Sili Apelu lost fourteen members of his family to the 2009 earthquake and tsunami in Samoa. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com SAMOA

Rebuilding after tsunami in the south pacific island of Samoa

(Lalomanu Beach) One early morning less than two years ago, Sili Apelu had no clue that in a matter of hours his life would literally turn upside down. Literally. On that day fourteen members of his family were washed away by the crushing impact of over twenty foot waves and his surviving relatives were left with their lives in tatters. During the minutes and hours after an earthquake struck off of the shores the South Pacific island of Samoa, he was forced to make life wrenching decisions. Survival was the order of the day.

When he resurfaced from his ordeal of the morning of September 29, 2009, Apelu didn’t just set out to rebuild his life. He made it his mission to rejuvenate the small beachside community on the eastern tip of Upolu Island. With his family, a group of his faithful guests and friends, he set out to recreate at least a semblance of the life of the community that he had previously honed on the remote and scenic Lalomanu Beach.

Rebuilding in Samoa, however, would always be a community affair. Nestled in the vast oceans of the South Pacific, age-old Samoan culture is based on Fa’a Samoa, a traditional way of life which to this day is anchored in chiefly traditions, reverence for family and community.

Even before the tsunami Apelu rented fales, traditional Samoan thatched roof constructions. Tourists rent fales to be in ear-shot of the ocean waves, lagoons and shining corals. On that particular morning the seventeen fales of Taufua Beach Fales, his outfit, were booked solid. Ninety six guests were staying on the property, he recalls, with some overflow clients housed on the neighbouring properties.

According to the US Geological Survey, on that morning at 6:48 am a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck the Samoan Islands region, with the epicentre 190km south of Apia, the capital. Samoa is located in the region known as the Ring of Fire, and can experience tsunamis from any direction. But the stark reality was that an earthquake here could leave as little as nine minutes before harnessing a potentially deadly tsunami onto these shores.

A reminder of September 29, 2009. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com SAMOA

Early morning buzz at Lalomanu beach
Apelu’s family were up and buzzing at 4am that morning. The household said prayers daily at the insistence of his 97 year-old ailing father. “I was still sleeping and when the earthquake rumbled,” remembers Apelu, “I thought someone was playing a joke on me and shaking my bed.”

He instinctively knew what had happened. Given the intensity of the shaking and his having worked for a seismological observatory for six years, he suspected what awaited them. A tsunami. He knew that it would be intense, since generally earthquakes were felt less on the absorbing sandy beaches of Lalomanu.

He brought the land cruiser from the back and turned on the radio before escaping into the office where his daughter had already fired up the internet. He sat down and asked to see for himself, searching for warnings. That was all that there was time for.

Something strange and eerie was happening. By the time he had typed in the US Geological Survey website into his web browser, the nearby lagoon had all but emptied. It was sucked out to sea, the sign that a massive wave headed right towards the beach.

“My wife suddenly yelled for people to run for their lives,” he remembers, “People were running all around. Somebody brought a land cruiser from across the road and many jumped onto it. They were panicking.”

Apelu, standing in front of the office, suddenly faced the two massive piles of water emerging from the ocean in the distance. The pandemonium that ensued was palpable. Although they didn’t know it at the time, the white Land Cruiser would have no chance of escaping the gushing waters. The only safe place was far beyond the path of a small road that crossed Lalomanu Beach.

Apelu called on his wife to escape, his son continued to warn the unsuspecting guests to run for their lives. Many didn’t even know where to run while others had little clue of what a tsunami was in the first place.

“I started running away from the wave that was sweeping in from behind. But by then the water had already inundated the road, which told me that the wave had hit the upper part of the village before it did our side. While I was running the wave was bulldozing the beach fales.”

“I didn’t make it to the foot of the mountain before I was caught.”

Fales rebuilt by Sili Apelu and his team at Taufua Beach Fales. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com SAMOA

Waves hits Lalomanu Beach
Sili Apelu still doesn’t understand how he survived the first waves that hit Lalomanu Beach. The day conjures painful images. He chokes when recounting the story, taking deep breaths and intermittent, lengthy pauses. Tears run down his face as he confronts his memories of that day.

Apelu ran between two solid structures as the wall of waters approached. He quickly grabbed his four-year-old nephew who was standing at the door, perplexed.

“I grabbed him,” he remembers, “I saw that the water was already in front of us and imagined that it had gotten into the house and was trapped before it escaped quickly through the door. All I did was to put my back against the wall and hung on to my nephew, but in a split second the building collapsed and took us away…”

Apelu hung on to his nephew as the world crumbled around them. The next image he remembers was being literally clamped onto a series of planks of wood, timbers that he thinks were from the base of a pigsty that had been on the foot of the nearby mountain.

“I had my nephew with me. Then I looked up and all that I remember was water for about two meters above me,” he says, “That was the first wave… and then I had to decide what to do with my nephew.”

“I thought that if I released him he would catch some air above, because I struggled to get away from what was locking me down. But I couldn’t. I had to decide what to do.”

“I let him go,” he says painfully. Another wave arrived shortly thereafter. Apelu looked up, now without his nephew.

Somehow amidst the chaos, Apelu survived. The water receded from the beach, and further down the it remained like stagnant pools for three days. Bodies emerged from the sludge. Where houses stood, mere foundations remained.

His wife had been carried away, but she was saved by the floating roof of a fale which she could grab onto in an ordeal that she describes like being strewn in a cycle of a washing machine. Apelu’s fathers was among the countless bodies that were found in the days that followed. In all fourteen members of his family lost their lives. Five of his neighbours family, four in the next, and three in the next…

“Our daughter survived, and one of our grandchildren,” he says, “Our eldest grandchild was taken by the tsunami. We had another child that survived, luckily some were in Apia.”

“As far as our losses are concerned… Now we are more concerned about the living, and we have to move forward,” he says.

Lalomanu Beach, site of the September 29, 2009 earthquake and tsunami. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com SAMOA

After the tsunami
The tsunami that hit Samoa on that day killed at least 149 people in Samoa, 34 in neighbouring American Samoa where the waves caused widespread damage to infrastructure in Pago Pago, its capital. Damage was also recorded in Tonga, as far away as Wallis and Futuna Islands, while heightened waved were witnessed in New Zealand and French Polynesia.

In the surrounding regions of Samoa, thousands had lost their homes, boats or cars. Villages were reduced to rubble, roads washed away in the four massive waves that pounded the island within minutes of each other.

The community at Lalomanu Beach continues to reveal the scars of the tsunami of 2009, with shells of one-time homes scattered along the main road. Family, however, have been rebuilding – some constructing fales up in the hills, fearful of the sea. But rebuilding is part of the healing process, says Apelu.

Taufua Beach Fales have reconstructed almost all of the fales which were completely destroyed less than two years ago, in a process that included both reconstruction and reclaiming of the white sands which were also washed away.

“As Christians we understand that earthquakes are part of creation,” he says, “It is not something that was intended to punish people. We have to move on. There must be a reason that God left us behind from the rest of our families.”

“By going ahead to rebuild will give hope to the people of the village to start slowly to move forward.”

The roads of Agra are a forray of activity. Cars, ricksaws, and a wide array of animals mix into the fray including elephants, camels, and donkeys.

In India, a frenzy of activity leads you through the shadows of age-old temples, forts and palaces

In exiting the aircraft at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, it didn’t take long to understand that layers of activity took place consecutively here; and no one layer particularly cared very much about what was going on in the next. There is always movement here; a sign in the main entrance hall read, “This is a work in progress”.

Swarms of people moved about like armies of marching ants, simply avoiding workers who were building the new, and fixing the old. This work in progress was a fitting welcome to a developing, moving, and buzzing India.

Even a strikingly beautiful young Hindi woman didn’t put a dent in the activity here. Out of nowhere a young woman in a bright yellow sari suddenly sat squarely on her luggage in the middle of the busy airport traffic among honking horns, corn vendors and taxi drivers. She began to talk emphatically on her cell phone, indifferent to the clouds of people around her who without a thought, simply rerouted their own paths to avoid her.

In the mêlée, I finally found my driver. I was a guest of the then Indian Minister of Tourism, whom I had met at an international event in Colombia. “You must visit my country”, she said. Before long, I was on my way on a tour of the “Golden Triangle” of Agra, Delhi and Jaipur.

I commented to the driver in New Delhi on the vibrant atmosphere, to which he jovially said, “A good horn, good brakes, and good luck are all you need in India to get by.” It made sense, I thought, as we sped off through the dusty, noisy streets to my first place of recluse.

The colorful streets
On this trip I was ready to enjoy the quirky, noisy and colorful streets of India. But the counter-balance here was a series of plush hotels and stately resorts to which you can easily escape and pamper yourself. It’s all a part of the duality of contemporary India.

