A whale of a time (LOL!!!)

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This is the first blog in a LONG time and my excuse is... err... I been busy. I got you all hooked and then took away the drug and for this i apologise. But im leaving tommorow and thought I would right my wrongs and do a whistle stop tour of the second half of my trip. Im now writing from Bangkok but wishing I was still in Indonesia. In Indonesia I had 60 days, just over 200 hours on boats and buses, saw 8 Komodo dragons, 3 albinos, 1 buffalo sacrifice, 5 scuba dives and 3 midgets. While I came to Indonesia because of its beautiful nature, its the people who make it awesome. I will definitely have to return to explore the HUGE parts I missed, and you should too.

After finishing the blog last time I was on the Island of Alor (the far east of Nusa Tengarran Indonesia, closer to Australia than Borneo), famed for its scuba diving. The person who I was staying with (Apedis) was nice but became massively annoying. He insisted on speaking in his broken english which meant that it took at least a minute to put together a sentence and after he did he was so proud that he would repeat it three times. GNNAAARR!! So i quickly left for a nearby little island called Kepa for some sea based fun. Kepa is about 150 metres wide with nothing but a tiny village and a hotel run by a french couple. their electricity comes from solar power (and onions) and they scuba dive everyday. If it wasn't overrun by aging french scuba divers it would have been paradise. Did some cool scuba diving, and found out from the French wife that a nearby island of Pantar was sparsely populated and only slightly corrupted by Western society.

After 3 days hopped on a boat to Alor again then waited a couple of days and hopped on a boat to Pantar. On the two hour journey I went to a hobbit sized toilet and then met Rocky: an 18 year old with a Ramones hoody and a dream of joining the Indonesian army. He invited me to stay with him in the village of Abang Ewang which I did. When the boat arrived the village looked like a stereotypical picture of an island paradise. It had small fishing boats and coconuts palms lining the beach. Pigs, goats, chickens and children roamed amongst the thatched roofed houses. After dumping my stuff in my new bedroom I was met by the village head and his cronies. He was a crazy looking man with a face a bit like a sad clown. Actually all the old people in this part of the world look crazy because they spend their time chewing an intoxicating plant name of Betul nut. This gives them a small tobacco like buzz, for the price of permanently blood red teeth. We chatted about the usual and it was soon clear that white people were rare here. The only other person to visit this village seemed to be a linguist who came to record the local language.

Life on Pantar was simple but beautiful. They survived by fishing with nets and spearguns, growing rice and tobacco (here they call it tambaco which is ace) and trading with the mountain folk. One of the best things about life here is that alcohol grows on trees!!! No joke! The Tuak tree provides a fizzy, white, 5% alcoholic drink! which tastes ACE. one tree can produce about 1 litre two times per day. The sad clown tried to get me to drink it for breakfast but I said NO WAY!!! No house in the village had electricity but thats not a problem because everyone knows electricity is for idiots.

After meeting the head I went boating with the kids and Rocky. The sea around Pantar has world class snorkelling and they would paddle while I would don my snorkelling gear and jump in at a particularly beautiful spot. I spent two days just boating around, snorkelling and chilling with the uncorrupted village folk. Everyone is friendly, everyone knows everyone, no crime!!! On my second day there I met up with a particularly crazy looking spearfisher and he let me swim down and watch him work. The tropical fish I had admired a few days earlier scuba diving were now ending up on the end of his skewer. He would swim down, hover by a fish for about 10 seconds then unleash his elastic band powered spear. It was cool but sad because even after they were cooked you could see their lovely colours and patterns.

After the spearfishing I went to play with the kids in the surf. There was one kid who was filthy with sand, so i pretended I was really angry and said "Saya tidak suka kotor" (i dont like dirty) then picked him up and chucked him into the sea. After that all the kids would roll around in the sand and I would chase them and try to chuck them in the sea to the amusement of all. I am calling this game: H.O.G. or Hygiene obsessed giant. After that the kids were less scared of me, and me and Rocky played a knackering game of football in the main square against the kids until sunset. The kids hung around until way after dark and then all of a sudden Rocky started to hit them with a stick. A few minutes later I learned that they were supposed to go home for food before dark but had stayed out late to play with the strange foreigner.

