Popping my cherry

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Not having EVER written a blog before, i'm slightly unsure as to how this should begin... Anyway the following is a copy of group email I 'penned' last night to family and friends. I wanted to send it to more people but technology once again got the better of me so I quit. I sort of realised that jamming stories of overseas adventures down the throats of working people back home might not be the most tactful way of keeping in touch, so here is the solution! Read it if you're interested in the goings on in Asia and eventually Europe, if you couldn't care less, no stress😊


Enjoy (hopefully)

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Well, right now i’m sitting in a very nice restaurant/cyber cafe
typing away on a laptop with some music in my ears. Fam and I are in
Yogyakarta, which is a beautiful (the word beautiful in this case is
extremely relative!) city in south/central Java, Indonesia. We arrived
yesterday after a full day spent in traffic, in planes and in transit.
So as of now there isn’t much to write about here. The places I have
been prior to Yogya on the other hand, have been all sorts of
awesome...

Damn, now that I try to think of a place to start I realise exactly
why slackness sucks! I don’t know where to start! So I spent a month
in Burma and had an absolute ball. Higlights/memorable moments
included manning the smallest bar in the world and serving moonshine
to the local alcos; seeing a pagoda covered in 53 tonnes of gold and
countless diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds (hence why the
population is desperately poor!); my SHIT (ie worst I am yet to ride
in) bus catching fire due to a full bottle of petrol sitting next to
an exposed wire and a red-hot engine cowling, then having the only
door jam shut; surviving the bus debacle; a nice hike tosee the
government sponsored opium fields and visit some beautiful hill tribe
folk (who are self-governed in the only form of democracy in the
country); resisting the temptation to do a runner with a $35000 ruby
that was handed to me; sunrise over ancient temples blah blah blah. In
short it was a beautiful country filled with beautiful people. In many
of the countries in this region i’ve felt welcomed and respected, but
in many cases I can legitimately doubt the sincerity of that kindness.
In Burma, I never once doubted the sincerity of the local people’s
love, friendship and warmth. They are stuck in a shit situation that
doesn’t look like changing any time soon, but despite this they still
live the most interesting day-to-day lives I have ever witnessed. Go
there!

After that I put myself through the wringer and got to Malaysia to
meet Fam. It took over 30 hours of constant travel and it’s fair to
say I have a healthy dislike of 2nd class seats in Thailand. Next time
I’ll take the sleeper! Malaysia was a little bland compared to Burma,
but there were definitely some cool parts. The Perhentian Islands were
beautiful (bar the rubbish washed up on the beach each day, but I’ll
overlook that). Pristine jungle islands with white sand beaches and
coral reefs offshore. No roads and a bar that serves ‘jungle juice’.
My kinda town! We spent our time lounging in the sun and snorkelling.
The snorkelling was great: reef sharks, turtles, clown fish and plenty
of coral. Heaps to keep a landlubber like me happy! The bar was great
fun too; a few small tables on the sand, a mixed bag of music, bonfire
and plenty of happy people to meet and chat with.

From there we went to a big jungle. I found out that jungles aren’t my
favourite environment as they breed monster leeches and mosquitoes,
are humid beyond belief and are almost as noisy as a mosque at 4am
(I’ll go into that later…). We saw 343433 leeches (bitten by 3),
1000932039 mosquitoes (bitten or attemped to be bitten by 1000932039),
2 bats, a snake and a few Americans. So much for wildlife!

South again to the Singapore border and Johor Bahru. A pretty boring
town that yielded an Indonesian visa, a love of sugarcane juice and
the fastest flood I have ever seen. Singapore after that for a night.
What a nothing place! People will disagree with me, but it was just so
sterile. Front page news was an anonymous phone call to a helpline
that reported a man telling the operator that we wanted to hit his local
minister. Ouch. With some more cash and time I could have found more
cool things to do, but as the budget was tight we were restricted to
Little India. That was nice as it had many of the trappings of India,
minus the overwhelming smell of raw sewerage, choking exhaust fumes
and stroppy cattle lying in awkward places. Makes India so much more
inviting!

