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Published: July 10th 2023
The firm tree does not fear the storm… ~ Indonesian Proverb
HE SAID... Today we were exploring the coastal township of
Pangandaran.
We woke early and tried to capture the sunrise (in photographic form) from our tiny ground floor terrace at the aptly named Sunrise Beach Hotel, but the humidity was so high that the lenses of our cameras immediately fogged over. Regardless, it was a beautiful sunrise over the hazy Indian Ocean that stretched to the southern horizon, and whose rhythmic waves were washing ashore just across the busy road from our room.
We walked to the hotel’s breakfast area (that was puzzlingly located beside a large swimming pool), and the kids were already in hyperdrive – running, jumping, screaming and splashing. As I watched them enthralled in play, I saw a familiar face from the distant past. A face that has long since grown. We were all kids once.
It suddenly dawned on me that our breakfast room was the same function room that had been used for a loud and interminable wedding celebration the night before. I hadn’t realised it was part of the hotel complex. Staff were still sweeping confetti from the floor as we entered. The buffet was pretty good – cornflakes,
yoghurt (the first I’d found since arriving in Indonesia), tea/coffee with condensed milk, diluted watery orange juice, omelettes, noodles, sambal (very tasty), fried tempeh (not quite as tasty as the one we’d sampled in Purwokerto the previous day) and banana fritters (very tasty).
We decided on a big breakfast, as we had a big day ahead. We were embarking on a day-long tour of Pangandaran and its surrounds. Local villages, cottage industries, rivers, canyons, national parks and coastal reserves were all on our visit list. In the short time before the tour started, we headed out for a quick walk along the foreshore to check out Pangandaran’s iconic wooden outriggers. These long narrow fishing boats are pervasive in this bustling beachside town, and their bright blue paint makes them hard to miss.
It wasn’t long before we were clambering into a waiting minibus and heading off on our day trip. I managed to jot down a few notes as we travelled between stops, and I’ve shared these verbatim (or at least very close to their verbatim form). They capture my immediate sentiments and reflections as we explored the hinterlands of Pangandaran, and I’m reluctant to edit them too
much.
Stop 1: Pangandaran local market
While not crowded, this small (and very local) market was at times confronting – the flies, the odour, the dirt floor, the slurry underfoot. However, the stall owners and workers were all very friendly, and they were fascinated by us – a gaggle of foreign tourists wandering through their workplace.
Stop 2: Small enterprise (rice cracker production)
The concrete yard outside this tiny enterprise was almost entirely obscured by mesh wooden frames covered with freshly made rice crackers. They were drying in the searing morning sun. We wandered through the old factory and witnessed its small-scale production. The savoury snacks are cooked and crafted entirely by hand. It is unbelievably hard work. The heat from a fire in the tropics is difficult to imagine, but working in a small shed with an open fire defies belief. I struggled to watch the intensity of the work. Our local guide made disparaging remarks about the female packers. My disdain for him was growing exponentially.
Stop 3: Small enterprise (palm sugar production)
This tiny enterprise was even smaller than the rice cracker factory. A local sugar making operation set up in the back room
of a very small family dwelling. We stood around a huge metal dish with a fire burning underneath. A friendly woman was boiling the sap from the flowers of a coconut tree. We were offered a taste of the end product. Palm sugar (or brown sugar as the locals referred to it) cut straight from a solid round slab. It had an amazingly deep flavour, which I couldn’t get enough of. I was eating small chunks of sugar cut straight from the slab. It was incredible!
Stop 4: Small enterprise (goat keepers)
We visited a local family that kept goats, and we managed to capture a photo of ourselves with the elderly couple outside their dwelling. They were very cute. As we walked to our next stop in the tiny local village, we stopped at a young bloke’s ice cream cart, which he was fortuitously wheeling through the village at the time. We all purchased a tiny ice cream from him, and it was so incredibly refreshing. I couldn’t believe he was wearing trousers and a hoodie in the intense tropical humidity! Maybe it was a cool day for him. He was so happy and affable.
Stop 5:
Small enterprise (wooden puppet makers)
We continued wandering through the tiny rural village until we arrived at the workshop of a wooden puppet maker. Traditional wooden puppet theatre in West Java is known as
wayang golek, and to be honest, I arrived with minimal interest. I quickly realised that puppetry can be very entertaining in the right hands. We sat with a couple of puppet makers and watched on as they methodically carved wooden puppets out of very soft wood. The older of the two was also a
dalang (puppet master, or puppeteer), and he willingly offered us an impromptu one-man puppet show. It was fantastic!
My favourite performance came from his wooden pirate puppet. The way he adjusted his cap, rolled back his sleeves and apologised to the audience (i.e. us) for his poor English. This was an exceptional performance from a skilled and gifted puppeteer. Everything this quietly spoken but highly theatrical puppeteer said corresponded with the descriptions of puppet shows in Colin McPhee’s
A House in Bali, which formed part of my pre-reading for this Indonesian adventure. Puppet shows start late (9pm) in Indonesia, and eventually come to an end in the early morning hours (around
3am). When our puppeteer explained how exhausted he feels after a show, I completely understood why.