It also takes a cultural immersion of sorts before you start to understand a history that most westerners are little equipped to understand. India’s rich collection of dynasties, kingdoms and religions existed far from European, let alone the North American glare. India and its history have to be learned as you begin to fathom the complexities that brought about the grand palaces, forts and temples that mark the landscapes here.

The Taj Mahal. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com INDIA

Navigating here was a challenge. It is not unusual for cars to venture into the oncoming lanes, elephants to wander the streets or for monkeys to congregate in parks – and all of this without anyone taking particular notice.

The Taj Mahal
An early morning adventure brought me to the Taj Mahal, completed in 1648 and the most emblematic of India’s tourist sites. Standing at the Taj Mahal is almost a spiritual experience. This monument – as glorious as the finely carved inlaid the marble is – is best known for its beautiful story. This greatest example of Mughal architecture was constructed with no other purpose than to honor the love of a man for his wife. Mughal ruler Shah Jahan promised his dying wife Mumtaz Mahal to construct a grand ode to their love. Hence the world was gifted the Taj Mahal – a real symbol of the power of love and dedication.

In Agra we also visited the stately Agra Fort, and the beautifully constructed but abandoned sixteenth century city of Fatehpur Sikri. The crafted stone-carved buildings here were used for a mere fifteen years.

In Agra I stayed at the beautiful Jaypee Palace resort. This self-contained complex includes ponds and pagodas, gazebos and landscaped gardens. The vast beautiful this complex is designed to reflect the style and tastes of the Mughal dynasty, and the hotel is situated not far from the famed Taj Mahal – but far away from the urban clutter and sounds of the streets.

After a harrowing evening drive we arrived in the neighboring state of Rajasthan and its capital Jaipur. The Chokhi Dhani is an ethnographic resort and theme-park representing the interior of Rajasthan culture. Ideal for families, the village is spread out over some twenty-two acres. At night performances for kids, restaurants, puppet shows and traditional dances entertain and even educate visitors. Accommodations are clean, but sparse – little huts basically – decorated with local arts and crafts that represent the traditional lifestyle of the Rajasthan people.

Meaning ‘Palace of Winds’, the landmark building of Jaipur was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh. Dedicated to Lord Krishna, the building is shaped like a makut, or crown, which adorns the deity Krishna’s head. The construction has over 900 niches, and not so long ago ladies of the court watched festivities on the street below without being observed themselves.

We came accross this young girl selling nuts on the sides of the busy Agra roads. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com INDIA

A blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture
Also in Jaipur is the Amber fort, built in red sandstone and white marble it is a complex with numerous apartments, living quarters and public and private audience halls. The Amber Fort reflects a blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture. Built in the 16th century, the fort sprawls a hillside.

After last minute shopping of beautiful Rajasthan textiles, I flew to the capital, New Delhi. Here I stayed at the stately and classical Ashok Hotel, located in the capital’s diplomatic quarter. Labeled the “grandest of them all”, this vast complex includes a variety of thematic restaurants all under one roof. You can dined in Indian, Chinese, modern and classical-style restaurants. The exclusive sixth floor even has its separate private dining facility, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson just happened to be staying a few doors away during my visit.

The Red Fort
The constructions of Mughal leader Shah Jahan is also on proud display in New Delhi in the form of the Red Fort, begun in 1638, and which took a decade to complete. This two kilometer long structure stands some eighteen to thirty three meters high.

My last port of call in India was as appropriate a place as you can imagine. It was the very place where Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi – who spearheaded the movement of non-violence – was assassinated on 30 January of 1948. Here at The Birla House, a permanent memorial, I paid my reverence to a man affectionately known here as ‘Bapu’. Inscribed in the simple room where he spent his last hours are his own words, “My life is my message”. A message of peace and social justice that resonates today as it has and will.

Skyline of Ho Chi Minh City. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

(Ho Chi Minh City) When regional tourism ministers gathered last week for talks in the midst of masses of zipping mopeds in a bustling Ho Chi Minh City; the world economic crises was the furthest thing from their minds. That is because – fueled by growing inter-regional tourism – leaders here say that they have already moved into post-crisis mode.

“Our strategy is how to connect our countries because connectivity is very important within the ASEAN region,” said an upbeat Thong Khon, Minister of Tourism of Cambodia, speaking of the 10-nation geopolitical and economic Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“After the crisis it turned out that the economies of Asia were not greatly affected, and at the same time our economy was growing fast.”

Three countries, one destination
The talks in Ho Chi Minh City – once known as Saigon – were held in the context of ITE HCMC, a yearly tourism-focused trade show that ended October 2. The fair was held consecutive to political meetings among regional partners featuring the tagline Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam – 3 countries – 1 destination. This year even marked the first-time presence of Myanmar to the troika.

“A lot of this had to do with the fact that tourists within the ASEAN group are now traveling more easily within the region,” he adds.

So instead of talk of crisis this group of four nations spent much of their time mulling new flights between their countries, the easing visa restrictions, uncovering ways of exploiting water routes and hatching investment and infrastructure plans to satisfy the demands of an increasing regional tourism.

Even Vietnam’s communist-led government was doing things a little differently. Hosting international guests in this nations metropolis, unusually the first place where guests were lead was the FITO Museum – the nation’s first private museum dedicated to Vietnamese traditional medicines. Medicines, which a Vietnamese official points out, at times treat the side effects of western drugs.

Asia Pacific region sees 14 percent increases
Symbolism aside, Khon points to world tourism growth which is estimated to be increasing by a respectable 7 percent in the first six months of the year, with the Asia Pacific region is doubling that figure with a 14 percent increase in the first eight months of the year.

These increases are not attributable to growth in European or North American arrivals, he says, areas that are still reeling from their recessionary hits.  Growth for Cambodia, rather, comes from within the Asia-Pacific region including its neighbors of Vietnam, Korea as well as seeing steady increases of Chinese tourist arrivals.

For Cambodia, sixty percent of incoming tourists come from Asia, while only twenty percent come from Europe and the remaining ten from North America.

The famed Hindu temple complex at Angkor Wat in the Siem Reap province of Cambodia is the country’s most popular tourist destination, attracting a full half of the total foreign arrivals. Cambodia is looking to diversify its offering with alternate attractions including the development of the coastal town of Sihanoukville; a plan to link world heritage sites in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos; and the development of ecotourism projects.

The partner countries also cooperate in the development of the Mekong Tourism Project, which supports developments in the Greater Mekong sub-region focusing on human resource development.

Somewhat reminiscent of the early development of the European Union, these ASEAN countries have regrouped partially as a means of repairing the damage of a one-time conflict area. The nations have initiated joint programs for tourists to flow from one country to the next seamlessly.

“Before the financial crisis there was an agreement between our government leaders that we should cooperate in all aspects of life including the economy, investment, tourism and culture,” said Sophong Monkhonvilay, Minister of Tourism of Laos and Chairman of the Lao National Tourism Administration.

“During wartime these countries fought each other. In these peaceful times we need them to visit each other and to exchange amongst ourselves.”

Backpackers and holidaymakers targeted
Laos too has succeeded in attracting regional tourism from countries like Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia or Myanmar. The Asia Pacific region last year represented over 90 percent of tourist arrivals to Laos. Deflecting a lack of tourism infrastructure, joint-marketing programs have attracted both backpackers and traditional holidaymakers.

“In addition to rich tourists who stay at hotels and eat at restaurants,” continues Monkhonvilay, “We also want to attract freelance tourists too; the backpackers who come to my country and in a way distribute the income.  They don’t care about the four or three star accommodations and they eat anywhere, spending small money for the rooms at guesthouses and home stays.”

Home stay accommodations are also seen at the fair’s host Vietnam, where outside of some main urban centers high quality traditional accommodations might simply not be available.

Guests of ITE HCMC at a Mekong River-focused post-tour for instance, stayed at Ba Duc, a historic house in Cai Be on the Mekong River. Not far from a noted floating market, a handicraft village and ancient pagodas, guests here even had their turn at cooking traditional Vietnamese foods and woke up to a misty morning on the Mekong River.

While the Mekong Delta region’s beauty and simplicity were appealing the approach and service levels demonstrated by the communist-run Vietnamese government showed that there was much to be desired. Cockroach infested busses and old-style formal meetings with communist party officials acted only as a distraction to enjoying the exotic landscapes and rich culture of Vietnam.

Foibles aside, the overriding message of ITE HCMC was that of a solid regional cooperation within the ASEAN group. “Even during the economic crisis tourists from Europe, especially France, didn’t drop but increased slightly,” says Khon, “but they did not see the increases of Asia. Right now the movement in the Asia Pacific is bigger than Europe.”

