At the beginning of this book, I talked about hope, and how the world's hope in Aung San Suu Kyi has all but died as her government oversees what has all the hallmarks of genocide against the Rohingya in Rakhine State.

But I also talked about how, for all her faults, it was a speech by Aung San Suu Kyi that first set me on the path of meeting the remarkable women whose stories you have just read.

“Democracy is belief in the people,” she said, speaking at the rally I mentioned in the Preface, as the sun beat down on the crowds in the fevered last few days before the November 2015 election.

A few days later, I was in the throng outside the NLD's headquarters in Yangon as the election results came in.

This time, it was raining, proper big droplet, soak-you-to-the-skin rain, but the mood was jubilant. Many were wearing NLD red, and some had bandanas knotted around their heads. Everyone was singing, and some were crying with joy as they watched the results arrive in Myanmar's first openly contested election in decades.

One man looked at the sky behind us. “Rain?” he said in English. “No problem!”

But for me and my kit, it was a slight problem, so I headed off to find shelter for a few hours until the rain eased off. Actually, as I walked towards a nearby café, the rain only got more intense; really hammering it down as my friend and I nudged past the human chain of volunteers forming a protective barrier between the revellers and the traffic.

With hopeless umbrellas and flooded streets, trousers plastered to our thighs and flip-flops in hand (nearly washed away by the flood), we pushed open the café doorway.

There was a beauty salon upstairs where we thought we could possibly borrow towels. Walking meekly up the staircase, leaving little rivulets of rainwater cascading down behind us, we were seized and bundled into a side room.

Switching on the air-con to the highest setting (to heat us up and take away the moisture from — well, us), the beauticians grinned and gestured at hairdryers and towels.

They didn't speak much English and I hardly speak any Burmese, but the message was clear: get in here, you silly foreigners, and let us help you.

IN MYANMAR, one of the most common everyday sights is a line of Buddhist monks, barefoot, shaven headed, clad in scarlet robes. Early in the morning, they queue up outside shops, houses and restaurants to receive alms — food and support from lay people.

For foreigners, they are also one of the most exotic sights, eagerly snapped on smartphones and cameras. But you don't just see monks. There are nuns too, also with bare feet and shaven heads. They normally wear pink robes with an orange sash.

However, according to the type of Buddhism practised in Myanmar, they are not really nuns at all. According to Theravada Buddhism, women cannot be ordained as nuns, because their order is basically extinct. They are, at best, known as “renunciants”, lay women who have taken vows to live according to Buddha's teachings — and there are 60,000 of them in Myanmar (despite their official non-existence).

But these nuns can't preach, become senior members of the Buddhist community, or even enter some parts of pagodas. They also don't get anywhere near the respect afforded to monks in this deeply religious country, and often even struggle for food donations. It's hardly the image of equality, tolerance and harmony that Buddhism often has in the West.

Ketu Mala is a Burmese nun, and she's not happy about this inequality. She's not just any nun, either. She founded the incredibly successful Dhamma School Foundation, which brings Buddhist teachings into education in Myanmar. She recently met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and leads lectures all over Asia. And she's a feminist — a feminist nun.

We meet in one of her friend's houses near Yangon airport.

“Let's face it,” she says, speaking partly in English and partly Burmese.

“Myanmar has and has had a male-dominated, patriarchal society, which also means the majority of religion is also dominated by men. The role of women in the religious sector can sometimes even be remarked upon as non-existent. It's that small. Why? Because the patriarchy is deep-rooted in Myanmar, this is the main point.”

To even say these kinds of things in Myanmar is pretty incendiary. Ketu Mala explains that the leading monks in Myanmar, known as the Bhikkhu Sangha, find this kind of talk threatening.

YIN MYO Su is probably Myanmar's most famous cat-lover. This makes it a little disconcerting when she tells me, moments after we meet for the first time at her floating hotel on Inle Lake, that she doesn't like cats.

“You will laugh, but I hate cats,” she says, looking down at the bluegrey felines slinking affectionately around her legs. “When I was little, kittens near my house would come and hurt my puppy's nose.”

The cats blink their golden eyes and look back up at her. “I do not like cats,” she repeats, firmly.

But love them or hate them, she has become known for them — not just in Myanmar, but across the world. Yin Myo Su, a hotelier by trade, found out in 2007 that the world-renowned Burmese cat barely existed at all in its homeland, Burma. So she began a mission to bring them back.

Working with a couple of heritage organizations, and starting off with just seven cats bought from collectors around the world at eye-watering expense — including breeders in Australia and the pet department of London's Harrods department store — she now has around forty felines, living on an island of their own (I'm not joking) on the picturesque lake in Shan State, attached to the hotel she runs. She lives at another hotel, across the lake.

The cats are housed in mini-replicas of Burmese royal palaces, a nod to their rumoured heritage as palace guards for Burma's ancient kings and queens. Their home is called the Burmese Cat Village, and signposted as such. They have pedicures and manicures, family planning, a dedicated staff, and even a honeymoon suite. One of them even tweets (@Phyuley).

Some are given away to locals, and foreigners can also buy the beasts, at a price-tag of US$600. Aung San Suu Kyi even had one, but she had to give it back because her dog was jealous

The project is about more than just pet cats, though.

“I see Burma losing the things we have, like jade, and as the country opens up we could do something that would preserve our heritage,” says Yin Myo Su, a petite, forty-four-year-old bustling businesswoman, who usually dresses in jewelled colours and is known to most as Misuu.

INTRODUCTION

For those living in Singapore or Peninsular Malaysia, accustomed to having fresh chicken eggs every other morning, chances are that your breakfast comes from one of 17 million broody hens raised in the Malaysian state of Johor. If this comes as a surprise, you are probably not alone. Most recent commentaries concerning Johor's economic growth give the impression that agriculture is now a historical relic. The Iskandar Malaysia development project — accompanied by glittery real estate, oil and gas refining, complex manufacturing, mass tourism, and sophisticated healthcare offerings — now hogs the limelight. Indeed, even for field-leading scholarship on greater Malaysia's economic development, agriculture has been conspicuous by its relative absence, sidelined by an overwhelming focus on manufacturing and services.

This essay represents an initial attempt to redress this imbalance. I ask two basic questions: what is left of agriculture in Johor? And why? My argument is similarly direct: although agriculture's share of Malaysian gross domestic product (GDP) and employment has fallen significantly, much remains, particularly in Johor. Amidst rapid urbanization and industrialization, agriculture's economic contribution in Johor has actually held steady and witnessed resurgence over the past decade. Johor's present-day agricultural strengths lie in oil palms, livestock farming, and certain forms of ornamental products. These agricultural activities are underlined both by high output and productivity relative to the rest of Malaysia. The clusters of trade networks and expertise underpinning these developments were already being developed in Johor prior to independence, and were given additional support from the 1960s onwards through policies linking industry with agriculture.

Johor's unusual situation can be best understood by comparing its present-day context with its past. The following section briefly outlines Southeast Asia's and Malaysia's agricultural transformations since the 1960s. A subsequent section places Johor squarely under the lens, comparing the size and productivity of its farm sector with the rest of Malaysia's. A third section examines the key historical drivers behind Johor's long-standing agricultural prominence. A fourth segment reviews the overarching roles that Malaysia's federal and state governments have played in shaping Johor's resource-heavy economy. I then offer some concluding remarks about Johor's past, present and future agricultural developments, pointing to a number of major uncertainties hanging over Johor's farmscape.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY