A taste of Indonesia

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After seven months travelling it was good to see a face from home again. Nikki and I met at Denpasar airport on Bali. Nikki arrived on a flight via Bangkok but, because of the vagaries of my round-the-world ticket, I had had to go from Bangkok to Bali via Hong Kong including a night on a sofa in the Travelers Lounge in Hong Kong airport.

We spent our first afternoon and evening in Kuta, admiring the mass of litter on the beach, then moved quickly on to Ubud. Using the Lonely Planet guide we arrived at Artini 1 cottages and were escorted around the family temple to a cottage surrounded by plants and ornate Balinese architecture. This family run place was superb with six lovely Balinese houses in a walled courtyard and at less than nine pounds a night for a cottage was good value. Ubud is the cultural capital of Bali, full of artists' studios and seductive shops and many temples with traditional dance programmes. We used Ubud as a base for most of the rest of our time in Indonesia and each time we returned to Artini it felt like coming home and Brony, our adopted dog with long hair and very short legs, was always there to greet us.

Now three weeks is a very short time when travelling, and Indonesia is a huge place made up from a mass of islands. Our three must-dos were Komodo Island to see the dragons; Bali for the culture and beaches; and Java for Borobodur and Prembanan temples. Ubud was a good base to organise our travels and because of our short time limit we used various Indonesian airlines to get around quickly. Because of limited flight availability we booked flights into Labuan Bajo on Flores returning to Denpasar in Bali from Maumere seven days later giving us just two days to get a boat to Komodo and four days to cross Flores. We left three days at the end of our trip to fly into Yogyakarta on Java to see the temples before flying to Jakata and away. Phew! The rest of the time we enjoyed in Bali.

Bali

We were instantly delighted with the real Bali. Small villages composed of walled compounds for each family were set amongst rice fields, palm trees and volcanoes. Each family had their own small temple withn their compound and there were larger temples for the village and region. The people were welcoming and happy to share with us their unique culture full of ceremony. The bombing two years ago and the subsequent warnings from many governments have left Bali with a 75% drop in the tourist trade. Competition is therefore fierce and prices low for everthing except transport. Bali is a predominently Hindu island. It feels safer than London and many places in England and personally I think it is a beautiful and interesting place to visit for a relaxing holiday.

As well as being lured into the adictiveness of shopping in Ubud, we spent some time getting out into the surrounding region. We had two days cycling around Ubud, one on a tour visiting villages and a spice plantation and the cycling was all down hill so deceptively easy. The second time we just hired bikes and cycled out from Ubud to enjoy the pretty views of rice fields in the area and got steaming hot in the intense heat as we struggled up some of the hills. On our final day on Bali we got up at 2am to climb Gunung Batur, a still active volcano that last erupted in 1999. Now 2am is not my best time and the climb got progressively steeper but we made it to the top to see the dawn rise over Lombok in the distance and the steam rising from the most active craters.

One evening we went to see the kecak dance, typical of the region. The music is provided by one hundred half naked men vocalising and hand waving while dancers perform a story from the Ramayana. This was followed by two trance dances with the finale being a young man in a trance dancing as a horse on hot coals.

In Bali I loved the way that the people maintained there own culture alongside modern ways of living. They are proud of their traditions and more than welcoming to tourists who want to see their way of life. We were invited to a cremation ceremony at a guesthouse near our own. Funerals are not the drab affairs we so often see at home but are full of colour and celebration of the life of the person who has died. The purpose of the ceremonies is to release the spirit so that it may procede to reincarnation and it is in several stages that may be months apart as it can be both expensive for the family and an auspicious time has to be selected by the priest. At the family temple the priest received a variety of colourful offerings, a gamelan orchestra played at the front of the house and a puppeteer related part of the Ramayana using leather shadow puppets. The guests and many of the villagers then followed a procession of a dias, representing the funeral pyre of the deceased lady, and a giant paper and bamboo cow, the sacred symbol of the Hindu god, Shiva. At the cemetary the dias and cow were set ablaze, the ashes collected and after another day of ceremony they would be taken to the sea to be scattered.

As a change from Ubud and to get some beach and sea we went to Amed on the east coast for a couple of days and found a balcony room overlooking the sea at Bamboo Bali bungalows. The beach was black volcanic pebbles, not the golden sands that Nikki was hoping for, but the snorkelling just a few metres off shore was good with clear calm waters and fine visibility allowing us to see a multitude of fish, including a small shark.

Komodo, Rinca and Flores

Early in our time in Indonesia we booked flights to Flores. Landing at Labuan Bajo we were instantly besieged at the small airport by tour guides willing to take us to a hotel and organise our travels. It was all good natured though so we went along with Filip who was representing the hotel that we had chosen from our books. Labuan Bajo is a small fishing town on the west coast of Flores with none of the architectural style that we found in Bali, just roughly built houses and shacks. Hotels on Flores are also not of the standard of Bali and we were to find that there was little negotiation to be had on the price of a room.

We arranged a two day boat tour to the islands of Rinca and Komodo and the next morning turned up at the quayside to find a large and beautiful converted fishing boat just for us. The party consisted of our guide, Filip, the captain and ships lad. The sky was blue, the waters calm and we sailed off to the west stopping to snorkel at various places and arriving in Rinca for a trek across the island. We were greeted at the end of the pier by a slumbering Komodo dragon, like a large prehistoric lizard, and Filip armed himself with a stick to protect us. The dragon just opened an eye and decided to ignore us as the day was still hot. Around the cook house of the ranger station were another five dragons ranging in size from one to four metres in length, all hoping in vain for a snack. At one time the lizards were fed but now they are left to kill their own prey from the deer and pigs on the island. With a ranger as a guide we had a hot and exhausting two hour walk across part of the island but only found one more dragon although we saw deer, water buffalo, wild pigs and monkeys as well. We were told tales of trekkers who had gone missing, presumably attacked and eaten by the dragons. A dragon does not directly kill its prey but one bite is enough as bacteria from its bite will kill the animal within a few days. All the dragons have to do is wait for dinner.

