Age is Just a Number

Travelog - Indonesia Part 1

so. after returning from komodo, we set out to explore the rest of the island of flores. like all the islands of indonesia, it's volcanic; a long, narrow strip of rugged mountains blanketed by fertile volcanic soil, which makes for very lush plant life: thick green banana trees and palms, forestier trees like cinnamon and teak, tangly rainforest undergrowth, and lots of crops as well. all the rice paddies are terraced sharply into the hillsides as there is very little flat land, and due to this they grow more of other crops such as potatoes, peanuts, and taro, which are less demanding of a level playing field.

this also means that travel across the island is arduous, at best: what looks like a short hop across the map is in reality an interminablly winding journey marked by endless, endless hairpin turns up and down and around the contours of each and every hump of land. first you brace yourself with your left hand/leg, then your right....for hours. people get sick. a lot. geography is the biggest determining factor in indonesia. it keeps cultures distinct and preserved over relatively short distances. it keeps the economy--and the resources-- centered on the main island, java, while everybody else is left to founder in increasing degrees of primitivity and poverty. and it keeps a lot of tourists from venturing too far off the beaten track.

the most accessible long-haul transportation option is the public bus. these are battered old behemoths, with treadbare tires, cushionless, busted seats, semi-functional windows, and clown-car capacity. each one has a 'boy' hanging out the door, whose job it is to endlessly shout out the destination to the pedestrains of indonesia (each of them); to collect fares, to oversee the continual repacking of luggage on top of the bus, and to blow an endless stream of cigarette smoke into the faces of those trapped within. the aisle is lined with crates or little plastic stools for that keystone row of passengers. bags of rice are commonly chucked in and serve as additional seating. the children are generally more well-behaved, if less conscious, than the poultry. people are mashed in to the bursting point--the bus can be stopped at the wave of a hand by anyone along the way who wants a ride. the younger men sit on the roof, until it rains or they need a cigarette lit (because who can go an hour without one? no one on this island!), at which point they too cram inside to fill the air with clove-cigarette smoke. stops are made for meals, for chatting with the driver's friends, for picking up untoward pieces of luggage like 16 truck tires or an entire restaurant display cabinet, and roping them dubiously to the back/top/sides--and then more stops are made to tie them back on when they fall off. it's an experience! a twelve hour one, in this case.

we arrived to the town of bajawa in the pouring, pelting rain of midafternoon. it's a rather nondescript, gloomy mountain town, with a perfect-coned volcano towering over it, and sometimes visible through the blanket of clouds. we decided to spend a day here to let our spines recover from the bus ride and to allow a good twenty four hours for blood to return to our pounded butts. bajawa is known as a base from which to explore the traditional villages of the local tribes, and so the next day we hired a guide and a couple of motorbikes to do just that. he took us, most notably, to a small village that was a walk away from even the nearest road. this probably sounds awfully condescending, but i was really impressed by the extent to which people here have managed to retain their traditions against the temptations of western culture. satellite dishes they may have, but they live in a village which looks virtually unchanged from time untold. it was set in a square around a large open space, tiered up the hill, all the houses facing inward. they were built with native timber and high thatched roofs in designs strictly dictated by tradition, and our guide explained to us many of their beliefs and practices, including the carvings on each house, the ancestor worship and the totems they maintain to represent those ancestors, and little fetishes on their roof-peaks. also they practice animal sacrfice for all occaisons of note, and keep the dried jawbones of sacrificed pigs and buffalo hanging on their porches as a symbol of each family's prosperity and devoutness.

as it just so happens, we were right on time for a pre-marital pig sacrifice. i was impressed with the non-chalance with which is was carried out: a few words were said as the pig rooted contentedly in the weeds, and then he was tied up to shrieks of protest. rather unceremoniously, i thought, the chosen guy hacked him across the skull with a big machete, and that was that: snap some photos, on to the next village. one surprising thing about the people of flores is, in a mulim country, they are christian. it's an odd mix of christian tradition and their own pre-existing animistic beliefs, most obviously evidenced by the graves in the center of the villages and in front yards with their almost-western style headstones. and the churches right across the island. in many places where religions have spread from abroad, the diety is transfigured to reflect local physical characteristics--for example, a chinese and a thai buddha look entirely different--but not so with jesus. he's still white, put-upon-looking, and blue-eyed to boot. that was the most disturbing aspect of it all for me, not so much that religion has been successfully proselytized here (which is bad enough) but that the people of flores are worshipping a white guy.

to be continued...

