sittin' around cairns

well, it was good to get away from the crazy german girl who brushed her teeth for over 10 minutes and washed _all_ the car windows at every gas stop and, well, countless other things that i ended up biting my tongue on lest i get too critical. the few times i made suggestions that she might do things otherwise i was generally confronted by a flat out refusal to believe that what i was saying is right.

on our second to last night out she complained to me about how i never complain about anything. oh boy. i could have let loose on her but she hadn't taken to suggestions and hints too well in the past,... i just wanted it to end and only had 2 days left. shit. maybe i need to be more confrontational and stuff. i guess i would be if i knew i'd be stuck with her for a longer time but knowing it was quite limited i just kind of sat back and treated it as a disasterous movie while watching her drive around town making sure to ask every used car dealer but seemingly no tire shop whether they had used tires... and asking obvious out of towners for directions rather than just checking in with a local. i guess i'm into efficiency and time management. i don't think i over-do it, but i think she took the diregard of the concepts to a whole new level...

anyway.... vent... vent... breathe... breathe...

the Thorsborne Trail was awesome, it was a 4 day, 32km hike on Hinchinbrook island. Rainforst meets beach. Camping near waterfalls. I started the same day as John and Emily, father and son, who were doing the trail on her university reading week. It was good to have some sane people around me, usually you meet some good people out on the trail. Sometimes you get characters, but they're good. These ones were great. John even paid for my ride on the bus back to Cardwell (the starting point for the trail) without me even getting a chance to do it... and then they gave me a ride to Cairns in their rental car... I mean, they were going there, but still, good people.

Now I'm hanging around Cairns. I need to find some people to rent a car with to head up north to Cape Tribulation and Daintree Rainforest with, maybe I'll just go alone. Snorkeling or Diving the Great Barrier Reef also needs to be done.

I've got about a week before I fly to Auckland, New Zealand on November 2. That'll be a different world. Hopefully a bit cheaper. The US dollar hasn't quite plummeted against the NZ dollar as much as it has against the Ozzie Dollar.

over and out for now....

almost to cairns

well, i got a ride from darwin to cairns. well almost to cairns with a semi-autistic ocd german girl who noone dared get in a car with but me. why do i do these things? fair enough, it was ok but sometimes there were some time management issues and a complete lack of musical taste compatibility which is shitty on long road trips.

i got to see litchfield national park, uluru, mataranka hotsprings, porcupine gorge, henbury meteor craters, and some other stuff for sure. i think my head is still ok after all of it.

headed out to do the Thorsborne Trail on Hinchinbrook Island tomorrow. Itll be good for clearing my head... then up to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and Ill probably be in New Zealand in about 2 weeks.

well see...

'nother quick update

i'm sitting here at an air conditioned internet cafe in Darwin, Australia figuring out where to go next. Wait around for car rides with other travelers or fly somewhere... We'll see what happens.

Since Broome I stopped in Kunnunura to do a sweet 3 day canoe trip down the Ord river. Then I headed to Katherine to hike the 66km Jatbula trail in 4 days and three nights. Awesome camping by a waterfall or nice pond each night. Flies were bitches for the whole walk. Grr.

I got a ride from Katherine Gorge to Darwin via Kakadu National Park and now I'm trying to figure out where the hell I'm headed next. Such a big country and I'm way out at one tip.

I'll see what kinds of rides materialize or maybe I'll just fly somewhere. East coast bound I guess.

No time to blog

Ok. So I tried keeping up but it's difficult. I've got 10 minutes left on this internet session. crap. Australia's expensive. I spent over a week in Perth with Brad and then after some complications ended up with a 10 day tour up north to Broome. I saw food habituated dolphins come up close in Monkey Mia, did some sweet canyon hikes in Karijini National Park, slept on the beach a few nights, sat on a bus a lot lot lot and thereby realized that my musical taste ain't all that compatible with your average flock of 25 year old German girls.

I've been chilling out in Broome for a few days kicking a fever and waiting to see The Waifs play.

I did that last night. It was a good show. Yesterday was the best day in a while, Frisbee on the beach, piling in a car with people i met over dinner the night before and doing a tour of a pearl farm and then getting the car stuck in some sand dunes... i had me a good time.

I'd like to write in more detail... I'm trying to at least keep up in my paper journal. Maybe sometime here I'll get more cheap internet and feel more comfortable wiling away the hours. I just wasted too much time setting up Skype so that I could call my bank to get them to reenable my online account after i forgot a security question.

Gotta Go.

Bye Bye Bali

Thursday August 23 was Nick and JoJo's departure day. Johanna woke me up at 9am to do the stretching and warm-up regiment but I wasn't feeling all that well and opted for an extra half hour of sleep. Nick and I went to hop on the internet for a spell and then we all went to really start our day. The goal: Sarong Shopping!

But first we had to get lunch. We had seen Bakso on the motorbikes passing through Lipah. I had even tried some at a restaurant in Ubud. But this day we went all out and got a delicious bowl of Bakso, the chicken dumplings that had tempted us for so long. We got it with some fried goodies at one of the beach cafes. Mhhhh....

We shopped ourselves into grumpiness. First we did a pass of the Sarong street to take in what options we had and then it was buy buy buy. I didn't get a ton of stuff, just a few things I really liked. They grabbed a ton of things for all their friends. Whee. I had me sone lunch and we reconvened to pack and have dinner. They pretty much maximized all their bags' capacities,... lots of new purchases. We ate at the Indonesian restaurant that we ate at the night that they arrived... it was so-so, we should have have the Mediterranean plata again. Then I saw them off to the airport.

Woah, alone.

I went and hoppen on the internet for a while and then cruised up and down the main drag looking for a place where I could have a beer and write a little bit... at the end of the drag I finally find a bar with some live blues music and stuck around for two hours or so nursing my large Bintang. When I walked home there was an annoying loud crowd in all the bars that I had never seen anyone inside of. Prostitutes walking the streets. I guess I had never been out late enough when I was in Seminyak the other nights.

Friday August 24 was departure day for me... redeye flight to Sydney. I slept in late because I had noone to answer to, packed and read until 1pm which was checkout time. I got to leave my bag in the entry parlor at Raja Gardens until I left that night. Internet. Fish and Chips. A 2 hour walk up the beach listening to music. Time to shoot some photos. A yummy Mediterranean plate, the day went fast and mellow. Before I knew it I was on my ride to the airport and then on a Garuda flight to Sydney.

Saturday August 25 I got to Sydney at around 6:30 am. The domestic terminal was really far from the international terminal and I eneded up having to pay $5 for a a shuttle bus over there. Weird stuff, I've never had to pay anything for transportation between terminals at an airport. Meh. Suck it up. In the Virgin Blue terminal I encountered my first water fountain in a month and drank heartily and gave my Nalgene a nice filling. I had about five hour before my next flight so I checked in and was able to score and exit row. Sweet. Ahh, the benefits of being extremely early. I tried to sleep for a few hours, brought my Therma-Rest and everything but couldn't quite get comfortable. My mind was racing with all the things that were different. It was weird. The first time I had travelled to a place where people speak English but I feel so conspicuous when I open my mouth. I avoided conversation and sleepily huddled into my little corner and tried to get some rest.

My flight was an hour delayed. I finally got on and tried to sleep a little as well. Still no go on that. Grrr.. I eventually crossed Australia and got to Perth where Brad was picking me up from the airport. He had been watching the flight online so he knew of my delay. Good, I'm glad he didn't wait around. When I left the security area I caught a quick glimpse of Brad as he ducked behind a pillar. I quickly made my way to said pillar and started walking around it in trying to hide from him. It only lasted so long before he found me. It was a nice welcoming ritual.

One the way to his house we made a stop at the booze store. Gotta have booze. We got ack to Brad's house in Como, just south of Perth and I settled into the guestroom. I was sleepy, delirious, semi-non-responsive but feeling good to have the run of a house. A real lived in house. With a refigerator and coffee and a shower and a couch and a computer and friends and all that stuff. Brad's girl Priya made a kick ass Indian Chicken dish that night and I stayed up way later then I though I would. Midnight or so.

Gili Islands

Saturday August 18 was travel day. We were off to the Gili Islands off of Lombok. We originally saw them from Gunung Agung. They're nice for relaxing and snorkeling. I got up at 6am, checked that JoJo and Nick were awake and snoozed another ten minutes. Sleepy. We ate some breakfast, JoJo payed with credit card... it pretty much settled us again for the flights that I had covered to Jakarta. By 7am we were all packed and met our ride to Padang Bai where the ferry leaves for Lombok. The ride was only about half and hour but our driver was stressing because he saw all the funeral ceremony preparations along the way... he figured he'd get stuck in all of those on his way home. We got dropped at a restaurant,... the office, as the driver called it. Yucky tourist smokers chased us to wait outside after we got our ticketing situation straightened out and booked a return trip for 130,000 Rp per person. Turns out to have been a good decision, the trips to Kuta, Bali cost 175,000 Rp if you book them from the Islands. Nick and I bought some cheapo sunglasses and we all rolled onto the ferry.

The ferry ride lasted about four hours. There was a sun deck where I found a shady spot and napped for some time, and write from some time, and listened to music for some time. It was a super relaxing ride. Lots of tourists were getting burned in the suns. Silly Bules. We pulled into the bay where the ferry was to land and started doing 360's. The ferry spun in circles about 6 times. WTF? turns out the other ferry hadn't left the terminal yet and our ferry had to try to keep its position in the harbor channel. Since the ferry can't just engage the sideways propeller it was circle spinning for a while. It all ended up making sense.

Off into a touristy bus with some goofy German guys who kept goofily yelling "Apa Kabar" (What's Up) out the window... We got some big smiles :) There was a stop halfway through the Lombok trip where we could take a potty break and buy some snacks... instead of those options be busted out a Hacky Sack and started kicking that and had a great time incorporating one or two of the guys who were working for the transport company. It was fun and a great break from being wedged into a little tiny van seat. But the fun dream head to end and we were wedged once again, this time to be caught in the traffic caused by a parade. Travel day getting longer than expected. Once we got past the parade we did happen upon a monkey forest. Those fatties were just sitting at the side of the road watching the cars go by, waiting for someone to feed them. Rock on, monkeys.

After an eternity we finally got to Bangsal for the ferry, the last segment of our trip to Gili Air. Things were a bit confusing when we got there but after some asking around we found the boat that we needed and had a nice 20 minute ride to the island. Some girl almost sent this bag porter for a swim when she couldn't find where her wallet was as the boat was leaving. The porter guy was up to his chest in the water by the time she squeezed some money into his fist. It struck me as odd that the boat driver didn't wait for him... it all made sense later though. I'll write about it in the departure from the Gilis a few days later.

Once on Gili Air there was a lot of pressure to take a horse cart to our accommodation. We declined as we'd been sitting all day and wanted to carry our stuff for a small distance. There was a local soccer game that we watched for a while before we made our way to Gili Air Santay, the bungalows that were were going to be staying at for the next few nights. On the way we passed a lot of cute little open beach front restaurants. Each one had a different assortment of fresh fish displayed on a little table out front. Mhhhhh... We were gonna be eating like kings.

We checked into our little bungalow. 2 mosquito netted beds and a porch with a hammock. What more could you ask for. The tap water tasted of salt. On a small island like this it's probably difficult to get non-salty water out of the ground. We wandered off to a cure restaurant and had some fish curry and a grilled fish. The fish was probably a good amount for 2 people and cost only 60,000 Rp. Wow, a large fresh grilled fish with side dishes for $7. That kicked ass. We were to have a different fish every evening that we were on the island. Always from that day's catch. Yum. Then we slept.

Sunday August 19 brought the chill island life. Sleeping in. A chill pineapple pancake breakfast. Some snorkeling. We didn't see anything too special. One interesting thing is that up the coast there were some warm and some cold sections in the water. The warm sections were super churned up but were really piss warm. JoJo gave an audible shudder when she passed back into the cold zone. It happened over half a body length. Incredible how the two types of water stay separate.

We took a leisurely walk around the island. It took maybe two hours. We saw these little swarm of fish that were chased by bigger fish. All the little ones would take to all jumping in the air over and over creating this seemingly boiling spot in the water. It was fun to watch. I accidentally dropped my camera's polarizer filter into the water after turning it the wring way to adjust it. Luckily no water got between the two layers of glass and now I have learned the lesson never to turn the front piece in the direction that unscrews the threads that hold the filter on. Very important. On pavement that would have been a $70 mistake.

We booked a snorkeling trip by boat for the next day (60,000 Rp per person) and cruised on the the Star Bar that Johanna had run by getting her exercise that morning. They had a happy hour. The savings weren't extreme but it was fun to sit around and have a few froofy drinks. The bartender put on some reggae for me. How did he know? Then it was off to find some dinner. We ate some Red and some White-ish fish. They told us Black and White Snapper but I learned later that the locals don't really know the English names of all the fish, so they just call it [Color of Fish] Snapper. We stayed at the table a long time and payed Hearts, one of the guys at the restaurant gifted us a little smoky smoke. The tobacco mix ain't the greatest thins wasn't the best but it was a nice gesture.

Monday August 20 we went on the snorkel tour with a boat. It started at 9:30 and we were soon in the water dicing with sea turtles off the coast of Gili Meno... or was it Gili Trawangan, I forget now. It was sweet to see the turtles. Unfortunately my sinuses/ear is still clogged so I can't get pressure equalized for deeper dives so I was doing a lot of snorkeling on the surface and not a lot of diving to chill with the turtles. Oh well. We hit an unremarkable dive site before stopping for lunch at Gili Meno where we were quickly surrounded by guys seeling us various trinkets. Go Away. Trying to eat. I did cave and bought a bracelet from one dude but I put him through hell trying to pick just the right one out of his bunch. Moo. I felt like a cow being shuttled around with all the other Bules. We did two more snorkel sites after lunch. One of them was a repeat of what we had done off the shore the day before. Uhm, great. They told us they were going to be feeding Nemo fish but it ended up no being Nemo fish at all. They made a big swarm of these medium sized stiped fish by putting a bunch of soaked bread rinds in the water. It was fun, but Nemo fish they were not. Grrr, false advertising ;)

That afternoon we were all pooped and just lazied around a lot. We had Red Snapper for dinner and stuck around and played cards. The waiters at the restaurant ended up being the guys who were our snorkel guides and we hung out and drank rice with with them until late. Nice welcoming people here. Great Vibe. They made me play some guitar. Damn I'm rusty.

Tuesday August 21 Johanna woke up sick. Boo. She read for most fo the day while Nick and I chilled out and had lunch. I went for a walk and collected some sea shells and made a little bit of beach art with coral pieces. High tide was to erase it soon and I didn't have my camera on me. Too bad. That happened to me once before that I made a cool pattern on a beach and then had no camera to document it with. Wishing I was Goldsworthy but I'm not. By the evening Johanna was well enough to go for a walk to see the sunset on the other side of the island. There were these cool spindly star fish all over the shallow water and I probably stepped on a few of them trying to get out to the little sand bar to take some photos from a different perspective. Sorry, little critters.

Nick and I got dinner at the same place as we went the night before. This time we ate Leather Jacked Fish and some squid with prawn for appetizer. All out. It was our last evening there so we had to live it up. We sat around and hung out with the guys running the place again. The owner was making fun of French people and their accent when speaking English. He told us of this one time when he was cooking and his server came to the kitchen saying that he had gotten an order for a Pineapple and Onion crepe. What? He sent the server back to verify. Yes, Pineapple and Onion... he made it and a few minutes later a Frenchman was cursing "What the 'ell is this?" Turns out he wanted Pineapple and Honey but could neither say Honey nor could he understand the Indonesian saying Onion back to him. The restaurant owner did a great imitation of the French accent. Right on the money. Priceless.

Wednesday August 22 was another travel day back to Raja Gardens in Seminyak on Bali. We got up at 6:45, got some breakie in us, paid (180,000 Rp a night) and were ready to take our horse cart across the island at 7:30. The boat didn't leave until 8:15 so we had plenty of time to relax on the other side. When we got over to Bangsal, the port on Lombok things got confusing. The horse cart guys were trying to charge too much for a 1km ride. No one told us where to catch our continuing ride. We ended up being suckered into waiting outside this dingy restaurant until we realized we had to walk to where the horse cart guys were taking people. In the tour boo it talked about sort of a Mafia in that area where the locals won't let the buses any closer to the port than the parking lot and then tried to extort rides out of all the tourists with luggage. Didn't work on us though it did confuse us for a while. We were later told that there are routine fights between travelers and the locals. I can believe it, they were trying to take us all for suckers and I got really pissy and defensive at anyone who approached me. It's just some people trying to make their way in the world.They see all these rich people rolling through on these tour bus companies and they want to get their slice of the pie. It sucks that it has to be done in such a negative manner. Seems like it would be a much better experience to charge a flat port tax or something,.. but then the free-for-all hustle of the horse carts wouldn't pay off for the horse cart guys because the tax would probably go to a school or something. I'm not sure how to solve it. It sucked.

In the halfway stop we played hacky sack with the transport company guy again. He greeted us with a big smile.

On the ferry I met a guy who barely got there in time to get on. He had taken the regular local transport. Bemos and such. It took about an hour longer but all in all his trip to the Gili Islands from Bali probably cost about half of what we paid. Fine if you've got no schedule to keep and want adventure. I might have done it his way had I been by myself but we were trying to minimize travel time so we paid a bit more. On this ferry there was a lot less space. Part was because they didn't have the roof be a sun deck. Part of the problem was that there was a mattress section inside that they charged 20,000 Rp to rent a mattress in and a VIP section that they charged 25,000 Rp per person to enter. F that. We sat outside in the dirt and played hearts for the trip.

The transfer to the bus to Kuta was smooth. We ended up paying the driver an extra 40,000 Rp to take us to Seminyak and we were back at Raja Gardens.
Actually, we bargained the driver to 30,000 Rp but paid him 40,000 Rp. The Ali principle, but while keeping your own integrity of not being a sucker. I know what the ride is worth, I'm choosing to pay you more.

We dropped out stuff in the rooms and beelined for Zula, the yummy vegetarian restaurant. We split a Mediterranean Platter. It kicked ass. It really did.

Johanna and Nick were leaving the next day. That must have been in my head. The next day I woke up having dreamed about being back at work wondering why I hadn't gone to Australia and SE Asia. Hmmm... I sure home I'm still going to those places...

Floating the Ayung

Wednesday, August 15 we floated the Ayung River. It was a slightly crazy thing to do but we did it anyway. We did it tne year ago so it had to be done again.

The idea is to set out where the reafting companies land their rafts at then end of their trips and float down the river for a stretch. Some people looked at us like we were nuts. Others smiled. We had to convince Nick to do it, well, to at least acknowledge that what we were doing may be a bit stupid. Some of the rapids were a bit rough. I got a cut on my hand and others had gotten some pretty mean bruises but we emerged relatively unharmed.

We floated past the Four Seasons Hotel as well as some cottages that were apparently owned by some Balinese Royal family or something. They had a sign up that said "Quiet Zone for the next 1 km." Ok, we'll try to contain our groaning as we get tumbled down the rapids. The last part was really really nice. There was a deep canyon that we went through (well, realtively deep, not like the Black Canyon of the Gunnison or anything) where 2 waterfalls fell down over our heads. It was a little odd trying to pick a spot to exit the water. Ten years ago it was easier because the Four Seasons resort was still a construction zone and we had no problems exiting through that.

Walking back to Ubud we passed a pig slaughter session by the side of the road. The pigs were already dead and bled and layed down on their backs surrounded by a team of 10 or so men with sharp knives. Nick and I stuck around to watch them do their job, taking the pic carcass aparart into lots of neat little pieces and emptying the contents of the intestines down the little irrigation channel that they were working next to. Mhhhh.... It probably empties into the river that we had been swimming in. The pigs were to be a feast at a wedding in two days. It was a trip seeing all those intestines. I've never really gotten to witness anything larger than fish guts... it was all so clean, from what I head humans look very similar on the inside.

That night our whole group went to Waqyan's Cafe in Ubud for a yummy dinner celebrating the birthdays of three people on a birthday neutral day. On the was back home I got caught up in watching a Gamelan and theatre performance in the street. It was mesmerizing. I couldn't pull myself away for over an hour.

Tursday, August 16 was Mandi, Hilde, Mechthild, and Joachim's last day. They were taking a car back to Denapsar Airport at 8pm. In the morning I took a walk up to the rice paddies with my dad and Hilde. I hadn't spent enough time with him.. Johanna's been real deliberate about QT whereas I we just kinda floating around in the background. It was good to get some time but I still found it hard to have fluid communication in German. I do OK with day to day things but having deeper conversation is something that's escaping me, maybe something that I never had, being that I left before I was ten years old.

I got to show off all my hiking gear to Mandi and Joachim after I got back. After getting the lowdown on some more of my travels Joachim disappeared into the rain for a little while and came back with a book that he had bought for me as a present at a store down the street. It was a second copy of the book that he was currently reading... it deals with someone who's living with a Balinise family and offers an outsider some perspective into Balinese culture and family life. I'm looking forward to reading it though it's sad I will have left Bali by the time I get to it.

I got a rip repaired in my North Face pants that day. 5,000 Rp to stitch up a little hole... not a bad deal. I gave the tailor 7,000 'cause he was nice and jolly. I had some shorts that had a pocket coming off... I brought them to the guy the next day.

We had a mellow dinner and Johanna and I said good bye to our dad. It was a somber affair. We played cards to distract ourselves... the start of a great series of Hearts games. Lambert even busted out a glass of Scotch for Johanna... distractions are good.

Friday, August 17 was Independence Day. We got up too late to see the morning ceremonies. We were told it consisted of school kids matching around demonstrating how ready they were to go to war and all that... by the time we got to the sport/drill field in the center of town there wasn't much but a lot of muddy spots and s few stragglers crossing the field.

Nick and Johanna had brought three extra frisbees that we intended to give away so we started playing frisbee on the field hoping that smoe kids would join in. For a long time they were sort of apprehensive but eventually each one of us had something like 4 or 5 kids in our circle throwing the flatball back and forth. Muddy hands and all. It was hard to communicate basic skills to them. They were pretty young. I juat had fun with them, Nick tried to teach them forehand throw grips and all that. Some of Johanna's kids got in a fight. We eventaully split and left the frisbees with the kids.

We walked down to the Monkey Forest at the end of... Monkey Forest Road. There's a colony of Macaques that are super habituated to humans and will climg right up you to get at the banana that you bought for them from the vendor at the edge of the forest. We encountered tons of tourists and tons of monkeys. The babies were cute. A big one tried to take my water bottle. They were all curions what the clicking noise in my camera was and kept trying to reach inside my lens hood. Maybe there's a banana hidden in there....

Johanna and Nick bought a kick ass piece of fabric at a fancy store with originial designs. It cost 1,800,000 Rp. Gack. $190 or so but it was super nice... hell, in SF I spent $125 on a photo on a whim one day. A cool tapestry is probably more useful. Good Work.

We settled into our last night at Lady Bamboo. I used the internet until 2am trying to catch up on this blasted blog stuff and eventually called it a night with mny alarm set for 6am.

Finishing Jakarta

It was August 11, a Saturday, so Ali didn't have to work, We all slept in, well, except for Ali's roomate Jen who headed down to the pool in the building complex and got cornered by a Philipino guy making moves on her. Properly slimed out she came back up and sought solace in our chill crew. JoJo and Ali headed to the gym, Ali had to go to her tennis lesson and JoJo had an ultimate tournament to play after getting back to the states so doing some weight training was definitely in the program. Nick and I went for a dive through the rabbit hole.

From the 34th floor you can see the posh swimming pool and tennis courts of the "Bule Ghetto" comlex. There's a wall... on the other side the real Jakarta begins. Ali told us about the little door over by the Ojek stand so Nick and I went to explore. The area looked poor and run down from above but once you hit the ground there and saw it from up close the houses were actually put together pretty well. What made it look slum-ish from above were the tiny streets. This was just an illusion. The narrow walkways between the houses were really quaint and most of the people smiled at us and many tried to communicate a little bit. There was one set of women down an alley that motioned for us to come closer. They smiled and giggled and mimed a fat belly and pointed inside the house. Ten seconds later an obese little kid wearing an undershirt gets pushed through the doorway, looks at us, and proceeds to force his way back into the house. Terrified. They all laugh. I guess we got to see the village freak. Luck Nick and I.

The Indonesians have a different cultural standard in pointing out peoples' physical. faults. It's ok to point out how much weight someone's put on in the past year. It's ok to push the fat little kid with some sort of metabolism problem through the doorway for us to gawk at. I guess it's kinda like in Latin America. You can call your fat friend Gordo and it's not a big deal. In the US you'd have someone crying.

We came upon a graveyard. The first thing I noticed was the pile of garbage in the corner. Yes, one corner of the graveyard was landfill... in fact some of the headstones had a hill behind it... the garbage had piled up so high on the graves that the headstones were actually containment walls for the garbage pile. Hmmm... respectful? The other thing I noticed were all the goats. They were just chilling, munching on garbage. It was a natural environment for them, being the natural climbers that they are. They ever-so photogenically posed on the gravestones. Cute. Especially when the little kids are eating newspaper.

In the afternoon Nick chilled at the house while we went shopping at a mall. Very strange environment. All the regular international luxury brands. We bought some batik shirts... ours were only about $20 a piece though there were some $300 intricate silk options. The Indnesians wear batik as someone like me might wear a tuxedo. To a westerner's eye it looks like a Hawaiian shirt, for them it's a highly formal outfit that they wear to weddings and such. Hard to get over :) I also bought 100g of fried fish skin. After carrying it around for over 2 weeks it was to get thrown away. Oh well.

That evening Ali invited us to dinner at a sweet restaurant. I forgot the name because I'm a sucker, but it's owned by a guy who has a great collection of antiques. Legend has it that he wanted to display his collection to the world so he opened a chain of restaurants,... each with a different theme. Once I get the photos up they hopefully speak for themselves.

On Sunday, August 12 we flew back to Bali. We got up at nine, chilled by the pool a bit, made some food with the perishables and made our way to the airport. Ali and Jen were alsos coming 'cause they were flying to language training in Yogyakarta. Pulling into the airport we saw a Krispy Kreme and a few Dunkin' Donuts. What gives? Ali explained it to us.

Some years ago a Dunkin' Donuts opened at Gambir railroad station in Jakarta and thrived for several reasons. Indonesians like fried food,... that's the reason KFC is also a natural fit and can be found on just about every corner. Ayam Goreng. Fried Chicken. The other reason that the Dunkin' Donuts kicked ass was that there's a tradition to bring food snacks back when you've been traveling somewhere. The train station location is a spectacular place to put the donut shop... the people fan out all over Java from there. Now everyone wants donuts. Heck, people probably demand them when their friends travel to the city. People at the donut shops at the airport bought massive quantities. Dozens at a time. Well, 10's at a time. Dozens are not an Indonesian concept.

We walked to the Krispy Kreme and it was shut so we had to settle for a Dunkin' Donuts. I was never a big fan of Dunkin' Donuts, though I do like their bagles. I got two different fruit filled ones and couldn't finish the second one. Kinda mealy/doughy. Meh. Maybe I should have tried the Durian flavoured one.

Our plane was an hour late. We had an uneventful flight to Bali and were picked at the airport and taken to Lady Bamboo Villas in Ubud. I have been in touch with them for almost 2 weeks trying to book a room there. They wanted a deposit transferred to their German bank account. Ugh. Uhm. Or maybe a deposit in person. Because our father was staying there and I kept dragging things out they took us in even though I hadsn't been able to pay the deposit.. that was very nice of them, to bend their policy a bit.

The ride to Ubud laster a bit over and hour. We checked in and crashed out pretty hard.

On Monday, August 13 I was sick. Yay, Johanna's birthday. I slept badly the night before. Proibably had fever. I skipped breakfast and had to get up at noon to change rooms. I had to change rooms twice because in order for the Lady Bamboo Villas to accept our booking without deposit they figured it would be OK to shuffle me aeround a bit to fill up different vacancies. I was fine with that.

I slept more that afternoon and was ready to eat for dinner. I chilled out chatting with Lambert, the owner of the place until midnight.

Tuesday, August 14 I was feeling a good deal better again. I got to try a Lady Bamboo breakfast. It kicks ass. They have a bread machine and bake their own whole wheat bread every night. The coffee comes out in a French press. I guess that's what you pay a higher rate for... a kick ass included breakfast. I dig it. Though it's not financially sustainable.

Johanna went for a run... continuing her exercise so that she'd be ready for the Ultimate tournament. Nick and I went for a nice rice paddy hike in the North. There are lots of artists that have their little houses along the farm paths. I reckon enough tourists pass through and but their goods that it's profitable. I guess they may also sell things to retailers in the town, but then they don't get the same profit margin. Rice paddy hike with are galleries. Cute.

There was town called Petulu to the Northeast where all the herons that live in the rice fields congregate to sleep and nest. They end up there every night and it's become a well trodden tourist excursion from Ubud to go to up there for sunset to watch all the herons congregate. It was a nice walk up... all of us went. Parent-folk. Joachim. Mechthild. Everybody.

It was Nicks birthday... we didn't do anything super special. Just had a dinner at Lady Bamboo.. they cook really well there. It was hard to explore town when we're all taken care of there.. no reason to leave :) I think we watched "Pan's Labyrinth" that evening. Johanna and Nick had a TV in their luxury room.

Maribaya

Thursday August 9 we had nice reliable warm showers in the morning at 7am. Luxurious. It's not that they're not usually available around here, it's just that we stay at the cheaper places that don't quite provide hot water that's really hot water. We debated staying in Ciwidey but saw some neat stuff in the guide book. There's a hike and a tea house to go to north of Bandung,.. leaving us a bit closer to the train station that if we had stayed in Ciwidey. So we hopped on the bus, yes, the bus, instead of a Bemo, and paid our 4,000 Rp a piece. We screwed up a little bit with our destination in Bandung but eventually did end up at the train station, which was a good thing because we were able to find out when the last train was running. We were gunning for 6:30pm. They had a baggage check at the airport so we didn't have to lug all our stuff on the day trip.

To get to Maribaya we could take a two sets of Bemos. One to Lembang and then one to Maribaya. The guy at the tourist info counter sugested we might try private transportation. We could be there in under an hour and pay 100,000 Rp, $11 or so. We could have haggled more or taken a nice AC taxi. Hmmm... We just wanted to get there so we piled into a van and off we were. "Alternative Route," says the driver, pointing at the traffic. Ok dude, no problem, flat fare. Your call. We go and go and go and after about 35 minutes we're going up some pretty steep roads and the little bus keeps stalling out. He tries and tries to make it up the hill and eventually give up after we're almost hit by a motorcycle that comes around the corner and spins out on some loose soil in the road. So we backtrack 15-20 minutes, presumably to take the original route.

Yay original route. Now we're getting somewhere. Eventually he pulls up to a Bemo and says something to the other driver. He pulls up in fron to the Bemo while somehow clipping the other vehicle. It was a nasty metal scratching noise. Ooops. He gestures for us to get out of his van and get into the Bemo. We were to pay him 50,000 Rp and 50,000 to the other driver. Uhm. We only went with him to get there faster and now he's trying to pawn us off on a regular Bemo that's already got passengers in it and is liable to get flagged down by anyone one the street. Not exactly express. The Bemo ride up to Lembang does not cost anywhere near 15,000 a person. We try to haggle down but they won't budge. The freeze at 7,000 per person. We might even have paid that much if the sitation hadn't put us on the defensive and feeling cheated. We aruged with these guys for a while. Went to another Bemo and they wouldn't give a fair price. We finally gave the driver 20,000... and that was being nice considering that he was trying to pawn us off at our high rate. Grrr... I asked some nice local ladies how much a ride to Lembang costs. 3,000 Rupiah. Word. We found a Bemo that was just leaving, and wasn't involved in the fray of price fixing for the Bules (Whiteys) and we were off at the fair rate. Kinda pissed but also feeling good about sticking to those guys.

Later we'd have a long conversation with Ali in Jakarta about the situation. She's often comfortable paying the inflated rate just because she and they know she has more money and the difference is a pittance to us. I agree in a way but I'd rather have them quote me the rate that every local on the street knows and then pay double to the driver after all is done. I think that's a nice way to do it for all parties involved. It's tipping, in effect. Tip more if you're richer. Pay what you feel is fair, not what someone else thinks is fair to you. Then again, have I been paying double for all my Bemo rides? No. But I haven't taken any since talking to Ali.

Anyway, we got to Lembang and had to catch an Angkot to Maribaya. We got the price from a lady on the Bemo and wandered to find the Angkot for 3,000 Rp. We talked people down from 7,000 to 4,000 with the rider that we'd leave right away. Sweet. Our Angkot was push-started by some other drivers and we were off... for about 100ft before it stalled out. No problem, the driver yelled something back and we had another ride within 2 minutes of trying to push him so he could try to pop the clutch a few more time. We made sure that we were still paying 4,000 Rp in the other Angkot and we were off.

Maribabya was a cute little resort area with scaped lawns, waterfalls, and little bridges. We we're feeling somewhat stressed and low on time after all the traveling. We quickly got on the path that leads to Dago, something like a 6km hike. Nick was all gung ho about going when Johanna and I got suckered into stopping for a grilled corn on the cob. Meh. We weren't sure when we'd get out next food... It didn't take terribly long and we were moving again.

The path was cobblestone. The occasional motorcycle would pass us. The plants had big leaves. Nick spotted a monkey. After some time we came upon the Dutch caves. It was really dark in there... they were orignally dug out to carry water to the other side of the mountain but acted as ammunition depots and a military radio installation through the war. There was kind of a mazo of rooms under the mountain. It was a nice break from the routine.

We soon happened upon Dago. We were trying to find the Dago Teahouse for lunch. The place was supposed to be easy to find once we got off the path. Either we screwed up and dindn't stay on the path long enough, or the guide book is just plain wrong. After more walking than we wanted to do and then a short Bemo ride we finally arrived and had some yummy yummy tea and some food that wasn't great but definitely better than the sketchy street food from the night before.

Bemo to the train station. We bought train tickets back to Jakarta on the 6:30pm train and had a little bit over and hour to kill. Nick made a call to Ali announcing that when we'd get there and then we want to find some beer and some fruit. There wasn't much fruit to be had but Johanna did find one stand where they were selling orangey type things and some other small fruits that we didn't know. They knew this and proceeded to demonstrate how to eat the other one. They're about the size of a large grape with a crunchy shell. You stick your finger nails in through the shell and peel it back to reveal an eye-ball looking substance on the inside. Big black see. It's probably related to Lychee. We called it the Eyeball Fruit. Ali got us some in Jakarta as well. I ate a lot of these. They're yummuy. I wish I could remember the name.

Walking back to the train station we went to the only place were we saw beer. We got to talking to the ladies out front. They were in high spirits and had giggled at us as we were walking past on the way to get fruit. Somehow we mentioned that I'm Johanna's sister and a few of them started pushing one of the younger girls forward towards me. Giggle Giggle. They had obviously been talking about me. It was pretty funny. We said Johanna and I were from America... Red/Blond hair. Light complexion. Then one of the ladies studies Nick for a bit and said "Mexican?" We had a good laught at that. After a photo and a little more chit-chat it was time to go. I didn't bring take the girl with me though that might have been perfectly acceptable. Oh, I did get cut off on the path by a woman that said "Take me with you" up at Maribaya. It was kind of joking, but probably also not. Anyway, we grabbed our beers and headed to wait for the train.

After that day I was the official Charismatic Megafauna of the group. Thanks for the term, Johanna.

The 4 hours train ride seemed like nothing after all those hours on Bemos. Reading and listening to music was super super nice. We got to Jakarta and went to try to find a taxi. It sucks arriving in a new place and not knowing where everything is. We were trying to find a Blue Bird taxi, the most reputable brand in Indonesia. We walked out and tried asking taxi drivers and of course all the independent guys are trying to do all they can to keep us away from where the Blue Bird cab stand actually is. They finally almost convince us to get into a different Taxi but then the driver told us it would be a flat fare of 40,000. "Meter?" we ask. "Broken." Oh boy, we walk away to regroup. Just wander around to see what's what and eventaully find the Blue Bird stand. It was 32,000 Rp to get to Ali's house.

Ali lives on the 34th (and highest) floor of a tower. When we got to her apartment the door was unlocked with no Ali in sight. We made ourselves comfortable and eventually she showed up. Her friend how had just moved in a few floors lower had just had a large flood in her apartment. In an attempt to turn on the water main for her apartment the handle came off and just started to shoot an uncontrollable stream of water into the apartment. Building maintenance finally got things under control but not before a lot of water went under neighboring doors. Oops. I helped mop up some of the water. Pity.

Ali had gotten us an assortment of fruit to try out. There was Eyeball Fruit which we'd already discovered. There was Sweet Garlic which looks like a bunch of arlic cloves when you break open the husk. The real winner was the Fly Larva Fruit. This one you bust into with your thumbs and you're greeted with a gelatinous mess of crunchy on the inside, gooey on the outside pulp sacs that look pretty disconcerting until you taste them. She had no Durian for us. I still haven't tried Durian. Meh. I'm actualy a little bit hesitant.

We slept well up there on the 34th Floor,.... until about 4:30 when the Call to Prayer began. From up high you can hear several distinctive mosques. It's quite the cacophony. Earplugs make it all go away.

Friday August 10 was a work day for Ali. She was gone before we got up but we planned to meet her at het Busway stop at 11am. We got up and Johanna made some eggs and toast for breakfast. Everyone was reveling in the ability to have access to a kitchen and being able to cook food just as you like it. Well, maybe I wasn't reveling as much but it was a nice break to eat our own food. We sort of had to work aroud the maid that cleans the place twice a week. She was nice and had no problem sweeping up around your feet and stuff. We got going a bit late to catch the bus to Ali's work but we got there ahead of schedule anyway. The dedicated lane bus system works pretty well. There are intersection stops from time to time but all in all it's a lot faster than endlessly weaving through tight traffic. To get on you take the pedestrial overpasses to the middle of the road and then pay 3,500 Rp to get into the waiting area. The system is a lot like the TransMillenio in Bogota, Colombia and I experienced the same payment system in Quito, Ecuador as well, just without the dedicated lanes.

