This is our first blog. We are still jet lagged, so forgive the rambling lists and incoherent descriptions that follow. This is the story of four travelers who spent a month in Indonesia -- that archipelago of 18,000 islands stretching between Australia and Thailand. We left Atlanta, Georgia behind to have an adventure, to use up expiring vacation hours, to relive childhood memories, to search for the perfect sambal, to remember that we are just tiny threads in the fabric of humanity, to experience ancient cultures, to climb volcanoes and swim in brilliant blue oceans. We did all this, and more, and with little preparation or hesitation and mostly by the seat of our pants. (In this picture, we are sweating, sunburned, sick and riding in a local bemo (a bus smaller than a '70s VW van that typically carries 12 people), but loving every minute of it. Really.Prior to departure, we discussed visiting numerous locales. We had weekly planning sessions with Asian food to inspire us. In the end, we narrowed it down to four primary regions of the country, with the most ambitious goal of visiting the Malukus, aka the Spice Islands. In the Spice Islands, our primary destination was the Bandas, home of the nutmeg tree, the spice that gave rise to so much European exploration/domination in the region. Just getting to the Bandas was a feat in and of itself... more about these islands later. The areas we visited included Java (Solo, Yokyakarta, Bromo, and Surabaya), Maluku (Ambon and the Bandas), Bali (Ubud, Kuta and surrounding areas) and Sumatra (Medan, Berastagi and Samosir).We survived a month of travel in Indonesia. By our calculations, it included no less than 13 airplane flights, 2 overnight government ferries, 2 regular ferries, a 1920's slow train, a light-rail train, and a high-speed train, the obligatory becaks (3 wheeled motorized or bicycle powered transport), small, medium and large public buses, taxis, motorcycles, rented vehicles, 4-wheel-drive jeeps, horseback, long boats, long canoes and yes, much transport on foot. On the left is our friend Tony, hanging with a poser becak driver in Medan...
Another survivor, who left us on the last week in Sumatra, is our brother Sim. (see right) Note that not even a Balinese full moon festival could deter Sim from checking his Palm Pilot Treo.
Aspects of the trip that stand out include: spicy food; bargaining (for everything!); feeling ill; snorkeling; travel, travel and travel; equatorial heat; coconut milk dishes; lots of sambal (spicy hot sauce); rice; the search for coffee with sweetened condensed milk; tropical fruit; religion (the Muslim call to prayer and Hindu offerings of incense); hundreds of bottles of water; smiling kids and photo ops; temples (ancient and new); volcanoes; photographs; poor roads; monkeys, chickens, dogs, cats, and water buffaloes; crazy driving; rice paddies; dirt, dust and mud; food markets and night
stalls; beer Bintang and arak (rice liquor); fried food, fried food and fried food; mosquitoes; kretek cigarettes; the Jakarta 60 and the Malay 30; cold baths; squatting toilets (use your left hand, no TP); birds (what birds?); trash, burning trash, and billowing smoke; sun burns; white sand beaches; sketchy hotels and friendly family stays; geckos and cecaks (tiny noisy lizards); Hindu dancing; "transport?"; sarongs; anti-malaria pills; huge schools of tropical fish; one leech; volcanic craters and more craters; sulfur steam; rugged, green, lush tropical
landscape everywhere; smiling faces; and laughter. Food might have been as important, or more important, than any other aspect of the trip. In fact, we'll probably dedicate many blogs to this subject.We met all sorts of people: Bataks (North Sumatran animist Christians who laugh and sing and are fiercely independent); Chinese Indonesians (enterprising
immigrants fully integrated into the culture with the most reliably safe food); Javanese (a mysterious, rich culture of mostly Muslim people who control the government and believe their culture is superior to the hundreds of others that make up Indonesia); Balinese (mostly Hindu people whose island is festooned with brightly colored temples); Ambonese (a mixture of Pacific Islanders, Malay and Aboriginal peoples, divided Christian and
Muslim, and animist), Bandanese (former workers and slaves serving the spice trade, Christian, Muslim and Confucius Chinese), Malaysians, Aussies, Dutch, French, Japanese and even Americans, carving out their own experiences on these mysterious islands.
