Obsessions of Asia

We are woefully behind on posting since we came back to the United States. Despite having almost constant access to computers and the Internet, we have focused our time on seeing family and friends. Even for me, it is hard to say, "Mom, I know you haven't seen me for two years, but I just have to get those Obsessions posts done..."

So, without anymore excuses, here come Asia's obsessions:

India- Spitting. An easy one. The average Indian might spit 1200 times per day. And we aren't talking about small little bits of spittle. We're talking about pieces of lung the size of a fist. Sure, lots of Indians also have a paan habit (think chewing tobacco, but different ingredients that also happen to make one's spit Kool-Aid red), but even those that don't chew still spit. And before the spitting comes a noise that sounds like the regurgitation of a cow. Wait, most Indians don't eat cow, so a goat. Like hawking up a goat.

Sri Lanka- Water tanks. What is a water tank you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you even if you didn't ask. A water tank is a man made lake. Sri Lanka has a lot of areas that are at altitude and are very wet for part of the year, but very dry for the rest of the year. So, starting a thousand years ago or more, digging giant water pits became the prerequisite for growing any large city that wasn't on the sea. And they did it with gusto. Some of the cities have dozens of lakes that are far larger than many dammed lakes in the US, and they were all dug out by hand. Or maybe with hands and a rock and maybe a chisel, but you get the point. Good job, ancient Sri Lankans!

Malaysia- Tourism posters. If all the Asian countries were elementary school students, Malaysia would get the "Tries Hardest" certificate at the end of the year. Not only are tourism posters in nearly every window of Malaysia, they are in nearly every hotel and vaguely related travel business everywhere in Asia. They must have printed millions of them. And that makes it even sadder that more people don't visit Malaysia, which really is a spectacular country.

Singapore- Rules. Singapore has rules for everything. And fines for not following most of them. The list of fines in the subway cars was as long as my arm. (We especially appreciated that one of the highest fines was for bringing the smelly durian fruit on the train.) If you like to conform, consider moving to Singapore. If you have ever voted Libertarian or are a card carrying member of the Tea Party, consider vacationing somewhere other than Singapore.

Indonesia- Cats without tails. Didn't see that one coming, did you? We saw hundreds of cats in Indonesia and every one of them had some or all of its tail missing. We can only assume that people think they should not have tails and take it upon themselves to cut off the tails with whatever sharp instrument is laying around when they see a cat with tail intact. We thought that we might see this in other countries, but it was really just Indonesia.

Thailand- 7-Eleven. Think of all the 7-Elevens you have ever seen. Multiply that number by 100. That is how many 7-Elevens are on the average block in Thailand. It used to be a joke in New York that Starbucks would often have locations right across the street from one another. 7-Eleven in Thailand might regularly have three stores on a block. I don't understand how they stay in business, especially since they are more expensive than most Thai businesses, but they all seem the thrive. Since I love Slurpees, I thank the Thai people for making cheap Slurpees available everywhere.

Burma (Myanmar)- Gold leaf. I had never heard of someone's job being to hammer gold until it was gold leaf. In Burma, that ranks as one of the most popular jobs. Where does all that gold leaf go? Buddhists in Burma buy the gold leaf and then rub it onto the Buddha statues (or anything else that they believe should be gold) at the Buddhist temples. This keeps everything bright and shiny. Oh, I should point out that only men are allowed to do this. Women aren't allowed to touch the Buddha statues, but can buy some gold leaf and have a manly man rub it onto the Buddha.

Cambodia- Angkor Wat. It seems sort of lame to be obsessed with your biggest tourist attraction, but Cambodia unquestionably is. It adorns the flag, half the stores in the country are named for it, and it inspired enough awe that even Pol Pot didn't destroy it. And Pol Pot destroyed just about everything in Cambodia.

Vietnam- Motor scooters. The average person in Vietnam has 3.2 motor scooters. Approximately. Through a quantum trick, they ride all of them simultaneously. So, while Vietnam has only 80 million people, 250 million people ply the roads on motor scooters at any given time. And most of those 250 million are going down the road that you want to cross. The streets of the large cities look like a moped convention.

Laos- Fruit shakes. I try to find something deeper than a food for country obsessions, but fruit shakes made with fruit, condensed milk, sugar, and ice are what hold the country of Laos together and makes the whole country so friendly. That's pure speculation, but locals and tourists alike can be found drinking delicious and cheap shakes all over the country, and we were certainly fans. For those who are not feeling happy enough after a regular shake, many places seem to offer "happy" shakes, which come with whatever drugs they happen to have in stock (pot in most places).

