argghh...still here

7-31 Well, the tour guide wasn't ready to go this morning and hadn't arranged the necessary permits and travel arrangements, so we were stuck another day in this god-forsaken city. I did nothing all day really other than take a bemo to the bridge for a view of the city and watch free willy and knocked up on very edited hbo in the lobby of the hotel.
Last night was a bit of a frustration. When I had checked into the hotel there was no running water on my floor, the top floor. I told them I had no water in my best bahasa indonesia and they gave me the thumbs up that they would fix it. Well after going out with Hugo and then internetting, I got back to my hotel a bit after midnight. In places like these I really like to have a shower before bed b/c I obviously sweat a lot, but more b/c all the pollution and smoke and dirt stick to you so much and I prefer not to get my little sleeping liner filthy. After a day walking around in the city my legs from the knees down are usually noticeably dirty and my feet even brownish. Even with running water, there was no shower, just the asian bucket and pail method; however, it looked like the water in the bucket in my room had been stagnant for quite some time and it looked quite gross so I wanted to replace it with clean water. Well, when I got to the hotel after midnight, there was no water. So I asked them and they said they'd fix it. 30 minutes later, still no water. They indicated with sign language that it would take a while for the pressure to reach the top floor. But how long? I didn't want to be up all night. Finally I gave up and lied down. But then they came and knocked on the door to see if there was water. Nope. Then they indicated that they wanted me to switch rooms down to the first floor. I tried to explain that I didn't want to do that, just wanted to go to bed. At 2am, I didn't really feel like packing up all my junk and then heading downstairs to a new room, which was actually even nastier than the one I had. But they just couldn't figure out what I was saying and were trying to pick up my bag and take it down. Eventually I was able to show them that I would just take the shower downstairs and still sleep upstairs. They were both very nice, but it was just one of those frustrating language barrier things, and also of course as a westerner, even one used to how asia works, you hope that if you tell someone at midday that you have no running water, something will be done about it by midnight.

Today brought about some more travel frustrations. Hugo's guidebook (he has the full indo lonely planet and I just have the shoestring right now) said that you can fly from here to the town near tanjung puting national park which will be my 2nd and last deistination in kalimantan. I decided I would do that instead of the 14 hour bus ride to benjarmarsin and then the 21 hour bus ride to that town...and those are most likely best case scenarios times. I went to a couple travel agencies today to look into flights, but with lack of english and such had little luck until one person said that the airline DAS flies the route (indonesia has at least 20 domestic airlines which makes things tricky and only 2 can you book online with) and that I had to buy tickets at the airport. So I took a bemo to the airport and found out that DAS no longer flies, so the only way to do it was by other airlines and connect through a couple of cities (with connection times not working out) which always makes things more expensive. So i think maybe i'll do the bus to benjarmarsin and then fly from there. We'll see, still haven't really found out how to book the tickets anywhere besides going to the airport which can be difficult as airports aren't always that close to the city.

The people here do seem to be very friendly though. I just can't interact with them like in other places. They all like to shout out, "hey mr", but that's about all the english they know.
There are lots of beggers in indonesia so far, which can be quite frustrating and annoying, which sounds terrible of me I know.. I'd like to help everyone out, but you just can't b/c there are too many and they get pretty annoying, always grabbing at you and following while walking and while eating they just sit there and look at you and grab your clothes. And as lucas and sari and I found out in the philippines, if you give them food, they usually just drop it on the floor b/c the kids are often working for some boss person that requires money or just want money to buy cigarettes or candy. I'll give food or money to the very physically handicapped people just sitting on the sidewalk, but the kids always tugging at your sleeves just seems useless. There are just too many and it just encourages them to beg. It's like the old addage of give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life.

Well, hopefully tomorrow we'll finally be off to go up the river.

Tough Travels

Well, I couldn't have had more of a 180 degree turn from the villa in Bali with the Carlisles and Brennans than this. Went from the most luxury and easy (everything was already planned out by Craig) travel I've had on the trip, to arguably one of the toughest 4 days of travel I've had on the trip. The 4 days would have been quite miserable had they not followed the time in Bali, but they just happened to do that. It all started b/c instead of taking a flight from Bali to Surabaya and then on to Balikpapan, like I had originally planned on doing, I decided to go by ferry. I decided to do the ferry for 3 reasons: 1. what turned out to be poor intel from fellow travellers who said the ferry crossing was easy, cheap, and only 24 hours. 2. I wasn't sure if I would be staying longer in bali so it was difficult to know when to reserve a flight. and 3. I really like riding in boats and I figured that a full 24 hour ferry had a sort of romantic feeling to it. Plus th two overnight (12 and 14 hour) ferries I had been on in the philippines were great with sweet karaoke bars on the deck, nice aircon cabins with personal bunkbeds complete with clean sheets, and good bathrooms.



So after I said my sad goodbye to the Carlisles and Brennans at the airport, I was taken to the bus station to head to Surabaya on Java. Surabaya is only a couple hundred kilometers from denpasar on bali combined with a short ferry crossing, but the whole trip took over 12 hours! The indonesian roads are horrendous. Not smooth and nice like the ones I had grown used to in thailand and malaysia. So instead of getting in around 6 or 7 like I had predicted, I arrived at 2am. On the bus I had a caved in seat, a baby next to me was screaming nearly the entire time, and halfway into the trip I started feeling quite sick again with a fever, chills, and muscle aches. This scared me more than anything b/c I feared a recurrence of dengue, which they say the 2nd time you get it, is much worse. Though I couldn't remember being bit anytime in the previous week I was still nervous. So I arrived at 2am, sick, in an unfamiliar city, in a country I still hadn't figured out yet as a backpacker. No one spoke any english at the bus station and according to my book it was 10km to the city from the station, so at that time of night and with the level of english being spoken (none), I wasn't sure what to do. I found a row of crappy hotels used for the bus station. The area seemed kind of dodgy, but the room didn't actually seem that bad and I'd stayed in worse, and feeling rather sick, I just wanted a place to stay. The next morning I woke up early b/c I didn't know when the ferry would be leaving. Took the bus into surabaya central where I was able to find a tourist info place. Although they didn't know anything about the ferries, they at least spoke english, and were in fact the only english speakers I would find in the whole city. Besides Bali, Indonesia has by far had the poorest english of any country I've been in. Malaysia and the philippines had excellent english spoken by all, which made it very easy to travel in. Thailand had good english in all the touristy areas, and in non-touristy areas usually you could find kids that knew english (the hard langauge barrier in thai was the tonal pronunciation and that they had special thai symbols). And even in burma, the poorest country, lots of people knew english. So I took a bus (all the while feeling quite sick, but this wasn't a city that I felt like visiting a hospital at) to the port and was told there were no ferries. This I didn't believe and eventually found out there were 3. I took the earliest, which was supposed to leave at 5pm. So I headed back to town to try and find a place to hang out and b/c on the bus ride my lock had been lost from my bag (I'm assuming it wasn't picked b/c I had nothing stolen that I knew from my bag, but that I had just forgot to completely close it and it had slipped off), so I needed to buy a new lock as indonesia is known as having the most theft and pickpockets and being the most dangerous of the SE asian countries (though their tourism authority proudly reports that although it's the most dangerous in SE asia it is still less dangerous than almost all of the latin american countries. I randomly checked with a travel agency to see what flights from surabaya to balikpapan would cost. It was 30 bucks! Incredibly cheap, especially considering I had just paid 28 bucks for the ferry (that I would later upgrade to above 30 bucks for a "nicer" cabin) and the ferry that would take 44 hours (I had been told 24). In hindsight I regret not buying the airplane ticket even though I had already purchased the ferry ticket, but at the time I didn't know how crappy the ferry would be nor how long it would take. At the time I was thinking, hey I"m sick and I need rest, 24 hours on a ferry bunk will be good, and of course this was thinking of the ferry as a similar ferry to the ferry I had ridden in the Philippines. Plus with my fever and all the temperature monitoring at airports these days due to H1N1 (hmm...perhaps I had that I began thinking), I was fearful that wouldn't let me through anyways. Before boarding the ferry I went looking for some paracetemol. I have plenty of Ibuprofen, but it apparently thins your blood, which is a bad thing if you have dengue, which maybe I had. Unlike the other areas in asia where there are pharmacies everywhere, I couldn't find one here. So I started asking at random shops for paracetemol. I had my old packet from malaysia and then tried to used my hands to point to pain in my head, make a motion attempting to depict a pill and then swallow with water, though this all had little success. The one funny thing was that one woman seemed to understand and ran into a special area behind closed doors in the back of the store to get the medicine. She came back out with a fifth of whiskey. As much as grandpa's old cough medicine does seem to work in movies, I did not think it would help here. I eventually did find some when I kind of let myself in to behind a counter and searched myself.