The ASEAN Tourism Forum, the next important regional meeting, will take place in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia between 15 and 21 January, 2011.

The bustling streets of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Sculptures of 14th and 15th century traditional medicine practitioners at the FITO Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Press conference with ministers of 3 + 1, and Myanmar. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Portrait of a man at the market. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Portrait of a young lady at the market. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Performer at Cambodia Night at ITE HCMC. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Thong Khon, Minister of Tourism of Cambodia, speaking at Cambodia Night at ITE HCMC. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

In the Mekong Delta. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

At the Cai Be Floating Market. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

At Tan Phong Isle. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Andrew Princz at Tan Phong Isle. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Mahouts are the cowboys of the east, says Roberts. THAILAND

Learning the centuries-old traditions of Thailand’s Mahouts

(Chiang Rai) There was something strangely reassuring sitting bareback high above a four-ton Asian elephant in the northern reaches of Thailand in a region known as The Golden Triangle. With my legs tucked snugly behind her ears, being on top seemed more comforting than possibly being underneath. Holding on to an elephant’s bristly forehead as she bathed in a slow-moving river was pleasantly contemplative. That my elephant named Ewong was semi-retired and not quite as agile as the rest was just fine with me. It was something of a counter-thought to my fears of having to swim away from a frolicking mass of grey pleats as it wasn’t uncommon for the more juvenile animals to simply lay down and play in the waters as they washed away the last evening’s dust.

Riding a docile 48-year-old former logging elephant at the Anantara Resort Golden Triangle felt more like taking part in something ancient than simply an adventurous stop on the tourist trail; as if that wouldn’t have been enough anyways.

The mahouts are the elephant’s most trusted human companions and their traditions; disciplined lives and linguistic affinities go back centuries.

“Mahouts as a culture are probably what brought me here in the first place,” says Devon-born John Roberts, Director of Elephants at the resort, „The lifestyle around them was really what attracted me as much as the elephants themselves.”

Roberts talks with the professorial air of an anthropologist but the passion of an activist. “The mahouts are really the cowboys of the east because they have a culture and a unique way of life,” he says, “One that is dying out.”

Elephants sleep only three to four hours a night - most of the time they stand up, only lying down for about an hour. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com THAILAND

A day at the camp began with the mahouts at the crack of dawn walk to fetch the elephants. Then together we walked down to the rivers edge to literally bathe the animals in what was a surreal choreography. The elephants splashed about as their mahouts’ lovingly scrubbed dust and grime from their scratchy, wrinkled skin while we guests held on for dear life. Unlike us the mahouts were propped onto the elephants as if they had been sculpted in place.

The elephants playfully slurped up large amounts of water in their trunks and then spewed out their load like giant sprinklers.

One young mahout, K. Khanchai (Khan) Yodlee playfully grabbed a tusks of his nine-year old male elephant, Pepsi, an animal that he has raised since it was a toddler.

“Pepsi is a boy but he is very good mannered and very happy,” says Khan, “My elephant is like a child, a brother or a member of my family. We are together from the beginning and I will be with him forever.”

Khan, who is originally from Surin, is from a family of that traces its mahout traditions back generations. His great-grandfather domesticated elephants and his father’s generation used them in ceremonies, ordinations and social events.

A day among cowboys
If this was a taste at being a cowboy it was admittedly a meek but comfortable attempt for me. Half-blind, Ewong had once hauled logs deep in the jungles between Burma and Thailand. My Canadian travel companions – no cowboys themselves but far more animated in their journey – rode the more juvenile elephants Bow, Makam and Lanna. Those elephants came to the camp after having lived on the streets of Bangkok, Chiang Mai or Pataya. They intermittently scratched against rocks or veered from the course to fetch some appealing bamboo shoots or other greenery.

At the camp we learned some of the seventy physical commands used by the mahouts. ‘How’ meant stop, while ‘Pai’ was go forwards. ‘Map Lung’ was the command to sit down, while the elephant would lower her head when she was told to, ‘Tak Lung”.

We were taught different ways of mounting and dismounting; either from the side, or a strange motion of being pushed over her snout. Surprisingly it didn’t take long to get used to life from a higher on. One of my facebook friends even commented, ‘Nice car’ on the picture of and my elephant.

The mahout-training program turned out to be what amounts to an ad-hoc conservation center that was launched in 2003. The elephant camp literally became and adjunct to the verdant resort. The project originally started with four rented elephants in a partnership with the government-run Thai Elephant Conservation Center. But the resort soon began to rescue elephants from the streets of major urban centers.

Over 30 elephants and double that number of the mahouts and their families now reside on the grounds of the Anantara today.

Elephants, especially the younger ones, are rather hairy. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com THAILAND

Centuries ago the descendents of some of today’s Thai mahouts are said to have domesticated wild elephants. Like Khan’s grandfather, it was these cowboys of sorts who trained the elephants and together went on to develop the country’s logging trails.

The mahout’s tradition of living side-by-side elephants was passed down from one generation to the next. The mahouts eventually developed into a social and even a linguistic group, speaking their own dialect.

Everything changed after 1989. It was in that year that Thailand instituted a ban on logging elephants, and a generation of mahouts suddenly found themselves unemployed. The animals  and their mahouts returned to the once swampy elephant-friendly heartland of Surin, but difficulties at making a living for them resulted in many of them ending up in the noisy streets of Bangkok charging tourists a token for taking pictures with the elephants or having them feed the hungry animals sugar cane or bamboo shoots.

“In the streets one mahout drives the elephant while two others charged tourists 20 or 30 baht to feed the them, or 10 or 20 baht for a picture,“ Anantara Elephant Camp Supervisor K. Prakorn (Seng) Saejaw told me, “They might stay on the streets until after midnight, and this is not good for them.”

Recent laws were introduced to penalize the public feeding of elephants, with interest groups pushing for the regulation of their working hours, a standardization of nutrition and even mandatory retirement ages for the animals. Roberts, however, laments that waning enthusiasm on the part of law enforcement mixed with the need of the mahouts to make money leaves little hope of success of any legislation.

Early morning view at the Anantara Resort Golden Triangle in Chiang Rai. Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com THAILAND

The Anantara resort set up the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation that offers shelter to the elephants. Those mahouts lucky enough to make it here also benefit from a new way of making a living as they offer the training and elephant riding experience to the hotel guests.

„It was completely surreal”, honeymooner Lori Anders Grubsztajn said after a day of mahout training at the resort, “The animals were absolutely massive, but so gentle. They are much hairier than I thought it would be, and their hair is much more coarse.”

« But we had a love affair, and gave each other kisses before we left.”

Look, no hands! Photo © 2010, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com THAILAND

Revisiting the Mekong reveals a modern face alongside traditional landmarks. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

The modern and age-old live side-by-side in today’s Vietnam

(Ho Chi Minh City) Things have certainly changed in Ho Chi Minh City. But so have I – last time I was here, well over a decade ago, I travelled by local bus and cyclo, my heart in my mouth as vehicles and pedestrians mingled at suicidal speed on the ripped-up streets of a Saigon that had aspirations of modernity but was still very much in the chaotic “developmental” stage.

Today my mode of transport is decidedly different. I’m met and escorted to a gleaming Mercedes-Benz for a drive in luxurious, air-conditioned comfort through the city and south towards my destination, deep in the heart of the Mekong Delta. The drive reveals that the modern world is undoubtedly sweeping Vietnam into its eager embrace; Japanese cars and mopeds outnumber bicycles 10 to one, computer shops and high-rises sprout throughout the city—but the familiar chaos of interweaving vehicles and pedestrians remains to jangle my nerves.

Outside the city an age-old rhythm is once again apparent; the roads are newer and better maintained, but the flanking fruit stalls, the expansive green fields, the regular rise and fall as we arc over rivers or canals on sturdy bridges, glimpsing hand-rowed longboats and bulky rice barges—these are quintessential Delta images that will never disappear. Two huge rivers require crossing by boat, and stepping out of the car on the rattling, clunking vehicular ferry to stand at the front with smiling locals whose mopeds are piled high with produce or family members, I realize I could be back on my first sojourn in this evocative land.

Seasons define the river’s flow
The Mekong Delta is Vietnam’s rice basket, producing enough rice to feed all of the country and still have enough left over for meaningful export. Its eponymous benefactor is the Mekong Song Cuu Long—“the River of Nine Dragons” as the Vietnamese call it, because by the time it has entered the country after its long journey from the Tibetan Plateau it has split into two main waterways – the Hau Giang, or Lower River, also called the Bassac, and the Tien Giang, or Upper River, which empties into the South China Sea at five points.