China- Crotchless pants. No, China isn't turning into 1980s New York. Any child under the age of three in China wears pants with a giant slit down the crotch and no underwear underneath. This allows them to go to the bathroom anytime and anywhere they like. And I do mean anytime and anywhere. Let's say the kid is waiting in a busy ticket line inside the train station with the parent and needs to go to the bathroom--that's what those pants are for. Number one or number two? Doesn't matter. Does the parent clean it up? No. It stays there for others to step in. While China seems likely to take over the world one day, we hope they get rid of crotchless pants prior to that.

Mongolia- Chengis Khan. Yeah, I thought it was Genghis Khan, too, but not in Mongolia. This founder of the Mongol Empire is known for uniting the nomads of Mongolia, declaring war on anything that moved, killing about a bajillion people, and creating the beginning of the largest empire the world has ever known. That, of course, makes him the hero of Mongolia. Based on our experience, I don't see the second coming of the Mongol Empire anytime soon.

There you have it: the obsessions of Asia. Disagree with us? Too bad. Write your own blog. Or leave us nasty comments about how we disparaged your country. That's why our home address isn't on the blog. Well, that and we don't have a home yet...

From Rupees to Rupiah: Financing Asia

All through our travels, people told us how cheap Asia would be...and, looking forward to bringing down our average daily budget, we hoped that they were right. Luckily, they were!

Here are the numbers by country. In case you forgot how we do this, these numbers are for two people, including visa costs and all costs on the ground (and in the air if we took internal flights). Sometimes we also include the cost of a flight into the country if that was the only way to get there.

India: $53 per day. Visas cost $74 each at the embassy in Istanbul. India is one of the cheapest countries we've been to, so staying there for five weeks did wonders for our financial (if not gastrointestinal) health. Hotel rooms ranged from $10-$25 depending on level of comfort (except in Mumbai, where it's hard to find a double for less than $50); restaurant meals could usually be had for a buck or two, and street food for pennies; and train transport in sleeper class cost less than a hotel. Not getting ripped off on cabs and tourist excursions required some negotiating.

Sri Lanka: $80 per day (including flight from Chennai, India, which costs about $120 per ticket; $53 per day without flight). No visa fees. Sri Lanka's hotels and food were a little more expensive than India's, but it made up for it with what is possibly the world's cheapest public transport on a $-per-hour basis. If you plan to visit more than two historic sites in the "Cultural Triangle" area, getting a pass can save you $25 or more.

Malaysia: $47 per day. No visas. Some travelers complain about Malaysia being pricey, but as it turns out, the only traveler item that is really expensive in (Muslim-majority) Malaysia is beer! As long as you don't drink much, the country is terrific value, especially considering how developed it is. Air-con double rooms with shared (but very clean, hot-water) bathrooms cost $10-$15, and delicious, cheap street food abounds. Transport is a little pricier than some Asian countries, but you usually get comfortable, AC buses on smooth roads. We stuck to the peninsula this time and didn't do any fancy tourist excursions, but our memories of our previous trip to Borneo are that prices were very reasonable there, too.

Singapore: $111 per day. No visas. We only spent two days in Singapore, so this is kind of skewed, but it's certainly one of the most developed and expensive countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the cheaper hotels are in the red light district, where we found a decent private room for $35 a night. Public transport, museums, and restaurants are comparable to Western prices, but taxis (which are metered, hallelujah!) and street or food court foods are relatively cheap.

Indonesia: $102 per day. One-month visas on arrival at the airport cost $25 each. Indonesia was surprisingly expensive, though that's largely because we did a lot of pricey activities like SCUBA diving, chartering a boat to Krakatau volcano, and a few other organized tours. No-frills internal flights between the islands were a pretty good deal, usually less than $50 one-way and could be booked just a day or two before. Buses and trains on the ground varied a lot in price and quality. Hotel rooms for $10-$15 could be found, but were usually pretty disgusting; if we wanted cleanliness and AC, we usually had to pay at least $25. Cheap street food could be found in most places, though not so much in touristy Bali, where we usually had to shell out for real restaurants.

Thailand: $83 per day. No visa fees. Considering how many touristy activities we did in Thailand (diving, elephant training camp, etc.), this is a great average. Hotel and transport standards are pretty high, but competition for the tourist buck keeps prices low. Markets selling cheap local food are pretty easy to find, and even fancy restaurants are probably cheaper than the Thai restaurants you find at home. Just try not to get robbed, which could certainly send your costs soaring!

Myanmar: $77 per day. Visas cost $27 each in Bangkok. This average includes flights into and out of Yangon from Bangkok ($130 each roundtrip), which accounted for one-third of our expenditures there. Once you're on the ground, Myanmar (Burma) is super cheap in all categories, though its rough roads, ancient vehicles, and power cuts often made it feel more like traveling in sub-Saharan Africa than Southeast Asia.

