Funny how certain serendipities can just set you off on an adventure. It happened to Bilbo Baggins, though that seemed to be directed by a wizard, I guess. Still, my little expedition did involve dragons, sublime sights, and many miles underfoot, so…
That my intended AT thru-hike turned out to be a colossal non-event, that my son Ethan was at my place taking care of things for a few months, that I had time and resources I’d saved for the AT available to me, that I have a still adventurous spirit (when I’m not sedentary and bingeing some happy chazerai on some screen, etc.) All of this aligned, and I decided to go for a two month walkabout.
I’d travel, eat, observe, run, read, write, reflect, and contemplate a variety of things in a variety of places. Those places turned out to be: Lisbon and Porto, Portugal; Casablanca, Meknes, Fes, and Tangier, Morocco; Istanbul, Turkey; Bangkok, Thailand; Hanoi and Danang, Vietnam; Singapore; and Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A whirlwind. My lovely partner knows I have a propensity to live inside my own head sometimes (except when I am on a Jet-Ski, I am gently reminded), and this is especially the case when I am alone, which I was mostly, apart from the Morocco leg, which I enjoyed with her. The internal me gets even more amplified when I don’t speak the language so I think about lots of things. Architecture, philosophy, art, wildlife, food, infrastructure, government, culture, sport, history, and the like. Lots of fodder.
Vietnam got me thinking about governance systems and some of the politics which, ostensibly, enable them. It started with the whole Communist rhetorical story structure overlaid atop a network of busy merchants in the markets selling myriad things to myriad people. Well, one morning in Hanoi I was out on a run, avoiding traffic, leaping over fallen mangos, and listening to a podcast. Ezra Klein talking to a NY state legislator named Alex Bores about AI regulation. Well, I’m very interested in AI and have been following it pretty deeply since around 2022, mostly because I think it is a singularly important issue on many fronts: existential, educational, scientific, practical, environmental, economic, spiritual, ethical, etc, and deserves far more attention than it receives, certainly more than the naive and predictable one dimensional tripe being spewed out in the media- needless to say I found the topic to be fascinating.
But, listening to Bores, a really smart guy and former Palantir operator, talk about it and make reference to the bills he sponsored, the frameworks he advocates, the lobbyists attacking him, the “collaboration and coordination” that would need to occur, the "conversations" that need to be had, the decisions which need to be made, and so on - all of this made me realize that though he wants to do good, he is utterly hobbled by the system, and so is everyone else that wants to act rationally and in good faith around this issue, or others.
For some reason on this run, in this country, an epiphany hit me, I realized that our very system of governance is no longer suited to identify and address the risks of the present and the future- AI being first and foremost among them, by orders of magnitude. While Liberals are constantly warbling their standard visionless myopic tribal shibboleths, and Conservatives are continuing to compromise seemingly every political and societal norm and standard which had benefited our system thus far, it leaves little room for the fair-minded pragmatic rationalist who has neither the will nor the patience to participate in the partisan vitriol gripping us for the past decades. So, I remembered my Greeks and became fixated on this highly idealized notion of a system which could act swiftly, smartly, in good faith, and in the spirit of providing the greatest good to the greatest number, aka bog standard Utilitarianism, as a guidepost. We need a first principles leader with the authority to lead.
Well, it turned out that a solution was it right in front of me, quite literally three days in front of me because my next stop was Singapore. I came to learn that Singapore was a paradigm for almost exactly what I was looking for. It grew from a quasi-backwater under British rule to a first world exemplar and archetype in 60 years. It leads in most major economic and social measures of development, and it has maintained the pace. I consider it to be a superpower because I don’t limit that label to purely military capacity.
It really is a miracle of sorts and it is nearly all due to a guy called Lee Kuan Yew. Legend. And weirdly, having known nothing about him other than as a name floating in the aether of my college poli-sci memories, the name popped up after I heard the Bores interview and then was motivated to go deep with Google in a fit of search-energy asking about “the closest leader to a Platonic Philosopher-King,” “Who best embodies radical pragmatism?” “Best example of an effective modern day 20th century political leader.” "Can a strong executive actually work outside of business?" This kind of thing. He pops up every single time. Then I was down a rabbit hole. I listened to podcasts, watched videos, reviewed articles, read Parag Khanna's book Technocracy in America, all of this. I couldn’t get enough.
So after all of this headwork I have concluded that his system is better than ours and that, more importantly, ours is not up to the risk, velocity, and momentum of the future. We are hobbled by: mediocrity in government professional intellectual horsepower, slow moving deliberative systems made even slower by stupid partisan polarity and arrogance, time horizons pegged to the electoral cycle, a culture resistant to long term planning, and a lack of focus on the common good. I’m sad to say it, but there it is. We are outgunned by the realities of the future. The 20thC was ours, but this one is probably Asia's. But this isn’t meant to be an LKY hagiography. All I will say that if you are so inclined and want to see a different model of governance, check him out. He’s simply fascinating. And his nation’s success speaks for itself.
