The Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity and its
proposals for improving linkages within the ASEAN Economic Community have been
a hot topic. However, the real impact of
improved ASEAN connectivity is often lost among the statistics and funding
figures thrown around. This week, I had
the unique opportunity to experience the issues related to ASEAN connectivity during
travels from the south to the north of ASEAN.
This crystalized ASEAN’s connectivity issues for me.
Here’s a summary of what I went through this
past week:
Monday – Starting in Singapore, I
took an Air Asia flight to Jakarta’s new but already quite full Terminal
3. After getting into a taxi which got
lost, I finally made it to a meeting with my client, the Indonesian Ministry of
Trade. After the meeting, I was caught
in a rainstorm. Fortunately, a young boy with an umbrella walked me to the
street and helped me get a taxi; I tipped him US$ 1 for his assistance. My taxi
to the airport then got caught in a flash flood and we had to circle around
Jakarta to finally get to Terminal 3. I
got on another Air Asia flight to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal in KL, then
took a bus to KL Sentral.
Tuesday – I took a taxi in heavy
traffic to meet a client in downtown KL.
After the meeting, I took a return taxi and rode the KLIA Ekspres train
to KLIA. Then I took a Jetstar flight back to Singapore.
Wednesday – To get to an Amcham
Singapore meeting on Myanmar, I called two Singapore taxi companies
simultaneously for 40 minutes but failed to reach an operator. That meant a 15 minute walk to the main road,
where I finally caught a taxi. The taxi
driver claimed that the drivers are too busy picking up passengers on the road
to take phone or internet bookings, despite the higher fees involved. The
driver also claimed that it was my fault for living in a “bad neighborhood” for
taxis.
Thursday – With my sister, I flew on
Singapore Airlines to Yangon (my wife’s cousin Wilson was the pilot). After arriving, we promptly got stuck in
extremely long immigration lines at the gleaming new international terminal,
and then traffic jams in downtown Yangon, both due to Myanmar’s new popularity.
Friday – We left at 5 am to catch a
6:20 Air Mandalay flight to Mandalay.
After boarding, the turboprop plane reached the runway, stopped for a
moment and quickly returned to the decrepit domestic terminal. We then sat there for 5 hours with no
information; I had to call the travel agent to talk with the airline. Finally,
Air Mandalay used an incoming plane for our flight and delayed the later
flights by an additional 4 hours.
Saturday – We visited one of
Myanmar’s ancient capitals, Inwa (Ava).
This required taking a small boat ferry to cross the river. Then we took
a horse-drawn carriage to get to the ruins of the capital.
Whew! That
I can make this post from Mandalay shows how much internet connectivity has
improved in Myanmar. However, telecoms
are still very expensive here and the debacle with Air Mandalay illustrates how
undeveloped the tourist infrastructure remains. Clearly there needs to be more
funding for improvements in terminals, air traffic control, telecommunications
networks, ports and other physical assets in ASEAN.
Yet improved connectivity in ASEAN will be
useless without improved human infrastructure as well. Singapore has the most developed mass transit
system in ASEAN, yet it can utterly fail due to attitudes like my taxi driver’s
or neglect of physical infrastructure by a society which views construction and
engineering as matters for the foreign guest workers to handle, and not
Singaporeans (which has resulted in recent subway snafus). Conversely, I had no
problems getting a horse cart or ferry boat in Inwa, because the Burmese people
were willing to work with what they had, despite their poor infrastructure!
However, for me the little boy with the
umbrella outside the Indonesian Ministry of Trade symbolizes both the failures
and the potential of ASEAN. Clearly, that boy should have been in school, and
not hanging around a government ministry with an umbrella. That needs to
change. On the other hand, the boy had
the initiative to see a market opportunity (my need to avoid getting wet) and
filled it with his umbrella. If we can
connect that human initiative with better opportunities (e.g., education,
improved infrastructure) then ASEAN and its people can reach their full
potential.
