Into Indonesia

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The trip so farI have been in Indonesia for 3 days now and the first real tragedy has struck: the CD containing the only copies of all my photos so far has been cracked in 2. Does anyone know if you can just glue them back together or do something a bit more advanced to get the photos back.

Anyway the diffence between Malaysia and Indonesia is huge. Whereas in Malaysia lots of people spoke english and only some were interested in you, in Indonesian no one speaks english but you are treated/ harrased like a celebrity. My plan was to take a ferry from Nunukan (Indonesian Borneo) to Pare Pare in Sulawesi but I had a hell of a time trying to find when the ferry left. The trip was made once every two weeks and after trying every number in every guide book and failing to find the daftar waktu (timetable) i just turned up in Nunukan and found it was going the very next night. The ferry took 42 hours and during the journey I was subject to an ungodly amount of attention. I suspect I was one of the first Westerners to catch a Pelni ferry because at no point was I not surrounded by at least 5 Indonesians hanging on my every poorly pronounced word. It was great fun though because I could elicit waves of laughter by reciting almost any inappropriate phrase from my phrase book. It was amazing that despite the cramped conditions and stupidly long journey everyone was happy. I thought that everyone on the ship must know each other on the ship because anyone could sit down next to anybody else and start talking and joking.

Walking down the street in Pare Pare everyone greets you with "hello mista" or offers to give you a ride on their motorbike. Hopefully when my Indonesian improves the interaction with the locals will be more informative but now it rarely gets beyond "I come from england and I am travelling around Indonesia". Luckily mentioning Beckham, Owen or especially Ronaldo works in every situation. I should also mention that someone in this internet cafe has 'the final countdown' as their ringtone!

My future plans are up in the air at the moment. Before i can head to the real backwaters i'm going to have to spend a week or so improving my Indonesian. I would like to find a fishing village on a beautiful beach and just swim and sleep a few days. After that the Toraja funeral season starts which is supposed to be an experience. My original idea to spend a month in Thailand now seems a bit of a cop out as everyone i meet tells me that it has been completely overwhelmed by tourism. When I think about where to go I'm sometimes struck by a strange feeling of freedom that I have the money, information and time to do pretty much anything I want in Asia, or at least anything cheap. But for now at least im just going to learn Indonesian and relax.

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Comments

[Pamela]

Hang in there Richard
Indonesia is the most fantastic place and I hope you come away loving it as much as I do. Check out Sumatra and Java if you have the time.