Selamat Makan (Enjoy your meal) Dinsdag, 7 mei, 2002 Over the last couple of weeks more and more e-mails have been dropping in asking me how I'm doing. This reminded me it has been quit a while since I wrote a little story on my web site so here we are: describing my final time in Asia. I'm sorry but I got excited while typing so once again the story is much longer than intended. So I introduced a new feature in this posting: the summary and the long story. The summary I'm doing allright. Visited Indonesia. Will be back in Holland in 2 weeks but don't want to. The long story From Sydney I bought a ticket back to Bangkok (instead of Singapore) because I could not decide on what I wanted to do: either do the Laos/Cambodia loop or head towards Indonesia. I hear many good things about Laos but I'm glad I headed for Indonesia: what a beautiful country, nice people and superb food. Nice one: As Indonesia is just a little bit malaria infected (look at the malaria risk maps on the internet: Indonesia is deep dark red colored meaning you almost have more chance of getting malaria than getting diarrhea), I headed for the hospital for tropical diseases in Bangkok in order to get some Lariam. A lot of protection for malaria you can just buy at any pharmacy in Thailand, except the Lariam I like. The doctor I talked to said: "Well, I can prescribe Lariam but I don't want to." My instant reaction: "Excuse me??!!, why won't you give me the best protection against malaria??" She explained to me: all these medicines are protective, but not 100 percent: you can still get malaria. If you do use Lariam and still get malaria one cannot test your blood anymore to determine what kind of malaria you have. Well, this kind of made sense and as mosquitos don't like me anyway (I never get bitten in Holland, as it turned out Asian mosquitos do like me) I could live with that. As a backup she gave me some quinine and mefloquine: if I were to get sick and was unable to get to a hospital, I had to take these medicines. I don't know exactly what this stuff does, but it must be the kind of stuff that hits your entire body like a huge sledge hammer. So the Thai medical society is a reflection of the general Thai culture: don't worry about it until the problem occurs. There I went: happily running to one of the most malaria infected areas in the world, unprotected. I wonder what the GGD in Holland would say about that... What are the odds: I took the train to the south of Thailand. 3 Months before I met Ian, a good lad from Newcastle, England) on the train station as I went to Chiang Mai. We still e-mail a lot about our whereabouts but I had no idea where he was at the time. Guess who I ran into at the very same train station: Ian. We had a lot to catch up and for some reason we always drink too much beer while telling our stories.. I took a ferry from Penang, Malaysia to Medan, Sumatra. I will not tell you too much about this as these are uninteresting cities, just pass through and forget about it. The only interesting thing was meeting Poltak in Medan. I had a nice and long discussion with him about the marketing of home appliances. Now that this little story actually brings you into Indonesia I can finally tell you: THE FOOD!! Vietnamees food is very good, Thai food is excellent but Indonesian is absolutely superb. Maybe it is related to the fact that I have some Indonesian blood in me and that I grew up with it, but I couldn't stop eating. In Indonesia they have a beautiful concept called Padang food (coming from the city of Padang, Sumatra). This concept is not about the dishes itself, but about the way it is served. You sit down, you get a plate with white rice, a cup of tea and a bowl of water. Then it happens: the waiter brings you all the dishes they cooked that day. This usually means the waiter balances about 12 plates on his arm to serve you. You use the bowl of water to wash your hands because you are supposed to eat with you hands. After that you start eating till you are stuffed. The beauty of this concept: you only pay for what you eat (usually I had to pay about 20.000 rupiah which is little over 2 euro). There are two disadvantages to this system: you are forced into making decisions as there is no way you can eat 12 dishes. The other one is that you always eat one or two dishes more than is healthy for you so the pompoui (Thai word for belly) is still growing. My first real stop was Lake Toba, a lake actually being a volcano crater at some places 400 meters deep. As a lot of places in Indonesia it was pretty quiet: there are not too many travellers around. This is all due to the september 11th events and people are scared to travel to islamic countries. For Indonesia I can tell you: this is absolute bullshit, there's no trouble whatsoever, you are perfectly save in Indonesia. Of course there are some areas like Aceh and Irian Jaya that are somewhat adventurous but this is traditional and Indonesia internal, it has nothing to do with september 11th. Yes, there is the occasional demonstration in front of the American embassy and if you walk around there and start shouting "I love George Bush" you probably get into trouble (but who wants to shout that anyway). Anyway, Lake Toba. Stunning country-side which I explored on motorbike with James from England and a bunch of Germans. James brings me to another subject: development of Asian countries. James works for a joint venture that educates groups of kids to work