Thailand, Transit, and Indonesia

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Greetings once again everyone. I hope everyone is warm and well this winter, as I have heard it has been a cold one (no, that does not include you Vegas people braving the occasional 30s). Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of this portion of the trip as I lost my camera in transit from Thailand to Indonesia, so please use your imagination, or google if my recap doesn't quite do it for you.

Bankok- round 2

Connie and I arrived back in Bankok after Cambodia, and we headed to Khao San Palace, a hotel in the heart of Khao San Road in Bankok where I had stayed the last time around. This street is considered the transit hub of backpacking in Asia/world as almost all people traveling SE Asia end up here at one point or another in transit to or from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, and of course travelling Thailand- a mecca for backpackers. This street is a crazy place that is jammed with street merchants, food vendors, performers, travellers, promoters, and people watchers. The bars here are open 24/7 and full a good 18 of those hours with people exchanging travel stories, plans, and advice. We relaxed there for the night and decided to spend the day, Connie's last of the holiday, shopping. It was a Sunday, so we decided to go to Chatuchak, which is the weekend market in Bankok. This market is only open Saturday and Sunday, but when it is, it is one of the largest markets in the world. It covers 35 acres (huge considering each shop is the size of a 1 car garage), has over 15,000 stalls, and gets over 200,000 visitors each day it is open. We spent about 4-5 hours wandering this maze of mini-stores, and upon leaving we guessed that we had seen about 1/4 of the whole. They sell just about everything you can imagine here, but we were mainly after clothing. Connie and I had very different experiences here, as her size gives her an incredible advantage shopping at local markets in Asia, so she was able to find some great attire. I, on the other hand, found heaps (yep- in Oz now) of great shirts that didn't fit. The shops here cater mainly to locals, so most clothing stalls carry Medium as the largest size, and a medium in Asia looks something like my wakeboarding rashgaurd on me. I did find a couple things however before we had to rush off into a cab and head back to get Connie's luggage out of my new room in Khao San Palace (back to the no A/C or hot water standard again) and wish her goodbye until Oz in a few weeks. At this point Reed was in Southern Thailand on Ko Samui Island, and I needed to make a plan. I decided to try to stay up for the Vike's game (4 a.m. start in Bankok- didn't make it, but valiant effort) and then head south to Ko Phi Phi Island to do some diving before rendezvousing with Reed somewhere in Malaysia/Indonesia and meeting my mom in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Ko Phi Phi

This is one of the better dive sites in Thailand, and widely considered the most beautiful place in Thailand. Some of you may know it from the movie The Beach with Leonardo Di Caprio which popularized it and sparked incredible tourism growth here. It also gained notariety from the December 2004 tsunami that struck Thailand, as it was the worst hit location, with nearly all infrastructure wiped out completely and a huge protion of the population dead or still 'missing'. It has redeveloped rapidly and is once again thriving. Upon arriving and finding a hosel after almost 24 hours of travel via overnight bus, minibus, and ferry, I needed to find a dive shop. I soon learned the following about Ko Phi Phi: 1. all 15+ dive shops have the exact same prices (collusion not such a big deal here) 2. Don't ask the girls promoting bars everywhere for directions, because they probably just arrived here and are promoting in exchange for food and lodging 3. Most people working here are now foreigners who came as backpackers and forgot/refused to leave. I found some food and headed to bed early as I needed to be at the dive shop at 8 a.m. I got there in the morning, had an espresso, met my instructor (a british transplant) and Isreali partner for the day, and we headed to the boat. I did 2 dives here, and they were both great. We saw a bamboo shark (rare here but one has made a home under a rock where it can almost always be found), pufferfish, scorpionfish, huge schools of baracuda, needlefish, many giant moray eels, one small white eyed moray eel (we would stick out a finger and it would pop it's head out of the reef and bite it, but it was too small to hurt), lionfish, crown of thorns starfish, huge schools of travelly and yellow snapper, and many other common reef fish. The reef here is in good shape also, but overdiving and inexperienced captians and divemasters are causing some deterioration, but it great to admire. The dive was done early in the afternoon, so I decided to do a hike up to the viewpoints to take it all in. The Island is like 2 small mountainous islands connected by a small land bridge (the city center area), and it can all be seen quite well from atop. I will try to attach a rack tourism photo off of a website to give an idea. It is very similar to looking at how Mission Beach connects La Jolla and Pacific Beach for those who are familiar with San Diego. After getting to the third and highest lookout I met a three other travellers who had made the journey, and the one american among them and I decided to climb the radio/television tower that stands atop the mountain. After a hectic and scary climb up, we could see all of the island, surrounding islands, and all the way to the mainland cities of Krabi and Phuket. I took some unbelievable photos here that I hope whoever has my camera enjoys along with my 500+ Cambodia pics : ( but I still have a video that I took on my video camera from here (if I can transfer a still onto here I will). I spent the night wandering, until I landed in a bar that has a full size Muay Thai ring, which was hilarious. This bar gives away buckets of mixers (plastic buckets that booze is sold/served in all over SE Asia that have a fifth of booze, ice, and a mixer added) to patrons who are willing to step into the ring and fight for 3 rounds. The system is a bit flawed as usually the first volunteer is walked around the ring until someone decides they will fight him, which, as you can imagine, leads to some dangerous mismatches. The bar itself is huge, with 2 stories for bird'seye action, and one side with full stadium seating open to the next level, and is apparently the only legal one of it's kind in Thailand. Drunk tourists fighting (with open-faced headgear) is incredibly dangerous and barbaric, but it makes for some of the most amazing evening entertainment I have ever seen, especially for free. Throughout the night I witnessed one guy get kicked square in the face and knocked out, 2 girls battle it out, and 2 professional Muay Thai boxers fight as part of the night's entertainment. The next day I went on a cliff jumping tour with two other people, who both happened to be Americans (rare here) from Minnesota, and one of whom's father is from Mankato of all places! The cliff jumping was super fun, with different heights allowing for progression, the tallest of which was 19 meters (roughly 64 feet!!). The jumping was awesome, but we all jumped out of a tree growing out of the mountain at about 12 meters (about 40 feet) and it bounced as I jumped and threw me off balance, and I gave me a nagging tailbone injury that I am just now getting over. No problems on the bigger jumps though, thank God. After the boat returned I got my stuff together and headed for the ferry to Phuket to get to the airport.

