Author: rr_admin

We while away the days in the Togian Islands.

After a two-day drive through the mountains from Rantepao, it’s another full day journey on the water from Ampala to the Sandy Bay Resort, on the island of Malenge.

We have to thank Soufiane and Jessica once more for this experience: we share a car and driver with them for the journey to Ampana. They plan to stay in the Sandy Bay Resort, so we tag along.

It’s a short boat trip further to arrive at the resort.

It’s pretty nice, I must say. Even snorkeling in the bay is like a mini Great Barrier Reef.

It’s about $CAD70.00 per day, three meals included (for two people).

The small boats are how we get around.

But it’s hard to get here. And once you’re here, it’s hard to get around: boat schedules and availability of accommodation are difficult to verify without internet service.

A noteworthy day trip is to the jellyfish lagoon. In fact, this is one of the more remarkable places we’ve seen so far. In a lagoon cut off from the sea, we drift in bathwater-temperature water for an hour among serenely floating sting-less jellyfish. It’s like ‘floating among corpuscles in a blood vessel’, or ‘floating among souls in purgatory’; pick your own analogy.

We set out for another expedition to several offshore reefs.

In the front are Frans, from the Netherlands, and Alina and Dominick, from Germany.

In the rear (or ‘abaft’ is the nautical term), Soufiane, Jessica, Maria, and a pale-looking me.

Snorkeling on these reefs is like swimming in an aquarium.

We’ve never seen such crystal-clear water.

And the sunsets are superb.

Something to keep in mind: there is no cellphone or internet service, electricity is limited to a few hours of generator-supplied juice per day, and you’d better like fish, because that’s the main dish for most meals. Freshness guaranteed.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Togian Islands

We make an excursion to the Bajau village in Pulau Papan  to see how the sea gypsy people live.

Like many countries in this part of the world, the government encourages the ‘Sea People’ to settle in permanent villages.

They have live lobster for sale, but no one has the heart to transport them home to meet a turbulent fate in the pot.

We’re a source of amusement for the locals.

The village at the end of the boardwalk.

OK, we’re back from a fantastic trip to the Togian Islands.  It’s Ramadan. As we sit here in front of the sun-flecked sea in Ampana in mid afternoon, we can hear muezzins wailing away in the surrounding mosques. But first, to catch up: we spend a few days in Rantepao, the heart of Toraja country.

Torajans are known for two things – unusual boat-shaped housing (similar to those in Lake Toba) and a strong culture of death. First, the houses.

Like many people with oddball ethnic housing, there is a strong tendency to live in something more conventional, if they can afford it. Like a square dwelling made of concrete. With a garage.

Locals still have elaborate rice storage barns, though. (Probably because they don’t have to live in them.)

The wood carving of a buffalo head means this is the house of a high-status person.

Multiple buffalo skulls in the front also indicate high status.

We share the cost of a car, driver, and guide for the day with a Swiss couple, Lukas and Liliane. As part of the tour, we enjoy a local lunch. I’m guzzling a bamboo container full of of palm wine.

For Torajans, death is more important than life. Crazy, I know. They share this belief with, among others, people in Madagascar. And ancient Egypt.

When someone dies, they are embalmed and left in the house. Family members speak to them. The corpses remain there until enough money is available for a funeral. This may take years: the cost is exorbitant. You can read more about this phenomenon here, with photos.

When the funeral celebrations are done, the dead move into caves carved out of the cliff face.

If they can afford it, people have wooden effigies (tau-tau) of the dead made.

They’re expensive. And people steal them.

This is interesting – in some places, deceased infants younger than three years are buried in a tree. Someone carves a rectangular chunk out of the tree and places the tiny cadaver inside, upright. The trunk heals, then babies and tree grow together.

Lesser (that is, poorer) people are often piled up unceremoniously in caverns.

‘And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.’
– Dylan Thomas

In between these macabre destinations, we pass through pleasant scenery.

These caves are a third of the way down a sheer cliff face.