in the computing industry: they teach them English and basic stuff like networking, Visual Basic. ASP and stuff like that. These kids are brilliant and as you see them work on the internet in internet cafe's you figure they must have a great future ahead of them. I wonder how this will influence the general development of these Asian countries. So far all these countries have had or are going through a process of economical development: Singapore and Malaysia are pretty far ahead, followed by Thailand, followed by Vietnam and Indonesia. Today these countries have access to the internet so I wonder how this will influence their development. Although I have all the time in the world to think about it, I haven't been able to figure it out. Anyway, after these large thoughts at world-wide scale I figured it was time to get some physical exercise. I have always out of shape, but walking around for 5 months drinking beer and smoking way too much cigarettes is not making it any better. In my little guide book I read about Pulau Nias; a little island that is known for its surfing activities. Yes, yes, yes: riding the waves, getting in shape as a lean-mean-beach-boy-machine! Before I tell you about me riding 30 feet waves a little side story. As Pulau Nias is an island, I had to take a ferry from Sibolga. On the ferry I met Jimmy, a guy from Ireland. He looked very tense and said "I have to tell you a story, not now, not now, wait till we set sail." Once we headed out he told me what happened. He had taken a hotel room for the day as he arrived in Sibolga early. About 1,5 hour before the ferry left a man knocked on his door, appearing to be a police man. The police man said: "You have drugs, you come with me to police station or you can pay the 'fine'." "No, I have no drugs on me, you can search my bags right now, right here." "No, you come to police station where we can test your blood and we can find anything dating 3 weeks back." This discussion went on for about one hour, Jimmy ended up paying the police man $35 US. The frustating thing about scams like this is: there's nothing you can do about it. Although Jimmy was clean as a whistle (maybe not if tested but that's beside the point), he ended up loosing no matter what he chose to do. He paid for something he did not do or posses because the other option is something you definitly do not want: spending a night in the Sibolga police station while the tests are being analysed. Even worse: even if you are clean they are always able to 'find' something... These are scary scams but to this respect I have to admit my trip has been quite boring: I have not been robbed, held up, kidnapped. Yes, of course there are the little tourist scams like paying too much for a product or service, but I'm sorry: I don't have any personal borderline stories. As said: riding 30 feet waves. The first thing to do was find me a local kid to teach me the ropes. Dedy walked up to me, in fact he more stumbled up to me than walked. I think he had polio or something as a kid as he uses sticks and artificial legs. He surprised me by telling me that he can actually surf and would really like to make some money by teaching. That's the other thing: there are loads of (handicapted) beggars in Asia. I never ever give them money. As long as their hands are working they can make something; I'll buy it. The blind guys that sing on the streets at night: even though it sounds horrible I give them some money: at least they try (the good thing is: the money usually makes them move on so you get rid of the awful sound). So I agreed with Dedy that he would be my surfing teacher. This felt a bit like the blind helping the cripple, where I was the blind carrying the cripple's surf board and the blind being completely out of shape and not used to using his shoulders and arms so much: we started out by peddeling to another beach for 25 minutes: completely exhausted. As it turned out Dedy is a pretty good teacher; gave good instructions and kept correcting me. After day 1 I had to take a break for one day: my mustles hurt too much and my face and arms had really taken too much sun the day before (to the point where it's getting dangerous). So we skipped one day and after day 2 I had to decide to go on or leave Pulau Nias as the ferry only leaves once a week. Humm, after 2 days I was able to ride a 2 feet wave, standing up for about 6 seconds. Was I going to be a professional surfer if I stayed one week more? Probably not. Next to that my lower left rib hurt a lot from climbing and lying on the board all day. In fact: this is 5 weeks ago and the rib still hurts. Although I usually treat my injuries very casually by not treating them at all, I seriously start to think that 5 weeks is not normal. Anyway has some profound medical advice? The ferry I took next brought me to Jakarta via Padang. This is how the Asian way and language barrier sometimes works in your favor. I bought my ticket the day before, together with a group of travellers wanting to go to Padang. You had to fill in a form with your destination on it and present that to the man at the counter. When I paid the ticket it turned out he had printed me a ticket to Padang instead of Jakarta: "Oh, I'm sorry, in computer now, cannot change. You can change on ferry tomorrow, I will be there with you at 15:00." Right, is this going to work?, how does this scam work? Well, just relax and take the ferry, so far I have had no serious trouble whatsoever. Of course the guy from the ticket office was not there the next day and on the ferry the information office was closed, being open again next morning 08:00. But: the ferry was scheduled to arrive in Padang at 07:30. So if I did nothing, wait for the office to open after we left Padang with me having no valid ticket they could charge me anything. So the next morning at 07:15 I started to hassle the guy in the still closed information office. I could not give him money for a ticket, I had to go to the security officer. 