Travelog - Malaysia to Indonesia...part Ib

"...back on the boat we motored on, and in the afternoon got to go snorkeling within the bounds of komodo national park.  this was the most amazing, pristine oceanscape i can imagine--the world underwater was a psychedelic garden of unabashedly brilliant color, texture and shape, absolutely teeming with life.  we even spotted dolphins leaping about 30 feet away, and heard their playful beeps and squeaks though they didn't venture close enough to see underwater.  daylight was fading and we were both shivering by the time we reluctantly got out, our unhurried crew placidly fishing (!) off the top deck of the boat.
we docked offshore for the night to watch enormous bats, flying foxes as they're not inappropriately called, screaming like demons from hell in the mangroves and then flying at sunset on wide, silent wings across to the bigger island for a night of hunting...fruit.  after dinner our crew fished for squid, as did many small craft from the nearest village.  this is accomplished by dangling a naked fluorescent bulb over the water to attract them, and then trolling slowly for the shadowy shapes.  the crew let us have a go, and i managed to catch one that was proudly served up for lunch the next day. 
  we slept on the deck, the stars were as brilliant as only away from civilization they can be, and the black water was alive with bioluminescence.
  we woke with the sun to the cacophonous sound of the bats returning to roost, and were off to komodo island for another hike.  komodo is pretty big and sprawling, inhabited around its shores, but still very beautiful to hike.  it has the reputation of having less wildlife than rinca, which we found to be true though it was nonetheless impressive, and we were lucky enough to get a guide AND a ranger doing research to accompany us, which was really a treat--he was experimenting with baiting the dragons with goatmeat suspended in stinky bags from the trees, at which they could only gaze longingly as we snapped their photos, but beyond that our guides' knowledge of flora and fauna was impressive:  who can tell the difference between a vanda and a dendrobium orchid by the roots??
  another snorkeling session and we motored several hours back to the port, just as the daily afternoon rains were closing in. 
  i think i'll leave off here for now, and describe the rest of flores in the next one.  if my eyes are glazing over from the computer screen, yours probably are too...
more later...."

picture from Google Earth

Travelog - Malaysia to Indonesia...part Ia

More travel adventures from my niece....

"so, it's been a while since i've been able to write.  i've actually been exploring parts of the globe where the world wide web has yet to take root.  it's been lovely to drop out, not to even have the option of being connected, of feeling like i'm somewhere truly remote and somewhat unspoilt by the virus of globalization. 

which also means i have a great deal to relate.  it's another thousand word essay, get a beverage and a comfy chair!

i returned to indonesia from malaysia in mid-march and met up with matthew, who had a two-week holiday he gamely chose to pack full of as much adventure as possible, rather than soaking up sun on a beach somewhere or swimming with the fish.  we decided to tick off one of his lifelong desires of seeing komodo dragons in the wild (while they are still left), and to explore one of the islands that's been topping my list, called flores--three islands to the east of bali and a world away, known most spectacularly for its colored volcanic lakes.  in stark contrast to bali's polished tourist facade, flores is remote, difficult to access, arduous to travel across, and immensely rewarding in terms of the unspoilt beauty of the landscape, and the challenges and lessons it presents to the casual traveler. 
  we flew into labuan bajo, which takes the cake for smallest airport i've been to.  as soon as the engines of our plane--the only one there--were stilled, the blinding silence of a sweltering day settled heavily around us, punctuated only by the twittering of birds and the occasional languid flap of the sophisticated navigational device we call the windsock.  luggage was unloaded by hand onto a hand-pulled cart, and dragged up to the small knot of passengers as the outgoing batch were loaded on; silent faces of the cab drivers and hotel touts outside pressed up against the dirty window, waiting.
   it was a dusty little port town, pretty enough once the shock of the intense, wet heat stifling our lungs was ameliorated by a porch to sit on, with a nice view over the island-dotted harbor.  but not a place to linger--fleecing tourists for all they are worth with outrageously expensive tour packages seems to be the local m.o.  with some difficulty we managed to charter a small boat to take us off to komodo and rinca, two of the handful of islands which harbor populations of the world's biggest lizard.  we set off the next morning, almost immediately greeted by dolphins leaping in joyful arcs all around.  the sun was brilliant, the water the saturated blue i like to call Windex (deep hue), and the breeze refreshing as we cruised past the lush green hills of tiny, near-deserted islands speckled with fisherman's shacks wobbly on their stilts. 
  after a few hours we arrived at rinca, and were escorted across a muddy floodplain to the ranger's hut for our guided hike--guide with stick being mandatory, to protect dragons and tourists from each other's more foolish/ destructive whims. the island felt like one that time had forgotten:  rolling hills with views to the sea, the quiet was very profound, the vegetation a grassy savannah punctuated with shaggy palm trees, dried up stream beds, and outcroppings of rock.  there were several dragons before we even set out, though, flopped lethargically on the ground outside the kitchen of one of the (stilted) huts.  it's hard to know what to make of them:  lithe and muscled with long, curving black claws and bacteria-dripping teeth, they are powerful enough to dispatch a person quite effectively (not to mention a water buffalo), should they decide to do so; but lounging around like that, fully acclimated to photo-snapping tourists, it's hard to take them seriously.  it was easier to be impressed by the itinerant one that came lumbering along the trail toward us later, pale yellow tongue flicking, mighty tail held suspended and lashing back and forth as he marched majestically past us (skittering out of his way) without a glance.  all in all though, the most impressive was just to be able to hike a few miles on a beautiful, nearly uninhabited island, to take in the wildlife and the feeling of nature amongst which human presence was merely incidental."

