From Bali to Jakarta

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

A month ago I thought I would be back in India by this time. But on the traveling road plans are always changing and now I’m in Jakarta getting ready to fly to Thailand in a few days. I was supposed to fly to Malaysia at the end of February but canceled that plan after I proposed the idea of making a cross-Indonesian road trip to Cesar. Our original road trip had us going all the way to Sumatra (the western most island of Indonesia) to take a boat to Malaysia. But we scrapped that plan at some point after deciding that Bangkok was a more exciting option.

But before any of that, we had a road trip to complete to get to Jakarta.

And by a complex series of buses, boats, trains and bicycle rikshaws we made it from Bali and across Java, going from east to west. Some of the places we rested for at least a night: Banyuwangi, a couple of overnight buses, Cewang Lemono, Solo, Yogyakarta, Bandung and Jakarta.

Indonesia is so big (it’s as wide end to end as the US) that you need several months to see all of it. There are 17,000 islands in the whole country and I visited a total of 6, so I’ve only got a few more to go. The island of Java is about as religiously and geographically diverse as any place I’ve seen. Just on this road trip I’ve met Muslims, Hindus, Christians and even Jewish Indonesians. And they’re so religiously tolerant of each other that standing on a street corner in Solo I could see a mosque, a church and a Hindu temple standing side by side.

The terrain of Java is just as varied. There are countless volcanoes across the central spine of Java, beaches and fishing villages on the coasts, hot springs scattered throughout, and then of course the modern mega-city that is Jakarta. I had been prepared to not like Jakarta from the several travelers who had already been there but despite the smog and high population, I found it to be quite a comfortable place. It’s got a mix of the very modern with countless high rise buildings, 5 star hotels and luxury shopping malls selling Versace and D&G tshirts for a mere $1000. But just outside the mall you can by fried rice from a street vendor for under a $1, or one of my favorite dishes, Gado Gado which is a rice and vegetables covered in peanut sauce. And the street vendors make the sauce fresh right in front of you with chilis, palm sugar, tamarind and crushed peanuts and it comes out tasting like peanut butter. Most of the food in Indonesia is fried (pisang) so anything non-fried is a welcome change.

Prior to Jakarta I was in Bandung for just a day and that was probably one day too many. It’s a big busy city with lots of cars and smog and noise and I didn’t find anything too exceptional about it, although supposedly there are some good hiking trails and hot springs within an hour of it. The only reason I went was because I worked in Bandung back in 1998 and wanted to see the Holiday Inn Express that I stayed in back then. I walked around for an hour and finally found it, but now it is just a Holiday Inn and it is a super luxury hotel. Why wasn’t it like that when I stayed there? Or maybe when they saw my type staying there they figured they needed to price my kind out of staying there again.

I did meet a local Indonesian, Benjamin, at the train station as I was waiting for my train. He had converted to Judaism and wouldn’t stop talking about it. I was interested though because he was the first Jewish Indo I had met. He had just completed a two year study at the Hebrew University in Surabaya and then he insisted I take a copy of his transcript. I really didn’t want it but I could tell he really wanted me to have it so now I am traveling around Asia with a Hebrew University transcript in my bag. He got a 3.48 on a 4.0 scale. Nice work Benjamin!

For some reason I’m going backwards in time here…bear with me. Before Bandung we spent a few days hanging out in Yogyakarta where the main attraction is the 1500 year old Borbrodur Buddhist stupa (shrine). It is the largest Buddhist stupa in the world and is 5 levels high. You start at the bottom level and walk around its perimeter, climbing up to the next level when you’ve gone around once. In all it takes 5 km to walk around all 5 of its levels. On all levels the sides are rock carvings depicting various pictures and stories. The first couple of levels deal with the base human cravings and emotions and then as you get to the higher levels the stories begin dealing with enlightenment and breaking free from the base human desires.

As cool as the site was, one of the most interesting parts of the day was all of us being flocked by a large group of students on a field trip. There were a couple of Americans, Tristan and Nathan and an Aussie Mark and Cesar and I and for the next hour we were celebrities. I sat on a ledge and the girls would take turns sitting next to me, getting their picture taken, shaking my hand and saying ‘Thank you Mister!’, getting up and going and then another girl would sit down and we’d repeat the routine. I felt like Brad Pitt or David Beckham and I can see now why many celebs get annoyed with the constant attention and autograph seekers. I was ready to quit after just my first 30 minutes of fame.

