Too Fat For Asia & Adventures in West Sumatra

I always enjoy the little reminders that show me how Asia is designed for people at least 5 inches shorter than myself and 50lbs lighter. Fortunately there was no repeat offense of crushing a plastic stool underneath my thunderous loins for this latest excursion. I was only subjected to the former reminder that suddenly struck me as I crawled into the third row of our derelict minivan transport.

Laughing is the only reaction one can have when, after asking several times to repeat, you are told the journey will be three hours and your bum is already numb after a wee five minuets and you’re already choking on your knees. My thoughts become a guessing game of which hour in the journey I will reach my breaking point and walk home. This seems like a great opportunity to describe how we came to this point.

Naz, the two guys from the photocopy room, and myself were waiting under a tarp covering a bakso stand in an absolute downpour, the kind of downpour only find in countries that have seasons wholly devoted to the word ‘wet’.  We are here after a brief bus trip from the train station in Bogor to the, and I use this next word extremely loosely, bus terminal.  The bus terminal is this guy selling bakso (a cart that sells hot soup and meatballs, who worked under candlelight mind you) on the side of a busy street and another dude hanging around shouting the names of cities that one could venture to for an easy buck-fitty.

Public transportation in Indonesia is always a lively adventure and our train ride does not fail to disappoint. A casual two hour trip takes you from Jakarta to Bogor. The train has seats that run parallel with the tracks, leaving plenty of open space for soft fleshy bodies to mash into each other. By the second stop the train is so full I am touching four people with my waist alone. Phish concerts in the pit have more personal space than this train, Europeans give you more personal space in conversation than this train. If there was music playing I would swear I was at the hawk/X2/timepiece or whatever club people go to ‘twerk’.

Despite the bumping and grinding (of the old train on the tracks) I don’t feel terribly violated, in some ways I feel cultural and pretty stoked were doing this the Indonesian way.  So after standing for two hours with strangers pressed upon me, we reached Bogor and ultimately find ourselves sardined into this…. Bus.

Thanks to a frightening yet ultimately hilarious whatsapp message the journey passed by quickly and without extreme scares. Worthy to note, by western standards the entire trip would have been cause for worry but for Indonesian standards it was, well, standard.  The bus had three benches in the back and one up front with the driver. If you can fit three people in each row, you surely can fit four. So myself and 15 other souls embark, knowing that any accident would mean a slow agonizing death.

The last leg of the trip was an exhilarating ojek (motorcycle taxi) ride through the mountains. The kind of ride where you can’t help smiling and chuckling to yourself at how awesome life is. Me and my mates just cruisin’ in the lush Indonesian countryside after dusk. There were a few arms extended upwards shouting ‘woo’ as well as a few ‘hati-hati pa! pelan-pelan tidak ada helm, gue suka hatiku’.

The journey was well worth the destination. Mountain camping with stunning views and chance to hike in the jungle. I took a dump in a river. I ate the same rice from a cookie tin for two days. The first time you do something in Indonesia that you have done one way your whole life is always a great experience and nice reminder that everything is relative. Camping was just one of these instances.   I learned how to start a fire using an old sandal and that you can also hike in sandals (a different pair).  Camping wasn’t sort of the ‘get back to nature’ vibe it so often has in the states, I’m not entirely sure what it is here. Still figuring that out, but I do know it was beautiful.

The best part of the trip was being cold, the kind where jacket and hat are required. I miss that.  

The return journey was just as exciting as when we headed out but slightly better after Naz and I discovered the most amazing martabak vendor on the street.  Fresh banana martabak can soothe even the most cranky oversized traveler. 

That’s a good line to end on.

God bless.

-Cheecky Sumatra Adventure Update!

Not surprisingly, I am atrocious at actually posting the bits I write. I do write, I just never find the time to put them online.  So Instead of having two posts, I’ve combined the previous story from a couple weeks ago with this brief one.  Last week my good friend Greg joined me for a week of riding motorcylces through West Sumatra. It was fantastic.