The main attraction on Pantar is a smoking Volcano that is about 7 hours walk from Abang Uwang and on my third day I hired a guide to take my huge bag and set off for the volc. I wanted to stay for longer in Abang Uwang but my arrival had disrupted village life so much I thought it best not to hang around too long. The walk was brutal since we started late and had to walk in the midday sun. To make it worse the heat expanded my feet and made my shoes too small. After 5 hours we gave in and hired two motorbikes.

On a tip from an American I met I arrived at a volcano adjacent village called Tacpala to stay with some guy called Pak Sem. He ran the local government office and was heathily corrupt. While the rest of the village didn't have electricity, he had solar panels, a generator, sattelite TV and HUGE speakers. Each night about 30 people from the village would crowd into his living room to watch football or jackie chan. Early the next day he took me to see the smoking Crater of volcano Gunung Sirung Api. While there I came up with an idea for a sitcom set in a volcano. Each week one of the main characters suffers horrific volcano related burns and the series only lasts 4 weeks because there is only four characters. Pak Sem wasn't amused. The volcano was smoking like a madman though which was cool. Because this place is off the radar the "hello mister" factor is off the charts. While motorbiking back from the volcano we passed through one village and every child from the village ran out to wave and chase the bike for a whole minute. Near the village is a football pitch dominated by the volcano. and I had another knackering game of football.

Pantar was completely beautiful, completely safe and unspoilt so I wondered why no-one else came here. The four main reasons I thought of are 1. its hella far away from anywhere. 2. hygiene??? 3. the food is basic and lastly and most importantly no-one speaks english. Luckily your narrator laughs at such mortal concerns since I now speak decent Indonesian and am stinky.

After 5 days on Pantar i took the boat to the island of Lembata. Lembata has the last village on Earth where they hunt whales by hand: Lamalera. Lamalera is almost as strange as Toraja. Whereas Torajan life revolves around Buffalos, here whale hunting dominates every part of life. Coming into the village you see whale meat drying outside every house. The beach is covered in whale bones and still rotting whale meat. The stench of whale fat is unescapable. They have been deemed exempt from whaling restrictions because they use wooden boats without motors and only catch 15-25 a year. However just in the week before I arrived those crafty savages had nabbed 10 whales. They don't hunt blue whales because they believe that they travelled to the island riding on the back of a blue whale which is badass.

From my lonely planet I found a woman named Maria with a place to stay. This was a fantastic piece of luck as her son was returning from Timor where he worked as a journalist and he was a legend. He also studied philosophy and knew a bit of english. He was friendly, philosophical and had a dirty sense of humour so we got on famously. He educated me about Indonesian corruption (EVERYWHERE) and some politics. He had a brother who was the first person in Indonesia I met who has criticised religion. Everyone has told me that there is not a single atheist in the whole country. While Michael went to school his cousin is a harpooner and he dropped out of school after 2 years and has been hunting whales ever since. Lamalera is like being teleported back into a time which should have disappeared long ago. The men were all "catholic" now, but just like Toraja they hold on to their old ways. For instance when they die they think their spirits go inside the whaling boats. I drilled Michael on this one: Is it the boats or heaven the spirits go to, can't be both!!!

My plan was to join them in the whale hunt but the Gods had blessed them with so much whale over the past few months they weren't going hunting. I waited 5 days, just hanging around drinking Tuak, visting nearby villages and generally feeling like one of the family. Occasionally snorkelling in the harbour but snorkelling was mostly spent dodging floating whale fat. In hindsight I should have stayed another week because life there was perfect but my time was running low. I didn't get to see a whale hunt but I wasn't really annoyed since I had a great time and I decided that whales are far too beautiful to kill.

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