The Slightly Bent Travels of Carol and Jim

Transylvannia 6-5000

2017-03-28T20:08:00.002-07:00

Okay, you probably have to be an old fart like me to get the Duke Ellington riff, but, yes, we’re off to the land of Vlad the Impaler and dear old Count Dracula, he of the black cape with the red lining, which my daughter wants as a present. The Portland airport is the smallest airport in the US where one can fly non-stop to Europe and Asia…so a “quick” 10 hour flight puts us in Amsterdam and a short hop to Budapest begins our latest sojourn into the known and unknown of life…..the known part is meeting with dear friends in Budapest. We will stay with two different sets of friends who we met on our last trip to Europe two years ago, then board a river cruise down the Danube river to Bucharest, Romania…That will precede a rental car and a two week road trip around Romania and Bulgaria with a one day hop into Ukraine to get a small taste of a Ukranian village…I keep thinking of “Everything is Illuminated,” when I envision this area of the world…rustic villages where traditional ways are still the norm and not the exception. Finally, a short hop retracing our steps to Amsterdam and three days with our friends there before coming home at the beginning of May….

Batik and Hair cut day

2016-05-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Jakarta loomed before we faced our 30 hour flight drudgery to get home and although we had really been active and accomplished most of our goals, a few things still unfinished meant that it would not be a throw-away day…. We always try to include a local fiber experience on our trips. Being a fiber person, Carol already had a lot of information about Indonesian Batik but had never dabbled in it. We had thought that she would be able to do so in Ubud, Bali, but our time there was too limited and didn’t line up with their scheduled classes. In Yogyakarta we visited a batik production with a huge inventory of unsold items from small hand held silk to full dining room table beautifully designed spreads with matching napkins and place mats. Again, no classes, just welcome to look, now come see our gift shop. But I was able to find online the Textile Museum of Indonesia located in Jakarta and they offered classes. Our options didn’t look good when they were closed on our second day and we were down to the nubbins on time. However, off we climbed into our blue bird taxi and sped, read, “crawled” our way, once more across Jakarta. Again, there is no rush hour direction…it’s just the same no matter where you go. The museum opened at 9:00 and we got there right at opening time. We paid our $0.33 entry fee and entered a dark dance-hall-sized room with various little alcoves all along the sides…lots of weavings, but no batiks. We were the only ones there for 30 minutes or so while we looked at the weavings when we heard a noise and went to see if it was somebody who knew something. Instead it was Motoko, a lady from Yokohama, who was wanting to do the batik as well…she ventured outside and found someone who directed us all to a building at the back….we walked in and were greeted with the question; “Batik?” and we were in.

We paid the $6 fee and an instructor pointed us to a stack of drawings which Carol and Motoko could choose from for their batik. Carol chose a horse and Motoko a flower. The room was about the size of two suburban houses stuck together and there were little pots with burners underneath scattered around the room with very low chairs placed around the pot. An opium pipe-looking device hung from the side. The man lit the burner and Carol and Motoko proceeded to trace the design in pencil onto a blank piece of cloth and then the drawing and blank cloth were attached to each other in an embroidery hoop to take out all wrinkles and provide a flat surface on which to work. The pipe device was actually a metal stem with a little bowl attached to it and a small reed-like half inch long piece of tubing leading from the bowl. The pipe bowl was dipped into the hot wax which was liquid by now, and slowly and ever so carefully the design was then traced a second time using the hot wax. Care had to be taken since lingering over a spot would mean a drip from the stem and continual dippings to keep the wax hot provided the lines which soon became the horses head and the flower. After this was done on both sides, they were taken to the various stages for completing the work.

The man painted paraffin along the sides to prevent any dye from entering the border and he crinkled the edge for effect and began to dip into the colors that they had chosen. And a finished product emerged. Both ladies really did great jobs, and Carol was pleased to have somebody else with her to see how they approached the projects in their various ways. Mission accomplished.

Browsing the gallery while the batiks dried, a woman curator/director talked to us about the various types of batik we were seeing and I told her that I had wanted to get my hair cut did she have any ideas where? She said that she’d ask the workers and we could check with her on the way out. I had been really disappointed in not having my hair cut, always something I look forward to when traveling. I was stymied at all points of the trip in finding a suitable place and just figured that it was another trip where it wouldn’t work out. However, the lady told us that up the street and down the alley there was a barber shop. It turned out to be a women’s salon, but hey, they cut hair and it wasn’t exactly upscale. We poked our heads in and two women in barber chairs with very wet hair, the barber and a lady in a union jack tank top all looked up like we had made a wrong turn somewhere. I put my fingers up to my hair and made a cutting gesture and all looked blank until one of the women said in a loud voice: “Hair cut!!” and everybody laughed and we sat down to wait our turn in the very hot room where the barber was now blowing hot air all across the girl’s head and across the room to us. After we sat there for a while and as Carol fanned herself with a program from the museum, the Union Jack lady grabbed a long-handled spoon, climbed up on the chairs and flipped two breaker switches and on whirred the room air conditioners. I’m quite sure this was just for our benefit but who cares? After a few minutes she climbed back up on the chairs and turned off the fan which was blowing the hot air from the outside into the room…that helped….The chair, spoon, flip the switches was repeated several times as the breakers kept popping and the room heated up again.

Now, not having spent a lot of time in women’s hair “salons” I was in for a real education as he snipped, shaped, blow dried, curled these two heads one at a time. He was actually quite skilled and the frou-frou girl who had to have the long curls just right primped, preened, fluffed the curls, took lots of selfies and pronounced everything okay. Now my turn came. I tried to get him to understand that I just wanted a little taken off and actually got through to him as he put on a trimmer which limited the depth of the cut. He worked carefully but quickly and knew what he was doing. It turned out to be the best haircut I’ve ever had away from home. Asking the price I was told 30,000 rupiah, about $2.50 US. I gave him an extra 10,000 since nobody in this country has any change at all. You just round things off, and he had done a great job. The Union Jack lady’s daughter came in and looked as shocked to see me in the chair as the others did when we first poked our heads in. She spoke fairly decent English and so I told the stories of my liking to get my hair cut in “real” people’s shops, not fancy shops and showed them some photos from past trips and about my Botswana “English Cut,” that was a US Marine basic training haircut….they got big laughs out of all the pics and stories translated into Indonesian. Mission accomplished.

A quick trip back to Sarinah to get the bell Carol likes to collect and we had been able in three frenetic days to finish all our appointed tasks and were highly pleased with ourselves…back to the hotel we collected our luggage from storage at the HIE and were off to the airport hotel for our last night. One last chance to see the coordinated insanity of Jakarta traffic and we were in the quiet of the airport vicinity for our 3:00 a.m. wake-up call and off to the airport. It had been a wonderful trip and it was even better than I could have hoped. I try hard not to have expectations, but the truth is that we flew a lot of low-cost Asian airlines, all of whom are forbidden to fly over EU air space and delays and cancellations, and, yes, changed schedules are rampant. Throw in a jumbo jet shot out of the sky and another one whose fate is still unclear and you have a little uncertainty as to the reality of what we’d find. Logistics were a question mark at the start, but drivers and cars can be hired to take you anywhere you want. A five hour one way trip to a destination and where the driver still has to get his way back will run about $60. There are local buses, but I’m too old and have too good a pension to put up with 5 hours in an open air bus which will take about 7 hours with all the stops. No, I’m just some fat cat American and I’m buying my way out of those situations. The country is incredibly diverse…17,000 islands, over 700 indigenous languages, of which Indonesian, the official language, is only spoken as a mother tongue by 7% of the population and is the 12th most common language, a flourishing religious culture featuring Islam, the most common, Hindu, Christianity and Buddhism and Confusianism all have sizeable followers, and a mixture of traditional and modern. The wildlife is amazing….jungles/rain forests are incredibly rich in wildlife and flora. Asked whether we’d return, it was met with a firm: “I don’t know.” The heat was difficult to deal with for long periods of time but it is a fascinating place and one that cannot possibly be explored or understood in a one month trip…it was just a teaser…now we have to decide if, in the future, we want to take the bait and return. For now, it was a memorable trip and a very positive one. I come home with memories of wonderful people who showed us the spirit of the place, the warmth and generosity of spirit of the people on the street continually uplifted our moods and it was a “happy” trip…with the Indonesian patience and low key attitudes, there was really no stress or tension. It just flowed, unlike the traffic. Next year, it looks like a two trip year. Back to Europe to complete our river cruise, and a favorite granddaughter is getting married in Uzbekistan, and we promised to attend so that will be our third trip there.

New World Shopping, old world ambience

2016-05-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

Day one was a rousing, if tiring, day, and so we approached the next day with enthusiasm and it did not disappoint. Nurul and Indry suggested we go see the old city and to look at another place to buy the shirts we wanted. So two elevator rides later we met the hot blast of outside air but quickly into one of the fleet of “Blue Bird” Taxies which line up at the outside of the mall/hotel complex. Our $5, 40-minute cab ride was met with the same bewilderment and amazement that I got every time we went for a ride. Every form of individuality and conformity would be seen as we inched our way across town. We had plenty of opportunity to observe since we spent more time stopped than moving. The traffic lights are tediously long, up to two minutes which gives ample time for the swarm of bikes/scooters to weave in and out in front of you to get closer to the front….there is no void at a traffic light. It is occupied space. And the remaining seconds are counted down so that on the count of 3, the motor bikes/scooters can take off. But in the mean time, I had the opportunity to look at the praetorian guards of bikes/scooters which quickly surrounds us and prevents anything else getting near to us…families of up to five members, chic females with flowing scarves, grandmas who can be as daring and aggressive as anybody on the road, and lots and lots of just regular people going somewhere, albeit slowly.

The girls wrote down the names of our two destinations so that the taxista didn’t have to untangle our bad pronunciation Tanah Abang was another 8 story tall, full city block wide emporium of clothes with literally thousands of small individual stalls all seeming to sell the exact things as the stall on either side and across the narrow passageway …we only wanted a shirt or two but the problem was that it was a wholesale place where they only sell items in quantities of 6 or more. That accounted for the number of men carrying large bundles bumping their way down the aisle and woe be to anybody in their path…with our massive language skills we were finally able to discern that on the 8th floor we could buy individual items where once again key words “Bigger” accompanied with hands going further apart we managed to get what we wanted. ….mark one item completed on the check list. - The place was an absolute teeming mass like leaf cutter ants carrying their prizes home, these men and women who run the thousands upon thousands of street stalls buy their wares and hawk them on the streets of Jakarta and probably nearby suburban outposts all of which are end to end without empty space separating them. Push carts loaded to the gills with bundles of whatever all wrapped in white plastic worked their way to the doors and out to waiting vans, motorbikes/scooters with large baskets or just another person to handle the unwieldy bundle while the other person whizzed across town. Amazingly the traffic deaths in Indonesia are not that bad. They have 15 deaths per 100,000 population compared with the 10 for the US and the 19 for Russia…I truly don’t know how they stay alive, but they do. With bags in hand we hailed another taxi, looked at each other and rolled our eyeballs to the top of their respective sockets as the cool air of the car sent its blessed relief across our faces. The ride was the same scenario, different street. Same chaos, different helmets as we headed to Kota Tua, the old colonial center of Batavia, the old Dutch name for Jakarta stemming from Colonial times when the Dutch controlled the spice trade and got themselves so rich in the process that the Brits needed to get a piece of the action. We arrived and were pointed down a narrow street where cars couldn’t go….of course this didn’t stop the two-wheelers from doing their thing. A sharp ear tuned to what’s behind you but getting louder is always a good thing to keep in some level of consciousness. Stone buildings, with old wooden doors showing their age were portals to souvenir shops, museums, businesses, were topped by that stair-stepped roofline that is so old world is can be seen throughout Europe but certainly the Dutch were leaders in this form of architecture. The street led to the huge block-wide Fatahillah Square with large white buildings surrounding the square. This was THE place. This was “oud Batavia,” old Bativia, the old city. Here would be found the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, the controllers of the spice trade and the center of the Dutch government offices. It was here that all commerce and government business was contracted and it is not difficult to imagine the scene as it must have been. Mimes, and actors portraying old Dutch settlers roamed the square wanting to pose for tourists, for a fee, of course. If the Dutch actually wore these costumes their life must have been nasty, short and brutal, as Hobbes would say. They wore heavy robes with full wigs and the heat would have dropped then like flies, and no AC… But it was a charming square. Multi-colored bikes lined the racks and one could ride, for a fee of course, around the square and look at all the different buildings, restaurants and activities going on. Here we saw more tourists in one place than we had seen in the entire month we had been in Indonesia.

A building facing the square had a decorative sign signaling the “Café Batavia.” Entering was a jump back to colonial times, teak and mahogany tables with padded chairs filled the room with old world elegance. The building was turned into a restaurant 23 years ago after undergoing different owners over the two hundred years of its existence beginning with the headquarters of the East India Tea Company. It’s the 2nd oldest building in central Java. We were asked “smoking or no smoking, which is a no-brainer in a country which has the largest number of male smokers in all of Asia, at 67%, and were led upstairs, past the wide staircase that would have made Downton Abbey proud. Mahogany handrails, lush carpeting, and an array of photos that spanned the enormous wall stretching two floors in height and highlighted the “A list” of Pre World War icons…Hollywood actors’ and actresses’ photos, high profile politicians and public figures were a quick scan and recognition from one face to another. Literally hundreds of them filled the wall. We walked past the long curved bar which looked like something out of a classy turn of the century European hotel to our table overlooking the square. Our waitress handed us our menus with Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers on the cover. I asked her if she knew who he was and, of course, she had no clue. “Some movie star,” she said. I showed her some Fred and Ginger videos clips that I googled and she just stared wide-eyed and giggled.

The menu was a combination of Indonesian and Western. Carol chose Gado Gado, her favorite dish, a combination of steamed veggies with either tofu or tempeh chunks and a peanut sause. I had chicken and lamb satays. Both were certainly a cut above even the good meals we had enjoyed. Their flavors matched the ambiance.

On the square below, people strolled around, mimes performed, people rode the multi-colored bicycles and there were lots of selfies. I asked the waitress if they had coffee for sale and she said she’d check. A little later out came a white-aproned, tuxedo-vested man carrying a tray of 10 different coffee blends in pint sized containers. He asked me to smell them and he described each as I did…”this one is stronger, this one has a smoother character. I’m not a coffee buff, I’m a one big cup of some non-Folgers and no instant coffee please kind of morning coffee guy. But I was fascinated that there was such a variety of coffee in Indonesia. My son-in-law mentioned that he liked Sumatran coffee and my neighbor, Bill, mentioned the same thing so I was very interested in his words. Later I looked up the coffee scene in Indonesia and was fascinated by the variety of what, and how, coffee was done here. It is the 4th largest coffee producer in the world and is grown on many different islands, each with their distinctive style and method of processing as well as different beans…some are dried with the skin and “cherry” still intact, some with the skin off, some with just the bean…..some are dried in kilns, some are dried directly on dirt, some on tarps or concrete…each differentiation means a different flavor to the coffee. I choose two different kinds that smelled good to me, at least. The price was steep but acceptable….the coffee prices range from a couple of bucks for half a pound to $40-50 for the Kopi Luwak that received fame in “The Bucket List.” It was our big splurge meal and it wasn’t even that expensive so we walked out full, satisfied and a different time and place in the world from the streets awaiting us on the ride back to the hotel. It was a full day and a productive one…..Jakarta is becoming anything but a throwaway city.

What a tangled web they weave

2016-05-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

Jakarta…that tangled mass/mess of 14 million people all trying to get to the same place at the same time on the same street, or so it seems. Motor bikes/scooters zip about with a carelessness that defies logic or sanity. It is like those old Scotty magnetic dogs my grandfather had, one black, one white. I would put one magnetic pole at the opposite pole on the other dog and literally chase it across the table simply by letting physics do its thing. They never touched. This was the visual image I saw when spending several hours in Jakarta cabs attempting to get across town and seeing all forms of transportation get ever so close to each other and then, magically the reverse magnetism kicks in and they move apart without touching. It made no difference the time of day. There is no “rush hour,” they simply have “rush days.” Any day, any time. Holidays, working day, morning, night, midday. All the same. They have even built toll roads above the traffic to alleviate the mess. For a stiff fee of $0.33 you can pay the freight and literally speed part way on your journey. However, they are limited and like a bad drug trip, you’ve got to come down at some point and face the reality. We got out of Jakarta as quickly as possible on our arrival at the beginning of the trip and only came to it because we wound up with just a couple of days left in the trip and not enough time to go some place else. What a pleasant surprise then, to find it is actually a very fascinating place….once you get to where you want. Our flight from Kalimantan was scheduled for 11:50 a.m. but Dessy told us that they changed that schedule a month ago and that the flight left at 8:00 a.m. I scoured my emails and there was nothing anywhere, but checking their website we discovered the change…Lucky that Dessy was up on flight schedules or it would have been “missed flight, phase 2.”

