Gunung Agung

Originally the plan for the last week in Indonesia we were going to go work on someone's urban farm in Denpasar.  I think it was going to be something like what I was doing in NZ, although with much less work.  Unfortunately Nico got a bit of the travelers stomach bleh, and we decided to continue to hang out here in Ubud.  Then kinda on a whim I looked up about climbing Gunung Agung, the highest mountain in Bali.

We'd always been saying it would be cool with either of us to do different things for a bit if that is where the wind takes us, and so since Nico was feeling a little bit better, I went off on my own little adventure for a couple days.

Sorry Mom, I rented a motorbike, but I made it everywhere perfectly safely.  In the morning I got the motorbike, bought some snacks, and head off to Pura Besakih – the largest temple in Bali, and also the start point to climb Gunung Agung.  All it would take is a few trail markers to make this a perfectly safe mountain to climb on your own, but instead you need to hire a guide to not get lost on the trails around the mountian.  I get to the entrance of Pura Besakih and let the haggling begin.  You need to buy a pass to get in and that is where I told the guy that I was there to climb the mountain.  He starts off at 70 or 80 Euro.  For some reason everyone here thinks that you carry tons of Euro on you all the time.  I eventually got it down to 600,000 rupiah (about $65) for a guide and accommodation, which seems pretty steep to me but there really is no other option.  He took me to my room in a homestay and said to be back at 5 to meet the guide.

I wandered around Pura Besakih for a while.  It was another temple... It was cool though that there was some ceremony going on there.  So even though there were tons of tourists, there were even more Balinese people there actually using the temples.

I met up with my guide, and he took me to register at the police station, and said he'd meet me at my homestay at 11pm.  Yes, that is 11pm!  People here are a bit crazy and think that everyone only wants to see the sunrise, no matter what sort of activity you are doing.  Ok, I'll go with it, I've never hiked through the night before.  I try to get some sleep listening to the dogs barking and little kid crying, and finally get maybe 1 hour before my alarm goes off at 10:30.

10 minutes early he shows up and we are on our way.  After about 30 min of hiking we stop at the highest temple on the mountain to pray for good luck.  It was kinda cool to be involved in this, cause normally you cant go into the main parts of the temples.  With our headlamps on, we continue on through the forest.  Basically the trail goes right up the side of the mountain following a ridge.  (I didn't know the ridge part until the way down when I could actually see my surroundings).  The jungle gave way to a pine forest, and when that began to thin we stop.  He tells me that we are 1 hour from the top, but it was only 3:30 am!  He actually builds a big ol' fire and we dry out our boots and try to keep warm while it rained off and on.  He also pulls out some rice and egg and spicy fish thing for us to eat while waiting there.  He got a bit of sleep and I just kinda hunkered down and waited until 5am when we could go on our way again.

He was right on with the hour estimate to the top, and we got there just as it was beginning to get light.  Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy, but most of it was along the crater rim about 100m past the top.  It was really neat to watch the clouds pour over the mountain and then fall and disappear over the other side (like in this picture to the right).  Once it got light out I could see around and how beautiful it was.  Pura Besakih is at around 3000ft, and with the top over 10,000 feet, it was crazy being so far above anything else.  It is also twice as high as anything else nearby.  After about 20 min (before the sun actually even popped up) he was asking if I was ready to head down.  I had to tell him a few times, “not quite yet”.  I guess for him though he's been up there for sunrise over 100 times, so he just got up there and sat down and waited.

After about 45 minutes and the sun was up I finally was ready to head down.  It was kinda weird to be seeing the scenery for the first time on the way down.  On the way up, I was actually always on my guides heels and kinda wanting to go faster.  But on the way down, he practically ran.  It was fun and it sure kept my mind 100% engaged to go down so quickly.  I am a bit sad though that I didn't get too much time to look around and enjoy the scenery on the way down either.  We did make it all the way back down in just 2.5 hours though.  By the end, my quads were so spent and felt like jelly that it was hard to even just walk on flat surfaces.