Transit

I don't usually write about this portion, but this was an incredible amount of travel in a short period of time, so it gets a mention. I didn't leave much time in the schedule for Thailand, and after squeezing in time in transit to/on Ko Phi Phi, I needed to get to Jakarta fast to meet my mom in a day and a half. So from Ko Phi Phi I caught a ferry to Phuket, hopped on the back of a scooter with my backpack to ride to the airport, and waited for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Upon arriving in Kuala Lumpur in the middle of the night, I caught a bus to Chinatown, where all of the cheap hostels are, and tried to find one fast. I wandered through the empty streets where all the food vendors were during the day, and it was now full of rats that would scare even a NYC subway rider. I had to walk the streets with these cat sized creatures all over scrounging for food and not afraid of me whatsoever. I luckily found some nice people at a hostel that was full who called a friend to meet me and take me to his hostel, which saved me some time and much needed sleep. I slept for about five hours, took a quick shower, and was off to the airport again. Unfortunately I didn't get to see KL at all, but I had tight schedule for the first time so far on the trip. With the famous Petronas Towers fading into the background and the taxi racing to the airport an hour away (I was too late for the bus), I continued on. I was stressed about being late on the way, which as I pulled up, realized was unnecessary since the Air Asia terminal had smoke pouring out of it and everybody was standing outside with their luggage while firemen ran in and out. I was pretty sure that I would be spending another night in KL and that my mom would be wandering Jakarta alone, but the smoke was cleared quickly and a few hours later I was back in the airport and on my way to Jakarta to meet my mom and Reed and start exploring Indonesia.

Jakarta

I met my mom (I saw her, she didn't recognize me with a buzzed head and a beard) in the hotel lobby in Jakarta where we caught up and chatted. We decided to go get some dinner, which turned out to be the first of many odd adventures on Java, the most populous island in Indonesia. We had asked the concierge for advice on where to eat, and he sent us to a shopping area with a bunch of chain restaurants and fast food, but we decided to go with the indonesian experience and took a locals advice on an authentic restaurant. In Indonesia, restaurants do not have menus, they simply bring mass quantities of food in different bowls to your table and you take what you would like, and the rest is re-served later. Soon we had fifteen bowls of different dishes on our table, and upon sampling most (the ones that were recognizeable as meat), we realized that Indonesian food might be a problem. Few of the dishes were edible, among those none were good. The next day we woke up and decided to figure out our Jakarta exit strategy, as the city was overcrowded and polluted, so we booked a tickets to Yogyakarta and met Reed at the airport to make the flight, as he had just made it in from Thailand.

