A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.
Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification
PNG is on my list to visit.
It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day.
I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country
It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight".
the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country.
I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country.
Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee.
The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting.
Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste.
I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_.
When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days.
I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight.
What's your criteria for mundane? Basically every decent sized island in that part of the world is going to have beautiful beaches, coral reefs, mountains, and jungles.
Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems:
> So nearly all groups eventually internalized a similar set of norms, a similar food culture and similar political institutions, without ever being part of the same political unit.
They managed to achieve eventual consistency in a distributed system, thousands of years before we even thought of it.
One of my parents' friends had spent a lot of time doing research in PNG as well as remote parts of South America. He was the nearest real life equivalent to Indiana Jones I've ever met. He told us some wild stories about the place. He would have been old enough to see the place when cannibalism was still around.
I have read somewhere that the cannibalism claims are overrated and kind of artificially inflated by the natives. (Most natives are actually Christian.) I have not looked closely into it though.
Unrelated. We have servers across the world; one in Mount Hagen. It has by far the biggest latency in the world; so I always use it as a "benchmark"; if it works in Mount Hagen, it works everywhere.
I randomly had a conversation with a guy at a bar in Taipei who was an administrator during the transition to self rule, and he said basically the same thing.
He said about many of the tribes modernized within a generation or two, and the ones that didn't still dropped the cannibalism stuff in the 50s.
I’ve just asked a friend of mine who lives in PNG and yeah, this definitely happened. Nowadays it doesn’t happen anymore except potentially in some insanely remote areas.
Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
> Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
Germans and Russians did too. Most humans with a survival instinct will turn to cannibalism if it their only means to survive. This is completely unrelated to cannibalism as a cultural practice.
> People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres
My mother (who is a doctor, although she's retired now) was part of the medical team who worked on this case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arrow-attack-attempted-rape-in-...
My mother isn't mentioned in that article, but the "Allan Mason" it mentions is her husband
A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.
Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification
This is those articles that I would just skip but I didn't...very interesting
I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden
That was a great read !
PNG is on my list to visit. It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day.
I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country
It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight".
the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country.
I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country.
Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee.
The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting.
Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste.
I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_.
When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days.
I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight.
Some travel tools allow you to search for 18+ hour connections.
I visited Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Hawaii, and Turkey at almost no extra dollar cost. If I like the city I go back.
Any cool facts to share about Timor Leste? My usual go to - wikipedia - does paint a rather mundane picture of it.
What's your criteria for mundane? Basically every decent sized island in that part of the world is going to have beautiful beaches, coral reefs, mountains, and jungles.
Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems:
https://theconversation.com/asias-scamming-gangs-target-timo...
(More on those scam factories: https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-job-at-fir...
And from The Economist - lamentably paywalled: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc)
It sounds like it is easy to get to Port Moresby (which is apparently a bit of a dump and very dangerous), but difficult to get anywhere else.
PNG has changed very rapidly. Parts of the country were in the Stone Age within living memory and are moving over.
> So nearly all groups eventually internalized a similar set of norms, a similar food culture and similar political institutions, without ever being part of the same political unit.
They managed to achieve eventual consistency in a distributed system, thousands of years before we even thought of it.
two great films in PNG are joe leahy's neighbours and black harvest
really excellent insight into society and values there as it meets capitalism
There was a discussion on it here yesterday: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1wfdnus/why...
One of my parents' friends had spent a lot of time doing research in PNG as well as remote parts of South America. He was the nearest real life equivalent to Indiana Jones I've ever met. He told us some wild stories about the place. He would have been old enough to see the place when cannibalism was still around.
I have read somewhere that the cannibalism claims are overrated and kind of artificially inflated by the natives. (Most natives are actually Christian.) I have not looked closely into it though.
Unrelated. We have servers across the world; one in Mount Hagen. It has by far the biggest latency in the world; so I always use it as a "benchmark"; if it works in Mount Hagen, it works everywhere.
I randomly had a conversation with a guy at a bar in Taipei who was an administrator during the transition to self rule, and he said basically the same thing.
He said about many of the tribes modernized within a generation or two, and the ones that didn't still dropped the cannibalism stuff in the 50s.
Servers for mining companies?
Just curious if the hospital still exists there. Do you know?
I’ve just asked a friend of mine who lives in PNG and yeah, this definitely happened. Nowadays it doesn’t happen anymore except potentially in some insanely remote areas.
Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
> Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
Germans and Russians did too. Most humans with a survival instinct will turn to cannibalism if it their only means to survive. This is completely unrelated to cannibalism as a cultural practice.
lol don't go there it's a trap. Civilization, despite all these people, is good.
This article makes me angry about colonialism, misrepresentation of genetic studies and just-so pseudo-scholars.
But still. Gourds up. Highlander pride worldwide.