Pics 2 (Asia)

It took me almost exactly 19 months to zig-zag my way from Turkmenistan through to Australia. As the largest continent, and cradle of civilisations there is plenty to see, taste, explore and experience. I have had innumerable encounters with unfailingly lovely people, made some life-long friendships, tried a plethora of strange dishes, witnessed some spectacular(ly odd) ceremonies, seen breathtaking landscapes, and learnt  much about culture and history that have allowed me to understand the world a little bit better (I hope). I also hope that this knowledge has made me a better, wiser person

Mushy introspection aside Asia has been an agreeably cheap destination (apart from North Korea) and I've managed to average a daily spend of £11, of which I'm quite proud. That average will definitely not hold out in the following months though. I've also picked out a selection of some of my favourite photos (in no particular order) from the past 19 months that I haven't previously used in any of my posts. Some of them perhaps have some deeper meaning or political significance, whereas other I just found beautiful. I hope you like them as much as I do (what are your favourites? are there any that you particularly like? If so feel free to let me know by leaving a comment.).

Mongolian girl.

End Of Indo

From Flores I caught the weekly ferry to Kupang in West Timor. I was unable to explore Flores all the way to its eastern tip as I would have liked because I had only one week left on my Indonesian visa and still needed to procure my East Timorese visa. Extending my visa was no longer an option for the frustratingly banal reason that I had no free space large enough in my passport to accommodate another extension stamp. I am, however, blessed with dual citizenship and so am able to carry on for the time being now that I've had my British passport shipped out to me. The West Timor immigration department has a wonderful website where you can apply for your visa online by filling out a form and e-mailing it to the address provided. The process has a single, but fatal, flaw. It doesn't work. I sent off my completed form four weeks ago and, despite several efforts to make contact, including a heart-rending sob story, could just have well have sent it into a black hole for all the feedback I got. So instead I had to resort to Plan B and turn up in person.

International man of mystery: which passport shall I use today?

What Have The Portuguese Ever Done For Us?

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit and set up shop in the Indonesian archipelago. They were also the last to leave when they were finally kicked out of East Timor in 1975. Nevertheless their influence has been relatively minor. The Indonesian language has only about fifty loanwords from Portuguese, such as gereja (church, from igreja), keju (cheese, from queijo), sepatu (shoe, from sapato), which pretty much sums up early European preoccupations: convert the primitive heathens, make them civilised by dressing like us, and finding a way to make them prepare decent food and not this rice rubbish (talk to almost any European who has spent a longer time in (south)east Asia and they will usually say that the one thing they are missing from home is cheese. The only lasting remnants left by the Portuguese are the name of the island of Flores (meaning "flowers") and Catholicism, the prevalent religion therein.

Traditional Flores ikat weaving. Simple designs and bold colours.

Here Be Dragons

My jaunt to Sumba completed I returned to Sape to join the well-trodden path to Labuanbajo. The town constitutes Indonesia's eastern outpost of mass tourism, as people from around the world flock to visit the islands of nearby Komodo national park, home to the eponymous dragons, the largest extant species of lizard in the world and dive in the renowned reefs in the surrounding national marine park. Being the wannabe naturalist that I am I couldn't not go, so I signed up and joined the queue.

A Komodo dragon in full swing, long, forked tongue out tasting the air.

An Island, Not A Dance

The islands of Nusa Tenggara stretch out due east from Java like beads on a string: Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Alor. The names exotic and evocative. My progress through to the tip of Sumbawa was relatively quick and, for the first time in quite a while, I was no longer the only white person in the bus. All were heading from Bali, via the Gilis (a cluster of islands off Lombok that have become a party favourite), to the port of Labuanbajo on the tip of Flores, from where there are many tours to the islands of Komodo national park. The trans-Sumbawa buses connect to daily ferries linking Sape to 'Bajo. But to the south, lies an island that many people bypass. Sumba's attractions are not as obvious as those of Java, Bali or Sulawesi. For Indonesians Sumba is best known for its horses. Not because they are particularly special, but because Sumba, with its drier climate and semi-savannah landscape, is the only place in the archipelago that is suited to them. For us foreigners who have seen horses before and think they are rather humdrum. Instead, thanks to being a generally poor island with few useful resources, the Sumbanese were pretty much left to their own devices throughout the colonial period, an attitude that didn't really change much with Indonesia's independence 65 years ago, so tribal traditions are stronger here than almost anywhere else in the archipelago.

The spectacular rumah adat of Ratenggaro village in west Sumba. In this part of the island the houses are larger (housing up to four families) and the roofs taller. Houses in Sumba all share a similar layout: ground floor for animals, first floor for people, second floor for eating communal meals and for the ancestral spirits, or marapu.

Which Bali Do You Want?