This research made me very excited to get to Singapore and when I did it was, as anticipated, a revelation. I’ve never seen a city like this. It just works. Like Apple products. You fly into Changi airport and are greeted by slick architecture, smiling and helpful staff, cute and curious public art, burnished metals, water features, gardens…all in the airport. And it is clean. So clean. Once you take the perfectly operating and fully intuitive MRT into the city, that sense of order and contentment is further galvanized. Littering is illegal in Singapore and people take it very seriously. The streets are clean and swept and there is no graffiti anywhere. There aren’t even coins in the public fountains. I don’t even know what the currency looks like because I didn’t use it. I used my phone because everything is touchless. And yes, it always worked.
Now, I think it is a fair rejoinder to my ravings here to be critical too. It is warranted. Singapore has been labeled “soulless,” that “It lacks weird,” that "the fringe element” is hard to find. Like that. And there is something to it, to be honest. It's like having a home which seems comfortably lived in, vice having all the furniture covered in plastic, and never-used china sitting on a shelf only for display. Singapore has a bit of that “plastic” feel to it. There is definitely something clinical and corporate about the city, as beautifully planned and designed as it is. I really do understand that. But that sense of Singapore isn’t necessarily what I’m focused on, though aesthetically I love not having old and decrepit structures laying around being overcome by mold, rats, and despondence.
It is the system of government that interests me - one which is guided by a strong, pragmatic, decisive, leader possessing dignity, integrity, character, and knowledge (that's an acronym), choreographing a team of pipe-hitting analysts, planners, and specialist-leaders, all incorruptibly and transparently aimed at providing excellent services to citizens, by acting deftly and driven by data. That’s what I want, and that’s what we do not have. Not even an approximation. And this statement is party-agnostic. Full stop. I understand that this is a fantasy and that we can’t just change systems, however better another system might be. Our Constitution precludes such rapid and substantial change. See the issue? And the thick irony?
Beyond that nerdy stuff, though, there is so much to see and appreciate here. I learned about the WWII history of the Malay Peninsula. It was a brutal and ferocious campaign, which the Brits ultimately lost with the fall of Singapore, which had been an essential element of their empire - “The Gibraltar of the East.” Churchill called the loss of Singapore the worst disaster in England’s military history. Grim. I spent time at the National Museum and enjoyed several installations focusing on Singapore’s seamless multi-culturalism, its maritime and trade history, its clothing and languages, and its mythology, which involves a giant crab living within a magical sea-tree called Pauh Janggi, and, of course, the epic Merlion.
After a sweaty and scenic run through the botanical garden one morning, where I slalomed my way through the hundreds of people out for their morning constitutional, I visited The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s most luxe shopping center and had a mall experience exceeding any one I'd ever had in my life. Now, I am the last thing from a brand, style, high fashion, designer-savvy kind of guy; it doesn’t really enter my life except when I hear people ask some celebrity, “Who are you wearing?” then I get irritated- but pretension usually does that to me. I do appreciate that rarified world though, and its foreign-ness, when I see it, but I don't really understand it and I likely won’t be attending the Met Gala anytime soon. And I saw that world at the Shoppes - a mall, btw, which had a river running through it (with dinghies you could set sail on), waterfalls, fountains. All while surrounded by Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs, Luis Vitton, Gucci, Dior, Hermès, Fendi, Prada, Patek Phillipe, Bvlgari, and the guy who makes shoes with red bottoms who I am too lazy to research. All were represented. Target was not.
Before I left, on my last day since I had a late flight so a bit of time to explore. After a run down to the waterfront on one of the hundreds of bike-ped pathways, I went to visit the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome, both attractions covered and out of the heat and humidity. The Cloud Forest mimics the cool, moist conditions of tropical highlands in SE Asia, and right now that environment also has a Jurassic Park display, flush with animatronic raptors - a brachiosaur, diplodocus, T Rex, a pachycephalasaurus, and a bunch of nasty little sharp-toothed fringe-necked beasts. Sort of campy, but as well done as it could be. The Flower Dome is the world’s largest greenhouse. It is immense and eclectic in its choice of flora. Tulip fields with an Old Dutch Masters aesthetic out front, rows and rows of roses, and a grove of baobabs. Well worth an easy stroll as I prepped for the next leg, which was to be Malaysia.
