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Manila is an ugly city and, like Jakarta, it’s also a very exhausting place. After a week of meeting with and listening to politicians, I was itching to get away from the capital.

On the recommendation of some friends, I headed south to the island of Bohol, which is located in the Visayas, the belt of islands anchored by Cebu and sandwiched between Luzon to the north and Mindanao to the south.

I’d been told that Bohol, more than Boracay (the country’s party-island), was a Bali in the making. Bohol, according to my sources, had Boracay-like sandy beaches. But, at the same time, it also had culture, history and beautiful countryside.

So, tired of being stuck in endless traffic jams along EDSA, Manila’s equivalent of Jalan Gatot Subroto and Jalan Sudirman rolled into one, I headed off.

However, modern technology means that we can never leave our world truly behind and with my BlackBerry at my side blinking perpetually, news from Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta followed me across Bohol’s gorgeous landscape.

Of the two, the updates from Malaysia were by far the most disturbing as news of the caning of three women for extramarital sex circulated around the globe, receiving almost universal condemnation.

There is no doubt that Malaysia has crossed a line with the canings. According to former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the nation has long been an Islamic state where these things are “normal” — though this is not a position I’d agree with.

With the latest development, Malasyia has chosen to place the government — with all its inadequacies and prejudices — dramatically into the world of private morality.

Obviously this has already been well underway with the Anwar Ibrahim prosecution. The decision to cane the three women (they were apparently very remorseful after the humiliating experience) is a turning point for Malaysia. Now the government is empowering its security apparatus to police the rakyat’s (people’s) morals and bedrooms.

And this, it should be remembered, is not an administration led by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). The initiative came from the former modernists in the United Malays National Organization. How times change.

So I drove around Bohol with the news flashing on my BlackBerry — a constant reminder of the bigotry and narrowness that has been making life in Kuala Lumpur more and more challenging.

While Bohol’s charms couldn’t entirely shake off the gloom, the island and its history reminded me of the arbitrariness of life in Southeast Asia.

As one of the first points of contact between the Spanish and the locals back in 1565, Bohol would most probably have been a Muslim enclave. The Spanish, however, were determined conquerors, spreading Catholicism in their wake.

Interestingly though, the conquistadors quickly realized that they would only be able to convert the local people if they themselves (and their priests) learned the local languages. This they promptly did, spreading Christianity through a mixture of Tagalog or Bisayan, depending on the locality.

This was not dissimilar to the acculturation that took place in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries when Islam was spread using Javanese, adapting to local customs.

Bohol was indeed a pleasant surprise, reminding me of countless places I’ve visited across Southeast Asia over the years. There were parts that had echoes of Terengganu in peninsular Malaysia, Sabah in Borneo, Ambon, Bangka and even Pagan in Burma.

As I drove across Bohol, stopping off at beaches and the rolling “chocolate” hills in the center of the island (a set of limestone formations worn down by the wind and the rain) I found myself forgetting the dispiriting news from Kuala Lumpur.

I was very intrigued by the island’s churches. They were large, daunting limestone structures, laid out by Jesuits with impressive thick walls, baroque altar pieces and lavish painted ceilings.

On the other hand, I still couldn’t quite shake off the unpredictable nature of history. Here, in a land little different from my own — a land studded with coconut palms, bamboo groves, mango trees and watered by frequent rainstorms — another faith had taken hold and become dominant whereas on the Malay Peninsula we had become Muslims.

Once converted, we in Malaysia have now become the most assiduous of Muslims, somehow forgetting our rich, syncretic, and much more tolerant past.

 

Karim Raslan is a columnist who divides his time between Malaysia and Indonesia.