Indonesian Adventures!

And so, 27 days later, we're back. It's going to be nearly impossible to write about everything we saw and did, but we'll do our best. And if you get bored, you can just skim the pictures and make it up yourself.
The trip had a bit of a rocky start, as we found out at the airport that our connection from Taipei to Jakarta no longer existed, meaning we'd have to wait 7 or so hours in Taipei before catching a connecting flight to Jakarta via Hong Kong. After a such a long flight we were not too excited about the wait, especially because it meant we wouldn't have the afternoon to start visiting Jakarta. But there was nothing we could do about it, so we passed customs and found a bus (there were significant language problems, but no matter) downtown.
At least we think it was downtown. We had no map, and absolutely no idea about how Taiwan fits into the global scheme of things. The bus dropped us off on a large street, and with only simple map to guide us around, we took off to see what we could of Taipei. We didn't even know what the money was or how much it was worth Canadian. I'm not sure how much we took out of the bank - doesn't matter anyway because the remainder was stolen by Lion Air employees when we flew from Denpassar to Makassar.
We stumbled across a large avenue complete with palm trees, and since it was so early in the morning, there were few cars on the road, giving us a quiet view of the city.
Through dumb luck, we stumble across the Taipei flower market, a huge market set-up under a bridge. Most of the stores had a good variety of orchids as well as impressive bonsais. At the end of the store there were some stalls selling the same junk we can get here in China Town, but it was neat seeing it there.
There are funny signs in Taipei.
After that quick tour, we found our way back to the airport (which involved running across a busy street to catch the bus), and eventually landed in Jakarta late at night. We somehow missed the taxi waiting for us at the arrival gate, moved through a sea of miscreants yelling "Taxi!" and "Transport!" and "Where you stay?" and hopped on a bus to a station downtown not too far from our hotel. From there it was simply a matter of paying a bejaj driver (a three-wheeled motor cart) to take us to the hotel. It was a pretty exciting arrival.
After a relaxing night in a 5-star hotel (life is tough), we took off with dad to visit Jakarta's port. The pier was very long, and lined on one side with these large sailboats that are apparently still used to ship goods from island to island. The guy above is hauling cement (semen, in Bahasa, which made for some amusing advertisements).
More of the boats. I wished I had seen some under sail, but no luck, may be the tide was no good.
To get out of the port we jumped on this canoe, expertly paddled by an old guy to a neighbourhood (slum?) nearby. There we walked through tightly packed homes, most of which double as small shops. We eventually found our way back out into a market, and from there to a busy street, where we hopped on a bejaj to go to a cafe popular with expats, then, as it was starting to rain, yet another bejaj to get us (eventually) back to the hotel. Disappointingly, they wouldn't allow us to drive right up to the front door, apparently, dilapidated, black smoke spewing conveyances aren't allowed too close to such fancy hotels. Snobs.
It was a tight ride.
The next day we took a train to Bogor, a nearby town that boasts a large botanical garden. It was a nice break from loud, noisy and stinky Jakarta. There wasn't a great deal to do, so we wandered around, had a drink in the cafe over looking a nice field, and just relaxed. We also decided to eat in the cafe talked about in the book. It was basically a foodstall with home-cooked, deep-fried items run by a bunch of shy muslim women. The food was good and cheap. It turns out that cafe was NOT the one mentioned in the travel book. We found that much nicer cafe during our tours around the gardens. We stopped there for fresh fruit juice and contimplated the intestinal parasites we likely picked up eating at the more dilapidated "cafe".
This was our first view of some of the neat plant life we would later come across in the wild. To make things a bit cooler, not far from here we saw some large fruit bats hanging high above. This was also our first experience with a "guide". Many people hang out near tourist attractions, and off to show you around (more on this later). This man in particular was useful, because he led us to the bats, and it didn't cost us much, because in retrospect I think that I only gave him about 10 cents, which is cheap even by Indonesian standards. I wouldn't have tipped the guy at all. Although the bats were cool, his information was unsolicited and at the time undesired. Such is Indonesia...

There were large ponds filled with impressive lily pads, some of which were about a meter in diameter. I think they came from the Amazon. It was hard to get good pictures, though, because most had at least one piece of garbage on them. Indonesia is quite dirty.
After Bogor, we felt we'd seen enough of Jakarta, so we left for Jogjakarta (Yogya, for short). The picture above is from the Bhuddist temple Borobudur. it was built in the 9th century, then abandoned in the 14th century, when many Javanese converted to Islam (thank you Wikipedia). Indonesians say it's the biggest buddhist temple in the world, but I think that depends on your definition of "temple" and "biggest". It was pretty big! And it's still a temple, even though it's more of a tourist trap now.
This is pretty much a mandatory picture. At least I refrained from Buddha posing at the Hindu temple, unlike some of the idiot tourists who joined us for the tour that day.
All of the walls of the temple were covered with these relief panels, all of which probably had an interesting story to tell, but we weren't interested in hiring one of the many "guides".