Stop 5: Green Canyon
After grabbing a few selfies with some of the wooden puppets, we clambered into a waiting minibus and headed westward to the aptly named Green Canyon, a picturesque and remote gorge flanked by high cliffs on a bend in the Cijulang River. We were accessing the gorge by river, so we parked near a small marina (right on the highway), clambered aboard a long wooden boat with an outboard motor and outriggers, and sped upstream. The river was green – emerald green in fact – and lush greenery crept down the surrounding hills and draped over the river bank. The thick foliage was impenetrable. Rivers such as these are so evocatively described by Joseph Conrad in
An Outcast of the Islands, another of my pre-reading novels for this Indonesian adventure.
We arrived at a narrowing in the river, where fast flowing water was spilling over a small ledge. We clambered out of the boat and used ropes to pull ourselves upstream against the strong current, then swam to a small rock (which we clung to and rested briefly).
We continued to swim upstream, this time effortlessly in the slipstream of a small eddy close to the rock face. We eventually arrived at a large rock, where the river was surging through a much narrower section of the gorge. We donned life jackets and let ourselves slip into the fast-flowing current in a defiant act of submission – it was incredibly liberating. The current pushed me into the sheer cliff face, so I had to use my feet to push myself back into the middle of the Green Canyon. I swam back to the large rock and rested in a safe alcove, letting the surging water drag against my skin.
I was without my glasses, so my vision wasn’t clear. I wish it had been. As I looked up, light streamed down through the lush foliage high above us, and drops of water fell from the cliff face and dissolved into the water around us. The constant sound of the surging water was deafening, and the feeling of utter detachment and mindfulness – simultaneously – was exhilarating. Unfortunately, it was time to leave. We slipped into the fast-flowing river and submitted completely to the strong current, floating effortlessly
back to the waiting boat. We navigated the slippery ledge, scrambled awkwardly into the boat and retraced our journey downstream.
This was an extraordinary experience, and one I am especially grateful for. Yet it held significant risk. There was a very real chance that an average swimmer could drown. I was stunned to discover that our local cowboy guide had tried to persuade Ren to join us, despite her telling him that she couldn’t swim. He said she would be fine, and that all she needed was a life jacket. He said he’d stay with her all the way, yet I saw how erratic he became when we arrived at the surging section of the gorge. If he continues to guide tourists in this part of West Java, he will lose a traveller in the swirling waters of the Green Canyon.
On arriving back at the marina, we clambered out of the long wooden boat, changed into dry clothes on the river bank, crossed the busy highway to our waiting minibus and headed straight to our lunch stop – which luckily was nearby. After swimming in a gorge with fast flowing water, we were hungry.
Stop 6:
Lunch (Warung Ibu Ade)
When we arrived at Ibu Ade, a very small and local eatery, we felt immediately welcome. The eatery had a self-serve model, which was explained to us as we gathered around the food options on offer. We served ourselves from a selection of dishes set out along two benches at the front of the shop, then took our meal to a counter at the back of the shop, where the owner calculated how much our meal was going to cost – based on what we had selected. My plate had rice, beef rendang, fried soybeans and chillies, chilli sambal, chilli sambal with dried fish, and stir-fried aubergine. This was good food, and it was served with complimentary hot tea. We finished the meal with a strange gelatinous coconut desert that I will not be seeking out again.
We left the small eatery in the mid-afternoon and drove (by minibus) back to Sunrise Beach Hotel in Pangandaran. I didn’t realise we’d travelled so far west from our starting point. It was a 30-kilometre return journey. At one stage we were driving along Java’s southern coastline. I gazed out the window at a long open beach with
small waves flattened by a strong onshore breeze. A lonely sign appeared. Cikembulan Pass. We were less than ten minutes from Pangandaran.
Stop 7: Coastal reserve (guided trek)
After refreshing in our hotel room, we opted to join a guided trek of Pangandaran’s coastal reserve. It sounded great, but it had a downside. It was with the same local guide that we had endured since embarking on our exploration of Pangandaran and its surrounds earlier in the day. Some would refer to him as a loose cannon, while others would refer to him a cowboy. I won’t share my description, but I will offer a clue. It starts with an f.
We walked from our hotel along the foreshore to the somewhat nondescript entrance of Pangandaran National Park. On the way we encountered a huge monitor lizard munching fish in a storm water drain. Our guide became so excited by the gratuitous carnage, he chased the lizard out of the drain to give us a better view. His conservationist credentials were looking shaky at best; non-existent at worst.
At the park entrance we encountered
kijang (barking deer) and peacocks. On wandering further into the park, we crept
through a large (and very dark) cave populated with bats and a small number of porcupines. It was fascinating to see a porcupine in its natural habitat for the first time. The cave opened onto a small beach, where we encountered a troop of monkeys gathering food scraps from the ground and settling on tree branches to munch them.