Cambodia: $53 per day. Visas cost $20 each at the border. Cambodia is excellent value. $11 a night got us rooms with bathroom, AC, and sat TV in both Siem Riep and Phnom Penn, the two most touristed cities in the country. Markets and restaurants offer cheap food; bus transport and tourist site admissions are pretty reasonable. If we had stayed longer, or ventured out to less touristy places, it probably would have been even cheaper, but even so, Cambodia was one of the cheapest destinations on our trip.

Vietnam: $66 per day. Visas cost $45 each in Phnom Penn, Cambodia. Vietnam's one of those countries that feels more expensive than it is, probably because people are trying to rip you off almost continuously. But we did manage to stay in some pretty nice hotel rooms and eat decent food for not a lot of money. Trains cost more than buses but are much nicer (which isn't the same as saying that they're actually nice!), especially for overnight travel. Halong Bay overnight cruises can be an especially good deal for a decently swanky experience...provided your boat doesn't sink in the night, of course.

Laos: $57 per day. Visas cost $40 each at the border. Laos is pretty poor, so the roads and buses aren't always the nicest, but hotels were quite comfortable, food was inexpensive, activities like kayaking were very reasonable, and prices overall about as cheap as could be.

China: $92 per day. Visas cost $160 each in Vientiane, Laos--the most expensive of our entire trip. (They are about $100 less expensive for non-Americans, though.) Yunnan province, in southwestern China, was incredibly inexpensive; with $10 hotel rooms and cheap bus rides, it cost no more than Laos, where we had just come from. As we moved east and to the bigger cities, things got more expensive, though you could always find cheap and tasty food, even in Beijing. In general, China didn't feel overpriced considering the good quality of rooms, trains, and food that we got, and some tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, were surprisingly reasonable.

Mongolia: $121 per day. No visas needed for Americans, though most nationalities need one. This number is high because we spent 6 of our 8 days in the country on a private jeep tour of the Gobi. If we'd managed to find a couple of other travelers to share the tour with, costs would have been halved. Otherwise, the country's pretty budget-friendly: In Ulaan Bataar, the capital, a hostel room with breakfast, Internet, and shared bath cost $15; there were expensive restaurants and cheap local-food canteens to choose from; and the 15-hour train from the China border cost around $9 for seats, or $25 for sleeper berths.

So, Asia had a few expensive countries, but was mostly pretty cheap for us. Hope that this post was slightly helpful to you if you're planning to backpack through Asia. If you have any questions, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you!

Indonesian Food: The Brightest on Earth?

Indonesia is a big country with many ethnic groups. This equates to lots of different food. We were somewhat disappointed with the food choices when we first arrived, but by the time we had left, we knew how to find the diamonds in the mist. Or something like that. A lot of pictures, so I'll try to keep the commentary brief and funny.

