lane

Lovina

Looks like I never finished writing about my travels through Indonesia.  Well, after a fine lunch at a fine cafe, four of us ride up through the mountains, pass a crater lake, and head down to Lovina.  It's a quiter but still touristy beach but since it was out of season it was still pretty empty.  Finding the hotels along the road to be too pricey we head for central Lovina.  After being bombarded by locals trying to sell all sorts of necklaces, sarongs, photo albums and such on the black sand beach we decide to just stay at Nirwana Seaside Cottages.  It's right in the heart of town, next to the big dolphin statue.  This place is quite nice in the lobby.  We get a good price for two rooms and we walk down a stone path.  There are colorful flowers and plants everywhere and several bungalows.  After what seems like forever and a chance for all of us to start thinking that these bungalows aren't worth the price we reach the end where there is a large opening with a beautiful pool on the left and recently built cottages in front.  It's actually pretty amazing and each room has two double beds, AC, large bathroom with hot water, and our balconies are attached.

We pretty much just chilled there for a few days.  Ate some good food.  Becca and I got harassed by some fat, angry, senile, old man while checking our email, which makes us believe he was Australian.  Probably that guy that runs his mouth to stupid Americans up and down Bali.  But we laughed when the internet in the place crashed and his unsaved report on what looked like organic compounds from afar was completely lost.  Kinda harsh but minutes after our confrontation, which makes me think that karma's a bitch.  We also smoked hookah with wicked smooth tobacco with these real chill siblings that travel all over the world.  They were staying next to us and we also treated them to dinner.  One of the highlights of Lovina.  One morning, we woke up early to watch the sun rise and go dolphin watching.  Quite comical experience and extremely ridiculous.  Heading out to sea, more and more boats converge and you start to realize this mass of tourists is led by these locals everyday single day to find dolphins.  After about an hour out to sea our party of maybe 100 boats start spotting families of dolphins.  And these dolphins don't stop swimming so one hundred boats, motors ablazing, literally chase these dolphins.  Cameras are a go and everyone is happy but I'm not sure how the dolphins felt about it.  We can't help but laugh outloud at how wrong this feels but I had a good time.  Saw shitloads of dolphins and way up close since we were in small boats that carried four people.  Though we still would have rather swam with dolphins, but prices were kinda expensive since we were in a touristy area.  On a side note, I often am reminded of that Simpsons episode when I think of dolphins.  That one when all the dolphins try to take over because they were once land animals that were run into the sea.  I suppose I'd be pretty pissed if boats followed me everywhere on my morning swim.  That night, we went out to the local bars, all very small and chill places with live bands.  Me and Bec tried to find bicycles to rent to explore and find that waterfall but that didn't work out.  Not sure if people there knew what bikes were.  So we ended up walking about and arguing prices for ojek rides and sitting on the beach.  After feeling bad for the same locals that try to sell their necklaces to us multiple times a day we got suckered into buying several from different people.  This is pretty much how Lovina ended.  Will post some pics someday... when I get my shit together, I just moved to Philly so my room is a bigger mess than it normally would be.

Somewhat early in the morning we took our bikes for a ride to the Monkey Forest.  There were so many tiny, horny monkeys everywhere.  It was unbelievable how horny they were, it would be inappropriate for me to explain.  And they're little kleptos too.  We watched this one monkey attack this woman multiple times because it wanted her water bottle.