We made it to our Holiday Inn Express phase 2 since so many of the Jakarta hotels were overpriced and the good old HIE offered everything we needed at a fraction of the price, sans any personality. Situated on top of a shopping mall from floors 10-19, you take an elevator to get to the lobby on floor 10, then another one to reach our 18th floor room. The upside was that we were greeted by two happy faces at the desk whose spirit made our coming and goings filled with laughter and positive attitudes. Our agenda for our two days was packed with a full “to-do” list: Textile museum and batik class for Carol, haircut for Jim, Hard Rock shot glasses for our daughter Ange, finding a knife that represented the culture for our son, Jeff, his traditional gift, find coffee to buy and bring home for my caffeine craving friends, gifts for this person and that person until we wondered if we could get it all done in our short stay. So it was an ambitious schedule and we hopped to it. First stop was to the mall attached to the hotel….two elevator rides later we are in a mall catering to upper middle class types…each floor had its own theme. One floor was the furniture floor…beds and mattresses in one, upscale Italian home décor, and assorted household furnishings. Another floor was just children’s clothing with a little fun arcade with kiddie rides for extra enticement and another for wonen’s fashions. It was a theme mall attracting a burgeoning middle class in this up and coming section of Jakarta. And of course, there was the inevitable food court an entire mall floor packed with western and Indonesian fast foods, upscale restaurants and a large number of cafeteria type places which served a variety of Indonesian foods. It was quite the visual display in addition to some simple, but good tasting, dishes. Patrons in our restaurant were a true mix of a portion of Jakarta society. There were just the two westerners looking out of place, a mixture of women in hijabs and uncovered coiffed heads. Families with three and even four generations, the elder generations looking very traditional, and assorted groups of young adults looking western, but obviously Indonesian all shared conviviality and food. A table of eight contained grandma, two sets of young adults and three children. The little two year-old was a very cute little princess who finally strayed from the table and began to dance in the aisle….Nobody at the table even paid the slightest attention to her. Then from the side there was a plain green uniformed girl of about 16? who whisked out and took the little girl back to the table. Every move of the girl from this point on was watched and dealt with by her, not the well tailored family. The nanny/au pair was interesting “Who is this girl, and what is her story.” I have no clue, of course, but I do know that in many places we’ve been village girls without prospects or any real hope of advancing in life have to work to provide for their families, thus perpetuating the circle of young children who seldom have the opportunity to get the education they need to have a better life. She went about her work very stoically, never smiling at the child or looking at her surroundings and taking things in. Her focus was the child…she was “on,” and it was a joyless task dealing with this little princess who refused to be fed by her, lashed out at her as she put the spoon to her mouth, and was, basically, the stereotypical spoiled, bratty child. I really felt empathy for the nanny because it seemed such drudgery for her, and yet it was better than the alternative. However, after lunch, we felt that this was not the place for our needs and so off we went to find the Hard Rock Café for the shot glasses. We were told that it was located in another eight story, Macy’s type, store…(they’re everywhere in Jakarta) and that they had a lot of the things we were looking for as well..GREAT…an all-in-one stop shopping. In fact, the Hard Rock had moved, but they did have a treasure trove of lots of what we wanted so, off we went with shopping bags in hand, walking to the Grand Hyatt Hotel attached to another grand plaza of shopping. A 15 minute walk in the Jakarta afternoon heat was not rewarded when we were told that it had moved again. This time an air conditioned cab was hailed by a friendly policeman, and we cooled down as we headed to the most upscale mall I’ve seen this side of Dubai. At One Pacific Plaza, the mall is attached to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Aren’t they all? Inside was a virtual litany of high end stores, the crowning jewel being the indoor showroom of the McLaren automobile, going for a cool $874,000 US.

Thankfully, the HRC was, indeed attached as well and we got the glasses…following our walk and time in the heat we decided to have my favored afternoon quaff, a chocolate milkshake while Carol changed from her usual Strawberry shake to a root beer float. We had had a variety of what were described as “milkshakes,” from colored water to huge ice cubes taking up most of the glass, but I can unequivocally say that was the absolute best milk shake I’ve ever had. Carol’s root beer float was real ice cream that fizzed up and overflowed the glass when pushed to the bottom. Unlike the soft serve stuff we’d had in other places which just didn’t make it at all. So when the $17 bill came, I didn’t even flinch. Given everything, it was perfect and I had no complaints. A $5 cab ride back was a cooling climax to our outing. With the HRC shakes/floats filling us, we were done for the day and hunkered down for the evening.

TOM

2016-05-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

The original incentive for coming to Indonesia was to see the orangutans. Since it is nature and nothing in nature is guaranteed, we planned several opportunities to see these gentle giants if our first encounter/s didn’t work out. We were continually cautioned that sightings are “uncertain.” Our first opportunity in Sumatra was a success and it was the only opportunity to see them totally in the wild. the three that we saw had no need, or desire, for human contact. They just swayed back and forth to go from tree to tree and were oblivious to the cameras clicking below them. Our second opportunity was in Malaysian Borneo. We went Semenggohto Wildlife Center which is a six stage orphanage and feeding station to educate infants who have been taken in for eventual reintroduction into the forest. This was very interesting and enjoyable in spite of the fact that it was an organized, on the tourist trail ,paved roadways, and well-regulated attraction. The tour buses line up in the parking lot and disgorge their load of tourists of several nationalities who walk the walk and talk the talk.. There is a nice information building (air conditioned) and a snack bar for juices and all the amenities of a must-do tourist attraction. It’s an orphanage because infant orangs’ mothers are often killed by poachers and people wanting to rid the area of them so that they can turn the land into a rubber or palm oil plantation. The orangs only bear an offspring once every eight years, so reproduction is limited and fragile. The wildlife center takes them in as infants when they are orphaned and teaches them over the course of several years to learn how to be orangutans again, eventually releasing them into areas deep in the rain forest and away from humanity, as much as that is possible these days. The orangs climbed and swung on poles and ropes put there for easy, unblocked photo ops and a path to the feeding station where fruits and orangutan goodies were distributed on the lowered deck. Easier for photos than from the higher, tiered bleachers. So it was a really nice experience, but a very touristy one…no complaints about people because I, too, got those same photo ops and was happy for them. I got to see the orangutans a second time…. It was a very different look to see them going hand over hand along a 100 foot rope suspended about 30 feet in the air instead of obscured in the forest. So because we had fulfilled our limited expectations, our planned trip up the Kumai River and into smaller rivers in Indonesian Borneo, called Kalimantan, to see remote feeding stations was a pure gravy trip…if we saw some, great, if we didn’t okay, we were okay with that. It would be a really relaxing and restful three days.

Well, we truly hit the Orangutan jackpot. Three different feeding station, each one more remote than the one before, each one with special experiences.…At one, I had some extra phone batteries in my pants pocket and one mother with baby attached approached and poked my pocket to see if it was food, I was later told…finding it solid, she ignored me and went on her way to the feeding platform. We were told that we shouldn’t have anything loose like purses or such because the orangs will take it and you do not get into a pulling match with an animal that outweighs you and is 8 times stronger….just give it to then, they said…they will probably drop it soon and you can retrieve it….When the orangs come on the ground, all the guides and boat personnel who are there with water and rain ponchos quickly put them on their back so that they were not loose which attracts the orangs. Another time the four of us were sitting on the front row of an old, very creaky two row benches. Cody’s eyes got really big and his jaw dropped as he looked past me. I turned and saw an enormous orangutan come out of the forest about four feet away, look at me directly, and he passed us in the passageway between the two benches. He literally almost brushed us as he lumbered past. It was an exhilarating moment for all of us. This was “Tom,” the reigning male and from the numbers of babies clinging on desperately to moms, he’s on the job. He passed behind us and just went down and plunked his butt on the end of the bench with a big ring of people snapping photos and video….an old American joined them after he got his system cooled down from the adrenaline rush. “Tom” just sat there like some Hollywood star in front of the adoring fans and posed for photos for a long time before he got bored with the whole thing and went to the feeding platform where he dominated the food table.

At another we were entertained by the swinging orangs, On one occasion, one mom with adolescent offspring not attached any longer climbed up high into the trees with junior following, and let their body weight bend the tree toward the next one where she disembarked and waited for junior. Since he didn’t have the body weight to make it bend to her tree she placed her weight so that her tree would bend towards junior’s. Not so far as to make it easy for him, but close enough were she would put out her arm and force him/her to trust and reach out into no-man’s-air and grab hold whence she pulled him onto her tree and they went across the canopy this way. It was like watching a lesson in orangutan development in how their world operates. They just move so slowly but gracefully. Unlike monkeys who swing and leap into the void to descend to another tree below….Orangs just ever so slowly let body weight take over and gravity do its thing and they rustle their way from tree to tree…They spend most of their lives in the trees where they are not vulnerable…they build a different nest every night of large fronds and large-leafed branches and one that is strong enough to support the weighty (up to 300+ pounds) body with a child or two still hanging on. Cody and Carolyn were perfect boat mates. I never did a crossword puzzle or read my Smithsonian magazines because we always had something to talk about…their travels, their history, their seven month back-packing, no frills (until this one) tour of South East Asia…They had such open minds and were so inquisitive in their search to understand what they were seeing. They even taught English in a rural school for three weeks. Cody, it turns out is from Portland and is a big Blazer and Duck fan, so we even had sports to talk about. Carolyn is from Minnesota and they were both students at American University in DC. I truly admired them both as individuals, as a couple, and as travelers. The feeding stations all had orangutans coming which doesn’t always happen so we were just fortunate all the way around…in August, they say that there are so many boats on the water that at some stations there are literally hundreds of people vieing for that perfect spot. There are a total of 84 klotoks on the river and while we were there, only about 10 were plying the river and they weren’t all at the same place at the same time.. At one station we and another couple were the only ones there.

We all slept on the deck on comfortable mattresses in two separate canopied tents to keep the mosquitoes out and the heat in without real ventilation and you had a tolerable, if not good, night’s sleep. Throw in great food, a night forest walk that produced HUGE spiders, nearly invisible walking sticks, a snake above our heads and an assortment of moths, a tree reforestation stop where we planted trees and left markers showing who we were, and all in all it was a wonderful experience. It would have been even without the orangs, but they just pushed it over the top on the fulfillment scale. We saved it for our last hurrah on the trip. Then it was on to Jakarta, that impossible city that we avoided as long as possible but now loomed for a three-day stop before coming home.

Junk Mail

2016-05-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

We left our little sanctuary in Yogjakara,the one with the meditation hut and peaceful waters running through the grounds for our run to Semarang, our jumping off point for getting to Borneo and our three day upriver excursion to see the Orangutans. I checked several sources to find a hotel similar to the one we left, but could not find anything that didn’t have serious drawbacks. In the end, we opted for the Holiday Inn Express….ordinarily, we are loathe to stay in one of these on our trips, preferring to do local hotels. However, that wasn’t gonna happen so there we were entering our room and wondering if we were really in Java. It could have been Stockton, Kalamazoo or Tucumcari since it has the same sterility. But it was cheap, the showers had hot water and a shower head that worked, and a breakfast that was tolerable. After a good night’s sleep with our choice of hard or soft pillows we got a cab to the airport to catch our 11:50 a.m. flight. We arrived a couple of hours early and went to the counter to check-in and were met with blank stars and the words: “Flight gone.” WHAT?....Since that was the only English that I was getting I was directed outside the airport to the Kalstar Airlines office where a girl with only a slightly better vocabulary eventually got through to me that that there was a schedule change and that they had sent me an email. I showed her that I received no such email as a young woman entered the office to speak to the girl, her friend. I asked if she spoke English and she said she did. I explained that there was a schedule change, but I didn’t receive any notification. She talked to her friend and said: “Give me your passports, maybe I can help. Trusting soul that I am…ha ha…I did so and in a few minutes later she returned with two tickets on her airline which had a flight leaving to our isolated destination leaving just one hour later than our original schedule…Amazingly, Kalstar refunded our TOTAL price, and I paid Garuda an extra $5.80 extra and we were on our way. Only, when I got to my hotel in Kalangon Bun an outpost in Borneo did I discover that I had indeed received an email but it was sent to my Junk Mail. But, as always, things have a way of working out for us in our travels, and this was just further confirmation that nothing bad happens on our trips. The truly amazing thing in the whole episode was that Kalstar refunded our entire ticket price and that I got a new ticket for only $5.80 more…don’t think that would have happened at home. We spent the one night in this frontier town of 200,000 before beginning our Klotok, boat, trip upriver. Our fellow passengers were a young couple who had been traveling all over SE Asia for 7 months. They traveled in the same style and spirit as I did when I was in my 20’s and they had wonderful stories of budget/backpacking adventures in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Really whet my appetite for a future trip but definitely not as shoestring as their trip. But I remember the mentality so clearly…every $8 hotel, as opposed to a $40 one, meant extra days traveling and more adventures to be had. They were a delightful couple, bright in spirit and a joy of life to go with their happy spirits.. Heading up the wide chocolate-colored river, brown from the decomposition of organic matter and the erosion and pollution up river, and past the ocean-going freighters loading and unloading goods, the armada of moored klotoks not yet booked for trips, and past the 4 story tall concrete structures with no windows and plenty of holes. It was explained that they were buildings where swallows would build their nests and then they would be harvested from catwalks inside and are a cash-crop and for locals who sell the nests to restaurants. Apparently it’s quite a good business. A bowl of birds next soup in Jakarta will cost you $25. A small red and white striped Indonesian flag tethered to the loops in a broken fishing pole fluttered gently in the breeze created by our movement. We turned off the big river onto a much smaller one about 100 feet wide and chugged against the gentle current with the foam from the runoff of mining and palm oil plantations giving stark evidence to the fact that Borneo wilderness is under severe threat. We stopped at a village along the way for a little reality check of the lives of river people. The river water flows out onto a bayou type of terrain and we walked on a roadway above the water. The houses were very, very simple and required a catwalk go get to higher ground on which the houses were built. Solar panels gathered energy to light the brick walkway of the single street and provided light for the houses in the section of each solar panel. An elementary school and a rudimentary medical facility accounted for the entire infrastructure of the village. Bright eyed little children greeted us with smiles and waving hands as they posed for their photos to be taken. Old women sat on their porches and motor bikes whizzed by even in such a remote village in the rainforest. It’s easy to think of them as poor because of the lack of the accoutrements of life as we judge prosperity, but there are no swollen bellies here, no flies settled around the eyes of the people too lacking in energy or spirit to bat them away. There is the joy of childhood as they leap into the canal and exuberantly play in the water with continual smiles and giggles. .

I woke up early the following morning as watched the mist rise from the river and formed an ethereal haze which obscured any vision beyond a hundred yards or so. The rainforest, impenetrable to the eye, blocked any view beyond the lush green shade that was pulled down on both sides of the river. That left only the sliver of water spreading out from the back of the boat to give any perspective to my surroundings. The sky turned from a slate grey to a soft teal color and shapes in the sky began to take form as the mist slowly dissipated. Clouds began to come into view, the forest began to show life as birds started their early morning songs and ever-so-slowly, the world began to take shape. There has always been something magical about waking up in remote areas where intellectually you know that the outside world exists, but there is nothing in your consciousness that confirms that fact.There is only you and the remoteness of your surroundings. Whether it was in the shadow of Everest in Tibet, walking the Inca Trail in Peru, or the Pantanal of Brazil it always awakens my spirit as my body comes back to life. I watched a troop of long tailed macaques cavort in the trees across the river, little ones exhibiting the derring-do of the 10 year olds weaving in and out of traffic on their motor bikes as they leapt into the empty space from tall trees, falling seemingly forever into oblivion when they suddenly landed on a supple branch of a tree below, with the branches bending and flexing like a springboard. How they managed to grasp the tree and not pin ball their way to the rain forest, or in this case the river, below was fascinating. The big male looked disdainfully down from his perch while the juveniles chased each other up and down the trees with a dexterity that has fascinated me from my youth looking at then in zoos. Again, seeing animals in their natural state makes it impossible to ever think of them in cages.

Crew members from the other klotoks which were moored at the same dock as we gathered, squatted as only Asians seem able to do and drank their morning coffee and smoked their cigarettes all to the continuous laughter and glee of their conversations. Seven men, who plied the river up and down, finding camaraderie in each other’s company and exhibiting that same joy I saw in the children cavorting in the canal earlier in the day. Slowly, the sky took on real color as the horizon worked its way down to the sun. Pink clouds appeared in the sky with their light blue background, swallows darted back and forth scooping up mosquitoes, the mist rose to reveal the river and Carol and the others on the boat began to stir. My world was coming back into focus and reminded me that remoteness is only a state of mind. Life is good.

Java the Hot

2016-05-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

With apologies to George Lucas, this is indeed Java, the hot. Not that Java is any different from the other islands we have visited, Sumatra, Borneo, Bali, all have very similar weather to Java. Today the heat/humidity index reads 86 and 85. Put your percentage and degree symbols where ever you want, it won’t make a dimes worth of difference. The numbers correlate directly to the discomfort level for the pasty-faced Northwesterners. Simple trips across any town/city are still the most fascinating to me because all of Indonesian life is out and on the streets. Nobody is walking, Everybody is finding some form of transportation…well, nobody except those pasty faced northwesterners. Bicycle tuk tuks are pedaled by what looks like the bottom of the economic scale. Men of all ages who scrape together enough sheckels to purchase a rattle trap bicycle equip it with some form of seat that may or may not be cushioned and is large enough for one person, but a definite squeeze for two as we found out. I would up basically sitting on my side so that we could both fit. The pedaling is slow and arduous. Some of the “drivers” look like they might not make it to the next corner as they struggle through traffic. You can almost hear the groan when they have to stop for one reason or another and have to muster up the extra energy to regain momentum.