Anyways, at 4:30 I boarded the ferry. Apparently I had bought economy class, but the seatless economy class, which meant you sit on the floor. Normally this isn't a huge huge deal as I've had those same sort of seats (or lack thereof) in burma, but I was not feeling well. Plus when I walked into the room where everyone was just sprawled on the ground, it was honestly over 100 degrees with no fans and heavy, still air. I knew I couldn't do that, not in my current condition, so for one of the 1st times on the trip, I buckled, lost my toughness and shelled out more money for the cabin next door that had bunk beds and I was assured aircon. I walked in, and it wasn't a whole lot cooler than the 1st place, but at least it had bunks, albeit with mattresses that had no sheets or anything. There was one girl that spoke english in there and she said the aircon would come on once the engine started. Well...that never happened. A coupld of times during the long 44 hours something resembling cold air did come out and cooled the place a bit, but overall it was a sweatbox. But to me, this was hardly the worst part...in fact, far from it! As a person who has suffered from asthma (and an asthma that my mom believes was caused by the fact that my babysitter was a chain smoker when I was first born back in the days before they knew that secondhand smoke was so bad) and lived in clean rocky mountain air, I can't stand smoking. It's far more than a pet peeve. It's terrible for the health of the person, terrible for the health of people around the smokers, it smells, it leaves residues, it's just gross. In fact, it bothers me so much, that it is one of the few things that can really anger me, though of course I usually keep it down inside me. Well, in asia as I've mentioned before, the locals smoke like crazy (as do most the euros), but indonesia has hit an alltime low for smoking. I'd say that 99.99% of the men here smoke, and spend more time smoking per day than not smoking. Now this is similar to the philippines and burma where they'd smoke on the bus or open aired ferries as well, but here they smoke absolutely everywhere!!! with no regard for anything. Sometimes when in cities I head into malls to cool off and escape the noise and pollution outside. Well here in indo, the malls are hardly airconned and everyone is smoking inside. They are smoking on the bus, in the hotel rooms, and right now I'm coughing and struggling to type as fast as I can as everyone is lighting up in the internet cafe...can you believe that? And I'd just come from malaysia, that has very strict and good rules about smoking, and actually a fair amount of the population doesn't smoke. And of course on the boat, regardless of the fact that there were signs everywhere saying not to smoke, every guy was smoking. So there I was on this hot, cramped, 44 hour ferry, with tons of smokers. You know that designated smoking room you see in airports, where the smoke is so thick, you can see it? That's what I was in! Go to the deck you say...well first of all I was still recovering from sunburn in bali, so I couldn't really go out there during the heat of the day, and in the evening when I did go out, there were so many smokers up there and so much smoke just emanating from the ship, that it still smelled terribly of smoke. At one point on the 2nd day I was so fed up, so angry by the smoke and my lungs were hurting so bad that I walked over to 3 guys just puffing away and confronted them. I pointed to the signs on the wall that said no smoking and they just laughed. I then tried to tell them it makes me sick and I coughed a bunch and they still just laughed. I felt like screaming and just grabbing all their cigarettes and tossing them down the toilet, but I didn't as this would not be very responsible travel. But it was just killing me, and making me even more mad that they would do this thing that not only hurts them, but others.

Then in my angry and sour and grumpy mood, I began being angry at everything they were doing (things that were not alltogether any different than the other asians in places I'd visited, but had come to a kind of climax here): from throwing all the trash into the ocean to spitting on the floor in the cabin to doing farmer blows onto the bunkbeds, to flicking their cigarette butts and ash onto the floor. This is just so shocking to me, so different than my own culture where all those things are looked down upon, so very different than the villa I had just been at (though terry did from time to time spit onto the floor at dinner and anne marie blow her snot onto the couch while watching movies...haha, j/k obviously). I mean could you imagine people on a trans american airplane flight just spitting into the aisles, blowing their noses into the backs of seats and dropping cigarette butts onto the floor. I began, perhaps unfairly as all the asian countries seem to do it and b/c I'd only been in indonesia a short time, judging and becoming quite angry with them. All that other stuff aside, they were friendly to me...offered me cigarettes, offered me peanuts, said the only english phrases they knew to me (hello...you from australia?...you speak indonesia?). But I was so grumpy being sick, being tired, having my lungs filled with acrid smoke, that I wouldn't even smile (hardly a model tourist and ambassador I know...good thing I just nodded my head at the australia question eh?). And the truth is it's hardly the people's fault. They probably don't know just how nasty smoking is (in malaysia they have nice visuals of deformed babies, black lungs, etc on their cigarette boxes), and rules aren't followed here or english known as well probably b/c they apparently have a crappy government, which must be true b/c they basically have more resources than malaysia, occuppy the same oceans and latitudes as malaysia, share a huge island with malaysia, have many of the same races as malaysia, yet malaysia is the richest large country in SE asia and indonesia one of the poorest. But all that didn't matter to me as I sat on my ratty bunk inhaling smoke as the indonesians played poker and trashed the cabin and the poor girl that spoke english next to me puked from sea-sickness. And here I had envisioned this nice relaxing time on the boat with air-con in the middle of the ocean for reading, moving watching, and perhaps a bit of karaoke just like in the philippines, or in thailand or malaysia.