"Have you been to Bali yet?" is the question that I've been asked by almost every single Indonesian I've met in the 3 months I've been here. Although Indonesia is a vast country comprising over 17,000 islands, 300 ethnic groups and 742 different languages, I am white and ergo I must be going to Bali. If any foreigner has heard about Indonesia it is invariably about Bali. For many Australians it is their equivalent to the Spanish Costas for sun-starved northern Europeans, and their way of holidaying there is not at all dissimilar. Yes, I was planning to go to Bali I would reply, but also Sulawesi, Ambon, Flores, Sumatra and Java. There is more to Indonesia than just one island. Bali's overwhelming presence on the tourist trail through Indonesia made me resent it even before I had set foot on it. I was sure I wouldn't like it and wasn't planning on staying long.

My nightmare image of Bali.

Exotic Souvenir

On the ferry to Surabaya from Makassar I started to feel a little unwell. I thought it was due to the kretek smoke that was permeating the cabin and thought that some sleep and fresh air once on terra firma would be all I need to feel better. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and the first day back in Surabaya the dull, throbbing headache that had developed aboard was joined by a vice-like sensation behind my eyes and pain in my joints and muscles. I had a sneaking sensation and after looking into the symptoms online and getting a second opinion I was certain that I had picked up an unwanted souvenir in the Moluccas: dengue.

An Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector of the dengue virus, biting an unsuspecting victim (actually, given the a photo was being taken of it the perhaps the victim was suspecting after all). [Photo from Wikipedia.]

Ferry Long Way Round

In Ternate I found myself out on a limb as it were. I needed to get back to Surabaya where I had left the bulk of my belongings with Erika and I had to return there before continuing east again through the Indonesian archipelago. As I've mentioned before I hate retracing my steps and so refused to consider going back through Sulawesi and instead decided to head south through the rest of the Moluccas before swinging west and back to Java. It's a route that is heavily dependent on boat schedules, the information for which is patchy at best, but I decided to take a leap of faith and see how far I could get.

In blue my route out to Ternate from Surabaya and in red my route back. It took nine days, of which over 100 hours were spent on boats (and a further 15 waiting for them).

Spiceworld

Indonesia is made up of around 17,000 islands. Some are huge, like Borneo and Sumatra, whilst many are tiny. The cluster of four islands of Ternate, Tidore, Makian and Moti, each centred around a volcano and each small enough to be circumambulated in a single day, is certainly towards the small and insignificant end of the spectrum. Nevertheless these tiny islands, located some 250km east of the northeastern tip of Sulawesi in a sub-archipelago known as the Moluccas (or Malukus), were to have a huge and dramatic impact on world history, far in excess of their puny size. According to legend Helen's is the face that launched a thousand ships. These little islands did that and far more.

A view of Ternate from its twin, and eternal rival, Tidore. Little speedboats shuttle people back and forth from one to the other throughout the day.

Swimming With The (Jelly)Fishes

Sulawesi is undoubtedly one of the world's oddest-shaped islands. Sometimes described as resembling an octopus or the letter K. Either way, its trailing tentacles and testing topography make travelling time-consuming. Bus journeys rarely take less than 8 hours and the various boats that service intra-island routes have seen better days. The tenacious are, however, rewarded with spectacular views of jungle-clad mountains that sweep down to isolated bays with turquoise waters and some of the best diving to be found anywhere in the world.

Sunset in the Togians always seems to be gorgeous.

Born To Die

Some say that the most important event in the (pre-)history of mankind was the discovery of fire and how to control it. I would say that equally important, if not more so, was the day man came to understand his own mortality and it scared the bejeezus out of him. The former gave him tools, but the latter gave him purpose. Ever since then man has been trying everything in his power to escape his fate. The most obvious manifestation of this is religion. In its myriad guises, and its various messages about ethics, lessons on how to properly sacrifice animals, what clothes to wear, and whether you can marry your first cousin the one constant seems to be a reassuring narrative of some sort of life after death, whether it be reincarnation, a hall for warriors full of wenches serving mead, or some abstract heaven. Follow us, the religions say, and we will ensure that the curse of mortality doesn't befall you. Even Buddhism, which is seen by many to be a philosophy rather than a religion, has incorporates the idea of reincarnation.

Smoking's a killer. Torajan skulls left with cigarettes as offerings.

