Compass Points – Robert Stedman
When people ask me what is so special about Southeast Asia, I pause, smile and answer with just one word: Mood. It’s a place full of sights and sounds found nowhere else on our planet.
ALMOST MAGICAL
The fact is that Southeast Asia is a frame of mind as well as a place. It’s almost magical in the way it presents itself. There’s something beautiful about the sound of tiny temple bells tinkling in the breeze, or the chants of Buddhist monks in the still light of dawn. Or the might of the Irrawaddy, or the majesty of the Sunderbans. Or the sight of a brilliant orange sunset. Or just looking at an arched coconut tree on a white sandy beach that’s surrounded by blue sky and turquoise waters.
If you want to feel awe inspired in Southeast Asia, climb to the top of a hill station, like Darjeeling, Cameron, Frazier Hill, even Penang Hill—and look out over the land as the sun slowly makes it way up above the horizon. The feeling and sight is overwhelming and will stay with you the rest of your life.
LOST IN THE NIGHT
Images from Southeast Asia get burned into your memory. I remember one time when I got lost driving though Thailand. I felt lucky to find a hotel in the middle of a pitch-black night in what I thought was a remote inland village. When I woke up the next morning I discovered that the hotel was right on the beach and surrounded by high peaked limestone islands. It was as surprising, as it was revealing and beautiful.
There’s another mood to Southeast Asia – distant mountains and smoking volcanoes.
European seamen, the very first travelers to Southeast Asia, called it “the land below the winds.” Technically speaking, with the exception of the Philippines, the area is free of typhoons and other tropical storms. This doesn’t mean, however, that tropical Southeast Asia is without natural calamities. It is a land of monsoons, dramatic volcanoes and even tsunamis, all of which can be devastating. And yet each creates a mood. What power a volcano has, especially one that sends up clouds of ash 20km, or more, into the sky and looks like it’s about to explode.
SPECTACULAR MOMENTS
Perhaps nature’s most spectacular, and awesome, sight is that of an exploding volcano. In modern times, the greatest explosion from a volcanic eruption occurred at Krakatau, an island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. When Krakatau erupted in 1863, it literally shook the world. For many days afterwards, much of Java was in total darkness. For years afterwards, the entire earth’s weather patterns were changed. Millions of tons of dust floated in the skies and fallout was felt in London for two years – even the snow turned black. When the eruptions subsided, cinders and ash on what was left of the island were 150 feet (46m) deep. Not one seed or spore of life of any kind survived.
Imagine, a year later, a visitor to Krakatau found a lonely spider on the still-hot lava beds. Three years later it was reported that grass was growing on the lowlands and flowering plants and ferns appeared inland.
Krakatau may have had the greatest explosion in modern times, but the greatest eruption was that of Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa, also in Indonesia. The volcano erupted in 1815, blew open a crater seven miles wide and lowered the height of the island by 1650 meters. It was about four times greater than the Krakatau eruption.
MORE THAN RAIN
And that brings us to Southeast Asia’s monsoons. What is a monsoon, anyway? Most people believe it’s a rain of some sort, but that’s incorrect. It isn’t a rain; it’s a wind. For anyone who hasn’t lived in a monsoon belt, the very name ‘monsoon’ has a way of spelling romance. Monsoons may exist in places all over the world but Asia is traditionally known as the land of the monsoons. When the monsoon winds blow here, you can be certain rain will follow.
That is what makes Southeast Asia so interesting for the traveler… the many moods you can encounter with just one visit.