Boat Building & the Last Hitchhiking Stories from Sulawesi—I promise!

Posted on May 11, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     I sleep AWFULLY these days. I wish I could sleep like this girl, my nameless heroine and idolette.


     When I arrived at Pantai Bira (Bira Beach) in southern Sulawesi it was dead, but I saw a small gaggle of white people and asked them what’s doing. They were “boaties”, they called themselves, and had been living here for most of the year. They were making a documentary of their purchase: the construction of a 35 meter boat.
     They said it was going to cost about $100,000 to build, and $250,000 for the finished product with motor, two 27-foot masts, interior work, etc. They were using a heavy tropical hardwood called ironwood, or kayu besi, that was quite rare, yet cheap. Incredibly, the hot-dipped galvanized steel bolts are more expensive than the lumber and will wear out before the wood does!
     They said that other than chainsaws and power planers, it’s very low-tech and low-pay work. The foreman gets about $20 a day, so you can imagine how much the barefooted guys working the chainsaws get.
     The next day I went to the beach to watch a crew make a similar-sized boat. It was fascinating.

     Note the guy drilling in the foreground. The wood is so dense and hard it will bend a nail if you try and hammer one without drilling a hole first.


     Looked precarious to me.



     It can take 10-20 days to launch the boat. It is cranked by hand as the guys in the background are doing and then guided through the shallow waters past the reef, a tricky endeavor.


     These two and I were all staying at Salassa Guest House in Pantai Bira, where you should order the ayam bumbu Bali for dinner. The Russian girl stunned me by perfectly expressing to Hiroshi why Penang is so special in a way that only a deep-thinking Russian girl can, and I sat there dumbfounded, not even taking notes. I keep telling Hiroshi that he should be the next Prime Minister of Japan as his country needs him desperately. He's a doctor, a surfer traveling with 35kg of junk(!) and is self-taught in proficient English, which is unheard of. Truly amazing guy.


     Pantai Bira sunset


     I decided to hitchhike back to Makassar from Pantai Bira. At one point I held out my thumb in front of a police station---in how many countries would you try that?---and two policemen excitedly waved me over to join them. This guy was like a kid given a new toy and he kept wanting photos of me while he giggled and played policeman. I tried to tell him that he already was a policeman and he didn't need to pretend to talk into the two-way radio, but who am I to rain on his parade?


     These vamps picked me up hitchhiking. For some reason I agreed to stay with them for an hour detour as they made a stop to pray in someone's house. The girls put white garments on their heads and prayed while the men sat in front of them and smoked, telling me to get myself an Indonesian woman. Surreal.


     Finally back in Makassar with Fitry, my former couchsurfing host on the right who very helpfully arranged my flight ticket out the next morning. She had me meet her in a McDonalds, then we moved to the biggest Pizza Hut I've ever seen. Somehow it still felt like an Indonesian experience.


     P.S. Special shout out to Stephen Lioy for giving me a lot of valuable Sulawesi advice. His website, monkboughtlunch.com, has a nice tagline I might steal if he chokes on a sheep bone in Uzbekistan in the coming days: “All Travel, All the Time. Most of the Time.”

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Death in the morning: mass buffalo slaughter at a Toraja funeral ceremony

Posted on May 10, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     I was proud of myself. I made a bus reservation by phone in Indonesian (degree of difficulty: very high to stratospheric) complete with questions about seat assignment and terminal information. 'Kent' is a hard name for Indonesians to grasp, but 'Obama' is easy in any language.


     I liked having a conversation with this man about his cacao beans while he's standing on his cacao beans. He told me they go for 18,000 rupiah a kilo, about $2, but the price fluctuates wildly, unlike coffee beans.


     A couple of friends recommended it highly, but I didn’t want to visit Toraja, a region 11 bus hours north of Makassar in Sulawesi. I thought that the main attraction was to visit the natives in their habitat which sounds like they’re zoo animals, not to mention exploitative and probably misleading, like in southern Ethiopia where someone yells, “Tourist!” and the tribespeople hide their iPads, cover their SUVs with brush and pretend to be primitive, posing for photos.
     But it’s not like that at all, and three things blew me away about Toraja: the rice terraces, the tongkonan houses, and the funeral ceremony.

     Imagine how much work goes into transforming a mountain into hundreds of level terraces for planting rice. I never ever tire of rice terraces anywhere. They are incredible feats of engineering that my camera can never accurately capture, so this photo is just of a small section.


     The tongkonan are the distinctive houses with soaring roofs all over the region. Architecture may not seem like a worthwhile reason to visit a place, but I found the tongkonan to be very pretty in their settings just as in Sumatra I was impressed by the elegant Minangkabau-style buildings.


     This beautiful elaborate building is for nothing more than storing rice, and you might not be able to see it, but it's richly carved with great detail and painted accordingly. It's 2012. If that isn't proof that they are keeping their traditions alive when they could use their time and hard-earned money other ways, I don't know what is.



