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Category: Southeast Asia (Page 1 of 2)

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A world-heritage disneyland

The city of Malacca (alternately spelled Melaka) was, for hundreds of years, one of the most important cities of southeast Asia. Located near the southern end of the Malay Peninsula, in what is now Malaysia, the city faces the Straits of Malacca, the sea route from China to the Indian Ocean. In the early 15th century, a great fleet commanded by Ming Chinese admiral Zheng He passed this way several times. The rulers of the Sultanate of Malacca were some of the first southeast Asian rulers to convert to Islam. In the colonial period, the city was variously ruled by the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese, before the Federation of Malaya gained independence in 1957.

In more recent times, Malacca has declined in importance, being surpassed by Singapore to the south and Kuala Lumpur to the north. The city’s port was located in its river, but the river silted up and the site was in any event unsuitable for the large cranes needed for container-based shipping after World War II. More recently, the city has reinvented itself as a tourist destination. UNESCO declared the town center of Malacca a World Heritage Site in 2008 (a dual-listing with George Town to the north).

Malacca has been heavily developed for tourism. The town center has a nice hill with a ruined Portuguese church on top, but the developers felt that they also had to build an amusement park-style rotating tower ride nearby for some reason. Immediately adjacent to the historic town center is a giant shopping mall with a huge parking lot. To the north, a monorail runs in a loop along the riverfront. I have a feeling that the urban planning board of Malacca decided to build this particular attraction after watching the “Monorail Song” clip from The Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail.” (They should have watched the end of the episode.)

View of the monorail along the Malacca riverfront.

View of the monorail along the Malacca riverfront.

Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) stalking along the elevated trackway of the monorail.

Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) stalking along the elevated trackway of the monorail.

The monorail is emblematic of how touristy and over-commercialized Malacca has become. It isn’t tacky for the most part, but I don’t feel that the commercialization is respectful of the culture and heritage of this place. The heritage that is preserved has been over-preserved. The ruins of erstwhile empires in Malacca are too obviously stabilized. The graves of heroes of the Sultanate period have been covered with latex paint. A whole bastion of the city’s defenses has been reconstructed, but the interpretive signs act like it is the real thing. Overall, Malacca is so touristy that it feels more like a historical disneyland than one of southeast Asia’s great cities.

Signs like this along the riverfront advise tourists how to take the exact same photos as everybody else.

Signs like this along the riverfront advise tourists how to take the exact same photos as everybody else.

A rotating elevator-tower near the historic center of Malacca.

A rotating elevator-tower near the historic center of Malacca.

A wall announcing that the town center is a World Heritage Site.

A wall announcing that the town center is a World Heritage Site.

Traffic on Pasar Senen, Jakarta.

Jakarta’s bus-metro

Before visiting Jakarta three years ago, I read someplace that the Indonesian capital may be the largest city in the world without a metro railway. A couple of other cities could contest that claim, but Jakarta is certainly one of the biggest metro-less cities.

Instead of a metro railway, Jakarta has the Transjakarta Busway, a hybrid transportation technology that is effectively a bus metro. The buses run in their own lanes and stop at stations that can only be entered with a smartcard. The bus doors are high off the ground to meet the station platforms, so it is only possible to board the buses through the stations. There can still be quite a gap between bus and platform, more than on any metro I’ve ridden.

Buses at a Transjakarta station.

Buses at a Transjakarta station.

A dedicated busway lane on Jalan Gunung Sahari.

A dedicated busway lane on Jalan Gunung Sahari.

A busway station

A busway station

Interior of another busway station.

Interior of another busway station.

At its best, the Transjakarta Busway is faster and more efficient than regular buses, which are at the mercy of all the other traffic in a city. It was also much cheaper to build than a metro railway, because the buses run on existing roadways rather than purpose-built tunnels. At its worst, the busway may not offer much advantage over regular buses, because traffic doesn’t always stay out of the designated bus lanes.