• ·      Fed a live chicken to a live crocodile in an abandoned amusement park in Harau
• ·      Ate peanuts with police officers on the side of the road during a downpour.
• ·      Stepped into a elephant enclosure because a 3ft. section of the wall fell down in a zoo in Bukitttinggi
• ·      Patiently sat through an explanation of the ‘new world order’ by a Hungarian on a trash filled beach in Padang.
• ·      The sordid condition of the 5 dollar hotel room we stayed in is hard too hard to put into words.
• ·      Ate nasi padang in Padang, and was disappointed.
• ·      Sang the Indonesia Raya with group of kids, teenagers, and parents alike at a bakso stand on lake Singkarak
• ·      Logged approximately 350 miles and 25 hours under my arse on a rented moped
• ·      Tried to shoot a squirrel climbing a cocoa tree with a pellet gun at lake Minanjau because the man with the gun suggestively placed it in my hands and pointed.
• ·      Played with baby sea turtles at a soon to be turtle farm in Pariaman
• ·      Regretfully did not purchase a green chicken for 50 cents.
• ·      Crossed the equator on foot.
• ·      Ate several meals with my hands while not wearing shoes.
• ·      Got lost.
• ·      Saw the richness and fullness of God’s beauty in one of the most spectacular countries on earth with one of my best mates.

It was a great trip, my next goal is to throw some pictures up. Here's to hoping. 

Having no breaks and no accident is better than having breaks and having an accident.

   A couple months ago or so I wrote an entry about how the breaks on my vespa decided to stop working while I was using them. In the interest of not causing unnecessary worry to my family I chose to quietly file it away until a later day when we could have a good laugh about it.  All in all it ended up as a really solid experience, in fact I’m glad it happened. Today, despite better judgment and almost certain worry of my mother, although I’m still not sure she knows how to use the internet (sorry mum! I still love you) I will now share the bold tale of a different motorcycle mishap.

    By the grace of God I managed to walk away with little more than a scratch on my hand and a bumped knee. It is really quite awesome that was it, although the scratch on my hand now makes a hot shower most unpleasant.  The other guy in the accident appeared fine before he fled the scene.

   Merrily bounding down the tree lined Jalan Panjang humming along to a dispatch tune in my head I was relishing my time on my Kura-Kura ijo (green turtle, as I call my vespa. It also goes by the name of teal steel, but that’s for another day). I would have fit in quite nicely in any European scene, motoring along in collard shirt and cardigan, messenger bag slung casually over my shoulder, just cruising on my 76’ vespa.

   They have traffic signals in Indonesia, I’ve seen them. Now if anyone else has seen one is a completely different story and  perhaps that’s where things really start to get interesting. I had the green light, even had 15 seconds left on the green light, as the flashing green number below the green light indicated in all its ignored green glory. As a line stopped cars turning right in that intersection began to grow I approached the crossroads.

   Just as I get to the chorus of ‘Bats in the Belfry’ I see it. It is happening, I’m keeping up with the flow of traffic, which is fast but not reckless. He’s hidden behind the cars turning right crossing the wrong way through the intersection . Im no more than 20 feet away when I first notice he’s driven out from behind the car and right into the way of me and my charging turtle. I slam on the nearly forty year old brakes (thankfully now working-ish) which seemed to have done a better job of heightening the experience with noise than stopping me. 

Crash...

  I weigh 210 pounds, the vespa is an easy 300 pounds, the two of us together are carrying a lot of mass and moving fast. He is a little Indonesian guy on a Yamaha scooter that is mostly plastic, with very little brain mass given he is blindly crossing an intersection with fast moving traffic. I T-bone him, thankfully he tried to stop and I made contact just behind the front wheel under the handlebars. We get knocked to the ground, and the front of his bike was pretty decently wrecked. The Kura-Kura with mighty shell is dented and chipped. Completely surprised, and now full of adrenaline shaking, we stand in the intersection and look at each other. There is a swarm of motorcycles waiting at the crossroad staring. Not sure what happens next, all I could think to do was shake his hand.

    Perhaps it was a measure indicating ‘I’m alright’ he looks me in the eyes and appears ok. I turn to the crowd as if they would tell me what to do next when they start shouting. The guy has jumped on his motorcycle and is quickly driving away. I’m not sure what they are saying, but some motion for me to follow him.  Bewildered and unsure, I pick up Kura-Kura and walk it through the intersection to take a seat outside a makeshift convenient store.