     Dotted around the countryside are coffins buried in cliff faces with wooden effigies


     Toraja is an island of Christianity and animism in a sea of Islam in Sulawesi with unique rites. When a Torajan dies they plan an elaborate funeral ceremony that can takes months or years to arrange as money needs to be saved and relatives need time to gather. They usually happen in summer, but a traveler at my guest house saw one the day I arrived. She said a water buffalo was killed, 20-30 tourists were there, an emcee on a microphone would instruct the foreigners on what to do and when—it didn’t sound like my kind of thing. However, I went to the tourist office the next morning and there was a message board with a notice that today was the first day of another funeral nearby, so I rented a scooter (60,000 rupiah a day, about $6.50) and went for it in spite of how odd it feels that the main “attraction” in Toraja is to attend a funeral ceremony and that tourists should be welcome.
     I didn’t have dark clothes. The darkest shirt I had said “Amsterdam” on it, which, given the history of the Dutch as colonizer, could be seen as insensitive, like wearing an “I love Ho Chi Minh” shirt to an American veterans parade, but no one minded. I was also told that as a gift men should bring 10 packs of cigarettes and women, 3kg of sugar, but then I heard conflicting information, so I brought sugar.

     The scene. Blood on the grass in the foreground


     Boy playing with hoof as a toy


     I arrived late. In a clearing there were eight slaughtered buffaloes among a few pigs. More than 20 were going to be killed this day. To helpfully show what I had missed, someone played gruesome video for me of the first buffalo being slaughtered. It must have been a prosperous family for so many animals to be sacrificed and it only took four months to arrange everything, which is fast.
     I watched for over an hour as men were putting on butchery displays, carving the animals up, separating the innards, and giving plastic bags of it to guests. I wish this concept would take off in USA. “Thanks for coming to our funeral! Here is your dripping buffalo spleen and kidney. Go make soup.”
     Most surprisingly, I was the only tourist. I played wallflower but a man approached and led me to a viewing area, where I was brought tea and sweets and I presented my gift. He smiled politely. I could tell I made a mistake. I asked if sugar was OK, and he said yes, but he also said I should come tomorrow—and bring cigarettes.
     I tried to get an a cappela singalong to The Smiths’ song, “Meat is Murder” going, but couldn’t manage any traction.

     Note the expression on his face and the blood running down his arm. I thought I had lots of good action shots, but they turned out subpar for which I apologize. I blame 81.5% myself and 18.5% on the slow lag time on my Canon.


     There was an unexpected festiveness to the event. Many of the dignitaries came by to greet me, pleased and relieved that I could make small talk in Indonesian. Lots of people asked to take photos with me. I almost got out my animal balloons for the kids. If there was a guest book I would have written, “OMG! Loved the funeral! L-U-V! Had a great time, thx! Ta!”

     All the pretty girls hang out at the slaughter

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The Unexpected Joy of Hitchhiking in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Posted on May 7, 2012 by The Dromomaniac


     First, the bad news. The downside of hitchhiking is when you are subjected to the bad habits of the driver. A few days ago I was tortured with several songs by Michael Learns to Rock, which is the world’s worst band ever in the history of recorded sound. Know them? They’re from Denmark, though they are better known outside the country than in it, which only goes to show Danes’ superior intelligence. It’s the softest of soft rock, making Air Supply sound like death metal. The lyrics are so insipid you can anticipate the simple, child-like rhymes seconds ahead of time, and the music makes me want to commit serious crimes against defenseless small animals. I have to tell myself as a mantra: “Kent, you are in someone else’s car. A kind person is giving you a ride for free. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.”
     If you don’t believe me, listen to this. His whiny voice is excruciating—I can’t talk about it any more.
     As an antidote to this, how about some fun, quirky Indonesian pop music by a band called Slank? (Great name, you have to admit.) This song translates as “Anthem for the Broken Hearted”, if I’m not mistaken.

     Where was I? Oh yes, hitchhiking. You might be sick of my hitchhiking stories, but I am always so amazed at the miracle that is hitchhiking, I can’t help it. This began as another unfortunately-short CouchSurfing visit with a girl and her family way south of Makassar, an excellent place to hitchhike south that I couldn’t pass up.
     I did the 260km southeast to Pantai Bira easily. The fastest public transport takes about six hours, and I did it in seven with two fried tofu breaks. It was fun, too. The challenge is to try to get dropped off in a lonely place—difficult in crowded Indonesia—because excited kids come out of the woodwork to scream and distract me. A foreigner is like a space alien in these villages away from the cities, but I still like seeing the kids’ disproportionately huge smiles. Indonesian kids are so great. They can solve all the world’s problems. If you put all the odious dictators of the world in a room full of Indonesian kids, they will be changed men.
     I started out near a gas station and these two waved me over to hang out with them:

     Their pouches are the cash register; getting gas in Indonesia is a fast act. Seems like so much cash on hand should be dangerous to have.