Penang, in Malaysia, started as a bit of a mess. First, one of the given anxiety points of every international trip is to ensure you get cell service via your provider, in my case Xfinity on the Verizon network. It had been going well on the trip so far with a little glitch in Vietnam where I had to do some creative toggling on my phone to make it happen. (And thanks, Gemini, for guiding me through it. Gemini has been a very useful tool to help me figure things out on this trip: currency exchange, rug price ranges, ceramics scams, history and backstory of certain sites and foods and drinks, agenda-building, language translation, flight information, cultural norms to be aware of, and the aforementioned help getting cell service). So I land in Penang and I have no service. That’s okay, it usually takes time. We offload from the plane and I get into the terminal. Still no service. And no working wifi in the terminal. Okay fine, I just need to get to my hotel in George Town and use their wifi. I’ll call a Grab. Oops, can’t. I can’t access the Grab app. Okay, I’ll use a taxi, but I don’t have Malaysian Ringgits and they only take cash, and I don’t have Singaporean because I didn’t use cash down there. Lemme go hit up that ATM over there. I go, I try. Oh, wonderful. My bank thinks it's a fraudulent transaction and does not allow me to get the ducats. Drat. The bank sends me a text giving me a phone number to call. I do and it doesn’t go through, God knows why. Double Drat.
But wait. How did that text get through? Something is up. Okay, so I go back to the taxi coordinator, and try to explain my situation, which I do. Barely, because his English isn’t great, but it is sheer brilliance compared to my skills in Malay, which are limited to knowing the word for toilet (it's tandas). So, he gives me a driver, Hafiz, and we head to George Town with the plan being that I get cash from my hotel so I can pay him and then I’d figure everything else out later. So Hafiz, who was wearing Lee jeans, and I leave, and I have time to play with the phone. I play toggle panic on the iPhone, I hard boot it once or twice and behold; the LTE with max bars appears. How, I don’t know. Then I remember that I had an old bank card with me that I never used. I wasn’t even sure why I had it. But, just for giggles, I had the driver stop at an ATM to give it a try, and hallelujah, it worked. I got enough cash to pay the driver and sustain me through this Penang piece and then down to Kuala Lumpur, which would be my final city. That hour was more fun than a cystoscopy sans lorazepam pregame. But it turned out okay and I had excellent service for the rest of Malaysia.
Malaysia is yet another fascinating place. I really love it. It’s as if it occupies a space right between the clean clinical competence of Singapore and the impassioned, noisy, chaotic fury of Vietnam. Islam is the primary religion here and the ethnic makeup is roughly 65% Malay, 22% Chinese, and 12% Indian (mostly Tamil). And this, my foodie friend, makes for the richest, freshest, spiciest, most savory fusion cuisine you’ve ever had. I never thought I’d love fried anchovies (ikan bilis) as a condiment, or fishballs (bebola ikan) bobbing inside a bone broth bowl with basil boats afloat on it. Or the satays with that savory, thick, piquant, peanut sauce. Or the day-opening nasi mamak, which prepares you for the night-closing nasi kandar, basically a pile of coconut rice splashed by expert spoon lashings of every curry at every spice level you can imagine.
And the people are warm and kind, putting right hand over heart when they greet you or say farewell. It is pluralism and integration without being loud about it. The US can be a bit much when it comes to identity politics. Duh. In America your optics are defined by your sex, your skin color, your religion, your choice of relationships. It is far too much, at least to me, and I tend to dismiss most of those snowflake arguments simply because they bore me. However, my good friend Nathan, who died far too young a year ago, used to argue with me about this all the time and I was never bored. I miss him. I was constantly wondering what he would think of this place and wishing he was with me just walking, marveling, and bantering.
Here, whether you see a Chinese man validating boarding passes, a Malaysian woman wearing a hijab (which, btw, they see as an empowering garment) checking passports and looking stern, or a Tamil teenager helping people wrap luggage in plastic at the airport, it all works. Some friction? Yeah, on the edges. But not the US where that stuff dominates. And BTW, Vietnam, if I didn’t mention it in that last post, has 54 different ethnicities. Doesn’t matter. They simply don’t care. Stupid issues don’t get oxygen over here. And I like it.
I did a wonderful food tour in Penang which brought us out into the streets for four hours. Ken, a Chinese local who clearly liked his food, was our host. We had so many dishes I can’t recount. But the chicken pakora I had in Little India was a blast of flavor that I’ve never felt in a dumpling before. They say that the mutton pakoras are the real deal and even better but they sell out by 11am every day, apparently. We also had a nice mix of dishes, a Penang version of tapas which included a lovely blue rice (the blue hue coming from Clitoria ternatea, the Butterfly Pea Flower), which was finger-lickin’ good, especially when doused with curry. We also visited a place where the proprietor, a 78 yo Chinese man, and wizard of the wok who specializes in a particular dish called beef koay teow- stir fried velveted beef, wide rice noodles, and fresh vegetables. It was his life’s work to perfect the dish and he was known for it throughout the city. Well, he is planning to retire, and no one is happy about it. I feel grateful that I was able to sample this almost Platonic delectable.