picture from Google Earth

to be continued....

Malaysian Travelog - Homebase

Backtracking a bit, while my neice was on Saipan visiting my brother, her dad, before her Malaysian travels,  she caught up on her water skills.  Here's a bit of photo eye candy:

Malaysian Travelog - Part IV

"... after conquering the majority of the trails and becoming a known face in the curry-shops, i decided it was time to move on to longer and wetter trails: into the rainforest proper, to taman negara (which means 'national park' in malay, and is the nation's biggest.  it's purportedly the world's oldest virgin rainforest, as none of the ice ages ever reached this part of the world.  this is where, if you've been avidly reading my travelogues all these years, you'll find me repeating myself; i was here four years ago and loved it.)  i didn't have time to do a long trek then or now, but i spent three long and very moist days hiking into the jungle.  different forest; lowland, full of thorny climbers like rattan and liana (tarzan vine), and soaring slender trunks with vast, thin butresses.  managed to spot a wild boar whilst hiking alone, and thankfully he ran first.  and leeches:  it was all about nasty little bloodsuckers.  deet is no use; i soaked my socks with it and found a leech dug in right in the middle of it all.  yuck. 

the best part though, is the sounds.  the forest is home to all those extraordinary birds that look like they shouldn't exist in nature: reds and blues and ginormous hornbills, and they all have unique, melodic songs.  i sat watching them flit around from within a wildlife blind at dusk, listening to the evening chorus of birds and frogs and blindingly loud cicadas, and stranger sounds from deeper in the forest.  vines hung around the windows like curtains from the proscenium of a stage, and the mist silently rolled in amongst the trees as the hills in the distance faded to blue.  a family of barking deer came to the water hole and the fawn frolicked around until his parents wandered on, and faintly, the evening call to prayer echoed from the village across the rain-swollen river.  i felt very, very lucky to be there.

tomorrow i'm returning to indonesia.  plans are sketchy:  hoping to go east from the heavily touristed islands, possibly to komodo...and we all know who lives there!  we shall see...
till next time..."

Malaysian Travelog - Part III

Continuing on with her travels....

" after those first few miserable days in malaysia, a wheezing, heaving bus with me in it found its way to the cameron highlands (how's that for a name that smacks of colonialism?) : think switchback turns thick with bamboo, tree ferns and towering tropical hardwoods; clouds clinging to the tops of the hills and tendrils of mist snaking down the road.  it's cool and moist, remote and lush, as surely the attraction today as it was during colonial times.  and they grow tea there:  miles and miles of low bushes blanketing the hills like thick carpet, defining the countours in intense shades of green. 

the cultural mix was the first thing i found interesting.  ethnic malays are a minority to populations of chinese and south indian decent, and watching these two cultures interface was great entertainment, almost like watching two different species interact.  probably none of them have been to their countries of ethnic origin, but they retain their national characters quite profoundly:  the taciturn and inscrutable indians, and the abrasive and abrupt chinese.  they've lived side by side here amicably for who knows how long, but there is no dilution happening.  it makes for fantastic cuisine though, sometimes right in the same restaurants:  the tandoor oven and curries on display on the indian side, versus the roasted chickens and ducks hanging by their necks on the chinese side.  needless to say i ate a lot, and therefore found it necessary to get a great deal of excercise.

which is the real reason people come here, aside of course from sitting in the guesthouse and catching up on twenty years' bootlegged action films.  the hiking trails are splendid.  really, it's some of the best short hiking i've found in asia, owing to the fact that the trails are well marked, maintained and user friendly, in stark contrast to the purposefully obtuse hiking elsewhere that necessitates the unwanted company of often useless guides, who may just lag well behind you and call out to be careful when it's muddy.  but this was fantastic:  i spent five days doing long hikes on my own, into the surrounding hills and often returning on rural roads that wound through intensive farmland: asparagus, strawberries, eggplants, greens and all kinds of flowers.  the rainforest is lovely, the views excellent on the rare occasions when it's clear, and imbued with a sense of intimacy when hiking through thick clouds and light, misty rain.