Still in Yogya…I signed up for an Indonesian cooking class along with my new Dutch friends Alma and Eline. They were also on the same bus to Borbrodur but we didn’t get to know each other until we bonded during a burping contest at the bar that night. I usually win these contests hands down but the Dutch proved to be quite worthy opponents. The cooking class was in the semi-outdoor kitchen of a pretty fancy (by Indonesian standards) restaurant. We cooked for a few hours and learned how to make satay, chili sauce, chicken and tofu with more chilis, fried vegetables and coconut milk rice. The satay was finished in the first half an hour and I was ready to attack them right then but we had to wait for another two hours before everything was all done. Our teacher was Made, which means two things: she is from Bali, and she is the second child in her family. She was a real sweetheart and would smile and laugh the whole time. She was raised as a Hindu, but her husband is from Java and so was Muslim, but once they got married they both converted to Christianity. I guess somehow that’s meeting in the middle?

As is the case with most of Indonesia, outside of Kuta, Bali, most of the people don’t speak English, and this was especially true on Java. We took a 20-minute bicycle rikshaw ride to meet our friend Maya for dinner and the driver kept talking and laughing even though we had no idea what he was saying. Then we somehow ended up belting out Happy Birthday over and over as we road down the main boulevard of Yogyakarta called Marlioboro road. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday. It was the only ‘language’ we had in common.

And on our last night in Yogyakarta, we hosted a movie night with our new friends. We watched Slumdog Millionaire with six people crammed in two beds watching the movie on Cesar’s Mac laptop.
Going back in time once again, before Yogyakarta, we spent a couple of days in Solo. There’s an old Sultan’s palace that is still actively used and lots of shopping bazaars selling the local Batik arts and crafts. The president was speaking in Solo right next to our hotel and there was a large annual festival happening the same weekend we were there. But, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, I didn’t see any of those things or go do any of the shopping that Solo is known for. I spent a lot of time in an internet café working on my taxes. Woohoo. I wonder how many other Americans filed their taxes in Solo?
And finally, back to the start of the road trip. A volcano. The first site we saw was the Gurung Bromo volcano, an actively smoking volcano. When you climb up to the rim you can see the endless smoke coming out of the crater. And it reeks of sulfur especially when the wind is blowing it in your direction. We were planning to hike up to the crater rim but a Jeep ride followed by a horseback ride seemed much more appealing, especially given that we were starting at 4 a.m.

After being in Bali for a while, it felt really good to get on the traveling road again. And I feel in many ways I’ve gotten a second wind for continuing my travels and trying to win more burping contests and collecting more transcripts for total strangers in Thailand and India.

Selamat Malan!

Back on the traveling road

Now that’s it raining more than ever
Know that we’ll still have each other
You can stand under my um-ber-ella
You can stand under my um-ber-ella

I’m back on the traveling road after a month in and around Bali. Daniel, who I flew out to Bali with from Australia flew back to Australia and now I’m back traveling with my good friend Cesar. I met Cesar in India when I first began traveling in October and we traveled together for a couple of months before we went our own ways in December. He arrived to Indonesia about a week ago. We had planned to go surfing at least one time since he’s never been but Bali has this way of just making you lazy and before you know it you’ve spent the whole day on the beach sleeping and reading and then it’s time to head back to the hotel. I love Bali and with all the islands around it and all the culture and the super friendly people, it’s definitely a place I’d recommend to anyone looking for a good time in the sun.

But after a month there I was ready to get back on the traveling road. So Cesar and I are now doing an east-to-west road trip across Java. Indonesia is an archipelago and Java is one of the biggest islands and is where Jakarta, the capital city, is. We began by taking a four hour public bus in Bali to get to the port town of Gili Menon. No one on the bus spoke any English and pretty much once we left Kuta (the main touristy area of Bali) we were in tourist-free local neighborhoods. There are no bus schedules for these small buses; they just wait around until enough people get on board and then they leave. And along the way it stops whenever someone waves it down. The bus cost us under $2 each. Every time we’d stop for food or to pick someone up, people would wave at us and say ‘Hello Mister!’ and laugh. It’s a novelty for them to see a Westerner. One guy even brought us pisang goreng (fried bananas) that he passed us through the bus window.

Before getting on the ferry we bought some nasi goreng (fried rice) and brought that on board for a late night dinner. We took the ferry over to Banguwanyi which is the eastern most point of Java, arriving at 9 at night. Luckily we had shipped home over 15 kilograms combined of stuff earlier that day so our backpacks were light enough to walk around town while we looked for a hotel.

