Random photos

On the streets of Yogya, some school children interviewed me for a school project. I think the idea was they spoke to a western tourist. They were nice.

A poster in my hotel in Yogya, the Hotel Harum. The writing says 'Unless you spread your hand you will have no idea how much far you can gets the winning.' Quite.

My dining companion at the Arabica hotel in Sempol, East Java.

Graffiti in Denpasar.

Mural on the outside wall of a cafe in an alley in Ubud, Bali.

Jakarta

This place is crowded, noisy, congested, polluted, and hot. I managed to have a bit of of a look around but the city's best museum (according to lonely planet) was closed when I got there. I went to Manggo Dua Mall which is one of the biggest shopping malls in the world and I got lost there. Finally managed to find an exit and took a 'baijak' (three-wheeled vehicle like tuk-tuks in Thailand) which took me through the backstreets of Jakarta and I saw some terrible poverty - people living in tiny close-together rubbish-stewn shacks.

Tomorrow I leave for Sumatra.

Yogyakarta

Detail of Borobodor temple

I had another early start this morning, rising at 4.30am to get Borobodor, a Buddhist temple built in the ninth and tenth centuries (though rebuilt in he 1970s). It was well worth it to beat the crowds - as we left at about 9am it was already swarming with tourists and groups of school children. The temple itself is amazing. You walk around the outside - clockwise is apparently the correct way - going up floor by floor, of which there are half a dozen. Along the way are hundreds of carved panels with pictures of Buddha and others, some of which are really detailed and beautiful. The ascent of the temple symbolises the stages needed to reach nirvana, which is represented by the high point in the centre of the temple. Most tourists simply charge right up the steps to the top without walking around the floors. There's something symbolic about that, I thought, showing modern impatience and the desire for instant happiness.

I wandered around Yogya (pronounced 'jogja') yesterday, trying to throw off the con men. The common con here is to get you to come to an 'official government' art gallery and sell you a batik painting. They come up to you in the street and act really friendly as though they are just giving you some advice, not trying to sell you anything. I took a look at one place and the painting were actually pretty good. I was even prepared to buy one at the price but got sick of all the lies the guy said that I walked away. The (probable) lies included: buying a painting helps fund a scholarship for local painters (some of whom are disabled), that the one I picked just happened to be painted by the guy showing me the paintings, that today is the last day of the exhibition before they set off to another city, and so on.

Tonight I'm off to another temple, this time a Hindu one called Prambanan, to see a Ramayana ballet.

Shadow puppet show in Yogya

Kawah Ijen

May 12

On the back of a motorcycle at 4.30 in the morning, being driven through the darkness of the jungle in east Java.

Before I explain why, let me describe what I’ve been doing until now. Yesterday I arrived by bus at the western tip of Bali island and caught a ferry over to Java, the trip only lasting half an hour. On board were a group of 60 Javanese returning from a holiday in Bali, and a westerner being aboard was such a novelty to them that they took my photo four or five times with them. This was funny though also made me a little apprehensive that I was going to a place where westerners were uncommon. When we arrived at the port an official requested that I come and sign in at the tourism office. At first I thought that this might be some kind of scam but they didn’t want any money and later I checked my lonely planet guidebook which said the office was legitimate. I stayed in a hotel in nearby Banyuwangi and arranged to be taken the next day to Sempol which is a village up in the mountains of Ijen, Merapi, and Raung. The road up was terrible. I can’t really say it had potholes because that would imply that there was a road to have potholes in. It was more like a bunch of rocks at times and can only really be driven in a four wheel drive (though I wasn’t in one).

