Souls smell like sulphur. Well, rotten souls sure do. We’ve shuffled as close to the lip of the crater as common sense and loose rocks allow when the source of the odour becomes clear: the basin’s plugged with cocoa-coloured water.
“This is for the souls of the bad man, the bad people,” announces Nando, our guide, as we contemplate Tiwu Ata Polo, the “enchanted lake” stewing below.
The image may be macabre, but the setting is almost ethereal. An orb of fire has just split the sky from the earth, drenching the mountain in golden light and revealing the dark pits around us as the jewels of Mount Kelimutu: its three colourful crater lakes. The grand reveal is a worthy reward for rising an hour before dawn to push my sluggish body to the peak of the mountain. Granted, a van did most of the work.
According to the beliefs of the local Lio people, spirits of the deceased flock to this dormant volcano, on the Indonesian island of Flores, to be categorised and stored.
A few months ago the water pooling in Tiwu Ata Polo was the colour of rust. Photos from years past show it glowing aquamarine. I wonder if a new addition of fetid ghosts stained it the darker shade it exhibits today and, if so, what did they do to be exiled here?
Kelimutu’s lakes transform up to three times a year, morphing like mood rings from teal to white to blood red. Some claim the rare phenomenon is an unexplained mystery but scientists – never romantics – attribute it to an ever-changing blend of chemicals leeching from the volcano.
A thin ridge separates the “enchanted pool” from the second lake for the departed. Despite its proximity to the murky liquid of nasty souls, Tiwu Nuwa Muri Koo Fai is a melting bowl of bubblegum ice-cream, swirling milky and blue. It is here, Nando explains, that the innocent spirits of children rest.
But it’s Tiwu Ata Mbupu, the crater for those who aged with kindness, that most intrigues. Nando tells me the pool is black these days and my mind thirstily conjures a bowl of Flores coffee – fresh and restorative, with floral notes.
I’ll have to take his word for it. This morning it’s a foamy cup of milk. Clouds froth up the crater’s edge, keeping the oldies safe from sight – a dignity they’ve no doubt earned.
My foot misses its mark on the descent and I stumble on a wild blueberry bush. Punishment, perhaps, for lusting after caffeine in such a sacred place. My toes smart and it’s hard not to wonder: if the stagger had occurred at the crater’s edge would I have wound up with the tender old souls or been banished to the cauldron of villains?
The inconspicuous vintage Coca Cola machine in one corner of Shanghai sandwich shop The Press hides something much more exciting than cans of fizzy drink.
For those in the know, the vending machine swings open to reveal a secret passageway leading straight to one of Shanghai’s best-kept secrets: Flask, a swanky cocktail bar with an effervescent atmosphere.
Step down a hallway of black-painted bricks into a lounge area accented by leather upholstery, copper fixtures, dark wooden floorboards and bare concrete walls. Out-there art, light sculptures and fish-eye mirrors complete Flask’s rarefied air. Recline on a vintage sofa or take a seat at the bar, where some of the city’s top mixologists will shake up something just as special as your surroundings.
With an open-air bar that looks like a giant gleaming bathtub floating 34 storeys above the bustling streets of Mumbai, Aer is one sexy lady. Ease into the curvaceous white furniture that sparkles like constellations against the Arabian Sea, and gulp down the extraordinary views. Order the signature cocktail – Afterglow (gin, cucumber, coriander and grapes) – and peruse the tapas menu with seductive offerings like goat’s cheese and pistachio truffles. This Four Seasons gem is such a stunner that the hotel imposes a US$37.50 cover charge on Friday and Saturday nights.
Where else would you find a city called Merv, which was once considered the ‘Queen of Cities’ worldwide, and the second most important in Islam. Now, it’s an awesome introduction to the archaeological ruins, culture and secrets of the ancient Silk Road, where exotic silks and spices, tea and gold where carted from the east to the west.
A member of the ‘stan’ community of Central Asian countries (the suffix means ‘land of’), among them Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, the country is almost covered by the Karakum Desert (it takes up more than 80 per cent of the land) with the Caspian Sea forming its western edge. Everyone from the Mongols to Alexander the Great and the USSR has ruled the region and left an indelible mark on the people and landscape.