     As we took photos of each other a car was pulling away from the pump. I yelled something in Indonesian to the driver through the open window and the family took me 20km. (Here’s a hitchhiking tip: take any ride for any distance in Indonesia. Many people have a loose concept of distance (as opposed to travel time since roads are often bad) and a ride of “three kilometers” can easily become ten.) Then a Toyota dealer and a co-worker drove me a long stretch. He spooked me by warning to be careful in the area, as many bad people were around.
     Half an hour later I was driving a woman and her kids in their flashy Nissan Livina! (I swear, I’ve had so many incredible, positive experiences hitchhiking, I am long overdue for a mass-murdering prison escapee picking me up.) The woman was tired and didn’t even ask if I could drive. She simply pulled over and expected me to as we changed positions. I was tired, too, but driving in other countries is fun; I was energized and drove for an hour.

     This woman is Muslim, by the way, and isn't the daughter adorable? I have it in my head that the average American imagines all Muslim women to be covered in black burqas, faceless and joyless. I'm the farthest thing from an expert on Islam, but I'm in Muslim countries just about every year and a regular shmo like me should make a documentary about Muslim people around the world to demystify them as being a singular 'them', the notion that all Muslims are the same. This woman, in fact, is married to a Buddhist and lets perfect infidel strangers drive her family around.


     My greatest hitchhiking experience like this was in Australia when a man pulled over for me and before I could say anything, he asked, “Can you drive?” I was behind the wheel most of the day from near Melbourne to near Adelaide while he dozed.
     The last 45km to Pantai Bira were supposed to be the toughest as public transportation was finished for the day, but I got three more rides easily: a woman on her own, then in the back of a truck, and in a new car with a guy who quizzed me relentlessly about why I was traveling alone. Everyone is fascinated by this. Indonesians, like most southeast Asians, aren’t the most independent people.

     Best matchbox I have ever seen. Indonesia!

Posted in hitchhiking, Indonesia | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Golshifteh Farahani

Posted on May 6, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     In January I wrote about the time I met the Iranian actress, Golshifteh Farahani, and for a long time afterward I had a spike in traffic from Tehran, which seems obsessed with her since she is in exile for nude photos of herself in a French magazine.
     Since I am always interested in a spike in traffic, I have one last photo of her from 2005 with her husband, Amin Mahdavi, when she spoke about her film, Boutique, at the Tbilisi, Georgia International Film Festival.

     My dream is to travel around Iran. Will publishing this photo get me banned?

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On Trust in Ubud, Hitchhiking in Bali and Uterus Surfboards in Kuta

Posted on May 3, 2012 by The Dromomaniac


     I made a second visit to Bumi Sehat Foundation, this time meeting with the founder herself, Ibu Robin. I’d barely arrived before I was led into a room where a woman had given birth 25 minutes earlier, I was told, exhausted mother and baby not seeming to mind the intrusion. Robin seems to spend a lot of time with people like me who just show up and want to see what’s going on and ultimately, wonder how to help.
     She won $300,000 as her CNN Hero prize, but it’s had an unexpected detriment: her regular donors turn off because they assume she has enough money now, which is not the case. She’s building a big clinic up the street instead of the makeshift facility they use now. The lease is expiring in two years and she needs to build the new one from scratch to make the transition seamless, but doesn’t have enough money yet. While she loves the “Eat Pray Love women”, as she put it, the people that were inspired by the movie to come over and volunteer their time, what she really needs most now is cash.
     As I mentioned last time, her clinic has become a place to handle all of the community’s crises. She told story after gut-wrenching story about what goes on, some of it hard to believe: unwed mothers are shunned in society, leaving some without any choice but to turn to prostitution and then when she becomes pregnant, the kid is taken by the pimp and raised for its organs to be harvested. She said just recently a woman who bled to death because her husband didn’t want to pay the 10,000 rupiah ($1.10) for transport because he didn’t think it was serious enough and bought cigarettes with the money instead.
     I can imagine why potential donors can be reluctant to give their trust. There are plenty of scams in Bali as shown by this BBC podcast about phony orphanages. I can only say I liked what I saw and especially that they try and deal with everyone who shows up at their door for whatever reason. This is the link again if you are coming to Bali and can bring something from the wishlist.

     Amed, eastern Bali, storm approaching


     My last blog post, the “Ubud on $10 a day” declaration, caused a ruckus that didn’t go over well with some of the people on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, a place where one needs thick skin.
     I hitchhiked from Ubud to Amed in eastern Bali in a little less than five hours and nearly a dozen cars. The most interesting ride might have been with a pair of missionaries from Colorado living in Pakistan who paid all the cash they had, 400,000 rupiah (about $45), at a police checkpoint as a bribe for not having an international drivers license. They didn’t bargain at all. I would have thought that living in Pakistan would make them immune to being fleeced like that.
     In Amed I stayed with a CouchSurfing host, a Hungarian divemaster, but after I arrived I learned her plans changed as she had to leave town the next morning. On Couchsurfing you have to be flexible when something like that comes up. I stayed just one night, but the silver lining was this, Pool of the Year:


     The next day I got a ride back down to Sanur, hitchhiked from the edge of a McDonalds parking lot to the airport, bought a ticket for $59 to go to Makassar, Sulawesi on Lion Air, hitchhiked from outside the airport to get a ride from a Russian divemaster and found myself in Kuta, the belly of the beast.
Kuta.
     These days Kuta makes Khao San Road in Bangkok seem like a quiet country lane. Khao San Road is upscale now. Khao San Road has order, and few Thais have it in them to aggressive hustle you. Kuta is the Wild West. My senses are ripe for exploding and I always have a slight feeling of vulnerability. It’s the kind of place where I would lock my backpack to the shower head in the room if I could. Walking back to your hotel late at night through either the drunken hordes or spooky, dark alleys adds to the heightened awareness that I don’t have health insurance—or life insurance. It gives me the skeeves, but I am also fascinated by it.
     I only had one night to look around. The monument to the victims in the Bali bombing 10 years ago is now cordoned off to the public for some reason. It should be, there were so many spelling mistakes on the engraving, which made it look slapdash and offensive to their memory.
     The best thing about Kuta is that it is like a self-contained island and you don’t have to deal with if you don’t want to, so there’s no excuse for someone to say they took a wrong turn in Denpasar and next thing you know, they were in the arms of an underaged pygmy transvestite.

     This is your Kuta photo


     Balinese culture


     Bali seems to frustrate travelers. So much of Bali is undeniably beautiful and from the surface the culture seems fascinating, but it only whets the appetite to have an authentic, non-touristy Balinese experience, which feels elusive. However, I think you just need to stick around a while and let it find you. So many things are going on and the Balinese are so festival-heavy, if you have the time, you are bound to feel it.
     My favorite experience was a zillion years ago in Padang Bai when it was a backwater, on the edge of the village away from any tourists was a beautiful Legong dance in the middle of the street led by two little girls who were incredibly talented and expressive in their movements. Even my last time in Ubud I stayed in a cheap homestay where a woman taught dancing every afternoon to little girls and sometimes the men would gather for a gamalan practice session. I lucked into witnessing it, but I also think staying for an extended time created my luck.

     More Balinese culture


     No, THIS is Balinese culture! See how much is going on?

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My Guide to Ubud on Less Than $10 a Day = My War with the Bali Tourism Board

Posted on April 30, 2012 by The Dromomaniac


     Normally, I check out Google News and search by the town or country I am visiting to see what is going on. Maybe there is a film festival coming or a hot local topic people are stirred up about, but every time I look at what is going on in Bali, I get agitated, like this story about “stingy tourists” (i.e. backpackers) not helping the local economy. Here are it’s most salient points:
     —Tourism Board chairman Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya said stingy tourists are overcrowding Bali, and residents who rely on tourism for their livelihoods are not reaping the benefits. “It’s ironic. We want people to come but when they come we have serious problems of traffic and waste. The island becomes dirty,” he said.
     —However, their average length of stay has fallen from a week to three or four days, while daily spending has decreased from $300 ten years ago to $100, Ngurah said.
     —Bali has begun to lose its cultural charm and exclusivity due to the crowded conditions, he said, driving away “quality tourists” like those from Europe.

     I don’t believe the $300, but if I did, it means I’m staying in a big international hotel, brunching at Starbucks, dining in exotic ethnic restaurants presumably not owned by an Indonesian, and probably going on excursions provided by the hotel. How is that helping local people?
     There’s only one benefit: those places employ locals. They employ them at dead-end, dirt-low wages, but even the salary argument aside, look at the difference with us “stingy travelers”. We stay with local families in guest houses and homestays and eat in Indonesian or locally-owned restaurants—the money’s not leaving the country, it’s not even leaving town. Even better, we are helping to grow local businesses, which is more of a future than a service job—big difference. Again, we can debate the effects of increased tourism on the local community until the cows come home, but don’t deride us unwashed backpackers so quickly.
     I’m making this black and white for the sake of argument and tourism here is spiralling out of control from its own success despite the arrival numbers, but my point is that money that is spent locally helps grow local economies. Money spent the Bali Tourism Board’s pipedream way is all leaving the country except for taxes that somehow disappear. Have you been to Ubud lately, Bali Tourism Board? Ubud is probably my favorite place in Bali, but it has several fundamental flaws. The biggest one is ironic, that you have to get outside of the town center to enjoy it. If you don’t, you’ll be swallowed up by the endless gelato shops, Mexican restaurants and fifi bars. The Ubud of today is of a wretched infrastructure: crumbling sidewalks, poor lighting, no garbage cans—where is the tourism tax money going?
     The most ridiculous assertion from the Bali Tourism Board is that somehow we non-Europeans are responsible for the traffic and waste. If there was something resembling a transit system, foreigners would gladly take it to avoid the rapacious taxi drivers, and I feel comfortable in saying that no tourists are littering, or more to the point, if we ever saw a garbage can, we would use it.

