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July 29th 2006
Published: July 30th 2006
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Blurry Sunrise on Gili AirBlurry Sunrise on Gili AirBlurry Sunrise on Gili Air

Sunrise during a run around the island.
Hey Yall, I'm back in Ubud, Bali now, which is where I spent my first night on the archipelago. The last 10 days or so have been crazy. After I wrote last Lynda and I headed up to a town called Bajawa in Flores to check out some traditional villages. We got a pretty sweet deal in a private car there so we spent a couple extra dollars to cut the trip from 14 hours to 7 hours, and to minimize the number of live chickens and puking children on our laps. It turned out to take two days though because around 4 pm the driver and his friend started acting really tired and said they would have to spend the night in Ruteng. Now, I'm all for safety, and these roads make the Seward highway on Turnagain arm seem an arrow-straight desert highway, but it did seem a little suspicious that the driver's fatigue was directly proportional to the amount of flirting activity with the two young Indonesian girls in the car. I won't go into details but it was confirmed that night beyond all reasonable doubt that we did indeed get bumped for a booty call.
In Bajawa we
Lynda and ChazLynda and ChazLynda and Chaz

Chaz, our little Rasta friend from the island
met up with a crew of other travelers from all over, two iridescently blond ladies from Slovenia, two Swedish women, one from the Netherlands, and an American couple. Together we booked a guided trip out to a group of traditional weaving villages with a pretty fascinating matrilineal culture. There is too much to go into here, but I'll try to post some pictures if I am ever somewhere with a fast enough internet connection. After the villages we went to a perfect hot spring at 40 degrees and spent the rest of the evening jumping between the spring and the adjacent river carved out of a slab of igneous rock. This pack of jumping nordic/sovenian/otherwise blond women was greatly appreciated by a gathering of local men.
That night we were invited to the wedding of the cousin of our guide and after some reservations about intruding everyone except the American couple decided to go. I knew we had made the right choice as soon as we walked in the door of the packed indoor/outdoor corrugated tin establishment. The hosts cleared several seats in the front of one of the side rows of seats, perfectly situated to allow almost all of
My obsession with microsMy obsession with microsMy obsession with micros

A wee crab from a tidal pool walk on Gili Meno
the 300+ well-wishers to change their focus from the bride and groom to us (or more accurately, the 5 ladies sitting next to me). This was probably just as well as far as the groom was concerned; I never saw him crack a smile once sitting next to his uncomfortable-looking heavyset new wife. It became apparent that everyone had already finished eating and were waiting for us to finish, so we gulped down our grizzle and mystery organ with rice and the festivities began. Lynda was immediately asked to dance by someone in the wedding party, and I was treated to about 8 minutes of watching her being dragged through a dance that resided somewhere between a Texas line dance and the funky chicken (only cornier, if possible); or as I like to call it, the funniest thing I have ever seen. To really grasp how funny with was, you have to try to picture Lynda, who doesn't much like being focused on anyway, protruding obtrusively about a solid food out of the crowd, holding her ears or nose or whatever it is at that moment in the dance, and shakin it. I'm reading this now and realize that I
Hammock on the FerryHammock on the FerryHammock on the Ferry

Riding in style on the beat up old ferry from Sumbawa to Florez.
can't describe quite what it was like, just trust me, it was funny. Also, it turned out that all of the following dances also resembled the funky chicken in some form, leading to a lot of mostly unnecessary elbow waving and nose pinching, and all in all a pretty damn good time, all made possible by the homemade arak (80 proof palm liquor) they were more than generous with. Then imagine all this over really really bad country music with a spattering of indo hits. Ahhhh...
The next day the whole group woke bright and early and headed out of the 7 hour, 85 kilometer trip to Moni, a quaint little mountain town at the foot of one of Indonesia's most interesting natural wonders, Kelimutu. Kelimutu, a volcano whose name literally means mountain of the souls, is topped by three crater lakes which have spent the last 120 years trying to figure out their favorite color. Each lake is a different color, and each changes this color every few years due to what is thought to be a change in the sediment content at the bottom some 150m deep. As of about a week ago the first lake was a thick tarry black (it literally looked like crude oil, if you tree huggers can open up your minds enough to see that as beautiful), the second lake was a brilliant turquoise green (if you consumers can open up your minds enough to see green as beautiful), and the last was a deep blue/black. Before the same lakes were green, blood red, and blue, in that order. Anyway, we all woke up at 4am to catch the sunrise over the lakes, and it was amazing (again, I’ll really try to send pictures but they won’t do it justice).
The plan after Kelimutu was to head to these islands called the tujuh belas islands (literally the 17 islands, even though there are 24 islands the indo gobment decided they would overlook 7 so it could coincide with the day of the indo independence, 17 augustus). This all changed though when we found out the American couple we had befriended were heading back to Labuan Bajo to a vacant 5 star sailboat and wondered if we would like to tag along. We decided we could always come back to Tujuh Belas but the boat would be long gone so we hopped a 15
Us at SarayaUs at SarayaUs at Saraya