Total weight I’ve sent home so far: 25 kg.
Total weight Cesar has sent home: 43 kg.

The Rough Guide recommended a Hotel Blembongan and we set off in search of it. Most people we tried talking to spoke no English which was a complete turnaround from where I had been in Bali for the past month. Cesar somehow found this to be a good time to try out the only sentence he knows in Indonesian. After introducing ourselves to a couple of locals, Cesar tells them “Saya hayan makan sayuras”, meaning “I only eat vegetables.” He wanted them to know he was a vegetarian. I got the sense they didn’t know what to do with this information.

We passed a police station and I decided to stop in to ask for directions. I was greeted by a 20 year old in uniform who wanted to know where I was from. “California”. “Ahhh! Obama! I like Obama! Arnold Schwarzenegger!”

That is a typical conversation over here. Everyone likes to say “Obama!” the moment I tell them I’m American or from California. “I like Obama!” I am also now well aware that Obama studied in Jakarta. I know they’re being friendly but hearing this over and over starts to become too much so I’ve changed my response a bit. I now tell people I’m from North Korea. Now I get one of two reactions:

• No reaction
• “Ohh! Australia! Good day mate!”

We eventually managed to find the hotel, although I’m not sure that was a good thing. Hotel Blembongan is not exactly a five star hotel; it’s closer to a .5 star hotel. There is no western toilet, just a hole in the ground, and although we had a sink in the room, there were no taps or even a faucet. Just a sink. There was no shower. What we had instead of all of that was a three-foot tall square ‘tub’ that you fill up with water and use it for everything. Cesar thought he saw a rat but it actually was an oversized cockroach. Sometimes budget traveling means having to share your room. One really positive point of the HB was the super friendly staff who although they didn’t speak English, did everything they could to help us figure out our traveling plans. And they brought us a great breakfast of rice, tofu and eggs loaded with sambal (chili sauce). I have rice for every meal, sometimes fried, sometimes not, sometimes with vegetables, sometimes not, but always rice, rice, rice.

The next morning we were debating between seeing the Ijen crater nearby or traveling all day to Gurung Bromo, an active volcano. Active volcanos are hard to top so we opted for that. We each got into our own becak (bike rikshaws) and headed to the bus terminal. My driver insisted of conversing the whole time which would have been fine except he didn’t speak a word of English. It makes for really awkward conversation when there is no language common. I found that nodding my head and grunting acknowledgment whenever I sensed he had told me a fact gave him the impression I was following along. This trip cost under $.50.

There are some days when you travel that everything just seems to end up working out in your favor. This was one of those days. The bus to Probolingo, the town closest to Bromo, was leaving in just ten minutes. Just enough time to buy some nasi goreng for the trip. The bus was a shapeless, tall, extended rectangle on wheels but was quite comfortable. Long bus trips in India and Nepal have lowered my expectations to the point that I expect to have a sore back for a couple of days after any extended bus ride. But this was not to be. And on top of that, as I began wondering when we would stop so I could get off the bus and have a smoke, the guy in front of me just lit one up right there. Perfect. And a hole in the floor by my feet made a suitable ashtray as it opened right onto the road.

We reached Probolingo and pulled into a gas station to fill up. And all of a sudden this one guy starts shouting at us “Bromo! Bromo!” and motioning for us to get on this bus behind us. Turns out this little mini bus was going to take us to Bromo. I still wonder what if one of these two buses hadn’t had to stop for gas, how would we have found out where to go? Even though I can’t figure out how things always work over here, they do seem to work. Before pulling into the gas station we had actually been put onto another bus that had stopped behind us earlier. What if that bus hadn’t been there? Who really knows how it all works. We were on the right bus and that is all that really matters.

And to wind up a long day of travel, we road in this small mini bus up into the mountain which turned out to be Dance Party Indonesia 2009. Cesar and I were the only passengers and there was the driver Adi, the second driver Udi and a friend of theirs Anton along for the ride. None of them could have been over 20 but I’m quite bad at guessing Indonesian’s ages as everyone looks 5-10 years younger than they really are. We were talking about music that we liked and Udi and Anton start singing Rihanna’s Umbrella. I told him to wait a second, brought out my iPod and speakers and starting blasting Umbrella. Next thing we were all dancing in our seats and belting out Umbrella, including Adi the driver who somehow had ended up wearing my hat. We made a short stop to pay a toll and the people in the toll station started dancing along.

After a couple of days of long traveling, it felt good to let loose, even if it meant revealing to a larger audience the fact that, yes, I do have Rihanna on my iPod.