There are a number of stupas at the top of the temple, each with a Buddha inside. Apparently it's considered lucky to reach inside and touch the statues, so we all did. If you don't find the Buddha, it's bad luck. Luckily they were close to the sides ;)
Near the top, with stupas on either side.
My mandatory pose. Although this is the most visited site in Indonesia, it was relatively quiet, as our tour started at 5Am.

This is the temple viewed from a distance. It was still pretty quiet, which was neat.
And more carvings.
Considering the fact that there are 504 Buddha statues, it was pretty hard to get a good picture, as they were all elevated and/or facing away from the walkways around the temple.
Part of our tour took us by this silversmith's shop. They had demonstrations of the process to make silver filigree work, which is very intricate in Indonesia. We actually bought my wedding band in one of these shops. $10.50, pretty good price, considering.
This was in a nearby Buddhist temple. This temple has the largest Buddha in Indonesia. Remi thought this flower (from the monastery actually) was more interesting, I guess ;) Alain and I declined to pay the $1 or whatever to go inside and wandered the little village near the temple. One sales lady was ridiculously persistant with a set of salad spoons. She actually chased our van as it was pulling away!


Next stop was Prambanan, the largest Hindu temple compound in Indonesia. This was were Sarah and I began our celebrity tour: The kids in the background got one look at Sarah and flocked around her, each taking a picture. This happened to us a lot, especially outside of the main tourist centres. We'd hear "Touris!", and a bunch of schoolkids, usually girls, would flock to one of us, and we'd stand patiently as they would take a few hundred pictures, doing our best to look pretty. What was funny, is they usually didn't want to know our names, where we were from, or any other bit of information about us. It's still a mystery what they do with the pictures. I was also later to find out (when Sarah wasn't around), that local teens would mistake me for Brad Pitt (or something), and insist on pictures. They would ask a more questions that the schoolkids, and were invariably disappointed when I told them I was visiting with my wife (a white lie that seemed to keep me out of trouble). No one thought Remi was Brad Pitt, but having wedding bands, even if fake, is recommended by us.
These are the carvings from the Hindu temple, obviously with different themese, but still in a similar style.
Our hotel in Yogya wasn't 5-star (or probably even 1-star), but it had a rooftop patio, where we could relax during the midday heat, and enjoy a Bintang, the local brew, availabe for less than 2 bucks pretty much everywhere.
As always, we spent lots of time writing in our journal, making sure we don't forget about our many experiences.
Sarah with some schoolgirls. They aren't shy. They actually grab at you. And a group shot isn't good enough. They each want individual pictures. This act was most prominent on Java, I think, but even in Tana Toraja, we were chased down by a woman for a picture of us with her children.
The next day we went to Yogya's famous bird market. Besides countless birds of many species, there are also a variety of mammals and reptiles available. If you're into the illegal bird trade, I'm sure this is a good place to start. I didn't see anything immediately objectionable, but I'm sure there's lots to be found if you know who to ask. This particular guy is likely going to be used in a cock-fight. Many people in Canada may find this inhuman, but then, many people in Canada haven't been bothered at 5AM by some idiot rooster. At one point I was willing to purchase a rooster just to get it to shut up (by eating it for dinner). Unfortunately, they're quite expenive.
This was a great restaurant at the edge of the bird market. We had this whole large table to ourselves, and we could comfortable watch the goings-on in the market. We probably spent about 2 hours here. I notice that Remi failed to mention this idiot "guide" that followed us around for the entire day - again, unsolicited. He latched onto us early saying "I work for the area. I want to practice my English. You don't have to pay me." Having been scammed at least once or twice, I was wise. I said to him, we don't need a guide thank you, we're not paying you, we've already bought Batik (pretty incredible art that is a specialty of this region, but also common to Indonesia as a whole). He didn't seem at all concerned and proceeded to drag us through the sites at a speed none of us appreciated. He told us bits and pieces (i.e. they don't eat turkeys, but rather keep them as pets; people eat some kind of bat to cure asthma; the birds are mostly used in singing competitions), but who knows how much of it was true. Anyway, we knew we were going to be a while at lunch, so we said so to him (who was waiting outside), but he hung around anyway. After our two hour break, we set off again, him dragging us to the water palace and then, here's the kicker, THIS is Indonesia, to his home, past his blind mother where he sells.... Drum roll please!!! BATIK!! Muttering "I help you, now you help me" over and over again, I said NO! We're not buying from you. You lied. You said you didn't want money, that you worked here. I told you we had Batik already. You were dishonest. The guy was pissed! He starts shouting in French (he knew Alain spoke French) how bad we were and then went by us on a motorbike and kicked his heals out at us. What a complete MORON! He was warned and yet still followed us all day. Idiot! Okay, I'm done ;)
This is inside the old sultan's palace. At it's prime, this would have been the pool where the harem would come to bathe, far from the prying eyes of the peasants outside. Although you can't see it, there is a tower on the right, where the sultan could relax and watch his many wives. We did enjoy Yogya, even if it can be trying, with many, many, many people working every conceivable angle to get your money (although we didn't experience theft here), but we had to get on a plane to head towards Bali where we would eventually meet up with mom the next day.
Dad had booked another 5-star hotel (it's difficult travelling with parents) south of Ubud, where we planned to spend a couple of days before moving on again.
Ubud is neat. The Hindu culture is prevalent here, and there are temples everywhere, and you have to watch were you step to avoid tampling an offering (I didn't put in a picture, but these were usually a small basket made of banana leaf filled with rice, cookies, flowers sometimes, and a stick of incense).
One of the side-streets.
From the air you would think that Indonesia's sole purpose is rice production. This is one of the fields within walking distance from the hotel.
Many people might not care, or notice, but this is actually a large fern. Once I knew what to look for, I would see these everywhere. They stand about 3-5m tall. Pretty neat.
Bali is famous for its traditional dancers, so we went to a performance. We'll add videos later.
The costumes were very elaborate, and although we had no idea what was going on (until we later read the brochure), it was neat to watch. They're very expressive with their faces and the way they move their bodies, even down to their fingers. It was amazing.