The cars, motor bikes/scooters and LARGE buses just whiz by very close to your personal space¸but on they pedal. During the heat of the day, the drivers sleep on the seat with their legs stretching out from the sides and their head propped on the metal grill work on the sides. I wouldn’t ride one of these because I’d be afraid the driver would already be dead since that is the appearance they give sleeping. They truly look like the downtrodden of society. The one we rode to a batik factory was so thrilled with the $1.50 fare that he waited until the time we were finished and was right there to take us back to the hotel. We had planned on walking instead of doing the sardine number, but he was so keen on taking us, I didn’t have the heart to say no. It’s still a tough life out there for huge parts of any society and Indonesia, with all its outward upward mobility, is not different. My enjoyment of being out on the street continues to be enhanced by the motorscooters/bikes. They are simply everywhere. In 2013 the statistics were that on any given day 65 million of them were on the roads, and 7 million new scooters/bikes were sold that year. Driving across town is seeing a cross-section of Indonesian society blithely bobbing and weaving their way through traffic. From hip young men on metallic gold bikes adorned with lightning bolts, to young women driving soft pink ones displaying Hello Kitty stickers. Helmets range from skulls and images of Che Guevarra to Snoopy figures saying: “Have a nice day.” The drivers range in age from 10, to ancient grannies. Old men with weather beaten faces and tattered sarongs driving motor bikes that appear to have about the same life expectancies are there as are , the young fashionistas with spike heels and flowing garments. $1,100 will put you into a spiffy new Honda Bravo or a Yamaha Spirit of your own choosing, and one which reflects your own self-image. They are fast, efficient and cheap. They can go forever on a tank of gas, it seems and with gas prices ranging in the $2 a gallon, it is the perfect mode of transportation in cities that have outgrown the infrastructure.. Particularly in light of the limited public transportation options the people have, they are an enormously popular and critical mode of transport. Riding around town to/from the sites we would visit in a blessedly air conditioned car with driver, it is fascinating to come to a rare stop light and suddenly realize that you are enveloped in a cocoon of motor bikes with a vivid array of said helmets surrounding you. I continually felt as if I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and we narrowly missed countless scooters and watched with an “Oh-oh” just waiting to be uttered from my lips as I saw little kids make turns into traffic and prayed that they would make it across. It’s actually like some kind of industrial sized ballroom dance where everybody knows the steps and nobody gets their toes stepped on, with the exception of Medan in Sumatra where it was like a pack of starved pit bulls when a chunk of meat is thrown into the middle…that was every dog for him/herself. Still it worked. We have never seen an accident. Motor scooters are preferred for families because they have a flat floor, all the better for young kids to stand on in front of dad. It’s like having a front row seat on a roller coaster where you get the thrill/fear of being right there as the lead element. Just as Mongolian kids learn to ride as soon as they are big enough to have their parents tie their legs under a sheep, Indonesian kids from about the age of two, or basically as soon as they can stand and support themselves, have a front row seat to learn the ins and outs, the bobs and weaves, the general rules of traffic and a modicum of safety habits. Just as mother hens cluck to their chicks for food or danger, so too these little kids are literally bred for the saddle. Somehow, it all works. We’re down to just over a week now before coming home and nary an accident has been seen….Amazing. As Carol noted yesterday: “Motor scooter drivers must have their own guardian angels.” I agreed because otherwise they’d all be dead. Individuals get creative on how to deal with traffic. Stores, banks and even homes hire their own traffic cops. Much like crossing guards at a school they get out into traffic with their whistles and some form of flag and wave traffic to a halt so that somebody can exit the gas station, bank or store. Without these traffic controllers, it could be a very long wait for a break in traffic. With a dearth of traffic signals, traffic just keeps on coming and coming and coming. And so when you are stopped for whatever reason, the Indonesian patience comes forth and everybody obeys the unwritten rules without any sort of acrimony or hostility.

We continually see whole families on scooters zipping around town with Dad driving, young boy standing in front of him, daughter wedged between mom and dad wile mom holds the baby in her arms. They are,however, more than just a family mode of transportation. They are commercial vehicles carrying baskets at the back to tote sacks of rice or other goods in; caged containers which hold chickens going to market; pots of liquid like some moveable kitchen and shelving which gives them the look of a mobile hardware store or a mini-mart. On today’s outing to a world heritage site, Borobudur, a Buddhist temple complex, we were continually besieged, in a nice way, by students wanting to practice their English. The boys are more confident and just approach, while the girls wait for a smile and a “Selamat Paggi,” (good morning) before advancing. But in all cases the brightness of their eyes and the eagerness of their desire to talk to you is really fun. Teachers bring their students to places like these because they know there will be a lot of foreign speakers.

English is the main language most want to learn, and so a question like: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” brings delight when you answer yes. Questions all are all simple and repetitive. What is your name, where do you come from, how are you, what do you see in Indonesia?.....but their sweet faces are such that it is a pleasure to answer slowly and patiently when another person in the group asks the same questions as the first one…it’s like they are on auto-pilot and can’t jump from A to D without passing B and C along the way. We talked with a group of four, two boys and two girls. They all looked the same age, and when I asked how old they were, the boys answered: “14,” and the girls “20.” We were amazed because they all looked 14. Wrapped in head scarves, swathed in long sleeved blouses and skirts that go to just above the ground, I feel for their discomfort in this weather, but they just laugh at us. They are used to it and they don’t even break a sweat whereas we are drenched in sweat. We were again unsuccessful in arranging Servas meetings and that, as always, limits our contact with people who can explain a lot of what we see and wonder about.Thank goodness for our time with Eka and her family and friends. This was our only real contact with ordinary people. However, the natural friendliness and genuine joy of spirit from these kids to the hotel clerks to the people on the street comes through in all the people with whom we do have dealings.

Bali Hai

2016-04-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

Bali was never high on my list. Yeah, I’ll go anywhere, but there were a lot more interesting places to visit than a place that I saw as a quasi-hedonistic party scene. I’ve never done well with those situations. I’m just totally clueless and I don’t get it. And so when we were planning the trip I was relatively surprised to hear Carol say she wanted to come here. She said her interest was piqued when she read Michener’s “Hawaii,” even before Angela was born. Much to my pleasant surprise, there’s a whole lot more to the place than the party scene, which is certainly healthy and thriving in parts of the island. Landing in Denpasar was a real eye opener. It could have been SFO. Planes stacked up on each other, and tarmacs full of a veritable rainbow of colored tail fins for the various local budget travel that has exploded, sometimes literally, onto the Asian air market. Inside the terminal at immigration processing there was one open kiosk for Malaysian passports and there were a dozen or so for foreigners. Long lines went fairly efficiently, but it was obvious that this was, indeed, going to be a different breed of cat. The immense variety of humanity within the baggage claim where flights had come in from literally everywhere was staggering, not only from an ethnic and cultural aspect, but also just for the variety of alternative lifestyles that a lot of people who come to Bali seem to exhibit. It certainly gave the appearance of being a place that tolerated a lot of individuality. And this was at 10 p.m.. We didn’t want to stay in the party area and I had found the small town of Ubud in my reading. It is a fiber area for Carol and has a lot of activities for the non-party types like us. The hour drive was nothing we had not seen before, tons of traffic, end to end shops all shuttered for the night with their metal garage type doors locked down and very little empty space since it seemed to be another one of those endless city urban sprawls where one village leads into another and you can’t really tell when one ends and the other begins. Literally thousands of shops selling everything imaginable lay hidden behind the doors. The shops are almost always single garage door sized and are end to end mile after mile. However, in the morning when the light shone on Bali interior, it took on its quintessential picture postcard feeling. Out the balcony of our hotel is a rice field backed up by the graceful coconut palm trees stretching to the sky and just daring anybody to walk underneath lest it drop with a thud a green coconut. The coconut palm is so much more picturesque than the mile after mile of the stubby, thicker oil palms all planted with precision in an “orchard.” Now, with this vision at my doorstep, it felt like what I had envisioned to be Bali. A woman in a red sarong cut the weeds and grass with a hand sickle from the established path lest the greenery take totally over. Everything is done by hand here, we saw no machinery of any kind in the fields.. Later she gathered it all up into a bundle, placed it on her head and walked with her flip flops flapping down the rows to a path like she has probably done a thousand times before, seemingly totally oblivious to the world, she still could manage a smile and a hello when I said good afternoon. Whereas in Borneo, we saw little of the traditional dress on men or women, now we see it everywhere. The men wear little turban-like head coverings, but they are really nothing more than thick colorful strips of cloth wrapped around the head with the center left open. The men and women wear the traditional sarong, simply a floor length piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and tucked in at the top around the waist. The women, young and old, wear these along with the men. Flip flops are the standard footwear and there are shops selling such an array and variety of them that it boggles the mind. I had no clue that they could come in so many ways. This is, surprisingly to me, a very heavily Hindu area. I’m finding such a broader level of culture. I had no clue. I just knew that Indonesia was a heavily Muslim country so was surprised to find a majority of Christians in Borneo and now a majority of Hindus here in Bali. Shrines and temples abound on every street and each morning and each night people carry trays holding offerings on mini-trays and placed in doorways and various other places as a symbol of good luck and blessed offerings. Banks, schools, shops and houses all seem to have a small shrine adorning the outside of the buildings and temples are to be found in abundance as well. Java with over half the population of 250,000,000 is heavily Muslim while the other 17,000+ islands have a wide variety of culture, religion and traditions very different from Java. One thing that became very evident upon first light is that Balinese look, well, they look Balinese. Unlike Borneo where the ethnic Chinese register about 50% of the total population and the intermarriage with ethnic Malays form a lighter skinned population, Balinese have a beautiful light olive sheen to their skin. The lack of facial and body hair gives the skin a sleek look and they are a lovely people. They smile and are a joyous lot and are said to be one of the most patient of people. This is good since the roads and traffic require that in spades. The women are petite and beautiful and the men are shorter than average but with nice features as well.

The roads are really narrow and are two-lane only because somebody painted a white line down the middle. The best way to drive them is to point the hood ornament directly along the white line for as long as possible until a car, seldom, or the mass break out of motor bikes come your way. If a car is approaching it means getting one set of tires well onto the limited shoulder and praying that he/she will do the same in the other car. It is also exacerbated by people who simply stop and leave their cars on the road without even the semblance of pulling as far off as possible. We passed a man happily washing his car in the middle of the road while traffic in both directions looked for an opportunity to get around him. The real fun is when the big dog of the road, the tour buses come towards you. They seem to have little compunction to pull over and this makes for some hairy moments. Another curious habit is that oncoming traffic seems to have the right, or at least the practice to turn in front of oncoming traffic. But everybody seems to understand the rules and as crazy as it seems to my western prejudiced driving habits, it all works without any semblance of anger or impatience. An interesting feature that Carol noticed on our map is that there are 9 major roads that go north and south in the island from the bottom to the top, there is not a single one cutting across the middle of the country or a major road connecting the parallel north/south roads. Any road that goes laterally across the Island heads directly for the coast and then skirts the island on its rim. Primary in our interest in visiting Ubud was a place called “Green Village,” which our ex-student Shane Liem told us was amazing. She was right. Comprising several aspects such as a school, a planned community and a production plant, The “green village/school is made entirely out of bamboo. They discovered a process to eliminate the sugar inside the bamboo so that the bugs don’t like it any longer. They’ve done some amazing architectural building using just bamboo. Pictures can be seen at: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/16/world/asia/bali-green-village-bamboo/ They also operate a “green” school for children of the area. A full k-12 program teaches all subject matter in a “green” process and environment. The classrooms again are all made from bamboo and everything is approached from a basis of sustainability. We were told that tomorrow is “Earth Day, “ and at the school it’s like Christmas. With over 300 students a fifth of them are Balinese and the rest are foreign students who live both at the school and/or are dropped by parents/drivers. At a cost of $8,000 for the elementary programs and $14,000 for the middle and high school students, it ain’t cheap, but they have Montessori type approach to learning in an environmental setting.

The number of restaurants, guest houses, hotels and home stays in the area are stark testimony to the heavy influx of tourism in the past few years. With a population of 30,000 my feeling is that a vast majority of them are involved in the tourist trade. But it is a beautiful area where one can go on all kinds of adventures from white-water rafting, visiting monkey sanctuaries, do elephant touring, rent motor bikes (Carol flatly refused to even consider it, probably wise) and have a wonderful and fulfilling cuisine experiences. Here’s the website for further exploration. http://greenvillagebali.com We decided that in spite of my initial objections to the party scene, it seemed somewhat strange to come to Bali and not at least see the beach and coast line. Asking what was a particularly beautiful beach near the airport, we were pointed to Nusa Dua. The trip down in daylight confirmed what I had thought on the nighttime run to Ubud. Mile after unending mile of shops and villages. One village is especially known for working with the wood from the forest making beautiful furniture, another for using the lava rock (there are two volcanoes on the island) into Hindu statuary while another one is the silversmith village which gets its silver from Papua, a province on the island of New Guinea. It also has the world’s largest gold mine. So, although they all run together and seem the same, in fact, there is a lot of individuality to them. Curious how the maps looked with the vertical highways I googled Bali and looked at the “earth” view, and there I could see the parallel strings of roads easily identifiable with the wall to wall buildings I mentioned. We stayed at a comfortable but cheapy hotel, having met the requirements of our stay, AC and WI-FI. We were able to make a pilgrimage to a beach and it was just as lovely as one would suspect from looking at the travel brochures. The water a turquoise blue, the coarse sand beaches from countless volcanic rock being pulverized into small bits, and the rocky outcroppings which give the beach character with the waves crashing into the reef and spilling white water closer to shore. The water in the lagoon was bathtub warm, literally warmer than the tepid showers we’ve had in the hotels. It might be refreshing, but it’s not gonna cool anybody off on a hot day. But still I’m glad we did it and I now have a better idea of why I wouldn’t want to stay here in spite of the beauty.

Gringos everywhere. Old and young, singles and marrieds, hipsters and hippies, they come from around the world to partake in the beach nightlife. They laze around the pool or at the beach all day and then party at night. I once was given a compliment by a fellow travel agent who meant it as a put down “You like to travel, and I like to vacation,” she said. And it’s true. Probably the only accurate thing I ever heard from her. So we came, we saw, we got out of Dodge. Glad we did it, glad we only gave it one night.

The Land Below the Wind

2016-04-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

Flying between the two provinces of Borneo, Sarawak and Sabah, on opposite ends of the island, I could look down upon an overwhelming density of life. The Indonesian rain forest is so immense and so thick that only the rivers, and there are lots of them, break up the sameness of the ground below. Towns will pop up along the shore line and then disappear as the rain forest once again becomes dominant. The rivers snake their way to the South China Sea and form a brownish alluvial fan as they spread their carried sediment into the water. There are so many rivers that there are often three of them running more or less parallel to each other even in their snaky curves. It’s fascinating to see from 30,000 feet.

A little further on, the sea suddenly became dotted with ships, then the oil rigs came into view, and I realized that the ships were oil tankers and below was the Sultanate of Brunei, a separate nation in a “U” shaped piece of land which juts inward from the coast and just happens to have enormous oil and natural gas reserves. The entire scope of the window on the plane was all oil platforms and oil tankers. We reached Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Sabah province, so-called “The land below the wind.” This name comes from the fact that Sabah doesn’t have typhoons (hurricanes)…we were told they never have had one, but I haven’t checked the veracity of that, but it sounds reasonable. Looking at a map, the province is sitting in a little protective bowl. Surrounded by big land masses and limited (on an oceanic scale) open water. The vast Pacific ocean can’t get there and crushes the Philippines first while the Indian Ocean hits Sumatra…they say they just get tailing winds.. If Kuching was the button-down commercial center of Borneo, Kota Kinabalu is the vibrant, pulsing heart of sea-faring environment and the rain forest. Kuching has access to the ocean through it’s rivers and estuaries, but KK as it is known locally is right smack dab on the water and that seems to dominate the entire city. There are long bike and running paths which reach out to the suburbs, and the waterfront in the city proper is all about fish. Rusty hulled fishing trawlers push out to sea every morning and return in late afternoon to unload their catch and the city turns out to buy fresh fish. They drop anchor in the harbor about 100 yards offshore, lining up like cars at the mall. Along the waterfront, dozens of stalls all hawk their seafood for the locals who come to decide what is for dinner. The variety of seafood is amazing. Everything is available from sea slugs to foot long prawns which are more than a meal by themselves. For those not wanting to cook, dozens more stalls cook the variety over wood chip fires with the red pepper marinade coating the outside of the individual pieces. Some of the fish are grilled, others are batter fried. All the stands seem to sell exactly the same things so the verbal enticements to the passerby are necessary to show that theirs are the best.