After Rinca we sailed into a gloriously peaceful sunset towards Komodo. The next morning we trekked again here but only saw one lazy dragon near the beach. The island is more forested and dragons less easy to find than on Rinca.

Returning to Flores we hired a car for four days to take up across the island to catch our flight in Maumere. Although expensive we did not have much time and the roads are steep, winding and bone shattering in places. We thought that the car would give us extra flexibilty to visit villages and sites off the bus route however the driver had his own agenda. The four days we spent in the car were exhausting from the heat, the driver's music and his cigarette smoke. On the first day the car had a puncture and we realised that none of the tyres or the spare had any tread whatsoever and the thread was showing through! "It's not like Europe!" said the driver.

It was coming up to easter when we were on Flores and the island is predominently Catholic. In Ruteng there was a large gathering on the town playing fields and a female singer with a beautiful voice was singing hymns as night fell over the town.

The most fascinating parts of the trip were visiting some of the ethnic villages along the way. The area around Bajawa is particularly interesting. The Ngada people in the village of Bena still maintain their traditonal lifestyle and believe in the spirits of their ancestors. They have symbolic male and female 'houses' for each family group and megalithic monuments where buffalo sacrifices regularly take place. They accept tourists visiting their homes with a pride in their traditions. The Ngada people still follow the law laid down by their ancestors. They are divided into clans, that have head chiefs and elders who decide over village matters. Nikki and I were disappointed as we were invited to trek out to some of the more remote villages which sounded fascinating but we didn't have the time. At Moni we visited another village, Jopu, to see the ancestral house and the beautiful ikat weaving.

Our last night on Flores was at Moni where we rose early to climb up to the top of Mount Kelimutu to see the sunrise and the coloured crater lakes. The morning was eerie as we watched the turquoise and brown lakes emerge and disappear through the misty cloud.

Java

Our time in Indonesia was drawing to an end but first we had planned to see the ancient temples near Yogyakarta on Java. Yogyakarta and Java were very different to Bali. The city was big and dirty and apart from the central area had very little appeal. We took a becak (cycle rickshaw) from our hotel to the Sultans Palace and later the Water Palace. We had the feeling that we were the only tourists in Java as everywhere was deserted. The Sultans Palace is surrounded by artisans houses and we had an impromptu guide to take us around. The present sultan only lives in a small area of the palace but we were able to see the area where the hareem of up to 40 wives of the previous sultans lived. The Water Palace contains a beautiful swimming area where the hareem and sultan could bathe in private. However the present sultan only has one wife.

Another early morning saw us setting off on a tour to the Buddhist temple of Borobodur. We did not have time to take the pilgrim route to the top so we just sampled a selection of the beautiful carvings illustrating stories from Buddhist texts that decorate the walls. As it was a holiday the temple was besieged by school children most of whom had never seen a foreign tourist. They all admired Nikki and we spent much of our time posing for photographs. In the distance the active volcano of Mount Merapi puffed out black smoke; maybe a reminder that just a few years ago terrorist bombs had blown up part of Borobodur.

The next day we visited Parambanan, a complex of Hindu temples built just 50 years after Borobadur. We were both surprised at this magnificent place that has a similar feel to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We spent four happy hours walking around the temples covering several kilometeres in the process. The heat of the day finally beat us though and we returned for a cooling swim in the hotel pool.

This was the end of our travels together for the time being and the next morning we took an early flight into Jakata, Nikki reluctantly to go home and me to fly on to the next part of my journey.

A taste of Indonesia

Now food is a major concern when you are travelling. Sometimes it is cheap and just satisfies your hunger, sometimes you have to take a chance on ordering from an unknown menu, and sometimes it is a gourmet's delight. We found all those in Indonesia.

The staple food for many Indonesians when eating out is padang. Traditionally in homes food is cooked in the morning and left in the kitchen for members of the household to help themselves when they are hungry. Padang restaurants follow this pattern. Food is cooked in the morning, or even the day before. Neither Nikki or I could get used to selecting luke warm or cold food from the bowls left in the window.

Conversely we had two lessons in cooking Balinese food and the results were delicious. The food at the Bamboo Bali resort in Amed was excellent and after making friends with the owner and his family they showed us how to cook coconut chicken sate (spicy ground chicken and coconut grilled on sticks) and urab (a spicy vegetable and coconut dish). Back in Ubud we asked at our favourite restaurant if they did cookery lessons and the chef invited us into the kitchen to cook our own delicious meal. The following day he delivered another meal to our room at Artini. This was a Balinese speciality - duck roasted with spices in an underground oven till it melts in your mouth. Yum!

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Photos

puppets
Puppets made from finely cut buffalo skin are used to tell the Ramayana

rice
Rice terraces and palm trees make Bali a beautiful island to explore.

kecak
One hundred half naked men provide musical accompanyment for the Kecak dance on Bali

cremation
A large image of a cow and a funeral pyre are paraded through the streets then symbolically cremated.

fishing
Early morning trip to watch the fishermen at Amed. Gunung Agung in the background.

komodoDragon
What are you staring at?

road block
The roads on Flores are difficult even for the locals

Bena
The megalithic village of Bena

Buddha
Buddha at Borobodur

Prambanan
The Hindu temple at Prambanan

dance
Ramayana dance in Yogyakarta

cooking
Nikki preparing sate under the watchful eye of Dewa