A floating hope

 

 LAPPING IT UP: Diners enjoying their meals bought from floating food stalls berthed at the riverside

PICTURE a bustling market filled with the aroma of grilled prawns, shellfish and squids and the all-time kopitiam coffee (kopi-o peng or o-liang in Thai).

Recollect scenes of old-style shophouses, selling desserts, titbits, cold drinks, crafts, those glittering ear rings and more with many customers bargaining for a best price.

Imagine you are being amazed with tourists and locals alike keeping their iPads, iPhones, Samsung in their bags, just laying back to enjoy the food and people passing by. People are smiling and laughing. Everyone is eating.

I could be at the magnificent Rejang River or the beautiful Sarawak River but it wasn’t long before I woke up in this beautiful hustle and bustle of Amphawa Floating Market by the canal near Wat Amphawan Chetiyaram, 72km from Bangkok, Thailand.

The sight at the canal’s embankments and paddling boat vendors evoked memories of my childhood days when riverside trading was thriving and vibrant.

While I marvelled at the iPod-toting generation of young and old alike falling under the spell of the low-tech charms of simple grilled food and o-liang by the river, my limited space was occupied by a crowd of young people with one common feature – a happy face over a T-shirt painted with Google.

I’m not too sure if he was teasing me but he said his name is Boo. He really did not look like one or even sound like one who will “Boo” a woman who wished to strike a conversation with some young people.

Boo said: “We are second year advertising students of University of Thai Chamber of Commerce. Google has sponsored 140 of us for a day trip here to experience the floating market.”

Then what are their commitments for such generous sponsorship?

“We need to send pictures to Google, that’s it. It is really a thrill and good experience,” Boo explained.

Exactly, it should be thrilling. How thrilled I would be if Google also sponsors our Unimas students, probably for a trip to Bakun dam or Murum dam or even just upriver to Kapit and paint the town Google?

The two women who teamed up perfectly to sell cook-to-order prawns, shellfish and squids served me and my friend a plate of five  medium-sized grilled prawns for 100 bahts (about RM10). Large-sized prawns are priced at 200 bahts.

I started counting – she could grill 15 prawns on the hot grill in 10 minutes -- meaning 90 prawns an hour. Now at 150 bahts for five prawns on average, she could make 2,700 bahts in an hour!

Business is good. Sipping coffee there for one hour, I noticed there wasn’t a moment the hot grill was empty. Grilled seafood were taken from grill to plates and right to the customers.

The coffee master over the other boat was busy as well. I lost count of how many o-liang he made in that one hour!

The Google-sponsored Boo took a picture of us – each holding a prawn --  while I imagined myself working in the Sarawak Tourism Board, promoting our own seafood and our own floating market.

Most Thai communities were formed at the sides of rivers. Did we not also start with riverine life?

The criss-crossing rivers and canals were the means of transportation and ways of life for these communities, especially along the Chao Phraya River Basin, which resulted in a rise in the number of floating markets.

With the construction of more and more road and rail networks, and people increasingly preferring road transportation to the waterways, some floating markets were forced to move to the ground nearby and some to close down.

However, Thailand Tourism Authority (TTA) was quick to act. Given that many floating markets chronicled the everyday happenings in people’s lives and possessed matchless charisma that many would be unhappy to lose, the TTA revived them, allowing the new generation of Thais and overseas tourists to take in the uniqueness of riverside shopping.

Amphawa floating market is one of these markets. It is an evening floating market operated on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It is not as large as Damnoen Saduak floating market but is more authentic, attracting more local visitors. It has become a magnet for Thai weekenders. Food stalls have grown from the riverbanks and stretched far into the surrounding streets.

The main draw is, of course, eating seafood grilled precariously on wooden boats moored around the famous central bridge, serving an appetizing array of huge prawns, shellfish and squids.

Customers perch on rows of narrow steps leading down to the water and food brought directly from the boats onto really narrow tables.

If you don’t feel like sitting on a ledge close to the brownish waters, you can walk a bit further from the bridge to find eating places with tables and chairs.

