Batik and Hair cut day

Our last day in Jakarta loomed before we faced our 30 hour flight drudgery to get home and although we had really been active and accomplished most of our goals, a few things still unfinished meant that it would not be a throw-away day…. We always try to include a local fiber experience on our trips. Being a fiber person, Carol already had a lot of information about Indonesian Batik but had never dabbled in it. We had thought that she would be able to do so in Ubud, Bali, but our time there was too limited and didn’t line up with their scheduled classes. In Yogyakarta we visited a batik production with a huge inventory of unsold items from small hand held silk to full dining room table beautifully designed spreads with matching napkins and place mats. Again, no classes, just welcome to look, now come see our gift shop. But I was able to find online the Textile Museum of Indonesia located in Jakarta and they offered classes. Our options didn’t look good when they were closed on our second day and we were down to the nubbins on time. However, off we climbed into our blue bird taxi and sped, read, “crawled” our way, once more across Jakarta. Again, there is no rush hour direction…it’s just the same no matter where you go. The museum opened at 9:00 and we got there right at opening time. We paid our $0.33 entry fee and entered a dark dance-hall-sized room with various little alcoves all along the sides…lots of weavings, but no batiks. We were the only ones there for 30 minutes or so while we looked at the weavings when we heard a noise and went to see if it was somebody who knew something. Instead it was Motoko, a lady from Yokohama, who was wanting to do the batik as well…she ventured outside and found someone who directed us all to a building at the back….we walked in and were greeted with the question; “Batik?” and we were in.

We paid the $6 fee and an instructor pointed us to a stack of drawings which Carol and Motoko could choose from for their batik. Carol chose a horse and Motoko a flower. The room was about the size of two suburban houses stuck together and there were little pots with burners underneath scattered around the room with very low chairs placed around the pot. An opium pipe-looking device hung from the side. The man lit the burner and Carol and Motoko proceeded to trace the design in pencil onto a blank piece of cloth and then the drawing and blank cloth were attached to each other in an embroidery hoop to take out all wrinkles and provide a flat surface on which to work. The pipe device was actually a metal stem with a little bowl attached to it and a small reed-like half inch long piece of tubing leading from the bowl. The pipe bowl was dipped into the hot wax which was liquid by now, and slowly and ever so carefully the design was then traced a second time using the hot wax. Care had to be taken since lingering over a spot would mean a drip from the stem and continual dippings to keep the wax hot provided the lines which soon became the horses head and the flower. After this was done on both sides, they were taken to the various stages for completing the work.

The man painted paraffin along the sides to prevent any dye from entering the border and he crinkled the edge for effect and began to dip into the colors that they had chosen. And a finished product emerged. Both ladies really did great jobs, and Carol was pleased to have somebody else with her to see how they approached the projects in their various ways. Mission accomplished.

Browsing the gallery while the batiks dried, a woman curator/director talked to us about the various types of batik we were seeing and I told her that I had wanted to get my hair cut did she have any ideas where? She said that she’d ask the workers and we could check with her on the way out. I had been really disappointed in not having my hair cut, always something I look forward to when traveling. I was stymied at all points of the trip in finding a suitable place and just figured that it was another trip where it wouldn’t work out. However, the lady told us that up the street and down the alley there was a barber shop. It turned out to be a women’s salon, but hey, they cut hair and it wasn’t exactly upscale. We poked our heads in and two women in barber chairs with very wet hair, the barber and a lady in a union jack tank top all looked up like we had made a wrong turn somewhere. I put my fingers up to my hair and made a cutting gesture and all looked blank until one of the women said in a loud voice: “Hair cut!!” and everybody laughed and we sat down to wait our turn in the very hot room where the barber was now blowing hot air all across the girl’s head and across the room to us. After we sat there for a while and as Carol fanned herself with a program from the museum, the Union Jack lady grabbed a long-handled spoon, climbed up on the chairs and flipped two breaker switches and on whirred the room air conditioners. I’m quite sure this was just for our benefit but who cares? After a few minutes she climbed back up on the chairs and turned off the fan which was blowing the hot air from the outside into the room…that helped….The chair, spoon, flip the switches was repeated several times as the breakers kept popping and the room heated up again.

Now, not having spent a lot of time in women’s hair “salons” I was in for a real education as he snipped, shaped, blow dried, curled these two heads one at a time. He was actually quite skilled and the frou-frou girl who had to have the long curls just right primped, preened, fluffed the curls, took lots of selfies and pronounced everything okay. Now my turn came. I tried to get him to understand that I just wanted a little taken off and actually got through to him as he put on a trimmer which limited the depth of the cut. He worked carefully but quickly and knew what he was doing. It turned out to be the best haircut I’ve ever had away from home. Asking the price I was told 30,000 rupiah, about $2.50 US. I gave him an extra 10,000 since nobody in this country has any change at all. You just round things off, and he had done a great job. The Union Jack lady’s daughter came in and looked as shocked to see me in the chair as the others did when we first poked our heads in. She spoke fairly decent English and so I told the stories of my liking to get my hair cut in “real” people’s shops, not fancy shops and showed them some photos from past trips and about my Botswana “English Cut,” that was a US Marine basic training haircut….they got big laughs out of all the pics and stories translated into Indonesian. Mission accomplished.

A quick trip back to Sarinah to get the bell Carol likes to collect and we had been able in three frenetic days to finish all our appointed tasks and were highly pleased with ourselves…back to the hotel we collected our luggage from storage at the HIE and were off to the airport hotel for our last night. One last chance to see the coordinated insanity of Jakarta traffic and we were in the quiet of the airport vicinity for our 3:00 a.m. wake-up call and off to the airport. It had been a wonderful trip and it was even better than I could have hoped. I try hard not to have expectations, but the truth is that we flew a lot of low-cost Asian airlines, all of whom are forbidden to fly over EU air space and delays and cancellations, and, yes, changed schedules are rampant. Throw in a jumbo jet shot out of the sky and another one whose fate is still unclear and you have a little uncertainty as to the reality of what we’d find. Logistics were a question mark at the start, but drivers and cars can be hired to take you anywhere you want. A five hour one way trip to a destination and where the driver still has to get his way back will run about $60. There are local buses, but I’m too old and have too good a pension to put up with 5 hours in an open air bus which will take about 7 hours with all the stops. No, I’m just some fat cat American and I’m buying my way out of those situations. The country is incredibly diverse…17,000 islands, over 700 indigenous languages, of which Indonesian, the official language, is only spoken as a mother tongue by 7% of the population and is the 12th most common language, a flourishing religious culture featuring Islam, the most common, Hindu, Christianity and Buddhism and Confusianism all have sizeable followers, and a mixture of traditional and modern. The wildlife is amazing….jungles/rain forests are incredibly rich in wildlife and flora. Asked whether we’d return, it was met with a firm: “I don’t know.” The heat was difficult to deal with for long periods of time but it is a fascinating place and one that cannot possibly be explored or understood in a one month trip…it was just a teaser…now we have to decide if, in the future, we want to take the bait and return. For now, it was a memorable trip and a very positive one. I come home with memories of wonderful people who showed us the spirit of the place, the warmth and generosity of spirit of the people on the street continually uplifted our moods and it was a “happy” trip…with the Indonesian patience and low key attitudes, there was really no stress or tension. It just flowed, unlike the traffic. Next year, it looks like a two trip year. Back to Europe to complete our river cruise, and a favorite granddaughter is getting married in Uzbekistan, and we promised to attend so that will be our third trip there.

New World Shopping, old world ambience

Day one was a rousing, if tiring, day, and so we approached the next day with enthusiasm and it did not disappoint. Nurul and Indry suggested we go see the old city and to look at another place to buy the shirts we wanted. So two elevator rides later we met the hot blast of outside air but quickly into one of the fleet of “Blue Bird” Taxies which line up at the outside of the mall/hotel complex. Our $5, 40-minute cab ride was met with the same bewilderment and amazement that I got every time we went for a ride. Every form of individuality and conformity would be seen as we inched our way across town. We had plenty of opportunity to observe since we spent more time stopped than moving. The traffic lights are tediously long, up to two minutes which gives ample time for the swarm of bikes/scooters to weave in and out in front of you to get closer to the front….there is no void at a traffic light. It is occupied space. And the remaining seconds are counted down so that on the count of 3, the motor bikes/scooters can take off. But in the mean time, I had the opportunity to look at the praetorian guards of bikes/scooters which quickly surrounds us and prevents anything else getting near to us…families of up to five members, chic females with flowing scarves, grandmas who can be as daring and aggressive as anybody on the road, and lots and lots of just regular people going somewhere, albeit slowly.