With all this and in my current state of how I was feeling, I was seriously considering just flying to a couple of the major sites in indonesia and then going home to my smoke-free, clean (dad's nose-picking habit could be forgiven), and wonderful family. People who had had family come and visit them in the middle of a long trip had warned me that it was right after the family visit that they nearly went straight home as well. I had had a basic family visit with my time in bali, and here I was (with a couple other factors adding to it) thinking the same thing. All of the previous things considered and then the fact that after experiencing what I had, I knew that travel here would be much more difficult than in places before with the crappy roads (meaning horrendously long bus rides) and lack of english, which always makes it difficult to figure out how to get to places and make things just work. Amanda, the gal Lindsey had kind of set me up with right before I left that I had gone on a date or two with had told me that she could give me some names of people she knew in Indonesia (she had lived there for a year teaching english...umm, so someone is teaching english?) in case I had trouble b/c she said indonesia would be tough to travel in without knowing their language. I didn't believe her at the time, nor anytime on this trip until now. I'm just hoping it gets easier once I start feeling better and get to maybe areas more on the beaten path, if there is one outside of bali, gili, and yogyakarta. Since I unfortunately had to peel Ashlin's hug away at the airport, I have not seen another westerner since then, so I fear getting lonely b/c there are no travellers here nor anyone that can even speak english. In malaysia and the PI you could always just easily chat with the locals.

Oh an interesting statistic I was noting as I walked to the warnet (internet) b/c I guess I'm just curious. I passed 41 people just hanging out or sitting on my way. 39 were men, of which 38 were smoking at the time I passed. The other 2 were women and not smoking, but that will just tell you the amount of smoking going on. The next time you're walking downtown somewhere count how many of the first 40 you pass are actually smoking at the time.

All this is a bit saddening to me (and frustrating) b/c Indonesia was the main reason I even wanted to come to SE asia in the first place. It was a video Mr. Adams showed in 8th grade geology on all the wonders of indonesia (including it's volcanoes) along with national geographic articles on borneo in highschool, and then in college finding out it makes up a huge part of the triangle of biodiversity that all got me wanting to spend an extended time in indonesia. It was really only my parent's christmas gift of the the lonely planet's book of SE Asia on a shoestring that got me thinking of going outside of indonesia, and here I am worried indo won't work out.



Well, I'm obviously a bit worked up, which will happen after being sick on a long bus ride, then a long boat ride in a cancer filled smoke cabin, and having not really talked to a soul in 4+ days. Lucas you want to quit fires and come down? Bro, give up grad school? =)

Well, I know it will get better when I get a chance to get out there. It was already much better when I walked a bit around Balikpapan (although the smoke is still everywhere). There's no hostels or tourist hotels in this town, but 4 local hotels mentioned by the book. The first 3 were all full for some local thing going on, but luckily the last one had a few places. Not a very nice place at all, and all I really wanted was a nice shower to clean off the grime from the boat ride, but no, your typical rural asian shower of bucket and basin (though we're in a city here?). You should have seen my face that I saw in mirror. Fairly black, covered in grime and suit and smoke from the boat ride, and peeling from sunburn.

But all will be better soon, I am certain. I feel nearly 100% tonight from my illness, and when I get out doing things it should be better. Coming into a new country at first is always a bit of a shock, and perhaps I will meet up with some good travel companions. And the truth is I'll only be in indonesia for maybe 10 more days (depending on travel time) before I'm back in malaysia for a bit to get my long visa

7-30-09
Update: Well this morning I took a bus from Balikpapan to Samarinda. Wow, what a short trip. Only 2.5 hours. I had hardly even settled into my seat by the time I made it to samarinda. But then spent hours walking around the dirty city trying to find a hotel. They were all booked up. Not really sure by who, but eventually a nice man that spoke english at a nice hotel that I was trying hard to bargain down (I was getting it a bit down) b/c I feared it would be the only place to stay, but was way out of my budget, helped by calling up some people for me. He found one, but when I went there it was supposedly full, until I dropped his name, and then it was cleared up. Of course another fairly crappy place.
The reason i'm here is to get a boat to go upriver to some of the dyak settlements, but there is nothing to do in this dirty, polluted town. Went to the mall to see if I could watch a movie, but they were all in bahasa indo except for harry potter, which I haven't seen the previous movies yet, so that would be pointless. Though it was so cheap at 1.50 that I almost went anyways. but did walk around the mall a bit. As expected, things here are dirt cheap even for nice designer clothes. Indo overall appears to be cheaper than malaysia and perhaps cheaper than thailand and the philippines in certain things, though it's accomadation is a complete rip off. the cheapest digs are at the highest level I would spend in the other countries, but for 1/3 of the quality. Today I paid the most I've paid for accomadation yet on my trip, yet the place would be in the bottom 10% of the worst places I've stayed. For the price I'm paying I would get a nice aircon bungalow on the beach with a hot shower and a good bed in thailand.
I talked to some guides today about guiding me up the river b/c it sort of appears like it would just be such a hassle to do it on my own if you don't know bahasa and would be less fun and more hassle. but the prices for 1 person are pretty high (400 dollars for a 3 day trip), though if you get more people it's the same price just divided up, which would be great. Course I haven't seen any westerners around at all...but when I was talking to the guides there were rumours that there had been some sightings of other whiteys out there, so I was hopeful. I left a note at the hotel they were rumoured to be at and stopped by tonight, and low and behold, two frenchies and a dutch. The french appear to be set on their own thing, but the dutch guy and I went out for a soda pop (strict muslims here) and talked about it and tomorrow we'll either try and get a guide together or try and go up together independently. What made me feel a bit better about myself and that I just wasn't going weak was that the frenchies said that the place they were staying at was one of the worst they've ever stayed at in asia, and they've been travelling for some time. And the dutch guy (hugo I think it was) had had similar travel issues. He said he's been in borneo for 6 days and only done something real for 2 of them, the rest was travel or stuck in bad cities. He eventually broke down and got a flight to get here, but he agrees with me that it's been pretty crazy. He came here to get away from the touristicness of thailand, but he thinks this is too much on the other end of the spectrum b/c there are no tourists, no tourist facilities, and you really need to know bahasa to get around. With all this in mind, I think I may just do this river trip, go to one national park I want to see, and then head back to malaysian borneo to do a couple things there I didn't get to that I would like to do. From there I'll go back to KL to get my 2 month indo visa and then head through the rest of indo, which hopefully will be slightly more easy to travel and have better accomadations.
So tomorrow, heading off up to sungai mahakam most likely for possibly 3-4 days, so if you don't hear from me, that's where I am.