I arrived at Sempol at about 2pm and checked in to the Arabica hotel, a place that is surrounded by coffee plantations but was unable to serve me a decent cup of coffee. Taking a look around, I found some back streets and wandered through while hearing Muslim prayers on a loudspeaker in the middle of the village. The following morning I rose at 4am in order to do a sunrise walk up to the rim of the Ijen volcano which has a crater containing a lake, hence my 4.30am motorbike ride to take me to the starting point of the walk. The walk itself was hard going - three kilometres of steep incline. Workers collect sulphur from the crater and as I walked up some would pass by me carrying baskets up, while others would be walking down with full loads on their shoulders. One friendly worker called Tom decided he would guide me up and so I went with him to the rim of the crater. I could see very little because of the smoke and mist and the sulphur made me feel nauseas. As we descended into the crater, the sulphuric smoke got worse and I had to cover my nose and mouth with a cloth to stop choking. The vapours became so overwhelming that at one point I said ‘enough, lets turn back’ but Tom convinced me to keep going and eventually we reached a spot where the sulphur was collected. When the breeze changed, I could see the crater lake which was an amazing blue-green colour against the grey-yellow of the surrounding rocks. We walked up a different path from the one we had come down and had even more amazing views of the lake. Frustratingly, my iphone camera had stopped working so I couldn’t take photos but here are some I got from Sophie, a young Dutch women who I met there.

Just as I got to the end of the descent back down the volcano, it started to rain and on the motorcycle ride back to the hotel, the raindrops felt like pin-pricks as they hit my face.

Sophie and I managed to catch a ride on a bus from Sempol. It was a long wait before the bus arrived and there wasn’t much to do except try to talk to some of the locals who were very friendly. The bus took us along the shockingly bumpy road to Bondowaso and now we’re waiting for another bus to take us to Probolinggo which is a bigger city on the north coast of east Java. Sophie is going to Mt Bromo but I think I’ll move on to Yogyakarta which is the cultural capital of Java, and will try to get there by train.

My progress so far

Negara

Just got off the bus from Denpasar. I was planning to spend the night in Negara but that was because I thought I'd be arriving in late afternoon. It is only just past midday so I'll have a look around here, get some lunch, then get on another bus for Gilimanuk which is where the ferries to Java leave from. Not sure where I'll stay there - maybe Yogyakarta or maybe somewhere before there. I'll just see what looks interesting and jump off the bus.

Denpasar

Arrived here on a bemo (the name for shuttle buses here) from Ubud and had to transfer to another bemo to take me to Ubung, on the outskirts of Denpasar and where I take a bus westwards. I spent a night here and it was fantastic walking around the city centre, looking at markets, stopping for food at roadside stalls: chicken satay and nasi goreng seem to be the most popular dishes. During my several hours of wandering about, not only didn't I see any other tourists but I didn't see a single other white person amongst the thousands of locals. This was great, I really felt like I was off the beaten track. I got a few looks as if to say 'what are you doing here?' but everyone was friendly and I didn't even have to fend of hawkers too much. In the evening I was at a city park where there was live music and people dancing and generally having a good time.

I bought a DVD of ten movies for 10,000 Rp ( about $NZ2) but when I got back to my hotel and tried it, found that the movies were completely different from the ones on the cover, half of them didn't work, and of the ones that did, they were pirated movies of the worst quality: a home video camera pointed at a cinema screen! Thought about trying to return it but didn't bother.

Me in a sarong

Today I walked around in a sarong. Some but not many of the local men do too. I think it suits me, what do you think?

Strange painting

While being driven around Bali, I saw this strange painting in a shop at Tegallalong. I don't know if there is some hidden meaning regarding the use of the swastika symbol. It was a Hindu symbol for centuries before the Nazis stole it and Bali is 95% Hindu unlike the rest of Indonesia which is mainly Muslim. At the same shop there was a similar painting of Osama Bin Laden and of pop stars like Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones.

Bali

I’m in Ubud, a city on the island of Bali that’s known for its culture - temples, galleries, museums, music, dance, and so on. I arrived yesterday after a couple of days spent in the madness of Kuta, the tourism centre of Bali, a crazy place crowded with tourists and surfers and locals trying to sell them stuff. I’m constantly asked if I want a taxi, a massage, or to buy some trinket. The hawkers even bother people at breakfast in hotel restaurants. A hotel porter even came into my room one time, barely knocking first, offering me paintings he’d done. I’ve hit upon an amusing solution to the hawkers though - giving them some of their own treatment. I have a few DVDs with me that I’ve watched and want to get rid of but I couldn’t find any used DVD shops either here or in Darwin. So whenever someone asks me if I want to buy something, I say ‘no thanks, but would you like to buy these DVDs?’ I even get quite insistent, saying ‘come on, these are very good. I give you a special price, just for you’ and so on. After that, they leave me alone.