We opted for something indoors – in re, something with AC. It’s necessary for our bodies, not to mention our mental state to find area when and where we can to cool off for a while before hitting the streets again. Our choices were myriad. Australian, Italian, Japanese, and of course, that quintessential tell-tale sign that we are in a tourist area a Hard Rock Café. Our daughter and son-in-law collect the shot glasses and are quick to point out where we will be able to find a new collectable. I looked before we left and saw that there was one in Jakarta, the Capital, and Bali, no surprise, but my daughter quickly wrote back and informed us that Kota Kinabalu also had a Hard Rock. Now, that was a surprise until we got here and saw how many

Timing was excellent as we left the restaurant to be greeted by a wonderful South China Sea sunset. The tropical thunderclouds towered high into the sky and the sun gave everything a brilliant golden hue. As it sank closer to the horizon, the gold turned to a reddish orange and we truly felt we were in a tropical paradise. The kind of setting you see in travel films, but this was reality, not fantasy. But KK is all about the jungle. Whereas Kuching is basically a flat tidal basin with some tall peaks in the general area, KK is all about coastline and mountains. 100 yards off the shoreline, the hills start abruptly upward with the jungle seemingly right out your doorway. Lianas drape from the trees like spaghetti strands, all reaching for the nutrients of the earth. No matter what direction you head other than to sea, the rain forest is right there. Row upon row of tall ridges form a seemingly unending line of high crests. Each one steeply descends into some form of river or creek. As you turn you are faced with another set of ridges going in different directions, but all the same – covered in the vast biodiversity of Borneo and all seemingly unending. It is said that in 6 square miles of the Borneo rainforest there are more species than in all of Europe and North America combined. Sounds amazing, but I’ve learned not to be skeptical of the wonderment of the area. There are Orangutans in the area, more feeding stations, but since we’ve seen them in two locations we opted for something different. We traveled to see the proboscis monkeys and some botanical demonstration gardens where they have brought the various varieties of plant life into one area for better understanding. We crossed a long and rickety canopy walk where the footing is a one inch by 8 inch board all roped together to long cables. Actually very safe, but also with a lot of movement..It reminded me of how I used to drive my sister nuts by making the bridge swing from side to side as we crossed the Feather River in the little PG&E camp we lived in when we were kids.

The only things seemingly more abundant than the varieties of orchids were the skinny dogs and the even skinnier chickens who walked along the highway with cars whizzing ever so close and scratched the ground with little chicks scurrying around mom looking for the morsel of possible food. Some things that piqued my interest: As we went deeper into the rainforest, we kept seeing signs for Catholic churches. In KK they are big churches a la Western civilization. In the deep rainforest, they may just be a single room with a cross on then, but there are ever present. In Sabah, the province, Christians are a majority in an overall very Muslim country and Catholics the vast majority of those. The Portuguese brought Christianity to the area in the early 1500’s. Carol noted that the name for church seemed very similar to Portuguese, and that is the reason. Driving is different in Borneo. In Sumatra, it’s everybody for themselves. The motor bikes and pedi-cabs all stick to the shoulder of the road and everybody passes without a thought for them. Here in Borneo, motor bikes ride down the center of the lane and people pass only when it is safe. There are NO horns blaring their presence or their driver’s frustrations. It is a very peaceful and sane driving experience. The major highway is one lane each direction and many drivers go at 25 miles an hour, yet there is no road rage at motor bikes not moving over or slow traffic, no epithets being cast about at slow drivers and there are plenty of those, and no clenched fists or pointed fingers jabbing the sky. There are lots of Chinese tourists, but not nearly as many, apparently, as before the flight of MH370 went missing never to be heard of again on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing two years ago. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the stores….what’s not to like about a place like that?

A Tale of Two Cities

2016-04-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

I noted last time some differences in Medan in Indonesia and Kuching in Malaysian Borneo. After spending a couple more days in Kuching, the differences became even more obvious than just traffic patterns. The main difference is a between a frenetic way of life and a more sedate one. First of all, because Medan doesn’t have any high rises, the tallest building we saw was four stories and in Langsa they were only two, that means that the city spreads out in a lateral, horizontal plane, whereas Kuching has a plethora of high rises reaching 30 to 40 stories high. Office buildings, apartment complexes and hotels all dominate the skyline and that give it a vertical appearance. That means that with one fourth the population, Kuching is much more organized and less frantic. The multi-level malls with an eclectic mix of eastern and western shops with L’Occitgane, Esprit, Levi’s and others taking their place alongside Asian shops more indigenous to the area. Rugby goal posts and playing fields give credence to the holdover of the Brits in the area, but today the city is a balance between ethnic Chinese and Malays who now are a larger percentage of the population than the Chinese. Throw in a few percentage points for local tribal people like the Sarawaks and you have a mixture that blends well in this city. In fact, the city has two mayors – one for the Chinese side of town and one for the Malay quarter, and heavens to Mergatroid, they actually cooperate and get along blending policies that benefit the whole…..now what’s that all about?

Secondly, Kuching seems to be a business center, a place of commerce for north Borneo while Medan is just neighborhood lapsing over into other neighborhoods without any distinctive flavor to any of them. Architecture in Medan is basically simple and utilitarian. Concrete block buildings abut against others of the same mold. Only the color changes. In Kuching, there is stylish and modern architecture and it gives the place a far more sophisticated feel. Everything just seems to move at a slower place in Kuching…green spaces and parks give it a tranquil feel and people just seem not to be in such a big hurry in all that they do. As the sun lowers in the sky men sit in the sidewalk cafes and drink their tea and coffee, lovers walk hand in hand down the street and women walk the street holding a multitude of shopping bags from the upscale stores and malls. It just feels good… if the sun didn’t bear down and beat you into submission it would really be a neat place. Our hotel filled our needs, free wi-fi and AC…for once, the AC was more important than the wi-fi. We’ve noticed in some of our hotels a arrow on the ceiling in the corner of the room. Carol finally figured out that it was pointing to Mecca for a proper prayer setting in the rooms for Muslim guests. The history of this whole area is one of colonial exploitation by the Brits and the Dutch, an effort to control the rubbe trade and petroleum industries. It didn’t pass to Malaysian control until 1962 when independence was gained as the Brits slowly began to unwind the empire upon which “The sun never sets.” Japanese occupation of the area was, as usual, vicious and deadly. Several WWII POW camps were established here, and the most famous one was Sandakan where only 6 of the 2,500 POW’s survived the war. On the flip side, the Brits bombed Kota Kinabalu, our next destination, and at the end of the war only three buildings were left standing. The whole area reeks with the stench of war and its inhumanity and it consequences. The island is the 3rd largest in the world after Greenland and New Guinea and is now split into three countries. Malaysia occupies the top quarter with Brunei, an oil rich sultanate enclave splitting, the different provinces of Malaysia, and the bottom ¾’s belonging to Indonesia who call their portion of Borneo, Kalimantan. However, we came to see the Orangutans. In Kuching our options were for a wildlife refuge where the primates are re-introduced back to the wild. They come to the refuge as orphans whose mothers have been shot or captured, or as adults who have been captured for domestic zoos. It was great to see them totally wild in Sumatra and there is lots of criticism of the “feeding Stations” where the animals are slowly re-introduced back to nature, but the fact is that if they were not there, the shrinking orangutan population would shrink even more drastically. They have a fine track record of success and keep a board of the status of the animals from quarantine, rehabilitation, to semi-wild, to totally wild. There is never any guarantee that you will see them at the feeding stations which put out food twice a day. In fact, since this is the season where fruits are in abundance in the jungle, it is actually a good sign when you don’t see them because it shows that they are finding sustenance on their own.

We were fortunate on our visit because there was a big male who came to the call of the attendant and then a mother with a baby clinging tightly to her side. Babies stay with their mothers for up to five years and this one was a three year old. She ventured out of her mother’s embrace as they scaled the long ropes that went from the various trees to the feeding platform where the ranger distributed food….The big male wanted more than his share and got into a pulling match with the ranger who wisely let go and let him have his way. Another difference that became quite obvious to us when we arrived at the wildlife center was the number of western and other tourists. In Bukit Lawang, there were a few pasty-faced visitors scattered out along the narrow walkway on which dozens of hotels and guest houses faced, but here in Kuching’s wild life center we saw just how many more there were here. Sumatra is not one of the top destinations within Indonesia, but here in Malaysian Borneo we are right in the middle of crossroads which makes for easy access to all destinations and cheaply so, since Air Asia has over 263 flights per week to all the destinations in the area, and they are just one of the many discount, low-cost airlines servicing the area. The other excursion that we wanted to see was a Sarawak cultural village. Established to promote the indigenous population, it is a well done replica of a village of the past. The students who work and study there are learning traditional arts and crafts. These places can be very hokey and have a phony feel to them, but this didn’t seem that way. The young kids were warm, friendly, informative and seemed truly appreciative of the visitation.

Borneo always seemed like such an exotic destination. So far away, so alien in culture, and full of lore about head hunting and lost expeditions. In fact, it is all of these, but it is also a place where in the modern world, conveniences in travel and the blessed and life-saving air conditioning make it a place that allows the traveler to enjoy the practicality of the place while still being fascinated by the exotic nature of the island. The rain forests are unique and are some of the oldest in the world. The huge island still has areas which are unexplored for any practical purposes, and I can only hope that it stays that way.

It started off well

2016-04-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Indeed it did. We were up at 6:00 for our 7:00 a.m. ride to the airport. We had a quick cool water shower, it was an eco hotel, after all, and the porters came to take our bags to our waiting car and driver for the 4-5 hour ride to the airport. We walked the half mile or so along the narrow bricked path listening for the sound of a motorbike from behind so that we could step aside. The “street” is just wide enough for the motorbikes to pass without hitting anyone and the locals seem to have the ability to just believe that they won’t get hit and keep on walking…the gringos, however, step aside.They had suggested that we didn’t need to leave for the airport until 8:00, but I wanted a little flexibility…just in case….Little did I know. The car was a nice comfortable SUV and even in the morning “coolness” the AC was appreciated. We passed the ever present oil palm trees and the little parade of students getting to early classes…smart to start the day early and finish before the stifling heat kills any intellectual curiosity. The motor bikes and pedicabs were, of course, everywhere, and the de rigueur single honk of the horn from the car basically said: “I’m passing, don’t deviate from your established path.”….amazing that we have not seen a single accident. About the time I’m settling in nicely for the relaxing ride, everything went silent in the car with the exception of the curious groans from the driver…no power….The car rolled to a stop at the top of the hill, far away from any village. The driver attempted to fiddle under the hood, but to no avail. He tried to use his mobile phone but no service either. Carol and I looked at each other with words unspoken but understood. “Now what?” “What’s plan B?” The driver walked down the road and apparently got some reception because he came back to say: “no problem. Another car is coming. We can make it.” Easy for him to say. Then he hitched a ride on a motor bike that had two baskets used for transporting the oil palm seed clusters and with a leg in each basket they went down the road. With nothing to do except wait, I strolled over to the two homes where the women were mercilessly chopping away at some oil palm clusters not full enough to go to pressing. Nothing gets wasted. I passed an old, reed-thin lady who looked at me with disdain and then looked the other way as if I had been invisible. My “Selamat Pagi,” (good morning) was met with stony indifference. This was most unusual because Indonesians are remarkable friendly and sociable. From rich to poor we have been met with near constant warmth and amiability. The two ladies whacked at the clusters of oil palm and I was impressed and amazed at the viciousness of their hacks while holding the cluster in one hand and whacking with the other. I’d be known as “Three fingered Jim,” if I used such force. I can’t even chop kindling for the stove without the threat of imminent impairment.

About 20 minutes later the driver showed up with a younger man, who we discovered was his son, and another vehicle…gone was our comfy Air conditioned SUV, replaced by a beat up utility van with hard seats and NO AC…..The road went from fair to terrible and each bump left my butt wishing for some extra padding on my skinny bones. The drivers must have permanent crooks to their necks from continually craning them to the left or the right to see if they can get around the trucks carrying who knows what. The single beep of the horn announced that we were coming around. We made it to Medan with the hub-bub of Indonesia’s third largest city and traffic is a real zoo….It took us over an hour just to get across town and this wasn’t rush hour, just late morning. It was the nearest thing to India’s traffic I have seen with everybody trying for that ever-so-slight advantage in getting one car length ahead. Even in a city of two million motor bikes out-number the cars by 50-1 it seemed….Two lanes of traffic were expanded to five when there was the space to create a new lane previously unoccupied. Adding to the chaos was the constant parking of trucks to unload sacks of goods, forcing everyone to somehow squeeze into a lane where nobody wanted to let you in. Basic rule….if you can get even an inch ahead of the other vehicle, the space is yours….all this and no road rage. Amazing. By now after four hours of riding in the heat with little relief, our nerves were fried as was our patience. There was little Carol and I could do but to give each other those unspoken looks that said: “Yeah, I’m miserable as well.” At last we got to the airport in time for our flight to Kuala Lumpur. Having left at seven without breakfast, you’d have thought that we’d have been starving, but the heat and fatigue sapped our appetite as well as our spirits. Carol was fighting the bug ungraciously given to her by drinking pure cane juice freshly squeezed and poured into what we ultimately decided were the culprits….unclean glasses washed in unclean water. So, while she is not eating because of the turkey trots, I just wanted something in my stomach….I forced down some French fries which were the only thing my stomach could possibly tolerate. We flew to Kuala Lumpur where we had a two-hour layover and then on to Kuching, “cat city,” The last flight on Air Asia was so cold that I asked for a blanket. They told me they only sold blankets. I guess when you only pay $25 for a two hour plane ride you can’t ask for too many amenities. Carol had a rain poncho in her backpack and so we huddled under it like some poor waifs waiting out a rain storm. The Indonesian and Malaysians seemed to revel in the coolness of the cabin while I froze. Finally it all ended and we reached our hotel…..a perfect place, cheap, good wi-fi, hot water, and a real shower. My stomach was in turmoil and that night I spent much of it with my head in the toilet getting up close and personal with my present reality….I think my system just more or less checked out from the physical and mental stress of the day.

But we are here in Kuching which means "Cat City in Malay, Sarawak province, Island of Borneo, Malaysia and the city is an oasis of calmness and driver civility compared to Sumatra. Drivers stay in their lanes, there are no pedi-cabs or tuk-tuks, the cars outnumber the motor bikes by the opposite numbers of Sumatra 1-50 now. If Medan was a city built for 500,000 people but has a population of two million, Kuching seems like a city built for two million with half a million population…lots of green spaces and parks. Something we just didn’t see in Sumatra where every corner is covered in some form of building or another. So it’s a much calmer place that we are in now, both physically and mentally. Our bodies and minds need that. Bottom line….in spite of the difficulties, it’s travel…shit happens…it’s all still good and worth it. on">

The Trek

2016-04-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

We got a fairly early start for our trek into the jungle…we left at 8:00 and were thankful that it wasn’t any hotter than it was…not cool by any means, but tolerable…that changed quickly as we climbed the steep side of the mountain across the river. Certainly, no self respecting orangutan would be caught near the tourist area. In reality, this is what has happened to many of them close to civilization and so they have moved deeper into the rain forest. They have been captured for domestic zoos and for those rich enough to afford having their own private, exotic animal confinement. I was feeling a little wimpish since we had booked a three hour trek instead of the all day one that the French couple at the hotel had booked…They were younger, I told myself and we’d take our chances in seeing the orangs in the limited time…plenty of opportunities in other places along our way this trip. By the time we reached the crest of the mountain, I was awash in sweat and sweating like a hog, which actually doesn’t sweat. Caro had sweat dripping of her nose and running into her ears as well…made it difficult all the way around. The weather has been so hot that I’ve not eaten as much as normal and had lost a few more pounds than I started with and so my pants kept sliding down and I was continually pulling them up so that I didn’t “flash” the orangs. I must have been a comical sight with one hand on my pants to hold them up with the other firmly grasping my camera for the potential photo I wanted. Our guide came to me with a long, thin vine which he laced through the loops of the pants and that worked well. We passed rubber trees which they were tapping and the thick ooze from the tree. A leaf placed at the bottom of the diagonal cut directed the raw rubber where it dripped into a coconut shell at the base of the tree. It is similar to what we’ve seen done with maple trees for the syrup that we enjoy so much. We passed the ever present oil palm trees which are quickly devastating the Indonesian rain forest. Over 25% of the rain forest has been lost as they now have over 1,500,000 acres, twice the size of Belgium, in production. With 17,000 islands to the nation and 250,000,000 people, it is difficult to control ecological disasters. We’ve seen the same thing in Brazil as poor people are far more concerned about the immediacy of their lives than they are about the future of the planet. The effect upon wild life has been particularly painful as encroachment is a slow, but steady march into what was previously unattainable areas.

HUGE ants, termites, various interesting little creatures of the forest gave us an opportunity to stop and observe life in the jungle. What it actually did as much as anything was give us an opportunity to catch our breath an take a short break before climbing ever higher before we reached level ground where we could then just walk and not climb. Reaching the crest, one of our two guides returned to tell us that he had found some orangs and our spirits and energy levels were raised immediately. There climbing and swinging through the trees were a mom and baby. We watched in fascination and awe as she so easily glided amongst the trees with baby trailing behind. Precious moment of the experience was when baby stopped while mom seemed out of reach and she looked down upon it for a few moments sort of saying: “You can do it, “ and then reached out with her hand to which baby grasped firmly and mom pulled it up to her side. A gentle gesture and a learning experience for all primates involved.