After we left and had time to chill for a bit, we decide to go looking for the rice fields since we still had about two hours until lunch.  It was a nice bike ride going up and down hills.  But we find that we had ridden in circles around town so we take a few more turns and get ourselves incredibly lost trying to search for these fields.   We decide to walk up this one giant hill and end up finding a long stairway on the side of the rode.  The guys in front tell us there are ricefields but you have to walk up the stairs and ditch the bike because you can't ride in the fields.  Or you can bike up the hill and then go another few kilometers but that sounds like death.  We decide, like idiots, to walk up carrying our heavy mountain bikes up many flights of stairs.  Just as you overcome one set of stairs, another emerges a few yards down the walkway.  We even see a bored dog looking at us like we're crazy in our heavily ventilated state.  But finally we get to the top and find a small, quaint area of town that is not yet overcome by tourism.  So we ride through some streets and dirt roads and this guy from the bottom of the stairs finds us on his ojek and directs us.  We peddle down one street, we make a left as we holler to some happy locals, and ride past the chickens.  Low and behold, we really had found paradise.  All it was was beautiful rice fields on top of this mountain stretching pretty deep within the jungle.  Several houses here and there.  The sun shining down on rice fields that were greener than green against a sky that was bluer than blue.  We try riding on the narrow path along the fields.  But we find the guys on the stairway were indeed correct about not being able to ride in the fields after Becca nearly rides herself into the stream.  There was no one in sight so we ditched the bikes and headed into the fields to play for a bit and take pictures (which do not do the place justice and will not be posted).  The time came to leave so we walk back to the dirt road.  We ride past the chickens, make a right as we holler to the happy locals, and peddle our way back to the main road.  It was decided early on with no objection that we were not carrying our bikes down the stairs so we try and find an alternate route.  We ride further and further turning which ever way looked like the main road and the further we go the more fields we see.  I particularly remember riding on that road and thinking how nice this ride was.  Besides riding to the show the night before, it had been the first time I had ridden a bike since I was a kid.  And I had been biased into thinking that riding bikes were hell.  After all, cyclists make great rowers with that same, boring yet burning, repetitive motion with your legs.  And in a way, it is the same.  Because you work so hard until you wished you had no legs.  And the only thing keeping you going is the sun and the wind and all that surrounds you.  But in this situation, the fact that we are so lost also keeps us riding.  We whiz by more and more ojeks, houses, and shops.  We stop every now and then for rest and more ridiculous pictures as we find more rice fields.  Eventually the streets become more crowded and can't tell which way we is into town so we decide that maybe it's time we stop and ask.  So this woman on her ojek tells us to follow her.  We ride our little hearts out trying to follow this woman turning right and left and going up and down, shouting at our legs to peddle harder.  We follow as long as we can but she gets smaller and smaller as she rides off into the distance.  And there she goes...  So we stop, pant, and yes, we want to die.  But we are still lost and late for lunch so we ride on.  To our surprise, the woman on the ojek is waiting for us on the side of the road.  She takes us through streets with a more familiar look of tourism: more stores, lots of art for sale, busy streets, white people, and even cars.  Finally we find a street that Becca knows so we thank the woman and ride back to the homestay and down the rode some more to the little cafe by the corner of the road, just in time to take shelter from the rain.  Everyone stares at us as we walk past and up the stairs.  Even Becca's friends look shocked when they see us and have to ask what had happened.  It isn't until Becca and I sit down and look at each other before we realize we look like we had just run a marathon.  Yet, it was a pleasant ride and one that changed my views on biking.  I think if I asked Becca today, she would still agree that those few hours of pain and sweat, beauty and triumph were the best of our trip.

There are many reasons why I like to travel besides the part that it's fun.  One of those reasons is the cultural aspect.  You know, the language, literature, music, dance, food, people, etc.  And I'm very much a museum person.  But in a place like Indonesia and with a fews days to be there I didn't want to do the musuem thing.  Plus, Becca would not have gotten out of bed.  But she was ok watching a Balinese dance show with me.  It was kinda beautiful and nice.  Everything is pretty much very very gold.  The music is loud and xylophone-like and each song pretty much sounds the same but its still nice.  The dancing reminds me of Thai dancing.  But I must say, some of it is quite scary with their wide-eyed stares and jerky movements, especially accompanied with some intense drumming.  Actually, Becca was pretty miserable during the performance and I fell asleep.  Still glad I saw it though.  Here's me and Bec playing the xylophone thing.

The city was great, the temples were great, the restaurants were amazing (I suggest Bed Hot Resto and Via Via if you ever find yourself in Jogja), and the shopping was a pain in the ass.  Bargaining is a draining task if you're white like Becca, who constantly has to deal with being treated like a tourist when she knows the local prices.  But we walked away with some tees and sandals.

So later one evening we move on and reach the island of Bali.  It kinda throws you knowing you're on one of the world's most beautiful islands.  Definitely was an exciting feeling getting there.  Partially because we were headed for Kuta.  It's pretty much Bali's version of Cancun.  The party scene does not so much excite me as does seeing white people speaking English, which to my surpise I miss.  We find cheap ojek rides into town and end up finding a place for $5 a night.  Dirtiest place we stayed in yet but the good places were full.  So Becca and I get ready to go out and head to the bars to meet up with her friends.  Night consisted of the karaoke bar, several dance clubs, drunk phone calls to America, and late night eating.  Since almost nobody actually reads this and since I was still coherent I have decided to post some pictures.  Overall, a very fun night.  That is until the night ended.  We decided it would just be easiest to sleep in our hostel than to go home with the friends.  That proved to be very difficult considering we forgot how to get back and never bothered to find out the name of the place we were staying at.  We roam through some dark alleyways in the general area of our hostel, talk to some locals, and sit alongside a curb and contemplate sleeping on the street.  Our intoxicated state made it hard to judge how long we were really lost for.  Seemed like an hour at the time and that hard, smelly, stained bed never would have felt as amazing as I had imagined it would be at that moment.  So we get our second wind and eventually find our cockroach infested hostel.  It was a good thing we both slept in that place drunk because it really was worth $2.50 per person.