The girls wrote down the names of our two destinations so that the taxista didn’t have to untangle our bad pronunciation Tanah Abang was another 8 story tall, full city block wide emporium of clothes with literally thousands of small individual stalls all seeming to sell the exact things as the stall on either side and across the narrow passageway …we only wanted a shirt or two but the problem was that it was a wholesale place where they only sell items in quantities of 6 or more. That accounted for the number of men carrying large bundles bumping their way down the aisle and woe be to anybody in their path…with our massive language skills we were finally able to discern that on the 8th floor we could buy individual items where once again key words “Bigger” accompanied with hands going further apart we managed to get what we wanted. ….mark one item completed on the check list. - The place was an absolute teeming mass like leaf cutter ants carrying their prizes home, these men and women who run the thousands upon thousands of street stalls buy their wares and hawk them on the streets of Jakarta and probably nearby suburban outposts all of which are end to end without empty space separating them. Push carts loaded to the gills with bundles of whatever all wrapped in white plastic worked their way to the doors and out to waiting vans, motorbikes/scooters with large baskets or just another person to handle the unwieldy bundle while the other person whizzed across town. Amazingly the traffic deaths in Indonesia are not that bad. They have 15 deaths per 100,000 population compared with the 10 for the US and the 19 for Russia…I truly don’t know how they stay alive, but they do. With bags in hand we hailed another taxi, looked at each other and rolled our eyeballs to the top of their respective sockets as the cool air of the car sent its blessed relief across our faces. The ride was the same scenario, different street. Same chaos, different helmets as we headed to Kota Tua, the old colonial center of Batavia, the old Dutch name for Jakarta stemming from Colonial times when the Dutch controlled the spice trade and got themselves so rich in the process that the Brits needed to get a piece of the action. We arrived and were pointed down a narrow street where cars couldn’t go….of course this didn’t stop the two-wheelers from doing their thing. A sharp ear tuned to what’s behind you but getting louder is always a good thing to keep in some level of consciousness. Stone buildings, with old wooden doors showing their age were portals to souvenir shops, museums, businesses, were topped by that stair-stepped roofline that is so old world is can be seen throughout Europe but certainly the Dutch were leaders in this form of architecture. The street led to the huge block-wide Fatahillah Square with large white buildings surrounding the square. This was THE place. This was “oud Batavia,” old Bativia, the old city. Here would be found the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, the controllers of the spice trade and the center of the Dutch government offices. It was here that all commerce and government business was contracted and it is not difficult to imagine the scene as it must have been. Mimes, and actors portraying old Dutch settlers roamed the square wanting to pose for tourists, for a fee, of course. If the Dutch actually wore these costumes their life must have been nasty, short and brutal, as Hobbes would say. They wore heavy robes with full wigs and the heat would have dropped then like flies, and no AC… But it was a charming square. Multi-colored bikes lined the racks and one could ride, for a fee of course, around the square and look at all the different buildings, restaurants and activities going on. Here we saw more tourists in one place than we had seen in the entire month we had been in Indonesia.

A building facing the square had a decorative sign signaling the “Café Batavia.” Entering was a jump back to colonial times, teak and mahogany tables with padded chairs filled the room with old world elegance. The building was turned into a restaurant 23 years ago after undergoing different owners over the two hundred years of its existence beginning with the headquarters of the East India Tea Company. It’s the 2nd oldest building in central Java. We were asked “smoking or no smoking, which is a no-brainer in a country which has the largest number of male smokers in all of Asia, at 67%, and were led upstairs, past the wide staircase that would have made Downton Abbey proud. Mahogany handrails, lush carpeting, and an array of photos that spanned the enormous wall stretching two floors in height and highlighted the “A list” of Pre World War icons…Hollywood actors’ and actresses’ photos, high profile politicians and public figures were a quick scan and recognition from one face to another. Literally hundreds of them filled the wall. We walked past the long curved bar which looked like something out of a classy turn of the century European hotel to our table overlooking the square. Our waitress handed us our menus with Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers on the cover. I asked her if she knew who he was and, of course, she had no clue. “Some movie star,” she said. I showed her some Fred and Ginger videos clips that I googled and she just stared wide-eyed and giggled.

The menu was a combination of Indonesian and Western. Carol chose Gado Gado, her favorite dish, a combination of steamed veggies with either tofu or tempeh chunks and a peanut sause. I had chicken and lamb satays. Both were certainly a cut above even the good meals we had enjoyed. Their flavors matched the ambiance.

On the square below, people strolled around, mimes performed, people rode the multi-colored bicycles and there were lots of selfies. I asked the waitress if they had coffee for sale and she said she’d check. A little later out came a white-aproned, tuxedo-vested man carrying a tray of 10 different coffee blends in pint sized containers. He asked me to smell them and he described each as I did…”this one is stronger, this one has a smoother character. I’m not a coffee buff, I’m a one big cup of some non-Folgers and no instant coffee please kind of morning coffee guy. But I was fascinated that there was such a variety of coffee in Indonesia. My son-in-law mentioned that he liked Sumatran coffee and my neighbor, Bill, mentioned the same thing so I was very interested in his words. Later I looked up the coffee scene in Indonesia and was fascinated by the variety of what, and how, coffee was done here. It is the 4th largest coffee producer in the world and is grown on many different islands, each with their distinctive style and method of processing as well as different beans…some are dried with the skin and “cherry” still intact, some with the skin off, some with just the bean…..some are dried in kilns, some are dried directly on dirt, some on tarps or concrete…each differentiation means a different flavor to the coffee. I choose two different kinds that smelled good to me, at least. The price was steep but acceptable….the coffee prices range from a couple of bucks for half a pound to $40-50 for the Kopi Luwak that received fame in “The Bucket List.” It was our big splurge meal and it wasn’t even that expensive so we walked out full, satisfied and a different time and place in the world from the streets awaiting us on the ride back to the hotel. It was a full day and a productive one…..Jakarta is becoming anything but a throwaway city.

What a tangled web they weave

Jakarta…that tangled mass/mess of 14 million people all trying to get to the same place at the same time on the same street, or so it seems. Motor bikes/scooters zip about with a carelessness that defies logic or sanity. It is like those old Scotty magnetic dogs my grandfather had, one black, one white. I would put one magnetic pole at the opposite pole on the other dog and literally chase it across the table simply by letting physics do its thing. They never touched. This was the visual image I saw when spending several hours in Jakarta cabs attempting to get across town and seeing all forms of transportation get ever so close to each other and then, magically the reverse magnetism kicks in and they move apart without touching. It made no difference the time of day. There is no “rush hour,” they simply have “rush days.” Any day, any time. Holidays, working day, morning, night, midday. All the same. They have even built toll roads above the traffic to alleviate the mess. For a stiff fee of $0.33 you can pay the freight and literally speed part way on your journey. However, they are limited and like a bad drug trip, you’ve got to come down at some point and face the reality. We got out of Jakarta as quickly as possible on our arrival at the beginning of the trip and only came to it because we wound up with just a couple of days left in the trip and not enough time to go some place else. What a pleasant surprise then, to find it is actually a very fascinating place….once you get to where you want. Our flight from Kalimantan was scheduled for 11:50 a.m. but Dessy told us that they changed that schedule a month ago and that the flight left at 8:00 a.m. I scoured my emails and there was nothing anywhere, but checking their website we discovered the change…Lucky that Dessy was up on flight schedules or it would have been “missed flight, phase 2.”

