LATest e-bulletin October '22

In this issue: ① Turning the page ② LAT Tariff and Product 2023-24 ③ Indonesia Everybody wants to go Sumatera ④ So Many Good Reasons to Work with LAT ⑤ Vintage Chinese Jazz ⑥ Malaysia Theater ⑦ Sulawesi Megalith ⑧ MY Airline ⑨ Is football worth to die for? ⑩ We Will be There

Turning the Page

With the passing of the summer season, we are turning a page on the whole pandemic opprobrium. Certainly, the health, social and economic distress brought about by will linger for a while before we can finally say “it is over!” The good news now is that we are back on our feet, busy resuming the lives and business we love to run.

In the meantime, the situation in Ukraine is rapidly developing along very different lines than expected just before summer and we do hope that a way out of it may be found soon. The spectre of a difficult winter is still looming over Europe and other parts of the world; the actions taken by governments to support families and businesses and to sufficiently stock up gas are somewhat mitigating the effects of such scourge. This geopolitical complexity and consequent cost of energy will keep holding back a full recovery to pre-Covid levels.

Nevertheless, the page of the Pandemic is turned and we symbolically like to mark it by distributing our Tariff and Product for 2023/24 which has been prepared in LAT traditional style of continuous innovation and enrichment of cultural content. This year Lotus proposes new lines of products spanning from “Away from Crowds” circuits to “LGBT friendly, vacation and honeymooning” and “Slow Tourism” our tours at a very slow pace with plenty of interaction with places and people visited.

For those in search of easy and in language touring around the region, our modular system of weekly and biweekly group departures has been improved with more and more offers, combining different landscapes, nature and culture like Malaysia, Sumatera and Singapore.

All our offers are now all strictly carbon neutral, all emissions being calculated and offset by projects in cooperation with Climate Partner.

Following the long Covid hiatus, the recompositing of an efficient and reliable supply chain and the pricing of services have been major challenges to the completion of this work and the main reasons for the late publishing.

Increasing cost, limited work force, diminishing capacity and the relentless search for better positioning in the market have turned many establishments hesitant to committing on long term tariffs.

That, coupled by the gyrations of a world economy pressed by inflationary processes, skyrocketing energy cost and the uncertainties of global geopolitics will certainly be the most relevant factors contributing to the numerous updated editions that will follow this one.

Indonesia, Everybody wants to go to Sumatera

Just some forty minutes away from Malaysia and Singapore by plane, Sumatra is a land of stunning beauty and diversity. Mostly mountainous and covered by lush rain forests, the island is populated by a variety of indigenous and Malay people.

Sumatra is the second largest (after Borneo) of the Greater Sunda Islands, and the sixth in the world. It is separated in the northeast from the Malay Peninsula by the Strait of Malacca and in the south from Java by the Sunda Strait. The high Barisan Mountains run northwest southeast for some 1600 kilometres (1000 miles), reaching an elevation of (3800 metres at Mount Kerinci. Eastward, flat alluvial lands are drained by many rivers; the Hari River, navigable for four hundred and eighty kilometres, is the longest. Lake Toba, with an area of about 1140 square kilometres is the largest of many mountain lakes.

The Sumatran Lowland Rain Forest is one of the most diverse forests on Earth and one of the most threatened. These forests contain comparable levels of species diversity as the richest forests in Borneo and New Guinea. The Sumatra rain forests are home to some of the world's most charismatic flowering plants: Rafflesia, which produces the largest flower in the world (up to one metre wide).

The avifauna is also exceptionally rich. More than four hundred and fifty bird species are found here, more than in any other ecoregion in the Sunda Shelf and Philippines bioregion, except the Borneo Lowland Rain Forests. The variety of mammals inhabiting the island include the Sumatran rhinoceros, Malayan tapir, tiger, Asian elephant, and orangutan.

Unfortunately, illegal logging and deforestation are contributing to a rapid loss of habitat for many of these species. Three national parks on the island—Mount Leuser, Kerinci Seblat, and Bukit Barisan Selatan—collectively were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004. Sumatra’s climate is hot, except in the highlands, and extremely moist. The Acehnese inhabit north-western Sumatra; the Gayo and Alas peoples, the mountainous north-central area; the Batak, around and south of Lake Toba; and the Minangkabau (the largest ethnic group), the Padang Highlands. South of Padang along the western coast live the Rejang mountain people and the Lampung coastal dwellers. The Malays, a coastal and riverine people dominating the eastern coast and the wide southern plains, speak Malay, the long-standing lingua franca of the archipelago. Most Sumatrans are Muslims, though some are Christians and animists. Road networks are fairly good in north-eastern Sumatra, the Padang highlands, and southern Sumatra, but mountain trails and rivers are used elsewhere.

Bukit Lawang is a small tourist village on the bank of Bahorok River in North Sumatra province of Indonesia. Situated approximately 86 km northwest of the city of Medan, Bukit Lawang is known for the largest animal sanctuary of Sumatran orangutan (around 5,000 orangutans occupying the area) and also the main access point to the Gunung Leuser National Park from the east side.