Victoria Can Tho. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

The second of our ferry crossings leaves us on the south bank of the Bassac, from where a five-minute drive brings us to the gravelled entrance of the Victoria Can Tho Hotel. Its refined, 1930s-style French colonial architecture, colonnaded lobby and languidly turning ceiling fans place me back in a world of privilege, plantation owners and French Indochina, but amazingly the Victoria Can Tho was built from scratch less than a decade ago, on a patch of paddy fields facing the main town across the Can Tho River. It is by far the most luxurious hotel establishment to be found in the Mekong Delta region, offering French cuisine of the finest quality, a large, colonial bar with a pool table, spa facilities, tennis court and swimming pool . . . nothing quite like it had been seen in the Delta before when it was constructed over a decade ago.

The government is reclaiming 30 metres of land on the river right in front of the hotel and for hundreds of metres on both sides, intending to turn it into a park-like promenade. The hotel will rent the land directly in front of their property, and use it to extend their swimming pool, create a new spa facility and showpiece riverfront restaurant—all of which speaks volumes about the success of the Victoria group’s vision in predicting that this colourful, fascinating region of southern Vietnam would become a popular destination for upmarket travellers as well as backpackers.

And why is Can Tho so popular among tourists and travellers? To find out, I book an early morning trip on the Victoria’s own converted rice barge, the Lady Hau, 20 minutes of genteel sailing, coffee and croissant in hand, up the Can Tho River to the famous Cai Rang Floating Market. Before dawn every day, large boats arrive from the Delta hinterland to sell huge amounts of produce to small-boat owners, who then paddle up the myriad small canals and waterways that create a vast and intricate water network around the main town, shouting out their wares to canal-side households as they go.

Vietnam’s rice basket
It’s a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years—in a land where water is so all-pervading, the seasons defined by the rise and fall of the Mekong’s massive flow, the best way to visit friends and family, transport goods, in fact to do anything, is by water.

Melon farmers on the Mekong. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

At this time of year, the boats at the floating market are full to the gunwales with sweet potatoes, cabbages, carrots and spring onions, as well as pineapples, dragon fruit, custard apples and passionfruit. It’s a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, testament to the fecundity of the alluvial soil that blankets the Delta, replenished every year when the Mekong breaks its banks and floods, leaving a new layer of rich silt into which the myriad roots eagerly delve.

I transfer to a smaller longtail boat with a young girl named Thoai Anh, who will act as my guide. Chugging through the market melée, small boats with open kitchens pass among the buyers and sellers, providing hot noodle snacks and lunch for the industrious market-goers. The larger boats’ engines emit deep staccato expellations, like flatulent elephants on speed, while smaller boats buzz by like giant-sized mosquitoes—it’s hard to know where to look, so much is happening all around you.

Eventually we leave the market behind and turn off into a side canal. We visit a rice noodle factory, family run, with eight members working methodically, each with his or her own job. The rice is first soaked in water, then made into rice flour, which is mixed 50/50 with rice tapioca, then cooked into a thin paste. This is ladled out onto a hotplate for a minute or two, becoming a large, semi-translucent disc that is expertly rolled onto a wicker “bat” before being transferred to a woven mat. These mats are piled into stacks and taken out into the sun, where they are laid out in expanses to dry, before being fed into a shredder much like the paper shredders found in legal and government offices. I am astonished to be told that this factory produces 500kg of noodles a day. It’s a long working day, and a tough life, but Thoai Anh is unmoved. “They make a good living, they are secure,” she says—hard work is a given in the Delta, but financial security is not.

Next we visit a fruit orchard; many families use what land they have to grow as many types of fruit as possible. These orchards are not the tidy affairs with trees lined in neat rows that visitors from temperate climes know—they are more like jungles, where grapefruit trees stand shoulder to shoulder with jackfruit, longan and lychee.

The curving waterways
We continue, winding our way along straight, manmade canals and through curving natural waterways. In places these are only two boats wide, bridged by simple structures made from a single tree trunk with—if you’re lucky—a bamboo hand rail. It’s easy to see why these are called monkey bridges—you’d need simian-like agility to cross them, although young boys and girls actually cycle across, I’m told.

Chau Doc river market. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

I have no idea where we are at this stage, no sense of direction or the distance we have travelled, but suddenly we exit onto the main river thoroughfare on the far side of Can Tho town, and I am dropped off at the town’s bustling riverfront promenade park, where a metallic grey statue of Ho Chi Minh – or Uncle Ho, as he is fondly known – is guarded by a policeman who shoos people away to a respectful distance from Uncle Ho’s laughing presence. An afternoon storm is approaching—yet again, I see how water dominates the natural rhythms of life for all who live here—and I retreat to the hotel for tea, a game of backgammon, and the pleasure of reading a newspaper on a veranda as cooling rainwater courses down the slanting roofs, falling in a waterfall onto the terracotta-tiled terrace.

The next day, a van picks me up at the hotel for some landside exploration. My guide is Nghia, an affable young local with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the region’s history and culture. He takes me first to the house of Duong-Chan-Ky, a 19th century landowner who in 1870 built an amazing house in which to house his collection of exquisite furniture and antiques. The house combines European and Vietnamese influences, including a beautiful French-tiled floor from which extend ironwood pillars that have lasted over a century and will probably last another. The old couple who still live in the house are third-generation family members.

We move on to a small village in the Bin Thuoy (Peaceful River) area. There is nothing remarkable about this hamlet – it is like any of thousands in the lower Delta region – but that is why I am interested to see it, to immerse myself in the everyday rhythms of life here. It flanks a confluence of river canals—of course— and a tiger shrine pays homage to a local legend telling how this area was once infested with tigers, and how the village’s founders made peace with the tiger spirit and received its protection.

Can Tho’s oldest Chinese Temple
Along the main street, market sellers smile shyly, young children careen past piled fourfold onto single bicycles, and at an open-air billiard hall, locals play each other for the hire of the table (3,000 dong per hour) or perhaps the bill for dinner that evening. On our way back to town we stop a few kilometres upriver at Can Tho’s oldest Chinese temple, Hiep Thien Cung, built in 1850 by Chinese merchants who settled here. Most Chinese left Vietnam in the late 1970s after waves of persecution, but the temple is still visited by those who stuck it out, as well as by local Vietnamese, who hedge their bets, figuring that it can’t do any harm to pray for health and prosperity from any immortal, regardless of faith.

Chinese temple. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Our last stop is at a boat builder, the master working hard attended by his young apprentice. Small boats in various stages of construction are stacked up in the workshop, waiting for buyers from villages up the canals. A boat costs 1.5 million dong (US$100), far more than most individuals can afford, but as with all rural communities, the more wealthy village heads will often buy a number of boats and allow their new owners to pay off the loan as and when they can. The master builder stops for a brief rest and genially tells me, “I work 14 hours a day, but I enjoy it and the day passes quickly.” He is happy with his lot—there will always be a market for well-built river craft on the Mother of Rivers.

In Can Tho centre, a Khmer temple exhibits a distinctly Thai architectural style, very different to the ethnic Vietnamese temple across the road. That complex is carefully maintained and clearly well patronized by wealthy local Vietnamese. The Khmer temple, by comparison, is a little shabby, showing a dearth of donations. The Khmers are the smallest and poorest sector of the population. Khmer boys all spend a year or 18 months as monks in deference to their parents’ wishes, although they seem hardly monk-like as they lounge about telling jokes and smoking cigarettes in the temple’s ante building.

The following day, early morning light bathes the Victoria Can Tho’s beautiful yellow-and-white façade in golden light, a pure, soft light free of industrial fumes. This is also the best time to wander around town, before it’s too hot. The bustle of river life is at its most convivial at this time, the vehicle ferries spewing crowds of workers and shoppers off on one side of the river, before sucking up an equal number all eager to get across to the far side.

Can Tho is the Delta region’s largest town, and it is booming. Shops selling mopeds, modern appliances and high-tech accessories sit alongside the more traditional dried-food stalls and colourful shops touting religious paraphernalia. A few kilometres downriver from the town is a suspension bridge which now crosses the broad Bassac River, an ambitious five-year project that was completed earlier this week, will open up the southern Delta by making it much more accessible, eliminating the bottleneck of the current ferry crossing, and shortening the driving time to Ho Chi Minh City by almost an hour.

Incongruous spells pervade the air
But wandering around this in many ways typical Asian town, two initially incongruous smells pervade the air, letting you know that you are very much in French Indochina: they are coffee and fresh bread—one of the most pleasant colonial customs to have endured in Vietnam is the coffee and baguette culture that the French instilled during their tenure in this tropical land. Coffee shops abound, with low, deckchair-like seats facing the street in rows, cheap but cheerful places to relax and watch the world go by. Bicycles freewheel past with baskets stuffed full of fresh baguettes, leaving redolent scent trails that draw you further into the backstreets. It’s such an easygoing place, you have to watch the time or a whole day will disappear before you know it.