Oh, we mention at the end of our last post our encounter with a six-metre-plus python. The story goes like this:

When we depart for the Togian Islands, we share a car and driver with Soufiane and Jessica, some friends we meet in Rantapao.  This involves a two-day drive to Ampana. On the evening of the first day, we drive along after dark. We come to a sudden stop, as does the oncoming traffic. Our driver says ‘Ular!’ (Snake!).

We see nothing from the back seat but a half metre or so of tail disappearing into the long grass at the side of the road. Suddenly half a dozen locals leap from their vehicles, brandishing machetes, and begin searching the bushes. At one point, a man grabs the snake’s tail and pulls an even longer part out before the python slips away again. We cheer for the snake.

The search becomes more frantic. At last, some shouts of discovery and frenzied hacking with the machete. One man pulls out presumably half of a python, thick as a man’s thigh. It’s about three metres long.

All this takes place over ten minutes or so in the eerie light of the vehicles stopped on the road  Our driver says the people want the meat. Possibly also payback for this incident in 2017.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Toraja

One thing many visitors look forward to attending here is a Toraja funeral. There is feasting, singing, dancing, and LOTS of animal slaughter. (This is why funerals cost so much – relatives are obligated to provide buffalo, pigs, and chickens for the glory of the deceased.)

There is one occurring while we’re here, but we skip it. We have no interest in seeing noble, placid animals like buffalo put to a cruel and needless death for the sake of human religious folly. Even pigs deserve better.

It’s a dictum of mine that the third world is a bad place to be an animal, a child, or a woman. We see confirmation of this daily.

From Malang, we take our last Javanese train trip to Surabaya.

(Note: this entry is quite short – we are leaving soon for an island sojourn and will be offline tomorrow. So you’ll have to wait to hear about the Torajan cult of death and other items of interest.)

From Surabaya, we leave the island of Java and fly to the island of Sulawesi by Lion Air.

We only spend one day in Makassar, and half of that sleeping. In town, we visit Fort Rotterdam. The next day, we take a 9-hour bus journey to Rantepao, the center of Toraja. We stay at Pia’s Poppies guest house.

We go to Pasar Bolu, the market where pigs and buffalo are purchased for Torajan funerals.

The whiter cattle are more valuable, for some reason.

There are also pigs for sale.

We travel around in these ridiculously small microbuses. At least they’re cheap.

We also visit the non-cattle market in Bolu.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Sulawesi

Do you remember reading Victorian novels and wondering ‘what the heck is an antimacassar?’ Of course you do. Well, turns out it’s to protect furniture from a gentleman’s macassar oil-soaked head. Macassar oil was supposed to be sourced from Makassar. Huh. Who knew?

Out-of-office message

After a two-day drive to Ampana, we are heading to the Togian Islands for a couple of weeks. They’re reputed to be quite nice. But they may not have Internet service. So we may be offline for a while.

When we’re back online, we’ll describe our encounter with a six-metre-plus python last night. Stay tuned!

This is Charlie.

He passed away a year ago. We miss him a lot.

At one time, we were thinking of naming this blog ‘Travels without Charlie’, as an hommage to John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley‘. We decide that might be too Charlie-centric.

Charlie belonged to my brother and his family. We bird-sat him a few times. Before one particular summer vacation, he came to us looking like this.

A cat that our niece had brought home attacks and nearly kills Charlie. Stress and trauma cause him to pluck out his own feathers.

We decide to keep him for a while. Among his accoutrements  is an old Barbie doll mirror. This is Charlie’s absolutely essential item. Disturb it and he squawks loud enough to wake the dead.

In short order, he makes himself at home.

Charlie’s cage in the kitchen lets him investigate whenever he spies something interesting that we happen to be eating. Maybe we can be convinced to share.

Because he’s so sociable, we take Charlie wherever we go. BBQ on the verandah? We take Charlie in his cage.

We soon learn that he loves rice. Whenever we make rice, he gets his own serving in a porcelain bowl.

