Indonesian Music

During our stay in Indonesia we really enjoyed the music scene. Most nights as we ate dinner there would be buskers who would come around play a song or two while we ate. It didn't seem to matter if we ate a food stall or restaurant it would usually include live music at some point.The busking is a little different than at home. The musician plays a song and then goes around to collect money. If the musician is good they usually finish the song and then collect from most people. If they are less than desirable someone usually pays them a lesser amount to go before they finish. Some of the bands busking can get very large. I remember one band had eight people including a poor guy who drew the short straw and had to carry around the double bass. On the ship we took from Kalimantan to Java we they had a band that played during our lunch. The second day the crew decided to join in on the singing and we were treated to a couple songs by the chief engineer. There is a mix of Indonesian music and old music from the west like guns and roses for example. Like in other countries Indonesia has one song that almost everybody knows and we can instantly recognize due to it's high usage. A few times I have heard shop keeps singing this song as we go through their store. Fun.

Flores

Dave and I decided that we would really like to visit the island Flores while we were in Indonesia. To get there we did a three day long bus and ferry marathon. We arrived in the town Labuanbajo tired, achy, and grumpy. We had a busy evening to arrange our flight out of Flores in time to leave the country before our visas expired, and to book bus tickets for the following morning so we could go to central Flores.

In the morning we left at six am on the regular bus to Bajawa. The bus ride takes an incredible twelve hours to cover 250 kilometers. When we got on the bus we were dismayed to find that the whole floor was covered in giant sacks of onions. We had to walk on the onions to get to our seats. The whole bus smelled of onions. We drove around town until there was no possible way to cram another person or article of luggage onto the bus then we hit the Trans-Flores Highway. This must be one of the most beautiful highways in the world. It twists and turns through lush forest, coffee, banana, and coconut plantations, and past occasional stunning vistas of the ocean and nearby islands. All along the highway we stopped to pick up more and more people and somehow they fit on the bus. Not far from Labuanbajo passengers on the bus began vomiting. Many people were vomiting. They vomited for the whole trip. I was glad that all I could smell was the many bags of onions. People in Indonesia don't seem to need pee breaks. We only stopped once on the whole trip. When we were finally getting to be within a few hours of our destination, we came upon a section of road that was under construction and was very slippery. After a very long wait and much animated conversation that we could not understand, our bus finally managed to inch around the construction, and we expected to be back on the road. Instead the bus pulled over again. Once again there was a lot of loud, excited conversation that we did not understand. Eventually the bus started to go again, but not all of the passengers were on it. We did not know why but were glad to get moving. As we rounded the next corner we came to the scariest moment of this trip, possibly of my life, when the bus came very close to careening off the muddy road and down a cliff. Luckily we did not. Once again the bus pulled over. The few passengers who had realised the danger in advance re-boarded the bus, and we continued on to Bajawa. I have never been so happy to get off a bus. I was not looking forward to our return trip.

In Bajawa we joined a tour to visit some of the nearby traditional villages. We both really enjoyed our tour. We learned a few things about the local people. Some of the ladies in the villages were making beautiful fabric on manual back strap looms. We also saw some of the amazing things that grow in this part of the world. At the end of the day we went to a natural hot spring to sit at the waterfall where the hot and cold rivers mix and make it a lovely temperature for bathing.

The next day we took another local bus to go to Riung. This trip was much less exciting than the last. The people on the bus were enjoyable to spend time with even though they spoke very little English. They enjoyed looking at the pictures we had taken lately. I took their picture and they took mine. As more and more people boarded the bus we tried to help people to fit in comfortably near us. There were two other tourists on the same bus as us. Even though we do not speak Indonesian we could tell that this Dutch couple (who had been part of our tour group the day before) was not very well liked on the bus. They complained about how long it took to leave town and how many people were squeezing onto the bus. The last straw with the others on the bus came when the couple refused to let someone sit in the isle beside them. Someone always sits there. A man had to stand for the entire six hour bus ride as a result. The people around us began muttering angrily (they politely included us in their conversation by saying "very bad" and pointing at the offending couple). Seriously, if you don't like how anything is done in a certain part of the world, you should probably just travel somewhere else instead of making a jerk out of yourself. Sometimes tourists can be very offensive. I hope that we are not often similarly inappropriate without realising it.