     'Strictly forbidden to throw garbage here'


     You’re upset visitors spend only $100 a day? Fine. I’ll show you how to stay in Ubud for less than $10 a day. Deal with it, Bali Tourism Board!

The Dromomaniac’s quick guide to Ubud for the stingy,
non-European, Bali-Tourism-Board-hating, low-quality tourist!


     I still can’t get over that we aren’t “quality tourists”. I don’t care if this is directed mostly against greasy Aussie surfers, we non-Europeans of every color, income level and “quality”—OK, even those who don’t like tempeh, we’ll take you, too—we need to band together against this slanderous injustice! Solidarity! Let’s do this!!!
     9150 rupiah = $1. If you have any ideas or think I am overreacting, please comment below. As I always say, life is too short to be shy.

Traveling
     There’s construction at the airport now, but it’s not far, maybe 400 meters, to walk straight ahead out of the parking lot and to the one road leading north. Then you need to go right at the first street and walk to a bigger north-south main road (or go with one of the motorcycle guys offering transport) where you can find a bemo/bus that will take you to Denpasar for 10,000 rupiah or closer to 5000 if you have a sympathetic local person haggle for you. You’ll need to get another bemo to another part of Denpasar, Batubulan, to take another bemo to Ubud because, you know, we tourists love making traffic and the taxi mafia can’t allow a decent public transit system that would connect the two main places tourists go and the cheapest shuttle companies aren’t allowed to do airport pick-ups.
     Sorry, I digress.
     I was a little impatient last time, but there is a stretch right after the place where everyone pays for parking which would be a great spot to hitchhike. It wouldn’t be so unheard of to get a ride all the way to Ubud since I imagine lots of drop-offs are being done all day. In fact, keep an open mind. If someone is driving to Amed or Padang Bai, take it. It’s easier to hitch back to Ubud from there.

Sleeping
     OK, so you already in a bad mood when you get to Ubud and then you are bewildered by your sleeping options. It used to be that you wanted to stay near the market, but that has been turned on its head and travelers with some money want distance from the center to get some tranquility, so now, generally, the cheapest places are…near the market!
     The best place to start is to walk east from the market, take the first street on the left, Jalan Sriwedari, and then check the first few homestays on the right. Remember to bargain for a room without breakfast and if you are staying multiple days, work that angle, too. I bet you can get something for 70,000 if you are alone. I stayed in that area two years ago. I would go check rates, but looking at homestays isn’t my idea of a good time. It’s hot today!
     Another area that has cheap sleeps and everything else you’ll need are the three roads parallel to the east of Jalan Hanoman. (I saw internet on Jalan Sugriwa for 5000/hour, the best I’ve seen.) If you are coming from the Perama shuttle stop or are being dropped off in southern Ubud, it’s within walking distance.

Eating
     This is easy, and you aren’t going to suffer by eating cheaply. On every little side road there is bound to be a stall that sells basic goods and then a basket of these balls in the photo below of food wrapped in banana leaves or butcher paper is about 3000 rupiah. You can add little portions of stuffed tofu and fried tempeh for only 1000, though a concerned citizen has suggested I should go easy on the soy due to this study about adverse sexual side effects.
     I had 10 small sticks of chicken satay with lontong for 11000 and for snackers, you can find thick chunks of tasty tempeh bacem for 3000 at most, thin slices of fruit for 1000, little packs of highly addictive singkong chips are 1000, etc.
     1.5 liter bottles of water are cheapest at the many Delta Dewasa convenience stores for 2500, then you can refill them at Bali Buddha market/restaurant or the library by the soccer field for 1500-2000 rupiah.

     This is a little overkill: pork, chicken AND tuna, but it's still 8000 rupiah, less than a dollar.

Sightseeing
     Two things I like to visit are the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary (any time you see the words “sacred” or “sanctuary”, watch your wallet) and the beautiful Tegallalang rice terraces. Who doesn’t love monkeys and rice terraces?
     To see the 20,000 rupiah Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary for free, there are two entrances in the front and one in the back, but from the front, if you follow the motorbike path on the left, where it makes a sharp right turn you’ll see a sidewalk that leads back into the forest.
     To check out the rice terraces 10km north in Tegallalang you can do two things: take a cheap bemo from the market to Gentong and then hitch or walk the few kilometers from there or, walk from the market on the main road heading east to where it comes to a “T” at the stoplight, go left, walk just past the big supermarket and police station, and hitchhike from there. There’s only one road north, but it’s nonstop shops and not the easiest route to hitch. Hitching back is much easier.

     Love the monkeys, fear getting bit by them.


     Is your total looking like you are going to spend more than $10 a day? Make some money to compensate: stay in a place with free wifi and charge people to use your laptop —yet another free business idea from The Dromomaniac! Just kidding, I would never do that, not matter how much they hate tempeh.
     Last tip: don’t mail anything from Indonesia if you are going on to Malaysia. Postcards now cost 10,000 rupiah to send to USA and Europe, about four times the cost from Malaysia, and parcels are similarly much cheaper in Malaysia. Send them sea mail as sometimes they go as air mail anyway. I sent packages to USA and Denmark by sea mail and they arrived within 10 days.