We bring him to the cottage every weekend.

This is a rare photo of both Blackie and Charlie at the cottage, having dinner.

Disregard my usual Saturday-morning-at-the-cottage state of dishevelment: Charlie has a thing about climbing onto your chest for a cuddle and a headscratch.

From the cottage, Maria sends this to me at work, for ‘moral support’.

Charlie checks out the hammock in the screened-in porch.

He’s never shy about demanding a sample of whatever it is you’re eating.

He’s always fun at home, too.

He likes to help when you’re working from home.

Especially after we stop working at the end of January, 2017. From February to May, we prepare our house for sale: decluttering, painting, refinishing floors. But only in the afternoon – we reserve the mornings for drinking coffee and leisurely reading of the news in the living room. Of course, Charlie wants to be where the people are. So it becomes routine to bring him into the living room with us. He has his own living room perch and mirror.

This is the end – Charlie

In May 2017, we head to the cottage for a long weekend. Friends and family visit. On Monday, after all the guests have left, I’m lying on the couch reading. Maria is down by the lake. Charlie is in his cage in the living room.

I hear Charlie sneeze. (We’ve heard him sneeze before – a tiny, cockatiel-sized ‘ker-chew‘.) But I notice his ‘sneezing’ doesn’t stop. I get up to look. Charlie is on the floor of his cage, unable to fly, obviously in some distress. I take him out and place him in my lap. His eyes slowly close – and he’s gone.

I sit there and cry like a baby.

Hard to believe that minutes before, this less-than-100-grams creature had a unique personality, habits, preferences, moods. In an instant, without the vital spark of life, there’s nothing now but a tiny, inert bundle of feathers.

Maria comes up from the lake to find me wailing and inconsolable. After a while, we recover enough to say our goodbyes and make a little shroud out of a tea-towel.  (A weekend guest brought the gerberas.)

We bury him in the back yard of the cottage. With his Barbie mirror, of course.

It’s sad driving back to Ottawa that week: on the way to the cottage, it was a glorious sunny day, Charlie whistling away in the back of the car. When we depart, it’s cool, gray, damp, drizzling rain, and we’re leaving Charlie behind, alone in the cold ground. The car is silent. Not one of our happier days.

Charlie wasn’t sick. He was completely normal until the end. We think he was around 15-16  years old: not terribly old for a cockatiel, but not young either. Maybe it was just his time to go. We had him for not quite two years.

One silver lining in this mournful cloud – we no longer had to worry about saying goodbye to Charlie when we sold the house and left on our trip. At any rate, it would’ve been hard to let him go.

We make a little memorial for him in tribute.

The text is very apt:

• Covering his cage at the end of the day, we’d say ‘Goodnight, Charlie. You be a good bird.’
• He was popular with our friends in a way that Blackie never was. Probably, as a friend said, because he was ‘always at eye level’. Blackie was a creature of the ground.
• Maria always called Charlie ‘little one’.

We leave Solo by overnight train for Malang. Looks like we’re crossing Java entirely by rail. Indonesian trains aren’t quite as modern and sleek as in Malaysia, but they beat the pants off of Myanmar Railways.

Malang is a pleasant, spread-out town. A lot of the centre is made up of orderly neighbourhoods of military cantonments that look like they date from the Dutch period. In between these are tidy, cozy alley communities like we see elsewhere in Java.

Parts of Malang look like Los Angeles. (Or at least what we picture LA to look like.)

We go for a sundowner daily in the elegant Tugu Hotel.

We hear of Mount Bromo from several sources, including our friend Ulf. People come here to watch the sunrise. We remember Ulf talking about a strenuous and lengthy trek in the dark to view this. We take the easy way out and hire a jeep and driver. (There are more Toyota Land Cruiser jeeps here than there are Land Rovers in the Cameron Highlands.)

After freezing in the dark with several hundred selfie-taking locals for company, we enjoy the primordial landscape gradually revealed below us at dawn.

