Sukhothai

The bus was going too fast. That is normal here, where the roads are obstacle courses of slow moving tractors, tuktuks, heavy trucks and private vehicles. We were travelling north from the new capital Bangkok to an older one in Sukhothai.

Like Ayutthaya further south Sukhothai was founded then sacked in the usual progression that makes and ruins kingdoms. It might have been the Khmer, who variously owned and then lost great slices of this part of South East Asia. Further east are the ruins of a Khmer temple and city complex, built atop the lava plug of an extinct volcano.

These days Sukhothai's former ruins have been heavily restored, and are surrounded by parks. I have not been. The bus was going too fast.

It was a semi luxury bus. The kind that offers bottled water and an anonymous bread roll as you board, then stops for an all included lunch of rice and local food. After eating there was a bad American movie dubbed in such a way that only the explosions and martial music remained intact. Looking up I saw it was another M_____ C____'s franchise. Another excuse to transpose a stilted 1950s adolescence into computer graphics and barely plausible plotlines.

The bus was going too fast. I was reading at the time. We braked hard, then harder still, and the great wheels locked and shredded rubber down the road. My book flew forwards. My shoes, water bottle, shoulder bag, mobile phone followed, continuing their terminal trajectory. Somehow I braced, slamming sideways into the seat in front of me. Everything tore lose of its moorings. The seat next to me ripped across my shin. We stopped.

It was silent. Someone moaned. Two passengers took hammers and destroyed a window. Others pulled aside railings and stepped slowly, gingerly, down the stairwell and away from the ticking, dripping, crumpled ruin of the bus. We were 50 km short of Sukhothai.

Joseph Colony

Joseph Colony is built on the far side of the railway tracks that bisect Lahore. To get there you pass under one of the ancient railway bridges that join sections of brick-arched viaducts with blackened steel spans, and drive through metal workshops and foundries. They say the best time to visit is at night, when the sparks and fires of the kilns are in full roar.

Joseph Colony is a Christian area. It is named not for the husband of Mary and sometime father of the Son of God but for Joseph, a spry and smiling lay preacher who worked once, many years before, on the Pakistan Railways.

M_____ and I are there to interview him about the history of the settlement that bears his name. The interview is in Urdu and Punjabi, and only occasional words float out to grab me. Bible. Hospital. School. Hospital again.

The Christians are a large minority in Pakistan, second only in size to the Hindu population that remained behind after partition. As with the other religious minorities their position in the Islamic Republic is increasingly marginal.

In March 2013 Joseph Colony was burned by a mob. Although no one was killed the damage to property was considerable. The fire was started in response to an allegation of blasphemy against a copy of the Qur'an. Joseph talks of finding burnt bibles in the aftermath of the fires. Is this not blasphemy too he asks? M_____ begs them not to go down this path. Once the retribution starts it will never end.

Two weeks after our visit another mob, 60 km south west of Lahore, finds it expedient to put the Christians, not their possessions, to the fire.

In memory of Shama and Shehzad Masih, Kot Radha Kishan.

Guanlan

The posters say Guanlan is on 1.4 million square metres of land. Certainly the site is large, as between the main studio and artist’s apartments are two ponds and a field where you can pick strawberries and pay by the kilo under a blue canvas marquee.

Apart from the two story office and studio, which are both new, the complex is a series of 300 year old stone and wood Hakka houses with steeply pitched, round tiled roofs and thick walls.

During the week it is quiet. There are four international artists here, a handful of Chinese printmakers, and staff who work the presses and maintain the grounds. There are occasional visitors. I am photographed, once. The locals laugh when I make the peace sign.

On the weekend it is different. Because this is an historic area as well as a printmaking base it fills with locals who come to walk among the old buildings and drink tea in the coffee shop.

There are three watchtowers. One is open to visitors, occasionally. The other two are closed and barred but not abandoned.

Outside the gate new China abounds. To the left is a small retail centre with shops at ground level and apartments above. Further on is a hotel, its entrance pillars wrapped in gold foil, and a large grey building that could be a museum or a government office. There are rows of concrete pillars, the stumps of an unfinished expressway project, and houses that have been sheered off mid room to make way for the expansion. The road is new but covered with dust the same colour as the sky.

It is nearly six o’clock. I walk to the end of the tarmac, where the new road finishes in a maze of construction barriers, look across at the distant hills, and make my way back home.

A____

A____ is from Pakistan. Islamabad. He has lived the last eight years in Hong Kong, four of them married to a Chinese woman. He has two children, aged three years and 15 months. He does not say if they are boys or girls.

We meet in a park just west of the Kowloon Temporary Food Market. Despite its name the market is built of concrete and steel and looks set to remain. There are stalls selling meats, fresh, frozen, halal, and otherwise, and a small section where hawker stands noisily announce their meals.

The park itself is a triangle wedged between two buildings and the off-ramp of a flyover. Across the street are the luxury stores. Gucci, Prada, Hermes, Dior. Watches are further along, in a mall renovated out of an 1881 police station.