   It was definitely a scary experience. I was pretty jumpy for the remainder of my drive and approached intersections with excessive caution. The best part was getting caught in a tropical downpour when I was driving home a couple hours later. This was then followed by me blowing out my flip-flop on the way to dinner. I was a little frustrated yesterday.

    I’m alright and I’ve adjusted my perception to 'the rule of self preservation' as the sole guide to the functioning chaos of Indonesian traffic to leave room for those who go rogue. There will surely be more close calls and accidents, hopefully none major. All you can do is learn from the experience, thank God, and get back on your horse, or in this case… turtle.

The adventure continues

So there I was, standing over what was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made in a long time. Failure to perform this task with precise execution could have lead to death, as I’m sure it has happened to some poor soul that now resides in Davey Jones Locker. The tiniest slip would have, in the least, surely ruined my day. The door closed leaving me in darkness save for a single ray of light passing over the room. I could wait no longer:  number 1 or number 2. 

This weekend, I was privileged enough to venture out to the Thousand Islands with a solid crew of friends.  It was a wonderful escape that has filled my head with wistful ideas of abandoning this structured existence, buying a boat, and trolling around for, like, a really long time.  The most important aspect of this trip is that it takes place in Indonesia, which means it was bound to be full of failed promises, dodgy characters, and a complete disregard for personal safety, yet at the same time met with fantastic surprises, extraordinary beauty, and enjoyable chance encounters.

I will not waste time describing the Thousand Islands other than they are a chain of islands that are the antithesis of Jakarta. I encourage you to check out some pictures.  Trip starts out in a flooded fish market. Please imagine all the sights and smells you attribute to a fish market, now remove all drainage systems and refrigeration, turn up the temperature 85F with high humidity, add copious amounts of garbage, while we’re at it how ‘bout a couple of wet stray dogs.  There is a certain ‘funk’ about the place, and not the James Brown kind of funk, the bad kind. We are boarding our ‘ferry’ to the Thousand Islands, which is strange because there is just about that many people pushing about to get onto the dozen boats that are leaving. No gangplanks, no handrails, water everywhere. As we pile into our ferry, I am reminded of the alarming statistic I had made up and convinced myself was true: two out of every five articles written about Indonesia in Western newspapers are about a ferry that sunk and killed almost everyone on board. Naturally I take a seat close to the door.

After a standard waiting time of one hour, we begin to motor. Shortly after we leave I move to the top of the boat for some sun and fresh air. It is worth mentioning that there are no seats on this ferry, you just kinda find a place to through your stuff and then sit on it.  We change boats two hours later piling 18 people onto some wood that had been glued together (I am completely embellishing here) but roughly equivalent to the boat featured in Rookie Of The Year. It was enjoyable, although the holes and gaps in the blue tarp roof caused leakage. Ah yes, it had just begun to rain. I in no way wish to portray this as unenjoyably or negative, I am loving every minute of this journey so far.  

We arrive at the island, its wonderful. We have a great meal, go snorkeling, get stung by jellyfish, have cold beers on a white sand beach, built a raft and it almost worked.  After locating 8 extra beds the crew finally found some well deserved sleep. The next day we go to the worst excuse for an aquarium I’ve ever seen, but it somehow was more fun than most aquariums I’ve seen, way less educational.  We saw some giant lizards, had pancakes, then prepare to return home.

Naturally, we show up to the ferry late and consequently are stuck up top, but even there it is cramped. It is in moments like those were I curse the length of my legs. It is only an hour into the trip when I realize nature is calling. Making my way over the heaps of bags and awkwardly arranged people I find the toilet. At the risk of creating the assumption the only thing in my travels worth writing about have been those involving the toilet, I continue.  I step inside and just burst out laughing. The toilet is simply a hole cut into the bottom of the boat. The laughter subsides when I realize I should really have been wearing shoes, then I just feel gross. It was entirely possible to fall into the toilet hole, but not a handle in sight. Thinking about it, even if there was a handle I probably wouldn’t have touched it.  In deep cogitation of how long I could hold it, I make another realization. The boat is rocking, there is no light, I’m not wearing shoes, and just like aerial bombardment campaigns of WWII, you can never drop every bomb on your target. So despite my desire for Ocean Dumpah, I opt for more specialized equipment and have to pass. Kyle Hay, you still have me on this one.  