Afterwards, we drive down to the Sea of Sand.

We arrive at Bromo itself. The volcano is kilometres away from the Land Cruiser parking lot. We set out on foot, like hundreds of other visitors.

There’s something vaguely, anciently, pilgrim-like about the way we trudge across the black sand, gradually getting closer and closer.

It looks like a steep climb, but we’re determined. How often can you get this close to the caldera of a live volcano?

One of the pluses of traveling in the developing world is the absence of any concept of safety or possible liability for death or disability due to negligence.

The rim of this active volcano has a trail about 2 metres wide at the top that scores of visitors have to negotiate. There is a short, metre-high barrier for the length of a dozen meters or so. You can continue beyond the barrier and walk about halfway around the caldera with a steep drop one one side and a slide into the smoking maw of the volcano on the other. (I couldn’t convince Maria to do this.)

There is apparently a ceremony in which locals throw sacrificial offerings into the volcano.

We make our way down. Feels like we’re in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. (Disclaimer – never been there.)

Bromo impresses us so much, we instruct our driver, Hari, to skip the remaining sights – a waterfall, a ho-hum temple – and whisk us home.

Why the heavy clothing? Because it’s friggin’ cold out here at this time of the day.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Malang

On arrival in Malang by train is this eye-catching sight.

As a sort of slum-renewal project, this part of town has been given a pastel-coloured makeover.

The blue part is named ‘Arema ‘- we think. It might be the name of a local football team.

The idea is to attract visitors and to encourage the residents to be more civic-minded. (That is, don’t throw garbage out your door or into the river.)

We make plans to go to Solo, also known as Surakarta. Maybe they should call it ‘Solokarta’?

Before we leave Jogjakarta, we visit the Taru Martani cigar factory on the recommendation of our guesthouse owner.

Taru Martani apparently means ‘the leaf that gives life’. Very poetic.

Incoming tobacco is weighed.

Most of the employees are women.

The rolled cigars are pressed.

Afterwards, we spend a comfortable hour or so on the train to Solo/Surakarta.

Like most Indonesian cities, Solo/Surakarta is pretty grim. But these alleyway communities are a pleasant contrast.

People in Java like birds.

One morning, we help our guesthouse owner feed live crickets to his.

A popular method of transport are local trishaws called ‘becaks’.

We visit a few markets.

Stroll around town.

Even the ugliest of Indonesian cities have some nice areas.

It’s not uncommon to see chickens in the core of the city.

We walk around the outside of Vastenburg Fortress, the remains of a Dutch fort.

Its modern ownership is hotly contested. Goats wander around the interior.

One day, we hire a car and driver to visit Sukuh, a temple about 40 KMs from town.

A bit of a splurge, but getting here by public transport is problematic.

We get a great view of the valley. And it’s cool.

At one time, all of Java was Hindu-Buddhist, like Bali still is.

Because we already have the transport, we visit nearby Cetho temple. This turns out to be a fantastic drive around Mount Lawu. There are views of tea plantations.

Alpine vistas of mountaintop communities.

And green fields of vegetables.

Cetho is a relatively minor site, but the scenic route here makes it worthwhile.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Surakarta

We visit the House of Danar Hadi museum. This is a stunning collection of batik work belonging to a local family of batik merchants.

We can’t take photos inside, but you can see some samples – and the beautiful displays – here.

One place we can take photos is the batik workshop.

We spend a few days in Jakarta before heading to Jogjakarta and Borobodur.

In our neighbourhood, we visit the wayang kulit (leather puppet) museum.

This interesting device is a coconut-oil lamp for illuminating the screen for the shadow play.

The museum also has 3D puppets.

Jakarta is not a great city to spend time in. We describe it in an email to a friend as ‘kind of Hellish’. We make plans to leave ASAP.

On the way to the train station, we pass this mural. Some images are iconic the world over.

The Beatles and Indonesia have not always seen eye to eye. Thanks to a friend who is a Beatles fan – and who isn’t? – for the link.