My travel guidebook says that the Balinese are naturally very friendly people and will smile at you and ask ‘where are you from?’ The book says that this is only sometimes a prelude to selling you something. Well, I’ve yet to find any friendliness that isn’t connected with trade. Once I make it clear that I’m not interested in buying, the smiling and courtesy disappear. This was most evident in a guide that I had yesterday who took me from Kuta to see some of the sights of Bali, including Mt Batur volcano, a temple, and rice terraces at Tegalalong. At first he was jovial and pleasant but after he took me to a snorkeling place and I said I didn’t want to do it, he became grumpy, no doubt because he didn’t get his kickback from the company that he’d taken me to. He lightened up a bit later on when I bought a sarong (to wear in temples) from the shop he took me to. (Wearing sarongs seem to be mandatory in order to enter temples. Anyone know whether this is really required by some religious text or is it just a scam to sell westerners sarongs?)

Arriving yesterday in Ubud I was taken by my guide to a hotel (probably one from which he also gets a kickback) where the world’s most annoying hotel concierge worked. After I checked in he said the key was in the door. I went there and it wasn’t so went back and he gave me the key. Once in the room, I couldn’t get the air-conditioner working and so I went back again to ask about it and he nonchalantly hands me a remote control without seeming to think that this could’ve been given to me at the start. I go back to the room and soon realise that there is no towel, so it’s off to the reception again for me, because I want to take a shower or a swim in the pool since this was the end of a very hot day. Barely looking up from the desk, he says ‘I’ll bring a towel to your room.’ I took this as meaning sometime in the next few minutes but after waiting a while there was no sign of him so again I returned to the reception. He was standing chatting to someone, and by this time I was ready to strangle the guy. But in my most sarcastic voice I asked ‘how’s it going with that towel?’ He then said he’d get me one and I said, even more sarcastically, ‘sorry to put you to so much trouble.’ I’m not sure if Balinese pick up on sarcasm but it felt good saying it. I did finally get a towel but I’m considering stealing some of the artwork in my room in retaliation.

I guess that’s quite a bit of moaning by me. I am, however, enjoying it here despite the annoyances I’ve listed. Lunch yesterday at a restaurant with a view of Mt Batur was great, and so was being driven through the streets to see some of the real Bali. Hopefully once I get used to things I can start to enjoy it more.

Okay, enough writing. I’m off to the Monkey Forest.

Funny stories

As I make my way through different cultures I’ll take it upon myself to describe and make fun of the spiritual beliefs that I encounter. Let me start with Australia and New Zealand since I’m about to leave them. Wait til you hear this. They think there is an old man living in the sky who created everything and has the power to make any changes to the world that he wants. When people die, there is a kind of invisible intangible part of them, called a ‘soul’ that carries on living. If they’ve been good they go up to the sky and live with the old guy but if they’ve been bad they go to another place under the ground where things are unpleasant. It sounds like a story for children I know, but this is what adults believe! The old man in the sky originally created the first man and then, to give him a companion, took one of HIS RIBS (?!) and from it created a woman! I swear I’m not making this up!

There are other crazy stories like a huge flood and a big boat that contained two of every kind of animal, a talking snake trying to convince people to eat an apple that corrupts (!), but here’s the most popular one: the old man’s son, who could do magic tricks like transforming things and making sick people well, got picked on by jealous people for saying there was an old man in the sky. They don’t just call him names, they nail his hands and feet to a piece of wood (?!). He dies, his body get put in a cave, but he is brought back to life by his dad. This seems to show that he was right all along because he says ‘I bet you feel silly now’ to his tormenters. It seems to be this hah-that-showed-you-all story that appeals most to the locals.

