Pic 1. The Mosque at the Arab Quarters. Singapore
The best time over here is the few hours before sunset. The air is coling down, the evening sky shifts in new colours and everybody seem to take a deep breath and then stroll to any of the many cofee shops to have a dinner. This weekend I decided to go downtown to the arab quarter. It was a experience, I had a coffee in front of the big mosque (see picture) while the evening slowly fell. Later I went to the national library and lended some philosophical books. One about the history of eternity and another one in the philosophy of science.
I start to feel a slow inner change taking place, I have spend eight months here now and before that about seven months in south east asia. It might not be a long time but when i reflect on the back packing period and when I saw all this westerners being transported on the big farang routes I felt I somehow had moved beyond that. When I went for the trip to the east coast of Thailand I understood the flow of culture coming from malaysia stretching up from Penang and Langkawi to the andaman coast.
On Ko Lanta the mosques was side by side with the Buddist temples. The women covered their hair. I know that the Tamils in northern Malaysia wher brough by the englishmen to work on the building of a modern Malayisa while the Chineese seemed to migrate more "voluntary" and these gruoup have further melted their herritage into this area.
Once upon time there were these "sea gypsies" (Mokas) roaming the coast along the "Straits cities", Singapore, Melacka, Penang and further up to Phuket and Myanar. They were in may ways state less, no border could hold them and no one expected that either. This was all fine untill the western societies invoked modernity and the national state in these parts of the world. The people needed to be taxed, to belong somewhere. So borders were set up and rules for trade was created and they had to settle and decide on where to belong.

Pic 5. In singapore, especially around christmas, they love these cheesie shoping mall shows. This is the 12 Barbies and a Prince show. Not supringsingly they had the a truck loads of dolls to sell afterward :-)
Ok, Now its friday afternoon im gonna get home and maybe have a beer tonight. Hasse

2 comments:
Du verkar ha det bra där borta. Fina bilder. Har lagt in lite bilder själv på bloggen nu. Inte så exotiska men ändå.
ha deet gott,
Martin
Hej
Det funkar ganska bra med mangfald her. Malaysia har haft en del etniska/religiosa konflikter mellan Malayer, Indier och Kineser men det var ett tag sedan. Her i Singapore maste jag nog sega att dom lyckats mycket bra med vad dom kallar "the racial harmony politics".
I sodra thailand er det en hel del konflikter mellan thai muslimer och centralamakten. Denn delen av thailand tillhorde ocksa till och fran det muslimska Malaysia.
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