As we wandered further into the forested park, we encountered more monkeys, more barking deer and the occasional flying fox. Dusk was beginning to fall, but we continued to navigate the park’s uneven leafy ground cover in semi-darkness. We could barely see, as the failing light was struggling to penetrate the tree canopy, so a decision was made to exit the darkening forest. Our guide led us to the popular
Pasir Putih (White Sand Beach) on the western side of the narrow isthmus that separates the bustling town of Pangandaran from its national park. We were meant to swim here, but by the time we arrived the sun had set.
We walked back to the hotel in darkness, guided by torch light from our mobile phones. On the way, we had to walk through a small stream running into
the ocean from the beach, as our clueless guide had misjudged the rising tide…
Okay, it’s pretty clear I wasn’t a fan of our self-important guide and his exhibitionistic shenanigans. At first I thought he was trying to emulate Australia’s own Steve Irwin, but his disregard for animal welfare put paid to any such comparison. I’m not going to waste time describing his shortfalls here, but there are a couple of things I need to commit to paper:
> he deliberately harassed wildlife to make them ‘perform’ for us (e.g. he shook the safe habitat of a flying fox to make it ‘fly’ to another location, knowing full well it was escaping a perceived danger)
> he was hell bent on catching a large scorpion with a baited fish hook, and the time he wasted was time we lost – luckily, he failed to snare the arachnid
> he picked up a street cat and threw it on top of another cat in a concerted attempt to make the two felines mate in front of us.
He had no regard for nature or its creatures. He was nothing more than a jumped-up show-off who exploited nature tourism to
make money.
Anyway, enough of my exasperation. We picked up some drinks and headed back to our hotel room, where we snacked on the chips and biscuits we’d stockpiled for our train journey from Jakarta – but didn’t end up eating. We organised our packs for the following day (we were travelling to Yogyakarta) and caught up on our travel notes. All the while, a severe thunderstorm played out above the hotel. It was severe, and some of the thunderclaps were the loudest we’ve heard. It was a prolonged and wild storm, and the rain bucketed down relentlessly. If this storm had played out the previous night, I doubt we would have been able to swim in the Green Canyon today, as the surging river currents would have been far too dangerous.
After a long day of physical activity, I crashed at 11pm. Ren had crashed earlier. As we lay in bed, the violent storm continued to erupt overhead. My thoughts raced with wild abandon. If Pangandaran’s storm water system failed, the entire waterfront area could easily (and quickly) flood. What would we do if water started streaming through the room…
SHE SAID... Considering I
wasn’t overly enthused about certain unhygienic aspects of our room at
Pangandaran’s Sunrise Beach Hotel, I was surprised at how well I slept. Not even the sporadic motorcycles on the main road next to our hotel disturbed either of us. And to Andrew’s relief, I woke up with a far more Zen approach to our room and bathroom. 😊
We’d woken at 5am to watch the sunrise, and our lingering low-grade jetlag certainly helped with this. We wandered out to our terrace as a faint dawn light appeared at 5:30am, and I was surprised that small groups of people were already sitting on the promenade across the road. And even though a few clouds threatened to ruin our view, people kept arriving to watch the sunrise. We’d just about given up and gone inside to escape the already muggy morning, when at about 6am a gorgeous sunrise broke through the clouds. It was a picture-perfect tropical beach sunrise that silhouetted a bamboo jetty and coconut trees swaying in the morning sea breeze. We felt very lucky to have the luxury of that view from our terrace… and I
almost forgave the not-so-great things about our room.
Almost.
Pangandaran
is a very popular beach getaway for locals, and our hotel / resort was full of local tourists who woke up very early. Or rather, I should clarify that their children woke up very early. It didn’t matter too much because we were up early too, but the kids were in the pool before 6am and clearly didn’t have anyone to tell them to use their quiet non-shouty voices!
We wandered over to breakfast as soon as the breakfast area opened. The room was built in the traditional open-sided Indonesian style with no walls to allow for natural ventilation. The breakfast buffet spread was a very pleasant surprise. Following the great view from our room, I’d say the breakfast was the second-best thing in the hotel! I settled on a combination of fried
bee hoon(vermicelli) noodles,
sambal goreng kentang (spicy fried potatoes with chicken heart!), a fried egg, a chilli and lemongrass sambal, fried tempeh. It was all very tasty. And from the sweet section I indulged in banana fritters,
gula melaka agar agar (a chilled toffee-like coconut palm sugar jelly), and
biji salak (a porridge of sweet potato and cassava flour balls in palm sugar syrup served
with coconut milk). It was a very local breakfast and I loved it! I even eventually enjoyed the tea that was served with condensed milk. Indonesians drink their tea black, so I was the only one experimenting with the jug of condensed milk at the tea station. 😊
After breakfast we crossed the road to the beach promenade across from our hotel. We walked to the small harbour of blue outrigger fishing boats that was a few hundred metres from our hotel’s gate. Beyond the fishing boats bobbing in the surf, we could see many bamboo
bagang (fishing platforms). They use a combination of a net and lights to catch squid and shrimps from the platforms at night. We’d seen the ghostly lights in the water the night before, and guessed they were fishing for squid. The promenade and beach were extremely local – this was very much a ‘working’ beach. There were vendors selling hot food from carts, people winching in nets from the water, and fishermen tending their boats. The local fish market had a fresh seafood shop with the closest thing I’ve come to seeing my name anywhere, much less on a shop sign. They were
only missing one letter from getting my name perfectly right, even with my exact initials!