Sometime late the next morning we head off in a van, conversating with a very nice Aussie in the middle of his South East Asian tour, and reach the little town of Ubud.  I like it there.  It's much quieter, a lot less touristy than Kuta but still touristy in some artsy, hippie kind of way.  A very intriguing place to explore and that deserves a post of its own.  In the mean time, here is the outside of our room at the homestay and a view right after sunrise.

 

People either love wikipedia or they hate it.  I happen to love wiki.  It's quick and easy information on almost anything.  My teachers in college never allowed it as a reputable source for research papers and I can't say I blame them.  But, I do defend wiki.  In fact, for those research papers I'd look things up on wiki and just search for the actual scientific articles referenced at the bottom.  People always say wiki is unreliable because anyone can edit it.  This is why I love it though.  So many people read it and so if there is anything wrong it is quickly corrected (though I understand that popular consensus can be wrong).  But I have never come across anything that I know is false.  Well, tonight I find my first error for the first time in the five years I've been using wiki.  Scrolling down the emphysema page I come across some bold faced words in the middle of the "clinical signs" section that catch my eye: chuck norris will kill you.  Which is not technically incorrrect.  Though I would never consider it a clinical sign of emphysema.  I have not lost faith in wiki but my heart did sink just a little tonight.

The fact that the Hindu temples of Prambanan and the Buddhist temples of Borobudur are so close together shows that Hinduism and Buddhism did coexist in peace.  Both are worth seeing.  We kinda walked through Prambanan without a tour guide and without reading most of the info posts.  But it was still amazing to see the temples and all the pieces cleared off to the side waiting to be put back together.  After the earthquake in 2006, a lot of the pieces came tumbling down and they are slowly trying to reconstruct the temples.  And for safety reasons, we can no longer go up to the temples.  For 5 bucks split ways, you can get a tour guide at Borobudur and that $1.25 is well worth it.  You'll learn a little about the history, the discovery, the rediscovery, and the bombings and earthquakes of the place.  Then you'll hear a lovely story about Buddha and other side stories, which are carved on the corridors of the place.  As you go further up, you'll learn about the different hand positions of the statues and the meaning of the number of stupas and shapes of the perforations on the stupas.

Actually, here is another excerpt from another journal entry.  It's embarrassingly cheesy but a closer description of how I felt about them at the time than how I remember feeling about them now.  So here it goes...

I've seen the Hindu temples of Prambanan and the Buddhist temples of Borobudur.  Gorgeous stone structures that have held for centuries, only to see destruction from recent earthquakes and bombings.  But still, peace can be found seeing these massive man-made structures.  Though I don't know all the stories told on the walls I find spiritual fulfillment knowing there's some moral or message behind all these carvings.  This is true for any religious building I enter.  Except may Mormon churches.  As beautiful as they are, they creep me out.  But in all seriousness, these temples amaze me the way the Mayan temples or the pyramids of Egypt would.  The carvings remind me of Chinese temples, how there are intricate carvings in every corner that can be carved.  There was true dedication and sincerity spent in constructing these places.  I am in awe and also elated to know there were some people so enveloped in finding truth in their religion to build such things and to build them for others to find that same meaning.

Check it out.

Finally...Jakarta.  Drugged up on allergy meds, knives in my eyes from watching movie after movie, and my legs are seriously going to explode.  After dealing with the airport and all the excess baggage of being a tourist Becca comes and takes me away.  We find a way overpriced hostel and head to the mall to meet up with a friend.  We window shop and they introduce me to typical Indonesian food.  Not what I expected.  Thought there'd be a lot of curry or really exotic food.  Turns out they eat fried rice and ramen.  So after dinner we head over to the hookah bar.  This is the first time I smoke hookah since that ill-fated night in Philadelphia last summer but all turns out fine.  And after?  Apparently this is all there is to do in Jakarta.  So the three of us make it back to the sketchy hostel, get settled in, sleep for an hour, and Becca and I am up around 4 to catch a flight.  Walking down the dark alleyways of Indonesia in the middle night is surprisingly peaceful.  Weather is warm, birds are chirping away, and people are getting up for prayer.  We find a taksi and we're back to the bandara.  Another plane...can't get away from them.  But after a short flight we land safely, sorta, and we get to Yogjakarta...

Jogja, what a nice little city.  All the cheap places Becca knew of or was referred to were all booked.  We end up walking down this one alleyway and a guy offers us his place.  A little sketched out at first, seeing that he runs an internet cafe and not a hostel or motel.  But we head upstair and find his place looks like this.  This is five steps up from the place we stayed at in Jakarta.  And its only 75,000 rupiah a night (~$7.50 USD) for a clean and furnished room and friendly people.  Thank goodness for homestays.