After successfully not falling into the toilet, I climb outside of the boat and scurry up to the roof to find my place in the intertwined mass of bodies. I’m finding more and more, I can never have the experiences I am having here in the States, or many places in fact. The very things that make the US great are in some ways the same things that make it slightly lame.  I don’t think Americans should opt for more archaic forms of washrooms, but perhaps should loosen their neckties and relax a little bit. After all, you can never have a good adventure unless there is some adversity to overcome. Even if it is simply deciding between number 1 or number 2.

people with mullets are often the best at reminding us important things

So I find myself nearly four months into living in Indonesia and am still struck with moments of excitement at the sheer fact of living abroad. The people around me must think im nuts when one of these moments comes around because I grin like even more of an idiot and get excited about normally insignificant things. The rational side of me wants to quell these feeling and play it cool so I’m not walking around like a fresher. But I cant help it.

It has been a long dry spell for writing this blog, which should not be too surprising to those who know me.  There is no way to sum up the time ive spent here with any meaning. There is simply no time, but it has mostly been school, school, excessive sweating, Jakarta lung (the official unofficial term for perpetual phlegm one coughs up daily due to pollution) school,  B A L I, gili islands. bali again, school, school, riots, ear infection, school. Yeah, that’s pretty much it with a whole lot of good coffee, lighthearted conversation, and a few cold beers in between.

Yet somewhere between the copious amount of smog and spicy food, sometimes It still feels like I could wake up back home to the smell of bacon on Sunday mornings and nothing would have changed much and I could pick right up where I left off. That’s how it goes sometimes I guess, finding a new routine in a new place.  Side note, the Indonesian guy with a mullet next to me has cut a violent fart, and thus destroyed my reflective moment.  Some sort of reminder perhaps to live in the moment, albeit a stinky one.

Stay curious and enjoy the wonder of it all.

Ojek Adventure!

             I was never educated on how one becomes a man in Indonesian culture, but today I think I can say I have sprouted a few Indonesian hairs on my chest. It was never my intention to ride home on a stranger’s motorcycle weaving through congested traffic without a helmet, yet somehow that is how I got home from school today. Alive.

            I must have looked horribly out of place as I swung my American sized frame on the back of an Indonesian sized motorbike.  I was terribly frightened as we pulled out of the school my hands were riveted to the steel bar just at the rear of the passenger seat.  In the midst of my fears I still managed to preserve my dignity and manhood by not wrapping my arms around my drivers waist and squeezing.  All I could think of was how angry my mother is going to be when she finds out I wrecked on the back of a dodgy motorcycle.  My grip tightened as the space between the battered steel fence on my left and oncoming traffic on my right grew smaller. Had I chose to re-create the titanic scene, believe me it crossed my mind after I pushed thoughts of my family reading the incident report out of my head, my hands would have been lopped off in a mix of rust and blood.

            The first ten minutes of the ride were a torrent of fear, anxiety, payer. As we turned off the main crowded road, we drove down a crowed, tree lined winding road that ran alongside a polluted river. Just as we turned onto this road, something happened. As we weaved into the new traffic flow, I saw three people riding on one crappy motor-bike. The driver had a bag loaded with random things wedged between his legs. The second passenger was texting someone. The last person on the bike was casually hanging on with her hands as her feet were lifted a couple of inches off the ground, no more foot pegs, she was wearing rubber sandals. As this calamity whizzed past, the young girl texting looked up and sent me a toothy smile exposing a brand new set of braces. Behind a dusty pair of glasses were a pair of kind eyes, that seemed to say ‘good on ya white dude’.

            With that, my grip relaxed and my mind eased. My posture became confident and no longer tense. I brought my hand up to my face and gave my scruffy chin a few meditative strokes before resting it in my lap. No longer staring at pavement wondering what obstacle will impale me, I looked around and noticed I was a part of a massive ocean of people moving in orchestrated chaos. In that moment, something clicked, I was truly experiencing this place for the first time. I breathed deep and appreciated the carcinogens and dust in a new way.

