Indonesia

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And to think, I wasn't originally going to go to Indonesia!! I'm so glad I did, it's awesome! I hope this post isn't too long and boring, but I was so fascinated by what I did and saw there I ended up writing quite a lot....


My entry into Indonesia is the small island of Bali. It’s a very developed island with many tourists, though still less busy than before the bombing of 2002. I arrive late at night and take a room in Kuta and the next day meet with some Swiss friends that I met in Thailand. I spend the day on the beach with them watching the surf and the surfers and sipping cool Bintang beers. In the evening we go to a Tiesto album launch party at a great club called 66, which even has its own bungee jump! I dance all night, say goodbye once again to Kris and Viv, get my bags from my hotel and head for the harbour.


At the harbour I find my Pelni ship to Flores and board along with about 1000 Indonesians. The ship is a cargo and passenger ship that does 3 week loops of the main islands, which is slow but extremely cheap. The ship has 4 decks and I’m booked on the lowest. I find a space on one of the wooden boards which will serve as my bed and home for the next 2 days. I’m next to a group of family and friends from Flores and I’m overwhelmed by how friendly everyone is. It seems I’m the only westerner on the boat and a lot of people come to look at me or talk to me out of curiosity. Two girls from the group study in Jakarta so speak good English, and we trade language lessons, me helping them with grammar and them teaching me some basic Indonesian. From the top deck of the ship I watch the view unravel before me, sometimes vast expanses of open sea, other times some of the 17000 islands that make up this huge country, the world’s 4th largest population wise.


I pass the time on the ship reading, listening to music or chatting and I eat Nasi Lemak (rice & spices) or rice, veg & egg for each meal. We stop several times and load up with local foods for delivery to other islands. But the process is chaos and highly amusing and can take hours to complete. To board the boat, people scramble up gangways, climb over railing, and jump barriers, all carrying numerous bags and boxes over their heads.


At the end of the first day I prepare to sleep with everyone else fairly early, soon after it goes dark. I sleep OK on my wooden board considering the strange environment but I am annoyed when people get up at sunrise and begin chattering loudly. I reluctantly wake up, shower in one of the ships bathrooms, and get breakfast. It’s 6am and we won’t arrive until 10pm. It’s going to be a long day! But the day passes surprisingly quickly. We stop for 5 hours at Bima on Sumbawa to load up with red onions and more people and then continue on to Flores.


I will have a few days on Flores before I catch a boat tour back to Lombok but as yet I have no plans for what to do there. A guy I’ve been chatting with on the boat suggests I travel with him to Ende to visit Kelimutu Volcano. I like the idea and we begin making plans together for this trip.


The boat docks in Labuan Bajo on Flores at 10pm, as scheduled, and I and my new friend, Tarik, try to find a bus to Ende on the other side of the island, but none are going so far. So instead we take a bus to the first town east of here, Ruteng, with a plan to change buses there. Buses on Flores don’t run to a timetable but go when they are full. This can be a lengthy process as people get bored waiting and get off and it can take hours to fill every seat. Our bus is finally full by 1am and sets off to Ruteng (4hrs according to the Lonely Planet) on winding, bumpy roads. It’s a rackety old bus and although I love authentic experiences, this journey is exhausting. I can’t sleep, can’t read in the dark, can’t listen to music (my mp3 battery is dead) so I sit staring into the dark for hours, my bum sore from all the bumping about. We stop for food in the night and then finally reach Ruteng at 8am. I make a quick calculation. If the 4hr journey to Ruteng took 7hrs, the 15hr ride to Ende could take 30hrs there. And 30hrs back again. It’s too much and I’d never make it back again for my boat trip even if I survived the trip. So I say a quick goodbye to Tarik and find myself stood alone in a rubble area which is Ruteng bus station. But I’m not alone for long!


The guy who was sat next to me on the bus introduces himself as Vian and invites me to his Auntie’s house. He tells me he’s been living in Java and has returned to Flores to see his family again after a year away. With no better plan to hand, I agree and we take a taxi up the street to her house. She gives us a rice and veg lunch and lets us sleep a couple of hours, which I’m really grateful for. The house is basic but clean and the Auntie is really nice. I ask if there’s anything to see nearby and they tell me there’s a really nice lake but that the last bus there has already left today. I suggest we hire a motorbike - that I will pay if Vian will ride on these bad roads. He agrees and quickly arranges it with a friend and soon we’re heading off into the mountains. It’s cold up in the hills and the cloud is low. The road gets steadily worse the further we get from Ruteng until it is just rubble and it is extremely painful to be on the back of the bike. After 3 hours we reach Vian’s home village of Wattunggong and we stop for a break.