It may not be five-star, but what it lacks in material creature comforts Turkmenistan almost makes up for with a millennia of history. It’s probable this nation isn’t at the top of (or even on) your bucket list, since it still suffers from the excesses of its former leader President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov, even though he died in 2006. You still can’t, for instance, play video games or have long hair if you’re a man. It’s only really possible to travel here as part of a guided tour, and you’ll be watched diligently by military personnel and the police.
Huangshan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was a major inspiration for the fantasy world of Avatar, and no wonder. When shrouded with clouds, the jagged granite peaks look positively dreamlike floating in midair. And this happens pretty often – clouds sink down upon Huangshan roughly 200 days of the year. Hike your way up, stay a night or two on the mountain and feel the scenic bliss descend upon you as you look out over the majestic peaks.
An early wake-up in the Russian holiday hotspot of Nha Trang isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Beat the heat and the tourists by rising at 5am and wandering down to the beach to experience exercise time in full swing. Swim with the locals flocking down for a pre-sun dip, dance in one of the many rotundas with your choice of salsa or techno music, or show off your muscles on one of the many exercise machines. Morning time is exercise time – so flex, bounce, bend and stretch your way around as you watch the sunrise!
A tattooed Iban warrior, with an embroidered loincloth and brown animal-hide fur vest, stands on a tree stump, divining rod in his left hand, raising a spear to the sky with his right. He’s directly behind me on a small slope in the Sarawak Cultural Village. It’s 11 o’clock at night and most eyes here at the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) are not on the warrior but rather on the main stage, as their hips shake and bodies bounce to the balafon melodies and djembe beats of Burkina Faso’s Mamadou Diabate.
Fans shout for more as the West Africans’ set comes to an end, but then a spotlight shines on the warrior and a hush falls over the crowd, as if word has quickly spread of the ancient taboo against singing on the slopes of Mount Santubong, a prohibition that local trekkers take seriously but which has no hold here in this Borneo jungle clearing.
Borneo. The name itself evokes a sense of mysticism and mystery. This huge island in the South China Sea – once home to the world’s most infamous headhunters, a tropical place where many villages can still only be reached by boat or small plane – has become home to something quite different over the past 15 years: one of the planet’s best organically grown international music festivals.
Behind me, the Iban warrior faces the mountain and chants a blessing in his own tongue:
“Oh Gods of all Gods Look kindly upon us Bless us who gather here Bless the people who come from upstream and the people who come from downstream Let us all have joy together”
The spotlight shifts to an old Bidayuh man dressed in black with a red sash around his waist. He’s standing on a boulder near the back of the crowd, holding a rod with a raffia figure. He chants his own blessing before the spotlight shifts a second then a third time. The four men form the points of the compass and signify the fundamental elements: Fire, Earth, Water and Wind.
It’s 10 years since I showed up at the gates of the Sarawak Cultural Village for my first taste of the Rainforest Festival, but every year I meet people who have been coming here longer than me. The festival has swollen remarkably and now attracts about 20,000 people, including couch surfers, yachters and even a primary school marching band.
Over the course of three days, thousands dance to Mongolian throat singers, swoon to a trio of Palestinian brothers duelling on ouds (a Middle Eastern lute), kwasa kwasa with Congolese legend Kanda Bongo Man and rock out to a Czech band called Cankisou that features a didgeridoo and a homemade flute made from toilet hose and a metal broom handle. And this all takes place against the dramatic backdrop of Mount Santubong – which, viewed from a distance, resembles a pregnant princess laying on her back – though that’s a tale for another day.
“The Rainforest World Music Festival has the most extraordinary setting I’ve seen for a music event, ringed as it is by dense forest and dramatically high and ragged mountains,” says Gerald Seligman, General Director of the World Music Expo (WOMEX), a trade industry event for the world music business.
The RWMF was initially the brainchild of Randy Raine-Reusch, a Canadian composer who literally plays thousands of instruments and has recorded with Aerosmith, The Cranberries and Yes. Raine-Reusch was traveling in Sarawak, researching and recording tunes on the gourd organ, when he was enchanted by the beauty of the sape, a melodic four-stringed instrument made from a single piece of carved out wood. Today, no RWMF would be complete without the sounds of the sape, but at the time, Raine-Reusch lamented that Sarawak’s rich musical heritage was in danger of disappearing.