Ali picked us up at the station and guided us back to her office at the Department of Agriculture. She's a veterinarian who does Avian Influenza work all over Indonesia... a lot of education of local vets. A lot of logistics. It was Batik day at the office, everyone was looking quite dapper. Friday is always Batik day and all the men leave for the Mosque for two hours at noon. Apparently this leaves the market and restaurant nice and empty and a good place to frequent on Fridays while the men pray. We brought lunch back and talked about cockroaches and things... Johanna and Nick headed out soon thereafter while I stayed behind to use the internet for a while.

When I left I found myself in an elevator. There was a sea of Batik 2 feet below m eyes. 5 women and 2 men occasionally sneaking peeks at the freakishly tall Bule with the funny hair that was on their regular friday afternoon elevator at the Jakarta Department of Agriculture Building.

I don't remember the rest of the evening. I think we stayed in and cooked and generally just took it easy.

Ciwidey

Wednesday August 8 saw the first bit of real traveling that we would do. We got up and had a so-so included breakfast at By Moritz. The guidebook really talked it up but in reality it kind of let us down. Plain old eggs and a piece of bread or something. The Cowboy Style coffee was nice though.

We headed to Ciwidey. We were inspired by at tea plantation and a hot spring that were written up in the guide book. The trip to Ciwidey consists of two consectutive Bemo rides or possibly one Bus ride but we didn't know about that yet. Bemos are arguably faster but the bus is cheaper. We got ripped off on the first Bemo because we hadn't learned our first lesson. Ask for the price ahead of time. You don't nearly have as much of an arguing leverage if you've already received the services. We ended up paying more like 4,000 Rp each for a ride that should have cost 2,000 each. Live and learn. For the connecting Bemo in Soreang we paid the correct price of 3,000 Rp. We got to Ciwidey at noon and checked into a Hotel there (225,000 Rp w/ 2 beds, TV, hot water). Sharing a room with two beds to save some money. We threw rock-paper-scissors for the beds and Nick lost. He ended up sleeping on the floor, but with a pillow and a decent assortment of comforters from the bed.

Having secured a place for the night it was time to head up to a place called Walini to check out this tea plantation and the hot springs. We walked to the bus terminal and wandered the market where a lady behind a stall gave us a smile and took a picture of us with her mobile phone. A first for me. After getting some decent adventurous, but not too adventurous, street food we boarded an Angkot to Cimanggu which was a town 1km short of Walini. An Angkot is slightly smaller than a Bemo and there's no guy shuttling you in, only the driver runs the show.

Walking through the tea was nice. It was a beautiful color and the clouds painted a nice shadow scenery. (Insert picture here.) After a walk we cruised down to the hot springs pool and assessed the situation. Nick and I were all set to go in the water but Johanna had only brought her two piece bathing suit. All the women in the water were wearing black t-shirts and long tights. One was wearing a swim cap. Ok then... maybe Jojo shouldn't go swimming. The boys were recent pubescents smoking cigarettes while clinging to the side of the pool. Ew. We scowled for a while, distanced ourselves, and had a good talk about modesty in different cultures. Burp don't fart. Spit don't pick your nose. Meh. As we were leaving two girls in Burqinis emerged from the dressing rooms. It was time to go.

We walked up the street and caught another Angkot to Situ Patangai, a cute little lake a few km further up the road. We couldn't stay there long because we arrived on the last Angkot and we had to catch it back to Ciwidey. So we hung around for ten minutes. A girl from Bandung who spoke pretty good English started talking to up and requested a photo of us with her family. We conceded and in exchange we now have a photo of her with us. It's fun ending up at local tourist spots when you're traveling because then the locals take pictures of you as much as you're taking pictures of the place.

We caught a ride back down into Ciwidey with the strawberry ladies. They were up at Situ P. selling local strawberries all day and had to get back to their homes along the road back to town. Passing through town we found a row of fried street food vendors... We dropped stuff at the hotel and backtracked to get some fried chicken and this strange roti fried bread. It was the special version. We should have maybe not gotten the special version. Special means with gristle. Eww... our pile of nasty on the side of the plate was pretty yucky at the end of this meal. We should have gotten a sweet desert.

Nick turned on the TV and we watched The Gods Must Be Crazy II all the way through before passing out. The commercials were always a pick of about five different ones. Not much product diversity. Cigarettes. Mobile Phones. Motor Oil. (Motor Oil? WTF?)

That night there was a 7.2 earthquake north of Java. We must have been able to feel it but we slept right through it.

Off to Java

Tuesday August 7 was a hard traveling day. Johanna and Nick and I got from Lipah Bay on Bali to Bandung, Java.

We woke up at Tresna Yoga, passed on breakpast, and paid the guy who barely understood what we were saying for our stay. Wayan was there to pick us up before the pre-arranged 6:30 am. 6:30 was very conservative for the 11:40 flight. It was gonna be a three hour ride to the airport but it only ended up taking two hours. Wayan had a tape deck so we even got to listen to some so-so pop music. Should have brought my tape adapter. Maybe I'll make that happen in Australia. Dave did a good job sitting in my living room coaching me in my packing and we decided that nixing the tape adapter would be ok. Nah. Now I want one, and it's not that big. Music is too important. I'm also really looking for mini speakers. It sucks not being able to listen to music in your room.

We got to the airport super early, well before 9:00am. We rolled over to the Adam Air counter and I checked in to make sure all was OK and where we should go. It turns out our 11:40 flight was cancelled and we could leave on the 10:05. uhm. oops. So much for a chill breakfast. Glad we planned extra time. We went through the security screening where bags were X-Rayed and all that. This was before we even checked bags. There was never a second screening. It was totaly cool to bring meat-cleavers and five liter bottles of sketchy liquids on the plane. My bad joke was that this is a Muslim country so what is there to be afraid of. Bad taste. Sorry. Checking our bags, they checked my passport to see that I matched my credit card. Johanna and Nick never had to produce and ID. As long as you have a ticket it seems effectively transferrable to anyone you might like to give it to. After checking our bag they handed us three cups of Pop Mie, effectively Cup-O-Noodle. We were to hold them until we got on the plane. Halfway through the flight they took the cups from us, wrote our seat numbers on them, and redistributed them, filled with hot water. Budget airline indeed.

Waiting for our flight we had to get some food into Johanna - Stat. She's a grumpy one without her breakfast. We scored some awesome croissants and some dried mystery fruit. It wasn't super nourishing but it got us through.

The fight was 1:45 hours long. The plane wasn't a scary prop plane, it was a proper modern jet. They kept the cockpit door open for half the flight. It was nice to be able to see out the front a bit and it was nice to see a society not crippled by fear. I guess there's no need to worry if you don't have hijacking in your recent history. They've got enough volcanoes and tsunamis to deal with here. Nick was sitting on the Java side of the plane and was witness to a volcano eruption. It all seemed to be slow motion but from the ground it was probably quite violent. A large cloud of gray smoke shot out of one of the volcanoes and rose thousands of feet in the air above it. We read about it in the papers a few days later.

In Jakarta we were suddenly in Muslim Land. Bali is pretty isolated. They've held onto their own brand while the rest of Indonesia seems to have been engulfed in Islam. Womens' headscarves were everywhere. Men wore long pants more religiously than on Bali. It was definitely a different feel. We had been warned that at 4:30am every day we'd be woken up by the Call to Prayer blasting over the megaphones at the mosques. Sure, 4:30 was a good estimates. Some days it was at 3:45. It goes on for about half an hour, maybe more, one mosque competing with the neighboring one. Misitors from the Middle East have said that this is a gross bastardization of what goes on back home. One was said to complain that he could hardly concentrate on his prayers during Ramadan because the Call to Prayer was too loud. "I'm praying already. I'm awake. I'm awake. Chill out." I reckon the Indonesians have a higher tolerance for noise. I found it hard to deal with and find it especially disconcerting for the Non-Muslims in the nation. They shouldn't have to put up with that all the time. Then again I come from a gentler world and we have religious freedoms that are as foreign in this land as my Bule (White Person) Dreadlocks.

We stepped out of the airport and ordered a cab to Gambir train station. Our destination for the night was Bandung, a few hours south of Jakarta. Normally the ride should last about 40 minutes. We sat in traffic for about 1.5 hours when our cab driver suggested we take a different route. We backtracked and went down a busier city street. It was good to get off the backed up highway that was going nowhere but going was still super slow due to construction. We entertained the idea of getting out and walking. We'd be a lot faster than this traffic crawl. All things considered it made more sense to ride it out and get there when we get there. The station was still 3 kilometers away and we didn't know at all where to go. We finally arrived, about 3 hours into the ride. Total fare, 112,500 rupiah. Maybe $13. Amazing. Nick thought the cab driver was taking us for a ride... I though he looked visibly distressed and just wanted to get there just as much as we did. It didn't matter. The money difference is a pittance to us anyway.

At the station I went to make a phone call to "By Moritz" Hostel in Bandung, while Johanna and Nick waited in the train ticket line. I got word that there was plenty of room at the hostel so it was game on. Not a problem to arrive after dark. We bought a ticket just in time to catch the train that was leaving 3 minutes later. It was so so so so so so so nice to sit, relax, breathe, and read for 4 hours on the way to Bandung. We hadn't eaten much that day and all had a raging hunger, luckily Eksekutif class has a meal service option for about $1 so we all ate our Nasi Goreng (Fried Rice) and settled in for the trip. There was much burning of grass and trash in the fields. There were many soccer games in the villages. It was a good ride.

Once in Bandung we weren't sure exactly how to get to hostel so we made do with the little map in the guide book. It didn't show that we could walk straight toward the hostel so we headed the wrong direction in order to try to skirt around the train station on a road. A nice fellow came chasing after us with an ID card from the hostel and told us that there's a much more convenient way. I think his name was PoPo. Butt in German. Haha. An easy way to remember. By Moritz was chill. A bare-bones hostel with an international crowd of travelers in the common space. Not aa ton of guests but it was a good feel. Augus was playing guitar. He knew a ton of American classics and had some nice Jazz guitar skills as well. We sat down for some dinner and some beers and sang along with some songs.