Bali...poop coffee, vampires, and waves

Just spent the most amazing week in Bali with the Carlisles and Brennans. I had visited the Carlisles in Singapore about a month ago, and Craig and Anne Marie had invited me to come to Bali with them and Anne Marie's brother's family (Terry, Elise, Danny (sophomore in hs), and Katie (freshman at Northwestern) from Tulsa, Ok. I had really been looking forward to this "vacation" from my vacation, and it definitely didn't disappoint.
I arrived into Denpasar airport the night of the 20th, and for the first time on my travels had someone waiting outside with a sign and my name. For the first time I wasn't with all the other backpackers trying to find other people to share taxis and figure out where to stay the night at the last minute.
The driver took me on a winding road up to the longhouse villa where we would be staying. And it was instantly amazing. Dinner was just starting, so someone took my bags to my room and I sat down to enjoy one of the tastiest seafood meals I had ever had complete with delicious white snapper, prawns, and the best clams I had ever had. The large table was in a nice and airy room with a nice view down towards denpasar and the ocean. After dinner (and a tasty dessert), Ashlin and Caitlin took me on the grand tour of the villa, which is by far the nicest place I have ever stayed. The villa came complete with it's own pool, hot tub, exercise room, kitchen, massage room, entertainment room (with a huge tv and surround sound), great views down to the ocean (always with loads of giant kites in view), lots of comfortable couches, speakers wired to an ipod port, and lots of cool art including rock carvings and painting depicting the story of the Ramayana (which brought back memories of Meg Simonton's english 150 class). We all had our own rooms, named after indonesian islands and with themed art decorating them. I had Java, which included puppets and figurines as art. I had large windowed doors that opened up to a little garden area full of frangiapanis, other flowers, and the view down to the ocean. And we had a cook that made the tastiest meals for us everyday.
We ended the first night by watching Forgetting Sara Marshall in the entertainment room. We thought it was a good movie to watch with the surf lesson scenes and all. So of course Danny, Katie, and my theme later on that week would be "do less" C'mon Danny, do less! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nrQPo53xo
The first day, we went down to the city to shop at the local markets for food for dinner as we were taking a balinese cooking class that day. The town was unique with all its hindu temples and statues everywhere and balinese style of architecture, giving Bali a feel unlike any other place in Asia I have been so far. It was very neat how almost all the houses and buildings were built with the very equisite balinese style. In the afternoon, we helped a bit with the cooking and hung out in the beautiful pool before heading out to the Ulu Watu temple which is situated at the edge of towering cliffs over the crashing waves. It's an ideal place to watch the sunset with the cliffs, temple, and ocean framing the dropping, burning globe, but the star attractions were the long-tailed macaques crawling all around the temple and cliffs. These cheeky monkeys would come right up to you to grab food, or any other loose object on you. The monkeys would walk right up to you, tug on your sarong (we were wearing them for apporpriate temple wear), and beg for food. These guys certainly had a good business as they would fit the ben and jerry's chunky monkey icecream flavor quite well. It was quite funny to watch them run off with sunglasses, hair ties, necklaces, cameras, you name it. The locals and the monkeys seemed to have worked out a deal where the monkeys steal something and then the locals will trade a banana for the object and then ask for money once returning the object. Our group made it out pretty good. Caitlin lost a headband and Craig lost his balance, and that was about all. There was this one male that was being quite agressive and baring his teeth. Craig went in to get a nice picture of the teeth and the monkey jumped out at him, teeth bared, causing Craig to stumble backwards. After another great dinner and some political discussion (they did a good job of getting me back uptodate on all that is going on back in America whether it be politics or pop culture), we went down to the theatre room to watch Twilight. When I left america, the twilight books were huge and every gal at my work was reading them. The movie was pretty entertaining and it ended up causing quite a discussion the next morning, and Danny and I found out that twilight things just kept popping up the whole time we were in bali.
The next day we woke up early for the long drive to tulamben to go diving at a famous US shipwreck (USS liberty). The scenery along the drive was spectacular with gorgeous views of volcanoes, glistening emerald rice terraces, and views to the ocean. And when we got closer to Tulamben it turned much drier in the volcanoes rain shadow and there were even cacti along the roadside. And it was of course intriguing watching balinese life in the rural areas go by, including a couple funeral processions blocking the road and a pig being slaughtered by the side of the road. The wreck was huge with lots of soft corals and some nice fish swimming around. Entering the dive site was difficult (and rather funny) as it was a stone beach with some wave action and of course we were all wearing our heavy and awkward dive equipment. Everyone was a certified diver except for princess Katie, so she had two escorts taking her around the wreck and watching and helping her at all times. The guys working with our dive outfit were all so happy and laughing all the time. And of course adding to the humour was this little guy wearing only maroon briefs in which he had stuffed himself to impress the ladies. And then he'd just randomly run out into the ocean with only a mask and snorkel and kind of flop around. None of them would stop laughing at that. Spaghetts that night, only the 2nd time (thanks to vivian earlier in singapore) since I've been in asia.
The next day was a packed day. We woke up early and then drove to the top of the Batur crater, which is a massive crater with a lake in the bottom and an active cincer cone still rising above it. We ate breakfast (#2) at a restaurant with a great view down the crater. After breakfast we drove down to a coffee and fruit plantation, which was famous for Lewak coffee (apparently highlighted in the bucket list according to Craig). Luwak coffee is quite interesting in that the Luwak (a type of civet) eats only the ripe and tasty coffee beans. The beans then pass through it's digestive system (in a highly sophisticated process, of course involving the duodenum...=) before it is pooped out. Then of course someone had the bright idea of taking coffee beans in luwak poo and finishing the coffee process only to determine that they made quite tasty coffee indeed. In addition to guzzling down luwak poo coffee, we also got to taste some of their other coffee, with the sweet ginseng coffee being my favorite.
After a bit of a drive, it was time to hop onto our bicycles and explore the upper Ubud area by pedal power. I'd been watching Le Tour some nights back at the villa and teaching Danny a bit about it, so we were eager to try out our drafting and pulling skills and avoid cracking. Course it wasn't too difficult as it was mostly downhill and with a nice cloud cover and occassional drizzle. And I had some extra weight to my ride as Caitlin was strapped into the seat behind me and acted as my excellent, though cautious, race coordinator. The bike ride was definitely a highlight of my bali trip, and not the least because I love cycling. The scenery was gorgeous, the villages unique, and the people quite friendly yelling out there hellos. The villages and rice fields we pedaled through were all very rural and all very traditional. The people watching was quite interesting from women carrying impossible loads on their heads to children flying kites to little girls dressed up and makeuppe-up to old toppless women. In addition to all the rice terraces we of course cycled passed hindu compounds and many many temples. The whole area had a very relaxed and quiet feel to it, which I liked...and there we were biking through it. It was a completely different bali (and in my opinion better) than what we would see the next day in Kuta. The ride ended in a little open area where there was a cremation ceremony going on. I think we all felt a little uncomfortable and worried a bit about how a cremation over an open fire would smell, but it was interesting to experience. After the cycling we were driven back to the owner's compound, which I guess is a rare experience to be able to visit inside a balinese compound. Inside we ate one of our best meals yet and then got a tour of the compound which included the spleeping areas of the family, the kitchen, and the temple and worship areas. Bali is primarily Hindu, unlike the rest of Indonesia which follows Islam. The entire tour that day was quite amazing and we learned lots about balinese culture and balinese hinduism. Something that amazed me is that in each caste they have a certain name for the 1st born, 2nd born, 3rd born, etc that is always the same. This is a bit crazy to me, b/c in essence they have lots and lots of the same names running around out there. So basically Sherman, Yosh, McClean, Conrad, the Bison, etc, etc, and me would all have the same name. We also later learned from Ado (The Carlisle's aussie friend who lives in Bali) that the Balinese often spend 80% of their small income on religious ceremonies
The next day we headed down to Kuta to catch what bali is world famous for...it's waves. After re-living the do less scene of sarah marshall and listening to some beach boys (and putting in the back of our heads all of Craig's horror stories of having to hold your breath for 2 minutes for each wave in a 10 wave cycle) we were ready to go out and hang ten. Craig has been surfing since he was young and living in Cali, but the rest of us (Ashlin, Caitlin, Anne Marie, Danny, Katie, Terry, and I) needed lessons from Ado and his pro-surfer employee Maday (sp?). The waves were pretty big that day as a big swell had come in the day before that had all the surfers excited. It didn't take long before we were pretty consistently catching waves, though standing was an all-together different story. We spent the whole day down at the Kuta beach and most of the time in the water. We were all fairly burnt, yes even me, the son of the sunscreen nazi. Even though I put layer after layer of 70spf on, the sun was so intense and the cream seemed to wash off quickly in the rough surf, of which I spent a lot of time tumbling wildly in.
That night back at the villa, we were treated to a special meal of babi guling (whole roasted pig) of which Katie had to kill with her bare hands using only a stick from the forest. Well, most of that is true, you can probably figure out which isn't.
The next day we went back to Kuta, which is really just a very touristy beach area full of western style surf shops, fast foods, etc mixed with tourist stalls, to do some more surfing. The beach at Kuta is nice and long, though quite crowded and there are lots of people walking around trying to sell you things. It's all quite the scene. I think there are other more serene spots on the island if you like quieter beaches, but this place has the better and safer (read no reefs) area to learn to surf. As the ladies would be leaving for ubud in the afternoon to shop, they took out the longer boards first, so I took out the short board, which was quite the challenge to stand up on; however, I was able to stand and ride several waves with it, which got me quite excited b/c as Ado said, that's the next big step in the surfing progression as all the good surfers you see out there are using the short boards. After the ladies left for shopping, I was re-united with big blue. Danny grabbed the green monster and me and my surf buddy were back at it again. By the end of the day we were doing quite well. We were catching the waves everytime and standing for at least a few seconds, if not the whole ride, most everywave as well. We had moved away from the area where the best surfers were riding as to be out of there way and in the area that we were surfing, we had become the best. In fact, we had been given a little "respect square" that was all ours, so we didn't have the problem of anyone in our way, which was quite nice. When it was time to pack the boards back up in the van and head back to the villa, we staggered out of the water completely soar from tumbling and paddling, sunburnt, bruised, chaffed, but with big smiles on our faces as we felt we had kind of got it. Back at the villa waiting for the ladies to return back from the shopping with all of their hardware (and hopefully still some money as we joked Terry about), we took amazing massages (much more professional and well done than the few massages I had done on the thai beaches) and soaked in the hot tub to ease our muscles. Dinner was again great, but slightly sad as it was our last night at the villa. And we were all so exhausted that we didn't even watch our usual movie.
The final day, we got up bright and early to surf one last time before heading back to the villa for our final breakfast and amazing pancakes and fruit.
It was a sad, sad goodbye for me when we dropped the Carlisles and Brennans off at the airport. Of course Craig and Anne Marie had been overly generous to me the whole time, and there was no way I could thank them enough. And the villa had been amazing beyond my wildest imaginations and the tours and surfing unbelievable as well. But what I was most sad about and what I knew I would miss the most was the fun I had with the group and the family feeling it had. Well, really, that's what it was: a big family vacation. And even though I wasn't family, I was taken in as family, and that is something I'll never forget and will always be grateful for. As I'd mentioned before and found out when I visited in Singapore the Carlisles are amazing...not only generous beyond belief, but fun and active as well. And they know how to throw a great party and kick in the fun. And the Brennans too made the trip all the better. Danny and Katie were fun and great to talk to, to catch back up on what's going on in America. And at the risk of sounding like an adult, they were the nicest kids I have met yet on the trip. It was fun to hear about Katie getting ready to go off to college and Danny is quite similar to how I was back in school with sports and all, but still highly concerned about academics as well. (and we even were both chess champions of some sort back in grade school). But in my own defense b/c I still consider myself one of the kids (age is but a number as the wise Yoshizaki would say), we hung out much more as peers (me pretending to me in my teens) than as some adult-teen relationship. Though it cut a little deep when Ashlin made the kid party (which of course I was invited to) be an under 30 only party. Yikes! But yea, I had a great time hanging out with and getting to know Danny and Katie. They got along very well and obviously loved one another, and it made me really really miss my bro. But I was lucky to have 1 brother and 3 sisters on the trip with me there, so all was great. Of course Terry and Elise were great as well. I loved Terry's humuor and he cracked me up, and I had some great chats with Elise and I admire her inquisitiveness. We found out that Elise and my mom were quite similar. The only difference I could ascertain was that Elise stalks Jason Castro online and is on facebook. Though I know my mom is a fan of Jason Castro, so perhaps she is doing that online as well while dad watches the rockies =) Mom, Terry also went to school in Madtown, though I think he went a few years after you did. And Bro, I've decided that inbetween ski seasons some summer we need to move to a place with big waves and really learn to surf sometime.
But yea, I will always remember Bali as a great place with an even greater group of families to spend it with. I do really hope to see both families again sometime. I hope perhaps I can show them around my turf sometime and take them down mountains filled with frozen water that doesn't crash and swirl quite so much. I think I'll likely be passing through Bali again as I make my way south the Darwin, but I know if I do come back it won't even compare to the first time.
And of course in the aftermath if got me thinking of my own family vacations and how great they were with you dad and mom. It's a different kind of thing between the kind of travelling I'm doing here on the backpacker traveller's circuit and family vacations. And though I think you see and do more as a traveller, a vacation with the family is more fun and perhaps just as rewarding.