I wonder if I’ll encounter any other cultures that can top that lot for ridiculousness!

stuff

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Leaving Australia

I'm writing this from Darwin airport - the first and hopefully the last airport I will see on my trip - so barring any minor miracles, it means that I'm going to fly over to Indonesia, breaking my flightless goal. One one hand, this doesn't bother me too much because that goal was always just something interesting and challenging to try to do. It's not as though I'm pathologically indisposed to flying or to sticking to my goals when it would be worse for me to do so, so given the circumstances it's not a big deal to have to give up.

On the other hand though, what bothers me is that it's so difficult to go from Australia to south-east asia by sea. It's only a small body of water to cross - bigger than the English channel but smaller than between NZ and Australia. In fact, from Cape York at the tip of Queensland over to Papua New Guinea looks about the same as the English channel. So why can't some boats make the trip and take people? The low cost of flying - Jetstar flights from Darwin to Indonesia/ Singapore are around $150 - must be part of the reason, but there are other trips around the world where there are ferry as well as airplane options. Ferries can take lots of people so could be profitable. As people become more environmentally aware and less willing to fly, consumer demand for a ferry will increase, so it wouldn't surprise me if sometime in the near future there does become available a flightless option.

This is the last I'll see of the western world for a while. I'm looking forward to exploring some exotic (to me) cultures.

Kakadu National Park

It's been a few days since I’ve posted to the blog because I had to recover from this trip. The trip itself was great, although the one day I did it in probably doesn’t do the park justice (I couldn’t face another three-day group tour). I did, however, get to go on the Yellow Waters and see some crocodiles and walk around Nourlangie Rock and see some aboriginal cave paintings. But the trip back to Darwin was an ordeal because the air-conditioning on the bus stopped working and it was a five hour drive until we could link up with a different bus. The first hour was the worst. Everyone was dripping with sweat while the driver apologised profusely. Opening the sun roofs on the top of the bus made a bit of a difference but it was still a very steamy ride. The staff were great, handing out wet towels, urging us to drink water and checking up on everyone. Most of the passengers were elderly and there was a real worry that someone might keel over in the heat but thankfully no one did and we all seemed to make it okay. We stopped for a drink partway, compliments of the tour company, and I never drunk a beer so quickly as I did that day!

During the ride, to take our minds off the heat, the staff played a DVD movie on the monitors, ‘Australia’, directed by Baz Luhrman and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. This was an ordeal in itself. It was packed with nearly every cliche about Australia you could imagine: tough beer-drinking Aussie blokes, mystical Aboriginal dreamtime mumbo-jumbo, prim Englishwomen encountering the outback, greedy capitalist English bad-guy, stolen generations. Everything was exaggerated to the nth degree - the red centre is red but not THAT red. The story was tedious and predictable - small cattle outfit owned by afore-mentioned prim English women takes on big corporation by driving cattle through the desert on a trail that no one’s ever succeeded in covering. And guess what? They make it! We arrived at our replacement bus just before the end of the film and when we were aboard, the disc would not play, so we never got to see the very end of the film. I wasn’t too upset.

Endurance Rating: Five hours on a bus without air-conditioning in the Northern Territory with 40 other people gets a 8 out of 10 (including the two days of feeling lethargic afterwards). The added discomfort of Luhrman’s ‘Australia’ pushes it to 9-and-a-half. Just short of having to walk through the Saharan desert.

Running out of options

I'm still in Darwin and close to giving up on getting across to Asia by sea. I've tried freighter companies and they strongly refuse to take any passengers. There is also the option of taking a cruise ship but they are not keen on letting me do one sector of a trip instead of the return-trip and if they do, they ask for payment for the full trip which can be more than $5000 so that's out. The cruises I could find were fully booked up anyway. My last choice is to find a yacht that might be going in that direction and ask if I can come along. I found a website where I can search for yachts but so far there is nothing going in that direction in the near future. There is a yacht race from Darwin to Indonesia in July and I could almost certainly get on one of those, but I'm not sure I want to wait that long because I've been in Australia quite a while already and am keen to start exploring south-east asia. There are a couple of possibilities of yachts in June but again I'm not sure I want to wait that long. They also take quite a while to get across and the captains are more keen on crew who will stay on board and keep sailing around Asia with them, rather than disembarking as soon as we hit Indonesia. I even enquired about chartering a boat but that runs into the thousands of dollar so is also out.