Muslims (ie most of Indonesia) don't eat pork, but Bali is mostly Hindu and loves pork. Here I am with pork sate (spelled satay in Malaysia), and, amazingly, vegetables. That's right--they eat vegetables in Indonesia!
Gad0-gado is peanut sauce with some vegetables on the side. Or at least the peanut sauce is the part worth eating. And the shrimp cracker things, which come with everything in Indonesia.
Oreos that taste like ice cream? What could they mean by "real ice cream flavor"? They mean menthol. Apparently, ice cream tastes like menthol if you are Asian, but they are still good. Also, they are blueberry, and Indonesians would eat poop if you told them that it was blueberry flavored.
Speaking of which, blueberry Fanta is popular and tastes a bit like...fake blueberry. More importantly, they have Speculaas, aka windmill cookies! As far as I can tell, the Dutch left their colonies with two good things: canals for sewage and windmill cookies.
Es teler, which roughly translates as "ice with whatever we have laying around that day" is a tasty treat in which the ice melts in the heat of Indonesia in between five and ten seconds. Some are tastier than others because you never know what they might add. I freaked out a bit when one place added shredded cheddar cheese to the top...
Bintang is the unofficial beer of Indonesia. I suspect it pays enough bribes to keep lax liquor laws in a Muslim country that it would be the official government beer if Muslim countries were allowed to have official beers. Tara says it isn't bad.
On two-for-one special was banana nectar! I love banana nectar (though not as much as peach)! So, I had no choice but to buy two. Sure, they were imported from Austria, but they were cheap and good.
This Indonesia fruit is called salud, and sounds like people are offering you salad. No, I don't want your salad. A type of palm fruit, they feel like scales. Inside are a couple of big pits surrounded by fleshy fruit that tastes a bit like a lychee, but not as juicy. Tara really didn't like them, but she once vomitted lychees for several hours while seasick, so she hates anything remotely like a lychee.
We went to a famous place in Bali that makes suckling pig. The place was crammed full of tourists and locals alike, but the food was not nearly as good as the southern barbecue that we often crave.
And they had this really great pig fountain to boot. Indonesia is the first country since Argentina to have its own brand of knock-off M&Ms. The verdict: Chachas might be better than peanut M&Ms. Long live Chachas!
We splurged on an all duck dinner, paying a whopping $6 each for a half duck. Tara had them fry hers until nothing was left but fry. My grilled duck was really good, though, and I normally don't care much for duck. Except for DuckTales, possibly the best cartoon series ever made.
Sop Ayam means chicken soup. What you get when you ordered it is as varied as what you get when you order chicken soup in the US. They always come with rice, though, unlike soup in the US...
Fried bananas! We first found these in Flores, where we stayed to see the Komodo dragons and dive. They weren't as good as Madagascar fried bananas, the gold standard in fried bananas, but they were cheap and decent and really fried.
Avocado shakes are popular in most of Indonesia, despite the general lack of avocados growing in the country. They always have chocolate syrup in them, which seems weird. I don't really like avocado shakes or chocolate syrup, but Tara loves them enough to keep her from crying when she lost this card game to me.
The drink on the left is this person's version of Es Teler. The one on the right, which looks basically identical in this picture, is actually a coconut drink with huge chunks of young coconut in it. Plus some crazy jelly stuff thrown in for fun.
Mie goreng, or fried noodles, are everywhere. The first time I ordered them, I didn't realize that they are always served with a fried egg or omelette on top. Fortunately, it was as flat and solid as it looks in this picture, so I could lift it right off and display it next to my plate like a piece of art. (For those who aren't regular readers, neither Tara nor I really like eggs by themselves. Yuck, eggs.)
We kept seeing this stuff called Tehbotol, which Tara finally figured out meant "tea bottle". Yeah, seems easy when you read it, but not so easy if you don't have us to tell you. In any case, we saw them everywhere, but hadn't tried them until we made friends with a little old lady at the convenience stand (what a convenience store becomes if it is just a case outside a woman's house) near our hotel in a part of Bali where they never have tourists. She sold us these at what must have been her cost so that we would stay and talk to her. They are a jasmine tea, and pretty good.
Indonesians love donuts. This works well since I also love donuts. Dunkin' Donuts has much better flavors like mango-filled and blueberry. Some of the flavors not pictured, like orange-lychee, turned out not to be as good.
Es buah, which I think means "ice honey", was so bright that this picture was taken in complete darkness with no flash. Or at least it seemed that bright. Each jelly and fruit was a different weird flavor and texture.
Java has what are known as siomay, which are meats covered in gelatinous rice. We didn't know that when we ordered them, and the basic one is fish if you don't upgrade to a real meat. As it turns out, they are gross. We ordered two of them each and managed to eat about a third of one. The greenbean bundles were better. The owner spoke really good English and made fun of us for not liking them.
This looks like tofu or tempeh covered in peanut sauce, but the peanut sauce is all that really matters. Tempeh is really popular in Indonesia, though, and it is better than tofu.
McDonald's in Indonesia (and Malaysia) has flavor burst cones. Very tasty. And for those who are asking how we could eat at McDonald's, we suggest you leave the country for a year and then see if you don't stop for some soft serve.
I have a habit, especially at places selling sweets, of pointing at a bunch of things without asking what they are. In this case, everything looked good and I saw them putting dessicated coconut on all the sweets. But, Indonesians like to fill their sweets with bad, sulphurous flavors. I managed to eat them all, but these were the last sweets I bought on the streets of Indonesia.
On the heels of that, I bought a bag of random fried foods for breakfast the next morning. Thanks to Tara's amazing Indonesian vocabulary of at least ten words, I narrowly missed a brush with a fish filled one. They weren't bad, but most were filled with various pastes and mixtures that I will never be able to identify.
In the supermarket, we found about ten things that looked like what we call Asian pears. Tara loves Asian pears, and they were cheaper than in the US, so she bought one. This one turned out to be a not-too-excellent normal pear. Sad.
Bakso is a soup that has noodles, vegetables, tofu, balls that seem like matzo balls, a wonton, and whatever else they might have available. It turned out to be really good and we had it a few times.
Here is the cart that sells the bakso. They just throw the stuff from the windows into the bowl and add broth from the pot.
Back to McDonald's for a blueberry sundae. They love that blueberry in Indonesia!
More than once, we saw stands selling "Pop Ice". You buy this little pouch of stuff that a woman (selling Pop Ice seems only to be done by women) adds with ice and water to a blender and out pops an amazing milk shake. Or at least the package seems to indicate that. At a festival, we broke down and bought one. It was just okay.
But the stand that sells them looks nice. We got mango, but it was tough to pass on the durian flavor.
Mie ayam means noodle chicken and looks like this. It is available everywhere, and is pretty good. Especially if you are trapped in a little shack selling them during a downpour for about an hour. You'd probably find yourself eating at least a couple of bowls.
What kind of juice does an Indonesian drink? Blueberry, of course. They add additional, fake blueberry flavor, though, because they like fake blueberry a bit more than real blueberry.
Indonesia is a country where the local buses constantly have people coming through selling things. The vendor selling this thing was doing brisk business and I had seen similar grilled rice patties elsewhere and was curious to try them. As it turns out, they taste exactly like they look. Smash some boiled rice together and throw it on the grill for a few minutes. Indonesians love rice almost as much as blueberries, so they go nuts for these things.
We took shared taxis in Sumatra, and one of them stopped at this snack store that had a lot of crazy things. I immediately bought a package of a dozen of these green things based solely on the bright green color. They turned out to be like a tortilla filled with some sweet stuff made from I don't know what. Not terrible.
We discovered soto ayam too late in our trip. A coconut-based broth with noodles and chicken, it is really good. We went back to this restaurant a second time even though it took almost an hour to prepare the food even though we were the only customers.
After seeing Yakult everywhere, Tara finally broke down and bought some. What is Yakult you ask if you aren't married to a yogurt expert or Asian? Yakult is a drinkable yogurt drink that is supposed to be healthy for you and is incredibly popular in much of Asia. It tastes like a lime if you left the lime sitting on your counter for a couple of months and then ate it.
Our guidebook called this the best gado-gado (vegetables with peanut sauce) in all of Indonesia. The peanut sauce (ie the only part that matters) was really good. Tara insisted that some of the vegetables tasted like cleaning fluid, though.
We bought these giant deep fried leaves immediately when we saw them. The leaves didn't taste like much, so it really just tasted like fried, but look how healthy those leaves look. Try it at home--just grab some leaves, bread, and fry!
We have mentioned durians a few times--they taste like sweet, metallic garlic and many Asians love them. They smell, however, like rotting flesh, so many places ban them. This is from our hotel.
Possibly the most popular drink in Indonesia is called Pocari Sweat. Despite the terrible name, I finally broke down and tried it. If you collected your sweat and added a bit of lemon juice, this is what it would taste like. It was like licking my armpit. Yum.

