Malaysia: tresspassers will be shot

It is difficult to reconcile the welcoming nature of the average Malaysian, regardless of religion or ethnicity, with the warning signs commonly seen on fenced property around the country. The threat of an armed response may be normal practice but in the US but much of the rest of the world has a lesser inclination to the indiscriminate use of firearms, Malaysia could however be taking the first steps down that path. A spate of shootings in 2013,  generally linked…

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Sarawak: village of the damned

“We’re going to visit the old village”, said Penghulu Sagan cheerfully, as he loaded another box of fishing equipment onto the small boat. The matter of fact statement disguised the real nature of the expedition, which was perhaps more evident in the thin, sun etched face of his uncle, who sat quietly waiting: eyes lost in the distance, speaking of a longing, a sadness? Lost in thought, remembering. The reality was that to actually visit the village they would have…

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Soul of the city: Astana, Kazakhstan

Anyone who employs an internationally acclaimed architect to design an iconic building for a brand new capital city, with a brief to combine state of the art design, whilst paying reference to the country’s cultural heritage and then goes and sticks a shopping centre in it, is clearly someone who does not know the meaning of the word soul and will never know the meaning of the word soul. Whether or not it was Kazakhstan’s strong man of politics (regional…

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Guinea

It has taken much time and effort to find just the right words to encapsulate the true essence of this country and after much consultation of dictionaries and  thesauri, contemplating adjectival comparisons and literary metaphor I believe I have captured concisely the quintessential Guinea: absolutely fucked. For a nation that hasn’t suffered war it suffers a level of decrepitude rarely matched in African nations. If you have not had the opportunity to become a connoisseur of relative levels of fuckedupness (this is my opening bid…

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