And thus the Rainforest World Music Festival was born to showcase Sarawakian music to the world and bring world music to Sarawak. “Traditional instruments contain a soul, an essence to them,” says Raine-Reusch, who was also the festival’s first artistic director. “They’re the voice of the people and the voice of culture for thousands of years and they have something that touches the human soul.”
It used to be that every band here had to feature at least one indigenous instrument, and there was a time when electrical instruments were totally off limits. Those rules have been relaxed, but the lineup still includes an eclectic mix of musicians from every continent as well as the interior of Sarawak.
Take the performance by Zee Avi, the diminutive Sarawakian singer-songwriter whose compositions have been featured on 21 Jump Street, Parenthood and even in a Johnny Depp movie. Avi could have been considered too pop, too mainstream for the Rainforest festival, but she traded in her guitar for a miniature sape – a sape-lele – and invited two of the Sarawak Cultural Village’s resident musicians, Narawi Rashidi and percussionist Johari Morshidi, to join her band.
“I have two masters playing with me tonight – such an honour!” an ecstatic Avi tells fans during her performance on the first night of the festival.
Instead of singing English songs like ‘Bitter Heart’, perhaps her best-known ditty, Avi instead performs tunes like ‘Mee Kolok Sigek’, which she wrote while sitting along the banks of the Sarawak River in Kuching. While that song is inspired by a popular food (a local noodle dish), her performance includes a folk tribute to Princess Santubong, the spirit in the mountain that forms the backdrop to the festival.
“In every band, the ethnic identity is powerful and dominant,” says Yeoh Jun Lin, a classical musician who rejoined the festival as its artistic director and put together the lineup after a several-year hiatus.
And in an age when most bands are dominated by just a handful of instruments – drums, bass and guitar – I encounter a new way of making music every year at the RWMF. In 2011, women from a village in Vanuatu turned the lake of the cultural village into their instrument, cupping their hands under the water to make booming percussion sounds.
This year, my mouth drops when I see Harkaitz Martinez de San Vicente and Inigo Antonio of the band Oreka TX play the txalaparta, a Basque instrument that nearly disappeared after World War II.
The txalaparta doesn’t really look like an instrument. It’s made from thick planks of wood or lengths of stone laid out one next to the other. Each piece is carved with precision to resonate just the right sound.
It takes two people to play the txalaparta; together they create a single melody. When Martinez de San Vicente and Antonio first explained this to me, I didn’t get it. But when I saw the men playing it together, I understood. For a single person to do this, he would need four arms. “The important thing is the act of sharing the rhythm with the other person,” says Antonio.
Their performance is part music, part story-telling, punctuated by a documentary video that plays behind them, showing them travelling through India and Mongolia searching for new materials to create their music. At one point, they carve blocks of ice into planks for their instrument and use batons of ice to play it.
Like most of the musicians here, Martinez de San Vicente and Antonio perform at least twice during the festival – in a workshop and during the evening concert. The afternoon workshops are more intimate and informal affairs. Percussionists, string players and vocalists from different bands are grouped together to introduce their music. A jam session often results. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s magic.
The late afternoon – in between the workshops and the evening concert – is a time to chill out as a calm settles over the lake in the cultural village and hues of orange and red tint the mountain sky. Some days I exit the festival venue and walk a few minutes to the beach to take a swim in the South China Sea. Others, I check out the longhouses, each one built in the style of a different ethnic group. The newest – the Bidayuh Longhouse – is also the biggest. The round panggah that’s connected to the longhouse traditionally housed the skulls of enemies killed in battle, though here it is used for an art exhibition instead.
While wandering the crafts bazaar and vendor stalls in and around the longhouses, I bump into Zee Avi and her bassist JP Maramba. It’s not unusual to spot the performers in the crowd here, but Maramba stands out this time. One side of his head is shaved with the pattern of a warrior tattoo. Avi encouraged him to do it and he’s happy with the result. Looks good on him, I think as I walk by the hair tattoo tent and consider getting one myself. The idea quickly passes and I opt instead to chill by the lake and enjoy a cold beer.
Unlike other gigs where bands are quickly flown in and out, here the musicians spend as much as a week together, forging new friendships and melodies. The camaraderie spills over to the stage. Late Sunday evening, Zee Avi warmly embraces Ghanaian dancer Paulina Lartey, before the two bust a move together centrestage in the festival finale.