Soon, other groups which had not gotten quite as early start as us began to arrive. The French couple and other nationalities oohed and aahed just as we had. There is something very special about these animals. They say that they are our closest relatives, and I wish we had the same gentleness that they displayed. They took notice of us but seemed unconcerned and just went among the trees, moving ever so slowly, but steadily as they munched on the food abundantly available to them. I could have sworn the mother looked at me and said: “Hello, cousin.” We could have gone further, but we were truly spent from the heat now really building and the climb that left our legs rubbery. We still had to descend the mountain which in some ways was more difficult. I was afraid that if I lost my footing I would bing, bang, boom my way down the mountainside like some out of control pachinko ball. We had seen what we had sought and didn’t need to keep looking for more at this point. Safely at the bottom it was time for what has become my favorite meal of the day, a chocolate milkshake. It’s made differently in every place we order it, sometimes with ice cream, sometimes with just ice, milk and chocolate syrup, but always cold and refreshing. Upon our return to the hotel we once again climbed the 115 deceptive steps to our room and wondered why we did this to ourselves. A “nap,” of sorts in the heat was little compensation, but lying flat was glorious. At dinner time, the French family was there and we asked them about their day. It turned out that after going an hour further, they too succumbed to the heat and I felt a little less wimpish. We opted for an easier day for our last in Bukit Lawang and had a guide with limited English but a sweet disposition to take us around by pedicab to see the surrounding territory. It was interesting to get off the main drag onto smaller roads. We passed little groups of smiling faces all headed to school .The girls in their red floor length skirts, white tops which came almost to their knees and the ever present white head scarves so that only their sweet little faces shone out to the world. The boys wore the same colored pants and white shirts and looked as impish as the girls did innocent….it made for some wonderful photos as they were all only too pleased to pose. In what was one of those: “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” moments our driver stopped for a cool drink of cane juice, freshly squeezed before us and poured into glasses. We sat in the shade and enjoyed our drinks while we could because later on we realized the folly of our actions. We both got ill. Each of us in our own way, but the toilet got a lot of usage in the next 24 hours. Carol surmised that the glasses were probably washed in unclean water and that was the culprit. You’d think that seasoned travelers would be more cautious than we were, but, it looked so refreshing our brains went on hold and we swigged it down.

Our time In the Sumatran rain forest ended and we headed to Borneo…A 4-5 hour ride to the airport, and then two flights would take us to Kuching, Borneo. Cat city in the Malaysian language. An easy ride in an air conditioned car would be a treat and relief from the stifling heat. Oh, if had only been so.

Graduation Day

2016-04-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

After many phone calls from someone who knew someone who could call someone who could make the decision, permission by the police was granted for us to attend the graduation at Eka and Ervita’s school Under a typically hot Sumatran sun, we arrived by pedi-cab and watched the participants and observers filter in. It was held outside under a large canopied covering to protect us from the sun and as guests we had a front row seat with Eka and Ervita. Since it was a nursing high school and most of the students would be going into that profession there was a large disparity between male and female graduates. There was also a large number of inordinately tall girls, which Eka told us was a necessity for nurses here. I didn’t get the answer to why that was. There were four different groups of students, each with their own distinctive attire. The groups represented different classes, or homerooms, which the students belonged to and each with approximately 25 students comprising the group.

The boys were dressed without fanfare, a rust colored shirt with subdued matching tie, or white coats with black ties but the dresses that the girls wore were totally amazing. Each group selected the color and style of the dress, but they were all floor length and bright in color. The individuality came in the girl’s headdresses. All were turban types, piled high up above the forehead with the face fully exposed, but that was the only skin shown besides the hands. Each girl had a slightly different shape or adornment to the turban reflecting their personality and taste. They all looked magnificent. Iridescent reds, pinks, greens, and blues gowns shimmering and giving the girls the appearance of Indonesian princesses.

From a distanced of 20 feet or so, I could only think how lovely they all looked. Up closer all I could think of was how miserable they must be so totally bundled up without any escape from the building heat underneath the garments. They were also very heavily made up and Carol commented that made it even more difficult for them. They carried little tissues with which they daubed their foreheads and eyes, trying to ensure that their make-up didn’t smear. I could only feel empathy for their discomfort, but Eka said they are used to it. They seemed miserable to me, but they never showed any discomfort.

A welcoming dance in the traditional provincial style was performed by one of the under classes, various performers sang or did skits, and other dance routines were performed in traditional Indonesian and Aceh (the province) style. After all the dances and skits, the students lined up by class and received their sashes showing them as graduates and went down the long line of teachers and other officials receiving their congratulations and giving them their thanks… because this is a new school it was the very first graduation for the school. It was all quite poignant and impressive. Again, we were somewhere between an anomaly and rock stars as we were continually asked for photos with the graduates. We posed and tried not to look miserable in the hot sun while they smiled and seemed unaffected by the stifling heat. Eka told us that since the eclipse of a couple weeks ago, the weather has been much hotter….don’t know the meteorological basis for this but I’ve learned not to question local knowledge on such things. After two hours, we returned to the relative comfort of our hotel with AC while Eka and Ervita remained to finish up their duties. Later in the afternoon, we went by motorbike to a swamp-like nature reserve, and, since the tide was out, the mangrove trees roots looked like tangled masses. The houses along the channel leading to the adjacent ocean were wooden structures on stilts and plank walkways leading from the road. I asked Eka if these people were poor and she said that they were not. I’ve learned that my version of poverty doesn’t always fit with other’s view points. Another example of how and why I have to check my cultural stereotypes at the door when I visit a place. We stopped for some roasted corn. We had two options, sweet or spicy…we choose sweet, which it was not, but certainly better than spicy. Ervita put hers down beside her for a second to check her phone and zip, it was gone…monkeys abound in the area, and they are slick and quick thieves….her corn on the cob was quickly in the tree being munched on. I hope they enjoyed the spicy cuisine. The following morning we left for Bukit Lawang and the national park where we were to visit the jungle and search for the orangutan. Eka had reserved a car and driver for us and she and her dad wanted to go with us so it was decided on an early morning departure for the five hour drive. When the car arrived, it was packed with people…In addition to Eka and dad, mom, brother, sister, and auntie all decided they wanted to come with us. Auntie was the only one who had been there and so this was a great opportunity for the family to have an outing for something new. Bukit Lawang is only 120 miles away from Langsa, but it might as well have been a foreign country. None of the family has been anywhere, for all practical purposes. So the nine of us packed into the SUV and off we went. As we crossed the border into the next province, mom had to buckle up and didn’t know how to do it. In Aceh province you have to wear the head scarf, but don’t have to buckle up. In Medan province, you have to buckle up but don’t have to wear the head scarf. Such is the variation in culture within short distances. In fact, a majority of women here did not wear the scarf and that seemed very different since we were used to the practice just a few miles away. We reached our hotel in Bukit Lawang after five and a half hours of driving and were greeted by porters who offered to carry our bags for the equivalent of $2.50 per bag. Not knowing what how far it was, it was tempting to just dismiss the idea and take them ourselves, but since we were tired, we agreed. That was a VERY wise decision since it was about a half a mile to the hotel over very uneven terrain. The family came with us to have a last picnic lunch. When researching the room type at the Orangutan Hotel, I saw a 3 story building and the comments were that it was great to book the top room for the view, even though it was a climb…..so I did…Only when I saw where the actual room was did I realize that we were in for more of a climb than we had expected…what the photos didn’t show was that far above the building where most of the rooms were located was a little chalet HIGH above. 115 steps we were told, but even that was deceptive since most of the steps were almost double steps and could be taken only by planting both feet on the step before getting the energy for the next one. We again opted to have porters carry our heavy suitcases up to the room for an extra $1.50….I’m liking more and more to be able to buy my way out of difficulties. Certainly the view was great, but it really affected our decisions about how often we would go out to explore….much better to sit on the patio, fight mosquitoes and relax. It’s an “eco-friendly” area, as it is more popular to say when they don’t have true facilities. Which in this case meant no air conditioning in the stifling heat and since the nights were still in the high 70’s, there was little relief from the heat and sleeping was problematic at best. A ceiling fan did cool things a little bit, but the mosquito netting prevented any real relief. The air movement was negligible and we, shall I say, “suffered.” Choice between being bitten by mosquitoes or trying to sleep in an oven didn’t present any real positive options…after one night in the pressure cooker, we opted to “cover our body up with oil” as Dr. Hook said at the Freaker’s Ball and raise the canopy netting. It’s a sign of my aging, I guess, that these types of things bother me a lot more than they did when I was younger and tougher…Now, I’m all about paying the freight for more comfort in my life….my “eco” days, I fear, are well behind me. Tomorrow into the jungle to search for the elusive orangutans in the wild.

The Nose Knows

2016-04-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

The day was a time for visiting families…Eka’s coworker and best bud, Ervita, wanted us to come to her home. Her family wanted to meet us…after Friday prayers. Eka told us that we could not be on the street between 12-2 p.m. because the Muslin police would make us return to the hotel. When noon hit, the busy, noisy streets basically became empty with only a few motor bikes zipping down trying to get where were supposed to be without getting in trouble. The Muslim police enforce the rule that ALL women in the province wear head scarves and Friday prayers. At 2:01 the streets again had their usual buzz and Eka and Ervita showed up a few minutes later to take us to Ervita’s home. So off we zoomed with the motor bikes/scooters, wove our way through traffic and onto small side streets and into a small path where her home was situated. They had never even met a foreigner, much less had one in their home and so you would have thought it was the royal couple paying a visit….everybody lined up for handshakes in the traditional manner….they take your hand and then press it to their forehead as a sign of respect to elders. As always, food and juice were provided and the buzz around the room left me confused and curious…Eka explained that they thought I was very handsome because of my pointy nose. She pointed (No pun intended) out that Indonesians have a very flat nose and a pointy one is seen as much more attractive. Well, that was certainly a first….my nose has not been a source of pride, and while it isn’t Jimmy Durante sized, it isn’t a tiny little thing either. Questions were asked and the oohs and aahs that accompanied Eka’s translations over even the most trivial detail made us realize how far we had come besides the obvious distance in miles involved. The house was a simple one, but not a poor one…It was a brick one and spotlessly clean, a feature we have noticed throughout our travels. No matter how poor the people are, they take pride in keeping what part of their lives they have control over clean and tidy. The living room was about the size of a master bedroom in a tract home and a few photos hung on the walls and when I inquired as to whether they were the parents, the answer was “Yes, the heads are the parents”. The photos were photo-shopped with a more affluent couples dress and surroundings forming the main part of the photo….these people couldn’t afford to have weddings like the ones in the photos, but their dreams were not lacking. The main living room was bare with the exception of a wicker sofa, just big enough for Carol and me to sit on, while the others all sat or stood….there were about 20 or so individuals checking out the visitors…..aunts, and lots of kids, but no men (they were all at work), filled the room. One door led to an outdoor kitchen, covered, but open to allow heat to escape and not fill the house with any more heat than was already present. Certainly a benefit in a land where air conditioning is a luxury most people could not afford. They just deal with it. There were a cluster of four homes with various family members occupying the individual houses. After the chit-chat, photos were a mandatory process with each person wanting a photo and a little discord occurred when someone bogarted the queue.

After a couple of hours of interplay we headed to Eka’s house for the same ritual….she is one of four siblings, and with the exception of the brother who works in Medan, all were present for the ritual which was repeated as it was at Ervita’s. An aunt came by, as did a neighbor, then another neighbor and still another one and another aunt…They could not believe that people would come all the way from America to visit Langsa…that was beyond their conceptual experience. As we settled in on the floor, the buzz started again over the nose and this was repeated every time a new person came to the house to see these exotic creatures, the foreigners and the one with the pointy nose. They were in no way insulting about my nose. I say that because it certainly would be in most places, but these people are as warm and friendly as you will find anywhere in the world, and the thought that they were giving offense is beyond their capacity as hosts. We had brought gifts for the family….scarves from India for the ladies. Eka has somewhere between 70 and 100, so this was certainly a needed gift. The brothers got tee shirts that I purchased…Oregon and Oregon State are the big schools in the area and were an easy find. The brother who was in attendance was absolutely delighted with his shirt, while the sister commandeered the bright yellow of Oregon. They, of course, reciprocated with a lovely purse for Carol and matching Indonesian design shirts for the two of us. Cousins began to arrive with babies and husbands filtered in to fill the room with laughter and the conviviality that these extended families personify. The weathered face of an old woman who turned out to be 77 years old was the most fascinating to me…I asked her about the changes she had seen in her life, and the response was that her husband had been in the military and that they had lived in many parts of Indonesia. In the end, I thought, the question was beyond the conceptual process of her brain…she wasn’t ignorant, but the lives of Indonesian women didn’t lend to concepts of changes in society and culture over the course of a lifetime…It was just not how her mind worked.

Food was bought out for all. Indonesian dishes spicy enough that they could melt metal if left too long in the pots. Tasty and filling, we ate and talked for a long time before saying our goodbyes to return to our air conditioned room after a day in the heat. It was a wonderful day to see two families and a small snippet of their lives. It is a simple life, but a pure one….people loving each other and just trying to get from one day to the next with joy in their hearts. As dusk fell, Eka told carol that she needed to be excused for a few minutes. As devout Muslims, she and a few family members needed to go off to a separate room for even prayers. In the end, it was all about family. I slept well thinking of the great family that I have as well, even though our lives are not so simple and our goals don’t always match up, still they are family. I also slept well thinking that my nose wasn’t as big or pointy as it seemed earlier in the day, and other people can even see beauty in it. Life is good.

I am the orangutan

2016-04-13T18:53:00.000-07:00

As the sky brightened, the blue sea spread endlessly below , the cotton ball clouds dotted the skies like anti-aircraft bursts I’ve seen a thousand times in WWII movies, and on the horizon the dramatic tropical thunderheads stretched from sea to the heavens. As we approached Jakarta, I was given pause to think of the many and varied forces that bring/take me to a given locale in the world, and Indonesia was no different.

“You are the Orangutan.” Or so I was told by a girlfriend when I was in college. She gave me a framed picture of one which she hung over my bed and called me “the Orangutan.” My moniker came from the Simon and Garfunkel song: “At the Zoo,” in which the animals are described by their behavior…it seems that “Orangutans are skeptical of changes in their cages.” And that, apparently described me as well…. So I have had a long fascination with my behavioral as well as genetic cousins and when this year’s trip possibilities began to percolate in our heads, Indonesia just kept working its way to the top. My 75th birthday was coming up and I always love to celebrate my birthdays traveling to special places. I have a “granddaughter” who was going to be married in Sumatra and that would be special to see a traditional Indonesian wedding. (The wedding plans were changed so we didn’t get to include that experience.) But Indonesia had taken form in our brains. Garden planting and family considerations just seemed to indicate the timing But Indonesia was the place and the timing was now. So there it is. We left on the 4th , and will return one month later. We will be in Sumatra, Malaysian Borneo, Bali, Lombok, Java and Indonesian Borneo, which is called Kalimantan, which I didn’t know before this trip. Indonesia has much to recommend it to all travelers…warm (hot) climate, warm,(amiable) people, colorful, inexpensive, and with 15,000+ islands there is a huge variety of things to see and do from the teeming jungle of Jakarta to the tranquil jungles of Borneo. Throw in a beach-lovers paradise, world class diving and indigenous cultures that stay traditional and Indonesia is perfect….that is if they would just move the place a little closer so that the 25+ hour transit didn’t wrack the old body. Our stay in Jakarta was short-lived…a city of 14 million doesn’t pique my travel mentality, so we immediately got out of Dodge at 6:45 the following morning and flew to Sumatra to celebrate my birthday with ,” Eka….Choo-Choo, meaning favored granddaughter in Indonesian. She had her father meet us at the airport with the driver who would transport us 4 hours north to Langsa. The ride through the Sumatran “countryside” was nothing of the sort…from the air you can see the ribbons of villages and homes stretching in long lines. It was seemingly one continual stream of houses, shops, and other assorted edifices with nary a mile of simply empty undeveloped space. The roads range from good to fair but the traffic is horrendous…..It seems that everybody is on the move and it’s all done by wheels, two, three or four…I never saw anybody walking…I mean never….120 miles of petrol/diesel powered mechanisms and nobody walked. The two-wheelers were most commonly motor bikes, certainly speedy enough with a few bicycles sprinkled in for those not able to afford the zippy motor bikes. These were nothing like the old putt-putts that we called motor bikes…these are just one short step below a motorcycle and they are ubiquitous. Eka’s is a new Honda, quite sporty and cost in the range of $1,500. The three-wheelers, pedi-cabs, were the Indonesian version of the Asian tuk-tuks, but with a twist. Instead of being a single confined vehicle where driver and passengers are under cover and the driver steering a handle bar, the Indonesian variety is a is a covered or uncovered cart attached to a motor bike with the driver on the outside, more similar to a sidecar. On the open road the four-wheeled vehicle cars and trucks formed a wall of traffic that is daunting when attempting to pass the slower “pedicabs,” and motor bikes who dart like bees in and out of the line of traffic. Although it seemed that we were screaming down the road, we never hit 50 on the speedometer. We wove in and out behind the trucks and motorbikes and it was nerve-wracking to see kids younger than my 9 year old grandson, no license required, riding with two or three friends as passengers coming at us in the opposite direction, or peddling unsteadily on bicycles, with cars whizzing only inches, literally inches, by them without a flinch on the part of anybody…. The mainly two lane road is in actually, anything but. It is at least four with the two and three wheelers occupying the outer part of the road and the four wheeled varieties the inner part, closer to the oncoming traffic. The general rule seems to be if the mirrors don’t touch, there is no problem….and there isn’t any road rage at all…everybody seems to understand the rules and accepts that Allah will take care of them. We arrived in Langsa and since Eka was still at work we checked into the “best” hotel in town, a probable 3 star under some skewed rating system but with severe limitations on the rating system. After settling in, we wandered around for a few hours looking for a place to get out of the 92 degree, humid heat, but with little success…everything is al fresco. Since we were going to have dinner with Eka and ONE other friend at eight, we wanted a bite to eat since we had had breakfast at 4:00 in the morning. Our walk was greeted by continual smiling faces and warm curiosity, based on the fact that we were walking and that we were pasty-faced Washingtonians. This is obviously not a tourist town and we felt that we had entered a town fairly unfamiliar with western tourists. Checking out menus in several street-side eateries, I hesitate to call them restaurants, was no help because of the language barrier. “Sandwich,” met with puzzlement or a smiling“no.” Eventually we were pointed to a little place where they had photos of the dishes…woohoo. A pizza looked good since we knew we just wanted a bite, not a meal…trying to decipher the size, however, proved more problematic than finding the restaurant…making a circle with our fingers to describe possible sizes brought curious looks, followed by a motioning to another worker to come over and see what we were trying to say. Repeat the process a couple more times and still no result…we tried to make the circle small then expand our fingers into bigger circles to determine the size of the pizza…at one point, one of the girls literally collapsed on the floor in hysterics. Obviously, we weren’t getting through…”Big?” “Small,” met with the same results…so at a price of $1 a piece, we decided they couldn’t be too large, so we ordered two…indeed, they were about the size of a saucer so that was a good decision…imagine a pizza with a very hot spiced tomato base and little dots of corn and pepperoni that was so thin it would float and you have our individual pizzas…

Eka showed up with not one, but three, friends, and so the six of us piled onto three motor bikes and roared down to a restaurant. This one actually an indoors one, but again, alas, nothing to take away the heat which had all day to build to a melting point of several metals. Shortly after settling in, four other friends arrived carrying a box of cupcakes with “Happy Birthday, Grandpa Jim” on one side and “Welcome to Indonesia Jim and Carol” on the other.