i'm astonished at how many of the plants growing there were familiar to me--wild begonias and impatiens, orchids and rhododendrons.  it makes me marvel at the explorer-theives who first journeyed here, and the hardships they must have endured to pillage highly prized specimens of exotic flora so sought after by their wealthy patrons.  now many of these plants  comprise the most mundane and commonplace of garden flowers, endlessly hybridized to relieve the tedium of their ubiquity; they have insinuated themselves upon us, domesticated themselves to their own genetic advantage.  and orchids, how did something as fickle as an orchid trick us into creating elaborate artificial environments for it, just to fulfill our own desire for rarity!  seeing the originals in the place where they evolved is just as startling as the fact that there's now a paved road to the top of the highest mountain:  three hours' hike up alone, clinging to tree roots and looking out over the foggy treetops, to be greeted by three jeeploads of tourists at the top (the sort who don't travel with rain gear), who stumbled out to find muddy me, and asked in astonishment (this is the gratifying part) 'did you WALK here?' "

....to be continued....

A picture I found on Google Earth of a tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands area:

The New Purple Boxes

I just may be the last person on the planet who uses the 3 ring paper month-by-month calendar in a handy zip up cover.  I prefer the month-at-a-glance;  I need to see it all.  Being visual and all, I use colored pencils:  blue for days I turn into a stepmom, green for gardening events, orange for church volunteer stuff, and various other colors for miscellaneous other stuff like ... vacations!  It's less exciting than it is full and busy.   It's amazing to me how, at the 1st of the month, there is a lot of white space and by the end of that first week, there are penciled in events all over the place like my No. 2 coughed up a lead ball when I unzipped the package.   Unfortunately this entire year I have not been able to fill in colors other than the blue pencil items - and it's been a bear let me tell you.  This week I was divinely inspired by a new idea fostered by a hairbrained schedule over the last 4 weeks where I didn't get to go home one night after work and put my jammies on.

I brought out the purple pencil.   Remember, in the first week there's a lot of white space.  I took the purple pencil and boxed in just about every single day that had white space untouched by gray pencil;  this, for the next two months.   This means I have deliberately made time to not be hairbrained for a number of days.   If I were really flexible I'd pat myself right square between the shoulder blades.

I know that some things will end up landing on those purple boxes, but I will stop and think first.  What a sense of release I got when I finished this!  What a feeling of hope that I don't have to be hairbrained for the next two months!  Okay, so some of my thousands of lurkers readers may say, what a lame post, we all do this and she just figured this out?  Well maybe I was too harried being hairbrained to clue in; give me a break will ya?

Malaysian Travelog - Part II

continued ...

"  and then i was rewarded with two days in the town of ubud, equally touristy but the yin to kuta's yang, filled with new agey expat types refashioning themselves as artists and yoga gurus, legitimizing it all by marrying in.  it's quite beautiful though, surrounded and interspersed by vivid green rice paddies with fluttering white scarecrow flags, bananas, palm trees, flowers everywhere, and atmospheric moss-covered stone hindu temples.  beauty seems to be really important to the balinese, as does tradition:  every morning each business, home and temple has little offerings of flower blossoms, rice and incense placed in tiny, hand woven palm baskets on the sidewalk outside.  each day they are refreshed.  i'm amazed at how much of the women's time seems to be taken up in this occupation; you see them sauntering down the sidewalks with baskets of the little things balanced on their heads, on the way to the temple and various other stops; you can watch them place their offerings, sprinkle them with water and kneel in prayer.  it seems to be equal parts a plea for luck and an act of devotion. 
  i got to see a couple of traditional balinese dances, too, which was probably the highlight thus far.  they seem to be real community affairs: there are about five venues that offer a performance each night.  the men play in the gamelan orchestra or chant, both really entrancing sounds if you've never heard them; no sheet music, no conductor, just perfect synchronicity.  the dancers are made up exotically and costumed elaborately, the storylines obscure but the artistry readily appreciable. 
  and i've eaten really, really well.  indonesian food is fantastic, i can't get enough tangy, pungent tempeh in rich, spicy curries; and the food in kuala lumpur is really the saving grace of an otherwise trying city.  it has substantial chinese and south indian populations, and the street vendors serve up things the likes of which you simply can't get or replicate very many places outside of their native countries.  for lunch, indian:  they put down a fresh banana leaf for a plate, and come around with little pots of various curries and condiments which you mix with rice and eat with your fingers.  a feast!  all for a little more than a dollar.  and for dinner, chinese:  i was just swallowing my last bite when the peach of a proprietress yanked away my plate and said "go! go! go! i want business, not sitting!" 
  so i'm going. tomorrow it's head for the hills. i'm sure i'll hit my stride soon, i have a lot of travel to look forward to and i'll have more (and better??)  stories to relate.  till next time, let me know how you are doing ...  "