We made it to our Holiday Inn Express phase 2 since so many of the Jakarta hotels were overpriced and the good old HIE offered everything we needed at a fraction of the price, sans any personality. Situated on top of a shopping mall from floors 10-19, you take an elevator to get to the lobby on floor 10, then another one to reach our 18th floor room. The upside was that we were greeted by two happy faces at the desk whose spirit made our coming and goings filled with laughter and positive attitudes. Our agenda for our two days was packed with a full “to-do” list: Textile museum and batik class for Carol, haircut for Jim, Hard Rock shot glasses for our daughter Ange, finding a knife that represented the culture for our son, Jeff, his traditional gift, find coffee to buy and bring home for my caffeine craving friends, gifts for this person and that person until we wondered if we could get it all done in our short stay. So it was an ambitious schedule and we hopped to it. First stop was to the mall attached to the hotel….two elevator rides later we are in a mall catering to upper middle class types…each floor had its own theme. One floor was the furniture floor…beds and mattresses in one, upscale Italian home décor, and assorted household furnishings. Another floor was just children’s clothing with a little fun arcade with kiddie rides for extra enticement and another for wonen’s fashions. It was a theme mall attracting a burgeoning middle class in this up and coming section of Jakarta. And of course, there was the inevitable food court an entire mall floor packed with western and Indonesian fast foods, upscale restaurants and a large number of cafeteria type places which served a variety of Indonesian foods. It was quite the visual display in addition to some simple, but good tasting, dishes. Patrons in our restaurant were a true mix of a portion of Jakarta society. There were just the two westerners looking out of place, a mixture of women in hijabs and uncovered coiffed heads. Families with three and even four generations, the elder generations looking very traditional, and assorted groups of young adults looking western, but obviously Indonesian all shared conviviality and food. A table of eight contained grandma, two sets of young adults and three children. The little two year-old was a very cute little princess who finally strayed from the table and began to dance in the aisle….Nobody at the table even paid the slightest attention to her. Then from the side there was a plain green uniformed girl of about 16? who whisked out and took the little girl back to the table. Every move of the girl from this point on was watched and dealt with by her, not the well tailored family. The nanny/au pair was interesting “Who is this girl, and what is her story.” I have no clue, of course, but I do know that in many places we’ve been village girls without prospects or any real hope of advancing in life have to work to provide for their families, thus perpetuating the circle of young children who seldom have the opportunity to get the education they need to have a better life. She went about her work very stoically, never smiling at the child or looking at her surroundings and taking things in. Her focus was the child…she was “on,” and it was a joyless task dealing with this little princess who refused to be fed by her, lashed out at her as she put the spoon to her mouth, and was, basically, the stereotypical spoiled, bratty child. I really felt empathy for the nanny because it seemed such drudgery for her, and yet it was better than the alternative. However, after lunch, we felt that this was not the place for our needs and so off we went to find the Hard Rock Café for the shot glasses. We were told that it was located in another eight story, Macy’s type, store…(they’re everywhere in Jakarta) and that they had a lot of the things we were looking for as well..GREAT…an all-in-one stop shopping. In fact, the Hard Rock had moved, but they did have a treasure trove of lots of what we wanted so, off we went with shopping bags in hand, walking to the Grand Hyatt Hotel attached to another grand plaza of shopping. A 15 minute walk in the Jakarta afternoon heat was not rewarded when we were told that it had moved again. This time an air conditioned cab was hailed by a friendly policeman, and we cooled down as we headed to the most upscale mall I’ve seen this side of Dubai. At One Pacific Plaza, the mall is attached to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Aren’t they all? Inside was a virtual litany of high end stores, the crowning jewel being the indoor showroom of the McLaren automobile, going for a cool $874,000 US.

Thankfully, the HRC was, indeed attached as well and we got the glasses…following our walk and time in the heat we decided to have my favored afternoon quaff, a chocolate milkshake while Carol changed from her usual Strawberry shake to a root beer float. We had had a variety of what were described as “milkshakes,” from colored water to huge ice cubes taking up most of the glass, but I can unequivocally say that was the absolute best milk shake I’ve ever had. Carol’s root beer float was real ice cream that fizzed up and overflowed the glass when pushed to the bottom. Unlike the soft serve stuff we’d had in other places which just didn’t make it at all. So when the $17 bill came, I didn’t even flinch. Given everything, it was perfect and I had no complaints. A $5 cab ride back was a cooling climax to our outing. With the HRC shakes/floats filling us, we were done for the day and hunkered down for the evening.

TOM

The original incentive for coming to Indonesia was to see the orangutans. Since it is nature and nothing in nature is guaranteed, we planned several opportunities to see these gentle giants if our first encounter/s didn’t work out. We were continually cautioned that sightings are “uncertain.” Our first opportunity in Sumatra was a success and it was the only opportunity to see them totally in the wild. the three that we saw had no need, or desire, for human contact. They just swayed back and forth to go from tree to tree and were oblivious to the cameras clicking below them. Our second opportunity was in Malaysian Borneo. We went Semenggohto Wildlife Center which is a six stage orphanage and feeding station to educate infants who have been taken in for eventual reintroduction into the forest. This was very interesting and enjoyable in spite of the fact that it was an organized, on the tourist trail ,paved roadways, and well-regulated attraction. The tour buses line up in the parking lot and disgorge their load of tourists of several nationalities who walk the walk and talk the talk.. There is a nice information building (air conditioned) and a snack bar for juices and all the amenities of a must-do tourist attraction. It’s an orphanage because infant orangs’ mothers are often killed by poachers and people wanting to rid the area of them so that they can turn the land into a rubber or palm oil plantation. The orangs only bear an offspring once every eight years, so reproduction is limited and fragile. The wildlife center takes them in as infants when they are orphaned and teaches them over the course of several years to learn how to be orangutans again, eventually releasing them into areas deep in the rain forest and away from humanity, as much as that is possible these days. The orangs climbed and swung on poles and ropes put there for easy, unblocked photo ops and a path to the feeding station where fruits and orangutan goodies were distributed on the lowered deck. Easier for photos than from the higher, tiered bleachers. So it was a really nice experience, but a very touristy one…no complaints about people because I, too, got those same photo ops and was happy for them. I got to see the orangutans a second time…. It was a very different look to see them going hand over hand along a 100 foot rope suspended about 30 feet in the air instead of obscured in the forest. So because we had fulfilled our limited expectations, our planned trip up the Kumai River and into smaller rivers in Indonesian Borneo, called Kalimantan, to see remote feeding stations was a pure gravy trip…if we saw some, great, if we didn’t okay, we were okay with that. It would be a really relaxing and restful three days.

Well, we truly hit the Orangutan jackpot. Three different feeding station, each one more remote than the one before, each one with special experiences.…At one, I had some extra phone batteries in my pants pocket and one mother with baby attached approached and poked my pocket to see if it was food, I was later told…finding it solid, she ignored me and went on her way to the feeding platform. We were told that we shouldn’t have anything loose like purses or such because the orangs will take it and you do not get into a pulling match with an animal that outweighs you and is 8 times stronger….just give it to then, they said…they will probably drop it soon and you can retrieve it….When the orangs come on the ground, all the guides and boat personnel who are there with water and rain ponchos quickly put them on their back so that they were not loose which attracts the orangs. Another time the four of us were sitting on the front row of an old, very creaky two row benches. Cody’s eyes got really big and his jaw dropped as he looked past me. I turned and saw an enormous orangutan come out of the forest about four feet away, look at me directly, and he passed us in the passageway between the two benches. He literally almost brushed us as he lumbered past. It was an exhilarating moment for all of us. This was “Tom,” the reigning male and from the numbers of babies clinging on desperately to moms, he’s on the job. He passed behind us and just went down and plunked his butt on the end of the bench with a big ring of people snapping photos and video….an old American joined them after he got his system cooled down from the adrenaline rush. “Tom” just sat there like some Hollywood star in front of the adoring fans and posed for photos for a long time before he got bored with the whole thing and went to the feeding platform where he dominated the food table.