Everyone is really pleased to see Vian again after a year away but even more fascinated by the white guy he’s brought with him. Vian tells me he’s brought Chinese and Japanese friends here before, but that I’m the first European ever to visit. He shows me round the village and everywhere we go there’s kids following us chattering excitedly. We have some boiled cassava as a snack then have another quick sleep. When I wake I’m introduced to his cousin, Dince, the local high school English teacher. Dince studied teaching in Bali and, like Vian, is one of only a few villagers to have ever left the island. The people in the village are all of a tribe called Manggarai and speak the Manggarai language as well as the official national language of Indonesian. Vian, Dince and I are invited to dinner by 3 different family relatives, all eager to see Vian again and meet this foreign visitor. So we have 3 dinners and I get quite full! But each dinner is almost the same. Some leaves, maybe some fish, hot chillies and plenty of rice. Only 3 plants grow well in this region, cassava, papaya and banana and all meals consist of either the leaves or fruit of these plants along with rice. As Dince is a teacher, she’s relatively wealthy and so the family can afford meat sometimes too, mostly chicken. Over dinner Vian jokes that his village is known locally as Wattunggong City, which the others find hilarious as it only has a population of 300. The family tell stories in English, Indonesian and Manggarai and they have a good sense of humour and seem generally quite happy.


After all the dinners, Vian heads off to his granddad’s village and Dince takes me to meet her mum and family. There are no street lights in the village and the sky is peppered with a million stars and it reminds me of the night sky as I saw it from Nepal. Dince’s neighbours have a TV so we go next door and join them to watch some American TV show and the news, before they put on some Indonesian Karaoke. There’s limited electricity so they don’t stay up too late. We go back to Dince’s and I’m given her room for the night, as she goes to share with her mum. It’s freezing cold up in the hills and hard for me to sleep on the wooden bed. And the dirt floors mean it is dusty and bad for my asthma. At sunrise Dince comes to wake me and we have breakfast. She’s bought some milk, a rare treat, as she knows that is what Europeans have. I actually don’t like milk much for breakfast but I’m touched by the thought. We eat boiled cassava, and chat with the other teachers who call in to see me on their way to work. They all speak surprisingly good English considering they’re never spoken to a native English speaker before.


At 7.30am Vian arrives and we talk to the locals about how to get to the lake. But they don’t recommend it; the road is too bad right now, so we decide to stay in the village instead, which is fine by me. Vian, Dince and I go up to the high school, 3 white buildings set high in the hills with a backdrop of luscious green mountains. When I comment to Dince how amazing the view is, she just shrugs and says “but there’s nothing there”. The day is heating up now. I meet all the teachers and have photos with them and Dince explains to me a typical day. Then I’m shown round the village again, including how they make the local coffee and I visit more houses. Strangely, all the houses are decorated with pictures of Asian and US pop stars and pictures of the Virgin Mary or the Pope (Flores is a catholic island, even though most of Indonesia is Muslim). Next we go to see some caves with 2 of Vian’s friends and it’s all a bit overgrown but very interesting and no-one seems to visit the caves often. As the boys chase bats in the caves, Dince tells me more about life in her Manggarai village. She finds it frustrating having lived in Bali and returned here. Her mother has never left the village so knows no different but since Dince has eaten KFC and pizza and other western food, she finds the same rice & veg meal every day incredibly boring. She hasn’t eaten bread for years! She’s also frustrated by how little money she earns. She’s well paid and can afford luxuries such as a mobile phone. But when I ask how much she earns, she explains that she gets just the equivalent of 50 USD a month. And she’s the only one in the family who earns a wage. So she can never save or travel and can rarely afford new clothes. But then most people in the village just live off the land and earn nothing. She also tells me that they have a culture of offering whatever they have to whoever needs it most at the time. For example, when someone has a child, people give whatever they have to the new parents. When Dince got a place at University in Bali, the whole village saved up to pay for her travel there.