That was curtains on peninsular Asia and opening time for Indonesia. I
like Indo. Its loud, tough, rude, cool and doesn’t try to impress you.
Honest. We started in a dive called Medan in Sumatra and quickly
exited to a BEAUTIFUL village called Bukit Lawang. Here we were
introduced to the sad stories of modern Indonesia. In 2006 a flash
flood washed away the entire village claiming 400+ lives. It sits on
the banks of a river and on the other side is a sheer wall of jungle.
The guesthouse was run by a permanently stoned guy with a big smile
called Pino. Some people opted to trek in the jungle; we were there to
see the Orang Utans. When we arrived we told Pino this and his
response was to point across the river, we looked and saw two O.T.’s
ambling along the bank going toward the feeding station. Wow! The park
rehabilitates O.T.’s that were formerly held in captivity. The
released animals are semi-wild and are fed twice a day. It was
actually creepy watching them walk like humans. They are so smart too!
To get across the river we had to take a half-submerged canoe that
worked on a pulley system and used the current to propel itself. One
of the apes (Sasha) had seen how this worked and had begun escaping
via the canoe. Trust me, it’s a tough system and to see an ape
dexterously pulling herself across the river was an eye opener! The
same one had once broken into a kitchen (ripped the wall open), filled
a wok with rice, ripped the tap from the wall to fill the wok with
water, climbed a tree and ate the ‘cooked’ rice. Smart!

Next was the old backpacking stop called Lake Toba. Toba was the Koh
Phangan of the 1980’s and 90’s. Since then the have been a range of
bombings, earthquakes, floods and tsunamis that have deterred most
tourists. Now it’s a ghost town, but a stunning ghost town. Toba was
an immense volcano that blew centuries ago leaving a massive
crater-lake with a big island in the middle. The island is big enough
to have its own lake… We swum in the lake, rode motorbikes through the
mountains, sampled the local psychedelics (awesome) and relaxed at the
guesthouse. Just the sort of place that you can get lost in, and after
a few months of living in hovels and dirt palaces, it was a good
remedy.

A 16 hour bus took us to Bukittingi for some recuperation for Fam. She
ate something nasty and suffered a bout of crookgut, which
appropriately chose to manifest itself 5 minutes before we got on the
bus. B’tinggi sits on the flanks of two volcanoes, which formed the
crux of our adventures. We hiked so bloody much. In two days we
struggled up mud ‘paths’ to see a blooming Rafflesia
Somethingdifficultinlatinidontremember, one of the biggest flowers in
the world. It has the unfortunate characteristic of stinking of
rotting carrion. Nice. That was 4 hours. The next morning we walked
another 4 hours around the local canyon. Our slightly crazy German
host had said that climbing Mt. Merapi (the active volcano) is easy on
Saturday nights as there are heaps of locals doing it. So we jumped
and started walking. 16 hours later we reached flat ground. It was the
hardest bit of walking I have ever put myself though. We scrambled up
sheer cliffs, over volcanic rubble, through sulphurous clouds of
noxious gas and then down through heavy jungle. We ate 1 nasi goreng
(fried rice) each, 2 bananas and some water. We didn’t sleep and
nearly froze on the peak. As the Ulli the German predicted, there were
locals doing the climb and they were the difference between us getting
there and quitting. We had reached the edge of the tree line at 3am
and were going to wait until 5 before trying for the top. It was very
very cold, very windy and in the clouds. Fortunately we had good
clothes, but no shelter and little food. They shared food, tents,
caffeine powder and jokes. Thank god we bumped into them! It was
pretty funny really, we were kitted out with headlamps, hiking boots
(not me though as I only have Jesus Sandals), goretex and other
high-tech gear. We battled! They were in tshirts, jeans, thongs and
their torches were those cigarette lighters with a small light in the
base. Gold! They were even chain-smoking the entire way and wondering
why the felt sick… The hike finished at a nice waterfall which did
wonders in washing away the dirt and grumpiness. I’ve never slept so
deeply. I even slept through the early morning chorus of muezzins.
This has become a pet HATE of mine. I’m all for religious tolerance,
but when the 8 mosques within 200m of each other compete for volume at
each of the 5 prayer times each day, my patience plummets. Our room
was cheap and in this part of the world that means it is definitely
loud, probably smelling and occasionally clean. This room smelt like a
sewer and a drain, faced the main road and was adjacent to the biggest
mosque in town. I actually find the muezzin’s call to be a beautiful
thing, but this one decided to do some freestyle Allah praising each
morning. Each call would last 30 minutes and was LOUD and distorted.
Grrrr! Here the brand of Islam is a lot more moderate than in Sumatra.
People are free to marry outside of their faith, mosques don’t wake
the whole population up at 4am and women aren’t pressured to wear the
varying forms of purdah. Hell, the guy we were following on the hike
was 29 and had two wives and two kids. Both of his wives wore clothing
that is one step away from the Saudi Arabian burkah, while he strolled
around in heavy metal t-shirts and professed his love of Bob Marley
and ganja… Feminism doesn’t exist up there!