At another we were entertained by the swinging orangs, On one occasion, one mom with adolescent offspring not attached any longer climbed up high into the trees with junior following, and let their body weight bend the tree toward the next one where she disembarked and waited for junior. Since he didn’t have the body weight to make it bend to her tree she placed her weight so that her tree would bend towards junior’s. Not so far as to make it easy for him, but close enough were she would put out her arm and force him/her to trust and reach out into no-man’s-air and grab hold whence she pulled him onto her tree and they went across the canopy this way. It was like watching a lesson in orangutan development in how their world operates. They just move so slowly but gracefully. Unlike monkeys who swing and leap into the void to descend to another tree below….Orangs just ever so slowly let body weight take over and gravity do its thing and they rustle their way from tree to tree…They spend most of their lives in the trees where they are not vulnerable…they build a different nest every night of large fronds and large-leafed branches and one that is strong enough to support the weighty (up to 300+ pounds) body with a child or two still hanging on. Cody and Carolyn were perfect boat mates. I never did a crossword puzzle or read my Smithsonian magazines because we always had something to talk about…their travels, their history, their seven month back-packing, no frills (until this one) tour of South East Asia…They had such open minds and were so inquisitive in their search to understand what they were seeing. They even taught English in a rural school for three weeks. Cody, it turns out is from Portland and is a big Blazer and Duck fan, so we even had sports to talk about. Carolyn is from Minnesota and they were both students at American University in DC. I truly admired them both as individuals, as a couple, and as travelers. The feeding stations all had orangutans coming which doesn’t always happen so we were just fortunate all the way around…in August, they say that there are so many boats on the water that at some stations there are literally hundreds of people vieing for that perfect spot. There are a total of 84 klotoks on the river and while we were there, only about 10 were plying the river and they weren’t all at the same place at the same time.. At one station we and another couple were the only ones there.

We all slept on the deck on comfortable mattresses in two separate canopied tents to keep the mosquitoes out and the heat in without real ventilation and you had a tolerable, if not good, night’s sleep. Throw in great food, a night forest walk that produced HUGE spiders, nearly invisible walking sticks, a snake above our heads and an assortment of moths, a tree reforestation stop where we planted trees and left markers showing who we were, and all in all it was a wonderful experience. It would have been even without the orangs, but they just pushed it over the top on the fulfillment scale. We saved it for our last hurrah on the trip. Then it was on to Jakarta, that impossible city that we avoided as long as possible but now loomed for a three-day stop before coming home.

Junk Mail

We left our little sanctuary in Yogjakara,the one with the meditation hut and peaceful waters running through the grounds for our run to Semarang, our jumping off point for getting to Borneo and our three day upriver excursion to see the Orangutans. I checked several sources to find a hotel similar to the one we left, but could not find anything that didn’t have serious drawbacks. In the end, we opted for the Holiday Inn Express….ordinarily, we are loathe to stay in one of these on our trips, preferring to do local hotels. However, that wasn’t gonna happen so there we were entering our room and wondering if we were really in Java. It could have been Stockton, Kalamazoo or Tucumcari since it has the same sterility. But it was cheap, the showers had hot water and a shower head that worked, and a breakfast that was tolerable. After a good night’s sleep with our choice of hard or soft pillows we got a cab to the airport to catch our 11:50 a.m. flight. We arrived a couple of hours early and went to the counter to check-in and were met with blank stars and the words: “Flight gone.” WHAT?....Since that was the only English that I was getting I was directed outside the airport to the Kalstar Airlines office where a girl with only a slightly better vocabulary eventually got through to me that that there was a schedule change and that they had sent me an email. I showed her that I received no such email as a young woman entered the office to speak to the girl, her friend. I asked if she spoke English and she said she did. I explained that there was a schedule change, but I didn’t receive any notification. She talked to her friend and said: “Give me your passports, maybe I can help. Trusting soul that I am…ha ha…I did so and in a few minutes later she returned with two tickets on her airline which had a flight leaving to our isolated destination leaving just one hour later than our original schedule…Amazingly, Kalstar refunded our TOTAL price, and I paid Garuda an extra $5.80 extra and we were on our way. Only, when I got to my hotel in Kalangon Bun an outpost in Borneo did I discover that I had indeed received an email but it was sent to my Junk Mail. But, as always, things have a way of working out for us in our travels, and this was just further confirmation that nothing bad happens on our trips. The truly amazing thing in the whole episode was that Kalstar refunded our entire ticket price and that I got a new ticket for only $5.80 more…don’t think that would have happened at home. We spent the one night in this frontier town of 200,000 before beginning our Klotok, boat, trip upriver. Our fellow passengers were a young couple who had been traveling all over SE Asia for 7 months. They traveled in the same style and spirit as I did when I was in my 20’s and they had wonderful stories of budget/backpacking adventures in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Really whet my appetite for a future trip but definitely not as shoestring as their trip. But I remember the mentality so clearly…every $8 hotel, as opposed to a $40 one, meant extra days traveling and more adventures to be had. They were a delightful couple, bright in spirit and a joy of life to go with their happy spirits.. Heading up the wide chocolate-colored river, brown from the decomposition of organic matter and the erosion and pollution up river, and past the ocean-going freighters loading and unloading goods, the armada of moored klotoks not yet booked for trips, and past the 4 story tall concrete structures with no windows and plenty of holes. It was explained that they were buildings where swallows would build their nests and then they would be harvested from catwalks inside and are a cash-crop and for locals who sell the nests to restaurants. Apparently it’s quite a good business. A bowl of birds next soup in Jakarta will cost you $25. A small red and white striped Indonesian flag tethered to the loops in a broken fishing pole fluttered gently in the breeze created by our movement. We turned off the big river onto a much smaller one about 100 feet wide and chugged against the gentle current with the foam from the runoff of mining and palm oil plantations giving stark evidence to the fact that Borneo wilderness is under severe threat. We stopped at a village along the way for a little reality check of the lives of river people. The river water flows out onto a bayou type of terrain and we walked on a roadway above the water. The houses were very, very simple and required a catwalk go get to higher ground on which the houses were built. Solar panels gathered energy to light the brick walkway of the single street and provided light for the houses in the section of each solar panel. An elementary school and a rudimentary medical facility accounted for the entire infrastructure of the village. Bright eyed little children greeted us with smiles and waving hands as they posed for their photos to be taken. Old women sat on their porches and motor bikes whizzed by even in such a remote village in the rainforest. It’s easy to think of them as poor because of the lack of the accoutrements of life as we judge prosperity, but there are no swollen bellies here, no flies settled around the eyes of the people too lacking in energy or spirit to bat them away. There is the joy of childhood as they leap into the canal and exuberantly play in the water with continual smiles and giggles. .

I woke up early the following morning as watched the mist rise from the river and formed an ethereal haze which obscured any vision beyond a hundred yards or so. The rainforest, impenetrable to the eye, blocked any view beyond the lush green shade that was pulled down on both sides of the river. That left only the sliver of water spreading out from the back of the boat to give any perspective to my surroundings. The sky turned from a slate grey to a soft teal color and shapes in the sky began to take form as the mist slowly dissipated. Clouds began to come into view, the forest began to show life as birds started their early morning songs and ever-so-slowly, the world began to take shape. There has always been something magical about waking up in remote areas where intellectually you know that the outside world exists, but there is nothing in your consciousness that confirms that fact.There is only you and the remoteness of your surroundings. Whether it was in the shadow of Everest in Tibet, walking the Inca Trail in Peru, or the Pantanal of Brazil it always awakens my spirit as my body comes back to life. I watched a troop of long tailed macaques cavort in the trees across the river, little ones exhibiting the derring-do of the 10 year olds weaving in and out of traffic on their motor bikes as they leapt into the empty space from tall trees, falling seemingly forever into oblivion when they suddenly landed on a supple branch of a tree below, with the branches bending and flexing like a springboard. How they managed to grasp the tree and not pin ball their way to the rain forest, or in this case the river, below was fascinating. The big male looked disdainfully down from his perch while the juveniles chased each other up and down the trees with a dexterity that has fascinated me from my youth looking at then in zoos. Again, seeing animals in their natural state makes it impossible to ever think of them in cages.

Crew members from the other klotoks which were moored at the same dock as we gathered, squatted as only Asians seem able to do and drank their morning coffee and smoked their cigarettes all to the continuous laughter and glee of their conversations. Seven men, who plied the river up and down, finding camaraderie in each other’s company and exhibiting that same joy I saw in the children cavorting in the canal earlier in the day. Slowly, the sky took on real color as the horizon worked its way down to the sun. Pink clouds appeared in the sky with their light blue background, swallows darted back and forth scooping up mosquitoes, the mist rose to reveal the river and Carol and the others on the boat began to stir. My world was coming back into focus and reminded me that remoteness is only a state of mind. Life is good.

