MY EXPERIENCE IN BORNEO WITH HABITAT FOR HUMANITY, AND MY TRIP TO FIVE REGIONAL COUNTRIES

In July-August 2013, I made a five week, five country trip to Far East and South East Asia that took me to Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The central focus of the trip was my participation as part of a twelve member volunteer team with Habitat for Humanity (HFH) Canada, to contribute both with physical labor and monetary donations in building a low cost house for a poor Malaysian family just outside of Kuching- capital city of the Sarawak province of Malaysian part of Borneo.

Incidentally, the other parts of Borneo belong to Indonesia, and the tiny kingdom of Brunei. Our team members traveled separately at their own costs and assembled on 20th July at the Grand Continental Hotel in Kuching. Our stay at this hotel was arranged by the Malaysian Affiliate of the international HFH. However, we were individually responsible for the costs of our room and board, local transportation and some recreation activities. I began my journey on 11th July with Air Canada, flying first to Shanghai – the imperial city of my childhood dreams - which I was not able to visit, even though I made it to Beijing twice during my professional life when I had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the six continents.

The Air Canada's direct, non-stop flight over the North Pole arrived at Shanghai on time. After collecting my luggage, I hailed a taxi to my pre- arranged hotel, Holiday Inn Express in Pudong area of Shanghai, not knowing how far the hotel was from the airport.. It was late afternoon with heavy rush hour traffic. The taxi driver surprisingly spoke good English and was a jovial fellow who tried hard to start a conversation with me about my visit to his city. After having flown for almost thirteen hours over night, I was not very eager to answer his mundane questions like the purpose of my visit etc. When I arrived at the hotel in a busy section of the city, but in a quiet back side area facing a canal, it was almost 5 in the evening. For some reason, I was not tired or sleepy perhaps because of the jet lag. After checking in, I went out for a walk along the bank of the canal which was beautifully landscaped and protected, with intermittent paved spaces for people to get together and socialize. I noticed a group of senior citizens who were waltzing and having a good time. I did not have the tenacity to join them but I enjoyed watching them. After that, I took a walk over the beautiful monumental bridge over the canal, leading to a fashionable busier boulevard. On the bridge itself, I noticed four gold plated statues on four corners. The inscription on the wall of the bridge explained that the four statues signified the four stages of human life from conception, nourishment, growth and finally to hope for the future. After a brief walk on the sidewalk along the busy boulevard, I returned to my hotel and had dinner in the hotel's small restaurant and decided to call it a day hoping to get up early the next morning to explore greater Shanghai with its countless skyscrapers.

LIFE THREATENING EXPERIENCE IN SHANGHAI

I got up early the following morning. After an all inclusive fabulous buffet breakfast at the hotel dining room, I hired a taxi to explore the city. My first stop was the city's Peoples' Square which was already busy with both national and international tourists. I took some pictures and then slowly gravitated to the Square's main attraction which was the Chinese National museum.

The line for entrance was already too long with people standing for hours in the hot bright sun. I noticed that almost all of them were Chinese. I was not going to stand in the hot sun to get into a museum. Just the same, I slowly made my way to the front entrance. The young Chinese girl at the gate, noticing that I was a foreigner, quietly let me in. I was thankful. I spent some time inside, but soon became bored reading about ancient Chinese history of potteries and metal works. While at the museum, a fellow Italian tourist gave me an extra city map that he had earlier collected from his hotel. Armed with that, I came out and started walking towards the street. A short distance away, I noticed a metro (subway) station. I decided to enter the underground which was a relief from the scorching heat outside, as the metro was all air-conditioned. At the subway stations in Shanghai, I noticed something which was spectacularly absent in most metro systems in Western cities including London, Paris, New York, Toronto and many others. That is the ceiling high opaque barrier on the edge of the train line trench that hides the trench and the train lines and thus prevents public access to the trench and even to the trains themselves except through designated, remote controlled train doors which perfectly align with the openings in the barrier walls.

The barrier wall's outer surfaces are used for commercial advertisements thus generating revenues. The most significant benefit of these barrier walls is that they prevent intentional and or unintentional acts of accidents involving people using the train services. And, this is in a country where, we in the West are always crying out for lack of value for human lives. I immediately remembered with sadness how the 22 year old daughter of a very close friend of mine gave her life away a couple of years earlier to a treacherously open subway trench in Toronto itself. I thought if the barrier walls could have saved at least one life from such unwanted accidents, then their monetary costs would have been worth it. But obviously, in a profit conscious capitalistic society like ours, such investment in accident prevention does not meet the cost/benefit requirements of the powers to be. During this trip, I have noticed the similar kind of accident prevention measures in metro systems in Malaysia and Singapore as well. Another sign of innovative progress in some of these countries that I had noticed was to do with the now almost obsolete box type street corner telephone booths because of the preponderance of cellular phones. In some of these countries, they now provide Wi Fi services in these street corner phone booths which I have not noticed at least in modern western cities like Toronto.

