Things to Come Adventure UnlimitedPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
People keep asking me, “What’s next?” I come back from diving on the British Battle ship Repulse, or maybe have written a book that has just been released, and what is the first thing people ask, “What’s next?”
I guess that applies to most everyone. An artist paints a masterpiece, a novelist turns out a best seller; a mountaineer climbs a supposedly unscalable peak; a deep sea diver breaks all records and descends farther than any man has dived before, and the public is responsive. These notable men and women are asked to give talks, to conduct lectures, to let the press interview them. Then what is the question everyone wants to know—“What’s next?”
What is next? That’s the question people ask me, what’s next. My answer is simple—plenty. In my travelers around the South Pacific and Southeast Asia I have left some of my objectives unfulfilled. I keep putting them off, saying to myself that one day I will have to finish a job undone. What are they?
Ever hear of Tambralinga and Langasuka?
If I mention names like Troy, Pompeii and Machu Picchu, readers have probably heard of them. They were lost cities that have been found. Tambralinga and Langasuka are still out there somewhere, lost cities waiting to be found. I went looking for them, without success, but I haven’t given up.
Of course, skeptics say Lost Cities! How in our modern day does a city become 'lost'? The fact is ever since man learned to build great cities, he also developed the knack of losing them. Cities simply disappear. Angkor Wat is n example. It wasn’t until Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist exploring in remote Cambodia stumbled upon the ancient Khmer capital, jungle eaten, and lost. And that wasn’t much more than a hundred years go.
What about Tambralinga and Langasuka? Were they real? Or are they only legends and myth. If Khmer ruins like those of Anger Wat have been uncovered, why not the kingdoms of Tambralinga and Langasuka? If we believe the Chinese chronicles, they exist, but finding them will take more than a trek in the jungle. It will take some deep, hard probing. The jungles have seen to that! We have to consider the sheer might and complete destructive force of a tropical rainforest. Leave a seed, carried by the wind, unmolested and overnight it will start to grow. Dropped into the crevice in a boulder and in time, split the boulder in two. It can turn palaces and cities into ruins.
Some years ago I was researching a book on Malaysia and in the archives room at the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur I read in an obscure volume about a Scotsman who had started building a European-style castle on his plantation. A European castle in the Malay jungle? I decided to try to locate the castle, but the area was no longer a rubber plantation. It had returned to jungle.
It took two days to find it. The first sight was disappointing. A gate or guardhouse of sorts had collapsed into a heap of rubble. I had to push aside vines and cobwebs to pass. It was eerie, like stepping on an unknown grave. What resulted was an unbelievable sight. A spacious courtyard was flanked by arches with parts of the wall and gateways lifted up from their foundations. Trees with trailing vines and creepers grew wildly in the garden. I had to look hard to see the walls of the castle before me, stretching skyward.
The castle stood like a minor Angkor Wat, and, like at Angkor Wat, gone too were the people. Who was this Kellie-Smith, the builder? I pieced together the story with the help of an old Tamil rubber tapper who had once worked for the Scotsman. The planter had died in the trenches in France during the Great War.
My interest in lost cities further intensified after reading Marco Polo. When this intrepid traveller returned to Europe after wandering across the face of Asia for seventeen years, he spoke about visiting a city in Southeast Asia of extraordinary beauty and great wealth. Its temple walls were richly carved and it had great courts. A Chinese traveler who followed in his footsteps corroborated Marco Polo's findings and gave first-hand graphic descriptions of the city, which had very lavish courts indeed, and thousands of concubines within.
Other source material comes to us from Chinese chronicles dating back to the 7th and 8th Centuries. They make mention of two great kingdoms whose capitals were Tambralinga and Langasuka. There's no doubt that they did once exist, but their sites have been lost for centuries. Further studies placed their location along the mighty Pahang River in central Malaysia. Over the years I led several expeditions into the Malay jungle in quest of the two lost cities, including a diving expedition to the bottom of Lake Chini in the jungle. I felt I was on to something when Chet Gorman, the anthropologist who worked on the Ban Chiang finds in northern Thailand, showed an interest. We travelled together to visit the curator of the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, but we were turned away. The Malay government figured they didn’t need any outside help. A short while later Chet died of cancer, at the age of 43. The lost cities are still there.
My expedition in the Malay jungle led me to another unexplainable phenomena that I would like to pursue further, but it is a very sensitive issue. It involves Southeast Asia's 'yeti', the legendary Big Foot.
I was never a stanch believer in Big Foot until Tunku Bakar, a Malay prince from Johor State, invited me to join him on a fishing trip on the Endau River in Malaysia. We spent several days travelling up the Endau River but the monsoon rains came early that year. Instead of fishing, a fast-rising river forced us to seek shelter in an Orang Asli village. We spent the next two days listening to Prince Bakar translate Orang Asli tales of the jungles, and that was when they mentioned Orang Dalam.” the giant people. I didn't put much faith in what the old man was telling me until I did my homework in Singapore that I learned there were endless reports of sighting in the jungles. I convinced an American magazine to sponsor my next expedition and spent nearly a month in the jungle. We never met Big Foot but we did find giant footprints that we photographed and cast. The discovery made the cover story of the magazine, but nearly destroyed my reputation. People were now saying, “You don’t believe that, do you?” Fortunately the Chinese are not so skeptical. In recent years there have been so many sightings in China that in 1981 the Chinese set up a bureau called the Society for the Survey and Research of the Chinese Wild Man. The society's 400 members include scientists, teachers and government officials. My aim is to travel to China and meet with these experts.
Also I would like to do more studies on the Orang Asli of the Malay Peninsula. These Stone Age survivors live as they have for thousands of years, and yet little studies have been made of them. I met families of them on the rivers, and did spend time with them, but to do it properly it would require living with them in the jungle for weeks on end. I haven’t ruled this out.
An area that I want to further pursue is marine archeology, or treasure diving, if you wish. For nearly twenty years I sailed my own 71’ schooner and explored the waters of Asia and the Pacific, and I would like to tell readers about some of the discoveries we made—sunken wrecks, both Chinese and World War II, and about so many other things that remain to be explored. But that will have to wait until next week. Stay tuned. Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