Long day. We were all asleep by 11pm.

Chill Lipah Days

Ok, getting far far far behind. Maybe I'll catch up 'cause there's more convenient internet access at this time... for a few more days at least. Yay Lady Bamboo in Ubud. Not cheap but they take care of you.

Back to the story...

The day was Friday, August 3 and Johanna had gotten the diarrohea the night before. Feeling quite poopy. Actually in the evening, when Nick and I got back to Tresna Yoga we found her sleeping on a towel on the floor. The bed sheets were not on the bed. Oh no. Sleepy accident. We debated on what to do. Nick went down the hill to get some fresh sheets from the employees. They only had a limited command of the English language, Nick probably only knew how to say 'Satu' and 'Dua' in Indonesian. One and Two. Apparently the talk went liket this.

Nick points to sheets.

"Need new sheet." - in pidgin English, less confusing to the casual speaker.

"Shit?" - says the man who can get us sheets

"Hmm... Sheet?"

"Yes. Shit."

"Exactly... Need new one."

With a fresh sheet in hand and the soiled one hung over a rock by the stairs we had to deal with the wet mattress. I had brought a large black contractor size and weight plastic garbage bag that worked great to throw over the sheet. That, and a little bit of incense and the room was livable again in a short while.

Now we really get to Friday. In the morning we put the mattress out to dry and disinfect in the sun. Nick and I went snorkeling and then grabbed some lunch. Fish and Chips was a pretty nice safe dish to have. I discovered it there that day and definitely had it a few more times. After some time Johanna went snorkeling as well and when we got back the crew at Tresna Yoga had cleaned out Johanna and Nick's room and put the mattress back in the room. Ugh. They don't understand. It wasn't even totally dry. Out with the mattress again... well into the evening.

I battled the stupid computer virus again that afternoon to no avail. I'd have to go somewhere else to load pictures onto the iPod. (I eventually found that the iPod camera connector does move the DNG raw files and AVI movie files from the Ricoh GX100 so I intend on using the camera connector more. I moved 2.4 GB the other night and the battery didn't run out... it did take over 1.5 hours)

Mandi and Joachim took off to climb Gunung Agung from a different side that day. Mandi borrowed my headlamp and water bladders. Yay gear. They left at 8pm and were due back the next afternooon.

And, oh boy, Nick started getting belly problems on Friday night. One gets better, the next one goes down. It's a good thing it's vacation and we can just rest and rest some more when we get sick. Good thing it wasn't a travel day.

On to Saturday, August 4. Nick has got a certified Bali Belly occupying Johanna's spot in the sick bed. I can't make up my mind whether to write in past or present tense. I'm an amateur. Deal with it. Johanna went snorkeling in the morning and saw a sea turtle. The running joke is that they're attracted to post diarrohea-bout humans... though Nick never did attract one when he was through. I went out with JoJo later in the day and I spotted another one. Good turtle day.

I started exloring the deeps and the shallows that day. In the deeps I found turtles and big big fish. As long as me, but not with my girth. In the shallows there were rocks to turn over and crabs to scuttle away. There was one thing that looks a little like an '*' with wavy arms but I'm not sure what it's called. It was nice to recognize that there's so much life even off the reefs.

That afternoon it was getting to be critical time to buy flights to Jakarta to meet Ali. We only had a few days before we wanted to travel. The internet joint in Lipah was not up to the task of researching different airlines and putting in credit card information so I went for a walk up the street toward Amed. I found a place after maybe two miles that was a dive shop with a dial-up connection and two computers. So much faster. Not blazing, but usable. I was able to book a flight on Adam Air, a budget Indonesian carrier. 3 round trip tickets for 2.3 Million Rupiah. That's maybe $250. Not too shabby. I was expecting smelly prop planes and farmers for pilots. I also got photos loaded onto the iPod. (this was before I found that I didn't need a computer for that anymore. In fact, I now prefer to use the iPod because then I can quickly flip through the thumbnails in the iPod software)

To get back I took an Ojek. Riding on the back of someone's motorbike. I paid 10,000 Rupiah... about $1. He told his friend what I was paying and the friend grinned at me like I was a total sucker. I could have bargained. I was feeling good. No worries.

The evening was probably dinner and reading and sleep. Oh, also, me walking down the road being called Bob Marley or Rastaman, but that's sort of understood by now.

On to Sunday, August 5. Johanna, Mandi, and I did a snorkel tour from Good Karma Resort a few bays down. We had stayed there ten years ago and wanted to check it out again so we packed up our snorkel gear and pounded the pavement for 20 minutes. When we got to the place it was not as green as we had remembered it. In talking to a lady there we found out that their well had become salty and they could not water the plant anymore. The water situation is currenly precarious so they're landscaping more with rock and dirt. That seems more ecologically sound anyway. The amount of water that was used on lawns in Lipah was frightening. The trees growing up and casting more shade also didn't alow the smaller plants to flourish anymore. That place wasn't bad. Just different. The vibe was good.

We left our bag with shoes and things on the beach. A local guy at Good Karma assured us that noone would mess with it... and if they did he'd track them guy down and tell him what's what. Ok. We leave stuff. The guy also told us a story of how his grandfather, a fisherman, had his boat fall apart at sea during a storm. These fishermen don't know how to swim. Traditionally Balinese don't go in the water. Grandpa was holding onto one of the outliers of the boat thinking he would drown when a set of dolphins came along and pulled him back to sea as well as protecting him from sharks. Amazing stuff. There are countless stories of that sort of thing happening. Grandpa ended his fishing carreer and took an administrative roll in the town.

As soon as we got out into the water a ways there was quite a current drawing us South down the coast and away from Lipah. We surrendered to the current and happily snorkeled down to the next nice bay where we could land. We played in the rock rocks for a while as we warmed up. There were these cool fish that lived in the waves. They would hop onto rocks that has just been splashed by waves and start moving along, presumably sucking scum and nutrients off the wet rock face. You couldn't get too close. They were pretty skittish.

After a while we wandered up to a Bungalow complex on the hill and had some food. Johanna's Green Papaya Soup was the winner. We've been ordering those ever since when we've seen it on a menu. We had some beers, relaxed, and eventually headed back.

The pavement was hot. We couldn't walk back to Good Karma where our shoes were. The side of the road was no good because of prickly plants. Someone could have taken an Ojek and brought things back but instead we decided to brave the current. It was hard going. A real workout. Paddle at a normal speed and only stay in place. You had to really kick it into sustained overdrive in order to get anywhere. In what seemed like an eternity we finally got back to good Karma, recovered our untampered bag, and hoofed it back to Lipah.

I think a beer was in order that night. The owner where we ate lunch was talking about a hike up the next valley where you can go for hours. If I ever come back I, like, totally wanna try that out. Who's up for it?

Monday, August 6 rolls along. Tuesday we leave for Jakarta. We tried to get some quality snorkeling time in to no avail. Nick braved the waters one again but no turtles were attracted to him. Well, there goes that theory. Maybe we need more data points. I spent noontime working on my finishing touches to the photo album that she had made for our dad. It looked awesome, though I didn't quite have enough photos to fill the whole thing. We were thinking maybe we'd send him Bali photos that he can paste in himself. We presented him with the album at dinner. He intently looked through it, and was sure to scrutinize every detail in the next few days while we were in Java. He's got an amazing ability to retain tiny minutae (sp?) and recall them years later.

Before dinner we had some massages and then played some Volleyball with the locals. Nick and I were on a team with a German guy. Johanna was with two local boys. They started out strong, spiking every ball. The net wasn't quite as high as the regulation nets so Nick and I towered over the nets. The spikes quickly turned into an incessant series of blocks. Eventually they changed their strategy and fared a lot better. A soft little bump when two giants go up for the block is lethal to the giants. It would have been fun to get the frisbees but we lived so far away and it was dinner time real soon.

Massage oil and sand all over your body don't go together very well. You really have to work on scrubbing all that sand off. Yech. Next time I won't take off my shirt.

After dinner I ran back our snorkeling things and warm clothes to Mandi and Hilde. There was no need for us to bring that stuff to Java and they'd have a cushy private transport where an extra backpack won't hurt to have along. Walking down the street I was almost jumped by people offering me a place to stay? Did I get kicked out of Tresna Yoga. Is everything OK? You can stay for free if you want. I couldn't explain to everyone. Smile and Nod. Keep Walking. Jalan-Jalan.

(whew... catching up... maybe I'll get some more writing after dinner tonight... gotta get ready for that. It's a Nick, Johanna, Mandi shared birthday dinner,... more on that later)

Lipah and Bangle

We woke up at Hidden Paradise on August 1 after a night of deep sleep... after putting a little bit of DEET on the neck and cheeks, that is, the mosquitoes were out and despite having screens, the room was open between the walls and the roof so there wasn't even that much point in having screens at all. Keeping a fan on your face is a nice strategy for fending off mosquitoes, but there were none in this place.

We got up, ate our included breakfast, and sauntered down the beach toward the Coral View Bungalows where Dad and crew were staying because there was a big french crew at Hidden Paradise that wasn't gonna check out for another day. The beach in Lipah is much like all the other beaches in the Amed area in that it acts as a host to dozens of fishing sailboats that go out to sea every day. Tourists can rent the boats to go see sunrise or sunset from the sea. We did this ten years ago and had it in mind to go again this time but it just didn't quite materialize. This was not due to a lack of effort on the fishermen's part. They lobbied you pretty much every time you took a stroll down the beach.