            I’m no Indonesian, but as I dismounted from my transport, I rolled out a solid “Mantap” [awesome] to my driver  that was returned with a smile and nod. I haven’t come close to mastering Indonesian, I still can’t eat spicy food, people still stare at me, but today was big. Just another step closer to understanding this fascinating and crazy place.  

'Macet' is not just a jam, it is a way of life.

    If there is one thing I have learned about living in Indonesia it is that everything is not as it seems but somehow exactly how it seems.  A full contradiction yes, but in that is a true sense of Jakarta.  It is horribly apparent how spoiled I am to have grown up in a country that has traffic laws and abides in them, uses actual solutions to problems other than covering them up only to appear fixed,  and I can drink water from the hose on a hot day.  Jakarta is a swirling mess of chaos that seems to carry on yet somehow works.

     Two days ago I had the fantastic opportunity to be stuck in a five hour traffic jam coming down the side of a mountain without moving an inch. The whole journey took eight hours to get from point A to B.  The same trip, mind you, only took two hours when we first went. Perhaps the best part of the story is the abhorring bout of food poisoning I have ever had in my life, and I have been known to have a few really good stories about me and an irritable bowl in an exceptionally inconvenient time (ie Disney World 2007). Anyone who has had food poisoning knows how terrifying it is to be more than twenty feet from a toilet, let alone getting on a rickety bus, or on a supposed two hour bus ride, or in Indonesia, or amongst your administration and new friends; nobody wants to be know as ‘the guy who soiled himself on the bus’.

     I will spoil any thoughts of this story ending with me in total embarrassment and in need of a change of clothes to let you know thanks to  a wonderful cocktail of activated charcoal, excessive pepto tabs, tums, Imodium, and an unknown Indonesian intestinal pill, I haven’t needed a toilet in three days.  But nonetheless, I was unaware of how successful my full on assault against my gastrointestinal organs would be. As far as I knew, I was a time bomb, living life minute by minute in absolute terror and fear. 

     So I eased into my bus seat to try sleep through the bumps and tosses of the bus.  Busses here normally are stop and go, hard on the gas, hard on the brakes. Think late night taxi ride in Chicago. But as the stop went from moments to minutes, minutes to tens of minutes my heart sunk deeper and deeper until I felt it might actually be purged along with the rest of everything in my lower abdomen.

     By the time forty five minutes had passed, we were informed this could take a while So a few of us got off the bus and strolled amongst the roadside stalls that lined the mountainside. This would have been something right up my alley on any ordinary day. Very dodgey, yet perfectly simple stalls ran by non-english speaking men and women with worn in expressions, all set on a mountainside that doubled as a tea-plantation, with the sun beginning to set.  Perfect, almost. But as time passed into hour two of being stuck we knew we were in for the long haul.

     What I noticed as peculiar was that everyone seemed to carry on as normal. The line of cars backed up for probably miles, but not a shout of frustration or horn-usage. It simply was how things worked. If there were regularly five hour traffic jams without a good reason in the states, people would be sued, assaulted, or killed. But as drivers turned off their cars and lit their cigarettes, there wasn’t even an air of understanding or acceptance, it just was. Disgustingly clogged streets is how things work around here, it is know in Jakarta as ‘Macet’ [Mah-chet]. Its no different than a queue in the grocery store, or trying to get a vending machine to accept a wrinkled dollar bill, its just one of those things we have as part of life.

    As hour two passed to hour five, my friends got to sample some good local street food while I reluctantly passed. We watched the sun set over the mountains in a cramped tin roofed food stall, resting precariously on stilts as it hung over the hill. It turned out to be a nice afternoon, although at the time everyone was still trying to go with the flow (which in this case going with the flow actually meant just sitting there as the situation was flow-less). Once we started moving again, we felt exhilarated only to be stifled by a slow going three hour journey for the remainder of the drive. But we made it, and maybe we are a bit more patient and understanding as a result.

It will take a while to get used to the erratic normality of chaos in this city. It is constantly moving, and like being tossed overboard in a swift river, you’ve got to keep your feet in front of you and your eyes looking ahead. Its fun, but ultimately exhausting to foreigner. But hey, over here it’s the way life is, so I might as well get on on board the train, if only the city had one, so I guess I’ll hurry up and get on the bus prepared to wait in the ever present macet.