It was a very sweet gesture and the 10 of us engaged in banter which was mostly translated by Eka, the only true English speaker of the group. We’d had a very early departure from Jakarta, a two hour flight, a 5 hr 30 min ride to Langsa all to get to this point where I was celebrating my birthday with my dear granddaughter and seven of her friends…It was all worth it, and made a wonderful introduction to Indonesia….

End of the road

2015-11-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

Three weeks with the Mutt and all went well with the exception of losing two hubcaps…after our madcap hubcap adventure in New Zealand last year, it seemed a fitting continuance of the travel spirits guiding my life…I noticed one was missing on one morning as I was getting into the car and then on our last day with the car, I noticed the second one on the driver’s side was missing…stolen? Fell off? Aliens?....who knows what powers dictate the hubcap world. I’ve never lost a hubcap in 58 years of driving at home, but the last two trips have added mystery and amusement to our journey. We finished our trip with a great family in Eger, Hungary…the kind of open minded, generous spirits that we meet through Servas connections. I had made contact with Boglarka through Emails and was told that they would be happy to host us. We coordinated tines for our arrival and I was told that the parents also spoke English in case “Bogi,” as the email was signed, was not hone when we arrived. After getting lost, as per usual, we finally found the house and I knocked on the door. A happy smile on a college-aged female’s face greeted me with the opening of the door and I asked “Bogi’s house? Yes, came the answer…we went in and the mother was bustling around in the kitchen preparing a lovely meal and I asked what time “Bogi” would arrive…I was then told with laughter that our “host” was actually this college student…we had a good laugh all around at the miscommunication.

Bogi is a serious-minded young lady working on her Master’s degree in English who laughs easily and was our guide as well as host in Eger. Alice, the mom, is a math teacher who has to be told to come home because she is so dedicated to her work that she loses track of the time and a cell call starting “MOM, when are you coming home comes when the clock passes 7 pm. Atilla, a proud name in Hungary, is a Lawyer and practices in Budapest an hour and a half away. He is a thoughtful man whose opinions are shaped by his basic humanity…They have an apartment there where he, Bogi, and the bright-eyed sister, Dora all live as they split their time between home and work.

Dora studies chemical engineering but whose happy spirit would seem more attuned to lesser academic endeavors. She’s one of those individuals who livens up the room when she enters….The girls both did an exchange to Texas last year and were just 30 minutes apart. They were really open and honest in their evaluations of the refugee situation, speaking of the fears and concerns that all in these four countries expressed, while empathizing with the human tragedy…there are no easy answers and they were very conflicted about being overwhelmed by huge numbers in their small country of 10 million people while agonizing over the plight of so many desperate people….We found this duality throughout our trip…There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the issue. There are not any easy answers. Bogi showed us around the sights and sounds of Eger and since Alice and Atilla had a previous engagement, Carol, Bogi and I had a lovely dinner in a traditional Hungarian restaurant before heading to Prague the following morning. It’s only fitting that we got lost once again after misunderstanding Atilla’s instructions and turning the wrong way on the freeway….the signs kept saying Slovakia and not Budapest, and the brain kept saying: “This isn’t right.” We finally got straightened out as we always do and dropped Bogi off at the Metro stop and made our way to Anna and Tibor’s house where we stayed three weeks earlier. The banter and frivolity of the evening was crushed the following morning when Anna and I were walking Zeus, the dog. He sprinted away from Anna, and she called and called him…we were walking parallel to the 4 lane road and then I heard that unmistakable “Thud” followed by painful yipping and sure enough he had been hit by a car…there were so few cars on the road on a Sunday morning it seemed so illogical that he would be hit…I comforted him while Anna ran back to the house to get Tibor and the car….they took him to the vet, but he had such spinal injuries that they had to put him down…A total downer for everybody involved, including the visitors. We got out of their hair as soon as possible so that they could deal with their own grief as a family without distractions. Turning in the rental car and making our way to our plush river boat where we will live for the next two weeks as we cruise to Amsterdam seemed a little other-worldly when we knew that our friends were hurting so badly.

With the end of the road behind us and the rivers ahead of us, it was time to shift gears and recalibrate. They had a free laundry and since we got on board early, we hustled down to get in before the rest of the passengers got there. That was a fabulous start for the 15 days…all clean clothes, and clothes that could be hung in a closet or put in a drawer…with a passenger list of 94 and a crew of 64 it’s a very different scene than the megaships where you have 3,000 of your nearest and dearest friends to be dealt with full time. So hello M.S. Maria Theresa, and good bye Mutt…., no more suitcases, no more schlepping them around, just clean sheets on a fabulous bed and a hot shower with heated floor in the bathroom…now that’s really over the top.

Old Lady's Summer

2015-11-03T21:19:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year of the long shadows as they were once described to me. The sun sets low in the sky and the days grow shorter by the day. The weather have been especially kind to us on this trip as the rain has stayed away and the temperatures have been nippy but not restrictive of our activities. It is the time of the “old ladies summer,” as they are known here in Hungary. That time of the year where the old ladies go out and sit in the park and soak up the last rays of warmth and sunshine before the harsh onset of winter. We call it our “Indian summer,” but I like the analogy as described by our Hungarian hosts…but first we had to get here.

We left Krakow and started to leisurely wind our way back to Budapest for the river cruise. Krakow is in the south of Poland and so we continued heading that direction. We spent the night in Zakopane, a ski/winter resort area near the Slovakian border at the foot of the Tatra mountains. It’s a lovely village with chalets dotting the landscape and the ever present flower pots adorning the balconies. The houses are stained a clear varnish color rather than being painted and that gives them a warm appearance. The town itself is filled with the usual resort attractions of shops both kitschy and sublime…Carol found a shop what had a really nice, classy variety of what can be officially labeled as sweaters, but are certainly more dressy than that. It’s off season, the summer crush of Krakow visitors looking for their summer hiking on the myriad of trails and off road opportunities are fewer now, and the snow has not yet arrived, so we easily found a hotel for $12 per person through a local hotel booking agent. A three star hotel as it was designated, but with a surly receptionist who obviously didn’t want to be there. There weren’t any towels in the room and when we told her about it, she got on the phone and made a call to the booking agent that didn’t sound all that friendly. She passed the phone on to us and the agent told us that: “For that price, you don’t get towels…you have to pay an extra $3 per person…okay….then there was a $4 charge for parking and a $5 charge for breakfast…but in the end it was fine and the entire bill the following morning came to $32. I think they forgot to charge us for breakfast and with the sourness of our welcome, I didn’t feel any compunction to point out their error. With some extra zlotys in my pocket, I topped the car off with gas and still had coins which can’t be exchanged for another currency, so a rummaging through the mini—mart at the gas station produced a bag of chips, Lays, no less, a bag of pistachios, a chocolate bar, and a Twix candy with a few coins left over for the grandsons to add to their international coin collection….nothing like making your money work for you….LOL. About 30 minutes later we crossed the border into Slovakia….gone are the goon border guards, the sniffy dogs, the concrete barriers, no more passport stamps which show where you’ve been….the only things left are the old booths which look like bridge toll booths. You slow down because they are narrow but other than that you just zip through in the new European Union where border crossings are simply a blink of the eye…

We wove our way through some glorious fall foliage with leaves falling all around us. Some became hitch-hikers on the windshield wipers until they blew off to rest in a new location. The roads are good, traffic is light in the morning and the Mutt (our car license plate is “MUT 405”) chugged up the hills complaining but still did the job. It was a most picturesque drive and an easy one. We only drove a couple of hours and came to another resort town, Slovakian style, with a large lake where we drove to a water fall and generally just relaxed for the afternoon after a lunch which we had no idea what we were ordering, but we had confidence since we hadn’t had any bad meals anywhere on the trip. We stayed in a hotel near the lake and hit the road the following morning heading to Hungary where we were to stay with a Servas family in Eger, the main town in a spa valley which is also renowned for its wine. We stopped often in little villages which is what I had been craving after the large cities…these throw-back places are such a contradiction. The houses are a mixture of new construction painted brightly in oranges, yellows and reds, while next door is an old barn or house that has been around long before I came to this earth. Supermarkets have everything available to the modern shopper while two ladies stand talking outside in their long dresses, head scarves and shawls, and rubber boots. Tractors pulling a variety of items in a wagon slowly ply the winding, narrow streets while some impatient driver in a hot car follows looking for the very first opportunity to pass and zip on down the road.

There are areas of public space where people have formed their own little private world of gardens…no bigger than the average back yard of an American home…well, the size of a back yard as I knew it growing up, anyway….but they are well manicured with flowers and vegetables. Each plot has a small shack where tools and a couple of chairs can be stored for use and enjoyment. Right next to one plot another sits, with no real border distinction, each seems to blend into the other, but each has its own little hut and the variety of crops is different depending on the family’s needs/desires. In other areas the plots are considerably larger measuring an acre or more. At one such place a man ran a rotor-tiller with a furrowing attachment which lifted and fluffed the soil and a very down-home woman walked behind with a bucket picking up the potatoes which had been unearthed. The earth looks very rich…The soil is dark and productive.…I always get the feeling that the people in these villages are a lot more in touch with nature and a simple life than we can imagine. After many navigational errors as we got close to the Hungarian border, we finally crossed back where we had started…The area is dotted with small villages which don’t show up on the maps and road numbers seem to change without any reason. You can be on E521 and the next thing you know it’s highway 23. We try to look at google maps in the morning before starting out to get an idea of where we turn and what the highway numbers are but this is of limited value. In the end, we’re on holiday and there is no reason to get upset because the journey takes an hour or two longer than originally planned…and besides it always leads to unexpected little treasures that would be missed, like Dedinky, which was anything but Dinky. We caught a glimpse of it through the canopy of trees, a lake and village below in a valley. It looked like a scene out of Switzerland where you are high in the mountains and a valley is laid out before you, except this was merely a glimpse, not a panorama, a bend in the road brought it into view for just a second. We found a spot where we could pull off the road, stopped for our photo op, then found a small road which seemed to be heading in the direction of the lake. Unmarked on maps it could have easily been passed by without any knowledge of the fact that such a little jewel lay waiting to be discovered. We stopped for some hot chocolate, walked around looking at how picturesque it was, took lots of photos and then headed on our way…the scenery was so beautiful, everything we had hoped for since we were missing our Autumn at home. A tunnel of yellow and gold trees formed an archway under which we passed, the forest floor was covered with fallen leaves looking like a carpet had been laid out, and the hillsides literally burst with color. Finally about five in the afternoon we crossed into Hungary and found our way with some local help to a lovely home and family where we are happily and very comfortably ensconced for two nights. Our road journey is coming to an end…Budapest lies just an hour or so down the road. A last night at Anna and Tibor’s house were we began will bring this portion of the journey to an end…then it’s lap of luxury time on the river cruise…..what a contrast that will be…I don’t think they will charge us for towels….LOL Life is good and we are living large in Central Europe.

The Yin and Yang of Poland

2015-11-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Yin…..the entry of Poland into the European Union had an enormous effect in uplifting the country from its rural roots into the fast lane of economic develop. Poles that we talked to said that it changed everything. They were no longer a pull toy, they were part of something big and bold, Europe. Roads were built, Poles went all over the place freely, industry moved in and development was huge. All of this has made Poland a different Poland, a Poland looking west where they can see their future development continuing. The yang…The election of JPII, as he is called in Poland, to the papacy was a huge boon to the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. For an already deeply religious and most devout of all European countries to have a Polish Pope was the most amazing thing to Poles. It just ingrained the church into their DNA. The country became even more dedicated to the church.

The Poles are traditional Catholics and there is now a huge pushback against Francis whose attempt to modernize and liberalize the church is met with outright and public scorn…..show’s how much I know..I always thought there was a thing called “Papal infallibility.” But most Catholics here are totally opposed to the new agenda. The church’s influence comes early and constant…students spend twice as much of their academic time studying religion as they do learning about their own history and culture. Elections are even held on Sundays and people go to church first and then to the polls…nice segue for the church. The political ramifications of this were seen in the national election for prime minister held while we were in Krakow. The party that won was the party that espoused the heaviest dose of Catholicism. And with that result, Poland has made a sharp turn to the right with potentially massive implications for all of Europe…at least that’s what is all over the news, and even this morning there was a lead article in the Washington Post about that very same thing. The party that won the election, in what was considered a landslide, did all the usual promising of everything to everybody, but embraced the conservative agenda of the Polish church hierarchy. The new prime minister to be is a huge fan of Urban, the president of Hungary who is even further to the right and has made a big splash about the refugee situation. They talk about this group of nations that we just happened to visit as some kind of sub-section of the EU. They say that they think alike and it’s becoming more different from western Europe. It will be interesting to watch the various forces working within the country determining the direction the country will head. Poland has had the ebb and flow of history cross its path on so many occasions, reading a list of all the people they had wars with for a variety of reasons reads like a who’s who of Europe…Everybody wanting to go west went through Poland…everybody wanting to go East went through Poland. And they had their own forms of aggression to kick up the numbers as well.

And now for one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, Krakow…. Krakow is a lively gem with a market square to rival any that we’ve seen. There is a certain similarity to them in various cities of Europe, at least the ones that didn’t bombed into oblivion during WWII. Warsaw got leveled during the war, but they rebuilt their old town just as it had been before the war…brick by brick. Here in Krakow all around the very large square there are many outdoor eating establishments and with the Autumn nip in the air blankets and propane heaters create a relatively comfortable atmosphere for dining al fresco. Street performers do their thing from break dancers attracting large crowds to mimes standing mute in whatever costume they have decided to portray their “Performance Art.” The clop-clop-clop of horses hooves on the cobble stones announce the arrival of another white horse-drawn carriage to take the tourists around to areas where they have probably already trod, but they do seem very popular. Carol noticed that the horse shoes were like women’s high heels and raised an inch or so in the back…..must have something to do with the difficulty of treading on cobblestones. The tourist gift shops around the square range from the kitschy to the sublime, read expensive. One of our Uzbek “granddaughters,” Guli, came from Warsaw to see us and we had a nice two days with her. She studies at the university in Warsaw. Her mother had moved to Germany about 15 years ago and remarried. Guli had been terribly unhappy without her family. She has a little brother which she had not seen since he was born 10 years ago, but finally she was able to obtain the necessary documents and is now studying in Poland where she can visit her family on weekends after an 8-hour bus ride.

She had wanted to go see Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps. We weren’t really interested because we have seen Dachau in Germany, and how much of man’s inhumanity to man does one need to see? However, we were willing to take here there. Good news, bad news, there were not any tickets available for the days she was with us. It never occurred to me that it would “sell out,” and that they limited the number of visitors. So plan B was a visit to the large salt mine in the area. It was very interesting……1,000 feet deep with 178 miles, (that’s not a typo) of horizontal shafts some of which date back to the 13th century where the miners picked and shoveled this commodity worth the price of gems in the Middle Ages. We walked down 378 steps to a depth of 443 feet on our tour. We walked for several miles to visit many of the chambers which included high-arched full cathedral like ceilings where they actually do celebrate mass every Sunday. It’s hugely popular with over a million visitors each year. A touristy rip off folk show with mediocre food was a disappointment, especially after the wonderful dinner at the Mozart show in Prague. But Guli enjoyed it and that made it better to handle. We are staying with a Servas family now that Guli has returned to Warsaw. Like so many families in so many places, their apartment in a block of apartments is small but serviceable….Kitchen and bathrooms (one for a toilet only, and the other with a sink and tub) are extremely small but suffice to their needs. Getting here proved to be our usual adventure of trying to decipher directions and signs. It was complicated by the fact that we were told to arrive about 6 p.m. but they went off daylight savings time that day and so our late afternoon search was further complicated by darkness. A little guess work as to where to turn onto streets we weren’t sure were correct proved successful and my usual practice of finding gas station where there is usually somebody who knows where we are trying to get proved very rewarding as a lady said “Follow me, it’s not far.”…so off we went. We’ve been met with this kindness several times already….people going out of their way to be our personal GPS. Once we arrived at the block of flats came the next part of the adventure. The address of 24 Na Blomie 9/19 was very confusing since there were about a dozen buildings all marked with a “9.” However, once again the local population comes to the rescue and people found it for us with a little exploration. Eva and Andrew were gracious Servas hosts even in their very small flat which got smaller with two guests. But, like so many it is functional and does the job. The world doesn’t operate on granite counter-tops and Jacuzzi bathtubs.. They were/are university professors. Andrew now retired and our age, was a font of information. Eva, 15 years younger still lectures at the university. They are cultured, have traveled widely and are very interesting people with whom to converse. I can’t imagine that other Servas hosts would have been as knowledgeable about, and as open, Poland than these two..it was a very lucky find…lots of good conversation, lots of honest insight was gained. It was a pleasure to meet them as well as informative. Now, we are through with the big 4, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague and Krakow…time for us to slowly weave our way back to Budapest for one last night and then get on the river cruise…I think it’s time for some country and rural living for our last week.