We got to Coral View as Mandi, Hilde, Joachim, and Mechthild were finishing breakfast. It was nice to see them after only briefly catching up with them after their airplane arrival the night before we left for Gunung Agung. Johanna and I stuck around and shared mountain stories in German while Nick went on a mission to find us cheaper accomodations. Hidden Paradise cost $50 a night for one big shared room, we felt we could do better somewhere else. After half an hour he came back and said we'd be staying at Tresna Yoga so we packed up our bags and made the walk through town. "Hey Rastaman!" "Bob Marley" "No Woman No Cry" Ok, playas. I get the point. It's all really friendly but you sure do feel strangely judged when people are constantly calling at you like that. Smile and keep walking.

At Tresna Yoga we had two separate rooms. One for 200K Rupiah and one for 150K Rupiah a night. Maybe not a ton cheaper than we were paying at the Hidden Paradise but we had our separate rooms for the same price. The view was quite nice. We were up on the hill, past a maze of stairs that we had to take to our room. This proved to be quite challenging for the next two days because our legs were pretty much shot from the hike.

We got settled and finally got a chance to go snorkeling. I used to snorkel all the time growing up. In Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, France... we always used to vacation somewhere within driving distance from Germany and then Dad would take me and Johanna out snorkeling. I learned to swim with flippers before I learned to swim without them. I remember being scared to be in water without them... I guess it wasn't a terrible way to learn to swim. We used to sit in a little rubber raft for minutes while our dad dove down and retrieved cool treasuers for us to look at. Sea Cucumbers. Starfish. A harpooned octopus.

It was good to be snorkeling again. It had been a while but I quicky became requainted with the drill. One thing was off though, try as hard as I might to remove hair from my mask, I was still getting a slow leak. I finally deduced that it was coming from my mustache and shaved under my nose later that day. It looks a little funny but it worked like a charm.

Snorkeling in Lipah is pretty good. Over the time there we saw: Rays, Flounders, Lion Fish, Eels, Boxfish (so cuuuuute), sea turtles, squid, and all kinds of cool little reef fish. Hopefully in Lombok we can get to where there are some Manta Rays. They used to be my favorite animal when I was under ten years old... it would be nice to actually see one before I die.

Aside from the Sunrises and Sunsets, the Japanese Wreck is the other big destination for the fishing boats. Our kid who used to water the plants at Tresna Yoga kept asking if we wanted a boat ride to the Japanese Wreck. The fishermen on the beach asked if we wanted to get a ride to the Japanese Wreck. Japanese Wreck this. Japanese Wreck that. We were so sick of hearing about it after two days that we never did go seek it out.

Anyway, after snorkeling we just had ourselves a super mellow recovery day and I went to track down some internet. The internet was dial-up. It took about 3-4 minutes to load one simple simple page of email. It was painful. I really didn't do anything but the very essential emails when I was there. Pardon me if I ignored you or was a bit curt. Ir cost 500 Rp a minute. That's about $3.50 an hour. Whatever. I whacked my head on the low door as I was leaving. I was more careful on subsequent exits.

In the late afternoon we did laundry in the bathtub and hung a clothes line of P-Chord in front of JoJo and Nick's room. We passed out early again. Really a quite uneventful day. What the hell am I doing writing so much about it.

Let's see, Thursday August 2 Nick, Johanna, Mandi, and I went to the village of Bangle. We had been up there ten years ago and we have lots of cute photos of the kids of the village. Mandi sadly left the photos in Germany by accident so we didn't come bearing those beautiful gifts. All we had were some pens to distribute to the children.

We kids living up on the hill rolled down at the pre-arranged 10am departure but the old folks weren't ready to leave because it was they day they were due to move to Hidden Paradise. I killed the two hours going to the internet cafe. I wanted to load some of my photos from the camera to the iPod. This proved to be a nightmare because all the computers there were infected with the Glupzy virus. It's a little program that runs at startup and copied versions of itself onto any USB drive that's connected to the computer. It hides all the folders and creates new .exe files with the folders' names. Then it changes the folder options to not show extensions and to not show hidden files. Users get confused and take their drive to a different computer and click on the folder. Oops, now another computer is infected. The internet cafe in Lipah had Norton Antivirus but the virus definitions hadn't been updated in over a year. Oops. I tried to download AVG but it would have taken 6 hours just to pull down 22 MB. Something was wrong there. I spent all my time there researching the virus and not getting any work done. I told them about it and the lady told me that they had noone knowledgeable around and would have to send the computers back to Denpasar if there's anything wrong with them.. I didn't spend too much time trying to fix things. Let those computers be part of a bot net. That's probably what's slowing down their internet connection in the first place.

Noon. We finally depart for Bangle... well, at the time we remembered it as Bangli.. . to much amusement of the locals. They let us say it wrong a few times before tactfully correcting us. It took maybe 1.5 hours to walk up there. From the left and the right children were shouting "Hallo" "Hallo" from the rice fields. Sometimes they were so far away and obscured that we really had to work to see them. What a positive experience.

We finally got to Bangle after a semi-agonizing walk on our recovering legs. We picked up a guide somewhere along the way which was useful because the main sight in Bangle is to tour the Five Holy Springs. Above the village water comes out of the moutain in various places and every spot has a different flavor. The locals see them each as being holy and medicinal. There's a little temple built at each spring. We trekked up the rice fields for a ways and stopped at each spring. Some tasted of iron, some tasted of citrus, and one was dried out for the season. We passed several cows along the way. There was one in particular that was a bad scene. It was tied up under this little shed with an aluminum roof. The roof was rattling in the wind. It was very loose and was just dangling making noise. Mandi went up to it and tried to fix the roof by sliding a piece of aluminum back in it's place and he completely startled the cow. It went apeshit. Paniced. Broke itself free from the shed it was tied up in... Well, really it tore the shed apart and took off through the woods still dragging the post it was tied up to. Poor thing. I hope it didn't hurt itself. I hope the owner found it.

We got back to the village as dusk was settling in. Mandi found the school teacher and got a mailing address to send his kid photos to. There were some kids walking in stilts. It was nice and mellow up there and noone called me Bob Marley. Unfortunately Johanna started to get a stomach bug at this point and we sent her ahead on the back of an Ojek (motorbike taxi) so that she could be closer to proper sanitary facilities. Nick, Mandi, and I walked back to Lipah. It was a nice night stroll with barking dogs and Gamelan music ringing through the valley.

Gunung Agung

Ok... so we dreamed of rats and stuff.

On Sunday, July 29 Ali went surfing early in the morning and Johanna, Nick, and I went for a morning walk. I had walked up the road that has all the tourist restaurants and money changers and all that jazz. You were hassled at every corner. You feel bad for the locals sometimes.

There have been two (2002,2005) extremist Islamic bombings in Kuta, Bali in the last few years. I haven't read those Wikipedia links but from what I gather they had targeted the loud, obnoxious nightclubs of the area. A lot of the activities that take place in those places don't really jive with the more reserved views of the fundamentalists... Ok fine, the place got bombed. What's the effect? the Bali tourist industry is shattered. There's a large infrastructure that was built and it's not really being used to its full potential. Even in high season tons of tourist restaurants and hotels are sitting nearly empty. Tourists get scared by the bombings... however if you just get out of the Kuta area to some precious little village on the coast or nestled in the mountains your main fear should probably be a traffic accident. If you want to go party and drink then maybe Bali isn't the place, but for the true treasures of the island... I feel like there's no elevated risk.

I digress...

Johanna and Nick brought travelers checks and no ATM card so they needed to change some of those to the local Rupiah before too long. We stopped by a money changer who was advertising a good rate (9,290 Rupiah to 1 USD)... his friend who was running the store gave him a slight kick to the side when we walked in. He was passed out in the bottom rung of a shelf in the corner. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he told us that he did accept travelers checks and asked how much we might want to change. $300 seemed like a good number so he typed 9,290 * 300 into the calculator and got 24,570. Uhm... a quick beck of the envelope calculation yields 3 * 9 = 27... WTF?? Nick said he saw him hold down the '=' key down instead of just tapping it. We called him out on the incorrect number and he typed it in again. 2,787,000. OK, that jives.

So he starts to count out money... in 20,000 Rupiah notes. That's like 140 bills. When he got halfway through the first $100 the stack was already ridiculously high. We had to stop him and ask if her had bigger bills. No... only 20,000's. Fine, let's just do $100 then.

He started counting again in sets of 5. You could hear his hands slide the bills... flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip flip-flip-flip-flip-flip.... HOLD ON.... wait a minute... the rhythm was off in one of those. Sure enough, one of the sets only had 4 bills in it. Busted again. Poor guy... he had just woken up.

So we pay attention as he recounts all the money, then we coulnt it. We eventually give him 11,000 change so that he can just give us a set of 20,000. Ok, good almost done. We count the money again and come up short. He quickly yields the 20,000 hat he had slid under his counter when we were not quite looking. Busted again. Poor guy. We got the poated rate from him and he tried every trick short of counterfeit money to try to sucker us.

Would it have been better for us to walk when we saw that the calculator was rigged, or was it right to hold him to his rate and monitor him at every step? Poor guy. Bad day. He probably took a decent loss on the deal.

After that ordeal we wandered down an alley from the touristy street and finally found some serenity. Little temples are nestled everywhere. People smile. Kids run around playing. It was reassuring to finally happen upon a non-tourist victimizing scene.

Then we walked up the street with a bunch of shops trying to get to the street where all the Sarong shops are.... turns out they were all closed on Sunday so we settled for some half-hour massages at Cecilia's Spa and wandered back to meet Ali who had had a tough day trying to surf out at the reef. The waves were way too much for a beginner.

Johanna and I went for the second time to meet our dad, Mandi, at the Dhyana Pura Hotel next door. He and his wife Hilde arrived in a tired, exhausted state. They were traveling with their good friends Joachim and Mechthild. We quickly greeted them and let them get settled in. "Come get us for dinner, yeah?" We hung around on a balcony and Nick taught us to play some poker until we were hailed to get some food. Dinner was mellow. They were zoinked from the flight. There was live music at the Dhyana Pura restaurant,.. it was terrible. A guy playing keyboard and a Lady singer singing sappy classic rock covers. Loungey music dribble smack. We had a good laugh at it.