My surname is relatively uncommon, and I naturally questioned if it had any connection to this similar Indonesian name. I wondered if my ancient forebears were related to the Indian traders who arrived in Java as early as the 1st century. It wouldn’t be that hard to imagine that some of the traders ended up settling here, especially when their religion – Hinduism – was adopted in Java a few centuries later. It might be a total coincidence that the two names are very similar, and their entomologies may be entirely different; but it made me want to do some research when I got home.
I would have liked to wander around the promenade and small fish market a bit more, but this was a very quick stroll to merely get a sense of the place. We rushed back to the hotel for an included group activity. It was going to be a big day out in Pangandaran! We were going to explore a local market, visit a village, and journey to the Green Canyon; and in the evening we would be exploring
the jungle that made up part of the Penanjung Nature Reserve on the peninsula near our hotel.
We walked to the reception area at the other end of our resort’s grounds to meet the group. A daily morning event on this trip involved filling our water bottles from the hotel’s drinking water dispenser. All our hotels were supposed to be providing us with water dispensers in an effort to cut down on single-use plastic. When we had a minibus for the day, there would be a water dispenser onboard as well. I loved this feature! It made our lives so much easier on busy days.
Our group was only just starting to get to know each other, but by now we’d gathered enough times to pick the people who were always early, the ones who arrived at exactly the appointed time… and the dawdlers who kept the group waiting with no apology. It was slightly annoying, especially since we’d rushed back from our walk. Anyway, once we were all assembled, we were introduced to our local guide Aep who would be leading us through the day. We piled into two vehicles and drove to the main Pangandaran market.
We could tell it was a bustling place before we even got out of the minibus. The market seemed like a vast collection of stalls in a somewhat dilapidated open-sided wooden building. The stalls were haphazardly roofed, but the ground was unsealed and muddy from recent rains. The diffused sunlight light and shadowy spaces made it much cooler for the produce, but it was difficult lighting for photos. We walked along the narrow lanes between the various market stalls, and we were a very big curiosity for the mostly female stall holders.
It’s quite normal when a group of foreigners (like us) enter a very local space, that the local people are as interested about us as we are of them. And I’m also very used to the predictable questions of where I’m from, and the usual surprise that a) I’m not Indian; b) Andrew and I are a couple; c) there are ‘brown’ people in Australia etc etc. But it was an entirely new experience for me when many of the women pulled out their phones and videoed us as we walked around the market. I was very curious about this. Was it to show their family
and friends? If so, I wonder what their reaction was. 😊
They all seemed to know Aep well, and tolerated him picking up local fruit or vegetables from their stalls to explain them to us. We walked past stalls of fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, fresh fish and seafood, all manner of seriously stinky dried fish, a couple of butchery stalls with the usual grotesque heads and carcasses on display, and smaller stalls with tofu and tempeh.
Every now and gain Aep would offer us a tasting of anything he thought would be new to us. I was familiar with most of the fruit and vegetables being discussed, but hadn’t seen the kecombrang plant before. It’s in the ginger family and grows from a rhizome. All parts of the plant are apparently edible, and we tasted its beautiful pink flower buds which were surprisingly tart and almost peppery. I had expected something so beautiful and fragile looking to be sweet or floral! Apparently, the kecombrang flowers and fruit are used to flavour many southeast Asian dishes, and I could see how it would be great in soups and curries. I thought I’d never encountered it before until
a google search revealed that it’s also called torch ginger or red ginger lily; and it’s used in one of my favourite Malaysian dishes – asam laksa!
Our next tasting wasn’t as agreeable. I’ve never really liked salted eggs, and the one I’d tried a few nights previously in Jakarta had re-confirmed this. However, when Aep broke open a salted duck egg for us to try, Sebastian (one of our group mates) convinced me that it was very good – especially because it was still warm (he said). Well. Being warm actually made the sulphury smell even worse, and the taste even stronger! I know without a shadow of a doubt that salted duck eggs are definitely not for me.
By now we’d nearly reached the other end of the market. The open-air areas had bamboo pens that held live chickens, and on the other side of the market there was another section with clothes and household goods. I liked the very local atmosphere of the market, but it was kind of a relief not to be in everyone’s way when they were trying to get their daily shopping done.
Next, we drove out of the
main town to the small village of Cikembulan. We were visiting a family run
krupuk (rice cracker) factory. Indonesians LOVE their crackers, and they are an accompaniment to almost every meal.
Krupuk (crackers) is an all-encompassing term for the wide variety of crispy crackers made from different types of flour. They come in many flavours and in all shapes, sizes and colours. There’s usually a big jar of some type of cracker on the counter in restaurants, from which people help themselves. I suppose it’s akin to the crunchy role of papadums in Indian meals.