Indonesia operates under the guidelines of the Pancasila, and one of
the main positions is that each member of the population has to have a
religion. They don’t understand the concept of atheism, and especially
not when they’re poorly educated and heavily indoctrinated into
semi-radical Islam. In a country that tries to operate as a democracy
that advocates tolerance and free religious affiliation, there are
people that are trying to introduce Sharia law here. Sharia is the
horrible thing that the Taliban forced onto the formerly liberal
society of Afghanistan. They want it here. Weird…

Enough religion! Tomorrow we’re off to see Borobodur. It sits
alongside Bagan in Burma, and Angkor in Cambodia as the greatest
temple/archaeological monument in this part of the world. I can’t
wait! From here we’re make our way to Bali for a few days, then Lombok
and the Gili Islands. After that probably to the big island of
Kalimantan that Indonesia shares with Malaysia. Our plan is to cross
into Malaysia for a few days and go from there to the Philippines.
Either by boat or AirAsia. But the beauty of our situation is that it
changes daily. Who knows where and what we’ll see!

Once again, sorry for the lack of contact (if it has been bothering
you, if not forget that I apologised!). How is it at home? Am I
missing out on anything cool? Make me jealous!

Love/cheers/hugs/kisses/etc

Temps x

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This is a bit more difficult than facebook! However i'll persevere and try to have some photos and other cool things uploaded asap. For now i'll just sit back and wait for KRudd to stimulate me😊

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Photos

Shwedagon Pagoda
The most stunning religious monument I have seen. Vatican City, take a leaf from Burma!

A big hunk of ruby
My moment of temptation in Rangoon.

Village kids
Some of the happy kids Imet while walking to Inle Lake, Burma.

Long Beach
The main beach on Perhentian Kecil in Malaysia.

Party
The nightly entertainment on Long Beach.

A hard earned thirst
Orang Utans in Bukit Lawang.

Happy Laundry
Says it all, really!

Rafflesia flower
Big, remote and stinks like dead animal.

Merapi Crater
A colder version of hell.

Comments

[Emil]

explended!
Hoi! Im glad to have the possibility to join you on your journey, to read about your adventures and see some pictures from whatever you see. :) Remember that if you are going for a 1-day in Angkor, make sure to be there when they open the gates in the morning, because the sunrice there is... undescribly beautiful. Best of luck on your adventures! your nondancing-to-britney swedish mate from Perhentian -Emil

[Lachy McKinnon]

What a pop
Mr Templin, Terrific work with the blog bud. Far outreaches and is incredibly more interesting than the blog we had to maintain for 3 years for Media @ RMIT. Will read on with interest. Speak soon.