He dropped me back off in front of Pura Besakih where I remember there being some lawn and trees, and I planned on sleeping for a couple hours before heading back to Ubud.  Surprisingly I was still quite awake and so sleeping was not going to happen.  Some locals there were looking at me when I was lying there and they invited me to sit with them on their platform.  It was cool to be able to chill and not be hassled to buy poscards and buy sarongs like every other white person there.  Then by about 10 am I was ready to hop back on the motorbike and go back to Ubud.

Gunung Agung - 2 hours after leaving the summit

Overall, this was a bit more expensive than most other things I've been doing, but sometimes it is well worth it and this is one of those times.  I got to learn to ride a motorbike (it had a small engine and was automatic and I probably never went over 30mph) but it was fun.  And this is probably the highest elevation gain and loss that I have ever hiked in one day.  Surprisingly it was far easier than I thought.  Adrenaline is wonderful and it kept me awake and alert all night long.  It wasn't until I was back in Ubud and sat down that I became exhausted and passed out for 3 hours, got up for some dinner and Nico kept me up until about 8:30 when I couldn't take it anymore and passed out for the next 11 hours.

For more pictures, check out my picasa site.

Hanging out in Ubud

Yea, that's about what we've been going for the past 5 days or so.  We are staying in a homestay which is sweet, cause it is in a nice area off the roads where a few families live.  There are the just a couple rooms for travellers and basically is just a normal living space.  The homes here are really neat to see to as there are intricate carvings everywhere, and it is just a different style of living than we americans are used to.  Check it out, this is where we are staying:

The first full day here we wandered around a bit and went to the sacred monkey forest.  There are tons of monkeys!  Here's me hanging out with my power animal, or should I say "I've got a monkey on my back!"

Next day we went for a walk around Ubud to see some of the surrounding areas.  It is really nice to get away for a bit after spending so much time in cities since we've been in Indonesia.  Around Ubud are all rice patties and small villages and there are actually some trails that you can kinda figure out where you are going on your own.  One frustrating thing about here so far is that to do any hiking you really need a guide.  It's not like the US or NZ where there are trail signs and well worn trails.

Then yesterday we went to explore a little further away by renting some bicycles for the day.  About US$2 each for the day, not bad.  We first head toward this place called Elephant cave.  Kinda disappointing as there were no elephants there and the cave was really small.  But it was neat in that there is a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple right next to each other.  We hung out with an old lady at the Buddhist place and Nico made an offering and we stayed to meditate for a little while.  Then after that we just found some small side roads (good to get away from the craziness that is Indonesian driving) and explored.  I really enjoyed getting to do some physical activity even if it is 100% humidity.

Ok, now some planning is in action, and also tomorrow we are going to rent a car and wander around the island for a couple days seeing what we happen to come upon.  Oh, and I suppose we should hit up a beach or two.

Ok, now if you've made it this far in the post, than you might care about how everything is going and what I've got to say.  Nico is discouraged with the whole blogging thing, so now mine might be the only one with updates.  We both have been feeling like this wandering around and finding the good things to see is actually not all that fulfilling.  We've spent about 4 hours a night for the past 3 nights trying to figure out what to do from here (Bali) as our visa is up in two weeks and we have no onward plans at the moment.

I have been trying to figure out what I am really doing here on the other side of the world from the people and things that I hold dear in my life.  Seeing some ruins is kinda cool, but am  I really getting anything out of it?  I think I need to be travelling with more of a purpose.  A couple things that I am really excited about and have wanted to do for some time is trek in Nepal and work on a kibbutz in Israel.  Another thing that is important to me for this trip is to experience other cultures and people, and learn about sustainable living.  It seems like couchsurfing and volunteering are a couple things that I want to do more of here in SE asia before getting to Nepal in mid sept to oct when the trekking season starts.  Another thing important for Nico is Buddhism, which is something that I am also interested in.  So we'll see what happens from here on out.