Our first view of the factory was a courtyard, with what looked like a carpet of yellow flowers spread on woven bamboo trays. It turned out to be small round rice crackers drying in the sun. We entered the hot and steamy (and very small) one-room factory floor, and watched a couple of old machines and the labour of three men producing this much-loved and ubiquitous Indonesian cracker.
In one corner, the dough (of rice and cassava flour, fish paste and spices like turmeric) was extracted from a large mixer – overseen by the woman who owned the factory. Lumps of this solid
dough was fed into a clunking green machine which extruded an intricate curly flower design onto small mesh mats. As the mats rolled out of the conveyor belt of the machine, a young man piled them onto trays and ran a quality-control eye over the little doughy discs. Try as we might, we couldn’t pick which ones he would pick off the mat as being under par.
These trays were steamed in a metal contraption over a wood fire. They would then be sun dried (or oven dried in the rainy season) until they looked like shiny plastic flowers, before being flash-fried and packaged in long plastic bags. By this stage the small off-white doughy flowers that were squeezed out by the first machine had transformed into ready-to-eat large crunchy yellow ones. Sometimes they are packaged after the drying stage so they have a longer shelf life (to be fried in shops and households). This business apparently produces thousands of crackers per day.
The workers were focused and quick, but even from a distance I could feel the intense heat coming off the steamer. I couldn’t imagine how searing it would be when the giant woks were filled
with coconut oil and fired up too. This was essentially a family business, with a small number of employees who seemed to live on-site. The men worked inside the factory, and the women sat in an adjacent room packing the crackers into long narrow plastic bags. We were given a few crackers to sample, and while I could appreciate that they were very fresh and crispy, and not too salty… the lingering fishy taste wasn’t to my liking. I love plain rice crackers and the lightly flavoured prawn crackers, but these ones were slightly too fishy for me.
It was at this point that it became uncomfortably clear to me that our local guide was a bit of a blokey sexist idiot. Two of the young women working there had little children, and he made a quip about what the women get up to at night because they have no TV. Most of the group looked away and didn’t engage with his gutter humour, but one bloke in our group laughed. Sigh. And from then on, the guide decided to address all his sexist commentary directly to him in a ‘wink-wink’ stage whisper.
We drove on to our
next ‘home industry’ stop in the small village of Cibenda. The place was full of coconut trees, and it made sense that we were here to check out the making of coconut sugar (also called palm sugar). As we got off the minibus there seemed to be some sort of village gathering going on, and Aep explained that it was the mobile clinic for children’s vaccinations. Thy had set up a small merry-go-round and an ice cream stall to further entice the mothers and young kids to attend.
We walked into a small house nearby where there was a massive wok of coconut sap simmering away on an open fire in a dark lean-to front room. The sap is obtained by tapping the coconut flower and collecting the sap in a container. Only small amounts are collected from each tree, and it takes many trees to collect enough sap to produce the palm sugar. That’s a lot of scaling up and down of coconut trees for the village tapper! They are called tappers because once they make an incision in the coconut flower, they tap along the length of the flower with the back of their knife to encourage
the flow of sap.
The sap is boiled for two or three hours until it reduces to a dark sugar residue, which is then set in moulds to cool. We were given shards of the hard dark brown coconut sugar to taste, and it was absolutely delicious! The young woman who was making the palm sugar was happy for a few of us to stay back and take some photos… and we may have been a little late joining the walk through the village because we couldn’t seem to stop hovering over the plate with the block of coconut sugar! 😊
The walk through the village was just gorgeous. The abundant spread of tall coconut trees gave a shady and peaceful air to the scattering of houses we passed. In one particular house, an elderly couple seemed very interested in us, and it turned out they owned the land we were traipsing through. After looking at their very noisy goats, and getting a few photos with the couple, we continued our walk through the coconut grove.
Very unexpectedly, or possibly by design… it was impossible to tell, an ice cream seller miraculously appeared before us. It didn’t
take much for all of us to crowd around his cart like… well… kids around an ice cream van! Unfortunately, some of us had left our bags in the minibus, so Susi and Al (our group leader and trip mate respectively) generously chipped in and made sure we all had an ice cream. It was a seriously hot and humid walk, and the swirly mango, dragon fruit and coconut ice cream was extremely welcome.
Our last stop in the village was at a traditional wooden puppet (wayang golek) workshop. The flat shadow puppets (wayang kulit) are a well-known form of theatre in Indonesia, but in West Java the solid wooden puppets are a bigger part of traditional life. Apparently, it’s becoming a dying cultural art, and these skilled puppet makers and puppeteers are now only found in some villages.
We made our way to a traditional thatched building and entered a workshop called Jagal Bilawa and watched two men carve pieces of soft lightweight balsa wood (which apparently grows in the area). As we watched, the first impressions of a face started to fascinatingly emerge from the lump of wood. It turned out that one of the men,
Pak Rojikin, was also a well-regarded
dalang (puppet master). He explained how after the intricate carving, the puppet was sanded and painted by his wife. His sister sews the gorgeous beaded costumes, and she also dresses and decorates each of the puppets. Puppet making skills are apparently passed down through families.