On one of my Penang days, I just walked around being very much in the moment with no agenda. I’m getting better at living a life that is less goal-oriented. I guess I think that’s good, but still not sure. Retirement is very strange indeed and rhythms change. I visited the Khoo Kongsi clan house, an ornate complex that is the centerpiece of the Khoo family in Malaysia. They are a Chinese clan. The Chinese take family, community, social harmony, bonding, and respect for elders to a new level. We don’t even have a vocabulary for it in the West. No, Confucianism, if it is known about at all in our society, is a word that is used to represent some very vague form of Asian wisdom, not to index the specific tenets of the very rigorous system it is. The West is focused on individual action and actualization. Obligation (and love) toward family, elders, and unit, is certainly there, but generally subordinated to that. I am most certainly a product of the West, but I have had some gut checks on this trip around individuality, selfishness, liberty, freedom, ethics, and self-sacrifice.
Here is something I found sad, humorous, and bizarre. So, I finished my visit to the clan house, and I was just walking around looking for a good chicken satay at a hawker stall (street food), and a can of very cold Tiger lager. Then I hear a familiar tune. It was the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” and it was being sung in Malay by a little kid, I assume poor because he had a can in front of him, sitting on the steps of a building on Armenian Street, accompanying himself with the handclaps and everything. Okay. Fair. But he was wearing a Spiderman suit. A full-on Spiderman suit. So bizarre. I know you wouldn’t see this in Singapore. It’s the weird. I do love the weird. Afterwards, I searched for batik wall hangings as gifts, but decided I couldn’t afford to ship it back through the vendor because it would have cost more than the products themselves and I refused to play the game. Apparently there are tariffs in the world somehow and they trickle down to American tourists. The irony is delicious. I continued my day taking pictures of street art, another thing Penang is famous for.
Kuala Lumpur finished out the trip. The biggest part of this section of the trip was taking a day excursion into city center to look at the buildings. KL is known for two (three, actually) structures. The first is the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest twins in the world. Up until 2004 they were the tallest buildings in the world. They are beautiful. I went to the top. The second is the Merdeka 118, which is the second tallest building in the world, second to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It dominates the skyline here and its angles are aesthetically interesting.
On my last day, before my late flight back to JFK, I went to see the Batu Caves, an active place of worship for Hindus, but also featuring a massive limestone hill punctured with a series of caves, all surrounded by ornate temples. A focal point of the site is the world’s tallest statue of the deity Lord Murugan, a golden work which stands prominently at the base of a rainbow-colored, 272-step staircase. It is also home to about 200 long tailed very mischievous macaques who steal worshippers sandals, and demand bananas. Personally, I thought it was too touristy, but really enjoyed learning about Lord Haruman, the Monkey God. He is stoic and noble. More of that, please.
People need to travel. Being on the ground in a place is the only way to experience it. Read and research as much as you want, but reality, dimensionality, and expectations are baselined at first contact. That’s the actual starting point. The hawker at her stall. The rug trader. The blind guy selling simits, the Grab driver, the beggar, the barista. That’s where lives intersect, stories are told, minds enrich one another.
Lots of people who are reading these dispatches have asked what my favorite place was. It's too hard a question. That said, overall the SE Asia part was most interesting to me because I had never been there before so it was all new. It was an education, however brief and limited in scope.
Here are a few superlatives:
Prettiest: Danang. It has the coast, the mountains, and the peninsular nature preserve up north, all bound up in a recent history I am familiar with.
Most Eye-opening: Singapore. It led me down a big Lee Kuan Yew fanboy governance rabbithole and then a re-exposed me to Aurelius, Frederick the Great, Ashoka the Great, Kemal Ataturk, and Akbar the Great.
Most Disappointing: Bangkok. Too big and busy, but they have monitor lizards and the food is stellar. Not a hit against Thailand, just my rural preference bias speaking. I’d like to see the north.
Most Vibrant: Tie between Hanoi and Fes in raw energy, but Hanoi gets the nod because Fes was far too touristy and the merchants could get obnoxious. Hanoi was just being itself.
Best Food: Penang, due to the ethnic mixture of ingredients, techniques, and very sweet and proud people serving it.
Most Resonant: Istanbul, mostly because fate led me there on Pascha, after having been exploring Orthodoxy for over two years. And the Turkish bath was so fantastic.
Most Fun: The 4 x Morocco cities because I could share them all with Nereida and we had a blast.
Best Running: Porto. Riverside options, big climbs on hilly cobbled streets, soccer stadium repeats. Istanbul also was excellent to explore at pace.
Worst Running: Kuala Lumpur. Head on a swivel every freakin’ step.
Thanks for reading.
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