture should be very moist, but not dripping.

• Chill the meat mixture for 15 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator, to make the meatballs easier to form.

• Heat the margarine in a large skillet over medium heat.

• Scoop with a large spoon, and form the mixture into a slightly flattened, oval meatball about the size of a small egg. Place the meatballs into the heated skillet, and fry for about 15 minutes per side, until the meatballs are well-browned and no longer pink in the center.

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