With help from some rare English speaking Chinese metro goers, I ended up at the Mag Lev (Magnetic Levitation) train station of the metro system and saw the sign that said it was the fastest ground transport system in the world. I had earlier read about China's achievement in developing fastest train system in the world, and I instantly decided to take a ride on it. The train runs from the city centre to Pudong international airport- a distance of some 35 kms. which it covers in less than eight minutes. The brochure claims that it is capable of running up to 350 kms/hour, but while in the train, I noticed speed displayed overhead recorded only up to 301kms/hour.

I forgot what I had earlier read about the Magnetic Levitation principle that the train system uses until my son Arman later on through his e mail mentioned the words in full. The principle basically is based on creating a magnetic field on top of the rails and lifting the entire train a millimeter or so above the rail. The magnetic force holds the train in that position while it runs, essentially making it move in the air thus reducing the friction with the rail. Hence the name MagLev short for Magnetic Levitation. I enjoyed the pleasure ride to and from the airport. Afterwards, I took a taxi to go to the famous Oriental Pearl Tower a.k.a. TV Tower on the bank of the Huangpu River opposite the famous Shanghai Bund site.

I along with other tourists went up to the second tier of the Tower and had a good over view of Shanghai skyline from there. I then walked around in the beautifully landscaped and elevated promenade at the bottom of the Tower. Later, I made my way to the famous Bund site of the city. My intention was to enjoy the environment on the Bund site both before and after sunset. Sometime during the evening, I innocently asked a random man on the broad sidewalk across from the Bund if he could show me the way to a nearby restaurant. He instantly introduced me to a friend of his who took great interest in me and offered to show me around. During the next hour or so, I passively allowed myself to be in a place where I became vulnerable to be exploited*. I remembered the saying by Mr. Kofi Anan- the former secretary general of the United Nations- to the effect that no body or no nation can exploit anybody or any other nation unless the exploited has passive agreement to the exploitation. But, at that stage, it was too late for me. Suddenly, at a secluded place, three gangster type hooligans appeared on the scene, cornered me and demanded a ransom of 19,000 RMB equivalent to more than $3,000 USD for my freedom. I had a lot of traveler cheques in my cummerbund which one of the gang members noticed, but only about 1200 in RMB and $100 in cash in my wallet. Foolishly, I took a harder stand knowing that I had no chance against the gangsters. I told them that 19,000 RMB was a lot of money and I had the audacity to ask them what they were going to do if I did not pay. I asked them if they wanted to kill me, they could go ahead and do so. This might or might not have worked as a deterrent to the gang leader who spoke fluent English. "This is Shanghai" he reminded me sternly. During the course of verbal exchange he repeatedly asked me: "Are you a member of any Mafia Group?" insinuating that there were a number of Mafia groups that existed in the city. I deliberately refrained from answering that question. Instead, I offered them 1000 RMB, but they laughed. Then, all on a sudden their leader came down to 2000 RMB.

I realized that their intention was not to harm me and get themselves into further possible trouble but was simply to extort money from innocent victims like me. I gave them the 1200 RMB and $100 in cash. And they let me go. One of their henchmen called a taxi and put me in it making sure that I did not go to police or something. I sighed with relief and was glad to tell the taxi driver to go to my hotel.

The following morning, after breakfast, I was determined not to allow the incident of the evening before to spoil my long planned adventure through the region. I hailed a taxi again and asked to be taken to the very Chinese looking building on the tourist map. It turned out to be the Chinese Museum of Arts. At the entrance, during a picture taking session with the plaque in the background, I befriended (as if I had not learned the lesson from the incident of evening before) a group of Chinese young people including two pre-teen youngsters who all came from outside of Shanghai. All of them, as if they had never before seen a foreign face earlier, were keen to have their pictures taken with me. One young nursing student took a special fancy on me and agreed to join me in touring the museum separating herself from the rest of her friends. But she always kept in touch with them with her cell phone. Together, we toured the art museum and then walked to old Shanghai city to tour the ancient Yu Yuan Garden. After a lot of picture taking of the two of us, we all ended up at the Bund site shortly before sunset. Together, we walked along the Bund and then crossed the Huangpu River by ferry to go to the opposite side. By mid evening, we parted our ways, but not before the nursing student and I exchanged our email addresses. I do not think I will ever contact her again, but that was much more pleasant ending of my third day in Shanghai than it was on the previous evening. On my fourth and final day in Shanghai, I decided to explore more the newer side of Shanghai, opposite to the Bund site i.e., the site of the Oriental Pearl Tower. There, I visited the glamorous Pearl Oriental Hotel, and then took a walk along the river bank. Later, I took an afternoon cruise ride along the river on one of many decorated cruise boats. I then took a train ride through the multi-colored lighted Tourist Tunnel back to the Bund site and spent the rest of the evening there walking along the entire length of the Bund and enjoying the crowd and the night skyline of my dream city of Imperial Shanghai. The following day, my flight to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) was not until early evening. After breakfast, I decided to take a long walk along the broad busy boulevard in the vicinity of my hotel and observed the day to day way of living of the Chinese city folks. I walked on very narrow but clean streets with stores of various small traders on both sides along with their residences. I came back to my hotel exhausted shortly after noon. I took a shower and checked out of the hotel. By three in the afternoon, I left for the Pudong airport in Shanghai.