Java the Hot

With apologies to George Lucas, this is indeed Java, the hot. Not that Java is any different from the other islands we have visited, Sumatra, Borneo, Bali, all have very similar weather to Java. Today the heat/humidity index reads 86 and 85. Put your percentage and degree symbols where ever you want, it won’t make a dimes worth of difference. The numbers correlate directly to the discomfort level for the pasty-faced Northwesterners. Simple trips across any town/city are still the most fascinating to me because all of Indonesian life is out and on the streets. Nobody is walking, Everybody is finding some form of transportation…well, nobody except those pasty faced northwesterners. Bicycle tuk tuks are pedaled by what looks like the bottom of the economic scale. Men of all ages who scrape together enough sheckels to purchase a rattle trap bicycle equip it with some form of seat that may or may not be cushioned and is large enough for one person, but a definite squeeze for two as we found out. I would up basically sitting on my side so that we could both fit. The pedaling is slow and arduous. Some of the “drivers” look like they might not make it to the next corner as they struggle through traffic. You can almost hear the groan when they have to stop for one reason or another and have to muster up the extra energy to regain momentum.

The cars, motor bikes/scooters and LARGE buses just whiz by very close to your personal space¸but on they pedal. During the heat of the day, the drivers sleep on the seat with their legs stretching out from the sides and their head propped on the metal grill work on the sides. I wouldn’t ride one of these because I’d be afraid the driver would already be dead since that is the appearance they give sleeping. They truly look like the downtrodden of society. The one we rode to a batik factory was so thrilled with the $1.50 fare that he waited until the time we were finished and was right there to take us back to the hotel. We had planned on walking instead of doing the sardine number, but he was so keen on taking us, I didn’t have the heart to say no. It’s still a tough life out there for huge parts of any society and Indonesia, with all its outward upward mobility, is not different. My enjoyment of being out on the street continues to be enhanced by the motorscooters/bikes. They are simply everywhere. In 2013 the statistics were that on any given day 65 million of them were on the roads, and 7 million new scooters/bikes were sold that year. Driving across town is seeing a cross-section of Indonesian society blithely bobbing and weaving their way through traffic. From hip young men on metallic gold bikes adorned with lightning bolts, to young women driving soft pink ones displaying Hello Kitty stickers. Helmets range from skulls and images of Che Guevarra to Snoopy figures saying: “Have a nice day.” The drivers range in age from 10, to ancient grannies. Old men with weather beaten faces and tattered sarongs driving motor bikes that appear to have about the same life expectancies are there as are , the young fashionistas with spike heels and flowing garments. $1,100 will put you into a spiffy new Honda Bravo or a Yamaha Spirit of your own choosing, and one which reflects your own self-image. They are fast, efficient and cheap. They can go forever on a tank of gas, it seems and with gas prices ranging in the $2 a gallon, it is the perfect mode of transportation in cities that have outgrown the infrastructure.. Particularly in light of the limited public transportation options the people have, they are an enormously popular and critical mode of transport. Riding around town to/from the sites we would visit in a blessedly air conditioned car with driver, it is fascinating to come to a rare stop light and suddenly realize that you are enveloped in a cocoon of motor bikes with a vivid array of said helmets surrounding you. I continually felt as if I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and we narrowly missed countless scooters and watched with an “Oh-oh” just waiting to be uttered from my lips as I saw little kids make turns into traffic and prayed that they would make it across. It’s actually like some kind of industrial sized ballroom dance where everybody knows the steps and nobody gets their toes stepped on, with the exception of Medan in Sumatra where it was like a pack of starved pit bulls when a chunk of meat is thrown into the middle…that was every dog for him/herself. Still it worked. We have never seen an accident. Motor scooters are preferred for families because they have a flat floor, all the better for young kids to stand on in front of dad. It’s like having a front row seat on a roller coaster where you get the thrill/fear of being right there as the lead element. Just as Mongolian kids learn to ride as soon as they are big enough to have their parents tie their legs under a sheep, Indonesian kids from about the age of two, or basically as soon as they can stand and support themselves, have a front row seat to learn the ins and outs, the bobs and weaves, the general rules of traffic and a modicum of safety habits. Just as mother hens cluck to their chicks for food or danger, so too these little kids are literally bred for the saddle. Somehow, it all works. We’re down to just over a week now before coming home and nary an accident has been seen….Amazing. As Carol noted yesterday: “Motor scooter drivers must have their own guardian angels.” I agreed because otherwise they’d all be dead. Individuals get creative on how to deal with traffic. Stores, banks and even homes hire their own traffic cops. Much like crossing guards at a school they get out into traffic with their whistles and some form of flag and wave traffic to a halt so that somebody can exit the gas station, bank or store. Without these traffic controllers, it could be a very long wait for a break in traffic. With a dearth of traffic signals, traffic just keeps on coming and coming and coming. And so when you are stopped for whatever reason, the Indonesian patience comes forth and everybody obeys the unwritten rules without any sort of acrimony or hostility.

We continually see whole families on scooters zipping around town with Dad driving, young boy standing in front of him, daughter wedged between mom and dad wile mom holds the baby in her arms. They are,however, more than just a family mode of transportation. They are commercial vehicles carrying baskets at the back to tote sacks of rice or other goods in; caged containers which hold chickens going to market; pots of liquid like some moveable kitchen and shelving which gives them the look of a mobile hardware store or a mini-mart. On today’s outing to a world heritage site, Borobudur, a Buddhist temple complex, we were continually besieged, in a nice way, by students wanting to practice their English. The boys are more confident and just approach, while the girls wait for a smile and a “Selamat Paggi,” (good morning) before advancing. But in all cases the brightness of their eyes and the eagerness of their desire to talk to you is really fun. Teachers bring their students to places like these because they know there will be a lot of foreign speakers.

English is the main language most want to learn, and so a question like: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” brings delight when you answer yes. Questions all are all simple and repetitive. What is your name, where do you come from, how are you, what do you see in Indonesia?.....but their sweet faces are such that it is a pleasure to answer slowly and patiently when another person in the group asks the same questions as the first one…it’s like they are on auto-pilot and can’t jump from A to D without passing B and C along the way. We talked with a group of four, two boys and two girls. They all looked the same age, and when I asked how old they were, the boys answered: “14,” and the girls “20.” We were amazed because they all looked 14. Wrapped in head scarves, swathed in long sleeved blouses and skirts that go to just above the ground, I feel for their discomfort in this weather, but they just laugh at us. They are used to it and they don’t even break a sweat whereas we are drenched in sweat. We were again unsuccessful in arranging Servas meetings and that, as always, limits our contact with people who can explain a lot of what we see and wonder about.Thank goodness for our time with Eka and her family and friends. This was our only real contact with ordinary people. However, the natural friendliness and genuine joy of spirit from these kids to the hotel clerks to the people on the street comes through in all the people with whom we do have dealings.