Yogyakarta

We arrived here at night and found a nice guesthouse. Our accomodations were now becoming a compromise between backpacker places that Reed and I were used to and swankier accomodations that would be more appropriate for mom, which proved a bit difficult at times. In the morning we checked-out and hired a driver for the day to take us around some of the local sites, continue onto Brobudur- a nearby religious monument, and then to Semerang where we would catch our boat to Borneo to explore the jungle and spot orangutans. The sites in this city were a bit of a let down, but the city itself was a huge improvement from Jakarta. We continued to Brobudur, which was our main site-to-see on Java, and was a short drive from Yogyakarta on the way to Semarang. Borobudur is a Buddhist monument built in the 9th century that is comprised of 6 square platforms on top of each other to resemble the shape of a pyramid. The different levels symbolize different levels of enlightenment in Buddhism and all have carving all around that tell stories corresponding to that level. Unfortunately, it started to pour rain just as we got there, so our touring was cut a little short. This was rainy season in Indonesia, and we would see our fair share of it. So it was back in the cab to go to Semarang to go to Borneo in the morning.

Semarang

If I had to describe our experience in this city in one word, it would be DISASTER. We pulled into the city to find it under several inches of water. We passed several cars and trucks that had stalled out in the water as we tried to find a hotel near the harbor, despite the fact that our driver had no idea where the harbor was. We drove in circles in the dark through the water, hoping that our car would not be the next to succomb to the flood and quit. Finally, after a lot of yelling, sweating, and praying we found a very small portion of the city that was not underwater and had a nice hotel (many of the others literally had standing water in the lobbies), checked-in, and sent our anxious driver on his reluctant way back through the water on his way home. In the morning we got up, rushed through breakfast, and took a cab to the harbor to catch the freighter that I had booked us passage to Borneo on (transit options limited to the area in Borneo we were headed for). We arrived to the harbor, where we sat in a non-air conditioned waiting area for about 6 hours wondering why we were not on the boat, and then finally boarded. We got on, and at first it looked like we would be on the floor with hundreds of other people, but our $5 upgrade into 2nd class booked us into a large room with recliners, sofas, a television, and private bathrooms (for our area only), which was a huge upgrade. We quickly settled in and waited for the boat to set sail... for another 6 hours. At this point, by peicing together several broken language conversations, we realized that we were not leaving because there were 5+ meter waves at sea (17+ feet). Mom then found the one employee on the boat that spoke english, and he assured her that it was not a problem and that the boat might leave in the morning (another 8 hours or so), so she negotiated a partial refund and we caught a cab directly to the airport to get out of Semarang and reroute our trip prematurely to Bali, as it seemed we were becoming a bit tired of the adventure travel portion of the trip. We found out later that an Indonesian ferry had capsized the night before and 230 people were lost at sea as we waited to disembark on our journey in the same seas, so missing the boat was good, although it meant missing our jungle adventure in Borneo. We caught a flight to Jakarta, stayed at an airport hotel, and booked tickets to Bali in the morning.

Bali

We arrived in Bali and decided to spend the first 2 days in Legian, which is in the main tourist area in Southern Bali at a relaxed resort to try to regroup and plan the next week. We actually caught some great weather for the first time in Indonesia, so we all relaxed around the pool, brainstormed ideas for destinations in and around Bali, and took advantage of the shopping and laundry services. We decided that we should spend a few days on Nusa Lebognan, a small island near Bali, where many tourists take day trips to visit, but few people stay.

Getting there was a bit difficult because the ferries to the island are tied to mooring off-shore, and you have to walk through the seawater to get to them and them climb up around the motors while the boat jumps up and down in the waves. Upon arriving, we once again walked in the sea to get to a water taxi, this time in the pouring rain, to get to a resort one of the boat employees recommended. However, despite the difficulty getting there, it was definitely all well worth it. The island is very small, with a population of only 5,000, and since it was rainy season we nearly had the island to ourselves. The resorts here are all bungalows that are built up the mountainside of the island, so all have great views of the bay, from which you can observe the seaweed farming, which is the only industry here that does not revolve around the upstart tourism industry. The sea has been divided into square sections where seaweed is farmed, so there are dark squares where the seaweed is growing and light square sections where it has already been pulled- after which it is laid to dry on tarps that lie all over this tiny island. Our resort was great, the bungalows were spacious, it had a clean small pool, and we were the only people there, so the staff were very attentive and appreciative. The one downfall of the island is that the power goes out every time it rains or the wind picks up, which is a good portion of the day in the rainy season, but it gives character to this little paradise. We spent our time here all doing our own thing and enjoying the stress free atmosphere. I did 2 scuba dives here, both of which were drift dives in very strong currents (1st drift diving experience), and actually had had good visibility despite the lack of sun. Reed did some snorkeling, although he didn't wear contacts, so his visibility was very limited. My mom relaxed, shopped, read, and wandered. We spent the evenings dining, drinking, playing cards, chatting with the few other tourists who had ended up here, and watching bootleg movies that we picked up in Legian when the electricity allowed. The last day Reed and I did a circle around the island on scooters, and we returned to get our stuff, and head back to Bali to go north.