Stuck In The Mud

It seems that Indonesia is becoming a place of reunions for me. I have no idea why, but a number of people I know are in the country at the moment and so I'm taking the opportunity to reconnect with them. Almost exactly 6 years after meeting Erika in a gorgeous guesthouse in Yazd I found her again in Indonesia's second city, Surabaya. At the time she and her partner Robin were cycling from Scotland east, with no definite goal in mind, seeing how far they could get and learning about the places along the way. They eventually ended up in Indonesia where Erika is now teaching English and quite content with her more stable situation: having a good job, a cosy house in a pleasant kampung and a circle of friends. I was glad to meet up with her again and catch up on what we had been up to in the intervening years and where we saw ourselves heading (much less clarity there). I was even introduced to some of her colleagues as they were celebrating a very British institution: after-work Friday drinks. It led to the bizarre situation where I was in the company of four other Scots, something that has probably only occurred once in the past 16 years since I left Aberdeen.

Monkey business in the kampung. Itinerant entertainers with a monkey on a chain and some music go round from neighbourhood to neighbourhood entertaining the kids with simple tricks.

Java Man (aka Where Are The Muslims?)

Of the little we in the West know of Indonesia, the fact that it's the most populous Muslim country in the world, with over 200 million officially registered adherents (more on this definition in a later post), is probably the most widely known factoid, helped by the odd Islamist bombing and display of irrational intolerance that make great media headlines. However it is an Islam that wouldn't be recognised in the Middle East. Islam came relatively late to the Indonesian archipelago, some time in the 12th century, by which time Hinduism had already been there for a millennium and Buddhism about half that, and it wasn't until the late 15th century that it became the dominant religion. Such a long legacy of Indian religions cannot but fail to leave a trace, a trace that is most evident in the Javanese heartland, which, paradoxically, is also considered to be among the most conservatively Muslim parts of the country.

Smoking Mount Merapi (one of the most active volcanoes in the world) towering above the ruins of Borobudur (visible in the centre-right of the picture as a small point, though trust me, it's big) in the pre-dawn mist.

Old Smokey

Jakarta was too hot and humid and so I decided to do what many locals do and head for the hills. My destination was Bandung, Java's favoured hill station. The weather is certainly more pleasant than Jakarta's oppressive heat and humidity, but that's about it. Bamdung has now mushroomed into Indonesia's third-largest city and has much the same traffic and air-quality problems as Jakarta. Along with the weather most Indonesians come to Bandung either to study or to go shopping at the city's many outlet stores. Those of you who know me will know that neither of those could possibly be a reason for me to come. So what drew me to Bandung?

The smoking, sulphurous crater Tangkuban Perahu is Bandung's premier tourist spot and it's possible to drive right up to the rim in your car. Souvenir vendors do a roaring trade in furry hats as intrepid Indonesians brave arctic temperatures (well, it's around 10 degrees, which is freezing for them).

The Big Durian

New York is known throughout the world as the Big Apple. I'm not sure whether it's for its sweetness, juiciness, or tendency to turn brown on the slightest contact with air. Whatever the reason I feel that Jakarta deserves its own nickname too. It is just as big and is quite the metropolis in southeast Asia. I have therefore decided to call it the Big Durian in homage to the local pungent delicacy fruit that locals love and foreigners loathe with a passion: the first impression is the smell (or perhaps in the case of Jakarta the haze of pollution on the horizon); at first touch it's a hard and spiky, seemingly impenetrable and not worth the bother to investigate further; once you've finally opened it up you discover that most of it is comprised of inedible, useless ballast with only a small percentage of fleshy goodness; and when you finally get to taste it then it's a 50/50, Marmite-like epiphany of either love or hate. Jakarta is a lot of work and you may not even like it at the end of it.

Is it a spiky, love-it-or-hate-it tropical fruit? or is it Indonesia's much-maligned capital?

 

Java: Stronger Than A Cup Of Coffee

Given my aching thighs and calves following Kerinci I was glad to spend a considerable amount of time on buses, trains and boats over the following week (although I was less happy by one of my drivers' enthusiasm for trance music played at full blast in the minivan at 2am in the morning). From the fresh, tea plantations of Kersik Tua I headed east to the hot and humid alluvial lowlands of Sumatra and the not-at-all-touristic town of Jambi. My main (only) reason for visiting was the remains of the capital of the once mighty Melayu kingdom that flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries after the fall of the nearby Srivijaya empire. It is this kingdom that gave its name to the Malay peninsula (which it also controlled) and, by extension Malaysia. This has led to friction between the two countries with Indonesians angered that Malaysia is claiming for its own cultural traditions and heritage that Indonesians believe to be rightfully theirs. The most notorious is batik, the colourful, wax-resist dying technique that is used to make intricately patterned clothes. Long ignored by Indonesian authorities Malaysia quietly stepped in claiming it as their own. This led to Indonesians protesting and quickly registering it with UNESCO as part of their intangible cultural heritage. Ever since then Friday has become batik day (the registration was announced on a Friday) when all office workers are obliged to turn up in garish shirts (the most popular designs often incorporating football team logos) in a sort of nationwide "up yours" to their northerly neighbour that they love to hate.