back in time to Burma

As I was transferring some pictures files the other day I ran across some of my burma pics, so here's a few of the highlights from my trip through Burma. The other westerner is Taylor from Canada, but more recently Harvard, whom, I met in Yangon and travelled with for his 3 weeks there. Highlights of the pictures include Inle Lake, trekking in kalaw, biking through mandalay, feeling rich with my 10's of 1000's of kyat, crazy vehicles, blocked internet sites, the temples of Pagan, and the Shwedegon pagoda of Rangoon.

Into the Heart of Borneo and Longhouse fun...and stuck til the rains?

Said goodbye to Brunei and Andrew and Hannah last week. We took a car from BSB to Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia. From there I caught a night bus to Sibu, along the betang rejang river. Got in around 4 in the morning, so I had to wait for the public busses to take me to the city center and port. When I got to the river port I booked my boat and just had a couple hours to walk around Sibu, which is a pretty trashy town, so it was a relief to get on the boat to go up the batang rejang.

The river is huge and muddy and has been described as the amazon of borneo. There is lots of traffic on the river with passenger boats, little local boats, tug boats, barges with everything from coal to logs to supplies, and huge trains of logs tied together floating down the river. The area all the way up the river is being quite heavily logged, so you see lots and lots of logging ports and huge gigantic logs being floated down the river. But in my opinion it's not as bad as in Sabah where they have clear cut everything and there is only oil palms as far as the eye can see. Here there is still lots of rainforest, it's just that the biggest trees have been cut down. The reason to go up the river is that it's a cool river journey to little villages that can only really be reached by boat or helicopter and there are lots of traditional longhouse villages along the way.