Along the canal, there are old charming wooden shops selling souvenirs -- from T-shirts to other creations, and lots of candies, snacks and ice-cream.

The favorite buys are the age-old traditional desserts, dating back to the days of King Rama II. Among the most delectable are rayrai, hrume, thong­aek, cha-mongkut and sanehchandr, all of which taste as good as they look and will please many a sweet tooth.

They say Thai people have sweet tooth and love nibbling all day long – well, Sarawakian people are the same, I bet.

If you have had enough of all the eating, shopping and seeing people and dusk would have fallen by then, you could take a boat and watch the beautiful flickering fireflies at night.

We did not take a boat ride but learned the ride would take passengers to a couple of temples and a mini zoo with wild boars, gentle goats and proud peacocks.

Here in Amphawa lives an old community that still retains its age-old tradition. It’s the birthplace of King Phra Bhddha Lertlah Napalai and two queens, Somdej Phra Amarindramatya, the royal consort of King Rama, and Queen Somdej Phra Sri Suriyendramatya, the royal consort of King Rama II.

Other celebrated sons of the land include famous poets Luang Pradit Pairoh and Khru Euar Soonthornsanan.

Locals or tourists alike, who can say no to a quick dose of nostalgia and lots of mouth-watering experience? More so, if it’s by our very own Sarawak River or Rejang River.  

If only we have one.

PRAWNS ON THE MENU: A woman preparing grilled prawns in her floating seafood stall

BUSY FLOATING MARKET: A typical day scene at the busy Amphawa floating market 

 THUMBS-UP: Boo and his university mates with one common feature – a happy face over a T-shirt painted with Google

 PASTRY SELLER: A youthful vendor selling cakes and other pastries at a riverine shop

 SOOTHING TOUCH: A “floating” masseuse giving a tourist a soft head massage

PLAY A BAHT-FUL TUNE: An itinerant musician playing his electric fiddle along a riverside corridor
 

FRUIT VENDOR: A vendor with a boatload of fruits

 LOOKING FOR BUSINESS:  A lone vendor paddles his boat as he searches

for a suitable spot along the river to ply his fare

 COLOURFUL TOPS: River merchants in a cluster of boats under a canopy of colourful umbrellas

So the saga continues

Beware lest we lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. — Aesop

EVEN at his death and after 50 years of the nation’s independence, the name Chin Peng still caused much bitterness, hatred and uneasiness.

Described by the US media as “a communist guerrilla leader whose tenacious, bloody struggles for an independent Communist Malaysia pitted him against Japanese invaders, British colonialists and finally the government of what had become his own newly sovereign nation,” and endowed by South China Morning Post in Hong Kong  as “Asia’s last great revolutionary, Malaysian communist guerrilla,” Chin Peng died on September 16 in Bangkok.

When news broke of his death on the morning of Malaysia Day, amidst celebrations, several leaders responded immediately.

No, not even the ashes are allowed to be transported across the border, let alone allowing him to be buried at his home town of Sitiawan in Perak – it was crude to have come out from the breath of our leaders and law enforcers!

Former Inspector General of Police Tun Hanif Omar reacted almost immediately: “Why should we give him a resting place here?”

The Prime Minister said much later in Sabah after his Malaysia Day do: “We will not allow him to be buried in Malaysia,” while maintaining that Chin Peng would be remembered as a terrorist who led a violent guerrilla movement that caused countless deaths of civilians and the security forces.

Former prime minister Tun Mahathir did not mince his words when he said the communist leader had been living in Thailand for a long time and did not seem to want to be a Malaysian and should be buried there, not forgetting that Chin Peng’s application to come back to Malaysia was rejected by the High Court in 2009 on technical ground that he could not prove that he was born in the country.

I do not espouse communism but because I do not consider myself immune to the thoughtless crude words from my leaders, I felt my little space has been attacked left, right and centre by them on Malaysia Day.

Neither am I immune to the sorrows, anguish and hurt of the families of Malayan and Commonwealth troops and civilians killed during Chin Peng’s campaign to establish a communist state in the country.

