Southeast Asia
April 6, 2024 — February 10, 2025
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Notes on Southeast Asia, where I live. I mean, currently live in Australia which does not consider itself part of Southeast Asia, but I humbly submit Australia is wrong about that, and at great cost.
For the record, I have spent most of my life in Southeast Asia, firstly Australia (decades), then Indonesia (ca 2 years) and Thailand (ca 1 year). I love this part of the world, which exudes future focus, and weirdness and wonder (excepting that sleepy island on the southern periphery of the action, Australia, which exudes complacency).
1 Cleopatra Wong
The last time I was in Singapore, I stayed in a 2-bit backpacker joint. There was an aspiring filmmaker from (IIRC?) Kerala there, who was in town to get finance to remake the film that, IMO, tells you everything about the foundation of ASEAN, Cleopatra Wong. We stayed up until way too late, effusing about our mutual obsession (to be clear, he was more obsessed than me, because I wasn’t pitching for funding). I regret that I lost his contact details because I would love to see that film remade.
Haven’t heard of it? Here is the background: Cleopatra Wong Is the Forgotten Movie Star That Singapore Needs Right Now.
2 Historical curiosities
Book review: A Swiss soldier on Dutch Formosa
Elie Ripon (Lausanne,? –?) was a Swiss soldier in the service of the VOC, who took part in most of the VOC’s military exploits in those years from 1618 to 1626. After his military service, he wrote down his experiences in a manuscript that was found in Switzerland in 1865 and was first published in 1990.
A wild itinerary, including Fort Jakarta/Batavia, Banda Island, a China Expedition, Fortress on Sibesi (between Java and Sumatra) diamond trade in Borneo, Privateering in the Gulf of Siam.