5 minutes later I was back annoying the guy again because I could not find the security officer. I really could not buy the ticket from him but we agreed that it would not be more than 220.000 rupiah. He wrote something on my ticket I could not read and waited for the ticket check in my cabin after we headed out. The guys came, I said "I want to change my ticket and pay for Padang - Jakarta." The guy couldn't speak a word of English so he looked at me like I came from Mars, tried to read the note on my ticket, didn't get it, gave the ticket to the big man in uniform, he gave it back and nodded, guy gave the ticket to me and said "Terimah Kasih" (thank you). No mate: thank you!: free ride, saving me a cool 25 euro (you can live well for 3 days on 25 euro) and free food as this was included in the ticket. Two other things about the boat ride and Indonesia in general. One: the people are so friendly in Indonesia as supposed to Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. I mean, nothing wrong in these countries, the people are also very friendly, but in Indonesia a lot of people just come up to you for a little chat. No intention to sell you anything, just wanting to practice their English. The other thing: it is very cool to be able to speak the language a little bit. Nine years ago when I visited my sister in Jakarta who was working there for a year, I took a 6-week course in Bahasa Indonesia. I cannot really make conversation in Bahasa Indonesia, but I can count, order food, buy stuff (and bargain for it) and usually this is highly appreciated. I would love to be able to do the same for Thai and Vietnamees, but these are very difficult languages, starting with the fact that their alphabet is completely different so all the letters are nothing but pictures to me. Jakarta was mainly another example of why I like travelling on my own: the unlimited flexibility. I arrived in Jakarta on monday night, wanting to move on to Bandung tuesday morning. Tuesday morning I had to check out of the guest house at noon so I ran out of the internet cafe 11:50. Shit: rain. I didn't feel like like walking through the rain with all my stuff so I decided to stay and leave wednesday morning. Tuesday night I realised that Jakarta has quite a few marks of Dutch culture from the past so I decided to stay another day to look at the cultural sites and in the end left for Bandung thursday morning instead of the initial tuesday morning. My main reason for going to Bandung was to play a little bit private investigator for a very close and dear friend of mine. I had to find a friend of this friend (you will understand that I have to be somewhat cryptic about this sensitive matter on an open platform like the internet). Just like in the movies I hired my local investigator to work for me, bribed a cap driver to drive us around and wait for us and together with my local man we walked into the kampung (dense living area where you easily get lost) where I was stared at by locals who had never seen a tourist before, or at least no tourist had ever set foot in their kampung. Very exiting, asking around, people running around for us and even the kampung-elderly-chief going around on his bycicle for us in order to find the address. Unfortunately our mission was not very succesful: address did not exist. Days later it turned out that my dear friend had turned the numbers around so we were looking for the wrong address. The next step was to explore the Bandung country side on a little tour. The usual ram fight, walk through the rice paddy and krupuk factory, followed by the highlight of the trip: walking on the Papandayan volcano. Wait till you see the pictures: this is a landscape you have never seen before, this is probably what the moon looks like. The thing about this trip was the bus and it's driver. This guy already missed an elderly crossing the street by 10 centimeters. He also didn't know his mechanics too well: we had to stop a few times to fill the radiator with new cooling water. I had to get out all the time as I sat next to the driver, right on top of the engine. One time he wanted to set off after refilling without putting the lit back on the radiator. As I was sitting right on top of the engine and don't like my arse getting boiled I refused to get back in until he put the lit back on. Going up on the hill was too much for the little old bus: the driver shifted back too late so we came to a stand still and the engine quit. The frightening thing was we started sliding backwards, I saw him hit the break but absolutely nothing happened. Finally we came to a stand still again next to the road. "OK, no problem" the driver said "everybody can stay in bus." "Right back at you babe" the majority of the group thought and everybody jumped off the bus. Except me of course, I'm usually pretty cool in situations like this and as there was no cliff of let's say 100 meters where we could fall off I just