Bali Hai

Bali was never high on my list. Yeah, I’ll go anywhere, but there were a lot more interesting places to visit than a place that I saw as a quasi-hedonistic party scene. I’ve never done well with those situations. I’m just totally clueless and I don’t get it. And so when we were planning the trip I was relatively surprised to hear Carol say she wanted to come here. She said her interest was piqued when she read Michener’s “Hawaii,” even before Angela was born. Much to my pleasant surprise, there’s a whole lot more to the place than the party scene, which is certainly healthy and thriving in parts of the island. Landing in Denpasar was a real eye opener. It could have been SFO. Planes stacked up on each other, and tarmacs full of a veritable rainbow of colored tail fins for the various local budget travel that has exploded, sometimes literally, onto the Asian air market. Inside the terminal at immigration processing there was one open kiosk for Malaysian passports and there were a dozen or so for foreigners. Long lines went fairly efficiently, but it was obvious that this was, indeed, going to be a different breed of cat. The immense variety of humanity within the baggage claim where flights had come in from literally everywhere was staggering, not only from an ethnic and cultural aspect, but also just for the variety of alternative lifestyles that a lot of people who come to Bali seem to exhibit. It certainly gave the appearance of being a place that tolerated a lot of individuality. And this was at 10 p.m.. We didn’t want to stay in the party area and I had found the small town of Ubud in my reading. It is a fiber area for Carol and has a lot of activities for the non-party types like us. The hour drive was nothing we had not seen before, tons of traffic, end to end shops all shuttered for the night with their metal garage type doors locked down and very little empty space since it seemed to be another one of those endless city urban sprawls where one village leads into another and you can’t really tell when one ends and the other begins. Literally thousands of shops selling everything imaginable lay hidden behind the doors. The shops are almost always single garage door sized and are end to end mile after mile. However, in the morning when the light shone on Bali interior, it took on its quintessential picture postcard feeling. Out the balcony of our hotel is a rice field backed up by the graceful coconut palm trees stretching to the sky and just daring anybody to walk underneath lest it drop with a thud a green coconut. The coconut palm is so much more picturesque than the mile after mile of the stubby, thicker oil palms all planted with precision in an “orchard.” Now, with this vision at my doorstep, it felt like what I had envisioned to be Bali. A woman in a red sarong cut the weeds and grass with a hand sickle from the established path lest the greenery take totally over. Everything is done by hand here, we saw no machinery of any kind in the fields.. Later she gathered it all up into a bundle, placed it on her head and walked with her flip flops flapping down the rows to a path like she has probably done a thousand times before, seemingly totally oblivious to the world, she still could manage a smile and a hello when I said good afternoon. Whereas in Borneo, we saw little of the traditional dress on men or women, now we see it everywhere. The men wear little turban-like head coverings, but they are really nothing more than thick colorful strips of cloth wrapped around the head with the center left open. The men and women wear the traditional sarong, simply a floor length piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and tucked in at the top around the waist. The women, young and old, wear these along with the men. Flip flops are the standard footwear and there are shops selling such an array and variety of them that it boggles the mind. I had no clue that they could come in so many ways. This is, surprisingly to me, a very heavily Hindu area. I’m finding such a broader level of culture. I had no clue. I just knew that Indonesia was a heavily Muslim country so was surprised to find a majority of Christians in Borneo and now a majority of Hindus here in Bali. Shrines and temples abound on every street and each morning and each night people carry trays holding offerings on mini-trays and placed in doorways and various other places as a symbol of good luck and blessed offerings. Banks, schools, shops and houses all seem to have a small shrine adorning the outside of the buildings and temples are to be found in abundance as well. Java with over half the population of 250,000,000 is heavily Muslim while the other 17,000+ islands have a wide variety of culture, religion and traditions very different from Java. One thing that became very evident upon first light is that Balinese look, well, they look Balinese. Unlike Borneo where the ethnic Chinese register about 50% of the total population and the intermarriage with ethnic Malays form a lighter skinned population, Balinese have a beautiful light olive sheen to their skin. The lack of facial and body hair gives the skin a sleek look and they are a lovely people. They smile and are a joyous lot and are said to be one of the most patient of people. This is good since the roads and traffic require that in spades. The women are petite and beautiful and the men are shorter than average but with nice features as well.

The roads are really narrow and are two-lane only because somebody painted a white line down the middle. The best way to drive them is to point the hood ornament directly along the white line for as long as possible until a car, seldom, or the mass break out of motor bikes come your way. If a car is approaching it means getting one set of tires well onto the limited shoulder and praying that he/she will do the same in the other car. It is also exacerbated by people who simply stop and leave their cars on the road without even the semblance of pulling as far off as possible. We passed a man happily washing his car in the middle of the road while traffic in both directions looked for an opportunity to get around him. The real fun is when the big dog of the road, the tour buses come towards you. They seem to have little compunction to pull over and this makes for some hairy moments. Another curious habit is that oncoming traffic seems to have the right, or at least the practice to turn in front of oncoming traffic. But everybody seems to understand the rules and as crazy as it seems to my western prejudiced driving habits, it all works without any semblance of anger or impatience. An interesting feature that Carol noticed on our map is that there are 9 major roads that go north and south in the island from the bottom to the top, there is not a single one cutting across the middle of the country or a major road connecting the parallel north/south roads. Any road that goes laterally across the Island heads directly for the coast and then skirts the island on its rim. Primary in our interest in visiting Ubud was a place called “Green Village,” which our ex-student Shane Liem told us was amazing. She was right. Comprising several aspects such as a school, a planned community and a production plant, The “green village/school is made entirely out of bamboo. They discovered a process to eliminate the sugar inside the bamboo so that the bugs don’t like it any longer. They’ve done some amazing architectural building using just bamboo. Pictures can be seen at: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/16/world/asia/bali-green-village-bamboo/ They also operate a “green” school for children of the area. A full k-12 program teaches all subject matter in a “green” process and environment. The classrooms again are all made from bamboo and everything is approached from a basis of sustainability. We were told that tomorrow is “Earth Day, “ and at the school it’s like Christmas. With over 300 students a fifth of them are Balinese and the rest are foreign students who live both at the school and/or are dropped by parents/drivers. At a cost of $8,000 for the elementary programs and $14,000 for the middle and high school students, it ain’t cheap, but they have Montessori type approach to learning in an environmental setting.

The number of restaurants, guest houses, hotels and home stays in the area are stark testimony to the heavy influx of tourism in the past few years. With a population of 30,000 my feeling is that a vast majority of them are involved in the tourist trade. But it is a beautiful area where one can go on all kinds of adventures from white-water rafting, visiting monkey sanctuaries, do elephant touring, rent motor bikes (Carol flatly refused to even consider it, probably wise) and have a wonderful and fulfilling cuisine experiences. Here’s the website for further exploration. http://greenvillagebali.com We decided that in spite of my initial objections to the party scene, it seemed somewhat strange to come to Bali and not at least see the beach and coast line. Asking what was a particularly beautiful beach near the airport, we were pointed to Nusa Dua. The trip down in daylight confirmed what I had thought on the nighttime run to Ubud. Mile after unending mile of shops and villages. One village is especially known for working with the wood from the forest making beautiful furniture, another for using the lava rock (there are two volcanoes on the island) into Hindu statuary while another one is the silversmith village which gets its silver from Papua, a province on the island of New Guinea. It also has the world’s largest gold mine. So, although they all run together and seem the same, in fact, there is a lot of individuality to them. Curious how the maps looked with the vertical highways I googled Bali and looked at the “earth” view, and there I could see the parallel strings of roads easily identifiable with the wall to wall buildings I mentioned. We stayed at a comfortable but cheapy hotel, having met the requirements of our stay, AC and WI-FI. We were able to make a pilgrimage to a beach and it was just as lovely as one would suspect from looking at the travel brochures. The water a turquoise blue, the coarse sand beaches from countless volcanic rock being pulverized into small bits, and the rocky outcroppings which give the beach character with the waves crashing into the reef and spilling white water closer to shore. The water in the lagoon was bathtub warm, literally warmer than the tepid showers we’ve had in the hotels. It might be refreshing, but it’s not gonna cool anybody off on a hot day. But still I’m glad we did it and I now have a better idea of why I wouldn’t want to stay here in spite of the beauty.

Gringos everywhere. Old and young, singles and marrieds, hipsters and hippies, they come from around the world to partake in the beach nightlife. They laze around the pool or at the beach all day and then party at night. I once was given a compliment by a fellow travel agent who meant it as a put down “You like to travel, and I like to vacation,” she said. And it’s true. Probably the only accurate thing I ever heard from her. So we came, we saw, we got out of Dodge. Glad we did it, glad we only gave it one night.

The Land Below the Wind

Flying between the two provinces of Borneo, Sarawak and Sabah, on opposite ends of the island, I could look down upon an overwhelming density of life. The Indonesian rain forest is so immense and so thick that only the rivers, and there are lots of them, break up the sameness of the ground below. Towns will pop up along the shore line and then disappear as the rain forest once again becomes dominant. The rivers snake their way to the South China Sea and form a brownish alluvial fan as they spread their carried sediment into the water. There are so many rivers that there are often three of them running more or less parallel to each other even in their snaky curves. It’s fascinating to see from 30,000 feet.