Local ferry lady. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

That’s something I must not do, because this afternoon I’m heading to the Victoria’s other Delta property in Chau Doc, a small market town also on the Bassac, but over 100 kilometres upstream, close to the border with Cambodia. The river is the fastest way to get there, and the hotel runs a speedboat service between the two. It’s an exciting four-hour journey, filled with interesting sights as the boat begins by hugging the river’s right bank as it pushes upstream against the powerful current. Huge wooden vessels ply the main channel, built in the same fashion as the smaller Mekong craft, but large enough to travel the ocean, carrying huge loads of rice and vegetables out—and bikes, cars and electronics in.

Fish-processing factories dot the shoreline, but as the river narrows—at Can Tho it is more than a kilometre wide—the view becomes purely rural, with cantilevered Chinese-style fishing nets perched on the riverbanks, and hamlets bridging countless side canals that snake their way into the flat land beyond.

Finally I see a hill ahead—my first in days—and at the confluence of the Bassac with a 200-metre-wide waterway that links it to the Tien Giang, the Mighty Mekong’s Upper River, we pull in at the Victoria Chau Doc hotel, where I am met by a member of staff dressed in a beautiful ao dai—surely the Vietnamese national dress, a combination of loose pants and knee-length tailored top all in finest silk, is the most gorgeous of Asian clothing.

My guide for my stay here is Tan Loc, a softly spoken ex-teacher, well educated and highly knowledgeable about his hometown. As we board a small boat for a dawn visit to Chau Doc’s own floating market—every Delta village has one, of course—he tells me of his parents’ suffering both during the American War and at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, who during the 1970s would make killing raids across the border, which is only four kilometres away. A young Tan Loc and his family moved away from the trouble, but returned as soon as it was safe.

“You know, we have Cham Muslims, Khmers, both Buddhist and Christian Vietnamese, such a mix of peoples in Chau Doc, but we live harmoniously here, never any conflict,” says Tan Loc proudly. Perhaps they’ve experienced enough terror and pain, and realized the futility of racial or religious conflict.

Idling through a floating village
The floating market follows the same rhythm as in Can Tho, though on a smaller scale, and afterwards our boatman takes us to see Chau Doc’s famous floating houses. Built on a platform of empty oil drums, what’s unusual about them is in fact what’s underneath, for suspended below in the muddy Mekong water are huge wire fish cages where hundreds upon hundreds of catfish are farmed. The family feed them through a trapdoor in the middle of the living room floor, and once the fish are around one kilogram in size, they harvest them, laying their gutted and filleted carcasses out in rows under the sun to dry.

We move on, idling through the floating village, past colourfully clad women powerfully hand-rowing their small canoe-like craft from one home to the next—a timeless rural Delta scene. Reaching dry land, we take a short walk through a Cham village to the Mubarak Mosque, where young children study the Koran in a schoolroom next to the modest but neat mosque, its minaret and domed roof somehow seeming perfectly at home in this watery flatland.

Fruit seller fresh from main market. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

There are many other holy sites to visit in the town centre, from churches to temples and pagodas, but the most impressive is the Temple of Lady Xu, six kilometres west of town at the bottom of the hill I saw as I arrived in Chau Doc, which in fact is ambitiously named Sam Mountain. We get there in the Victoria’s own immaculately restored classic American Jeep, passing stone sculpture parks and new tourist resorts along the way, which show how popular even this part of the Delta is becoming.

It’s hardly surprising that in a land that is virtually all low-lying floodplain, a 260-metre obtrusion would be given reverential status. Sam Mountain is home to a host of temples, pagodas and cave retreats, many with their own legends and stories. The Temple of Lady Xu, at its base, has perhaps the best, since the statue around which the main building has been built, was originally located at the top of the mountain. During the 19th century Siamese troops attempted to steal it, but the statue became heavier and heavier as they descended the hillside, and they were forced to abandon it in the jungle. Later it was discovered by local villagers, who also tried to lift it up, but again the statue proved too heavy.

A girl suddenly appeared and told them that it could only be carried by 40 virgins, and this proved true, for the requisite maidens easily transported the statue to the bottom of the mountain where it suddenly became immovable again. The villagers divined that this was where Lady Xu wanted her effigy to remain, and so the temple’s site was set. Inside, the temple is a kaleidoscope of colourful paint, candlelight and neon gaudiness, but it is a major pilgrimage site for both Chinese and Vietnamese families, who bring whole roasted pigs to offer in exchange for the Lady’s grace.

My last stop is at the top of the mountain, from where the inspiring 360-degree view gives me another perspective of how the Mekong dictates every aspect of life here. Huge tracts of land are under water, while the curving waterways and arrow-straight man-made canals stretch off into the hazy distance, their banks lined by stilted houses, ubiquitous tethered boats alongside. To the south and west other hills mark the border with Cambodia and the edge of the floodplain. From there on, life is intrinsically different, governed by other natural phenomena and populated by equally different cultures. The Mekong Delta is a world unto itself, exotic in almost every sense, imbued with sights, sounds and scents that all evoke its inextricable link to the Mother of Rivers.

Fish farming. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Can Tho street scene. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Rice noodle process. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Chau Doc river market. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com. VIETNAM

Ho Chi Minh riverfront statue in Can Tho. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Can Tho river life. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

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The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, known popularly as the Blue Mosque. [Courtesy Turkish Culture and Tourist Office

By Anne Marie Parent

(Istanbul) It is a nation enveloped by two seas, which spans two continents. This is also a place that harks back as much to the land of the mythical tales of the Arabian Nights, as they do to a modern-day European metropolis. We set off to discover some of the regions and landscapes of Turkey. It was a journey from the coast, to the heart of Anatolia, the Asiatic region of the country that comprises 97 percent of its territory.

While Istanbul is not the capital of the country (it is Ankara), it is nevertheless the most visited. The reason is simply geography; it is rich in historical sites and vibrant, colorful streets that make up the only city in the world whose territory lies on two continents.

Istanbul is both a modern metropolis in the European sense, as it is traditional and true to its Asiatic origins. It goes without saying that a visit here is about a cruise spanning the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus Strait, which literally delineates Europe from Asia.

We had reserved a room at the small Hotel Dersaadet, not far from the 17th century Blue Mosque. Its 19th century Ottoman-style wooden façade, comfortable rooms and breakfast terrace overlooking the Marmara Sea was a blissful sight to behold. From the 15th of March to the 25th of November a room here with European breakfast, will set you back some 115 Euro.

In addition to the palace, the mosque and the numerous area museums on the beaten tourist path, there is one site that grabbed our attention. It was an amazing sixth century cathedral-sized cistern, or in Turkish, yerebatan sarnici, which literally lies underneath the city. This grand reservoir was once the source of water of the Byzantine kings, the Topkapi Palace. You can walk through the enormous “engulfed palace” and its waterways thanks to a wooden catwalk imbued with a series of filtered lights.

The experience is made all the more atmospheric as the sounds of classical music which mesh with the echoes, voices and slowly dripping of water.

A mix of some 336 marble Ionic, Corinthian and Doric columns sustains the giant underground dome. During our visit there was even an art exhibition in this unlikely venue. Ironically there was nothing unusual about this as many cultural events take place in this mysterious space whose obscure lighting, water and echoing sounds appeal to the city’s artists.

Our visit to the region of Cappadocia in Anatolia was the destination that we had waited for with much anticipation. This was a landscape of strange cone-shaped rock formations pierced with small Swiss-cheese-like holes. We spent much of two days wandering around this open-air museum, the archeological sites of Goreme National Park and its troglodyte caves, chapels and monasteries where fleeing Christians took refuge in the 4th century. The Hittite people, and many others would subsequently also inhabit these surprising geological formations.

We then headed west to Guzelyurt, in western Cappadocia. The 150km journey was a three-hour ride on public transportation, costing less than 15 Euro. That was better than the 55 Euro taxi fare that we had been offered. It may have taken a tad longer, but this was a good opportunity to mingle. On the bus a man accompanied by his young daughter offered us some nuts that they had just picked from local fields. Seeing me struggling to crack that nut, another passenger simply grabbed it and ably cracked it for me, returning it ready to eat. All this without a word spoken of either English or French… Luckily, he understood my ‘merci’, which means thank you in both Turkish and my mother tongue, French!

We then booked a cell in the one-time monastery that is now the Hotel Kerballa, an inn constructed in 1856 and now recognized as a historic monument. Located in the heart of Guzelyurt it attracts mostly hikers and amateur equestrians. A room here cost a mere 55 Euro for two, a real deal! Breakfast was not included, though, and sets you back an extra 10 Euro.