Monday, July 30 was the day we left for Gunung Agung, the 3,142 meter volcano on Bali. We got up at 7am and Johanna led us through some stretches and Yoga and various other warm-ups. A nice way to start the day. One last fruit, granola, and yogurt breakfast, a quick trip to the ATM, and we were off to the north side of the island so start our ascent. We had to stop by a bank along the way so that Johanna and Nick could cash in more travelers checks... it cost us some time. Nothing tragic though. We stopped by the M & G Trecking Headquarters to pick up supplies including water, tents, sleeping mats, food, and various other goods.

We pulled into a small village with the car and the guide, Mudi, started to unpack the gear and round up the porters, Wayan and Wayan. Balinese are often named after their birth order resulting in either Wayan, Made, Nyoman, or Ketut. These guys carried big baskets of gear attached to either end of a bamboo pole they they laid over their shoulder. They had common things. We all carried our own personal items like clothes and toothbrushes and things. We started the ascent at 300 meters 1t 4:30 pm and climbed through long grass and lave washes for about 4 hours before we reached the campsite. I think the plan was to get there earlier, but given our bank adventures that day we were quite delayed. We had rice, steamed veggies, and chicken for dinner. Not my normal camping food but I'll eat it. They carried it up in these steel pots. Oh well. Four of us crammed into a large tent and Mudi, Wayan, and Wayan took the other tent. They carried one more that we never ended up using. Thank you for the pipe, Tim, it was good smokin', sitting on the side of the mountain in the moonlight.

On Tuesday, July 31 planned to get up at 2:30 in the morning but ended up doing 3:30. Ali had left her Blackberry phone set to Jakarta time and the alarm was way delayed. I'm not sure if Mudi was too timid to wake us up for overslept as well. Generally you'd get to the peak at sunrise at 6:20 but we watched it from a spot maybe an hour from the top. It was beautiful, with the sun rising just to the left of Lombok's Gunung Rinjani. Soon we were at the peak, peering down into the crater below and being fed Ginseng Coffee and hard boiled eggs. Ali had cell phone reception so we made a few calls from the top. "Guess where we are?"

The descent was slow. It was a lot harder going down the skree at the top and a lot harder to find your way down the steep sections of tall grass. A little while after we left the top we also ran out of water. We could have rationed better had we known about how much water there was... I guess we assumed that there was enough in the back holes of the porters' bags... guess not. So we spent 3 hours descending without a drink. They did stash 3 liters part of the way down so we were not completely screwed but we were definitely starting to feel a bit dehydrated by the time we got there. I had some oral re-hydration salts in my first aid kit. They were meant for diarrhea but would basically work just like salt pills or Gatorade in a pinch when you don't have any food and no salt to help your body get hydrated.

We finally made it to the bottom. Knees were shaky. Toenails were blue. They had cold soda waiting for us. I haven't had a soda in so long. Orangina's about the closest thing. I devoured a Sprite in no time at all. We were taken to a restaurant to have dinner and then got a ride to the Hidden Paradise Cottages in Lipah, near Amed on the northwest Bali coast.

Ali had a flight back to Jakarta at 8:30 and there was no way she was going to make that. She tried to get flights in the morning and finally was able to get a business class seat. We tired to all pile into a room at the Hidden Paradise and they called us on it so Ali caught a 2 hours ride back to the Airport to try to catch one of that evening's delayed 10pm flights. It's a good thing Ali had her cell phone. It would have been so much harder to take care of all this otherwise.

We passed out hard at Hidden Paradise. Didn't even bust into the beer in the mini-bar fridge. Too tired.

(Ok, what am I now,... 9 days behind... hopefully I can use Ali's laptop tonight after the others go to sleep and try to get caught up a little more and intersperse some photos into all this)

Johanna and Nick arrived (and I'm behind blogging)

It's really hard to deal with these intermittent bits of internet access here and there. The little town of Lipah has dialup internet and it's super slow and this blog site won't even load. I walked up the coast a bit to a dive shop that has internet and it finally loaded. yay.

After last posting I got a good night's sleep and when I stumbled out of my room in the morning, Nick and Johanna's friend Ali called out to me. We sat around and talked for an hour or two before getting some food. I eventually headed out to explore the neighborhood and get to know the beack a bit.

Like most beach places the stores all sell the same things. Flip Flops. Local Art. Stuff like that. No store differentiates from the other. On the beach you're hounded by guys selling sunglasses even though you're already wearing two pair. The other hot times is watches. Poor guys. I must be extra tempting 'cause I don't wear a watch anymore and don't really intend to do so again.

I eventually settled into a cute little food shack on the beach and drank a beer or two while reading my book. In the afternoon Ali and I headed to the Airport to pick up Johanna and Nick. The airport was maybe 20 minutes away from Raja Gardens where we were staying. A 50 or 60,000 Rupiah ride. $USD6 or so. Jojo and Nick were pretty pooped. We had some Indonesian food for dinner and called it a night.

On the 28th, the day after JoJo and Nick arrived we all went for a walk down the beach to hit up the Cecilia Spa that Ali had gone to at some point in the past. We all got various sorts of wakes and full body massages for under $10. Super nice. Mad relaxing. We had some lunch at this place called Zanzibar. There's a ton of places along the beach that serve western food. It can be hard to get away from. We gave in to it while we were there. Plus, Ali could use it after having been in Indonesia for a long time. It was fun watching the little surfer boys hit on the little touristing girls.

Johanna and I soon headed over to Dhyana Pura where our dad was supposed to get in at around 6pm. We waited for about an hour before checking at the reception and finding that they weren't booked to get there until the 29th. Oops. Instead of hanging with Pops we went and had some more Indonesia food. I forgot what they called the style of restaurant but it was kind of like Dim Sum. They brought out a bunch of plates of the food on the table and we put items that we wanted onto our plates and ate them. Food was cooked in the morning and kept in the window all day. We were just asking to get sick but we made it through just fine.

That night we rented a movie... Ratatouil or whatever it's called and passed out dreaming of rats that could cook.

Ok, gotta leave this internet place... I was buying airline tickets, checking back balances and all that stuff and didn't actually have so much time to write. Yay, only 6 days behind on the blog deal.

Touchdown in Bali

Thanks y'all who came to the dinner at Picaro. It was good to see everyone. It was quick... sorry about that. I originally thought my flight was at midnight. I'm a big flake. The flight did end up delayed by a little over and hour which was getting my slightly concerned about catching my connection in Sydney. I didn't book the flights together so I had to do a full entry into Australia (stamp in the passport and all) and a full exit from Australia (stamp in the passport and all.)

I hate 5 hour flights. They're a pain in the ass. They feel like they should be short and I'm never mentally prepared. Set me up for a 14 hour flight and I treat it like a big deal, I take off my shoes, I nap and read and nap some more. I make it work. I figured it might be horrible but it worked out just fine. I spotted several kids on the plane who still hadn't finished their Harry Potter. Shame. They had a whole 4 days already.

A few things struck me as different about Sydney right away. Firstly, the Soy Chicken flavoured chips in the vending machine. Secondly, how nich and chill all the airport security people were. They didn't have rods up their collective asses like the TSA folks back home tend to do. Thirdly, holy crap, at the Sydney airport they make you walk through a big duty free shop just to get to your gate. It's like trying to go the the Pretzel place at the mall and having to walk through two floors of JC Penney in order to get the the center of the mall where the little stores are.

I did like the outdoor observation deck at the airport. I had a little bit of time and made my way up there for a few photos.

Flying over Australia is crazy. There's nothing there. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Well, dry stuff and the occasional canyon. I mean, I knew all this conceptually but it's different to see it from the air. It'll be a whole new ballgame when I get to Alice Springs... hopefully later on in the trip.

For ten years now I've been telling the story of me on Bali with dreadlocks in 1997. The locals often didn't have anything to associate with my hair other than "Hey. Bob Marley!!!" Fast-Forward ten years... I just paid my $25USD for my on-arrival visa and was getting my passport stamped by the passport stamping guy when he looked up and made to say something... oh boy, I'm staying too long? Oh no, I'm denied a Visa... no... "Reggae? Bob Marley?" :) Oh boy. Image is evetything. I need a guitar to travel with and just sit on the corner playing "No Woman No Cry" or something... that way I'll fit into everyone's world view. It doesn't help that one of the two shirts I brought is my Augustus Pablo shirt. Yeah Melodica.

The taxi to Raja Gardens cost 60,000 Rp. about $7. It was a good 15 minute ride. In SF that woulda been $50 probably. Like to the airport. I showed up at Raja Gardens and settled into a nice room with a mosquito net, some power outlets (charge camera! charge iPod!) and a shower. A shower felt amazing after all that flying. Brushing the ole teeth wasn't too bad either. It's just mad chil here. So many smiles from the locals. I went for a 40 minute walk on the beach amongst tons and tons of youth playing soccer and German and French (assumedly) men strolling around looking white and showing off their package in swimwear that I'm just not used to anymore after all this time in the US.

The water is warm. So warm. I can't wait to go for a swim and try surfing and snorkeling and all that stuff. I didn't feel up for a swim and there were signs about strong current. Anyway, I was just going for a stroll and then quickly cruising for internet and food.

Nasi Campur, here I come.

Tomorrow Ali should be getting here. Saturday, Johanna and Nick should arrive from Tokyo. Ali is Nicks friend, I think from college. She's doing Bird Flu work out this way (Jakarta I think) and is coming down to Bali to hang with the crew. I think we're gonna go surfing tomorrow. We'll see how that turns out. Also, my Dad and his wify Hilde will be out sometime as well... Saturday or Sunday, I forget.

Ok, Mad Hungry. I'm off.