All, Learn
I am just about to do something illegal. I’m about to cross an international border with what I am told is an invalid passport, which on top of that lacks one of the basic entry requirements of the country I’m about to cross into. Sounds like the beginning of one of 007’s stunts… but more of that later.
Visas are an interesting thing. They allow a country to decide which non-nationals to allow into their territory, for how long, and in which capacity. There are administrative fees involved of course, but when looking at the fees, one cannot help but wonder whether they are more connected to politics between countries than actual workload. Random ‘stamp fees’ charged at South East Asian borders most certainly go straight into official’s pockets, and if you are from anywhere wanting to go to the USA, you’re going to have to dig deep, and in return, if you are from the USA… well, some counties will delight in giving you get a taste of your own medicine.
This has seemed to be the year of visas. After battling for 5 months with the bug ridden Canadian working visa document online upload system, I finally bit the bullet and had my Australian Visa confirmed, a whole 4 hours after applying for it. Two of my close married friends (he is Canadian and she is Spanish) finally had his visa for living in the UK approved, after having to pay a lawyer to appeal years of applying and unjustifiable rejection by the authorities, that came down to nothing but rhetoric.
A very dear Russian friend’s ability to leave her country was recently threatened by other countries proposed boycott of visas for Russian nationals following Putin’s actions in Crimea. And another good friend is millimetres close to having enough to apply for a 3 year US visa – only a film industry reference is needed. Obviously easy to come by in a tight nit community even landsmen have difficulty ever getting into.
The Epic Journey is also giving us plenty of red tape and hoops to jump through to be able to travel through our 17 counties. Experiences have been mixed, with Mongolia super-easy to get a visa for, Russia easy if you pay an agency and China being our hardest so far. Having to put up with and smile sweetly at a rather power hungry and overall difficult embassy official who changed her mind daily on what we needed to supply (shouting “you bring me document… this is wrong document! Not my fault!… you bring me document and I DECIDE if you go to China!” at us), was nevertheless not enough to spoil our amazing stay in Tokyo.
Where visas get interesting is when you have to start figuring out how much you can risk to bend the rules. In countries like Thailand, whole industries depend on border officials turning a blind eye. Allowing scuba diver after scuba diver to re-enter the country after half an hour abroad means dive shops have a sustained supply of long term recruits without having to go through the bureaucracy of organising work permits. Ethical or not, this flexibility does allow for spontaneous work and financial support people would otherwise not be able to have. South East Asia has its ways.
Which brings me back to where I left off. For some reason no one seems to know, certain countries require at least 6 months’ validity of your passport to allow entry. We arrived in Thailand later than planned, so both of our passports needed replacing if we were to go…. anywhere else overland. Australia being as they are, Saxon had his brand new passport couriered within 9 days of applying to our dive centre on Koh Phi Phi. The UK was…. not so obliging.
I was told that upon sending my application, my current passport would become invalid, that I had to remain in Thailand without the option of border-crossing to extend my 30 day maximum stay visa. How long the process would take, no one was sure. When calling the passport agency in the UK, we were only able to speak to the call centre of an outsourcing company. The representative first refused to put me through as ‘it hadn’t been 4 weeks yet’, then admitted they hadn’t even started looking at my application 3 weeks after submittal. I had 1 week to research and try all my options.
My question of whether I was correct in my assessment of the situation that I was going to be forced to stay illegally in Thailand, pay fines and have my new passport red-listed as ‘overstayed’ which could cause huge problems when applying for visas in or even just entering countries vigilant of their borders such as Australia or the USA was answered with a curt ‘yes, it appears so’. Was there anything I could do? ‘No, just wait’. How long for? ‘We can’t say’.
So I’ve bitten the bullet. Spoken to Thai immigration who strongly advised me to go on a border run to gain an extra 30 days. “Your passport won’t be a problem”, I am told, but if the border crossing goes wrong, I could be arrested or stuck in no-mans land between checking out of Thailand and checking into Malaysia. One of our contacts got caught at Bangkok airport and was only allowed back through immigration after a few days rough sleeping on departure gate seats and a hefty fine. Guess where the money went.