This is the sacred monkey forest in Ubud. It's very cool, the forest is small, but there are many paths and quiet spots, and there are monkeys everywhere, not all of them terribly shy.
We were apprehensive at first. We had no idea if the monkeys were aggressive, or how to deal with them in any way. One of them tugged at Sarah's sarong, but otherwise they left us alone. They thought we should have had bananas. They are a major tourist attraction, so the site sells food to feed them.
We watched them play for a while. They were climbing up and down this branch, pushing each other into the small pool below.
It's not too obvious in this picture, but this is one particulary well endowed naughty monkey.
Finally a country that not only encourages, but actually requires men to wear sarongs (in certain temples). It's the ultimate in comfort in the warmer climates.
This pool was cool.
After the hard life in Bali, we left for Gili Meno, on the eastern side of Lombok (on the marsupial side of the Wallace Line, for those of you who care). There is nothing to do on the island other than relax, eat, and snorkel. It was terrific.
The hotels and restaurants were all on the beach, connected to one another by a network of roads. There were no motor vehicles on the island, however, so it was either walk from place to place, which was easy, or take what is known as a Lombok Ferrari, as seen in the background.
Apparently, one of the must-do things on the island is to watch the sunrise over Lombok. That's Gunung Rinjani on the right, a large active volcano. My only regret from the trip is that we didn't make the effort to climb it. Maybe another time...
I spent as much time snorkelling as possible, which was easy, because you can go from shore. Due to fishing and maybe global warming, the corals in the shallow water weren't incredible, but the fish life was. I've never seen diversity like that anywhere, I couldn't begin to outline every species we saw, but the highlight would definitely be some black clownfish that would come charging up at us when we got too close, and a lion fish I spotted under a rock.
Gili Meno also has many visiting sea turtles, and we quickly found that if we approached slowly, they weren't afraid of us, and we could get close enough to touch them. On our last day on the island, I followed one for a half hour or so, watching it feed, and enjoying life from a turtle's point of view.
There are many boating trips offering "primo" snorkelling, but if you know what you're looking for, you can easily do it from shore, braving the dead coral beds on the way out and back in. We ran into a guy promoting his boat with an "I bet you didn't see this!" attitude, but we'd actually seen everything he promises from his boat ;)
One of the restaurants.
I never got to see one of these, but that would be really cool.
Our private cabin, air-conditioned, of course.
Sunset dinner, in our fancy new sarongs. I'm actually wearing a dress, but I did buy it in Indonesia.