The signals that our leaders have given out were that of “hatred” and “unforgiving spirit” even when a person is dead, even when the country has gained its independence for 50 years.

There are always better ways to express our emotions and bring forth our message.

The short “journey” recorded in the New Straits Time by Najib Rahman – whose father was the late Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim, the third Inspector General of Police – from the time he received the news of Chin Peng’s death to the call he made to his mother was something I think brings much positive thought and the message conveyed is far-reaching.

According to Najib Rahman, Chin Peng, based on the official version, had ordered for his father to be “gunned down like a vermin in the streets of Kuala Lumpur in the morning hours of June 7, 1974.”

First, he remembered his late father, then the over 10,000 innocent lives lost due to Chin Peng’s campaign. And he also remembered to call his elderly mother who should have suffered much with the loss.

My simple mind has not been able to comprehend the way his 88-year-old mother, widow of the late Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim, reacted.

In Najib Rahman’s own words: “Over the phone, I broke the news to mother. Her reply, in a voice that clearly belied her 88 years, was simply Baguslah.Tak payah risau lagi (Good, No need to worry anymore).”

Najib Rahman summed it up very well: “That there are lessons to be learnt from the past, a bloody and painful chapter of history has been closed, that there is absolutely nothing to be gained by extremism of any kind in this country, that we need to learn to trust one another again, and that is the time for us to move on. Achieve that and there will be nothing for us Malaysians to worry about.”

In his memoir Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History published in 2003, Chin Peng said the Malaya he grew up in and fought against was a different world from the Malaysia today.

Obviously, in mitigating his image as brutal and ruthless, he wrote that today’s young Malaysians who are living in stable government would find it difficult to comprehend the choice he had made – a revolution based on violence and armed struggle.

He said he had to be a liberation fighter after having witnessed how locals were badly treated by the British colonials, claiming the communist movement took place amid injustice.

That was the signal Chin Peng received in those days of Japanese occupation and British colonisation – injustice in society.

Chin Peng has passed on. He had been denied return to the country – and now “not even his ashes should return.” The signal we are sending out to the people is that despite the signing of a peace accord in 1989, we can totally ignore it.

I chanced upon the comment by former Special Branch officer Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng in The Nut Graph in 2009 when Chin Peng was denied return to Malaysia.

The forgiving and big-hearted fighter of the communists during and after the Emergency years sent out this signal: “We have to find ways to reconcile sooner rather than later, not carry negative baggage, prejudice and sensitivities from generation to generation, confusing the future when all communities have to work and unite together without racism to survive in the world of globalisation.”

We are divided more than ever. We have taken a few steps forward but alarmingly, also a few steps backwards.

Is it really true that “we don’t have to worry anymore?”

Take the new Bumiputra economic empowerment agenda announced by the prime minister just two days before Malaysia Day – again we are sending out the signal the government agenda is to continue with the privileges of certain groups only, not the nation as a whole.

Is it because we have been too engrossed in the jubilee celebrations or too overwhelmed by the death of Chin Peng and whether his ashes should have a space here in Malaysia that we have forgotten to address the new “agenda” – not even hidden – to be implemented that speaks only of strengthening and empowering the privileged group?

For Chin Peng it is dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.

But we have a life to live – take time to seriously think how history is shaped. Withdraw into the silence but do not turn off the current to the antenna just in case we miss the signal that will bring us back in a flash … something important is going on all the time.

It’s the essence of life.

To give or not to give

 

THEY are hard to resist -- children in shabby clothes, dirty and sad-faced, asking for a dollar -- in US currency.

Indeed, what’s one dollar when we already spent hundreds on hotels and air tickets for a holiday which is meant to not only be fun-filled but to also broaden our horizon as we experience life in a foreign land -- away from the daily office grind?

So even as our gut feelings told us not to, we still handed over a dollar for a postcard, a bracelet, a bunch of bananas or a package of peanuts, if not merely in response to the pleading from some poor street munchkin -- give me one dollar, I need to buy milk for my hungry brother.