     Tegallalang rice terraces with a swastika table, a Hindu symbol the Nazis reversed and took for themselves.

Posted in Indonesia | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

The Best of Ubud, Bali

Posted on April 25, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     Actually, this is no one's idea of the best of Ubud. There is an annoying, virtually endless parade of people calling out 'Taxi?' when you walk around town. They aren't persistent, but there are so many of them, it feels that way. Even the taxi drivers are sick of parroting the same word all day, so they make signs to hold up, the more creative with a reverse for when you say, 'No.' I heard of a traveler who made a sign saying 'No thank you' that she would show the taxi drivers when they held up their sign. When the taxi guy reversed his sign, 'Perhaps tomorrow?' she would reverse her sign, which said, 'Not tomorrow either'. Genius! Imagine everyone walking around with a dozen signs of questions and answers that we use to communicate with each other.


     One reason I enjoy my time in Indonesia so much is that I can speak Indonesian, which makes even hanging out with potential taxi drivers fun. I can imagine that claiming to speak Indonesian raises hackles of Indonesians, who must be thinking to themselves, “Here we go again, another sweaty bule (white man) thinks he’s a linguistics scholar because he knows to say “ba’so” instead of “bakso” (a soup). Give me a break.”
     I’m not claiming to be fluent, but I can speak a remedial Indonesian, enough to satisfy the simple conversations I have all the time hitchhiking or on the street. That’s something, isn’t it? Throughout each day I jot down words and phrases I wish I knew and then look them up on Google Translate. “My hovercraft is full of eels” in Indonesian is “Hovercraft saya penuh dengan belut.” Now you know.

     A coconut carved in the shape of a cat!


     Women love Ubud. It’s a very feminine place. Girls are everywhere, but this is the email I get from a guy:

     ”I was stopped on my motorbike at the lights earlier today in Ubud and you were walking toward me and I was wondering why I couldn’t look away, so I asked “How are you?” (maybe you remember). And of course, when I rode off I realised I recognised you because I’m a fan of your blog! Small world!
     I’ll be back in Ubud on maybe Friday or Saturday if you’ll still be around and want to meet up for a coffee, juice or beer and talk about the world…”

     Why is it always only guys who can’t take their eyes off of me? No, truth is, I’m chuffed to bits and would love to meet with anyone who takes the time to read my blog, no matter their gender.
     That wasn’t the only amazing coincidence today. I met two Danish sisters who live on the same street in the same small town in southern Denmark as my friends whom I have known forever. The coincidence was almost too spooky for them and they had no problem taking their eyes off me.

     This is an relaxing place to get away from the congestion of central Ubud and hang out by the rice fields, Sari Organik. It's only one kilometer from the market but feels far removed. Any restaurant with the words 'organic' or 'vegetarian' will have a ratio of nearly 10 women to 1 man. It's smart to appeal to women in Ubud. They are more loyal than men.


     My favorite low-end restaurant in Ubud is Puteri Minang on Jalan Raya Ubud 77 around the corner from the post office. It's western Sumatra food which is so omnipresent that it has come to be what people would call Indonesian food. I usually pay between 15,000-18,000 rupiah (just under $2) for a meal. The same owner is still manning the cash register, still making the same bad jokes ('The total is 15,000---euros!') My other go-to option used to be a fish satay guy farther down the street, but standards have dropped, I am devastated to report.


     Tempeh bacem, which Wikipedia helpfully describes as 'tempeh boiled with spices and palm sugar, and then fried for a few minutes to enhance the taste. The result is damp, spicy, sweet and dark-colored tempeh.'


     In Ubud this is a very typical $10 a night room in a family compound. I'm at Wayan 2 Homestay off Jalan Hanoman where there are only three guest rooms. The intricate wood and stone carvings almost make me feel guilty I don't pay more. Almost. A very loud caged bird wakes me up every morning at 6:30, but it's the price to pay for paradise, some would say. I'm not one of them. I alarm the sweet little girl working here by offering to pay her to fry the bird for me.




     I have to thank someone who “Likes” me on Facebook and detests me in real life (just anticipating; we haven’t met yet), Erin Fisher, who gave me the idea to visit Bumi Sehat, a natural birthing clinic here in Ubud. They offer many services; it seems to be quite a focal point in the community. Their founder, an American woman, was selected one of CNN’s Heroes.
     I got a short tour of the small facility which was limited as one woman just gave birth and another resting room was occupied with a newborn and its parents all laying on a small bed, a tender moment that didn’t seem appropriate for me to barge in, “Hi! I’m Kent! How ’bout a photo of the happy family!” They have a long list of needs if you are flying into the country. It’s a shame you can’t mail or freight them anything since they get taxed to death.