All of which means that I'm getting pretty close to giving up on finding a flightless way over. Lou, the other flightless traveller I met here, also gave up and flew to Singapore today.

Anybody have any helpful suggestions?

A Painting

An Aboriginal painting I bought off a person on the street in Todd Mall in Alice Springs, by the name of Pango Williams. It is called 'Bush Yam Dreaming' and the brown squiggly shapes represent yams.

Darwin

I've been in town now for a couple of days. The heat/humidity is intense. Luckily I have air conditioning in my room. When I'm out, I scurry from one shopping mall to the next. I sweat more easily than other people so when I'm outside I get drenched with sweat while other people seem to saunter around at their ease and pass me by, looking at the weird sweaty guy. It probably doesn't help that I'm wearing long pants so I may have to sacrifice sartorial elegance to practicality and wear shorts. I did manage to walk around outside quite a bit yesterday, walking to the waterfront to check on the boat situation.

That situation is now my major concern. I have to find a boat that will take me over to Indonesia. I was originally lined up to take another freight ship from Brisbane to Singapore but that was re-routed and the next isn't available until July. I've made enquiries about cruise ships, to take just one or two sectors of their route. Some of them, however, want me to pay the price of the entire trip which can be $5000 or more, so that's out. I thought I found one where they would let me take a Darwin to Bali sector but then discovered yesterday that they don't do that after all.

I've had a notice on the noticeboard of Darwin Sailing Club for the past few weeks but haven't had any responses other than an email from another person, Lou, who is trying to do the same thing and asking if I'd found anything. We've agreed to look out for each other for any possibilities. My next step is to approach some other sailing clubs and see what happens. I think, however, that I may just have to concede defeat on this part of the trip and take a flight. There really just doesn't seem to be any feasible alternative. Everyone keeps making jokes about swimming or getting returning refugee boat and those jokes are beginning to wear thin.

Anyway, I will keep looking for a few more days at least. I also want to do a bit of tourism in Darwin, especially a visit to Kakadu National Park.

The Ghan part 2

After a few more days in Alice Springs and still appalled at the social conditions there (about which, possibly more later) I boarded the Ghan at 6pm on the evening of April 19 and we set off for Darwin. If the average age of my fellow Uluru and Ocean Road tour passengers was somewhere in the twenties, the average age of the Ghan passengers (or at least those in Gold Class - I did see some backpackers getting on in a cheaper class) is probably in the sixties. Where are all the people in their thirties and forties? Raising families and building careers I guess. At least the people on the Ghan were a bit more interesting to talk to. Most were recently retired couples taking this famous trip that they’ve always wanted to do, but some were doing it for the second time.

Just north of Alice Springs, we passed over the Tropic of Capricorn. I’ve decided to make this a significant point for my overall trip. We can imagine the earth being divided into four parts from bottom to top: the first part is from the South Pole to the Tropic of Capricorn; the second from that Tropic to the Equator; the third from the Equator to the Tropic of Cancer; and the fourth from the Tropic of Cancer to the North Pole. My adventure will take me from the first part (New Zealand) through to the fourth part (England). I’ve now made it into the second part and further moments of significance will occur when I cross into the third and fourth parts.

Watching the sunset and the nightsky from my cabin on the train was amazing and I was even brought a cup of coffee in the morning so I watched the sunrise over the outback.

The Ghan stopped in the town of Katherine for a few hours and I got off to take a bus to Katherine Gorge. The first thing that struck me was the heat and humidity. Within five minutes of walking up the path to the lookout over the gorge, I was dripping with sweat. I kept going for a while until I had a decent view and then turned around and headed back to the visitor centre for an iced coffee. I had intended to go swimming or canoeing on the river but high waters meant that those activities were closed due to the risk of crocodiles.

After a few more hours on the train we arrived in Darwin. Overall, the trip was an enjoyable one although perhaps the scenery was not as interesting as I expected. Maybe this is partly due to the area being more green than usual instead of its characteristic red. But the service and meals in Gold Class on the Ghan are great.