Jakarta was the first place I saw a busway, but then when I went to Yogyakarta in south-central Java, I found a small busway system in that city as well. When I moved to Jaipur later that year, I saw what appeared to be the ruins of a rapid-transit bus system. On one of the roads on the western side of the city, buses ran in their own dedicated lanes, but the lanes were not always open, and at other times non-bus traffic infiltrated the lanes.

To return to Jakarta: there is a metro railway under construction in Jakarta, but it has yet to open. When it does, the Transjakarta Busway will probably continue to operate alongside it.

Metro construction on one of the boulevards of Jakarta, 2015.

Metro construction on one of the boulevards of Jakarta, 2015.

Indonesia has two other public transportation technologies that are worth mentioning: ojeks and becaks. Ojeks are motorcycle taxis. The passenger sits on the back of the motorcycle behind the driver. Thanks to their narrow profile, ojeks can weave through traffic. I understand that motorcycle taxis are common elsewhere in southeast Asia. It seems that they could be popular in India as well, but they have not caught on there for some reason—possibly because they would not be practical for women traveling alone.

The other distinctively Indonesian mode of public transit is the becak, a three-wheeled cycle-taxi. (The c in “becak” is said like ch in “change.”) Unlike the cycle-rickshaws of India or the trishaws of Malaysia, becaks have a passenger seat in the front, and the driver sits in the back. The use of becaks has fallen off considerably in recent decades, but they are still around, especially in touristy areas.

A becak in Yogyakarta.

A becak in Yogyakarta.

Singapore Airlines planes at Changi Airport.

A nation without monuments

Every country has its monuments, which glorify great men of the past (and less frequently, great women), commemorate battles won and lost, and represent the nation’s ideals. Even colonies have monuments, erected on behalf of the colonial power and often paid for by the subjects. When a colony declares independence, the monuments of the colonial power are often the first to be torn down. In 1776, American colonists toppled statues of King George III. After 1947, when India parted ways with the British Empire, statues of British monarchs were moved to museums or shipped off to Canada.

The now-empty pedestals in roundabouts and parks were soon occupied by statues of the new heroes of the independent nation: Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhash, Pandit Nehru. Buildings and streets likewise received new identities: Kingsway in New Delhi became Rajpath, the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay became Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. For that matter, Bombay itself was rechristened, becoming Mumbai. Just about the only thing that wasn’t renamed was the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. A larger-than-life statue of the elderly sovereign remains in place in front of the wedding-cake building, but the interior now features a museum commemorating the independence struggle.

The example of India is not unique. Around the world, political changes usually lead to a flurry of renaming of streets and dismantling and rebuilding of monuments.

By comparison, the example of Singapore is unusual. Singapore has been an independent, sovereign nation for more than fifty years, but there has been little of the renaming and reinventing of the city-state that has happened in most other former colonies. A statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who founded Singapore in 1819, still stands cockily over the waterfront. Most streets retain their colonial names. While there are plenty of historical markers for the colonial period and the Japanese occupation during World War II, there are no statues for Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first prime minister—even though he served for more than thirty years and was a central figure in the modernization of the city-state.1

Statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in Singapore.

Statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in Singapore.

On first blush, it might seem that modern Singapore is lacking in a sense of identity, which other former colonies have gone to great lengths to cultivate. I certainly felt that way when I visited two years ago. But on further reflection, not having statues of modern heroes all over the place is a part of Singapore’s identity. It shows that the country is open to the world—or at least the modern, prosperous parts of it. With its gleaming high-rises and booming economy, Singapore itself is a monument to Lee Kuan Yew.

Singapore's monument to the Great War, which is inscribed in honor of the fallen of World War II on the back side.

Singapore’s monument to the fallen soldiers of the World Wars.

A sign on Connaught Drive, pointing to a historical marker about World War II. (The marker is located on the site of a memorial for the Japanese-affiliated Indian National Army, which was dynamited by Mountbatten’s troops after they retook Singapore in 1945.)

A sign on Connaught Drive, pointing to a historical marker about World War II. (The marker is located on the site of a memorial for the Japanese-affiliated Indian National Army, which was dynamited by Mountbatten’s troops after they retook Singapore in 1945.)

  1. C.M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore (Oxford, 1988), 320-21. []

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