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Short Story Time in Ubud, Bali

Posted on April 24, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     I was first in Ubud 21 years ago when there was a resident mad artist named Antonio Blanco. Pico Iyer wrote about visiting Blanco in his book that made an indelible impression on me, “Video Night in Kathmandu,” so, naturally, I made the pilgrimage to see him, bringing with me a pretty Dutch girl that I had happened to meet the day before. Blanco took one look at her and for some reason started sketching dress designs that would accentuate her figure, which needed no embellishment, but I bit my tongue. At the time I regarded him as just a doddering eccentric, but since his death he is of some renown and I wish I had saved those sketches to sell on ebay.
     OK, so it’s not much of a story. The next one’s better.
     On the same trip I saw three kids outside their home and took their photo. It’s a photo I’ve always liked and had an extra print made to keep closer at hand rather than buried in a photo album. Two years ago I was planning a trip to Asia and I anticipated I might be in Bali again, so on a whim I brought the photo with me. Once I made it back to Ubud the first thing I did was to look for the kids, showing the photo to people of a certain age, and with extraordinary luck it took me less than an hour to find the house!
     I stepped inside the family compound and one of the girls—now a woman—was there. You can imagine how shocked she was to have a foreigner show up with a 19-year-old picture of her. I gave her the photo and she told me to come back later to see her brother and sister. When I did, they already had their best clothes on and we took a new photo outside the house in the same place.

     I went white water rafting on the not-so-mighty Ayung River north of Ubud. I like rafting as much as the next person, but it has never been the same for me since I went down the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. I was on one of the last rafts of the season since the water was dangerously low. A week later, a tourist group insisted on running the river and was willing to pay big money to do so. My guide couldn’t refuse, and in treacherous conditions, he drowned.
     By the way, this is the same Zambezi where earlier this year an Aussie girl went bungy jumping and her rope snapped—and survived. When I was there, they were just starting the business and to drum up customers, they told girls that if they went topless they could get 50% off, and if they went naked, they could go for free.

     Just call me Short Bus

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Hitchhiking in Indonesia and the Cheap Flight Fight

Posted on April 23, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     Something must have been lost in translation


     Last time I wrote, I took a $29 flight, including all taxes, from Surabaya to Bali. I discovered that the alternative, a bus/ferry/bus combination, was $19 and takes 15 hours, usually as an overnight journey. I mentioned this to three travelers I met who were in their early 20s and expected them to say what I would say: I’d take the flight 9 times out of 10, maybe 10 out of 10. Instead, the most gregarious of the three, a Chinese-American girl from rural Pennsylvania(!), wasn’t even considering it, and in fact, threw it back in my face: “What would you have done when you were our age?” It was a good question. What is a no-brainer for me today is different from their mentality, which is simply, “I can do it cheaper.”
     That nameless girl made an impression on me as being very clued-in because she is taking advantage of every opportunity she has, particularly with working holiday visas. I thought Americans couldn’t utilize them, but she said there are plenty of countries where Americans can work legally. Usually the age limit is 26 or 30. If I had half a brain back then and the visas were available to me, I would have worked in every country that would let me. I can’t think of a better way to go.
     She also made an impression because she spoke in quick bursts to parry anything I said, and then would suck on a small hose that led from a water pouch in her backpack as if it were a pacifier, making her look very young indeed. The encounter made me realize that I see less and less true backpackers these days. Travelers yes; backpackers, no. I am thinking of writing an emotional opus called, “Death of the Backpacker, 2012.”

     Possibly a monument for spicy food.


     I hitchhiked from Bedugul over the mountains the long way via Munduk and Seririt to the northern beach enclave of Lovina. The first ride was from a guy named Made, which is what the second child born in the family is almost always called, whether male or female. He said if I visited his village I should ask for him. Sensing that this might prove difficult, he added I should ask for “Made #14.” The only thing more confusing than Indonesian first names is a phonebook in Punjabi India where everyone’s last name is Singh.
     I was expecting Lovina to be a complete hellhole, but it’s not bad at all. I was there a zillion years ago and few people have ever had a kind word to say about it, but I’ve been surprised. That said, the beach isn’t very pretty, the water not very clean, and there are lots of tiny jellyfish that nip at your body—not a place to skinny dip. These nagging, biting jellyfish are also Thailand’s dirty little secret I don’t hear people mention enough. Maybe I’m always there in the wrong season, but the problem is endemic to large parts of southeast Asia.
     The hostility to Lovina got me thinking of the worst beach towns in the world. The first thing that came to mind was Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, though even in the best of times I don’t know if you can classify it as having a beach. It would be fun to hear everyone’s worst beach. Maybe a subject for another time—unless you feel strongly about a foul beach, then by all means, vent!

     Tempeh, glorious tempeh, which in this case is fermented soy bean cakes in a spicy sauce


     These 15 year olds were on a school trip with their teacher to Lovina for the sole purpose of chatting up foreigners to practice their English. You can't see it, but the girl on the right, her t-shirt says, 'Blogger.' All Indonesian girls have beautiful, long, thick lustrous hair. It's the tempeh.


