I lived in Singapore for a year, but it was prior to the Marina Bay Sands Skypark being built. This structure looks like something out of Star Wars, or something designed by H.R. Giger (which would make it ‘Alien’, I realize that, but work with us here!) Now, imagine jumping off it into Singaporean traffic!

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[Source: Skypark BASE Jump]

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Source: Mark Bramley]

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Source: James W. Griffiths]

They say God has many faces. In this instance, she took the form of an elderly Asian woman dressed head to toe in black. She hovered above me – a face creased with age, framed with straight gray hair and punctuated with a toothy, betel nut-stained smile. Who knew how many tourists she’d led down that laneway in the old Red Light district off Jalan Alor. How many adventure seekers had lain where I now laid – on a day bed in a back room of her bustling restaurant in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning?

The room was stifling and the air was a heady mixture of candle wax, opium smoke and French cigarettes. There was a hint of Jasmine tea – it was the one smell that seemed out of place, even in a part of town that was known more for its intoxicating food than its illicit drugs.

I’d smoked only a small bowl – five hits, maybe six, I have no idea. Within minutes I had seven fingers on each hand! It didn’t matter. The extra grip on the bed didn’t stop the room from moving away from me, alternating between lightspeed and molasses.

“Close eye,” the old woman said, her whisper barely audible above the din caused by the propane-fired wok in the next room. Shit – I couldn’t keep them open if I tried. But it wasn’t sleep that took me.

She replaced the wash cloth on my forehead with a fresh cool one. I learned later it was soaked in a mixture of rosewater and mint. I managed to crack open one eye just in time to see the room become a Dali painting. I giggled, loudly I think. The old woman continued to smile. I tried to smile back, and maybe I did, but my brain was preoccupied with the movie, my body with the feelings.

A few hours later I found myself wandering, floating almost, back through the streets of Kuala Lumpur looking for my hotel, basking in the afterglow buzz. I discovered the city anew that night. And I ate like a pig.

When I finally negotiated my way home, I resolved to do three things. One, return to Malaysia and Southeast Asia and spend more time travelling the world – life is too short. Two, to never again be a tourist, but always a traveller – life is too short. And three, remember as much of the opium experience as possible and never repeat it – life is too short.


I mention this life-altering event for one reason. Addiction.

I knew once I’d straightened out that it wouldn’t take much for me to make a return trip to see the old woman. Many trips perhaps – the experience was that amazing. I loved it and wanted more – had to have more.

Travel affects me the same way, and luckily it’s the only vice I have. Not alcohol, not drugs – travel. The desire, the need to experience what’s around the corner, around the country, around the world is the only habitual inclination I possess. I simply must travel.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

That quote is from a man who wrote eloquently about both drugs (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and travel (Treasure Island). Like many other authors who became famous for their literature, but were first and foremost travel writers — Mark Twain and Evelyn Waugh among them — Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing was a happy consequence of his travels.

And so it is for me. Although my vocation is that of a writer, producer and director of television, my avocation is that of a traveler. It is when, on the all-too-infrequent occasions the two intersect, that I know I have arrived, and the monkey returns once again to my back. I live for those moments.

As for my resolutions, I’ve managed to keep them all. So far.

[REW]

Thoughts, feelings, indictments…? Comments below.

Bread, in its myriad forms throughout the world, is a dietary staple, unless, of course, you find yourself in Southeast Asia. When I lived in Singapore the only Westernized version of bread I could find was what Singaporeans called ’sandwich bread’. Thinly sliced, long loaves of heavily preserved white bread the consistency of plaster board. It was normally sold in the ’specialty’ aisles of chain markets along with wieners and macaroni and cheese, and rarely found in the kitchen.

But there are so many other tantalizing varieties of food available to the traveler in Southeast Asia that you quickly adjust your palate. In fact, one of the best aspects of travel in foreign countries is the ability to dive into the food and culture of the region.

Entree To Asia is a travel-based cooking TV series I produced a number of years ago. It still amazes me how, in Asian food culture, so little changes. What was true — and tasty — hundreds of years ago, remains so today. Food in Southeast Asia remains an important aspect of the travel experience, and so the two are not only interconnected, they each thrive on their diversity of ingredients.

With this post we start a new category here at Wanderism – Food & Travel. We’ve nibbled around the edges of this subject before — articles about Morocco and the Vancouver Olympics for instance — but this category will deal directly with the connections between the two, and why, in many cases they are inseparable. Also, where possible, we will be presenting entertaining video clips with those posts. Today is such a case.

Herewith, the TV series demo of Entree To Asia. I went on to write, produce and direct 26 half-hour episodes and a one-hour special for broadcasters around the world. In future posts we’ll show clips from shows in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong. Also, coming up we have clips on the food of Central America, including Belize. All exclusive to Wanderism visitors. Enjoy!

A Taste Of Asia from Wanderism on Vimeo.

[REW]

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