Off the bus.
Back on the bus.
Re-check: It seems I got lucky. The Malaysian immigration officer heard my story, turned a blind eye and let me in. The bus is careering towards Penang through the night with me in it, and I am beyond relieved.
I am aware of how lucky I am to have a passport from a country that makes travelling amongst the easiest in the world. With travel being so important for global relations and peaceful coexistence and understanding between so many different people, surely it should be facilitated and encouraged wherever possible. Without having to bend the rules or putting yourself in dodgy, semi-legal situations.
I have been in Malaysia now for 3 weeks, and it has been amazing. Penang is one of the coolest places I have ever been and shooting in KL and visiting Melaka were interesting asides from editing in our little room in Georgetown.
50 days ago I handed my passport and application in to the British Embassy in Bangkok. Taking Thailand’s immigration authorities’ advice and coming to Malaysia has proven to be an immensely wise decision, as staying in Thailand would have cost me £210 in overstay fees so far (not counting accommodation, food and living cost, and not sharing a room as Saxon can only get 15 days after a border run).
Martial law was declared yesterday which in effect means that if anything had happened to me if I had stayed in Thailand (get mugged, hit by a car, slip on the pavement), the police have no power to do anything, and the military would be in their full right to arrest me at any moment.
I called the passport enquiry outsourcing call centre again today. The lady on the line informed me that someone has yet to look at my passport application, 7 weeks after I submitted it. The only explanation she could give me was that they didn’t offer a guaranteed service and the words ‘at least’ were clearly printed on their website when any timeframes are mentioned. The only thing she could tell me was what was written on her computer screen, as they had no direct link to the office actually working on the passports and had to wait for them to get in touch. Why I had not received a single one of the 5 promised phone calls from the passport office directly, no one could say.
As a solo female professional unable to work, travel or plan anything, illegally in a country governed by martial law, the passport office has nothing better to offer than ‘you’re just going to have to wait indefinitely’. I wonder how anyone is surprised that trust in the government is low (especially after the 2012 expenses scandal), and am concerned that these kinds of situations breed a culture of bending the rules as playing by them has so many unnecessary negative ramifications.
I am in a good place, but only thanks to myself. For how long? I wouldn’t want to guess.
I have just picked up my passport in Bangkok after another semi-illegal border crossing (which has saved me over £700 in overstay fees and being blacklisted) as the office was not able to send my passport to the British Embassy in Kuala Lumpur due to their ‘data protection’ (read: doing nothing but the minimum) policy. I am finally on the move again, after two and a half months of waiting.
I can only hope that the UK will make their services more sensitive to the requirements of people who use them, rather than the other way around. And if your job doesn’t require you to be able to be abroad at a moment’s notice, check your passport’s validity and have it renewed now.
All, Learn
You’ve just arrived in a brand new part of the world and it’s all incredibly exciting. You’ve remembered to get all your jabs, pack more than two pairs of underwear and your passport is somewhere safe (you can’t quite remember where that place is, but probably in that pouch thingy your mum gave you, stuffed down the front of your elephant pants). You’re ready to explore this new and exotic place all guns blazing – but when you try and find the bus stop you realize you’ve missed something.
Everyone is making these weird sounds, all the signs are in squiggly lines and you can’t for the life of you figure out where to get the bus to somewhere to sleep, let alone ask someone and understand what they are saying. To you, it’s all Chinese. Which it probably is if you’ve come to China (unless you already speak Mandarin, and it’s plain sailing).
Language barriers can be a bit of a struggle, but overcoming them is an amazing way of breaking the ice, especially when you make mistakes the locals are likely to find hilarious, and boom – you have yourself a new best friend for life. Whilst learning every language on the planet can be tempting to some and a living nightmare to others, there are certain little tricks you can use to help you along the way.