Our journey ended at Ihlara canyon. This area is located 12km from Guzelyurt and seen ideally from the western banks of the Melendiz River. Doing the trek entirely on foot covers some 14km in a little over five hours. We chose to stop halfway at Belisirma where we lived three hours of bliss in a wondrous natural oasis.

On the banks of the river we began to climb rocks formations and to visit the dens adorned with cave paintings. We came across sheep and shepherds, and photographed astounding geological structures that looked either like the hats that a witch would wear, or simply stunningly high rising rock formations. It was a fitting and blissful end leaving us memories of a journey to an astonishing land on the precipice of east and west.

On set in Bishkek. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com.

Marta Meszaros – Little Vilma: The last Diary

(Bishkek) “A person cannot be freed of their roots,” said Marta Meszaros during the final days of shooting of her upcoming feature film Little Vilma: The last diary. Largely set in Kyrgyzstan, on the very site where the filmaker spent her early childhood, it was here where Meszaros was orphaned when her parents fell victim of the Stalinist purges of the 1930′s. Like the earlier films in her “diary” series, this autobiographical film will reveal the story, largely unknown in the west, of a whole generation of survivors of the Soviet Gulag.

A German, Hungarian, Polish and Kyrgyz co-production, this film will be the last of the internationally acclaimed series which has included Diary of my children, Diary for my lovers and Diary to my Father, Mother.

A day of filming in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, was more reminiscent of a family gathering than the shooting of a film. Nyika Jancsó, the son of the director, sitting at the camera, perched on a boom dating from the Soviet era. The director’s father is played by her actor husband’s son, Lukács Nowicki; while the main character portraying Little Vilma, or Mészáros in her youth, is played by her twelve-year-old grandaughter Cleo Ladányi. On one hot august afternoon after a long day of filming, Andrew Princz spoke with the director in Bishkek.

What memories are you trying to conjur in this film?

This is a difficult question. The film is more of about memories. Every person has memories, and great artists often write about them in their novels. Fellini and Bergman often made films about their memories, and many refer to their childhood. I myself did not set out with the premise that I had an extraordinary childhood. My starting point was that my parents, along with many others at that time who came to Kyrgyzstan in the thirties, became the victims of Stalinism. These people were killed, and then simply forgotten. I have great respect for those who make films about the Holocaust, because there is a great need for them. At the same time, there is little talk about the Gulag and there is only little mention paid the twenty million people who were murdered during the Stalinist regime. There are several reasons for this silence. Partly, nobody wants to be in conflict with the Russians. Fascism has been dealt with and was judged evil. Stalinism, on the other hand, is considered a private matter for the victims and their survivors. Yet it is not so simple. Foreigners, many of whom were leftist in orientation, were also the victims of the Stalinist regime. Europe was a very difficult place to live in the nineteen-thirties. There was the rise of fascism, then Hitler’s victory in Germany. In the Soviet Union, these things were unknown. In America during the nineteen sixties some young people started to rebel, and then joined the left. They went to the Soviet Union, and many were then destroyed by the system. When I started to film the trilogy, I felt that these people cannot not be forgotten. However, some ten years ago, I could not have even dreamed of making this film in the Soviet Union, in Russia nor or in Kyrgyzstan.

So, was it only now that you could return to put these events to film?

Yes. I decided that I will make a film here in Kyrgyzstan, where these events actually took place, where I lived my childhood.

How do you evaluate these memories today?

I have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, it is about a terrible tragedy. To lose your parents and be left alone in the end of the world in a Central Asian country… But a child is still a child, and I have plenty of good memories too. Had there not been many good and even interesting people around these children, many would never have survived. So, my basic memories are tragic, but like most childhood memories I also have a lot of really poetic memories. Really, though, this is still a film. It is about me, and about us… yet in the end, it has to fall short of both. In a film one writes a story, and it has to be the story of many people.

What is the synopsis of the film?

A woman who is my age goes to Kyrgyzstan and obtains the papers relating to the death of her father. The documents reveal that her father was executed. She just learns this now, and this, in fact, this is really what happened to me. I only learned the truth of my father’s execution in 1999.

What did you know about his fate earlier?

That he died. He was arrested, deported, but of his execution and when it happened… they never talked about that. The system never revealed the real documents. When Askar Akayev became the president of Kyrgyzstan, I don’t know what he is like as a President, but in this way he is a decent man; he considered it his duty to release the original documents. So, this is the gist of the film, a woman comes here and confronts herself and her childhood.

When did you first return to Kyrgyzstan?

In 1990, but as I said, at that time it would have been impossible to make a film like this.

You seem to have brought your whole family here. Why is it so important to have your family be part and parcel of the film?

It was a given. I have already made films with my son Nyika, the cameraman. It was only natural that I want to work on this with him. My other son, Zoltán, the father of Cleo, is also part of the crew. I thought that my granddaughter Cleo would be able to play my childhood-self. Luckily, she is even better than I imagined her in this role. She is very talented. She was a bit scared at first, but then she got very good at it. Cleo knows that she plays me as a child, but in the end; it is not absolutely necessary that it should be me.

Why do you think that in Russia or the former Soviet states, or elsewhere for that matter, they make so few films dealing with the Stalinist purges of the nineteen thirties?

I think that it is less in the common consciousness that in the thirties, Europeans came here, worked here. They had no plans to remain here forever, and in the end, they were killed. Recently, there has been literature written on this subject, and they are starting to publish more documents. The West, however, is slow to talk about it. The European left, particularly the French and the Italian communists and socialists, are not keen to talk about it because in some way they were implicated in this story. When those who survived returned to France, Germany or Italy- they did not reveal the truth. They did not want to say that, yes, our friends were killed but we survived. Why and how did we survive? It was a delicate question. At any rate, they wanted to maintain their faith and their idealism. Yes, maybe Stalin was a dictator, they thought, but still, the idea of socialism remains both good and decent. They defended this view for a long time to come.

Don’t you think that the Kyrgyz are reluctant to confront the past since there are plenty of problems that they are dealing with in the present, and also in their recent history?

Yes, that might be one of the reasons… but look, the Americans know very little about Europe, and know even less about Russia. They are the leading power both economically and politically, and in most fields. People start to think like the Americans. They think that the past was very sad, but we have overcome this, and it is not worth dealing with. Yet in America, they make films of the not-so-glorious past. In fact, America was born through bloodshed: the Indians, the civil-war, prohibition, unemployment…

But it seems that here, people are not even familiar with their own history?

Of course. During the filming, many locals looked at me with a great deal of respect for daring to reveal the truth, and not letting the past fall into oblivion. According to many Kyrgyz, this is a good cause, all while they have a lot of hardship to deal with at the moment, economically and other. We can’t forget that Central Asia lived in a state of terror for seventy years. Sheer terror.

Marta Meszaros shot part of the film Little Vilma: The Last Diary on the outskirts of Bishkek.

How do you view their predicament?

Generally, I think that the people of Asia have a great future. There is an elementary force in the Kyrgyz, Tadjik, Kazak, Mongolian and Chinese people. I am optimistic, but it is still very difficult. Partly, because there are still many communists or former communists who are still in power. Until this generation dies out, there will be no real democracy in Kyrgyzstan. People’s way of thinking is not democratic here.

In Hungary, society has given the great opportunities to and invested in their youth. This does not seem to be the case in this country?

People are still afraid here. This is the problem of the past seventy years: the system was based upon intimidation. People were afraid to talk with each other, were afraid of history, they were scared to tell the truth. It is difficult to be freed of this attitude. Still today I notice that whenever they talk, people look left and right for fear of being reported to the authorities. In Hungary and in Poland- I live in two countries- the situation is somewhat different. In Poland, it seems better than in Hungary. In Hungary the thirty years of the Kádár regime left deep scars. Maybe economically it was more favorable, we lived better, but the period was nevertheless disabling spiritually. I think that continuous rebellion in Poland carried more energy and truth within itself. In Central Asia it is also difficult to affect change because people do not know what it means to work. During socialism, they earned little, they did not have to have a career outside of the communist party. At that time, there was only ideology. Yet this is a beautiful, interesting country. They are strange these people, the Kyrgyz, there is something wild about them.

What do you mean by ‘wild’?

For me there is something mystical about the Kyrgyz. You never can tell how they feel, whether they start to be aware of their freedom. You never know what they are going to do with this freedom. This is still unpredictable.

Yesterday you were filming in downtown Bishkek, next to a monumental statue of Lenin. A decade ago there were still many such monuments both in Hungary and Poland, most of which have long since disappeared. Here they still stand erect. What does this symbolize? Is this a country still living in another era?

I think that Lenin and Stalin are the symbols of the Soviet socialism. History judged Stalin, but Lenin is still thought of as an ideologue and not an executioner, although I do not agree with this. The Kyrgyz people insist that the Lenin statue is there because they have not have the money to demolish it. In order to destroy it, they say, they would have to totally rebuild the square along with the whole neighborhood. Probably there is some truth to this. The statue will disappear one day, but a lot of people here are still attached to the past.