A____ is not from Islamabad but a village nearby. It is in the hills so cooler than the capital in summer. In any case Islamabad is milder than Rawalpindi or Lahore, and much greener than either year round.

A____ is not doing so well. He smokes the stubs of cigarettes. His wife moved back in with her mother three months ago. He has lost his job. His mother-in-law has money so the children now have two nannies. Hong Kong is an expensive city to raise children in, he says. He does not say what work he used to do, or what he hopes to find. Anything will do.

It has been cold this last week in Hong Kong. Fog lies across the harbour, isolating the island from the New Territories. The sky above is grey. It has not rained yet, but yesterday the pavements were covered in shallow pools.

A____ says warm weather is coming. I pull my beanie down, wedge my hands into my pockets and tell him I hope so. Soon.

Brunei

Brunei

I have one night in Brunei. It is a small country, one of the three that share the island of Borneo, and wealthy beyond reckoning thanks to the gas and oil fields that lie offshore.

All Royal Brunei flights transit here, including the ones to London and Hong Kong. Most of the flight from Melbourne is heading to the UK. The passengers are a strange mix of backpackers and older British tourists. D____ two seats along was visiting his daughter. The lady chatting near the bulkhead mostly goes on cruises [‘but never on the smaller lines’]. Her companion says he has flown this route once or twice a year for nearly 30 years. A lot of miles.

At the airport I am met by a small man with Damon Lawrence written on a sign. It is a two minute drive to the hotel. The room is large and foyer empty, though a decorated limousine sits outside waiting for a wedding party.

‘Which way is to town?’

The clerk gives directions. Outside the air is warm and humid and the wide streets are quiet and well lit.

‘Times Square’ he says.

This name sounds out of place for a country whose road signs are written in English and Arabic. The Arabic, or Jawi, is an old form of the language, revived as the country re-embraces its faith. It feels false to read what is essentially a dialect of Bahasa Melayu in the script of the Middle East. A different form of colonialism to that offered by the English language and Roman.

Times Square. I walk for a while, thinking the centre of town and its harbour should be further away than 15 minutes on foot. I stop. Look up. Times Square is massive, brightly lit. Sealed and mostly windowless. A mall.

J____

J____ is a third generation Japanese Korean. His grandparents left Seoul at some unspecified point in the past – perhaps during the time of colonial rule – and he, like his siblings and parents, was born in Tokyo.

He speaks no Korean. He has both Japanese, Korean and English names, the latter of which he is thinking to change when he applies for US citizenship next year. Is J___ a name on its own, or a shortening he asks.

J____ carries a Korean passport. Until recently it was almost impossible to apply for Japanese citizenship. In any case he has now been away too long for this to happen. 10 years in fact.

He studied in Portland, Oregon. A place picked because it was somewhere he knew almost nothing about and certainly knew no one from. College, undergraduate studies, work in the finance sector in Boston. Now New York. This is home, he says. Could not think of living anyplace else.

Through some irony the company he works for is Japanese. Insurance products for Japanese firms. Multinationals. Not that he is expected to speak the language or translate for others into his mildly accented English. But there it is, a fragment of the past carried into his life in the new world.

Last year he visited Australia. Sydney and Melbourne. Chasing a long distance relationship that foundered almost as soon as he arrived. J____ reports that Sydney was nice but that Melbourne made him feel lonely. What time of year I ask. The winter months can be bleak.

I can't remember the response. J____ talks some more about how he needed help to fill in a passport application at the local Korean consulate. It being presumed that a citizen of that country would have no need for forms in English or any other language.

Boston

Boston was cold. After the relative warmth of the first few days in New York this city, only four hours drive north, was a plunge back into icy winter. 75 down to 40, in the old numbers.

As a result much of what I saw in Boston was inside or underground. There was a Common, sure, because the metro passed beneath it. Harvard had a yard, rushed through on the way to one of the nearby museums.

I was in town to visit U___, a colleague from Lahore. She is studying at MassArts and is one of the many graduate students from Pakistan on Fulbright scholarships. She has almost finished her first year here, a year she found difficult and thrilling in almost equal measure.

The thrill comes from the access to research, to stuff. On Tuesday we visited the MIT Media Lab, where bright sparks and pranksters condense the future down into a physical presence. Strips of hanging paper pulse and contract as tiny electrical charges tense the single strand of bright metal that runs down their centres. Muscle wire.

There are eight legged walking machines, intelligent fabrics, ceramics as thin as tissue. Not all is bleeding edge. On the second floor is propped a lenticular panel, positioned so that as the elevator ascends the image changes. 1, 2, 3, 4. No haptic feedback, no touch screen interactivity. Just light and carefully thought out geometry.

I would like to stay longer, see more, but class is beginning and U___ must go. Outside, across a courtyard, is the titanium skinned inflorescence of a Gehry building.