The German’s call the Eselsbrücken – or Donkey Bridges. Simple things that help the stubborn, donkey-like learning centre in your adult brain remember things it would have soaked up and stored in seconds for lifelong use when you were a kid. Back in the day, you read a word and it was stored automatically. Cat became gato, dog became inu, or vacuum cleaner pipe became stopsoucherslough, or whatever.
Now though, it helps to remember simple courtesies and random words by remembering what they sound like in your own language. With a little imagination, the Russian word for dog, ‘sabaka’, almost sounds something like the English phrase ‘It’s a barker’. Handy, huh?
You’ll be surprised what doors open, what new friends are made and how much a little bit of local lingo can smooth your path in this exciting world. So here you have it, dear reader, a non-extensive list of donkey’s bridges for useful words, the language they are in, and what they sound like in English. Enjoy!
German
Feel and dunk
Sounds a bit like: Vielen Dank
Meaning: Thank you very much
Goo 10 tag
Sounds a bit like: Guten Tag
Meaning: Good afternoon
Spanish
Grassy arse
Sounds a bit like: Gracias
Meaning: Thank you
Kettle (overpronounce the last e as an a)
Sounds a bit like: Que tal?
Meaning: How are you?/ How’s it going?
Portuguese
To do bong
Sounds a bit like: Todo bom?
Meaning: How are you?/ How’s it going?
Oi!
Sounds a bit like: Oi!
Meaning: Hello!
Russian
Ya table – loo blue
Sounds a bit like: Ya tebya lyublyu
Meaning: I love you
Horror show
Sounds a bit like: Harasho
Meaning: Good, fine, ok
River
Sounds a bit like: Riba
Meaning: Fish
Japanese
Don’t touch my moustache
Sounds a bit like: Doitashimashite
Meaning: You’re welcome (said in reply to ‘thank you’)
Eat a ducky, mass
Sounds a bit like: Itadakimas
Meaning: Something like ‘bon appetite’ (said before a meal)
Gucci sauce on my desktop
Sounds a bit like: Gochisosamadeshta
Meaning: Thanks for a great meal (said after a meal – this one will impress!)
Chinese (Mandarin)
War eye knee
Sounds a bit like: Wo Ai Ni
Meaning: I love you
Vietnamese
Come on!
Sounds a bit like: Kah moonh
Meaning: Thank you
Come car seat
Sounds a bit like: Com Kasi
Meaning: No problem
Indonesian Bahasa
Tear out my car seat
Sounds a bit like: Terimakasi
Meaning: Thank you
Summer Summer
Sounds a bit like: Sama sama
Meaning: You’re welcome (said in reply to ‘thank you’)
Hat-y Hat-y
Sounds a bit like: Hati-Hati
Meaning: Be careful/ caution
All, Destinations
As night falls, the shadows are shredded by a motorbike’s headlights shining through a gate whilst a cat peeps out from a doorway at the steaming noodle cart across the road. Our new found home (at least for a while) could create a thousand bright and colourful films of smiling locals and visitors enjoying the incredible architecture, art and easygoing vibe of this beautiful town, but it’s the night time bustling that intrigues your Rat & Dragon team this time.
Georgetown on Penang Island has been declared the most liveable city in Malaysia, 8th in Asia and 62nd worldwide, and there are many reasons why. Twinned with Adelaide, Taipei and Bangkok, the town’s inhabitants display various distinct cultures, religions and influences. Muslim Malaysians, Indians and Chinese rub shoulders on a daily basis and form one of the most functioning mixed societies in South East Asia, doubtlessly contributed to by the fact that most people are trilingual – speaking English, Bahasa Malay and Tamil or Chinese.
Penang’s standing as one of Malaysia’s leading tertiary education centres compliments Georgetown’s historic quarter’s status as a Unesco World Heritage Site, where street artists such as Kenji Chai, Cloakwork, Drewfunk, Katun, Siek, Julia Volchkova and Ernest Zacharevic draw a young crowd of visitors year round.
It is this multifaceted yet flowing vibe of Penang that inspired us when we arrived – this crazy mix of crumbling colonial buildings with locals living real lives in stead of begrudgingly manning souvenir shops in homes they no longer own. A fresh and vibrant young arts scene on an international standard were made all the better by the ready availability of incredible (and incredibly cheap) street food.