You get the feeling in Bishkek that you were visiting a place where time stood still. What do you know of the changes in the last decade?

Many things changed here as well. Ten years ago, when I last visited here, it would have been unimaginable to sit here with you and talk. People were different, waiters were different, the shop windows, the service… now people come and go on the streets, they laugh, they yell. It was not like this in those days.

This is where your parents were killed. You spent many difficult years in this country. What brought you back?

Look, one cannot be freed of one’s roots… but I really wanted to shoot this film. It was important for me to oblige the Kyrgyz State to admit that my father was innocently killed. This did happen. My father was morally and materially rehabilitated. This is the reason that they allowed me to do this film.

The title of this film is “The Last Diary”. Why?

Well, I hope that I will still make films, but this particular story ends here. Nevertheless, I would be glad to come back here. I would love to make a road-movie in Kyrgyzstan. I think that with a simple story, traveling through this landscape… it could end up being a fascinating film. Unfortunately it is hard to raise money for films in Europe. European film-making is not in very good shape. There is little money available, and generally the American film industry swallowed European cinema.

Your directorial style is very unique, it’s almost as if you let the film direct itself.

That’s the only way that I can make films. I think that there are only fifteen to twenty great directors, the others are more or less talented. I don’t like directors who imagine that they are creating great masterpieces, I just don’t believe in that attitude. They run about in a crazy furor, back and forth as if they were on some sort of a mission. I have seen directors like that, and then you see the film and it is really about nothing. I believe that in order to make a good film, you need a good story, to tell the truth, to cast it properly, and be professional and realistic about the film-making process. There are directors who become hysterical while filming, and then they give birth to some good idea. I am not one of those, but I do take my work seriously. My husband, Jan Nowicki, always says that Marta makes a film between two meals. I love to make films, and I know that since this is my twentieth film, I am a really professional filmmaker.

Ambiguous future on the horizon for Central Asian state of Kazakhstan. Photo © Anna J. Kutor, ontheglobe.com

Economic meltdown only latest in woes for oil-rich Central Asian state of Kazakhstan

(Astana) With economic turmoil ravaging world markets, political or economic instability anywhere comes with incrementally higher stakes. Russia’s most recent conflict with the Ukraine and last year’s clampdown on the Caucasus state of Georgia has undoubtedly had ripple effects.

The road ahead for the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, nestled awkwardly between its powerful Russian and Chinese neighbors, may be equally ambiguous and fraught with potentially hazardous unknowns.

While in recent years this oil and resource-rich country has quietly enjoyed the fruits of the bonanza of high world oil prices, the recent world economic conditions have left darker clouds on the horizon.

« Very soon Kazakhstan will face many serious problems, and problems with a catastrophic context that only begin with a slowing and stopping of economic growth, » warns Murat T. Laumulin, Chief Researcher at the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank under the aegis of the office of the country’s president.

Laumulin even pegs the instability at least partially on his country’s influential neighbors. « This is the new Russian neo-imperialism, it is the reality.”

The New Putin Doctrine
Laumulin describes the ‘New Putin Doctrine’, a slowly creeping strategy to reunify the countries of the former Soviet Union – not by political or brutal methods as in the past – but using simply using economic instruments as a measure of force.

Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia is one of accommodation, an important piece of the puzzle is its neighbor’s desire for influence in the post-Soviet space. While Russia may tolerate business dealings with the west – the Holy Grail is a continued coordination of military cooperation with Russia. And this, Laumulin says, Kazakhstan understands and even accepts.

Golden Gates of Astana. High-concept structures and sleek skyscrapers grace the centre of Kazakhstan's decade-old capital. Photo © 2008, Anna J. Kutor, ontheglobe.com KAZAKHSTAN

What is at stake for Kazakhstan is a romance with the west that began during Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Escaping its Soviet heritage in the 1990s, Kazakhstan was open for business. US oil giant Chevron was invited to exploit the vast oil reserves of the Caspian basin. While at the time lower oil prices did not make tapping these reserves very attractive – until recently all this had changed.

But Kazakhstan is still firmly under the influence of Russia, which in recent years has flexed its economic and political muscles – with oil and gas as its main weapon. On its own soil it has precipitated the withdrawal of foreign companies from the oil and gas business, and even jailed businessmen who have strayed away from the Kremlin’s grasp. With this, who knows how long Russia will tolerate the Kazakh grandeur of allowing western companies to tap into their vast reserves?

« The current president is the guarantor of the existence of these deals agreed just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, » warns Laumulin, an echeloned former high level diplomat. « With the corruption facts I cannot guarantee that after his disappearing some people from the elite would try to renew these agreements. Including Chevron.”

The political crisis
This brings us to the second potential crisis for Kazakhstan – a political one. This country may also be on the precipice of a political vacuum that is primed by a power struggle among the political elite as it looks for a successor to strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled this country since 1989.

« Russia has found the mechanism of power changing from Yeltsin to Putin, Putin to Medvedev. We have no such model, unfortunately, » laments Laumulin, who sees a power struggle already taking place based on clan, regional, ethnic and geopolitical orientations.

The bets are out on where the cards will fall on the geopolitical sphere. While steeped squarely in the political and economic sphere of interest of Russia, Kazakhstan nevertheless plays an intricate balancing act between its other powerful regional neighbor, the rising and powerful China.

What Kazakhstan may fear even more than Russian domination – a fact under which it has long lived – is a Sino-Russian domination, embodied in the uncertain future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

« Many experts regard this organization as the Sino-Russian condominium over Central Asia, » Laumulin says, « We accept the traditional Russian influence and our historical and political ties with Moscow, but we don’t – and cannot – accept the Chinese-Russian domination.”

Ultimately, it’s a tossup for this vast nation of only 15 million inhabitants in waking up one morning and being economically dominated by either Russian or Chinese interests.

The face-paced city development of Astana is best viewed from the lookout-tower on top of the city’s infamous Baiterek Tower. Photo © 2008, Anna J. Kutor, ontheglobe.com KAZAKHSTAN

The showpiece capital looks more like a multi-colored jewel of modernity with spanking new skyscrapers and soaring construction cranes – cranes that have become more and more silenced as the country becomes impacted by international economic woes.

While there is strong agreement within the political and economic elite on the development of western standards in economic terms, the challenge lies in maintaining a political framework for these changes as it transitions towards a bona fide democratic state. At the moment Laumulin laments that his nation remains in an impasse.

« Ten years ago I dreamed about the restoration of the Soviet Union with democratic and normal principals. Then I was dreaming about closer ties with Europe and Eurasia – the post-Soviet space as one geopolitical and geo-economic organization. Now I have no answers. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Related articles:

Kazakhstan’s quirky metropolis, seeontheglobe.com
A stop on the Silk Road, ontheglobe.com

* Text by Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com
* Photos Anna J. Kutor, ontheglobe.com
* Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved

Julliard-trained Orsolya Korcsolan brings Jewish folk sounds to the classical stage. Image courtesy Dora Bekefi.

Violinist gives new form to Jewish folk, liturgical music

(Kuala Lumpur) Orsolya Korcsolan has a secret. The Hungarian-born violinist and her horn-playing husband Gergely Sugar spent the last six years performing with the internationally recognized Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, venturing to this newly assembled international orchestra and bringing with them the classical traditions of the European continent. But a secret passion for the musicians has been preparing her recently released début CD Mosaic – an undertaking produced by her husband and whose traditions are anchored very much at home.

Mosaic, their labour of love, is a series of rarely played transcriptions for violin and piano of Jewish folk or liturgical music from the classical, romantic and contemporary periods.

Motifs inserted into compositions
« These are songs that are sung on streets, by kids or by a mother to her baby, » says Korcsolán. « Or they are sung in a synagogue as a part of a liturgical ceremony, a prayer or by the cantor in Eastern Europe. These particular composers picked up this motif and put it into a composition. »

Korcsolán, trained at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York, was one of the last students of the legendary American pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. She has gone on to perform for the likes of Itzhak Perlman, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Neville Marriner, Pierre Boulez, and Zubin Mehta.

But Korcsolán sees producing Mosaic as an important stepping stone in her career. Like most violinists, performing as a soloist is the apex of musical life; and that is where she would like to be.

Her longstanding interest in the Jewish violin repertoire led Korcsolán – then in her teens – to perform in the most prestigious Hungarian synagogues, developing her passion for reviving lesser-known Jewish music by bringing their notes to life in the classical form.

Since the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe many synagogues have lost their original function. In rare cases they have been converted into cultural spaces, where musicians like Korcsolán attempt to keep traditions of Jewish music and culture alive.