I asked Pak Rojikin if he follows a template for the faces of the puppets, or if they are all organically different. He said that while there are some minor variations, all of the puppets are characters from the Hindu epic
Ramayana (which narrates the life of the legendary prince Rama), or from local folklore. So every puppet has to be created to match the specifications of its character with distinct features and head decorations etc. I loved the head of the half-finished Hanuman puppet he showed us, with his trademark huge monkey teeth. There were also many beautifully finished puppets for sale in the gallery section of the workshop.
These puppets were similar to the Punch and Judy style puppets. Their long costumes hid the puppeteer’s hand/arm that manipulated mechanisms in their necks for head movement, and rods attached to their arms were manipulated by the
puppeteer’s other hand. Pak Rojikin treated us to a short impromptu puppet show… complete with different voices for each character. It was excellent! He was so skilled that even though we weren’t familiar with the characters and didn’t understand the dialogue, we could absolutely follow the story by the expressions and movement he gave the puppets. He was very skilled at imbuing subtle human qualities into these inanimate pieces of wood. Plus, slapstick comedy has no language or cultural barrier, I suppose. It really was an excellent show.
Apparently, he performs his shows regularly at festivals and weddings, and the performances usually go for two to three hours! I guess the Ramayana story isn’t called an epic for nothing! I read later that in times of tight top-down governance in the country, these puppet shows had been used as a means to spread subversive discourse – serious political news could be guised as comic chatter between the characters.
After many heartfelt thanks to Pak Rojikin for his time and for sharing his ingenious skills with us, we walked back to our minibus. We drove to a small marina which was the main jumping off point for the Green
Canyon. We parked in a large parking area surrounded by many shops, and it made me realise that at certain times of the year (and possibly on weekends), there must be many big buses parked here. It was supposed to be a quick toilet and change-into-bathers stop; but I’m not sure if there was a miscommunication or if some people in the group were tired and needed a longer break; but we ended up standing around for a long time while people sorted themselves out.
We eventually crossed over to the marina where there were small traditional wooden boats moored on the Cijulang river. Our group of 12 was split into three, and we were in a boat with Ramin and Naheed. I absolutely loved this boat trip upriver! The lazy green river took us through low lying bright green jungle scenery on both sides, and it felt so relaxing and serene. Whenever the river narrowed, the trees leaned in and created a jungle tunnel through which we floated. Everything was so green! I even took my sunglasses off so I could truly appreciate all the different shades of green we were enveloped in.
After a while the
river narrowed even more, and we entered a canyon with high cliffs on either side. Our boats pulled up to some rocks, and everyone who had decided to swim had the entire canyon basically to themselves. The current was very strong, and the group used ropes to cross the river at the mouth of the canyon before slowly making their way along the gulley wall to a waterfall deeper in the canyon.
As I sat on the rocks near our boats with Susi, and admired the truly amazing rock formations around us, another boat pulled up. We watched as a father and two adult children assisted an older woman through the river. She clearly couldn’t swim, and I wondered what would happen if the two men accidently let go of her life jacket in that very strong current.
After they turned a corner and their squeals were lost to the roar of the water, I went back to admiring the almost cathedral-like nature of the moss-covered rocks around and over us. It was very easy to imagine that we were lost in a green world and the rest of humanity was a long long way away… that was
until the cigarette smoke of one of the boat guys drifted over and brought me back to reality. After 15 minutes or so, our group returned to the boat, and I could tell by the big grin on Andrew’s face that he’d had an amazing time swimming in the canyon.
On our return trip Al got his drone out and flew it along the river, and he managed to get some beautiful footage of our boats gliding through the water. However, it was very short lived, as he was asked to land it shortly afterwards. There are no-fly drone zones in the country, and we must have been close to some structure or area that was deemed sensitive. The return trip to the Green Canyon took an hour, and by now we were all starving!
Aep took us to a small warung (local food stall) that specialised in
nasi sunda. We were in West Java which is home to the Sundanese people, and Warung Ibu Ade served Sundanese dishes with rice. There were a whole lot of trays and dishes of food against one wall, and you were charged according to whatever you served yourself. It was late
in the afternoon and there wasn’t much food left, especially when Andrew (who let everyone go first) got to the food. I tried the beef rendang, an omelette, green beans with tempeh, a delicious eggplant dish, and cassava leaves in coconut milk. Without a doubt, my favourites were the eggplant and cassava leaf dishes! If they hadn’t run out of food, I would have definitely had more of those two dishes.
The rice was free, as were the unlimited glasses of black tea. There were also some coconut milk jelly desserts in small packages on the table. I thought they’d be like the coconut palm sugar jelly I’d loved at breakfast, but this was very bland in comparison. On the whole, lunch at the warung was a nice experience, and apart from running out of food (which is the nature of these small eateries), I appreciated tasting dishes that were very local to the area.