Not so much a place to ‘do’, to have a list of ‘must see’ attractions to tick off, Penang simply felt welcoming just to BE in. Local brothers Eddy and Ivan, who run independent Pit Stop coffee shop loved to sit down for a quick chat and brought us ‘food from around here you must try!’, including Durian – check out the lowdown on that crazy stinkball!
The Camera Museum, China House and Purrfect Cat Café were just other examples of quirky but sophisticated hangouts that could easily give London’s hipster lokales a run for their money. And having the privilege of staying in 33 Stewart Houze hostel, run by arguably Malaysia’s most friendly family was the icing on the layercake.
There are many cultural events around the year, the George Town Festival and Tropfest being only two to keep and eye out for, and there are some beaches and rainforest in the National Park at the North West corner of the Island. But whilst the beaches weren’t as spectacular as others we’d seen, they were a lovely respite from the bustle of walking in traffic along the streets of Old Georgetown.
Georgetown is a relatively affluent part of SEA, and where in KL anyone who can afford it is likely to move into the newest, shiniest, ‘yuppiest’ glass and metal mega-structure, Georgetown residents seem to quite like their crumbling facades and shrine filled front rooms. Life, as we soon found out, was lived everywhere, and we were by definition right in the middle of it.
And thus, dear reader, we head off to take you on a short journey through the maze of night time Penang, the long sheltered walkways, the midnight thunderstorms, the murals and sculptures by young and fresh artists everywhere you turn. Our Russian Lomo’s double exposures on grainy film inspired multi-layering our rushes, just as the many facets of this town light up all in one frame as a taxi passes by us through the alleyways to the main street beyond.
You’re in the proverbial rabbit hole, and all around you glitters with intriguing little snippets of all sorts of different types of life. Welcome to hours after after-hours.
All, Learn
You’re gonna die. Sorry to break it to you.
It’s nothing personal, just the nature of life. We’re all gonna die someday, but don’t worry – you might just get another crack at it…
In Thailand, it’s believed that after death, you’ll be reincarnated. You’ll come back as someone or something else, depending on how well you behaved in this life. Maybe you’ve been really good and you’ll come back as something awesome-fun and cool. Or maybe you’ve been naughty and you’ll come back as something really unpleasant.
Which got us thinking; what kind of asshole would you have to be to come back as a foot spa fish on Bangkok’s Khao San Road?
When we thought it through, however, we realised that maybe there’s a surprise in store when we find our selves back again for another chance at life.
I mean, at first glance, it seems like a shit existence – sweaty tourists lowering their stinking, sunburned feet into your home. You suck on crusty flakes of dead foot-skin – cheesy foot after cheesy foot – all day, and on Khao San Road, all night too.
Your fearless Rat & Dragon crew tried this freaky experience. (If you’re up for a laugh, you can watch the fishy fun on film here!)
One thing we couldn’t help but notice was the gusto with which the foot spa fish fed on foot. The little guys went absolutely berserk – hundreds of them, crowding over feet, squirming between toes and enthusiastically biting, rasping and sucking at hairs, nubs, corns, freckles and fleshy toenail cuticles.
It seemed the cheesier the part of the foot, the more they actually loved it. In fact, the little fish seemed to be delighted. You could see the little grins on their fishy little faces. (see them on the film!) Could this be the foot spa fish’s ultimate lifestyle? Is this what a lifetime of happiness looks like?
Think about it – a safe place to hang with a load of your schoolmates. You’re looked after lovingly by your owners, because you’re their money-spinner, after all. And all day, and all night, you have totally free access to all the foot flesh and toe jam (which you especially love) you could ever want. All you need to do is chill and munch.
Compare this to a wild fish’s lifestyle – swimming around endlessly in grotty wild-water, sifting through mud in search of food, and ever fearful of being eaten by a bird, a crab or a bigger fish.