SCARY, LONELY, AFTER MIDNIGHT, 70 KM. LONG TAXI RIDE FROM KLIA TO CONCORDE HOTEL IN DOWNTOWN KUALA LUMPUR

The China Eastern Airways flight to Kuala Lumpur (KL) on 16th July was scheduled to have arrived shortly after mid-night. But it was late by a couple of hours in leaving the Pudong Airport in Shanghai and arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, popularly known as KLIA, well past 2 o'clock on 17th morning. By the time I collected my luggage and made through Customs and Immigration, it was almost half past three in the early morning. I had earlier made a reservation through my travel agent in Mississauga for 16th and 17th nights at the Concorde Hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur (KL), even though I had intended to stay about 4 nights in KL. Thinking that I have a confirmed hotel booking for the night and not knowing how far the downtown KL is from the KLIA, I set out in an airport taxi on my way to the hotel. Once in the taxi, a surprise was waiting there for me that was somewhat scary and unnerving. The taxi driver, a young Malay, was courteous and energetic. It turned out that the KL downtown was about 70 kms from KLIA and there were hardly any cars on the highway moving in any direction at that time of the early morning. The taxi driver repeatedly told me to go to sleep in the back seat where I was sitting. That made me even more scared as the taxi ran through some semi-industrialized rural and lonely areas between KLIA and KL. The taxi driver could have easily stopped his car on the side of the road under any pretext, robbed me of my possessions and simply let me off stranded by the side of the highway . Luckily for me, the taxi driver was a young good Muslim and it was the month of Ramadan when almost all Malaysian Muslims observe the dawn to dusk fast. Later on, when I described over the phone my situation to my daughter Sabrina, she told me it was foolish of me to have taken the taxi alone at that time of the early morning and that I should have waited at the airport until the day break. I admit it was my second wrong judgment in almost as many days. After checking-in formalities, it was almost day break by the time I walked into my comfortable deluxe (I was upgraded from my reserved superior room) hotel room and went straight to bed after having spent nearly 16 hours since I had left the hotel in Shanghai.

After about five hours of sleep and a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel's all inclusive buffet, I started on foot my first day's venture in the KL city that I had earlier read and heard so much about from friends and other family members. Concorde Hotel turned out to be within five to seven minutes' walk from the city's most famous landmark-the fabulous Twin Towers, owned by the Malaysian Oil company- Petronas- the only Fortune 500 company (so, I was told) in the developing countries of the South East Asia – which is probably the most internationally known symbol of Malaysia. Designed by an Argentine architect, the massive and imposing 88 storey high steel office towers are symbolically perhaps Malaysia's equivalent to India's Taj Mahal, instantly identifying the two countries respectively.

The Twin Towers are located adjacent to the Suria KLCC which is perhaps the most famous shopping mall and recreation and congregation centre in the whole of Malaysia. Behind the KLCC is the so-called "Symphony Lake" where colorful dancing water fountains adore the environment and throngs of tourists and local citizens congregate all day especially in the evenings. It is Malaysian version of "The Bund" in Shanghai as the meeting place for families and visitors. Having observed the popularity and propensity of tall towers and exotic shopping malls all around the world, I got to thinking that in ancient times, a select group of people all over the world who controlled the wealth and destinies of the masses built palaces and mausoleums for themselves. They of course did not feel the need for shopping malls because most people did not have enough money for much of shopping. In modern days, with money and wealth being spread around a little bit, people or corporations who have lots of money build expensive hotels and air conditioned shopping malls where most common people spend a lot of their time and money and in the process the rich and the corporate bosses make more money and get even richer. In other words, the rich always find a way to serve themselves well ahead of the masses.