We returned to our hotel for a small break before getting ready for an optional jungle walk in Penanjung Nature Reserve at 4pm. It was extremely disappointing that we had the same local guide from that morning. For various reasons we didn’t leave
when we should have, so we kept getting more and more delayed. Then when we eventually did leave, Aep got fixated on feeding fish to a resident water monitor lizard that lived in a drain near the fish market. There seemed to be quite a few water monitor lizards around, and Aep knew all their hiding spots, including one that lived in a World War II Japanese bunker. It was nice that he wanted to show us these creatures, but it really felt like it could have been a five-minute stop rather than a 20-minute stop. We still had a two- or three-hour jungle hike to get through, and it was already getting dark.
We started at the east gate of the nature reserve (and would be finishing at the west beach of the nature reserve). No sooner had we passed the reserve gate than one of our group members needed the toilet, and it involved more waiting around. By the time we actually started our hike, it was even darker, and there was a distant rumble of thunder.
As we waited at the reserve gates, some tame looking
kijang (barking deer) hung around us as if waiting
to be fed… and sure enough, our guide opened his backpack and threw them some cut up sweet potatoes. I was shocked that he feed the wildlife, but given the deer were hanging out at the guard’s hut, I wondered if they had been rescued and/or weren’t fully wild (they are a protected animal in Indonesia). There was also a beautiful peacock who’d taken up residence on the roof of the guard’s hut…. so it was easy to assume that these animals were regularly fed by the guards.
We eventually made our way into the Gua Jepang cave, which like the nearby bunker, had been used by the Japanese in World War II. We were all armed with headtorches, or used our phone torches, to see our way through the pitch-black cave. It was quite tricky, as we were concentrating on not hitting our heads on the low cave ceiling and the stalactites, while at the same time not tripping on the uneven ground and the stalagmites.
When the cave opened into a bigger chamber we were stopped, and without explanation Aep asked us to turn our torches off. In the pitch-black cave, he started making weird animal-like
noises! After I got over being startled, I predictably got the giggles. 😊
Unbeknownst to us, he’d thrown some sweet potatoes around the cave, and before long we heard snuffling noises and a porcupine came out of hiding to munch on the sweet potato. Within a few seconds, another one appeared. When Aep turned his torch on, it was very clear that they were truly absorbed in eating dinner, and didn’t care that a bunch of humans were crowded around staring at them. I was torn between feeling very sorry for the animals, being quite appalled at the unethical behaviour of our guide, and feeling very thrilled at seeing these strange looking creatures munching away. I have never seen a porcupine before, and it was so weird having these two feeding less than a metre from my feet!
I had always thought a porcupine would look like a bigger and spikier version of an Australian echinda; but these Malayan porcupines looked exactly like the rodents they are. They were larger than I thought, and they had long black and white quills on their backs and bottoms. The one closest to me had grabbed a piece of sweet potato
between its two front paws and was nibbling on it like a guinea pig. It was very cute. After a few quick blurry photos, we kept walking through the cave.
Aep warned us that there were hundreds of fruit bats hanging high up among the stalactites, and he also warned us not to look up with our mouths open! Like the porcupines, these bats didn’t seem perturbed by us or our torches in their dark cave. Thankfully, there were no bats hanging in the smaller chambers of the cave. If they had, our heads would have had to pass very close to them on certain parts of the walk.
We exited the cave onto a lovely small beach. I think word had got out that Aep was coming through the jungle, because a few long-tailed macaque monkeys descended from the trees just as we came out. A courageous mother and baby as well as a juvenile male were rewarded with pieces of sweet potato for being brave enough to come close to us. As much as I really really really disagree with the feeding of wildlife, it was clear that Aep was doing whatever he needed to do
to give the group a close-up view of animals in the jungle. I’d read there were a number of wild bulls in the jungle too, and I hoped with all my might that he wasn’t going to pull a feeding stunt like this if we came upon one!
We were still on the eastern side of the reserve, and after watching the mother and baby monkey for a little while, we started crossing through the jungle. I absolutely love walking through nature, especially taking in the different smells and sounds of nature in different parts of the world. I noticed very quickly that this was an exceptionally quiet jungle. There was a distinct lack of bird calls, but it was getting late in the day. Aep pointed to a blur and said we’d just missed seeing a hornbill (toucan).
The canopy was quite high, and a couple of times we heard and saw black monkeys gently swishing their way high up through the tree tops. Unfortunately, they were never close enough to see any of their distinguishing features, and none of them made any calling sounds. We also came upon more barking deer, but they were silent too.
At one point Aep went into what I’d call an ‘excited Tarzan’ mode. He’d spotted a red giant flying squirrel. We could see the furry red thing clutching the side of a tree, and I suppose we were very lucky to see it glide from one tree to the next. However, Aep’s antics of shaking multiple trees to get it to glide didn’t sit well with me at all. The squirrel is a nocturnal glider, and the poor thing must have just ventured out to start feeding, only to be harassed by this guy. By now I had definitely decided that I would be complaining to Intrepid Travel about this local guide. There was absolutely no doubt he knew his flora and fauna, and he also knew the area really well – but his behaviour was hardly a ringing endorsement for the responsible travel that Intrepid likes to model.