We took a faster boat this time, which got us there in less than half the time it took us to get there, but were bouncing off of huge waves the whole way and hoping that the hull didn't crack in half on the next one. Once we arrived back on dry land in Bali we got a cab to take us north to Lovina beach, which was a 2-3 hour rally race over and through the interior mountains of Bali, which provided great views to take in between each near accident and blind pass (Reed and I had adjusted to ridiculous driving in Asia, but it was new to mom). We got there and found a nice seaside hotel to stay at in the middle of this small tourist area. The next day we woke up and decided that we should pamper ourselves at a spa that we had seen advertised in several places the night before. We were picked up, taken to the spa, and each had some really nice 90 minute massage, body scrub, and wash. After we left we needed to plan the remaining 2 days of our trip. We decided that it would be cool to hit the West Bali National Park before heading south towards the airport.

We hired a car and driver to pick us at about 5 a.m. the next day, take us to the national park, and then take us to Kuta in South Bali (the nearest beach to the airport). This portion of the trip started out about as well as our travels on Java. First, when we arrived to the national park, there was nobody at the main entrance. When workers finally arrived to work an hour late, they informed us that we could not enter the park unless we took a tour guide, who wanted to charge us ridiculous rates. We finally found a semi-official looking guide who wanted to charge us slighlty less rapacious rates, and we went on our way. This area has plenty of wildlilfe to see, however, because we were there in the rainy season the canopy was at it thickest point of the year, making it hard to spot animals. Our tour consisted of about a 2 hour trek through the forest trying to spot the loud birds all around us that we couldn't see. The highlight came when we crossed paths with a group of Macaque monkies. I happened to have a bag of peanuts that I had bought for the boat ride to Borneo, and once I started throwing those out every monkey in the area was circling us. We had monkies all around and at some points I had to turn and move fast because the alpha male tried to get the entire bag out of my backpack. We hung out with the monkies for about 15 minutes or so until we had to move on, being stalked by the alpha for a quite a while, and eventually returning to our car and driver. We then had what should have been a 2 hour ride to Kuta ahead of us, which after a flat tire, putting on the spare, another flat tire, our driver hitching a ride on a scooter to repair it, and put it back on, we arrived just 4 hours or so later.

We checked into our hotel in Kuta, which was a dump, but we didn't want to spend any more time in that car, so we checked in. Reed took his stuff to our room, but the A/C was not working, so they moved us. I entered the new room, grabbed the pillow off the bed to set down my backpack, and a giant cockroach flew off onto the wall and began running around, passing another giant dead roach. Needless to say, we found mom another nice hotel nearby and Reed and I moved to the first room after they fixed the A/C. We found a nice place to eat and have drinks nearby, and enjoyed our last night together in Bali. The following day we spent lounging by the pool at the nicer hotel, laughing about the trip's troubles, and relaxing. We got together again for an early dinner and said farewell as mom was off in a cab to the airport. Reed and I did some last minute shopping and packed up to catch ourt flight to Australia.

Overall, Indonesia was a great experience, despite some minor difficulties. The highlights included touring the very laid-back Yogyakarta, touring the world heritage site Borobudur in the rain, having a resort to ourselves on Nusa Lebognan, drift diving in the currents and finishing nowhere near the start of the dive, finding things to do during power outages on Lebognan, the thrill ride drive through the central mountains in Bali, a relaxing spa day in Lovina, seeing the Hindu traditions and temples that are scattered all over Bali, feeding wild macaques in the jungle, and watching the sunset while sipping wine in Southern Bali and recounting the trip. Some of the low points included Indonesian food, the muslim calls to prayer that start blasting at 5 a.m. and occur throughout the day, navigating flooded cities, missing Borneo- which was a big part of initial plan, and the difficulty with transportation.

This is getting a bit long so I will wrap it up. The blog is now caught up through my current location now, and I will try to write the next portion on Australia before I leave to New Zealand on February 16th. Also, I should have more pictures to include next time as I have a camera to take with me. I miss you all and thanks for all of the great feedback.

Trev

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Photos

Ko Phi Phi
Picture I found online of Ko Phi Phi