The Sunday finale is not a work of musical genius. The last performer of the evening, Kanda Bongo Man, lays down an upbeat melody as the members of each band that has performed in the three-day festival – followed by the schleppers who carry their instruments, the liaison officers and other volunteers – take to the stage for a last wave. Soon the stage is packed with people, everyone shaking to the soukous beat.
In previous years, Raine-Reusch stood stage right, whistle at the ready, directing each band like a traffic cop at a busy intersection. This year, Yeoh takes a more free-form approach. It’s chaotic and no one knows quite what to do, but as the confetti shoots over the audience, everyone – musicians and fans alike – is clearly having a blast.
I climb onto the stage as well and as I look out over the crowd, my thoughts turn to the coming year. I’ll miss the mountain and the music, but before I depart there’s the afterparty back at the hotel, where Mamadou Diabate pledges to play til dawn. The Brazilians and a French tuba player quickly join in. Every party, I think, should have West African drummers so that, as in the words of the warrior chanters, whether you come from upstream or downstream, we will ‘all have joy together’.
Pull up a stool in this tiny bar and settle into another epoch. Bar Trench has been sliced from turn-of-the-century Paris and grafted into an alley in the Ebisu district of modern-day Tokyo.
A huge windowpane overlooks an interior of wood, exposed brick and dapper clientele sipping homemade ginger ale, exclusive whisky and finely crafted cocktails – many with an Absinthe bent.
Order an in-house creation – the Go Lassi!!! (a blend of Absinthe Clandestine, lime, dill, yogurt and cucumber) is a must if you’re game – then test your recollection of the classics with boozy quotes from Hemmingway and Sinatra printed on coasters. Best of all is the chance to tap into the mind of the English-speaking Brazilian–Japanese mixologist and owner, who’s happy to share his seemingly endless knowledge of grog.
Bulging eyes plead for mercy. I’ve caught my first ever bamboo worm in the trap of my chopsticks. Fried into crispy waifs, these critters are the Chinese version of beer nuts. I pause, surveying its lifeless body, and pluck up the courage gnash off its head.
With bugs teeming in the humidity, it’s no surprise these protein-packed slippery suckers have wound up in sizzling oil and on the plates of hungry Yunnanese.
I pluck my next victim from the pile. Its skin crunches under my teeth, leaving just an empty husk. I wash it down with a swig of Kingstar. This amateur foodie has arrived in the real China.
Ditching greasy memories of sweet and sour pork and noodles slick in cardboard boxes, I find myself in Xishuangbanna in the south of the Yunnan Province. Far from Guangzhou and its sugar-swamped Cantonese cuisine, China’s so-called utopia is a land where salt and sour reign supreme.
Home to the Dai people, Xishuangbanna lures Chinese tourists with its muggy climate and the promise of elephants romping through tropical rainforest. To foreigners though, this ‘Amazon of the East’ remains a little-known lick of land, dipping between Myanmar and Laos.
Keen to sink my teeth into the local culture, I join a cooking class run by Mi Wei An, the head Dai chef at Anantara Xishuangbanna Resort & Spa. Like any culinary journey, the class starts at the source: the local market in Menglun. Mi Wei An grew up nearby, learning to make traditional food with her neighbours before Anantara persuaded her to nourish their guests.
At the market we exchange faded cash for a handful of yangmei, Chinese strawberries the size of lychees, with skin like a cat’s tongue. I scalp a rambutan, rubbing its waxy hair between my fingers as I munch on the translucent flesh.
“Without herbs there is no Dai food,” a cook translates, while Mi Wei An describes the local fare. They point out a tangle of fragrant herbs on a table next to bulging melons and vegetables with tongue-twisting names.
The Dai minority is one of 56 recognised ethnic groups in China, and Mi Wei An explains that there are three types of Dai, each linked to their local environment. “There’s one that’s very close to the Han people, the main Chinese, and then another Dai lives in the mountain,” she says. This second group is known as the Huayao Dai. Our chef hails from the third: the Shui Dai, or Water Dai. “They’re living very closely beside the water, the river.”
The prominence of water spills into their cuisine. My first Dai dish was strewn with moss plucked from the river, dried and pounded into sheets and then barbecued. But I can’t see any of this popular and surprisingly tasty snack at the market.