Exploring the snorkelling on the other side of the island. Not as good as on our side, but we did swim over an impressive coral garden.
There were many travelling sales people that would come to the island to sell home-made jewelry. A lot of it was nice, as pearls are grown on Lombok, and readily available. We bought Sarah a necklace and some earrings here. We drove a hard bargain, getting the price down to $12.50 and a slice of pizza. It was hard though, as these people are scraping a difficult living, and it was impossible to buy something from everyone.
There is a bird sanctuary on Gili Meno, founded by an expat. We got a guide tour and were allowed to hold a few of the birds. The guide was actually included in the entrance fee!!
One of these climbed right up on my head!
There is also a turtle sanctuary, where newly hatched turtles are kept for a few months before being released into the ocean. It's important work, as populations are declining everywhere (think of that when you eat tuna, swordfish, and other open water species), and allowing them to grow even a little greatly improves their chance of survival.
We quickly discovered that we could order fresh fish at all the restaurants (this one was the cheapest, maybe because there were extremely large spiders in the kitchen), which makes for a terrific lunch.
Plenty of seashells, although the larger ones were usually broken.
A typical restaurant. I think there's a market for this setup in Canada.

The sweet life couldn't go on forever, and besides, we still had lots to see, so we left early one morning, and made for Suranadi, a quiet town on Lombok, known for a Hindu Temple, and not much else. There was a very clear river running through the temple, open at a couple of wells, were very sacred water is collected for other temples all over the island. Pretty neat. It was also completely off the beaten track. There were sparse accomodations, no western tourists, and very friendly locals. It was in this town that we had one of our cheapest meals: less than 3 bucks for tonnes of food and drinks. The temple here is actually extra sacred. People from all over Lombok come here to get water from the sacred well for offerings. You cannot use regular tap water for your daily offerings in Hindu culture, on Lombok, anyway. You must come here to get it. Very interesting.
The bathroom segment of this blog was bound to come sooner or later, so here goes: there is never any toilet paper (unless you pay for fancy hotels), but there is a bucket and a hose. You do the math. On the plus side, you can pee in the shower and not get in trouble for it. We bought our own toilet paper (which you MUST NOT TRY TO FLUSH) and had regular toilets most of the time.
After visiting all the sights of Suranadi, we went to Mataram, Lombok's largest city. The city itself was not terribly interesting, but we could visit a few sights from our hotel ($10/night, with A/C, balcony, and HBO). It was here that we met Sabri, a local man who offered to take us around on a tour. As the town was boring, we agreed. He took us to many of the local sights, including a couple of markets, where we could buy stuff without paying a tourist premium and yet another Hindu temple, this one known for it's many monkeys.
This time we came prepared: we had peanuts. We couldn't see any monkeys at first, until our guide started calling them down. Hundreds rushed down the steps towards us and waited relatively patiently until we fed them. Sarah was quickly picked out as the chump in the crowd, and had her bag stolen more than once. Only twice! And only by the big monkeys :P
They're pretty cute.
This is ikat, a form of weaving that's still common on Lombok. The threads are individually dyed, then pulled through one at a time. It's a very labour intensive job, but it's essential to the village economy. Here women must learn the process before they are considered marriageable and are able to contribute to the household income. The other neat thing we learned, is that here, in order to marry a girl, a man must "kidnap" his girlfriend from her parents' house at night without them noticing. Then, when she is safely at his parents' house, a suitable price is agreed upon, and everyone is happy. Very romantic ;) When talking to the girl in this village, she asked if I had been kidnapped (I had mentioned that Remi and I were recently engaged). I decided that I sort of had, since he was the reason we ended up in BC! Dad, you should be looking for suitable compensation! ;)
After Lombok, we took a couple of flights (one of which was the aforementioned Denapassar-Makassar flight where Lion Air employees went into our luggage and stole Remi's buck-knife and some pocket money, the latter of which I shouldn't have kept in there, but the former of which we can't very well carry onto the plane!) and a 10-hour bus ride to get to Rantepao, a small town in the heart of Toraja. The area is known for the community of Torajans that still retain parts of their old animist beliefs. Although a lot of their culture has been lost, they still retain their very elaborate funeral ceremonies and their traditional homes, tongkonans (above).
At the root of the funeral ceremomy is the belief that corporeal death is transitional period between life on earth and the afterlife in heaven (they are predominantly Catholic). Therefore, when a person dies, they are considered to be asleep, and are kept in the house for several months or years until the family has accumulated sufficient wealth for a funeral and gathered the whole family in Toraja.
Up to here, I understood the basics of the process, but the obvious questions, especially bearing in mind the average temperatures exceeding 30°C and 90-100% humidity, remained unanswered. Our guide explained that the process of preservation was rudimentary: some brine is poured in the mouth, and the body is swaddled in blankets, then laid within the family tongkonan until the funeral. And yes, he said, it stinks. A lot. I heard rumors later that in some cases they might also use formeldahyde, but anyone in biology knows that's not necessarily an improvement. And since the body is still at this point considered an earthly being, guests to the house must greet their (dead) host as they would a person, and extend to them the same courtesies expected of a live person. All this with a thick stench in the house. Yikes.
Central to the process of getting to heaven is (obviously) the funeral ceremony, that appears to be centered on the sacrifice of many buffalos and pigs that will join their previous owners into the afterlife. We attended one part of a funeral (pictures below), where as many as 24 buffalo can be killed, as well as hundreds of pigs. The buffalo are especially prized, and can be worth up to $10,000 for the nicest albino ones.
Theses are tau-tau, effigies of the dead, that stand guard over the cliffside graves (some corpses are put in special tongkonan, other in cliffside graves, and some are buried according to a class system we still don't understand).
We innocently left the ceremony to find the washroom, and stumbled across the pig slaughter. Lacking better tools, the pigs are simply stabbed in heart with a machete (it was awful to see, but we got over it and had pig for lunch). We didn't see the buffalo slaughter, but it's much more ritualized, as the animals are killed in the middle of the ceremonial grounds with one or two machete hits to the throat. Some friends we met took pictures: I'll add them if I get them. I can still hear the sound of the pigs squeeling and it's not just when they're killed. They carry them around on bamboo contraptions with twice that cuts into their flesh. Yucky. There are videos we will post for you interest.
This buffalo would be expensive.
Little boys all dressed up.
And the girls. I like this shot. Notice the cell phone? These are the grandchildren of the deceased. And cellphones were everywhere! They must be cheap - we're so ripped off in North America!
Some rice.
Roadside pictures. Toraja is very beautiful.
Up close with the tau-tau.
The exception to the funeral system are babies that haven't yet grown teeth. They are buried in this tree (and probably others like it) and can proceed to heaven without butchering countless animals. Toothless babies haven't yet sinned. I assume that "sinning" constitutes eating animals or something other than breastmilk. As the tree grows, it carries their souls to "paradise" (we assume this means something similar to heaven).
Carving tongkonan is big business, as they can be used only once for people, and are also needed for other purposes in funerals and daily life. A whole "village" of sorts is built for each ceremony and unless someone else dies within a month of the first funeral, these are torn down and must be rebuilt for any other ceremonies.
Although the funeral ceremony is so important, it obviously can't be applied to everyone, so it seems that many people end up in shared coffins in specially designated areas. These were on the cliffs behind Kete' Kesu.
A traditional village, preserved by the Indonesian government. Not without controversy, however, as the locals aren't allowed to apply their continuing culture anywhere in this village.
Buffalo horns are a sign of wealth.