Malaysian Travelog - Part 1

My niece, very smart and creative young adult that she is, travels frequently.  I mean travels.  This isn't Samsonite.  This a trusty old backpack - and that's it.  It's living cheap, working hard and saving well.  It's researching and being brave and adventurous.  It's Rick Steves on a piece of dental floss. 

To set the stage, she and my sis-in-law planned for her surprise arrival on Saipan.  They pulled it off - to the complete and outright surprise to my brother - and she spent several weeks there, and readying herself to jump to her other adventures.  She will eventually head back to Saipan after 6 weeks of travel elsewheres.  Here is the first half of her e-postcard:

of all places.  i'm sitting in steamy kuala lumpur, capital of malaysia: it's huge, commercial, congested, too modern to feel exotic and too bustling to feel quite comfortable.  i'm in a sixth floor hostel in a cement building mashed between a roaring four-lane street, a bus station, and the elevated light-rail track, within 100 yards of four mcdonald's and three KFCs.  and a starbucks.  and chinatown!  i'm sharing an 8x10 windowless box of a dorm room with three strangers:  one a PhD candidate in theoretical physics, the other two thwarted drinkers who failed utterly to do their research on the party scene in a muslim country.  the common room features duelling bigscreen TVs and fluorescent lights, and is perpetually crowded with zoned-out tourists who can't seem to find anything better to do than watch pirated action movies and chain smoke cheap malaysian cigarettes.  the stairwell, too, has an ample population; they collectively seem to have drug use predilections which are rather surprising considering their indigence and malaysia's notoriously intolerant drug laws.  AND we have a team of seven visiting filipina prostitues who appear to be here on working holiday:  all this for four bucks a night, and alas, it's one of the nicer hostels in kuala lumpur.  so it goes. 
  this first week of travel has not been ideal.  i keep putting off writing until i hit my stride and have something lovely to relate, a glowing travel picture to paint..but why wait?  lest this be taken as complaining though, be assured that i am in good spirits, would still rather be stepping over malaysian drug addicts than shovelling snow.  laugh with me..
  first off, why am i even IN malaysia?  i was meant to be trekking through the jungles of borneo even as i type, and the first (and biggest) disappointment was having to give that up for this trip.  my own last minute planning, the difficulty of booking travel over the internet, and indonesia's byzantine and exasperating visa regulations are to blame.  details, details.  i arrived in bali last sunday, had to book an onward ticket and be out by saturday, and here i sit:  in the cheapest place i could get to on short notice, with ten more days to kill.  it's an interesting new way to view travel, if nothing else. 
  the first week in bali was up and down.  i landed late enough at night to get screwed on both cab fare and a hotel room, always a good tone-setter, and the next day found myself in the armpit of indonesia:  kuta beach.  it's a surfer's paradise...i guess..to everyone else, a filthy, hassley tourist trap with few redeeming qualities.  the waves are nice, but the predominant surface feature of the beach is washed-up plastic, seconded by indonesian women trying to find people to manicure or massage, by force if necessary.  you can't get six feet down the street without being offered "transport?" by one or more guys with motorbikes looking to make a few rupiah, or optimally to score a green card in the process.  the surfers are by and large assholes who would sooner shoulder you off the sidewalk than say hello, and the spaces between them are clotted with japan's tittering, feckless youth.  (girly hair barrettes are IN this year, for men, in case you are wondering, and old-school panty hose with toeless white high-heels for women.) i had to spend a whole day there, sweating, figuring out how i was going to leave the country in time, getting bad-to-worse news from each travel agent, until i found a qatar air flight to KL arriving at the bracing hour of 3 am, and that's how, eventually, i got to be here! 

To be continued....

Art Exhibit in Town

For those of you who appreciate Art (and who happen to live in the Denver area), there is a free Art Exhibit in town called "From Durer to Rembrandt ...  the rennaisance of faith in art". 

Check out the website here, and get your tickets (yes, free, yes, tickets required).

Let me know if you go, and what you thought of it after you went!