From Sibu I took the express jet boat 140 odd km's up to Kapit, the last main village along the way. Kapit is a tiny, tiny little town with nothing really going on other than a bustling port bringing in supplies and then tribespeople coming down to buy supplies, so I walked around and saw everything pretty much in an hour. There were only a handful of other westerners in the town. My plan was to go upriver to the farthest town called belaga. People weren't too sure if the boat would be going as the river was really low (so weird b/c in sabah the rivers had all been flooding and here they're in a drought), but I went to get my permit to go higher up anyways. The place to get the permit used to be in the center of town, but for some reason it was moved to some fancy new building 5 hot, shadeless km's from town. It was miserably hot, but at least I got to see some of the countryside. As it was so hot and there was nothing else to do in the town and I had an aircon room with astro tv (meaning you watch whatever the front desk is watching from your own tv) I watched a couple movies that evening and night: sleepless in seattle (which always reminds me of my mom) and titanic, which is interesting to watch after being on sketchy boats. There was actually a catholic church in the town, so I went to mass that night. The priest said mass in english for my benefit I think, and they all clapped for me at the end. Probably don't get a whole lot of westerners at church there as there are hardly any even visiting the town. Being from the USA, I probably won fr greg's postcard prize for the year at this church.

In the morning I went down to the dock to see if the express boat would be going up to belaga. It was indeed, but it would be the last one, so was sure to be crowded as everyone that wanted to get to their homes up river without spending 4 days on a tiny local boat would have to go. The express boats are these super long (25meter), but very narrow boats that are completely enclosed and airconditioned to about 40F I think. They have jet propulsion instead of propellers so that they can go shallower I guess. It basically looks like a medium sized airplane without wings or a tail. There's only one door in (and out) but a 100 or so people packed in, which means that if the boat were to sink, capsize or whatever, it would be a mad rush to the one door, of which no one would make it out in the frenzy, which was nervewracking considering they were risking going up the pegasus rapids with the low water. So I made sure to sit up on the top of the boat with most the other westerners who perhaps feared the same thing and don't view the might strong aircon as a luxury but as a potential hypothermic threat, and of course a few smoking malayan youths. This really, really crazy brit, who's been teaching english in Hong Kong for 16 years mentioned the thing about being stuck inside the boat if it sinks, but he said if you were a westerner you would survive b/c according to him asians give up in boat wrecks. He was just really crazy and often full of it, but he may be a little correct on that b/c the indonesian and filipino ferries are often overpacked and about 1 or 2 a month in each country sinks and when you read the headlines you'll see that there were 800 souls on board (for capacity of 500 ship) with 790 indonesians and 10 westerners. Then you'll see that 15 people survived....9 westerners and 6 indonesians. I think it's just b/c I've noticed asians can't really swim unless they are fishermen. But anyways, I was glad to be on top of the boat, enjoying the nice breeze, watching the every narrowing river as we plowed upstream deeper and deeper into the jungle. There's a book called Into the Heart of Borneo, or something like that, and this is the route they went up. About 30 km's upstream from kapit (balegas was 160km's or so from kapit) we hit the pegasus rapids. They were definitely pretty fun and a bit scary. I would estimate them to be class III, but a whole new experience to be going upstream. And watching the tugboats take in water and struggle ahead of us added to the excitement, though our boat was much more suited to do them. After the rapids it was a calm and long (6 hours) and nice journey through the jungle river and passed long house villlages along the way

Belaga is also a tiny little town, but I really liked it. In the past few years it has been connected by a 4wd logging road, but still the only practical way is by boat. There were lots of different tribal people hanging around from the different longhouses nearby and the place was quite active in a sports sense. It was a one sidewalk town and from the shops and cafes on the sidewalk you overlooked tennis courts, a basketball court, and volleyball court, which was pretty surprising considering the size of the town. But every evening people went out to play the different sports. There were 8 of us westerners who got off the boat (me, John (uk but teacher in HK), Alex and Quinn (uk, but teachers in china), roger and gunhilde (germany), and herdy and maricqa (holland), and we were the only westerners in the town as a whole as the express boat hadn't gone the two previous days. We all gathered together for a late lunch as we were starved after the long boat ride. Crazy john bought several rounds of tiger beer and then decided we should all try the arak, the local alcohol which is 48% alcohol and has been described by some as tasting like petrol. There were liter bottles of it selling from $1.50 to $8 and he chose the cheapest. The stuff wasn't too bad we didn't think and nothing worse than the cheap drinks you buy in college for parties. Needles to say the combination of the arak and wacky john made it quite the fun afternoon. In the evening we made arrangements for tours to the longhouse (john wouldn't be joining b/c he felt he wouldn't want people with bones in their noses and huge rings in their privates staying at his house, so he didn't want to return the favor). We all gathered again that night for dinner and some of the local people brough us bottle upon bottle of tuac (local rice wine). So again another fun meal of laughing and drinking and then stumbling home. One of the best parts was everyone in the group was quite fun and with the help of what the locals call (the english teacher or the friendly juice) we had no problem having a great time.



The next morning we donned traditional sun hats and local basket backpacks and headed to the market to buy things for our 2 day long house tour. After buying all the stuff, we headed into a couple small longtail boats and headed up river to visit our first longhouse, a kayan tribe long house. The longhouses range from a football field to a couple football field in length and are divided up, apartment like style for each family. They are raised up on stilts and two stories high. I was quite surprised how big each family's place was with a large family room, a large kitchen, an area for storing things and then the bedroom upstairs. And then along the whole front of the longhouse is a huge, huge deck where everyone just kind of sits and hangs out and smokes. The first village we visited had had one of their longhouses burn down last week, which is fairly common b/c with so many people cooking and smoking it's easy for one "apartment" to catch fire, and then of course the whole thing goes. When it does burn the government helps build another one, but builds them in separate units to avoid the massisve fires, but then the people quickly attach them all as they like their longhouses. The original reason for the longhouse design was that being on stilts and all together, if you raised up the one entrance ladder, it was easy to protect the whole village from the headhunters if they were living in one place. We toured around the farming area a bit and the longhouse itself, and were invited into a few houses and offered cigarettes made from tobacco grown right outside. Our tour guide, daniel, informed us that these were healthy cigarettes as they had no chemicals. And as they only had the tobacco leaf, they were quiet healthy and could be considered as a vegetable serving. I found this quite hilarious. I didn't smoke, but the people who tried said it was quite strong and even made them a bit dizzy.

After visiting the kayan longhouse we took a boat up to the next longhouse of a different tribe, kejaman. We toured the longhouses here, handed out some gifts we bought at the market and then helped cook lunch. We all ate lunch on the floor with the family of the section we were in. One guy brought out a native guitar type instrument and a nose flute and played for us. And then several other people brought out shots of arak. This was far better arak than the other stuff, but perhaps even stronger. It really burned at first going down, but then it was ok. It's not really polite to refuse, so we kept taking shots and mroe shots of arak and before you know it, all 7 of us westerners and several of the kejaman's were quite drunk and really enjoying ourselves and having a good time. As people had excitedly warned before, a trip to the longhouse is often rice wine and arak themed. It was starting to seem almost like the last week in college, drinking from lunch till bedtime.