More Adventures in Indonesia

After that crazy time in Jakarta, we took a train to Jogja (the cultural center of Java).  We got one of them air conditioned trains, which meant that it was 85 degrees in there instead of 90.  And on the ticket it said we'd get in at 4:30pm, which apparently means sometime around 8 or 9.  But apparently that is how travel here in Indonesia works.

Anyway we took a day to chill out there, went to a shadow puppet show and also saw some Gamelan music in the Kraton (royal family's palace).  The puppet show was cool, and there is one guy who moves the puppets, tells the story, makes some other banging noises and also directs the gamelan music band.  It was all in bahasa indonesia (Indonesian) so I had no idea what was going on, but it was cool nonetheless.

Then the next day the plan was to take some public transport to Borobudur (a huge Buddhist temple).  We set out at 2pm and the plan was to get to the nearby town and spend the night, assuming that was enough time to get there.  We go find where we are supposed to wait for the bus, and some guy tells us it is where we are standing, even though there is no obvious bus stop there.  So we sit and wait, ... and wait ... and wait some more, until it was about 3:15 and we realized that the bus we needed to change onto stops running at 4.  The bus never came.  Many busses here just wait in one spot until they are full, and then they go on their route.  I guess bus 5 never got full....

Later we decided that maybe we should do some organized transport, and booked a day trip to Borobudur and also a 2 day thing to get us to Mt. Bromo, and then on to Bali.  First off, Borobudur is pretty cool.  I have been meaning to look up some more info about it, but just havent gotten there yet.  I just know that it is a big ol' Buddhist temple and you are supposed to walk around each level 3 times before going up.  I'll let the pictures do the talking about how much work had gone into this thing.  To see more picts go to my picasa site: picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan

Carvings like those above were everywhere!

After wondering around the temple, we thought it would be nice to walk to a nearby hill to get a different view of it.  Turned out to be really nice and there were all these trails and walks around, but they were not advertized at all.  Funny how when something is awesome, but not in lonely planet, no one goes there.  Obviously Borobudur is in there and there were tons of tourists, but once we went for a little walk the only person we saw was a guy climbing a tree to get some coconuts.

  The next morning we head off to Mt. Bromo.  One breakdown and 3 hours late, we make it to the hotel to get about 5 hours of sleep.  We are woken up at 3:30 shoved into a jeep and taken to a nearby mountain to get some wonderful views of Bromo and the sunrise.  Apparently sunrise tours here are hugely popular.  It was kinda weird for me to get way up on a mountain (2700m or about 9000ft) and have just been driven there.  It was too easy.  But it was sweet.

Bromo is the one smoking in the middle

Unfortunately it is so easy that probably about 400 other people were there that morning too!  I of course had to climb down off the viewing platform and then into a tree to get away from them all.  We were then shuttled down to the base of Bromo to go walk up it.  It was quite easy, and then there was a staircase up the steep part!  It just did not seem right to actually have to wait in line to walk up stairs to get to the top of the volcano.  At least no one was adventurous enough to do the 45 min walk around the crater rim, and I at least got to do a bit of walking in peace.

Overall it turned out to be cheaper and easier to do the tour thing to see Bromo and get to Bali, but at the same time it was way less fulfilling.  It was the first time we were with lots of white people since we got to Indonesia, and it was also quite chaotic.  We never really knew what was going on, or where we were headed or where we were staying, yet somehow it all worked out.  We made it to where we were going; although there was one other girl supposedly coming to Denpasar (Bali) who we met and I never saw her after leaving Bromo....

So anyway, now here we are in Ubud which is kinda in the middle of Bali.  There is lots of art and dance and my favorite - trails with monkeys.  We will probably spend at least a few more days here and also figure out where we are going from here.  Our visa is only good for 30 days, so I suppose sometime soon we'll need to buy another plane ticket somewhere.  Till next time...