The Bukit Lawang rehabilitation centre for orangutans was founded in 1973. Its main purpose was to preserve the decreasing number of orangutan population due to hunting, trading and deforestation. The centre closed in 2002 as the place was getting too touristy and unsuitable for animal rehabilitation.

So Many Good Reasons to Work with LAT

Established in 1991 Independently owned and operated Purely B2B with travel industry partners Online booking engine with immediate confirmation of hotels, tours and transfers Skilful Contents Provider and Technology user Knowledgeable and efficient reservations personnel Long and proud association with the MICE industry in all Lotus destinations Fully committed to Sustainability and CSR; ‘Travelife’ partner Carbon Neutrality for all packages and services on offer

Extensive selection of scheduled group departures and innovative product lines Direct access to a vast pool of local professional contributors Owns small boutique island hotels strategically located LAT Indochina subsidiary operating in Thailand and Vietnam Multilingual guides in all destinations Operations offices throughout its destinations Centralised bookings and payments for multi destination tours Assistance in language

THE TATTLER

Vintage Chinese Jazz

A century on, 'indecent' Shidaiqu music is blossoming in Malaysia and Singapore. Onstage, the spotlights are on three Chinese Malaysian women in retro bob haircuts, colorful dresses inspired by the region's floral batik tradition, and vertiginous high heels. Standing in single file, they take turns to wail melodiously -- in Mandarin, Malay and English -- while a band of Malaysian men in ties zeros down on strings, keys and skins. In front of the stage, a mixed crowd of elderly Chinese Malaysians, smartphone-toting millennials and curious expatriates hum and cheer a repertoire of vintage Shanghai jazz, rearranged Malay classics and tunes from the great American songbook. To some spectators, the music brings back the thrills of youth. To others, the performers sound and look uniquely chic. Kuala Lumpur-based singers Janet Lee, Winnie Ho and Mian Tan, better known as the Shang Sisters, are not reinventing the wheel -- but they are hitting a jackpot by forging in a new musical direction that they call Nanyang Jazz. In Mandarin Chinese, Nanyang refers to Southeast Asia. Nanyang Jazz is a term coined by the team and refers to a multilingual repertoire from Southeast Asia, paired with musical influences from different regions of the world. Originally formed in 2014 as the Shanghai Sisters, the group reinterpreted century-old Shanghai jazz classics (known as Shidaiqu music, literally meaning "songs of the era") and released an acclaimed eponymous album in 2019.

HIGHLIGHTS

Sulawesi Megalith

The Lore Lindu Megalith are a series of carved stone monuments centred on the Bada Valley within the eponymous National Park in Sulawesi. Also known as Celebes, Sulawesi is one of the four Greater Sunda Islands and was first inhabited during prehistory when the island almost certainly formed part of the land bridge used for the settlement of Australia and New Guinea by at least 40,000 BC.A majority of the present-day island inhabitants descend from the Buginese or Bugis people, which are an ethnic group that migrated around 2000 BC to the area around Lake Tempe, and Lake Sidenreng, in the Walannae Depression in the southwest peninsula of Sulawesi.

Malaysia Theater

Challenging Malaysia’s historical narratives, three Malaysian artists take turns scribbling symbols and motifs with chalk on a blackboard floor that doubles as a stage, singing and telling stories. A screen hung behind the stage shows live interview footage, helping take audiences on a multimedia journey that transcends traditional theatrical performance to shed light on the skeletons in the closet of Malaysian history. The Equipe wants to critically bring on stage the tools of the documentary or supposed ‘truth-making’ world – various cameras and media techniques such as the green screen as explained by the director Mark Teh, a member of the Kuala Lumpur-based collective Five Arts Centre, founded in 1984.The performers do everything in the show: there are no blackouts or backstage for them to hide, no stage managers to come in and transform the set.

Malaysia, MY Airline

MYAirline is a proposed low cost carrier to be based in Malaysia. Malaysian Aviation Commission (MAVCOM) approved the issuance of an air service license (ASL) to My Airline and its Air Operator Certificate on 27 September 2022. It will commence operations in December 2022 with two Airbus 320-200.

Is Football worth to die for?

At least 125 people have been killed and around 320 injured at a football match in Indonesia in one of the world’s worst ever sports stadium disasters. Police used teargas in response to a pitch invasion by rioting fans, causing a crush among panicked spectators. Officers and organizers are facing scrutiny over the tragedy, including questions over the use of teargas inside the venue, which is contrary to FIFA guidance. The incident occurred after a match in which the Javanese club Arema were defeated by their rivals Persebaya Surabaya at Kanjuruhan stadium in Malang regency, East Java on Saturday night.

We wil be There

Meet the LAT team at TTG Incontri, 12-14 October Rimini and WTM 07-09 November London and discover the new world of LAT tour and hospitality services.