existential struggles in greater China and southeast Asia
April 13 was the New Year celebration for Thailand and Myanmar, also known as the Songkran Water Festival. Â Unfortunately, I was in neither Thailand nor Myanmar on that day, but I did the best I could – I visited Thai and Myanmar Buddhist temples in Penang, Malaysia.
Here’s an environmentally friendly reminder I noticed in the Thai temple:
I saw this beauty at a Thai Buddhist temple in Penang, Malaysia. Â Great way to reuse an empty plastic bottle!
Astute readers may have noticed a disturbing change to the site.
Yes, I’ve sold out. Â I’m now a user of Google Adsense. Â You’ll see the ads at the bottom of the sidebar on the right and also on the left side of the footer. Â I hope you can understand why I’ve gone to the dark side. Â I have no steady income and this site costs money to run. Â My lofty ambition is that I’ll be able to pay for domain name registration and web hosting with ad revenues.
I tried to use space that was otherwise wasted. Â Let me know if the placement of these ads detracts from your viewing enjoyment and I’ll see what I can do to improve the situation.
Please forgive me. Â Please do not forsake this site. Â I guarantee that the quality (or wretchedness) of the content will not be significantly affected by this unfortunate, piggish, capitalist, but eminently practical decision.
Note: Â The picture shows Marina Bay Sands, one of two casinos in Singapore. Â The structure on top was designed to resemble a boat and conspiracy theorists believe it will detach and take the leaders of Singapore to safety when the world floods in 2012. Â The hand-like structure near the bottom left is the ArtScience museum, universally reviled as an expensive, profit-focused travesty of a museum.
Finally, after months and months of delay, here is the last episode of the Southwestern Adventure. Thanks so much for sticking with me through this trip! Hope you enjoyed the pics and the captions. I plan to follow up on these issues by exploring the downstream effects of China’s damming activity on its Southeast Asian neighbors. Especially worrying are China’s damming of the Lancang River, known as the Mekong in southeast Asia, and the Nu River, also known as the Salween.
If you have contacts at NGOs or government agencies in Southeast Asia who are working on international river issues, please let me know.
Here is a map of our approximate route during this episode.
One positive thing (not to say that there aren’t lots of other characteristics I like about this place, such as cheap delicious food and really friendly people) I’ve noticed about Singapore: The buildings look nice, even decades-old government-built housing. I’ve been told that the government requires and/or subsidizes regular repainting of buildings to maintain the city’s clean, modern aura. And it works.
Walking up St. Martin’s Drive toward the Myanmar (aka Burma) Embassy in Singapore, I noted that the buildings here looked particularly sharp.  Based on its proximity to the flashy Orchard Road shopping area, this neighborhood must be expensive even by Singaporean standards. Below are a couple of St. Martin’s residential buildings.