That morning we find ojeks (motorbikes) that will take us to the Prambanan Temples.  My second motorcycle driveby experience was not nearly as terrifying as my first, seeing as we were not riding 80 mph up and down hills through farmtown, Pennsylvania.  This was quite pleasant.  Riding through the hustle and bustle of city streets is a whole new experience when you're on a bike.  Everyone drives insanely close to each other and to pedestrians.  There are crowds of bikers that try and squeeze through everyone.  Kinda reminds of me Taiwan except they don't speed as much but, actually, I think Indonesians follows the rules of the road less.  So I guess more like China.  We get out of the city and eventually hit some villages and rice paddies.  There is some farming going on, some family trash burning, chickens chillin' in ditches or in the yard, people laying out their rice to dry. I think I could live in one of these huts someday.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of this but I'm sure you can imagine.  The rice paddies are also a sight to see.  I've seen plenty of rice paddies in my day but this was a totally different.  It's a completely different experience riding on a bike and being in the environment that surrounds you.  No car window blocking your view.  You see and feel much more and that makes the view ten times more beautiful, whether you're in the city, a village, or riding past rice fields.  Picture album that doesn't do any of this justice.

Going to Japan and actually leaving the airport was the first time I've really had to rely on myself completely.  It was only for about 20 hours or so but for one day, I couldn't understand enough to make sense of anything.  I was alone so there was no one I knew who could translate.  Oddly enough, I was persistently mistaken for a Japanese.  So when people spoke to me in Japanese I just had to point or nod and try to figure my way around.  Luckily, I overprepared myself and made it to the right shuttle bus alright.

Although I didn't get to see much of Japan, I did get to see a little bit of country life.  The cars were similar but somehow looked different.  The roads were smaller, more narrow, buildings were closer to the street.  Vegetation all over, mostly random, pocketed infestations of bamboo trees or shrubs.  The houses were smaller and looked more compact.  It was all very familiar but I was always excited everytime we rolled over the next set of hills.

Excerpt from my journal:
I know I chose the most affordable hotel I could find.  But the Japanese really do know how to make use of space.  I unlock the door with my key and slowly enter the room.  All that can fit in this room is a tiny desk, a tv, and a full size bed.  I check the bathroom and it distinctly resembles the bathroom of an airplane.  It's not that I need the space with my five foot one inch frame and a lone backpack.  It's just that I'm so incredibly used to wasted space that I keep hitting my head in the bathroom.  Everything is lower to the ground: the bed, the desk, light switches on the wall, bathroom sink and toilet.  I even laughed when I noticed I had to bend down to look through the peephole instead of stand on my tiptoes.  It was something I got used to easily and something I appreaciate in Japanese culture.  To maximize space, indoors and out.  I will have to come back to Japan someday for some sightseeing, language learning, and, of course, some more culture shock.

This is what I'm thinking. It's gonna be a long cold night. Just took a shower. Not in the mood to get wastey face. Haven't really been since college. And college is over. But I like a nice drink. And a warm drink is starting to sound very appealing. Need something to relax and keep warm. Out of luck. No red wine this weekend. Hmm...I think rum will do. Yes. Ok. Walk downstairs. Peer through the liquor cabinet. Glenfiddich. Maybe? No, I don't think it's even opened. Drambuie. Mmm...haven't had that in a while. It IS my favorite liqueur. No. I have nothing to mix that with. And I'm not drinking it straight. I need something I can sip on for a while. What else? There's the rum. Wait. What?! We have gin?! Ok, it's a cheap bottle of Gordon's. Probably from a friend who felt the easiest way to get rid of it was to just leave it here. But it's gin, nonetheless. Geneva. Gin. Haven't had gin since October in Florida. Damn, I'm really wishing I was back there again. Open bar most of the time. Good gin too. And I barely had anything at all. Ok. I'm going for it. Damn, no tonic though. Ugh, soda. I guess I'll drink that. I think we have some in the depths and far corners of the basement. Good. Back upstairs. One generous shot. Smells a little off. I assume it's just the cheapness. Despite that, I taste a bit. Juniper. Refreshing. My favorite. One can of fructose mixed in and I'm back upstairs. Drinking gin. Personally, I don't know why people hate this stuff. If the world was rid of all other hard alcohol and replace it with gin I think I'd be ok. I don't drink often. But this...I could drink this everyday. I think I should buy a bottle of gin and do this more often. Delicious. Sweet. Like honey on my lips. It almost satisfies my mood. Yet, I can't help but think that I miss my good friends and my close friends even more.