Riung turned out to be a very small town. Really the only touristy thing to do was to hire a boat and go snorkeling by the 21 islands of nearby Seventeen Islands Park. In Riung we began asking around about the options for getting back to Labuanbajo. We were hoping to find a way to avoid a sixteen hour bus ride of doom. The only other option that we found was a boatman who would take us to Labuanbajo for 2 million rupiah. That's a lot of money. In comparison, the bus would cost us between 100 000 and 200 000 each. We talked about it that night and decided that if we could barter the price down to 1 300 000 or less we would go by boat because the trip would be several hours shorter and we really wanted to avoid the bus. The next day the boatman approached us. His family wanted to go to an island near to Labuanbajo. We could come along for 1 million and he would throw in a half day trip to an island for snorkeling for free. We got the price down a little bit more then happily got our swimming gear together to go snorkeling for the afternoon. I think what happened was the boatman's family wanted to go home for Ramadan (he told us they were Muslim) but they could not afford to. The money we paid was enough to finance the whole trip for everyone, but also a great price for us.

We have been traveling in southeast Asia for nearly a year, but we had not yet tried snorkeling. The truth is we are not strong swimmers (I am particularly awful at swimming) and it seemed a bit terrifying. I'm sure that we were very entertaining to the boatman and his helper. We stood in the waist-deep water and stuck our faces in. After a couple tries we found that it was indeed possible to breath like this. Next we tried moving around a bit and found that the water here was very easy to swim in. We floated so easily that we could just lay in one spot and look at what was going on below us. We were excited to see some pretty fish and a bit of coral about the size of a pomelo. Eventually the boatman started waving his arms and yelling what direction we should swim to find coral. Apparently we still swam the wrong direction. He sent his Friend out to show us. I followed him (very slowly) and found an absolutely amazing display of colourful coral and even more colourful fish. Once Dave and I started to figure out what we were doing, we really loved snorkeling. It was so beautiful and interesting. Wow.

Our boat ride the next day was very enjoyable. It was much more comfortable than the bus. We left at 5 in the morning (yuck) and were in Labuanbajo by 3:30. The scenery was lovely. We enjoyed having the family on board. It would have been much more boring with just the two of us. Did you know that babies here don't wear diapers? Their parents just pack a lot of pairs of pants. Well now you know.

We are now in Singapore. We flew from Labuanbajo to Denpassar on an airline with the reassuring logo "Wings Air: Fly is Cheep". Then we flew to Singapore on Air Asia.

Goodbye to WWOOFing for now

Many of you know that we have chosen to spend some of our time while we travel volunteering on organic farms (wwoofing). Our wwoofing list has recently expired and we have decided we don't have time to renew it this trip. Our experiences on the farms we have visited have been very valuable. Our time spent wwoofing has turned out to be as much about learning about and participating in different cultures and living with people different then we are as it was about farming. I found it interesting how each of the farms we worked on had made their connection to wwoofing. The connection usually came from the west either by marriage or other some other relationship. In the Philippines it was the project of a dedicated peace corp volunteer who got the Ecna farm connected to wwoofing. When this relationship was healthy it made for a better experience and working environment. We were able to see some tropical plants grow. The food we were provided with was always good and it was good to be able to see how food is prepared in the home. We tried some interesting things like banana hearts, local ferns, and pig lungs - always served with rice. When we were on farms we ate rice three times a day. At first this felt unusual especially for breakfast but soon it became a normal part of our routine. Now when we go to a restaurant and have a omelet we comment on it would be nice if it came with some rice to fill us up. We learned that making organic compost can be a lot of work as this was by far the most labour intensive project given to us, but it was also rewarding because the progress made was easy to see. I have really valued our time on the farms we have visited and found it to be very important part of our trip . I hope we can try wwoofing in Canada and perhaps other countries in the future.