Since her youth Korcsolán has performed Jewish-themed music in the cities of Szeged, Zalegerszeg, or the capital’s Dohany and Ujpest synagogues. She has performed as a guest artist, and sharing the stage with leading European cantors.

Mosaic contains pieces that range from simple Jewish folk songs to coffee-house music transcribed to the classical form. Works include Marc Lavry’s Three Jewish Dances, Julius Chajes’s The Chassid, Abraham Goldfaden’s Raisins and Almonds, Josef Bonime Danse Hébraïque and Lazare Saminsky’s Hebrew Rhapsody. Korcsolán plays Ernest Bloch’s Abodah (God’s Worship), a Yom Kippur Melody to Yehudi Menuhin with a picturesque bravado. The sensitive performance reveals a reserved crafting of notes that bursts into and emotive crescendo of melodic images.

A tribute to her parents
Another piece performed by Korcsolán, accompanied by Hungarian pianist Judit Kertész, is Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish. Korcsolán haphazardly discovered the composition which was originally transcribed by a small French publisher. The sorrowful, slow yet resolute composition is named after the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish, said or sung by the firstborn son or daughter after they have lost their parents.

« Korcsolán has an excellent command of the violin, perfect intonation and a very beautiful, warm sound, » remarks violist Robert Verebes, himself a soloist and career performer with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, « The Chassidic pieces are performed with great spirit, the slow pieces are very beautifully projected while the fast ones are very well controlled. »

« Yehudi Menuhin is said to have known this piece, » says Korcsolan, who with Sugar will make a move from the Asian sub-continent to classical-music inspired Vienna.

« He was so touched by it that he said that he was not brave or good enough to perform it. He played it for himself a couple of times, but I think that it was so deep and so emotional. »

But Korcsolán herself felt compelled to perform Kaddish, if only as a tribute to her own parents who had recently passed on. For her, this is her remembrance, her Kaddish. « The best way to say it is to play it, » she says.

Multicultural model shifting. Photo © 2008, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com MALAYSIA

(Kuala Lumpur) The Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur is a cosmopolitan mêlée. The skyline is dominated by the Patronas Twin Towers, its name given by the state oil company which drives much of the recent wealth of this country; while a stone’s throw away is a tropical rainforest right in the middle the urban sprawl. Here, it’s all about contrasts.

And while KL is a city that has much in common with New York City or London, this predominantly Muslim state boasts an entirely different multicultural model. If the simmering ethnic grumblings of this country touted for its ethnic harmony are a sign of things to come, it may be a multicultural model that has had its day.

Ethnic Malays – considered Muslim by the government here – represent some 65 percent of the population. The Indian and Chinese communities, themselves Hindu, Christian or Buddhist – represent the remaining 35 percent of the population. As a result of this ethnic mix in even the smallest communities you will find both temples and mosques doting the landscape.

The multiculturalism that developed since the country’s independence from British rule was a compromise designed to ease the tensions between the complicated ethnic and religious fabric that was the heritage of the colonial era.

Unlike other western models, here your religion and ethnic group are more a question of defining your place in the eyes of the state rather than individual choice. Finding a totally secular Malay is not an easy task. Here your very ethnicity and religion almost defines your place in society.

If you happen to be ethnic Malay, the New Economic Policy that has been in place since the early 1970s offers you benefits, entitlements, job opportunities or educational advantages over other minority ethnic groups. Many of Malaysia’s top positions at key institutions like the civil service, police or armed forces are held by Malays as a matter of course.

« Malaysia’s constitution promised tolerance and co-existence for religions other than Islam, and this was a good start, » says Steve Fenton, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol who has researched Malay multiculturalism, « Malays see themselves as having made this great concession to non-Malays in allowing them to stay, become citizens, practice their faiths and some use of their own languages. This is certainly a better position than to be found in some other multi-ethnic societies.”

« These policies have contributed to the formation of a Malay middle class, partly served by government ‘favoritism’. This pattern persists and is an understandable source of aggravation to other groups, none more so than Indians who have a large poor population.”

Kuala Lumpur, the main gateway to Malaysia, is a modern city, locally known simply as KL. It is a bustling metropolis, with a real mix of the old and the new. The name means 'muddy rivermouth'. Photo © 2008, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com MALAYSIA

The result has been the primacy of ethnic Malays, with Islam enshrined in the constitution – all while officially granting freedom of religious faith and citizenship to non-Malays. This was the compromise that allowed for discrimination in favor of Malay, in exchange for social cohesion.

To this day if you drive in the center of KL, across from the tall skyscrapers and urban sprawl you will find whole swaths of land with homes only available to ethnic Malay citizens, a concept that simply wouldn’t fly in North America, Britain or Australia. A large portion of the plush government jobs at the nearby government city of Patrajaja with its monumental buildings and false lake and bridges are also set aside for ethnic Malay in an unabashedly discriminatory policy that this country’s citizens are expected to accept.

« It was one of the basic foundations from when we got our independence from the British, and one of the issues at the center of many discussions among the various communities was what their role would be in the country of Malaysia, » says HJ Mohd Shafie Bin HJ Apdal, Minister of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage of Malaysia.

« Surely they were concerned about their economic well-being but more important also in relation to their cultural preservation, » he adds.

One reason cited why ethnic inequalities came into being was because many of the immigrant workers who made their way here in the last century became very successful and powered the industrial motor of this country’s economy.

Not far from the capital, I visited one ethnic Chinese family who have made their mark in Malaysia, and continue to rule a dynasty of sorts that is now in it’s forth generation. The pewter manufacturer Royal Selangor employs over six hundred workers here. Workers in the sparkling clean factory are separated into blocks of one hundred, with each worker silently crafting individual designs from a base of fire-hot pewter as they have done since the late 19th century. The factory hums with the steady knocking of hammers sculpting the pewter, resulting in over one thousand separate products.

« When the races came to Malaysia from China or India, society was structured along these racial lines because that is how the British managed the economy, » says Chen Tien Yue, General Manager of Royal Selangor.

« The Chinese were working with the tin mines, the Malays were in administration and the Indians were in plantations. That’s just the way they carved up the economy. After the British left the Chinese continued to be entrepreneurial and involved in business.”

Yue is the forth generation to run this family business since Yong Koon founded Royal Selangor in 1885 in a wave of Chinese migrations instigated in order to exploit the natural resources.

« I don’t know if it is from those roots that you see the Chinese having built up generations of businesses, but certainly those family firms that have lasted three generations or more are much more likely to be Chinese simply because of how it has developed over the years, » he says.

Sundown in Lumut. A young muslim girl posed for us at sundown in the small town of Lumut. Photo © 2008, Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com MALAYSIA

He says that the price of not doing so, according to the critics, would be an inability to achieve national unity. The younger generations, he says, are increasingly wondering why they are paying the price for a deal made by their forefathers. They argue that the deal was for affirmative action to help Malays until they were on a par with the more advanced Chinese and Indians. Not forever. And relations between the Malay and the country’s ethnic Indian and Chinese communities – making up 35 percent of the population, have been fragile in recent months to say the least. This discontentment has even resulted in flare-ups.

Some of the protesters argue that the discriminatory practices set up at independence are no longer necessary, and they want equal treatment. Earlier this year thousands of ethnic Indians took their protest to the streets of Kuala Lumpur in the first ethnically motivated demonstration in decades to demand an end to the institutional discrimination – protests which uncharacteristically ended with the police using tear-gas and water-cannons. The organizers were promptly charged with sedition.

Another source of aggravation between racial groups has been highly publicized cases of attempts to convert out of the Muslim faith. In one case the religious courts did rule in favor of a woman’s right to leave the Islamic case after the collapse of her marriage to a Muslim man. Non-Muslims marrying a Muslim are expected to take up the religion. But when it comes to renouncing the faith, many are left fighting the prosecution of stringent religious courts.

« The pro-Malay policies continue to be questioned both by other ethnic groups and by elements in the Malaysian multi-ethnic elite, » says Fenton, « They have been questioned for some time and will carry on being questioned.”

« Malaysia may be forced towards increased ‘neo-liberalism’ seen as a way of competing or surviving in a global economy. The effects of this may be not so good for Malaysia’s poor and disadvantaged, » he adds.

While the government of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was swept into office this spring, it was with the worst margin in over five decades and in a context of mounting dissatisfaction. The government even lost its two-third majority. Earlier this year five of Malaysia’s thirteen states went to the opposition – and Badawi’s government has been tumbling from one crisis to another. Separate protests on rising fuel prices and corruption scandals have only fuelled the fires of discontent here. In Malaysia today, the winds of change are in the air.

Related broadcast:

Rebirth of old Borneo, by Andrew Princz for the CBC Radio show Dispatches