We catch a comfortable, executive-class train to Jogjakarta.

First stop after arriving is the Kraton, or Sultan’s Palace. We come across a performance of gamelan music.

Nice pergola.

In another part of the grounds, we come across young men practicing Javanese dance.

We sit for an hour enjoying this.

We visit the Sonobudoyo Museum, a small gem of a museum nearby. At first we think this is an insightful installation on Indonesia, with shadow puppets appearing against an inverted Indonesian flag…

….making some kind of statement. We decide we’re just overthinking it. This museum is in much better shape (less neglected) than the Kraton.

We visit the Beringharjo Market. Lots of batik clothing around, of course.

Piles of material at Batik Keris, a more upscale batik chain.

We take local transport to Borobodur.

I visited here many decades ago. I distinctly remember renting a bicycle. It’s over 40 KMs from Jogjakarta, so I must’ve bussed it to some small town and biked from there.

Borobodur is as impressive as it was 30 years ago.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Jogjakarta and Borobodur

When we leave the Krui Surf Camp, Zane drops us at the bus terminal. We realize that we forgot to pay the remainder of our beer tab (an honours system for grabbing cold ones from the cooler). In an email, we offer to send Zane the cash. He suggests donating it to a mosque instead. We wait until we find a modest mosque that can use the money – not a giant Saudi-backed showpiece.

In Jogjakarta, we come across the tiny Nurul Huda mosque in a narrow alley.

Back to Singapore. This is not a hardship for us. You may remember our fondness for the place.

It turns out to be simpler to get an Indonesian visa here rather than go through the rigmarole of dealing with the bureaucracy in Indonesia itself. A big shout-out to Max and Jade from the Krui Surf Camp for providing step-by-step instructions. Merci, Max and Jade! We stay at the recommended Chinatown hotel, too. It’s great.

We use our one full day in town to visit the zoo. We normally don’t go to zoos in non-Western countries because they’re usually concrete monstrosities full of sad, neglected creatures.

Needless to say, this is not the case in Singapore. It’s one of the world’s best.

All of the environments are spacious and well-planned.

We think it’s significant that the info about rhinos is prominently displayed in Mandarin as well as English. Where the text says ‘some people’, what they mean is ‘Chinese people’. Very timely, as the Chinese seem to view any creature precious and rare and on the absolute cusp of being snuffed out as a handy source of ‘traditional medicine’.

Strangely, this doesn’t apply to pandas. We wonder why not? We’re sure if you tried draining the bile ducts of pandas, you’d have a sure-fire cure for baldness.

The zoo has both Borneo orangutans and Sumatra orangutans, of which there are fewer than 5,000 left.

This handsome fellow is a channel-billed toucan, from South America.

As with many creatures here, he doesn’t mind being close to people.

A pair of pelicans groom themselves.

We marvel at the good behaviour of Singapore school groups.

Elsewhere in Asia, kids are absolute hellions in public places, where they scream like banshees in echo-ey museums and race around without interference from indifferent staff or their own indulgent parents.

The zoo has an impressive reptile house.

The zoo has several examples of animals in unenclosed spaces. Like this gibbon.

And this cotton-top tamarin.

The next day, 2-month Indonesian visas freshly stamped, we fly to Jakarta with Lion Air. This is our 16th flight in six months. (19th, if you include the flights from Ottawa to Bangkok.)

We stay in the Kota Tuas area, the site of the original Dutch city of Batavia.

The square is popular with young Jakartans as a meeting place.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Back to Singapore

We mentioned that at the Singapore Zoo, many creatures don’t mind being close to people.

This includes the wilder creatures. We come across this snake dropping from a bush on a quiet side path.

Afterwards, we try looking up what it may be. No luck. Hope it wasn’t poisonous.

It’s time to say goodbye to Krui. We feel so at ease here in Zane’s place – easier to say than any of the three other names that it’s known by.

We’ll miss the beautiful ocean, and watching surfers from the tree house.