Interesting

When we were traveling in Indonesian Borneo, we found that they do not get many foreign tourists in that part of the country. As a traveler that means several things. Very few people speak English fluently and those that do all want to practice it on you. People yell out "hello mister" when they see us. Yes, they call me mister too. It can really startle me when someone yells hello mister as their motorbike whizzes past nearly brushing my arm. Because there were so few tourists we were unable to find an Indonesian phrasebook, so we brushed up our charade skills. Western food was unavailable. We only know how to say a few foods in Indonesian, so we ate a lot of those things. Finally, everyone stares at you. We took a two day boat trip to get from Borneo to Java. We bought second class tickets so we had a room with beds to sleep in. Just outside on the deck the locals traveling economy just lay down and sleep where ever they can find the space. We like the sunlight so we wanted to keep our curtains open. We saw several people walk past, do a double take, then come back to stare in at us. Most of the time this was just funny. Maybe some of them had never before seen people who look like us. At one point two men found us so intriguing that they stayed outside our window for a very long time watching us, laughing at us, and waving at us. They called people over so they could look too. They lifted up children so they could see better. A crowd grew outside the window. We felt like very awkward animals in the zoo. Eventually we could not handle it any longer so I waved good-bye to our audience and drew the curtain. Now that we are in Java, we are not the only tourists. Here it feels like we are only interesting when someone is trying to sell us something.

Ghost Town Beach

We have booked a trip on a boat over to the city of Surabaya on the island of Java for August the 2nd. With a couple of days to spare before our boat heads out we decided to go to a local beach a couple of hours north of where we are staying. We were told it could get busy on the weekend so we booked a room using most of our reaming cell minutes trying to convey my name to the hotel receptionist.

D as in dog. I hear her repeat "B" no D as in dog. A as in apple "pinapple".... eventually we ended up with "Ohh!! Mister David".

This and the fact we are staring to tire of eating mee goring(fried noodles) and nasi goring (fried rice) has led us to try and find a Indonesian phrase book to try and at least pick up a few basics as most people here only have limited English. With our hotel booked we head out in a shared taxi which ended up being just Marina and I. The first part of our drive was very slow as we wait in a traffic jam to get out of the city. Once we are out of the city we are able to pass and travel at speeds up to about 80 Km/h including times we pass next to the road congested with school kids. This made me nervous but kids here must be trained to not go onto roads and to listen for horns to warn of vehicles traveling behind them. We arrive at the hotel around noon and check in. The hotel wants a deposit for twice the cost of the room we decline and assure them we won't break anything and check out when we leave. Our room is basic and appears to be in a building shared with hotel employees or family members. We go out to check out the beach and area. It's very nice but empty. Usually this is a good thing but this has strange feeling to it. There are probably over twenty restaurants with seating for well over a hundred people lining the beach but they are all empty. Strange, but we enjoy the empty beach and eat at the hotel which also has very few guests. It does pick up a little bit on Saturday and even more on Sunday so by that point we are feeling the place is somewhat normal. Perhaps even though it's peak season for foreign tourists maybe it's not the peak for local tourists as that is almost all of their business.

We ask at the hotel about a bus back to Pontianak and are offered a ride to the bus terminal not far from the hotel. We get dropped off at the station and look for a bus after handing a map with the name of the town to a group of men they all study the map and eventually end up pointing at a bus. The bus they point at is having some kind of repairs to it which isn't a good sign but we are in no hurry and the driver tells us to hop on so we do. They finish the repair and we head back to town. About half way back we pull over to the side of the road with a flat tire and all four bus staff (the bus only seats about 15 people) jump out and change out the tire with great efficiency. Probably not the first time they have done it. The spare tire doesn't look to be in very good shape either but we made it back. People here have an incredible ability to take things in stride. Whether it's the lights going out a couple times a week or constantly making the same bus repairs. I hope as we experience the different way of living here we are able to learn from it and judge for ourselves what we feel is important as we reenter a western culture.