Well, that wraps up our foods of Indonesia. Sorry for the long post. Now for the summary: Indonesian food isn't that bad, with a few really good items, but it isn't the best. We expect the rest of Southeast Asia to be better.

Indonesia: 0.03% of all islands now visited!

Our last Indonesia post left you with the image of a sunset off of Flores island, so I should probably start you off with a sunrise at our next destination. Except I don't wake up in time for sunrises, so another sunset it is!


We flew back to Bali and took a bus to the far western edge to squeeze in a visit to the island's only national park before heading farther west to Java. Those volcanoes you see in the background are actually on Java, it's that close.
Here's the bathroom of the lovely room we got near the park. OK, lovely is an overstatement, but the room only cost $8. We've used public squat toilets in a lot of countries, but Indonesia is the first one that will routinely give you a squat toilet in a private bathroom! The squareish structure next to the squat is another uniquely Indonesia bathroom feature, the mandi. It's a basin that's filled with water from a tap, then you just scoop out the water with a plastic scooper for whatever purposes you need. It's a toilet flusher, sink, and bucket shower all in one!
OK, finally, we get to the national park, where we did some birdwatching. This is probably the coolest bird we saw, a rufous-backed kingfisher.
Our guide took us up to a lovely lookout, where we sat for a while and watched birds swoop in and out of the forest.
Bali just can't let an intersection be an intersection--if it doesn't put up a huge statue or fountain, it'll bridge it with a crazy structure like this one. Glad we had some stone dragons guarding the road from potential attackers...
On to Java! We got tickets on a Yogyakarta-bound super-luxury bus that may have been the nicest overnight bus we've ever taken: tons of legroom and AC, free pillow and blanket, bathroom on the bus, welcome snack box, and buffet dinner stop included in the ticket. (Stupidly, we assumed that this boded well for bus travel in the rest of Indonesia. It didn't.)

Anyway, our bus drove right onto the car ferry heading from Bali to Java. We got off and enjoyed the half-hour crossing on deck.


Where there is smoke, there must be volcanoes (and cigarettes): Java


So, Java is Indonesia's most populous island (though not its largest--that's Sumatra, the next one further west). It has Jakarta, the capital, and several other large cities. We had hoped to visit Mount Bromo, in eastern Java, but it inconveniently decided to start erupting that week, putting the kibbosh on that plan. So our first stop there was Yogyakarta (usually pronounced more like "jogjakarta") in central Java. Yogya is supposed to be the cultural/intellectual capital of Java, so we took it upon ourselves to visit some historic sites and artistic performances. (And go to a carnival!)


