From Burma, Jamál Effendi and Mustafá Rúmí traveled further east, stopping over in Singapore on their way to Java, Bali, and Sulawesi in Indonesia. In Singapore, it is very likely that they taught the Bahá’í Faith to the Arab and Indian traders. Mustafá Rúmí eventually settled in Burma to build on the work started by Jamál Effendi. He consolidated the entire village of Daidanaw; it became the first all-Bahá’í village in the world outside Irán. The works of these two great teachers of the Cause paved the way for other Bahá’ís to visit the region and bring in the refreshing breezes of the Faith during the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In 1916, Vasily Eroshenko, a young blind Russian, sailed from Japan and visited Siam, now Thailand. In 1921, Mirza Husayn Tuti arrived in the Philippine Islands and stayed for five years. Three years later, the American journalist Martha Root sailed from Hong Kong to Indochina–now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia–where her articles on the Bahá’í Faith were published in local newspapers. The land and seascapes that greeted these early Bahá’í teachers provided not only a breathtaking backdrop for their travels. They also gave them a vast reservoir of potentialities for the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. Southeast Asia is the crossways of rich cultures and ancient civilizations shaped by thousands of years of human interaction. Clothed in these layers of diversity are peoples unified by a common sense of spirituality. Shoghi Effendi, in writing of the region’s “vastness,” “heterogeneous character,” and “geographical position,” underscored “the spiritual receptivity of many of its inhabitants.” These are peoples whose traditions are rooted in the teachings of the great religions of the Prophetic Cycle, and whose high-minded values are reflected in their relationships with one another, with their communities, and with nature. | 