You know you're in trouble when.....

2015-10-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

You know you’re in trouble you go into the tourist office where they have all the maps and the internet maps and all the search engines and they are the experts and you ask them how to get out of Prague and onto the highway to go to another town and after fiddling with all of the above for 10 minutes they announce: “hmmm…..this can be very complicated.” Uh, yeah…that’s an understatement…if it’s difficult for you, what do you think it’s like for us…after a while she said: “Well, you need at least one hour to get out of the city…..but more on that later. Twenty-seven years ago we visited Prague on one of the Student trips that we led. To no surprise, it was lovely but seemed a dour place with few tourists, and those few that were here didn’t seem much different from the locals. No surprise since they were from other Soviet/Communist countries. No joy in the streets, just a very working class city with everybody going about their business. Now, it is just the opposite, a bustling, lively, vibrant city with tourists clogging the main street and tongues from many lands can be heard…mostly Japanese. For whatever reason, we’ve been told several times that this is a favorite time for them to visit…The place is alive with a vibrancy…Music can be heard almost in any area of the city as duets, trios, quartets, and quintets play classical, jazz, Dixieland and traditional Czech…they are hawking CD’s and we bought one for ourselves – a roma (gypsy) group that really rocked…there are concerts every night…choral, organ, orchestral, chamber and full, opera performances are all there for the locals and visitors. We arrived in Prague at 1:00 in the afternoon and actually made it to our hotel around 3:00. A combination of misdirected google map directions, Czech street signs, confusing highway signs, locals who were helpful but unknowing of our destination (“Follow the tram tracks,” they would say, but the tram tracks went in several directions and split off as well) and our lack of language skills all contributed to our confusion and delay. No matter, eventually we got there. We had chosen a hotel in an obscure area because our “granddaughter, Shah, had an apartment there and it made for easy connections. After settling in, we immediately headed downtown by Metro to find her place of work and emerged from the bowels of the Prague metro to a cacophony of music and marching demonstrators. Czech flags waved in the air in one area of Wenceslaus Square while a converging group of banner carriers came from down the street shouting slogans. I searched for young people in the crowd who looked like they might be English speakers: “Do you speak English?” I asked as I wove through the crowd….After a while, I was able to learn that there were counter demonstrations on the refugee situation…one group totally opposed to accepting them while an equally large group felt that there was a duty to help these people from war-torn Syria. Asking several times about the issue, I came to a consensus, in that there is no consensus..the people seemed to feel that the two sides were pretty much divided in overall support from the Czech people.

One problem is that there is such a well organized industry in forged documents…people from several nations who want to get to Europe pay large amounts of money so that they can have “Syrian” passports and documents. This problem is further complicated by the fact that many of the legitimate Syrians had to flee without their valid documents but are then viewed as suspicious. This was our first up close view of the problem which dominates Europe at the moment. It appears that public opinion is as complicated as the wretched condition of the refugees…there is now a growing backlash throughout Europe and there is no end in sight as the wave of people keeps washing onto the European mainland. Away from the square, life seemed pretty much business as usual, and business was booming. 25 years ago the only thing being sold was Czech crystal and that in the official government shop. Now, every other shop has “authentic Bohemian crystal” glistening in the windows at prices that match the glitter of the glass. The mood away from the square was festive with pedestrian streets brimming with what amounted to a huge fall craft fair….actual blacksmith forges worked banging, literally, out bells and door knockers. Carol collects bells from where ever we visit so this a welcome sight for her…beer, beer, and more beer was vended along with an array of different sausages, and full pigs were roasted in foil on a rotating spit over a bed of coals. “Chimney” cakes were spun on rotating spits. These doughy confections were a coil of pastry wrapped on a round rolling pin device then baked over open coals then dipped in sugar and cinnamon…yummy sweets for a snack indeed. We took Shax on a mini road trip to visit Ceske Krumlov, the second most visited city in the republic.

The place was filled with tourists, as Prague is, and we kept saying: “If it’s like this in mid October, what’s it like at the height of the tourist season. The city is a step back in architectural design…buildings dating from the Renaissance are the norm, not the exception. Situated on a bend of the Vlatava river (the Moldau, of Smetana fame) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOxIbhqZsKc It was easily defended with its natural moat…a huge castle dominates the high ground giving even more protection to the marauding bands of would-be conquerors. It was lovely and carried us back to a simpler time. Our musical interlude in Prague was an evening at the Mozart Café. I wanted to do something special for our last night in Prague and with Shax…it could have been a little hokey what with the 4 piece chamber group in period costumes and white wigs, but the music was excellent and the food was even better. I was surprised that it wasn’t better attended but the maite d’ told us there were 30 concerts that night in Prague…talk about a music city. We had a great evening, left totally stuffed and with Mozart and other composer’s music ringing in our ears….on to Poland.

The Giggle Girl

2015-10-25T00:58:00.001-07:00

Shakhlo and Malika are their names, Shah and Mali is how we call them. They came to me as friends before our second trip to Uzbekistan in 2013 through the usual channels of mutual Uzbekistan facebook friends…I received a request from the two lyceum girls, 17 at the time, and asked my usual questions: How did you find me and why do you want to be friends with an old man half way across the world. They answered intelligently and with light heartedness and we became friends. Over the months of conversation they began to call us “Granny” and “Grandpa” and they became like true granddaughters to us. On our visit to Uzbekistan several months later we spent more time with them than with any other people in Tashkent. They even accompanied us to our 35th Anniversary dinner.

They were best friends, study partners and were always having fun together. When they would try to send me a voice message they giggled through most of it and I began to call them “The Giggle Girls.” With all the silliness of high school girls they were both serious students and were able to carry on intelligent conversations when they could stop giggling. After graduation, Mali was awarded a rare, full-ride scholarships to a university, one of only 4-5 given each year and Shah applied for, and was granted, admission to a University in Prague and a Czech visa, which is difficult to obtain in today’s world. Her father had business interests in Prague and had an apartment so this made it more practical for her to leave the nest. She was excited about fulfilling her dream and headed eagerly off to Prague and a new life experience. Then the heavy THUD of reality set in. There is nothing in the upbringing of Uzbek girls to prepare them for the sudden change from the sheltered nest in which they have been brought up, a comfortable nest where everything is laid out for them and they follow willingly, but blindly. Right up to the point where many parents choose their mates and that’s a done deal. Shah was suddenly away from her major support system, Mom. She was in a culture she knew nothing about, a language she didn’t understand, different religious focus, no friends, and in short she was totally lost. She would write to me and I could hear the tears dripping on the typewriter keys. Her sadness was that palpable. Confused, afraid of failure, and basically alone, she struggled badly…she was ready to pack it all in and head home. But she didn’t…she stuck it out. Cut to one year later and we arrive in Prague to find this same teary, confused young woman a dynamic force who has taken charge of her life and is living it with gusto, poise and energy. She passed all her courses the first year and headed into her second year. Dad had issues that needed addressing in Uzbekistan and he left Shah to continue on her own. She got a job, then got a better job in a Turkish Restaurant at Wenceslaus Square and is a barista. The restaurant is a blend of Turkish, Czech, Ukrainian and Uzbek workers. She is 5’3 and 100 pounds and bulls her way through the waiters who stand in her way when she is moving from point a to point b. No hesitation, no deference, no holding back from noon until closing time which is around midnight. She now lives by herself and totally supports herself through her job and still attends university classes.

I can’t tell you how impressed I was to see this giggle girl with such a determination that I never knew she had inside…looking back there were signs which I saw as an anomaly two years ago but were, in fact, the seeds of the strength she would need to survive in her present situation. I asked her if she liked living by herself and she just looked with a deadpan expression and said. “This is what I have to do. It’s not to like or dislike. It’s just my life.” No bitterness, no frustration, she just does what I need to do…What a tough little woman she has become.

I admire her so very much. She didn’t wilt under the pressure and stress. She didn’t fade into the quiet life of what is expected of so many Uzbek girls reaching womanhood. She reached deep inside and found the strength not only to survive, but to flourish. She’s still sweet Shax, she’s just a full-blown, fully functioning woman now and living her life on her terms. No Grandpa could hope for anything more for his granddaughter..

See ya and Ahoy

2015-10-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

One of my biggest objections to so many American travelers is when I listen to tourists enter a shop and immediately say things like: “How much does this cost,” or variations on questions that they might have…there is no attempt to acknowledge the fact that they are in a foreign country and that not everybody may speak English….I learned many decades ago that a simple “hello,” or “Thank you,” in the local language goes a long way…I will follow that up with: “Do you speak English,” and depending upon the answer I will proceed in the manner necessitated by that answer. So, In Budapest, to say Hello in Hungarian is pronounced: “see ya,” and it was strange to walk into a shop or a hotel and say a goodbye in English that was a Hello in Hungarian…the “Thank you” was a 5-6 syllable word (I never could count them) and I finally gave up trying and just smiled and nodded. Here in Slovakia to say “hello” is “Ahoy,” although I’m sure it isn’t spelled that way, and I have to resist adding “Matey,” to the Ahoy. Thank you in Slovak sounds very much like Requiem only with a “D” instead of the “R.”…again, I’m always pleased with the smiles I get when I use the local language for such simple gestures of courtesy. We got our rental car and headed out of Budapest on our way to our next stop, Bratislava. The road was excellent which was a good thing since we’re going to have several days of rain and I didn’t want/need to be fighting the prospect of poor roads along the way. I was once more quickly acquainted with European driving habits which seems to pour out of Germany into neighboring countries….simply stated it’s, pedal to the metal. The freeway speed limit is 120 kph, which translates to 75 MPH. However the only vehicles doing that or under are the long string of long haul trucks which from their license plates come from points south, Turkey, Rumania and Bulgaria since we were headed north. If you dare be in the fast lane and another car is coming, find a place to hide because they will come screaming up behind you at full tilt with lights flashing, stating simply; “Get the hell out of my way.” I was cursed very harshly even though the windows were rolled up when I refused to budge before I had passed a line of trucks where there wasn’t any room to get out of harm’s way. Just a good primer to things to come and to be aware of. I will try the back roads ,which is my first choice anyway, as often as possible, but for the heavy rain, I merely was going from point A to point B. Bratislava is much more compact than Budapest at just under half a million it’s only 1/3 the size and hence things are much more concentrated…the old city is small but very much what I have appreciated about the maintenance of historical centers of Europe. It has come into its own now that it has broken away from what was Czechoslovakia and formed its own independent nation. The Czech Republic is the other half of what once was.

Finding the hotel was a fun proposition…one way streets, road projects, and very heavy traffic resulted in the fact that we could see the hotel, but how do we get there, sort of thing…..eventually, we hit upon it quite by accident…going around and around, clockwise then counter clockwise, followed by north/south and then east/west, we finally looked up and there it was right in front of us…traffic is a real pain…from our hotel window on the 5th floor, we can see fully gridlocked traffic heading up the main thoroughfare at all times of the day…we’re scouting out our escape route for Saturday when we head to Prague. My disappointment in not seeing Swan Lake in Budapest was alleviated by the opportunity to see Turandot here in Bratislava. However, the experience was quite different…instead of the old style opera house with the boxes lining the three sides as is traditional, this was a modern performing arts center. Very classy, but definitely not old school. The red velvet seats shone brightly against the white interior walls and the seats were just the orchestra seats and one sloping balcony instead of the steep jump from one level to another of the traditional houses. However, the performance was first rate and was an interesting mix of old and new…set designs were very modernistic while costuming was traditional Chinese. All in all it was a great musical experience.

Fall color is just beginning to hit and the changes are subtle so far. I don’t expect a New England type of experience, but I do love Autumn and am hopeful that in the coming weeks it will treat us to an array of color which will be a unique experience. One surprise, and I must admit to disappointment, was the amount of graffiti displayed on any blank wall around the city…It looked like the New York subway trains in a stationary condition. I guess I’m just not in touch with how much this “art” form has taken over many parts of the world. I just thought it was a blight on our land…I don’t mind true art displayed in creative ways, but much of this was just “tagging,” and it did take away some of my enjoyment of the visual aspects, particularly in the old city…Maybe I’m just too old to “get” it.

Meals continue to be a delight as they are everywhere we travel, but old world European dishes are hearty and delicious. Goulash soup is still a favorite and we have it whenever possible and never cease to be amazed at how different it can be…Slovakian Goulash is not as spicy as Hungarian, but certainly delicious. At one dinner we talked with a young Slovakian man at the next table and as he got up to leave, he said simply: “Go, Bernie Saunders.” Certainly surprising but it also served as a reminder of how much more aware of our politics people around the world are compared to American’s knowledge of other places and peoples. But that’s another stoy.

Are you Buda or Pest?

2015-10-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Personally, I’m Pest…..which will be no surprise to people. Particularly my mother, on several levels. Budapest is actually the consolidation of two separate cities with very different class structures in their origins. After getting overrun by the marauding hordes which was inconvenient, to say the least, to the aristocracy, they moved their capital some 40 miles away to the hill section of the Danube where they could more easily protect their way of life as they knew it. This became Buda, while the “barbarians,” trades people, and merchants occupied the low, flat ground on the other side of the river known as Pest. Over the centuries the two began to merge and overlap yet even today the difference is distinct…the Royal Palace, castle and fine buildings of Buda are architecturally ornate and show the refined way of life that was common to that class of society. Pest, on the other hand, is down home. As the merchant class developed a more affluent level of life, Pest developed its own sophistication and wide avenues and luxury homes and town houses became abundant on the flat lands and not just a feature of the hill people.

It’s incredibly easy to get around Budapest. The city has a well developed transportation system that includes an underground subway, extensive bus system and modern trams any of which can zip you around anywhere in the city and its environs. It’s truly impressive to see such public transportation. It’s the second oldest underground, electrified system In Europe predated only by the London tube. It has a daily ridership of one and a half million riders, not bad for a population of 1.7 mill. Men in suits, women dressed to the nines, young lovers snuggling in the corner, the lady with the pug dog with the pink collar and the body blanket keeping it warm and a myriad of other personality and economic types are all to be seen daily on the system. The conviviality of Budapest life continues to be evident…lively conversations are heard any time two people are together, walking, in a restaurant, or just sitting together, there doesn’t seem to be dead air….it appears to be joyous and full of laughter and joy. The highlight of our visit was our stay with our Servas hosts, Anna, Tibor, 15 year old Andres and the 12 your old pistol named Masha who has her dad wrapped around her little finger. Tibor is a retired policeman and keeps the house running smoothly…fixing the meals, running the kids to school and the house work. Anna works for the US Embassy and does translating as a private contractor because, as she noted, if you want to have a decent life, you have to have two jobs. Andres is quiet but forceful…the kids go to an American private school which sounded very much like a Montessori type educationl system….expensive, Anna said, but the best head start for her kids….Andres objected strongly to changing schools since he had just made friends, not easy for him, and the hook was that he said: “If you make me go to this school, I’ll run away.” It was later decided that he would go to this school if they let him have a dog.They now have a dog named Zeus. Masha is a whirlwind and reminded us of Alex, our 9 year old grandson…sweet, sneaky, manipulative, loving and with a mind and will of her own which she is not hesitant to display even when strangers are in the home. Home is a two story flat which is so tiny and cramped…the downstairs is a 30x20 room which includes the kitchen, dining room, living room and two half baths. The kitchen is so small that I can almost touch the walls by spreading my arms. The upstairs is two bedrooms, the two kids share, and a small bathroom….They do not feel deprived or prevented from enjoying a better standard of living…they just accept that this is what they can do and they get on with it….the house is full of laughter and warmth. Affection is displayed both in the giving and receiving and it is a happy family. We slept on the floor on an air mattress which went flat in the middle of the night…that’s a requirement of air mattresses, I think. In the morning, they get up at 6:00 to be out the door at 7:00 and so they just quietly step over the guests on the floor and have some breakfast before starting their busy schedule. Two visitors got up close and personal with the transportation system as we went from our Servas hosts to town. They told us that the bus would take us downtown from the ‘burbs where we were staying. That was really helpful since reading the bus route in Hungarian was impossible for us…. but we happily climbed aboard and then rode and rode and rode until everybody finally got off the bus. The last lady to get off was a woman of roundish 60+ based on her well-lined face. With a babushka type head scarf, calf-length flowered dress, brown, heavy stockings and shoes that were simple but sturdy she didn’t say anything, she just looked at us until she had our attention and then just nodded to the doorway of the bus and then walked off and away, carrying her cloth bag carrying, who knows what, and her plastic bag with groceries sticking out in the other hand. She sort of swayed a little back and forth as she went. She looked very old school to me…not rural old school, but citified. I wondered what her life had been like living through such dynamic events and changes in her lifetime. We got off the bus confused. We didn’t know where we were, but we knew it wasn’t downtown. We’d seen that and this was definitely not it. …our confused looks brought a sympathetic individual who explained in English to return the way we came and transfer at the metro station and pointed us to the bus stop that would take us there…so we became two of the 1.5 mill that day. We roamed around town visiting the National Museum where we were told it was too far for us to walk and noted down all the bus lines lines and metro stops …..we just walked anyway. I had taken note of the usual locater points of reference, color of buildings etc., so we would sail on home with ease where we could catch the bus back to the house. We had this one down pat now. We got on the metro, got off the metro at the right spot and spotted our bus about to take off. I didn’t see my reference store sign, but I saw the correct name in the window of the bus and told Carol it was the right one and we hopped on board happily smiling that we didn’t have to wait in the cold and drizzle for the next bus in 30 minutes…A few stops down the line, Carol mentioned that she had seen a distinctive building twice now…I, knowing that wasn’t possible, authoritatively told her it couldn’t be….a few more stops along the way I finally caught a name I could understand on the speaker and told Carol. “We’re going the wrong way. Off we jump and waited in the drizzle for the next bus except we were further away than when we started. Carol, to her credit, didn’t rag on me, make me feel guilty….she just let it pass….until, a few minutes later she quietly said: “That’s the 3rd time I’ve seen that building.” As you can see we’re living large in Central Europe…Life is good.