     I left Lovina yesterday, a Sunday, the best day to hitchhike. Leisure drivers are on the roads. It’s a mellower experience. Still, with less cars, it took a bit of time to get going. Even in the slower moments of hitchhiking, I would rather stand on the side of the road for 30 minutes and try to get rides while admiring lush green rice terraces than sit in a claustrophobic, fume-filled bus for 30 minutes while the flunky who tells you the bus is leaving “now” keeps trying to get more passengers.
     I managed a ride into the big town of Singaraja, saw a barber shop, got a haircut for $1.10, went back on the road, and kept hitchhiking.
     On the hardest stretch of the day, going from the coast up and over the mountain, I had to wait 20-30 minutes, but then a white girl pulled over. The passenger window was already down and she leaned over to say, “You look like you speak English!” I was taken aback and said, “I speak English very good!”
     I have to say, I’m pretty clever with accents. I can quickly tell where people come from by the way they speak. When she said the word “no”, I had her pegged as an Australian immediately. Only Aussies make “no” a three-syllable word. I smugly indulged her. “Where are you from?”
     ”Alabama.”
     Oh.
     She was from the race car capital of Talladega and drove like it, but of all the close calls, the worst that materialized was merely when we clipped our side view mirror on a bus.

     'Bagus' means good. This is on Lovina, as are the following photos. Lovina looks great the farther away you are.




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The Bali Tourism Quiz—a free postcard is the fabulous prize!

Posted on April 19, 2012 by The Dromomaniac

     Pop quiz!
     Name the top 6 countries that send the most tourists to Bali. I bet you can get only 3 of them, and I bet you can’t guess #2. Answer at the bottom of this post.
     Since my brouhaha with Orbitz I now get a lump in my throat when I buy a flight ticket online. I am usually anxious, anyway, since a flight connotes a dreaded feeling of finality for someone as footloose as me.
     It’s a shame it isn’t as straightforward as in Indonesia where you can sashay over to the airport ticket counter, pay your money and get a normal ticket, like a bus or train, like how it should be. There is demand pricing, but it seems reasonable to me. I paid only $25 plus $5 airport tax to fly from Surabaya, Java, to Bali. I knew the price before I got to the airport courtesy of the good people behind utiket.com. To make the same journey by land and ferry it would have cost about $15 and taken 10-12 hours minimum, I believe, plus a shortened life span, and I’m not getting any younger.
     To go from unvisited Semarang and Surabaya to the belly of the tourism beast, Bali, is a jolt. I took a collection of bemos (minibuses, vans) to leave the tourist/airport area of southern Bali, which is easier said than done as it’s a pain to get around with public transport. Therefore, I was incensed to see the news headline, “Bali Travelers Turning Their Backs on Public Transport.” Of course we do! What choice is there when there are few routes, the drivers take you for a ride (literally and figuratively) and it’s too congested to hitchhike?
     Partially as a reaction to this, the demand for reputable drivers in Bali is high. You have to like the spirit of someone trying to stand out from the crowd by advertising his service on ebay.. “Shipping” is 61 cents!
     I’m up in the mountains in Bedugul, Candikuning, specifically, which is a Balinese word derived from ancient Sanskrit texts that means “musty hotel rooms”. Between that and the narrow window of good weather every day to do stuff, I can only take one more night up here, though it’s great for hitchhiking. I’ve had about 4 or 5 rides, never waiting for more than a few minutes. The last ride yesterday was from a couple of ethnic Yemeni guys who said there is a substantial community of Yemenis in Bali and Java. One told me his family has been here for 200 years.

     My body is like a mismatched pair of halves. Getting sunburned at Pura Ulun Danau Bratan


     This is a flyer for jobs in a convenience store. I thought the Malaysians discriminated, but this takes the cake. The first job is for a clerk. Must be a boy, maximum 25 years of age, unmarried, without tattoos and piercings, and a minimum height of 155cm! For the second job, the cashier, you must be a woman and they don't seem to mind if you have tattoos as long as you are 'attractive'.


     List of Bali’s foreign tourists based on their nationalities:
1. Australia (63,704 visitors)
2. China (55,099)
3. Japan (12,805)
4. Taiwan (11,671)
5. Malaysia (11,656)
6. Russia (10,907)
7. South Korea (10,567)
8. Singapore (7,566)
9. United States (6,783)
10. England (6,325)
     Someday those Chinese are going to turn from package tourists into backpackers. They’re going to get all glassy-eyed and slack-jawed with wonder when they see us looking like we haven’t washed our clothes in weeks, hanging out in cafes all day with our laptops, arguing with taxi drivers for 20 minutes over 20 cents, storming out of coffee shops in a huff when the Fair Trade Blend has been sold out, and they’re going to say to themselves, “This is the life!”

     Did anyone get the answer to the quiz right? If you came close and you want a postcard from Bali AND you have never received one from me AND we have never met in person AND you “like” my Facebook page (if you are on FB), be the first person to comment below and I’ll do it.
     Easy!

     Bedugul botanic gardens. Nice!

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