First up, historic site. Borobudur is an enormous Buddhist shrine from around the 9th century. It was abandoned in the 14th century, as Islam took over as the area's major faith, and was "rediscovered" in the 1800s and restored in the 1900s. It has six levels, hundreds of Buddha statues, and thousands of storytelling relief panels. It is so big that we couldn't even fit it all into one photo!

Buddhist pilgrims are supposed to circumnavigate each level of the structure three times, but of course we just ran straight to the top. The top level has all these beehive-like structures, each containing a seated Buddha inside.

This Buddha appears to have escaped his beehive prison!
Wow, that Buddha's head looks a lot like...
OK, so maybe we weren't as reverential as we could have been. But it was a nice site to visit. These butterflies must agree, since they were everywhere on the grounds.
Our tour made a stop at a nearby little temple, where we paid about 20 cents each to see one final Buddha. Rumor has it that this one was actually made to sit atop Borobudur, but was too heavy in the end to get lifted up there. 20 cents for one Buddha here, or $15 for 504 at Borobudur...which was the better deal? You do the math.
Both Borobudur and Yogyakarta city in general are swarming with uniformed schoolchildren who have been assigned by their English teachers to go talk to tourists, asking them a slew of predetermined questions off a sheet, then asking for our signatures (and sometime our e-mail addresses) or even taking pictures with us to prove that they talked to us. Some kids could barely say the questions and definitely didn't understand our answers, but some were really quite proficient and fun to talk to. Usually the girls were superior, I must say. You go, Javanese schoolgirls! Here I am with a bunch of them on the street in Yogya.
For a few weeks a year, Yogya has a big nightly carnival. We had to ride the Ferris wheel, of course. For 50 cents each we went round and round, faster and faster, for at least 10 minutes. Good investment. And I'm sure the machine was up to all the latest safety standards...

Back to high culture: We went to a Wayang Kulit shadow puppet show. We actually learned all about this traditional Javanese art form last year during our visit to the Santa Fe International Folk Art Museum (remember that post?) in the US, where we said "One day...sometime next year...we will see these puppets in action!" And so we did.


The puppets are made out of buffalo leather and are incredibly intricately designed and painted by craftsmen, many of whose families have been making them for centuries. (The best ones cost around $200 each in case you were wondering--and yes, they'll airmail them to America. No, we didn't buy one.) Here are some puppets, ready to perform scenes from Hindu epics, like the Ramayana.
"Real" wayang kulit performances are marathon all-night affairs, but the tourist version only lasts around two hours. Short or long, all puppets are operated and voiced by a single man behind a screen, though he is backed up by a full orchestra of nifty traditional instruments called a gamalan. For a two-hour show of a myth we didn't know in a language we don't understand, it was pretty mesmerizing. Even more fun is that you can get up and wander around to look at the orchestra and man-behind-the-curtain whenever you like--there are seats on all sides of the screen.
On to Jakarta! We took an overnight train from Yogya to the capital (it was AC and pretty decent, though not nearly as luxurious as the Bali bus)--a good choice, since the train gets in to a central station, but buses arrive many kilometers outside of the city, and traffic is horrendous.


Right outside of the Gambir train station is The National Monument, Monas, also known as Soekarno's Last Erection. Apparently, the former leader erected (heh heh) many monuments around town, which now have funny nicknames (kind of like the statues around Dublin, Ireland, as I recall).
As soon as we got settled in Jakarta, we took a train right out of Jakarta to the suburb of Bogor to visit its famous botanical gardens. They weren't bad, but I have to say that I was kind of disappointed that there was neither a raffelesia nor amorphophallus titanium in bloom for our visit. (Google these flowers--they are huge, stinky, and fabulous!) I mean, didn't anyone tell them that that we were coming?


Anyway, about two minutes after we entered the garden cafe for lunch, the heavens opened and drenched the park for about an hour. Rainy season in Indonesia...guess that's why it's so green.
Back in Jakarta, we wandered north to the old colonial district of Kota (well, what's left of it--a lot of Jakarta has been swallowed up by shopping malls). Jakarta is really big, so just getting there took a few hours (what can I say, the malls kept distracting us). There's a big canal and a lot of old Dutch buildings--just like Amsterdam, with a few more palm trees.
Kota has some museums, but we skipped them in favor of another couple of malls, where I bought a new T-shirt ($1.50!) and decided not to indulge my growing obsessions with netbooks ($350!). Then Andy was feeling shaggy, so we stopped in a hole-in-the-wall barbershop for an 80-cent haircut. While we were in there, the heavens opened...
Apparently, Jakarta has big problems with flooding (and dengue fever) in the rainy season. I guess all those Dutch canals haven't quite done the trick, and the city just keeps expanding.