After sobering up a bit we took the boat back towards the belaga direction and then went to visit a crystal clear swimming hole. The water was cold and refreshing and of course the two guys that took us there brought out more arak to warm us up after swimming

After the swimming we headed back to belaga to get some coffee. sphssh...who needs coffee at that time of day and in that heat. So I went to the b-ball court. It was just the ladies playing at the time, and sort of a weird form of basketball where you couldn't dribble, but all the same, pretty fun, even though I had to go easy. But, I didn't have to wait long until I was challenged. an hour or so in, maricqa joined the game. She's about 3 inches taller than me and could throw elbows with the best of them, and I found myself working up quite a sweat in order to have any success against her. After the game, we wanted to play some real (dribbling) ball, so we played some one on one. Turns out she used to be a star forward for a big university in holland.

When we were finished with our coffee and basketball break Daniel informed us that we had been invited to a different longhouse, a kenyah longhouse. The plan had originally been to choose one of the first longhouses we had visited, but one of our boat driver's invited us to his longhouse, which apparently was having a funeral celebration. The indigenous people of borneo have celebrations as part of funerals. We felt a bit awkward about it, but decided to go. It was a huge longhouse complex (they had the longest longhouse in sarawak), and we were put at the very end. They weren't expecting us, so they hadn't reallly prepared anywhere for us to stay nor any food. We got taken to this more or less abandoned part of a longhouse and given some ratty mattresses. They lit a couple small candles for a tiny bit of light and given 10 bananas amongst us. John, the man who had invited us in and whom I called uncle john b/c he called me the "little boy", sprayed the area with nasty mosquito killer. With as bad as the stuff smelled and hurt my lungs, I was thinking I'd rather take my chance with malaria or dengue (especially after the morning when we all woke up with loads of mosquito bites). Uncle John then left and shut the door behind. So there we were, basically locked in this old dark structure, with no water (running or not), sweating on our crappy mattresses, with only bananas for dinner, and hacking our lungs off from mosquito killer (while still swatting mosquitos). But I was with a good group and we made humour of it anyways and just had quite the laugh about it. I knew asian hospitality better than that though, and I knew they would bring us out for something. In the end it was just that they were embarassed they hadn't had any food prepared and didn't want to have us watch them prepare it. So eventually John came to get us. We walked onto a large deck where the casket was, covered in gifts and decorations. At least 70 people were there on the deck just sitting or eating or drinking. We were brought inside and sat down where we were served rice baked in some sort of jungle leaf and then several dishes to add onto the rice. Now in malaysia most people do all their eating with their hands, though they usually have silverwear for westerners or chopstix for the chinese. However here they didn't have that, and a large group of 30 or 40 of them gathered around with incredible interest to watch us westerners eat with our hands. They had a good time doing it and it was for sure a jovial dinner. A lot of the locals sat down with us and you can be assured that our people watching was just as good as theirs. There were some quite crazy and itneresting individuals there, especially the ancients. There were a couple nearly 100 year old people there. One woman who was 100 and was paralyzed on one side (presumably from a stroke) had apparently risen from the dead a few years ago according to everyone. Her husband, an equally ancient man, was so funny. He just sat there and signed to us the whole night, mostly giving various thumbs up gestures, but also eating, drinking, and sleeping gestures. He also liked to come in for hugs on a regular basis. And he had huge holes in his ears like lots of the elderly locals did and in one ear hole he had a fatty local tobacco cigarette and in the other a more western cigarette.

When our dinner was finished, some other older lady, though not as old as the ancients, came by with a big box of the pure tobacco. This time Quinn and I (the only two non-smokers in the group, which is not unusual for me as the euros seem to smoke like chimneys) took the cigarettes as in some cases (like this one) it can be quite impolite to refuse gifts. But I just smoked it like a cigar w/out inhaling, so no big deal. But apparently it was pretty strong stuff according to everyone else. Of course everyone was smoking an incredible amount, including the ancients, so maybe there was something to daniel saying that their tobacco is healthy. The cigaretteds here are crazy b/c they just stuff a whole lot of tobacco into a rolled brown paper so that you just have this huge fatty joint looking thing with tobacco hanging out of it. After the cigarettes, the old lady brough out their famous chewing tobacco. It's a mix of tobacco, some sort of leaf, often a crushed nut, and some other uknown stuff rolled up. I accepted this again, but in this case did the disappearing sleeve trick, as did most b/c this stuff was known to be quite potent and I really don't have any desire to put that stuff in my mouth anyways. I think alex was really the only one to take it. He was quite the champ. The funny thing is that he had quite smoking about 3 months ago, but then with all the alcohol and locals always offereing cigarettes and their local tobacco, he got back on. It was quite hilarious to watch him take it, as his eyes and face showed just how bad and strong it was. His eyes were nearly bulging out and he began sweating profusely and you could tell he was trying his hardest to keep it in his mouth. The champ did it though, and kept it in. A little later, I looked back at him and he was in a huge cold sweat and completely pale and looking quite out of it. He later said that for a while he was touch and go. But soon enough out came the arak and tuac. In copious amounts too. After Alex got some shots of arak in him, he perked right back up. So with all the new arak and tuac the merrymaking continued. And there we were, completely drunk for the 4th time in like 30 hours. We continued just to sit there and drink and laugh and have a good time watching all the characters (white caped boy (the family of the deceased had to wear some form of white), magic thumbs, stone face, sign language man). And one point the older woman who had been handing out all the cigarettes and chewing tobacco started talking loudly. I responded a couple times with "Ogh oh", the local way to say ok, or yes. For some reason and no one really knew, she found this hysterically funny. None of us had honestly ever seen someone laugh so hard, which made it quite hilarious for us considering her age and fragility. She fell over dieing of laughter. Holding her stomach and ribs like they were going to break. She rolled and rolled on the floor and eventually got to a corner where she sat covering her mouth and clutching her ribs still cracking up. This honestly lasted for more than 15 minutes before she slightly calmed down a bit. Then she came over to me pointing and cracking up again and again. Even stonefaced smiled a bit, which means it must have been something funny. For another 20 or so minutes she'd just keep pointing at me and laughing. She calmed down again, but the rest of the night any of us could easily get her, and thus us, cracking up again by just repeating what I said. Towards the end of the night, the old laughing lady (isn't that a neil young song) disappeared and then came back with another box of what at first appeared to be more tobacco, but no, a quick smell of the first cigarette that alex lit up confirmed that it was another old lady: mary jane. Of course the two amsterdam girls jumped right in, and when in rome...or when in a kenyah longhouse. Eventually people began bedding down right there in the longhouse where we were sitting. It might have seemed as though they were just people passing out in a random house just like at a college party, but no, this is how they do it normally.
Needless to say, we slept soundly that night until the roosters began crowing at 5am. And we were all disappointed to notice that the toxicity of our blood (or the spray lingering in our bedroom) had not deterred the mosquitos from feasting on us. That morning we ate breakfast out on the deck right next to the fully decked coffin and the woman's husband who had stayed up all night next to it. There were still lots of people sprawled out and snoozing along the floor. After breakfast we toured the longhouse area a bit and visited the school house before taking the boat to an area to go hunting. We went with a local hunter toting a big knife and poison tipped spear, but in the end it was more like us walking his dogs than hunting b/c with a group that size any wild boar or deer was long gone. Once we got back from our forest walk..err...hunt we went back to belaga...and it was here it became a bit tricky...