The Magic is still there

2015-10-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

I suppose that all of us could say that at age 19 we had no idea how our lives would take shape, but I think more so for me for as an aimless, physically and mentally lazy person I could never have imagined the incredible life which was in store for me. It began as a simple act of defiance, not unusual for me, even then, when I declared that I was going to hitchhike my way around Europe in 1961. I was so naïve, so uninitiated to the world, that each day was magic…there wasn’t a day that didn’t have something special to it in one form or another. Time warp 55 years into the future and that same magic continues to define my life. As I travel I still shake my head in wonderment at the way it has unfolded and I never can understand how such an ordinary person has had such an extraordinary life….one that continually teaches me as much about myself as the cultures I discover. Today, our first full day in Budapest was a perpetuation of that discovery and that fascination. We arrived at our hotel which is a typical old style hotel much as I used in the “old days.” It was a nondescript building with a small sign over the door which read: Hotel Metro. Pressing the button alerted the reception desk to buzz us in where we followed the sign to the “lift,” and ascended to the 3rd floor, which is actually the 4th floor, to the reception. The lift was just big enough for two people wearing backpacks and pulling suitcases to enter with a little basic organization of space. It’s a 3 star establishment and has all the requirements: free wi-fi, a halfway decent bed, and lots of hot water all for $50 a night. The shower is big enough to allow a person to actually turn around, but no hanky-panky in the shower, two will never fit. After a surprisingly restful 1st night we headed out to discover this exotic city which has fascinated me ever since seeing on TV the Russian tanks roll through the streets in 1956. Even for a sleepy and drizzly Sunday morning, the streets seemed unusually quiet and deserted. Further exploration led us to the discovery that it was Budapest Marathon day. We happened to be in front of the Budapest State Opera house and as the first runners began to run by, a band struck up the John Phillips Sousa March: “Washington Post,” followed by some Scott Joplin Ragtime. This was followed by a full chorus on the steps singing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and served as our introduction to the Cultural aspect of one of Europe’s most sophisticated and artistic cities…Who knew?...not me, anyway. We did a hop-on-hop off tour and learned facts to back up the previous statement…over 400 book publishers in the city, over 60 independent theatre groups and literally hundreds of musical societies. Even decades of Soviet domination could not dampen the cultural side of the city. As the capital of an “independent” country within the Soviet bloc, Budapest was not subjected to the sterile buildings of that system as TashKent and Almaty were as “Soviet Republics.” Rather it retains the old world style as one of the bright lights of the Austrian-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire. Hence it is full of glittering, albeit fading, rooftops and domes while the buildings have a uniqueness, and not conforming to any individual style. Carol thought they looked more like Tallin and Riga in the Baltics.

First thoughts: PASTRIES: Oh my do they love their sweets…strudels, traditional chocolates of amazing variety and dozens of things like square doughnuts and a wide variety of “chimney cakes, “ and all kinds of pastries, of which I have no clue, but all look really good. They are sold in fancy, upscale shops, little mom-and-pops, and on the street after dark from little food carts which have disappeared in the morning.

ALCOHOL If I thought that pastries shops were ubiquitous pubs and clubs abound in the city and beer is on tap in almost any place that sells some food. The hop-on-hop off bus even provides a free beer at one of their stops. As the original developer of the Tokay grape used in the wine of the same name, this means that there are a lot of homeless people who sleep on the street with their wine bottle clutched in their hand. However, I wouldn’t say that it looked any different, or worse than walking down Market Street in my favorite city anywhere, San Francisco.

SMOKING I was truly amazed at the number of smokers there are from a wide, cross-section of the population. Young adults in a surprisingly large numbers can be seen smoking their curiously thin cigarettes. Male/female sophisticates and homeless, it all seemed the same. I was most surprised at the young smokers because in other cultures I have seen, smoking was more of a generational thing with more smokers who were older than otherwise. Many young choir-boy look-alikes and their sweet angelic counterpoints have the cigarette between their fingers. CULTURAL BIAS I always say that I check my stereotypes and preconceived ideas at the door but one area I can’t in is the overall friendliness of the people…I tend to judge the world on an Uzbekistan standard and nothing I have seen since can match the outward warmth and friendliness of the people. I know this is, in part, because they are just opening up to the world, but it goes beyond that. They are just a wonderfully warm people. Here in Budapest, you’re just another in the long line of tourists who have come here for hundreds of years….This is not to say that they are not friendly. We’ve not been met with any “coldness,” but you’ll be misguided if you come here and expect a warm greeting. It’s all business here in the big city. I think this comes in part from the overall sophistication of the people. They’ve seen it all. BRAND NEW WORLD It’s a whole different emphasis from what I’ve known before here in Europe. Here there are Bulgarian and Turkish institutes and the country aligns more with the other “Central” European nations: Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic than they do with the traditional powers of Western Europe. GAIETY IN THE AIR This seems to be a place where people like to have a good time and there is a liveliness to the place…lots of clubs and watering holes. I think the Hungarians are a very convivial people when you get to know them. They like to have fun. No dour pall over the place…this is definitely not Scotland. So, here we are living large in Budapest and feeling full of adventurous spirit about what lies ahead…let it roll. Life is good. Sign of the day: “ALCOHOL, because no great story ever began with someone eating a salad.” Welcome to Budapest.

Fernweg

2015-10-08T06:55:00.003-07:00

“Fernweh is the opposite of homesickness. It is the longing for travel, or getting out there beyond the horizon, what you might call… awaysickness.” This is my permanent disability which needs to be continually nourished and fulfilled. As soon as we return from one trip, I’m asking Carol: “Where are we going next.” I’m not totally comfortable, about my life until I have another trip in the offing…it may be a year away, but I have to take my Fernweh medicine, which is knowing that there is another trip on the horizon. When we returned from India In March, we decided that our next trip would be to “Central” Europe…what we used to Call “Eastern Europe,” until the Soviet bloc imploded and Ukraine and Belarus became the Eastern portion of what is considered Europe and the ex- Soviet satellite countries then became Central Europe. We’ve wanted to do a river cruise for some time…tired of the mega-ship experience of being with 5,000 of your nearest and dearest friends hurried along on to shore excursions with a cattle prod, a leisurely putt-putt down a European river with no more than 100-150 people seemed ideal. I wanted to take advantage of my travel agent perks and get the large discount offered to Travel Agents at the end of the season. We don’t usually do two big trips the same year, but since I’m such an old fart and not sure how much longer I will have my TA card, and my Fernweg couldn’t wait 18 months we opted to double down and go this year. Trying to decide on going to head out in October and November, our thoughts ran as such: “We can be in the rain in Budapest, Prague, or Krakow, or we can be in the rain in Battle Ground, Washington….hmmmm….let me consider that…not much of a brain twister, actually. So the trip was planned….a 15 day river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam preceded by a three week rental car zip from Budapest to Bratislava, where our dear friend Maruska is from, then on to Prague where we have a dear “granddaughter” from Tashkent studying, and on to Poland, (where we have another granddaughter studying In Warsaw) to see the world heritage city, Krakow which has always on my list and then back to Budapest with a lot of national parks and nature in between the cities…. The caveat on this trip is that since we initially planned to do this trip, the refugee crisis which is engulfing Europe has now put a totally new perspective to the journey…the four countries we had decided to visit have formed an “anti-quota” bloc and that means that we are going to be dropping right into the middle of the crisis on an up close and personal level…not just headlines, photos, and sound bites….Hungary has implemented a new law which makes it a crime to transport any refugee, so I have no idea of what kind of emotional roller coaster we will be on in this trip….certainly changes it from a walk in the park smelling the flowers to a realization of the fragility of life. But I’m assuming that the spirits which guide my life have some lessons which I need to learn and I am ready for whatever lies ahead of me, literally and figuratively, on this road of life. So, let the medicine kick in….just a simple 10 hour flight to Amsterdam from Portland, funny how that seems like such an easy flight these days, and my condition will immediately improve…an extra skip to my step, a heightened awareness of my surroundings, a general improvement in attitude…all miracle remedies for my malady. Time to live large. Life is good

Dharamsala

2015-04-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, well, not really. I’ve always read that it was his home, but actually it’s up the hill about 2,000 feet and six miles away in a burg known as McLeod Ganj, named after the Lt. Governor of the Punjab In colonial times. Dharamsala is certainly a lot more poetic than McLeod Ganj. So we are in the Ganj and it is a very interesting mix of local Himachalis, Tibetans and western counter culture types. The Dalai Lama is not in residence at the moment, he’s off doing his thing but we saw where he lived from outside the gate and his main temple adjacent to The “Palace” is anything but. A large complex fenced off with barb wire where there are paths to walk in the woods for solitude. What a sad world that the Dalai Lama has to have barb wire around his complex. The streets are filled with saffron yellow and maroon robes of monks of all ages. Many have old, grizzled faces and I wonder if they came with the Dalai Lama when he fled to India. It was 65 years ago and they’re fading fast nowadays. So much has been written about the episode in history. Were these old men, those men? They walk with canes and hobble their way around the temple, and sit on the benches in the temple complex and enjoy the sunshine while they talk and count their prayer beads. At the opposite end are young boys in monk’s robes as well. We’ve seen several places where parents have their boys live a monk’s life for one year to understand the philosophy and practice of Buddhism. It gives it all a sort of continuity-of-life feel. On our second visit to the complex, the female equivalent of the old monks more or less adopted me and made sure I was doing things correctly…walking in the right direction, stopping and praying at the entryway, and working the prayer wheels in the proper direction. She had a sweet smile but a very firm hand on the situation. She was about 4 feet and something tall, but not much more than that. Her old Tibetan dress of gray with the multi-colored apron went just above her ankles and she wore white running shoes with a design on them that would make an American female teenager proud. It was a wonderful combination for my mind to wrap around. I sneaked a photo of her because I didn’t know if she would let me…not really fair of me, but I really wanted to remember that face. People have been very open with being photographed, so I didn’t feel that I was violating anyone’s privacy.

The narrow streets look like they are just wide enough for one car to safely pass and avoid pedestrians, but, of course, it’s two way and traffic does it’s “Indian thing,” of honking excessively and waiting for somebody to finally give in and back up to move over and allow them to pass while pedestrians get in doorways, lift the legs on the benches they sit on or find refuge in a car which has conveniently been parked there and the owner has pulled an Elvis and left the building. Eventually, it does get solved, but it’s a noisy process and when it happens right in front of where you’re standing or sitting, it can be intense. The beginning of the big mountains looms behind us and a very smoky/smoggy valley lies in front of us as we sit on a ridge on one of the foothills. That was a surprise. We expected some great vistas and clean air, but not down below it’s not. Lots of people burn firewood for all kinds of reasons and the smoke in the air shows that. The mountains themselves are the beginnings of the majestic Himalayas and they are a pretty good introduction to what lies behind them. For me, they have a kind of spiritual hold. I felt it when we were in Tibet and I feel it here as well…Can’t explain it, but they just seem to “call” me. Carol felt this same way about Ayer’s Rock in Australia, but I haven’t experienced it like I do here. Just seeing them is mystical to me. Upon our arrival, we were met by someone who was sent by the company who booked our trip to show us around. I hadn’t expected this and so I was a little uncertain. I asked him what his services cost and he laughed and said that it was all taken care of and he just wanted to make sure we were settled. He suggested that we take a rest for a while and then he would take us around. We met him later, and guess what? It so happens that he is the uncle of the booking agent in Delhi and his daughter has a shop. He minded the store while she took us to the temple and afterwards back to the shop for some chai. There were still several things that we hadn’t purchased yet…Carol always gets a bell, etc and so she told us that since we had booked with the family she was giving us her “special” price that nobody else gets. Maybe true, maybe not, I have no clue. But it’s just another example of how the whole networking works, somebody knows somebody who has what you want/need or think you do. In the end it just made sense to get all the things that we were looking to get from her. Sometimes in India you just have to accept that things have a life of their own and why fight it. The only negative aspect was that there was talk about showing us things on the second day and after purchases were made, that subject was conveniently dropped. Again, it’s just India. The country runs like this, it seems, everybody has to get that edge. You don’t sit back in Indian life and succeed. You hustle your buns off to make it work because if you don’t somebody else will and you lose. . I don’t remember that cultural persona from my trip before. I guess because I was just totally independent and so was oblivious to the whole system. It doesn’t look like it’s just started recently. “It’s India” as we’ve been told several times. Nobody I talked with disputes that assessment, both domestic and foreign opinions seem to mesh on this issue. The ones I’ve talked with fully acknowledge that you have to do this to survive. You will be buried if you don’t and this attitude just becomes a definite part of the entire Indian persona, as I see it. On one afternoon, we sat on a bench just to watch people pass by. An old woman came along and sat a few feet away in the sun and I greeted her with a Tibeten greeting, and she responded the same with her hands cupped as well as she smiled a smile that was wide but missing a lot of teeth. She had four in front on top and maybe the same on the bottom, but the rest looked empty. She wore a maroon dress with a yellow blouse-type and a grey sweater on over that. She looked like a lady who needed to be able to stay warm. Her face had that that same weathered, time-warm look but her eyes were bright and expressive as was her smile. I asked to take her photo and she smiled broadly as I snapped the picture. She had her hair pulled back in a short knot in the back with purple and green thread woven and tied. She, too, looked like one of the originals. The life she must have lived. I am constantly reminded in my travels that I have met some really extraordinary people in my life who led amazing lives.

One disappointment has been that we have not connected with Servas hosts and have not really had the opportunity to sit with people and have an evening of conversation. Our one potential host had a family crisis and had to cancel and that was it. On our last day in Dharamsala there was a little 3-4 year old Tibetan child with the world’s greatest smile. I snapped his joyful face and as I started to walk past the vehicle I was near, a voice asked: “Aren’t you going to take my photo?” It came from a man with a nice smile and kind face. He had been sitting in his delivery van watching me. I stopped and we joked about both being old and gray and we just chatted. After a bit he said he would like to invite us to dinner the next day. Unfortunately we were leaving so that was out. We went along our way winding through old streets and up and down and worked our way back towards the hotel when there was the same delivery van and we both laughed that we had found our ways to the exact same spot at the same time for the second time. He really wanted to have us to his house and so it was arranged that he would pick us up and take us to his home. We actually ate at a little restaurant before going to his house for tea and conversation so we finally got to be in an Indian home. It was a really nice evening and, in the end, he told us that any of our friends who want to come to Dharamsala they will be welcome to stay at his home. They have a whole story above their living quarters that used to be the kids rooms.

Vinod, the husband is a noodle distributor and travels the district supplying noodles to the restaurants. He drives these roads all the time. Amazing. Rashmi, his wife is an art teacher and has lots of mixed-media work in her home. Very nice pieces. She and Carol talked art and Vinod and I talked about Indian culture all by artificial light since the power was out. But no difference, they had a calmness about them and soft dispositions and we just had a nice evening. Exactly what I needed. Of the three Himachal cities/towns we visited, I liked Dharamsala the best. They were all interesting and different; however, Shimla is just too huge for those little hills and Manali exists strictly as a tourism spot. It runs like a resort town. But Dharamsala has a feel of its own. It has its own draw in the Buddhist community and they don’t have to manufacture thrills and spills to entice people to visit. It feels natural, not artificial. We’ve enjoyed our time in the mountains. It was a good way to end our trip At this time on all our trips at this time I’m in the going home mode and there’s always a semblance of marking time before wheels up. But there are so many things I will miss about India. It seems that the entire gamut of the Indian population passes before your very eyes every day. My head is just continually on the move with all the amazing faces and human conditions you see in one walk down the street. This is true for any city we’ve been in. I had Carol read this before sending as I always do and simply asked her: “Does this sound too negative?” She said no, just realistic. I don’t want to give any impression that this has been a trip filled with negativity. It’s been an amazing journey and one that we have enjoyed immensely. We would even consider returning to see parts we didn’t see on this trip. However, it isn’t an easy trip to do independently as we like to travel. That modus operandi has its own rewards, of course, but it also forces us to deal with Indian society on a much more up close and personal standpoint. That has its rewards and inherent difficulties but is how we like to do things. New Zealand was so easy….quite the contrast. Headline of the day: “Carol and Jim are on their way home.” Final final letter will be sent after things sort out in my head after 30 hours in transit.