When you die, if you’ve been a really nice person, what if you come back in the next life into the form of a being that is so happy and so fulfilled and has all it’s needs delivered, as a reward for all the good you have done in this life? You know what you love, and you get loads of it.
What if, when you’re not such a nice person, you come back as a being that works hard, toils all day every day for a lifetime, and is never quite fulfilled no matter how hard they work, no matter how much they have, always wanting more? Thinking they know what makes them happy but not being able to get enough of it?
What if the most important thing in life is knowing what you want, and getting loads of it? Maybe coming back as a foot spa fish wouldn’t be as bad as it first seems.
How are you behaving in this life..?
All, Inspire
As you may have gathered whilst reading our ramblings along this particular trip, we have been travelling before. And to some pretty exciting places as well, most of them, due to our fields of interest and budget requirements, well on the backpacker’s trail. After arriving once more in backpacker decompression zone Bangkok, we mused at the ever-continuous hordes of fresh and weathered faces, fondly remembering the first time we got on a plane to a country very far away, with our mates and not nearly enough cash.
Something this time was different. And we didn’t know how we felt about it. It seemed our safe and familiar world had been invaded, and by a force we were powerless to turn back.
Kids. They were EVERYWHERE. Not locals, not families on holiday who had by chance stumbled upon our backpacker haunts, but running, screaming, tie-dye-T-shirt wearing, Mohawk sporting, Pad Thai spilling backpacker offspring kids. And where no fried cockroaches or green-chilli-Sambuca shots could cause lasting unease, the presence of kids who could be our neighbour’s children or nephews and nieces suddenly made us feel somewhat uncomfortable.
Seemingly gone were the days of free frolicking, where you can drink as much as you can in public, DIY shave your head, wear the most ridiculous clothes locals can produce and embarrass yourself ties-free by tea-bagging your mate in that awesome Irish bar.
Suddenly, as you are mooning the hot Swedes on the other side of the room, you make the mistake of looking past them, straight at the dead pan face of an 8 year old girl in pigtails and a frilly Roxy Kids dress and (if you’re unlucky) the horrified look on her parent’s faces. After you have painstakingly escaped your own parents’, neighbours’, boss’, lecturers’ and even societies’ idea of acceptable behaviour to run free in the pastures of South East Asia’s anti-responsibility backpacking bubble, your moral compass yelps from afar that you should have the duty of being a role model to the younger generation.
If guilt tripping yourself into behaving on the streets wasn’t bad enough, you are now sharing your hostel with that lovely tattooed couple from Switzerland and their 4 middle-class feral new-age-hippy kids, all under the age of 5. The corridor outside your room has been turned into a 7am playground, and you can tell when sunscreen is being applied due to the high-pitched screams of torture reminiscent of Guantanamo that flood through your earplugs. And where beforehand you could have told your fellow bunkmate he’s an asshole for waking you up last night, there’s now nothing you can do. “Kids are kids you know, but look how cute they are!”
Gentrification has caused quite a stir in Europe’s/Australia’s/America’s real estate markets. Areas such as London’s Hackney (predominantly working class and Black African/Caribbean communities), Sydney’s Redfern (a traditionally low earning aboriginal and islander neighbourhood) and New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (previously the largest black community in the US) have seen vast displacement of former residents. These areas have suffered a sharp rise in rent due to richer investors buying up property to let out to other richer seekers of the new trendy parts of town. Shoreditch is so 2004.
Whilst most backpackers of course come from families who have the means to invest in travel abroad, there are parallels. Many especially young backpacker are on a tight budget so having to compete with a family who are a) used to getting one room between 3 or 4 people thus splitting the cost and b) are more likely to just pay the going rate or more for better facilities rather than haggle to keep the peace (especially when the kids are playing up) can be a tough one.
After endless wondering about whether families are ruining your favourite budget accommodation and whether these kids are even taking anything in (and aren’t they supposed to be at school?!?!?), you decide to get out, have a coconut and think things over.