The jungle was full of very large teakwood and mahagony trees. We walked on clearly laid out paths for most of the hike, but at one point we came into an open sparsely treed area, and Aep decided we should cut through the undergrowth. Even though I enjoyed walking
on the crunchy carpet of fallen leaves, I was very aware that we were very much in snake territory now! Aep disappeared at one point, and I realised he was crouching at ground level poking a stick into a hollow log… Apparently, he wanted to find a scorpion for us! Our desire to see a scorpion was definitely far far less that our desire not to get bitten by a snake, so we asked to keep moving.
Dusk was setting in when we came upon Batu Kalde – a small sandstone ruin of an ancient Hindu temple in a clearing. It was roped off, but it looked like many of the important artefacts had been removed, with only the heavy large stones left behind. They think it dates back to the 14th century, but so little is left of the temple that I wondered if more should have been done to secure the site.
It was well and truly evening when came across a troupe of long-tailed macaques heading home from the beach. They nonchalantly crossed the path in front of us, but two stayed behind to watch us. When we got too close, they called a warning
to the others. We were on the western side of the reserve now, and these monkeys clearly hadn’t heard about Aep and his backpack of goodies. At any rate, he’d run of sweet potatoes by now.
We exited the jungle not long after that. It was nice to come out of the dark canopy and onto Pasir Putih, a white beach on the western side of the headland. The wreck of a large Antarctic illegal fishing boat was quite dramatic against the coral reefs. It had been impounded by the maritime authorities and used as a visual deterrent to others… but over time the ship has toppled over, and it has been quite eye-catchingly painted by street artists. It now looks more like an art installation than an official warning. Aep pointed out small boats pulling away from the ship, and he told us it’s being slowly scavenged of all its iron and usable parts.
It was very annoying that we had been so delayed on the walk, because I would have loved to have reached this beautiful beach in the daylight hours as we were supposed to. As we stood on this tiny beach with its coral
reef on one side, and the last vestiges of a setting sun above it… a whole cauldron of fruit bats flew out of the jungle and down the beach. Aep laughingly said that they were very tasty, but given he’d said many idiotic things during the walk, I wasn’t sure if he was joking. Susi later confirmed that the locals do eat the bats.
By now it was getting quite dark very quickly, and we had yet to cross to the eastern side of the isthmus. We followed Aep back into the forest and along a dark forest track, then across a waterway… but thankfully it was low tide and our shoes were only minimally wet. It had been a three-hour walk, and while it had its good moments, I couldn’t help but think how much better it could have been in the hands of a better/nicer local guide.
Andrew and I decided that we didn’t need dinner that night. Instead, we visited the Alphamart across from our hotel and bought drinks and snacks to have in our room. Susi had generously organised coconuts to be sent to all our rooms when we got back from lunch, and
following a hot tip from Ramin and Naheed, we put them in the fridge for a couple of hours.
After a long day of exploring, followed by a very humid walk in a tropical rainforest, the chilled coconut water was exactly what we needed to rehydrate. It was so nice to have some down time in our room that night, and we continued to rehydrate with beers, mango juice and
teh tarik (iced traditional milky tea). A massive family-size pack of cassava chips (crisps) and leftover snacks from our last trip to the supermarket in Jakarta also contributed to our sense of happy relaxation. 😊
Pangandaran had been a surprising destination for me. Despite being a super popular destination for locals, it clearly doesn’t draw many overseas tourists to the area. We hadn’t seen any other non-local tourists in Pangandaran!
Even though it wasn’t the little fishing village I’d been expecting, we had managed to see many local aspects to this beachside tourist town in a short time. I really enjoyed the local village life experiences, and the visits to the small home industries. However, I think the biggest cultural insights were gained from our visit to
the wooden puppet workshop – especially the impromptu performance which was a delight to witness. From a nature perspective, the visit to the Green Canyon and the jungle hike gave us as insight into the geological and ecological treasures that surround the area, but also the environmental challenges faced by a region that relies heavily on both fishing and tourism.
Before I wrap up my thoughts on Pangandaran, I should mention that the pronunciation of ‘Pangandaran’ had stumped every single one of us in the group. The minibus driver who drove us to the town, as well as Susi and Aep, had all tried hard to get us to wrap our tongues around it, with no luck. It didn’t help that our efforts made them laugh quite heartily every single time. The closest we could come to it was PUNG-UN-DA-RUN. I know it’s not right, but that’s my best effort. 😊
It had been threatening to rain most of the afternoon, and we’d started to hear rumblings of thunder while hiking that evening. A massive storm finally broke around 8pm, with bolts of lightning lighting up the sky and claps of thunder rattling the building and making us
jump! It was the loudest thunderstorm I’ve ever experienced, and it raged for hours and hours. We caught up on travel notes for a little while, but I couldn’t believe that I was totally ready to call it a night by 9pm.
The thunderstorm (and Andrew munching on cassava chips while he wrote) woke me every now and again, but very surprisingly I managed to sleep quite well. When yet another clap of thunder woke us up… we wondered what damage we would wake to the next day.
Next we travel east to Yogyakarta, the cultural capital in Central Java.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Pangandaran
What a great trip. You are seeing some amazing things.