Luckily for us, the rain stopped in time for us to get home, get on our finest (OK, only clean clothes) and get a taxi to the nice expat part of town for our only fixed appointment in Jakarta--dinner with my cousin's husband's parents! They have been living and working in Jakarta for the past four years, and were wonderful enough to invite us (and all our laundry) over for a serious Tex-Mex feast (and good machine washing), despite us never having really met before. They are big travelers, too, and it was terrific to see their photos and hear their stories about some places we've been and many we hope to get to someday. And it's always really interesting to see what expat life looks like in a city you've just been visiting as a tourist (and to see what said city looks like from a 17th-floor balcony--NICE). So here we are with our Jakarta buddies Terry and Linda--thanks again to you both!
(Also, I hope you noticed my new shirt! Though Linda's embroidered one probably is a much better representative of how nice Indonesian-made clothes can be...)


The next morning, we got a bus to Java's west coast, and let me pause here for a moment to tell you about this bus. If the bus from Bali to Yogya was one of the nicest we've taken in 60 countries, then this one had to be one of the worst. Sure, we've been on a lot of dirty buses with no AC and only half a seat per adult butt. We've been on buses that stop about every three feet, trying to rustle up more passengers even though the aisles are already heaving with standees, making a trip double in time. We've been smoked on in buses, and we've been overcharged. But never before all of these things at once to quite the extent as we experienced on the public bus from Jakarta to Labuan.


I think the smoking was really the worst--the rest of it I can forgive, but the smoking you just can't escape, even if you stick your head as far out the window as it can go. Though it also really got our goats when we found out later that we'd been charged double for the privilege...


Anyway, we did finally arrive at our destination and manage to book a boat for the next day to take us to an even greater source of smoke: Krakatau volcano!


We had both read Simon Winchester's terrific book "Krakatoa" this year, about the 1883 massive eruption that blew apart Krakatau volcano (which sat in the Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra), killing tens of thousands of people and with the amount of ash it discharged into the atmosphere, changing the world's climate for years and even making sunsets more psychedellic worldwide.


"Wait," you say. "If the eruption blew the volcano apart, what is there to go and see now?"


I will tell you: Anak Krakatau, or "son of Krakatau." In the 1930s, a new volcano started to emerge from the sea (eep!) and continues to grow at the crazy rate of a few meters a year (eeep!), regularly smoking and sputtering. In only 80 years, it has formed a whole new island, complete with trees and wildlife, and you can charter a little fishing boat there to go check it out.


Which is what we did. Even though the oceans had been kind of rough lately. And, um, Anak Krakatau recently became more active than usual. Maybe not our smartest move ever, but we lived!


After two hours on windy, choppy seas (during which I learned--twice--that you can indeed get slapped in the face with your own vomit if conditions are right), we finally pulled up within view of the little monster of a volcano, which I was kind of resenting at that point. It is undeniably quite impressive and stark looming out of the ocean, though.
I felt slightly better after making landfall, but not much. Here we are, though, standing on one of the youngest islands in the world. Usually, tourists are allowed to hike partway up the volcano, but because of activity, this is as close as we were allowed to get.
Along with our captain, we were the only people on the island when we landed, which was pretty cool, but as we were sitting on the black-sand beach after our walk, two more boats arrived, loaded with Korean tourists. As they clambered loudly onto the island in their inappropriate footwear, lit up cigarettes, tossed their rubbish into the bushes, and let their Pomeranian off its leash (seriously? You just had to bring Puffy to pee on the volcano?), we quickly decided that it was time to end our visit.


We did snorkel nearby, though, in the shade of what's left of "Mama Krakatau" (one side of the volcano is still standing, now grown over with trees). There's some nice coral and fish there. And the seas were much calmer for the trip back to Java. It was an expensive and often uncomfortable outing, but it was very cool to see the volcano up close. (That's mama on the left, baby in the middle, as we sped away.)
We braved one more public bus trip back to Jakarta (it was no less smokey, but at least we paid the right fare this time) and then flew to Medan in Northern Sumatra.


When orangutans attack: Sumatra


Sumatra is Indonesia's biggest island, and is the one that seems to get hit with the most natural disasters. If you're reading in the paper about a tsunami, or an earthquake, or a flood, or an eruption in Indonesia, chances are it's happening in Sumatra.


But, that's where the orangutans are! So, that's where we went.


But, no more public buses for us. Medan actually has some very affordable shared taxi services for tourists that will take you to the area's attractions in AC, nonsmoking comfort. Well, most of the time the AC works, and most of the time the driver refrains from smoking in the car...in any case, that's how we got around.


We spotted these kids riding atop their school bus on the road to the rainforest. Don't fall off!
At our hotel in Bukit Lawang, there was this cute, semidomesticated animal hanging around. The owners called it a "night cat," but I know that this is no cat! Can anyone identify? Merrie, Dan?
Here's a song our guides taught us as we began our overnight hike into the rainforest (sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells"):


Jungle trek, jungle trek,
From Bukit Lawang!
See the monkeys, see the birds,
see orang-utan!