You probably didn’t have these kinds of memories from when you were a kid. Countries outside Europe, Oz or the US/Canada were probably a bit too much work to go to with small children back in the day, whether it was getting affordable flights, visas, jabs and dealing with lack of local infrastructure and language barriers. Many of us will have gone on easy family holidays to the seaside – somewhere slightly boring maybe, but safe, predicable and fun for everyone (including the adventurous maverick backpackers of those bygone days, who were glad you were on Malta, and not where they were).
Whilst these were fantastic times, they didn’t really teach us much first hand about the way other people, other kids live. That having the biggest, fiercest looking home-made kite in the neighbourhood is the best thing a little Balinese boy can wish for. That dried squid on a stick is quite a tasty snack for a 3 year old Chinese girl. That there are real, friendly, interesting and lovable people living in these countries and that they have just the same fundamental worries, hopes and dreams as we did when we were 6 (probably involving the acquisition of ice cream). That there are faces and souls behind what our national security officials and free market economists want us to believe are corrupt governments who simply won’t cough up their vast amounts of ‘endless’ natural resources at prices our multinationals want to decide. But don’t mention the rainforest.
The media tend to sell their wares through creating feelings of outrage, curiosity about disaster and fear. Cue stereotypes, nurturing misunderstanding and sensationalism that foster our own ignorance. And we are all up in arms after skimming that Daily Mail article about that one man in Indonesia who wouldn’t let his head-scarfed wife get a driving license, and because we know no other Indonesian people, they must all be backward woman-hating bigots. The best way to remedy a set idea of another country, culture or group (whether political or religious) is to go yourself, experience the place and its people and make up your own mind.
We still maintain that a holiday from your day-to-day life and the freedom to do so 100% is worth keeping. Go to a hostel or beach or bar that is clearly for young backpackers out for a good time. And you, dear tourism industry, make sure these places exist and that prices are kept fair for both budget travellers and locals who make a living from welcoming the young, bright eyed and bushy tailed into their midst.
Places are not just places though, to stagnate in time for you to tap into and out of whenever you chose. Places are also places in time, and if somewhere has developed since you last saw it, then appreciate the good bits and see what you can do yourself to fix the bad bits.
Consider the huge benefits of people’s lives mixing to create broader global understanding on a grass routes level, and for the sake of this interconnectedness, share your public spaces with a couple of kids who may be a little bit annoying, but who may just be finding their life’s inspiration to better the world we live in. And if not, they are having their own little first time adventure, and will later in life appreciate the impact they had on their surroundings a lot more if they remember having the time of their lives backpacking with their parents.
All, Learn
The Egyptians did it. The Mayans did it. The Tibetans did it. Even the Koreans and German Housewives do it, en masse and with gusto – in the latter’s case with the resulting treasures to be stashed in some cellar shelf to collect dust, or to be given to secretly reluctant friends at Christmas so that they in turn can clog up their dusty cellar shelves. They all pickle stuff.
Preservation of food nowadays takes just a few choice chemicals, so participation in this activity is often down to taste and nostalgia. The more grizzly ancient practices of human embalming however, were widely exercised to ensure safe journey into the afterlife – for those fortunate or tyrannical enough to be able to afford the entry fee to the afterlife. So what is it, in these modern secular times, with communists pickling their dead leaders?
Our Epic Journey has taken us through Russia and China, the biggest countries on the globe influenced by communist ideology, as well as some little ones such as (North) Korea and Vietnam. We have previously studied and travelled Latin America extensively, and this continent’s ongoing toying with the idea of the ideal socialist state is also apparent whenever you witness yet another disgruntled citizen complain about the corruption of the government, the marginalisation of the working class and the inherent ‘stupidity’ and hypocrisy of anyone who gets into capitalist power. The Revolution will come – it’s just that no one seems sure of when and how.
You may be surprised to hear that Fidel Castro, one of our potentially soon to be pickled protagonists, wasn’t originally out to turn Cuba communist. He was in fact only persuaded by this very intelligent, but for Fidel’s liking somewhat too radical left-wing guy by the name of Ernesto Guevara (that’s ‘Che’ for all you cool kids out there). Che, counter to the beliefs of one of the kids in our 9th grade way back in the day, did not “die fighting for the legalisation of weeeeeed, maaaan”. But it was the Revolution with a capital R (i.e. people’s rule over themselves and freedom from the meddling US and USSR) that pulled both men’s heart strings.