We visited a few caves, all of which also served as tombs. Without exception they were littered with garbage; apparently these are "offererings", but I suspect they only say that to cover the great Indonesian tradition of dumping stuff everywhere.
Every 6 days there is a market in Rantepao where people come to sell their buffalo.
This would be the nicest (by Torajan standards) buffalo we saw, and would sell for $10,000 or more, in a country where many people make less that $5 a day.
After this, another 10 hour bus ride, then a flight to Jakarta, where we treated ourselves to the 5-star hotel, and a very uneventful flight home.
It was a great trip.

It was a great trip. We had some amazing experiences and met some incredible people. I'm still coughing from pollution though, as every man smokes, everyone burns their garbage and roads are congested with traffic. It's a stinky country. However, the people are what I am choosing to remember. They may look at you skeptically from a distance, but catch their eye and offer a smile and their whole face will light up. They are instantly willing to make friends and tell you about their community. Indonesians are proud to be Indonesian. They ask you if you like Indonesia and if you answer yes, they are very honoured and pleased that you do. While we dealt with many scams and attempts to rip us off and hound us for "transport/taksi", that is not what I'm choosing to remember from this trip. Although I do urge you to be aware of it if you are travelling. Common schemes include: "Oh, I went to school at UBC/U of T/McGill/etc.!" "My brother lives in Vancouver/Edmonton/Toronto/etc.!" "I'm an english student and I want to practice my english." "This is the last day for this exhibition - it's for the orphans!" "Special price/morning price/last day price." If you can shift through the bullshit and not let it get to you, you will be rewarded with some of the friendliest, most genuine people you'll ever meet.

And that was Indonesia :)

Remi & Sarah