stayed in the bus. The driver got the engine running again and tried to pull out. Doing 5000 rpm with his Diesel engine he did not realize his wheels where spinning like crazy. That was when I figured: "If he's blowing this engine through the roof it's going to take me with it as I sit on top of it." That was enough for me to get the hell out of there. We pushed to bus back on the road and drove on happily, especially the girls on our group being just a little bit scared. From Bandung I travelled to Panangdaran with two funny, crazy Dutch girls and a Canadian guy. Panangdaran is a beach village so we checked into our nice bungalows at the beach. Hired some motorbikes, explore the environment a little bit, got soaking wet on one of those tropical showers and did a little tour the other day. After the girls and Canada left, I had the entire bungalowpark to myself (as said before: there are not many tourist around). Nice and quiet, read some books before I had to start heading back to Bangkok. I went back towards Thailand (flight leaves from Bangkok) via Bukit Tinggi, Sumatra. From Bukit Tinggi you can visit the place where the equator is running. Of course this is only a virtual line, but it's enough to make a tourist attraction out of it. It's a nice ride through the mountains so I rented a motorbike to get there. For the experts: although this was a 2-stroke machine which I do not like, it actually had a clutch instead of the semi-automatic. This means I could really drive a bike again: optimal shifting for curves etc. What most people won't realize but I do, is that the equator crossing is quite a rip-off. At the crossing point there is a line painted on the road with statements painted like "you just crossed to the southern hemisphere". I have my little GPS (Global Positioning System) gear with me (sorry JoJo, I only used it like 10 times, not more than that) and guess what: this whole tourist circus is not on the equator but 130 meters to the north of it!!! Apparantly they did not want to tear down a couple of houses to build this significant landmark. Puff, all this trouble driving up there and then being ripped-off. Anyway, I played the good tourist and after a lot of hassle I bought my I-crossed-the-equator T-shirt. From Indonesia I crossed to Malaysia to visit the Taman Negara national park: time to explore the jungle. Very cool: the Canopy walkway: a small bridge build high up (45 meters) between trees with a total lenght of 500 meters. This is one of those Indiana Jones bridges build with rope so you dangle a lot walking from tree to tree. The other excitement was spending a night in the jungle in a little hide, far away from the village. The hide has an opening on one side from where you can watch the wild life that comes alive at night. It was quite exciting except: if it's dark you don't see anything unless you have torches powerful enough to reach the place where the animals come. As both me and the Japanese couple also staying in the hide did not have powerful torches we didn't see much animals. The only animals I saw where a big, fat rat that woke me up going through my garbish that I had hanging up about 30 centimeters next to my head. Luckily the rat was more afraid of me and my torch then I was of it, which is a comfortable position to be in. The other animals I saw where 4 leeches of which I was unaware that I was donating them my blood. No worries, these creatures are harmless, they just suck some blood out of you, you easily pull them off or scrape them off with a knive. That was it for Malaysia, back to Thailand for the very last week in Asia. This is how a leg of travelling can look like: - start 07:30 in the morning with a 1 hour hike from the hide to the village - have breakfast - take a 2 hour boat trip to the landing zone, leaving at 09:00 - take a 30 minute bus ride back to the hotel where I left my luggage - take a shower, have lunch while checking e-mail - take a mini bus at 13:30 for a 3 hour drive to Kuala Lumpur - find the bus station in Kuala Lumpur and buy a ticket to Hat Yai (South Thailand) - explore Kuala Lumpur for 4 hours - the bus leaves at 22:00, arriving in Hat Yai at 07:30, try to get some sleep on the bus - buy a ticket to Koh Samui and have breakfast - get in crammed mini bus at 08:30 - arrive in Surat Thani 12:30 - be brought to the ferry pier at 15:00 - ferry sails at 17:00 - ferry arrives at Koh Samui at 18:30 - hire a motorbike to drive to the beach where you want to stay, 30 minute drive - arrive at The Beach Resort 19:15, check in, have a sigarette and a beer, take a shower. This is what 36 hours of travelling can look like. This is definitly one of the longer legs I did, but it is quite doable, you go into a state of trying to nap whenever you can, just sit down and relax and eventually you will get there. So for the last few days I'm beaching out at Koh Samui. I'll be going to Bangkok on friday because saturday it is going to happen: shopping at Chatu Chak. So far I have resisted the urge to buy souvenirs because I just couldn't drag them around all the time. By this weekend I will have only one week left in which I will mainly travel by plane so I can check in extra bags. Chatu Chak is the weekend market in Bangkok where they have over 8200 shops selling their stuff. This will mean buying extra travel bags to carry all the stuff I will buy. Only 2 weeks to go and I'm back in Holland. I just try not to think of that too much.   ... back