Importantly, something about the structure of both the Revolution and socialism make it most effective in creating and retaining political power – and this very thing might just explain these governments’ fondness for formaldehyde. No matter how much any leader may bang on about the ‘power of the people’, the most widely used tool in maintaining structure and leadership has been a very simple one: a solidly entrenched personality cult.
“Religion is the opium of the people” said Marx, and did away with it. Just like throwing your board shorts out to sea during a tipsy skinny dipping session seemed like a good idea at the time, some people would be absolutely fine crawling back to shore butt naked and proudly stomping off to get a towel. For others though, getting rid of what used to be an arguably somewhat fantastical but nevertheless very emotionally supporting trust in a guiding figure left a void only another supreme being could fill.
With even the Flying Spaghetti Monster out of bounds due to the whole anti-religion doctrine, the Maos, Stalins, Lenins, ‘Uncle’ Ho Chi Minhs and Kim Il Sung’s of this world got ready for a field trip. Guiding their people through wars, struggles for independence and the turning inside out of the political system needed a well-oiled propaganda machine, of which symbolism is one of the most effective tools.
Walk down a street in Moscow, Beijing or Hanoi and you’ll have to be blind or completely engrossed in Tinder to not see the victorious faces of Lenin, Mao and Uncle Ho everywhere. The machine is ticking over, the saviour everywhere and the country in control. But then – he gets old, sick, loses interest, maybe even his mind… the authorities who have been happily building this one figure of reference suddenly start to sit up and take notice. Unlike other forms of government, there is no automatically accepted son to follow in the king’s footsteps a royal bloodline, no new supreme leader chosen by God – or in a democracy, the people… although there are sound arguments against the existence of such a democracy even in our modern, enlightened, ‘Western’ world. But that is another debate within itself.
As admiration, guidance seeking and numbers of followers grew throughout the ‘liberator’s’ lifetime, of course always assisted by a vast network of propaganda, government officials found themselves incredibly concerned how the system would fare once the figurehead of it all kicked the proverbial bucket. Then, 15 months after the hype surrounding the discovery of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen’s preserved body, the genius idea struck one of Lenin’s homies. “Pimp my dead leader!”, he exclaimed, and Lenin (Moscow Mausoleum) was preserved and put on public display in 1924.
Paradoxically, the idea of preserving bodies of communist anti-religious leaders may also on a subconscious level be likened to the Christian Orthodox belief that one of the dead giveaways of someone having been a Saint was that parts of or even their entire body would not decay. Nevertheless, this dappling in religion didn’t seem to deter the ministers surrounding Mao Zedong (Beijing Mausoleum), Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il (both in the Kumusan Palace of the Sun, Pyongyang), Ho Chi Minh (Hanoi Mausoleum), Mongolia’s Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Angola’s Agostinho Neto, Guyana’s Forbes Burnham and, most recently, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (not Dagenham).
Klement Gottwald of Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria’s Georgi Dimitrov and Joseph Stalin were also given the star treatment, but after a botched procedure, the fall of communism in Bulgaria and a general hate of Stalin’s guts respectively, the bodies were removed and put to rest using alternative methods.
Interestingly enough, the afore mentioned embalmees were rarely asked whether they would agree to the procedure, with Ho Chi Minh explicitly instructing to be cremated. The preservation of the state over personal wishes may have been the last sacrifices these leaders made to their countries. It certainly worked on some levels as millions of local and international tourists flock every year to catch a glimpse of particularly Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, always in a solemn atmosphere and with some tears shed as well amongst the more nostalgic of the socialist era.
We defy you to tick them off like trump cards on your travels around the globe, but witnessing the power one person’s image can hold is a truly thought provoking experience. Let us know what you experienced when probably seeing a dead body for the first time – we’d love to know your thoughts.