Most of all, we’ll miss the relaxed ambience and family-like groove that is so easy to slip into here.

Our little group is joined by John and Martina, a hybrid USA/Slovak couple, to round out our mini-United Nations.

We’ve learned more about surfing and its attractions in the last 11 days than in our entire lifetime. The world needs less Donald Trump, more surfing.

We rent a scooter on an overcast day and drive up the coast.

Mealtimes are a social event. Nita and Lisa keep everyone well fed.

On another day, David, Maria and I rent scooters and make our way to the nearby waterfalls.

It’s a bit like the Amazing Race getting there. We wade through rushing waters.

Hike through somebody’s cow pasture.

We arrive for a cooling dip at last.

Another attraction at Zane’s is puppies. There are adult dogs around. They are not actually Zane’s – they come to the property because they are treated well here. A neighbour comes by with a gunny sack of puppies and leaves them. Everyone knows that Zane is a soft touch.

They bolt under the porch and gradually venture out to explore.

We’re not even sure how long we’ve been here. We have to leave to get our Indonesian visas extended. We’ll miss the sound of the sea outside our window. (Accompanied by barking puppies.)

If any surfers read this, you should make your way to Krui, Sumatra, and stay at Zane’s. But only if you’re not an asshole.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Goodbye to Krui

Without a doubt, what makes our stay here so special is the character of Zane.

He has such obvious affection for the people of his adopted country. He’s a fair and honest man in a part of the globe that is often neither fair nor honest. He’s the perfect bridge between his western guests and the Indonesian way of life because he’s at ease in both worlds. He is a surfer to the core.

Zane went to Bandar Lampung for a few days to visit his family. In his absence, it’s as if the soul of the place was missing. Everyone – guests and staff – is so happy to see him back. People are always dropping by for a chat or advice. Kids love him.

Zane is one of those rarest of creatures – a man who is comfortable in his own skin.

From Bukittinggi, we take a shared taxi to Padang airport. We fly from Padang to Bandar  Lampung – via Jambi – then take a seven-hour bus trip next day to Krui.

Krui is little-known on the farang circuit – except to surfers.

The few foreign visitors here are all surfing people. We can see where their passion comes from.

From what we can absorb, surfing is part art, part science, and part lifestyle philosophy. My misfortune to be born 1,000 kilometres from salt water.

‘Surf’s Up, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children’s song’

– The Beach Boys, ‘Surf’s Up‘ (alternatively, a stripped-to-its-essentials version. )

(This song has little to do with surfing, apart from the title. I just like the enigmatic lyrics.)

Krui is not an easy place to get to. But once we’re here, it’s extremely pleasant.

Our guesthouse has several names, for example  ‘Mutiara Alam’ (Nature’s Pearl), ‘Hotel Zandino’, and ‘Krui surf camp’.

Stumbling across it was a happy accident.

It’s owned and operated by Zane, a transplanted Californian from San Diego who has made this place his home for more than 25 years.

The other people here are Max and Jade, a lovely young Mauritian couple, and David, an adventurous young South African who has been crewing on yachts. (All surfers, of course.) There’s a relaxed atmosphere that threatens to trap us here for a while.

Eddy, Zane’s majordomo, climbs a coconut tree for some refreshments….

…then he hacks off the tops.

David and I enjoy the fruits of Eddy’s labours.

Our accommodation faces the ocean. Delicious meals are included. Beer is freely available. (Not a thing to take for granted in this conservative part of Sumatra.)

We walk everywhere, which makes us conspicuous. Everybody in Indonesia rides scooters at all times.

The sun sinks into the Indian Ocean at the end of our first day.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Krui

One of the best places to hang out is the tree house. Not only does it overlook the ocean, it overhangs the ocean.

It’s also a good place for a sundowner.

This is the view of the beach from the tree house. Whenever we’re by the ocean like this, Chris Rea’s ‘On the Beach‘ runs though my mind like a soundtrack. Hell, the whole album is a classic. Takes me back to my silo-building days.