A little further on, the sea suddenly became dotted with ships, then the oil rigs came into view, and I realized that the ships were oil tankers and below was the Sultanate of Brunei, a separate nation in a “U” shaped piece of land which juts inward from the coast and just happens to have enormous oil and natural gas reserves. The entire scope of the window on the plane was all oil platforms and oil tankers. We reached Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Sabah province, so-called “The land below the wind.” This name comes from the fact that Sabah doesn’t have typhoons (hurricanes)…we were told they never have had one, but I haven’t checked the veracity of that, but it sounds reasonable. Looking at a map, the province is sitting in a little protective bowl. Surrounded by big land masses and limited (on an oceanic scale) open water. The vast Pacific ocean can’t get there and crushes the Philippines first while the Indian Ocean hits Sumatra…they say they just get tailing winds.. If Kuching was the button-down commercial center of Borneo, Kota Kinabalu is the vibrant, pulsing heart of sea-faring environment and the rain forest. Kuching has access to the ocean through it’s rivers and estuaries, but KK as it is known locally is right smack dab on the water and that seems to dominate the entire city. There are long bike and running paths which reach out to the suburbs, and the waterfront in the city proper is all about fish. Rusty hulled fishing trawlers push out to sea every morning and return in late afternoon to unload their catch and the city turns out to buy fresh fish. They drop anchor in the harbor about 100 yards offshore, lining up like cars at the mall. Along the waterfront, dozens of stalls all hawk their seafood for the locals who come to decide what is for dinner. The variety of seafood is amazing. Everything is available from sea slugs to foot long prawns which are more than a meal by themselves. For those not wanting to cook, dozens more stalls cook the variety over wood chip fires with the red pepper marinade coating the outside of the individual pieces. Some of the fish are grilled, others are batter fried. All the stands seem to sell exactly the same things so the verbal enticements to the passerby are necessary to show that theirs are the best.

We opted for something indoors – in re, something with AC. It’s necessary for our bodies, not to mention our mental state to find area when and where we can to cool off for a while before hitting the streets again. Our choices were myriad. Australian, Italian, Japanese, and of course, that quintessential tell-tale sign that we are in a tourist area a Hard Rock Café. Our daughter and son-in-law collect the shot glasses and are quick to point out where we will be able to find a new collectable. I looked before we left and saw that there was one in Jakarta, the Capital, and Bali, no surprise, but my daughter quickly wrote back and informed us that Kota Kinabalu also had a Hard Rock. Now, that was a surprise until we got here and saw how many

Timing was excellent as we left the restaurant to be greeted by a wonderful South China Sea sunset. The tropical thunderclouds towered high into the sky and the sun gave everything a brilliant golden hue. As it sank closer to the horizon, the gold turned to a reddish orange and we truly felt we were in a tropical paradise. The kind of setting you see in travel films, but this was reality, not fantasy. But KK is all about the jungle. Whereas Kuching is basically a flat tidal basin with some tall peaks in the general area, KK is all about coastline and mountains. 100 yards off the shoreline, the hills start abruptly upward with the jungle seemingly right out your doorway. Lianas drape from the trees like spaghetti strands, all reaching for the nutrients of the earth. No matter what direction you head other than to sea, the rain forest is right there. Row upon row of tall ridges form a seemingly unending line of high crests. Each one steeply descends into some form of river or creek. As you turn you are faced with another set of ridges going in different directions, but all the same – covered in the vast biodiversity of Borneo and all seemingly unending. It is said that in 6 square miles of the Borneo rainforest there are more species than in all of Europe and North America combined. Sounds amazing, but I’ve learned not to be skeptical of the wonderment of the area. There are Orangutans in the area, more feeding stations, but since we’ve seen them in two locations we opted for something different. We traveled to see the proboscis monkeys and some botanical demonstration gardens where they have brought the various varieties of plant life into one area for better understanding. We crossed a long and rickety canopy walk where the footing is a one inch by 8 inch board all roped together to long cables. Actually very safe, but also with a lot of movement..It reminded me of how I used to drive my sister nuts by making the bridge swing from side to side as we crossed the Feather River in the little PG&E camp we lived in when we were kids.

The only things seemingly more abundant than the varieties of orchids were the skinny dogs and the even skinnier chickens who walked along the highway with cars whizzing ever so close and scratched the ground with little chicks scurrying around mom looking for the morsel of possible food. Some things that piqued my interest: As we went deeper into the rainforest, we kept seeing signs for Catholic churches. In KK they are big churches a la Western civilization. In the deep rainforest, they may just be a single room with a cross on then, but there are ever present. In Sabah, the province, Christians are a majority in an overall very Muslim country and Catholics the vast majority of those. The Portuguese brought Christianity to the area in the early 1500’s. Carol noted that the name for church seemed very similar to Portuguese, and that is the reason. Driving is different in Borneo. In Sumatra, it’s everybody for themselves. The motor bikes and pedi-cabs all stick to the shoulder of the road and everybody passes without a thought for them. Here in Borneo, motor bikes ride down the center of the lane and people pass only when it is safe. There are NO horns blaring their presence or their driver’s frustrations. It is a very peaceful and sane driving experience. The major highway is one lane each direction and many drivers go at 25 miles an hour, yet there is no road rage at motor bikes not moving over or slow traffic, no epithets being cast about at slow drivers and there are plenty of those, and no clenched fists or pointed fingers jabbing the sky. There are lots of Chinese tourists, but not nearly as many, apparently, as before the flight of MH370 went missing never to be heard of again on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing two years ago. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the stores….what’s not to like about a place like that?

A Tale of Two Cities

I noted last time some differences in Medan in Indonesia and Kuching in Malaysian Borneo. After spending a couple more days in Kuching, the differences became even more obvious than just traffic patterns. The main difference is a between a frenetic way of life and a more sedate one. First of all, because Medan doesn’t have any high rises, the tallest building we saw was four stories and in Langsa they were only two, that means that the city spreads out in a lateral, horizontal plane, whereas Kuching has a plethora of high rises reaching 30 to 40 stories high. Office buildings, apartment complexes and hotels all dominate the skyline and that give it a vertical appearance. That means that with one fourth the population, Kuching is much more organized and less frantic. The multi-level malls with an eclectic mix of eastern and western shops with L’Occitgane, Esprit, Levi’s and others taking their place alongside Asian shops more indigenous to the area. Rugby goal posts and playing fields give credence to the holdover of the Brits in the area, but today the city is a balance between ethnic Chinese and Malays who now are a larger percentage of the population than the Chinese. Throw in a few percentage points for local tribal people like the Sarawaks and you have a mixture that blends well in this city. In fact, the city has two mayors – one for the Chinese side of town and one for the Malay quarter, and heavens to Mergatroid, they actually cooperate and get along blending policies that benefit the whole…..now what’s that all about?

Secondly, Kuching seems to be a business center, a place of commerce for north Borneo while Medan is just neighborhood lapsing over into other neighborhoods without any distinctive flavor to any of them. Architecture in Medan is basically simple and utilitarian. Concrete block buildings abut against others of the same mold. Only the color changes. In Kuching, there is stylish and modern architecture and it gives the place a far more sophisticated feel. Everything just seems to move at a slower place in Kuching…green spaces and parks give it a tranquil feel and people just seem not to be in such a big hurry in all that they do. As the sun lowers in the sky men sit in the sidewalk cafes and drink their tea and coffee, lovers walk hand in hand down the street and women walk the street holding a multitude of shopping bags from the upscale stores and malls. It just feels good… if the sun didn’t bear down and beat you into submission it would really be a neat place. Our hotel filled our needs, free wi-fi and AC…for once, the AC was more important than the wi-fi. We’ve noticed in some of our hotels a arrow on the ceiling in the corner of the room. Carol finally figured out that it was pointing to Mecca for a proper prayer setting in the rooms for Muslim guests. The history of this whole area is one of colonial exploitation by the Brits and the Dutch, an effort to control the rubbe trade and petroleum industries. It didn’t pass to Malaysian control until 1962 when independence was gained as the Brits slowly began to unwind the empire upon which “The sun never sets.” Japanese occupation of the area was, as usual, vicious and deadly. Several WWII POW camps were established here, and the most famous one was Sandakan where only 6 of the 2,500 POW’s survived the war. On the flip side, the Brits bombed Kota Kinabalu, our next destination, and at the end of the war only three buildings were left standing. The whole area reeks with the stench of war and its inhumanity and it consequences. The island is the 3rd largest in the world after Greenland and New Guinea and is now split into three countries. Malaysia occupies the top quarter with Brunei, an oil rich sultanate enclave splitting, the different provinces of Malaysia, and the bottom ¾’s belonging to Indonesia who call their portion of Borneo, Kalimantan. However, we came to see the Orangutans. In Kuching our options were for a wildlife refuge where the primates are re-introduced back to the wild. They come to the refuge as orphans whose mothers have been shot or captured, or as adults who have been captured for domestic zoos. It was great to see them totally wild in Sumatra and there is lots of criticism of the “feeding Stations” where the animals are slowly re-introduced back to nature, but the fact is that if they were not there, the shrinking orangutan population would shrink even more drastically. They have a fine track record of success and keep a board of the status of the animals from quarantine, rehabilitation, to semi-wild, to totally wild. There is never any guarantee that you will see them at the feeding stations which put out food twice a day. In fact, since this is the season where fruits are in abundance in the jungle, it is actually a good sign when you don’t see them because it shows that they are finding sustenance on their own.