We wander back into the village from the caves and I have a final meal with them, papaya and banana soup with rice. I give Dince all the money I have with me as thanks for her hospitality and she takes it. It’s not much, as I thought I was only going out for the day, but it’s 2 weeks wages to her and is much appreciated. Then it’s time for me to leave, so I say goodbye to Dince and then Vian and I set off back to Ruteng by bike. The way back seems easier and we’re soon back at his Aunties. I pack up my bags, thank Vian for an amazing time and take a bus back to Labuan Bajo.


The next day I start my boat trip back to Lombok. I join the boat for the return leg of a 5 day trip, having been advised the 2nd leg is more interesting. There are 30 of us on the boat and most people already know each other, and after being in the village it’s a bit of a shock to be suddenly amongst only Brits and other Europeans. The ship has cabins but I've booked deck class so after the welcome party is over, I settle down with 10 others to sleep on the floor. The Germans take all the mattresses for the upper deck so the rest of us are on the bare metal lower deck. At 4am the boat sets off to the island of Rinca. By 6am we're having breakfast and soon after are on the island. Immediately we're faced with 2 huge Komodo Dragons, the biggest lizards in the world! They're also one of the most dangerous creatures in the world; their toxic bite is lethal. As we trek over the island and its Jurassic park scenery we pass many more komodos sunbathing to keep warm. Then it's back on the boat and on to Laba, an awesome long, soft sandy deserted beach with amazingly colourful coral and fish. The sea is really clear and I spend an hour snorkelling and marvelling at the sea life.


As our boat continues on into the evening, the choppy sea makes us feel queasy. I struggle to sleep that night and around 4am I go up and lie on the upper deck and watch the stars - the 1000-star-hotel! As the stars fade and the black turns to blue, there's an orange haze as a stunning sunrise emerges over the ocean. People stir and slowly the boat comes to life. I'm tired but excited for another day’s adventure. We visit Mayo Island to see a small waterfall then later stop at a tiny deserted desert island called Keramat, which is so small you can walk around it in 10 mins! The coral here is better than I've ever seen - purples, blues, greens and so full of life - and it's stunning. The last part of the day is a long sail to Lombok, where the trip ends.


I stay in Sengigi on Lombok and next morning take a boat to Gili Trawangan. It's a lovely island, both quite relaxed in the day and with a bit of a party reputation for the evenings. I spend 4 days there relaxing after my busy days. I share with an Irish guy called Chris, a teacher in Taiwan, and I spend my evenings drinking margaritas with him and his teacher friends Mike, Jenny and Joe and a British girl called Chau from my boat trip.


The island is famous for its turtles, and I'm lucky to be there when they hold a turtle release ceremony. There's some dancing and some speeches, and then 200 baby turtles are released, flapping wildly and then disappearing into the ocean. The next day on a snorkelling trip I'm lucky to see 6 or 7 adult turtles diving and surfacing and swimming happily out at sea. After these days of relaxation and margaritas it's finally time to move on again. I have a final swim in Asian sea for this trip, say goodbye to the Gili's and fly over to Java.


I land in Surabaya and immediately head south to Mount Bromo volcano. At 4am next morning I go by jeep to watch the sunrise from Mount Penajaken. It's awesome!! Breathtaking!! And really cold! Then we climb Mount Bromo to the edge of the crater and it's hot and dusty and the smoke is suffocating but it's worth all this just for the experience.


From Bromo I take a bus to Jogja. I meet a German girl and her younger sister on the bus who are great fun and I spend the few next days with them laughing and enjoying the sights of Jogja. The sights include the impressive Buddhist temple Borobodur and the nice but less amazing Hindu temple Prambanan. And the funniest thing is definitely a funfair in the city with cycle mini-big-wheels and elephant rides and mini-rickshaw rides by kids (the silliness reminds me of Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai) and I think I haven't laughed this much in ages!!


So I'm really quite sad to leave Indonesia and to fly back to Singapore. In the past 3 weeks I've seen and done so many things. After so many months of travelling I'm amazed to have some of my best experiences just now. Indonesia has delivered the kind of experiences I think I was looking for on this trip and it has opened my mind further as I got a glimpse into another way of life. I found my moment. I'm satisfied.


So is the trip over? Oh no! Tonight I fly to New Zealand! :-)

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Comments

[matt aho]

travel gem
thanks for the great blog entry...it appears you have found the reason why a lot of us travel...the feeling of actually experiencing a different place with local people. cheers.