Jakarta: a life Experience

Holy Crap.  I have never experienced such a dramatic change in culture and basically everything (except climate) in just a 90 minute flight.  First of all, couchsurfing is amazing.  Nico and I are so lucky to have had the change to really experience how people live in Jakarta and learn so much about it.  We stayed with a 24 year old math teacher named Rheden, who lives with his family in a modest little house in South Jakarta.  His whole family were amazing hosts as they were so happy to see us and talk to us and constantly feed us new Indonesian foods.  About the only thing that was normal to me was rice.  For them it is not a meal unless it includes rice (breakfast, lunch and dinner).  But everything that goes with it and how it was prepared was different and equally new and delicious every time.  They believe that when they have guests they really take care of them.  They made every meal (and lots of snacks) for us when we were around and would not let us clean up at all even though we tried every single time.

This is Rheden's family at 6am on the day we left.  Rheden is in the picture below.

Jakarta is not much of a tourist city.  This has made for some totally unique experiences here, especially having locals as hosts.  First off, when we first took a bus into the middle of town, we were constantly surprised by the people.  It seemed that they all wanted to sell us stuff cause we were foreigners.  But once we actually listened to what they were saying, the ones that have some broken english are all trying to help us get to where we need to go by pointing out directions.  And everyone else just wants to say “Hi Mister!”  That's it... not begging, or selling crap, they just want to say hi.

The second day that we were here, Nico and I went with Rheden's Mom and Sister to go pick up his 6 yr old nephew from school.  Now in this small school, most of the kids had never seen a white person before, but it is part of their curriculum to learn some english.  We kinda walk in and all the kids are just looking at us, and following with some distance.  Apparently they all love photos...  I take out my camera and say “foto!” and they all get super excited and pose, and then I get in there with them.  Then they all want to talk in English with us.  Next thing we know, a path is cleared and the teachers are ushering us to the front of a classroom with 40 super excited 9 year olds.  So here we are trying to teach some english words.  We'd say something and then they would all repeat it.  I have never seen so much excitement in a classroom.  Then after a few minutes we tried to leave, but then every single kid wanted to shake our hands.  They also do this thing where they bring your hand to their forehead and sometimes kiss it to show respect to elders.  I felt like some celebrity being there with everyone doing this to us.  Crazy that it is all just because of the color of my skin.  Then we were ushered into the headmasters office to meet with the people running the school and sign their visitors book.  This morning was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life for sure.

Later that day Nico went into the middle of the city and went to the national monument (Monas) and to  Masjid Istiqlal which is the third largest mosque in the world.  This city is something different.  To continue with the craziness of being white from before... Wherever we went people would want to take their picture with us.  About 10 times that day we took photos with strangers, probably so many times cause I have a really hard time ignoring people.  I am constantly saying “halo” to people on the side of the road.  The bus system here is also very different.  The buses have no set stops.  You just wave one down as it goes by and then tap the ceiling when you want to get off.  The driver will stop (or just roll slowly) in the middle of the road; not even necessarily on the side of the road – so you wander through traffic to the relative safety of the sidewalk.  The doors are always open and there is a guy who hangs out the door hustling people to get on the bus and collecting money.  Then when we stop at a traffic light people with guitars get on and play a song or two, collect some money and then hop off and wait for the next bus.

It is a really good thing that Nico and I studied a little bit of bahasa indonesia before we came here.  Unless they deal with tourists, which is not many people, very few people speak any english.  Our broken Indonesian has saved our butts a couple times especially when we first got to where we were to meet Rheden for the first time and we borrowed someone's phone to send him a text saying we made it.

Now we are on a train (this will probably be posted sometime later...) to Jogja.  It was an amazing experience being in Jakarta, but also very tiring.  You always need to be “on” and paying attention.  Also Jakarta has awful air quality.  There is smog from the tons of cars and motorbikes and traffic that does not end even in the middle of the day.  And everyone smokes all the time.  So I am happy to be moving on, although I am not sure what we are moving on to.  We hear that it is kind of the cultural center of Java, and there is a big Buddhist temple nearby.  We might have to actually spend the $30 for a lonely planet travel guide, cause there is so much in this country and we are only allowed 30 days here.

getting a tour in Istiqlal

I think that is it for now, I feel like I could write pages about all we've seen in just these past few days, but maybe I'll save some for later. Phew.