We were fortunate on our visit because there was a big male who came to the call of the attendant and then a mother with a baby clinging tightly to her side. Babies stay with their mothers for up to five years and this one was a three year old. She ventured out of her mother’s embrace as they scaled the long ropes that went from the various trees to the feeding platform where the ranger distributed food….The big male wanted more than his share and got into a pulling match with the ranger who wisely let go and let him have his way. Another difference that became quite obvious to us when we arrived at the wildlife center was the number of western and other tourists. In Bukit Lawang, there were a few pasty-faced visitors scattered out along the narrow walkway on which dozens of hotels and guest houses faced, but here in Kuching’s wild life center we saw just how many more there were here. Sumatra is not one of the top destinations within Indonesia, but here in Malaysian Borneo we are right in the middle of crossroads which makes for easy access to all destinations and cheaply so, since Air Asia has over 263 flights per week to all the destinations in the area, and they are just one of the many discount, low-cost airlines servicing the area. The other excursion that we wanted to see was a Sarawak cultural village. Established to promote the indigenous population, it is a well done replica of a village of the past. The students who work and study there are learning traditional arts and crafts. These places can be very hokey and have a phony feel to them, but this didn’t seem that way. The young kids were warm, friendly, informative and seemed truly appreciative of the visitation.

Borneo always seemed like such an exotic destination. So far away, so alien in culture, and full of lore about head hunting and lost expeditions. In fact, it is all of these, but it is also a place where in the modern world, conveniences in travel and the blessed and life-saving air conditioning make it a place that allows the traveler to enjoy the practicality of the place while still being fascinated by the exotic nature of the island. The rain forests are unique and are some of the oldest in the world. The huge island still has areas which are unexplored for any practical purposes, and I can only hope that it stays that way.

It started off well

Indeed it did. We were up at 6:00 for our 7:00 a.m. ride to the airport. We had a quick cool water shower, it was an eco hotel, after all, and the porters came to take our bags to our waiting car and driver for the 4-5 hour ride to the airport. We walked the half mile or so along the narrow bricked path listening for the sound of a motorbike from behind so that we could step aside. The “street” is just wide enough for the motorbikes to pass without hitting anyone and the locals seem to have the ability to just believe that they won’t get hit and keep on walking…the gringos, however, step aside.They had suggested that we didn’t need to leave for the airport until 8:00, but I wanted a little flexibility…just in case….Little did I know. The car was a nice comfortable SUV and even in the morning “coolness” the AC was appreciated. We passed the ever present oil palm trees and the little parade of students getting to early classes…smart to start the day early and finish before the stifling heat kills any intellectual curiosity. The motor bikes and pedicabs were, of course, everywhere, and the de rigueur single honk of the horn from the car basically said: “I’m passing, don’t deviate from your established path.”….amazing that we have not seen a single accident. About the time I’m settling in nicely for the relaxing ride, everything went silent in the car with the exception of the curious groans from the driver…no power….The car rolled to a stop at the top of the hill, far away from any village. The driver attempted to fiddle under the hood, but to no avail. He tried to use his mobile phone but no service either. Carol and I looked at each other with words unspoken but understood. “Now what?” “What’s plan B?” The driver walked down the road and apparently got some reception because he came back to say: “no problem. Another car is coming. We can make it.” Easy for him to say. Then he hitched a ride on a motor bike that had two baskets used for transporting the oil palm seed clusters and with a leg in each basket they went down the road. With nothing to do except wait, I strolled over to the two homes where the women were mercilessly chopping away at some oil palm clusters not full enough to go to pressing. Nothing gets wasted. I passed an old, reed-thin lady who looked at me with disdain and then looked the other way as if I had been invisible. My “Selamat Pagi,” (good morning) was met with stony indifference. This was most unusual because Indonesians are remarkable friendly and sociable. From rich to poor we have been met with near constant warmth and amiability. The two ladies whacked at the clusters of oil palm and I was impressed and amazed at the viciousness of their hacks while holding the cluster in one hand and whacking with the other. I’d be known as “Three fingered Jim,” if I used such force. I can’t even chop kindling for the stove without the threat of imminent impairment.

About 20 minutes later the driver showed up with a younger man, who we discovered was his son, and another vehicle…gone was our comfy Air conditioned SUV, replaced by a beat up utility van with hard seats and NO AC…..The road went from fair to terrible and each bump left my butt wishing for some extra padding on my skinny bones. The drivers must have permanent crooks to their necks from continually craning them to the left or the right to see if they can get around the trucks carrying who knows what. The single beep of the horn announced that we were coming around. We made it to Medan with the hub-bub of Indonesia’s third largest city and traffic is a real zoo….It took us over an hour just to get across town and this wasn’t rush hour, just late morning. It was the nearest thing to India’s traffic I have seen with everybody trying for that ever-so-slight advantage in getting one car length ahead. Even in a city of two million motor bikes out-number the cars by 50-1 it seemed….Two lanes of traffic were expanded to five when there was the space to create a new lane previously unoccupied. Adding to the chaos was the constant parking of trucks to unload sacks of goods, forcing everyone to somehow squeeze into a lane where nobody wanted to let you in. Basic rule….if you can get even an inch ahead of the other vehicle, the space is yours….all this and no road rage. Amazing. By now after four hours of riding in the heat with little relief, our nerves were fried as was our patience. There was little Carol and I could do but to give each other those unspoken looks that said: “Yeah, I’m miserable as well.” At last we got to the airport in time for our flight to Kuala Lumpur. Having left at seven without breakfast, you’d have thought that we’d have been starving, but the heat and fatigue sapped our appetite as well as our spirits. Carol was fighting the bug ungraciously given to her by drinking pure cane juice freshly squeezed and poured into what we ultimately decided were the culprits….unclean glasses washed in unclean water. So, while she is not eating because of the turkey trots, I just wanted something in my stomach….I forced down some French fries which were the only thing my stomach could possibly tolerate. We flew to Kuala Lumpur where we had a two-hour layover and then on to Kuching, “cat city,” The last flight on Air Asia was so cold that I asked for a blanket. They told me they only sold blankets. I guess when you only pay $25 for a two hour plane ride you can’t ask for too many amenities. Carol had a rain poncho in her backpack and so we huddled under it like some poor waifs waiting out a rain storm. The Indonesian and Malaysians seemed to revel in the coolness of the cabin while I froze. Finally it all ended and we reached our hotel…..a perfect place, cheap, good wi-fi, hot water, and a real shower. My stomach was in turmoil and that night I spent much of it with my head in the toilet getting up close and personal with my present reality….I think my system just more or less checked out from the physical and mental stress of the day.

But we are here in Kuching which means "Cat City in Malay, Sarawak province, Island of Borneo, Malaysia and the city is an oasis of calmness and driver civility compared to Sumatra. Drivers stay in their lanes, there are no pedi-cabs or tuk-tuks, the cars outnumber the motor bikes by the opposite numbers of Sumatra 1-50 now. If Medan was a city built for 500,000 people but has a population of two million, Kuching seems like a city built for two million with half a million population…lots of green spaces and parks. Something we just didn’t see in Sumatra where every corner is covered in some form of building or another. So it’s a much calmer place that we are in now, both physically and mentally. Our bodies and minds need that. Bottom line….in spite of the difficulties, it’s travel…shit happens…it’s all still good and worth it. on">