True to the song, first we saw the monkeys. This guy is a Thomas leaf monkey, and was just hanging out on a branch near the trail with some of his buddies nearby. Cute!
I'm sure we saw some birds, too, but before long, we spotted our first orangutans. Bukit Lawang is actually home to an orangutan rescue center, so the forest around it has a very high concentration of "semiwild" primates who have been released and forage on their own, but also sometimes return to the center for feeding. In the wild, you'd never find so many orangutans in one area (they like to be more solitary), but thanks to the center, we saw quite a lot.
Mostly, the orangs were peaceful and lovely to observe...
...but then we had the misfortune to come across "Mina," an orangutan so notoriously violent that she has her own warning box in the Indonesia Lonely Planet (but we only have the Southeast Asia Lonely Planet, so we were clueless!). Apparently, about half of the 120 guides who work in this area have been attacked by her at some point, and multiple attempts to release her deep into the jungle have failed, as she always finds her way back to terrorize more humans.


Andy and I were completely in the dark about her existence, but our chief guide, Dani, knew her as soon as he saw her. Blocking our path with her baby on her back, she wanted our food, Danny knew. He threw her our fruit scraps to try to placate her, as she's been known to bite people (leaving them with facial scars, lost fingers, etc.) when she's pissed off. So, she ate the food...then she attacked Danny anyway. We were backing away from her with the second guide, when suddenly she and Danny were ON THE GROUND in a clench, rolling around. We went from being scared for ourselves to being terrified for Danny. Luckily, he was able to jab her in the eyes and whack her with a branch, which sent her up a nearby tree, but not before she'd bitten both of Danny's hands. He still had all his fingers, but there was blood all over the ground.


Our group dashed past on the trail, then stopped so another tourist with a first aid kit could disinfect and wrap Danny's hand. But Mina didn't give up so easily, and we had to book it down the trail farther and farther as she continued to track us for about five minutes more before finally giving up. We later found out that she ended up biting a tourist later that same day.


Danny went back to town for medical treatment that night and was back with us in the morning, far more chipper than I would have been if a crazy ape had just tried to bite my hands off.


Of course, Mina is this way because she used to be someone's pet and was surely not treated very well. Attempts to release her far from humans have failed so far, so her reign of terror looks set to continue. If you Google "Mina orangutan" you will find all sorts of stories, and even videos, from people who've had, um, encounters with her.


Anyway, we have a few pictures of Mina from before she attacked, but weirdly, they refused to load online when we uploaded photos the other day (hm...). So instead, we'll leave you with pics of another orang with her baby who came sniffing out of the forest when we gave Mina our food scraps. Unlike Mina, she was gentle as could be.


Check out the little baby hands and feet!
Hi, baby!
Later, after our escape from Mina was over, we needed a rest. Luckily, there was this nifty natural swing.
And here is the lean-to on the riverside where we spent the night. Sure, it looks like a homeless person's shack, but it was comfy enough and rainproof (yup, more rain! Can't outrun the rainy season!).
The river scenery was gorgeous, but the hike was brutal. Up, down, up, down. Hilliest rainforest ever.
Hanging out near our camp were a lot of long-tailed macaques. Also known as "naughty monkeys"--they like to steal your food.
Andy can now add this monitor lizard to his collection of pictures of animals caught sticking their blue tongues out.
Our final stop in Sumatra, and Indonesia, was Lake Toba, one of the biggest crater lakes in the world. That's right, we decided to finish things up by spending two nights inside a volcano. Extinct, of course, and filled now with pretty blue water.
We took a boat across to the island of Samosir, home of the Batak people, and quickly got set up in a room built in the style of a Batak house. Huge room, tall, pointy roof, hobbit-sized door, balcony and loft. Good deal for 10 bucks!
Our ferry boat on the way over was piloted by a five-year-old. OK, I'm exaggerating, he was probably at least eight.
The island has few cars and is so quiet and peaceful--a great place to do absolutely nothing and unwind after a hectic three weeks racing around Indonesia. Here was the view as we played euchre (I won!) and ate tasty peanut-sauce-soaked food.
This giant buzzing thing hung out nearby, and Andy got a nice picture.
That's it for Indonesia. Often beautiful. Often stricken with violent natural disasters (and primates--humans not excluded). Often expensive, too. But really interesting to visit. My favorite places were probably Komodo National Park (for the dragons above ground and diving below) and Lake Toba, but it's such a big country, there's surely something for everyone. (Well, maybe not skiers).


17,000 islands...we set foot on seven. Had to leave a few for next time.