Tan Wee Cheng - Exotic Lands and Dodgy Places

Parts of this book were previously published as The Greenland Seal Hunter by Times Editions.

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Tan, Wee Cheng.
Exotic lands and dodgy places : adventures in Greenland, the Amazon and other far-out places /
Tan Wee Cheng. Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2010.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-981-4302-90-6 (pbk.)
1. Tan, Wee Cheng Travel. 2. Voyages and travels. I. Title.
G465
910.4 dc22 OCN672929846

Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd

Once we had a planet. Now we're left with a suburb.

John Simpson in
A Mad World, My Masters: Tales from a Traveller's Life

When I was ten, Mother brought home a box of colourful stamps from the office. I remember that most of the stamps were still stuck onto the original envelopes. They fascinated me, not just the excitement of holding something from an exotic, faraway land, but also the very fact that these tiny objects had travelled a long way to reach my home. Later, Dad brought home a simple but colourful map of the world, with different colours representing different states. From then on, I became obsessed with exotic lands and their cultures.

I come from an ordinary Singapore family. Those were the days before budget airlines and mass tourism. Vacations usually meant a chalet weekend in Changi. For a long time I'd thought that my travels would be restricted to the armchair variety. Before long, I became an expert on trivial facts such as the old name of Burkina Faso, the whereabouts of some long-forgotten Paraguayan dictator and whether Greenland was green or white.

How the world has changed! After graduating from university, I decided to backpack around Western Europe against the advice of family and friends who felt that it was too dangerous to travel independently. I was bitten by the travel bug and the love of travelling became an incurable disease. The very sense of achievement after undertaking a major journey was intoxicating. One journey followed another: Eastern Europe, Middle East, China, Central Asia, the former USSR, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific.

In an increasingly globalised and capitalistic world, governments and businessmen have invested in tourism and transportation infrastructure to make it easy to travel. The availability of well-written guidebooks provides everyone with practical advice on even the most exotic and faraway countries. There are few places that are difficult or outrageously prohibitive in cost to reach for the average citizen of any developed country; whereas a mere hundred years ago, such journeys could only be undertaken as major expeditions by highly connected and extremely wealthy members of the elite.

While major international tourism cities once appealed to me, it soon dawned on me that I was attracted to places I knew little about, or places where I was least likely to bump into tourists on package holidays. Places that now get me excited are those which are more likely to be featured in National Geographic than Cond Nast Traveller, or hot spots that insurers would hesitate to cover.

I am neither a mountaineer nor a hardcore explorer. Climbing Mount Everest or braving the sandstorms of the Empty Quarter are not my cup of tea. I am more interested in simple journeys on public transport, albeit through epic routes like the Silk Road or the Trans-Siberian; or visiting places with strange names like Ouzarzate or Tierra del Fuego; or the recent battlefields of the Balkans and hotspots like Armenia and Azerbaijan, which for someone interested in history, politics and economics are particularly fascinating.

Even then, the places I have travelled to are not extraordinarily unusual. Many are standard destinations of slightly more adventurous backpackers from the United States, Europe and Australasia. Increasingly, I also bump into fellow Singaporeans in the most unexpected places, ranging from Azerbaijan to Mongolia and Colombia.

What I have included in this book represent an exotic sampling of my stories and encounters in a number of off-the-beaten-track areas, as well as impressions and thoughts about a few more familiar destinations. History, current affairs and business have always been my passions. My thoughts often evolve around the colourful coincidences of history and culture that I discover during my journeys, as well as the intricacies of development and the reasons for the lack of social and economic progress in certain countries.

This book is a revised edition of my 2004 book The Greenland Seal Hunter. I have added photos and maps too so that my readers can travel with me visually through these distant lands. I have also included in this edition stories relating to my journeys to Mauritius, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

There are many of you whom I should thank as you have helped me during my journeys, or made them more enjoyable. I had considered listing your names but have decided that the list would be nowhere close to being complete or fair. You know who you are, thank you very much! Lastly, I would like to dedicate this book to my family who have supported my never-ending wanderlust through their concern and advice.

Tan Wee Cheng

October 2010

THE NORTH ATLANTIC

Greenlandic Seal Hunter for a Day

I had barely arrived at Mette's home when her telephone rang.

Look here, Wee Cheng, there's going to be a seal hunt today. If you are interested, you must set off now.