Then you passed by some musicians sitting on a platform with their prosthetic legs in plain sight – probably victims of bombs and land mines. At such moments, you’d find it easier to part with gifts.

It’s only a dollar. Even with our depreciating ringgit, it’s still only RM3.30 -- a mere sacrifice of kampua mee kosing and kopi-o kosong for breakfast.

While travelling further to a floating village at Lake Tonle Sap during a recent visit to Cambodia, the nine of us in our group were “forced” to buy a 50kg sack of rice for an orphanage, each of us chipping in US$5.

I did a mental calculation – it would mean a kilo of rice for RM3.60 which is considered very expensive and I know I don’t go for that price range for the staple.

The Russian couple in our group started collecting from each one of us. It was difficult and painful for me and my other three journalist friends – we knew it was a scam. And it was because of fear that a refusal could spoil our holidays in a bad way that made us open our wallets.

There are lots of overwhelming sights and spots in Cambodia – Angkor Wat, Lake Tonle Sap or Phnom Penh.

While it’s only human that our immediate response was to want to fix the problems we saw during our walkabouts, our impulsive-ness was often futile in the long run.

Yes, it all appeared so natural and harmless but who knows what resistance may bring? It’s sad and seems so callous and cruel.

The unfortunate truth is that the situation is bad. Why do begging children exist in the first place? Why shouldn’t we give money to begging children? What is really going on?

Often we assume children willingly beg to support their destitute families. But the real story may be quite different – children are frequently trafficked from the villages and forced to beg along ur-ban streets or in tourist areas.

Iveta Cherneva wrote in her book -- Trafficking for Begging: Old Game, New Game – that traffickers will choose children with handicaps as a handicapped child earns three times more than a healthy one.

However, the scenario can be much worse. According to reports, not all child beggars are trafficked – sometimes, they are exploited by their own parents.

“The bottomline is that giving money to street kids is not pro-ductive in solving the issues with them, with their families, or with them being on streets.

“There are more complicated issues going on behind their cute faces and shabby clothes,” Sam Flint, director of Anjali House, an education centre for former street children in Cambodia, told the New York Times.

I talked to a tourist guide, Chat, 21, while heading to Lake Tonle Sap and he told me giving “a dollar” to the street children ensured a thriving labour market for these youngsters whom, he pointed out, shouldn’t be working in the first place at their young age.

He said many of them were not from Siem Reap but brought in from other provinces to work in the streets.

“By supporting these children, we are exposing them to predators, traffickers, drug dealers and child sex tourists.”

As Chat continued, a boat carrying two children (each with a small python coiled round their necks) and an adult came near our vessel.

As I clicked away happily with my camera, one of the little boys drew the snake nearer me, saying give me a dollar.

The creepy thing scared me but Chat said: “Don’t give. These kids are supposed to be in school now. Giving them hand-outs jeopardises their future -- every dollar a tourist gives deprives the parents of an incentive to make sure their kids go to school and get a proper education.”

According to Chat, there are over 24,000 child street sellers working throughout Cambodia.

Twenty-four thousand children! That’s a lot. But if I don’t buy from them just to show that I’m not supporting child labour – or even that I’m depriving them of schooling -- then they will go hungry. If I buy, maybe they will have some food to eat -- maybe, they can also go to school?

My one dollar may create a positive interaction between me and the child who receives it, but where will the money go at the end of the day? Will the positive interaction go further or stop with the child?

UN volunteers, children charities and aid groups introduced a campaign in Cambodia in 2011 called Think Twice with the inform-ed motto Let parents earn and children learn.

And consider this too -- the Child Safe Network suggested supporting vocational training projects and buying products made by these parents so they can earn an income and keep their families together and volunteer their skills with organisations which are building the capacity of local staff to ensure long-term sustainability of the community.

I don’t have the right answer – to give or not to give. Maybe, I shall go by instinct to help lighten the burdensome tray of peanuts a sweet innocent girl is carrying on her head, or brighten up the face of the girl selling bamboo flutes?