The executive ManU batik shirt - no self-respecting Indonesian office worker would be seen without one on a Friday.

Climbing Kerinci

Travelling down the interior of Sumatra you get a good sense of its size and relative wildness. The Trans-Sumatran highway is a joke: barely wide enough to let two trucks pass, winding along the hilly spine of the Bukit Barisan mountains and potholed, you'll be lucky if you achieve an average speed 40lm/h. It gives you plenty of time to watch the surrounding countryside go by. Small, dusty, farming villages with their adjoining rice fields, vegetable patches and banana trees alternate with large chunks of forest spilling down to the roadside from the wild, green mountains. Encroachment onto virgin forest is a problem as the human population of Sumatra increases and demands greater space and resources. Nevertheless this is still a haven of biodiversity and is the last refuge on earth of some of the world's largest and most majestic animals: the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran orangutan (slightly different to its Bornean cousin) and Sumatran rhino are found nowhere else on earth (actually there is a small population, estimated at 25 individuals, of Sumatran rhinos in Sabah). Naturally it's difficult to get out to the places where these animals live, and a sighting is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead I decided to just go for a hike in one of Sumatra's three main national parks.

Statue of a harimau (Sumatran tiger) guarding the road that snakes through the tea plantations to the Kerinci National Park and the iconic volcano that lords over the surrounding countryside.

Dangerous Island

Sumatra is a dangerous place. It's not the inhabitants though, but the island itself. Something deep down in Sumatra, more fundamental, geological, doesn't seem to like people. I've already mentioned the Boxing Day earthquake, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There have been at lest half a dozen serious ones since then claiming a few thousand lives. Slightly further back in time southern Sumatra was host to the largest volcanic eruption of the past 180 years when the Krakatoa (aka Krakatau) volcano erupted violently in 1883. The explosion, which was heard up to 5000km away, became the first worldwide media sensation, claimed the lives of over 36,000 people, plunged the world into an ash-induced winter for several years, and even had a film made about it.

Intricate decorations adorning a traditional Batak house in the Toba area.

The Day The Earth Moved

Up until six and a half years ago Aceh was a name that few people knew. For years the region at the northern tip of Sumatra was a no-go area thanks to the Free Aceh guerrilla insurgency that was seeking independence for the region underpinned by discontent about central government appropriation of Acehnese resources (oil had been found offshore Aceh in the 70's), an influx of outsiders and a desire for a greater role for sharia in local law. The almost three decades of conflict had claimed some 15,000 lives. All that was to change on Boxing Day 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever to be recorded struck off the northwestern coast of Sumatra. The resulting tsunami spread far and wide, causing immense casualties in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Somalia and even as far as South Africa. The brunt of nature's force, however, was borne by Aceh which experienced some 70% of the total 185,000 casualties and the capital, Banda Aceh, was almost wiped from the map.

The owners of this house probably weren't too pleased to find that someone had parked a boat on their roof despite the very obvious sign.

Hello Mister!

After a week with my friends in Cyberjaya it was time for me to move on. They had already postponed my departure by insisting I spend the weekend with them, but the easy life wasn't getting me any further, and so with a last farewell I set off for Port Klang, Kuala Lumpur's port on the coast. It seems strange to me that despite all the difficulties in getting by sea from one part of the country to another, Peninsular Malaysia has good maritime connections with several neighbouring countries, including Indonesia. Although I liked my time in Malaysia I find it a rather dull place to be honest. Whether it's to do with the rather staid, conservative Muslim culture favoured by the authorities, or whether it has to do with reaching a certain level of development and therefore eschewing the happy chaos of less developed countries I'm not sure. But a difference in chaos was certainly evident in the transition from Malaysia to Indonesia. Boarding the ferry at the Klang terminal was a muted affair, with slowly shuffling rows of passengers trickling through immigration. Disembarkation, on the other hand, was joyously raucous as porters, passengers and onlookers jostled for position on the jetty. The immigration hall was full of shouting, sweaty bodies and a dense fog of sweet kretek (clove cigarettes that have already become one of the hallmarks of my time here in Indonesia) smoke. Nevertheless the bureaucracy was dealt with surprisingly swiftly as people huddled round the immigration desk where the clerks were a blur of furious stamping. The crossing was also quite merry as there was a karaoke video of popular dangdut (the Indonesian music of the masses, best described as the bastard offspring between Polish disco polo and Romanian gypsy manele) songs, which the passengers sang along with when they weren't quizzing me about who I was, where I was going, and other personal questions.

Medan's crowded public market has possibly the largest collection of dried fish in the world. It also has lots of smiling vendors who seem to want to talk about Chelsea or the upcoming Euro championships.