This doesn't really warrant an Endurance Rating as it wasn't something to endure. But if I have to give something: a 2, just because of a few fellow passengers.

The Ghan coming into Darwin. You can just see the city in the distance.

Red Centre, day three

As I write this, I’m in the bus on the way back to Alice Springs and its none too soon. This will probably be the last guided group tour I will every do. Nearly everything bad I’ve heard about group tours is true. You get herded around like sheep and there is little room for individual choice. The bus stops, you get out at places where dozens of other buses have stopped, and join the hundreds of other tourists taking photos of the same things. If an interesting lizard or other animal is spotted, the poor creature has multiple digital cameras thrusted into its face. Then it’s back aboard the bus to endure inanely laughing and shrieking young adults (is everyone on drugs except me?) and the driver’s atrocious musical tastes. On this last, particularly grueling, afternoon, I even had to resort to swigging a few mouthfuls left in my previous night’s bottle of wine to get through it.

The tour leader who on the first day seemed so jolly and enthusiastic is by the third day irritating and overbearing. (We’ve got up at 5am each day, so that may be a factor.) For a start, on two occasions he’s called New Zealanders ‘sheep-shaggers’ before he realised I was a kiwi. He is also apparently from another century because he believes that at dinner-time, men should gather round the barbeque and drink beer while women make salads and sip wine. And women apparently do the washing up. His only acknowledgement of modernity is his concern for the environment, but in this he is an environmental fascist. He yells at people if they stray off the beaten track and step on some scraggly plants. He even admonished us not to swim in a water hole because our deodorant and sunscreen would pollute the water. Last night around the campfire there was a slight mutiny when he told off the German-speakers from speaking German, saying that it was impolite to leave others out of the conversation and that they should speak English. I can see his point but he did make it rather rudely. At one point he made the argument, like Basil Fawlty, that ‘we won the war,’ the relevance of which I wasn’t clear on. The German speakers were not impressed and made their feelings known both then and the next day.

Oh, we did stop at King’s Canyon, walked for three hours, and saw some fantastic scenery.

Endurance Rating for the three-day tour overall: 7

Red Centre, day two

On the second day we went back to Uluru to watch the sunrise there and then took a walk around the base of the rock. There is an option to climb the rock although we were unable to due to strong winds. Climbing the rock is an enormously controversial issue. The local aboriginal people, the Anangu, believe the rock is sacred and do not want people climbing it. They also own the rock and the land around it, after it was returned to them by the Australian government several years ago. So why don’t they simply prohibit walking on the rock? From what I can gather, although the details of story differ according to who is telling the story, they either did ban climbing it for while or considered it and did research on what the impact on tourism would be and the result was that banning the climb would impact too severely on tourist numbers. Instead, they permit climbing but request that you do not do so, a kind of moral rather than legal prohibition on climbing. This is also emphasised by many of the tour operators. Both the tour leader and the guy who I booked it through urged non-climbing. However, I probably would have climbed had I been able to. I’m in favour of respecting people’s spiritual beliefs (although why respect false beliefs? I don’t respect Christian beliefs, I think they’re ridiculous) but the fact that they don’t take their own beliefs seriously enough to sacrifice tourist revenue for indicates to me that it is not a strongly held belief. That doesn’t mean that I’m accusing them of being hypocrites. There’s nothing contradictory about holding a belief but sacrificing it for the benefits that could be gained by doing so. But if the spiritual belief can be outweighed by revenue then I can’t see why it isn’t also outweighed by the enjoyment I would’ve got from climbing the rock. I also think its a strange position to hold that the option to climb must be kept open while advocating non-climbing. Surely if the moral pressure not too climb is strong enough to do the work they hope in deterring people then it would also have a similar effect on tourism. That is, a moral prohibition could have the same effect as a legal one, and so revenue would fall similarly. Perhaps there is a way of resolving the apparent contradiction: the moral pressure may work on peoples voluntary desires, so that they will still desire to visit the place even though they cannot climb. That way, the Aboriginals get what they want without losing revenue. But perhaps they need to do some research into what the effects of a moral prohibition would be before doing it.