Chatter wafts behind loaves of pig’s blood and men hack at meat, their cleavers thumping into wood. A butcher heaves pork belly onto a metal dish and I salivate remembering the morsels I ate in Guangzhou. The best pork belly is said to have five layers of alternating flesh and fat topped with crispy skin. The Cantonese dunk theirs in sugar – a finale our chef would dismiss with a grimace.
I pass a flock of leathery birds, gutted, splayed and skewered. With heads and legs still intact, they look like prostrate bats. At the next stall I paw a parcel of glutinous rice. Wrapped in banana leaf, the patty is one of the few sweets made by the locals. Our guide tells me they’re traditionally eaten at Dai New Year in April. After a nibble I suspect this bundle’s hung around since last year’s celebrations.
Back at the hotel, we muster at our cooking stations overlooking the rust-coloured Lancang River, the northern arm of the Mekong, and a fitting backdrop for a Water Dai feast. Fishermen wade in the shallows as we set to work.
For entrée we prepare a pork rib, basil and winter melon broth. My shoulders tinge pink as I dart between shaded stovetops, comparing the clarity of each broth and the texture of the melon. Our concoctions pale compared to Mi Wei An’s, and as she samples my soup she suggests shovelling in more salt than I’d normally dare ingest.
Locals source their salt from a village in the mountains. Although they use a lot, it never goes to waste, Mi Wei An says as she tosses a pinch into her pot.
Next we whip up a shredded chicken salad with tongue-numbing basil. The meat is bland and dry until we crush seasoned lime juice into the flesh with our fists. The battered dish croons with flavour.
We barbecue long, firm eggplants, the purple skin morphing to yellow then golden brown. I gobble the creamy flesh mixed with mint, coriander, chilli and garlic. Strips of ganba (dried beef) hit the flames before we marry the salted, slow-dried rump with a blend of local herbs in a marathon mortar and pestle mash.
Preoccupied with the first four courses, I’m blind to the brewing clouds. As rain lashes the deck, the umbrellas offer little protection from the plump, tropical drops. It’s no wonder Xishuangbanna claims China’s crown for biodiversity. Lightning slices into the botanical gardens across the river and cooks swarm, whisking chillies, chopping boards and stoves inside.
This warm, volatile climate keeps the region alive. Each family grows herbs outside their bamboo stilt houses, and many forage for honey and the mushrooms that thrive in the hills. “If we get snow here, we get hungry,” a local explains. “No food.”
In true Dai style, our feast shuns sugar bar the boluo fan, glutinous rice with clandestine slithers of sweet pineapple, a staple dish of Dai gastronomy, which Mi Wei An serves as a delicious side to stir-fried lemongrass beef and banana flower salad.
Later I head into town for a late-night snack. A round of baijiu (white liquor) melts some space in my stomach and I graze from the street stalls that have sprung up at the entrance of the market. I chew a curl of fried cowhide and raise my beer with a group of local girls, who, between giggles, welcome us to Menlung. Xishuangbanna is a gourmet’s paradise, and Dai food sure hits the sweet spot.
METHOD
Rinse the rice and soak it in water overnight. Strain rice and steam for 30–40 minutes, until cooked. Scoop the flesh from the pineapple with a spoon, leaving the skin as a bowl. Chop the pineapple meat, discarding the core. Mix the cooked rice, chopped pineapple and sugar together. Steam again for around 15 minutes. Fill the pineapple shell with the mixture, and serve.
The neatly stacked shelves and colourful displays of Nishiki Market’s 126 shops and stalls inspire both curiosity and hunger. Although camera-clutching foreigners can be found wandering the 390-metre strip under the shelter of the checkered stained-glass roof, this is no tourist trap – it’s a functioning market packed with fresh, locally produced and procured goods, known by some as the ‘kitchen of Kyoto’.
Glittering fish and gnarled molluscs are carefully laid out on beds of crushed ice, vast wooden barrels are filled with rice to one side and green tea on the other, and trays of crayon-bright sweets add blasts of colour to the scene. Less easy to identify are the yellow-smeared bulbs crammed in wooden crates, or the wood-like sticks stacked side by side. Although its name literally means ‘brocade market’, Nishiki actually started off as a fish market, with the first store opening as early as 1311 and others soon springing up around it. You can still find an incredible array of seafood here, but there are plenty of other items also on sale, as well as several small restaurants close at hand, serving dishes that are just as exciting as the raw ingredients.
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