The little fishing village would sit right behind us but out of sight.
hour overnight car to LB. The ride was fairly uneventful, except for the creature that looked oddly human lying in the middle of the highway at 4 in the morning. We wanted to stop and move this creature as it in fact looked 100% human, but we were informed by the driver that sometimes when they stop and help people on that road in the middle of the night they turn out not to be human but demon-like, so we cruised on leaving the poor drunk (we think) sprawled out across that insane road.
The Americans Ben and Carrie (who, surprisingly, were really cool; I say surprisingly only because usually I avoid Americans like the Plague when I travel but so far in Indo we have loved all the Americans we met) were visiting Carrie’s mother who runs a high end tourism business of Bali. They had told us some pretty amazing things about the boat in Moni and on the trip to LB, but we were not at all prepared for what we had in store. It wasn’t entirely accurate before when I said the boat was “vacant.” There were currently no guests on the boat, but it was
Large male Komodo DragonLarge male Komodo DragonLarge male Komodo Dragon

The laziest predators I've ever seen.
fairly buzzing with the 15 person crew ranging from a gourmet chef out of San Fran, to a PADI dive instructor and a horde of other maintenance and serve staff to do everything short of wiping our asses for us (although I’m sure that could have been arranged). We stumbled off the zodiac hot, smelly, and exhausted from the overnight drive and onto some sort of twilight zone luxury I could barely have imagined. We were greeted with freshly made pineapple banana drinks and an ice-cold towel soaked in lemongrass water for our faces. We were whisked down to our cabin, a spacious room of richly colored woods and adorned with Balinese art and two daybeds, a separate shower and toilet, and a king-sized bed.
Despite all the western extravagance the Silolona did have a heart and soul of its own. It was made in a boat building village on the island of Kalimantan, 100% by hand, in the way boats have been built in Indonesia for hundreds, if not thousands of years. There is almost no metal, and no plastic on the whole of the 160 foot sailing yacht (ship?). The only bolts are in the hull itself, everything else was fastened together by broad, hand-carved wooden pegs that were fit perfectly into hand-drilled holes. Carrie had gone on the expedition to Papua with her mother and crew to select the tree for the keel from a special tree with a twisted grain which is said to never crack. Sacrifices and offerings were made at every step of its construction, and I am not a superstitious person, but there was something about that boat.
We spent the next 4 days and three nights once again exploring Komodo National Park, this time in style. We went anywhere we wanted to go, used everything we wanted to use, and ate three times as much as we wanted to eat (Bill, the gourmet chef, boasts that he can make anyone fat and I have no doubt this is true). In the morning we would wake up to breakfast (i.e. salmon locks and home-made cream cheese on home-made bagels with espresso and scrambled eggs) and then go scuba diving. Goris, the dive instructor let us go Disco Scuba (Discover Scuba), a PADI program that allows you to go to 12 meters, although we often went to 15. I cannot say enough about the
Drive-by attempt at a panoramaDrive-by attempt at a panoramaDrive-by attempt at a panorama

Not the best shot but it gives you the idea of the beauty of central Florez
diving in Komodo, except that the coral is amazing, the fish are brilliant, and it contains 2 of 5 of the worlds top dive sites. Needless to say I’m hooked, although unfortunately I am at the same time ruined for diving because there isn’t much else like it out there. Afterwards we would either go lay on the beach, or go water skiing on one of the Malaysian Special Forces zodiacs onboard. For lunch we had shrimp and scallop ravioli and homemade ice cream for desert…..and so on. All this for the great price of nothing + an 80 dollar tip we left for the crew on departure. We got a pretty good discount considering the going rate for the Silolona was $8,000 per night. On top of this the crew (from all over Indonesia except Bill) were fantastic people and of course Patty, the matriarch of the boat, was amazing for giving us the opportunity to be there. If anyone is interested and wants to really hate us, the website for the boat is www.silolona.com.
So now we’re back in Ubud after staying a night at Patty’s place near Denpasar. Last night we said goodbye to Ben and Carrie
Gregarious little Ham at a semi-traditional animist villageGregarious little Ham at a semi-traditional animist villageGregarious little Ham at a semi-traditional animist village

I played football with this little dude for a while, he was a trip
and are looking to rent a motor bike for a week and head up to the north of Bali to check out a black sand beach and the national park. It was nice (although exceedingly strange) living that way for a few days in a developing country, but it is good to get back down to earth again.
To you all back home: Life sounds intense in the hospital, so intense I’m pretending for now that it doesn’t exist. Having said that, I would love to hear from you all, I’m sure you have crazy stories as well. Back in AK and elsewhere, hope things are well. Those are crazy tiger shark pics Chris, I’m stoked to hear about the shark hunt.
Much Love, Andy



Additional photos below
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Slightly more bashful pairSlightly more bashful pair
Slightly more bashful pair

These two were at the same village. The lightings not so good but they were nice little ones as well.
Lush mountains around the villagesLush mountains around the villages
Lush mountains around the villages

The scenery surrounding the village. Life has to suck here.
Hungry manHungry man
Hungry man

The little dude on top of the hut who looks like he is holding a knife and fork is actually a symbol for the house of the lower caste. The upper caste has a little house on top of the huts.
Love the kids hereLove the kids here
Love the kids here

I swear this little dude was smiling when I asked if I could take his picture.
Love the old ladies tooLove the old ladies too
Love the old ladies too

She actually has teeth, you just can't tell because they are so stained with betle nut.
Black and GreenBlack and Green
Black and Green

Two of the lakes at Kelimutu
Another AngleAnother Angle
Another Angle

It just doesn't do it justice... The othe lake, which is dark blue/black, is behind me.
The roomThe room
The room

Somewhat nicer than out other accomadation


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