It hadn't rained at all, so it was obviously inpossible to take the express boat back. An option was to take a local long-tailed boat for the 3 or 4 day journey back down. But it was the 16th and I had a flight the night of the 18th from Kuching which was an additional 10 hour journey from the river's mouth and the brits and dutch also had flights on the 18th and 19th in Miri, so that option seemed out. There is a long and rough 4WD road now connecting belaga with the trans-bornean highway which would have worked; however, they were out of diesel in the town as no boats had been able to make it up river to bring fuel. So this left us with one option, take a long-tail boat 3 hours up river to the site of an on-going dam construction site (highly controversial as it is destroying lots of rainforest and displacing 12,000 tribal people) where there is a road and likely people b/c there is also a lot of logging going on. So we hopped in the tiny boat with all of our stuff and headed farther upstream and deeper into the jungle. When we got as far as we could go upstream, we climbed up the muddy bank to luckily find some 4WD's to take. We drove for a bit before coming to a junction. Here, the two germans had arranged something with daniel to stay at a more agricultural based longhouse, so he took them, what he said was 15 minutes away and had us wait at the junction which was congested with logging trucks going in and out. After more than an hour Daniel finally arrived and we were relieved to have our ride finally come back as we were getting nervous. But... It turned out Daniel had decided to go back to guide the germans, so we were stuck there with no ride and the sun quickly setting. We set the two dutch girls out to the road to find us a ride, going with the traditional thinking that two attractive girls are much better at getting rides and unshaven dirty guys. An hour later, no luck, so I decided it was my turn to try for a ride. Apparently, herdy and maricqa had been quite new at getting rides in asia, b/c in about 3 minutes, I had us a ride. You have to utilize the special asian hitch-hiking hand motion (waving a hand up and down, palm down as opposed to sticking a thumb up) as well as calling out for a ride. It was a guy driving a pickup, so most squeezed into the truck, but I got the nicer ride of sitting on the bags in the bed, while unfortunately watching the unbearable scenery of clear cut land and newly planted oil palm plantations which I had origincally thought were only in sabah and not in sarawak. The land looked just like it's depicted in fern gully, except maybe even worse, especially with the setting sun through the smoke of burning trees adding more symbolism. The whole crowd got dropped off at the trans-borneo jct, so I said my goodbyes and continued on in the truck with the guy who picked us up as he was going to bintulu, which I figured afforded me a better chance of catching a non-full night bus than that little junction. He had an ipod plugged into his car and told me I could have free wheel at the music. I don't know if he knew what he was getting into as his ipod was full of...what else on an asian ipod?...80's power ballads and remixes of akon's na na na. So we cranked up the volume and I began singing full blast. He looked at me strangely for a while, but it wasn't long before he joined in with all his lungs, and I'm pretty sure he was quite sad to drop me off at the bus station. That night I caught a night bus from Bintulu to Kuching, and nasty 11 hours when going by bus, but only 4 or 5 hours if by day on a boat.

When I got into Kuching that morning, I had hoped to go to Bako NP, but I got in a bit too late, so I just kind of toured the city and took it as easy as, someone like me can, which means I did an awful lot of walking around the city. Kuching is actually a pretty cool city with lots of culture and diversity. It's a pretty famous tourist city with it's culture and proximitiy to the rainforest, so there were a lot of wealthy tourists in the area as well as families. It has a really nice river waterfront to walk along and buy fruitshakes in the intense heat and watch racing regattas go by. There's a lot of old british buildings from the time of british colonialism as well as an Indian Street and China Town. It also has several fancy areas that remind me almost of san diego and some giant fancy hotels. So I kind of walked around taking in the sites, getting some grub here and there, and of course visiting the mandatory cat statues. Kuching means cat in Malay. I walked away from the main area to check out the catholic cathedral and see about mass times. In a hibiscus garden on the way, by a fountain in the shade where I stopped to re-apply some sunscreen, there was a group of seemingly harmless teens on lunch break. They were in their school uniforms and I started up some conversation with them as I put on my sunscreen. But soon they started asking for money and then getting pretty pushy about it. They started moving in a bit more, but I wasn't too nervous as I was wearing my sneakers (yes, another pair of asian sandals had bit the dust), and I knew for certain that I could outrun them. As I was getting ready to start running away, a policeman walked by and the kids scattered as I think they weren't supposed to be in the garden at all in the first place.
Back along the river front, I saw Hannah and Andrew (the brits I travelled with in Brunei) having cold drinks and watching the sunset. So of course I joined them for that, but they were off to see harry potter VI and I had only seen the 1st, so I didn't join. I walked some more along the river walk looking for a place to eat. Stopped at a little stall and got some food, but I was too hot to go on (it may have been the hottest I have been yet on the trip), so I just sat behind the stall on the bench with the two girls running it. Only a few minutes later, Brody (the aussie that was the only other westerner at my hostel in brunei) showed up. So we hung out talking and sweating there on the bench by the kebab stand. One of the girls eventually gave us ice to put on our heads and cardboard to use as fans. After brody and I departed, I walked around looking for a place to watch the tour de france. One of the guesthouses that thankfully had a/c was playing it. There were 6 other people watching it, an american couple from cali and family from Denver. It was interesting b/c the couple were both attending yale: john at the divinity school and freddie the school of forestroy in environmental science. She had spent her first year of the master's program studying up in the cordillera of the philippines. She said that I should definitely check out yale's forestly program for grad school (and echo from the loveable strawberry mystique sherman). They knew some law students, but no, they didn't know chris sherman, but thai taste was their favorite restaurant in new haven as well.
The next day I just kind of hung out and then took a van to the airport. At the airport waiting for the gates to open there was a family with their cats there. The cats weren't flying anywhere, but just there to say goodbye to the mom who was going to visit some other family. The cat's were very well behaved and just sat on the chairs patiently waiting for the gate to be called. Thought it was rather hilarious as that would never happen back home, and fitting considering kuching is the cat city. Arrived into singapore and at the Carlisle's house late that night.
This morning was back to the amazing buffet at the American club, but before that we all went working out at the club to try and burn away some pre-calories. Today I've been just kind of hanging out doing some computer things (producing a fake flight itinerary and receipt that shows I will be leaving indonesia b/c in order to get the visa on arrival or a 2 month tourist visa you have to either have proof of leaving the country (airline ticket) or 5,000 dollars of hard US cash. Since I don't carry that kind of cash around and I don't really know when or how (bus to east timor or Papua New Guinea, boat to malaysia, australia, or a flight) I'll be leaving indo I don't have the airline ticket, so I'm using the skills mr. evans gave us in his computer class back in highschool to make a forgery of a ticket going from jakarta to san fran, so we'll see if that works), and hanging out with vivian and cleo the dog