Wednesday, April 25, 2007

April 23 - Bangkok, Thailand

We stay in a guest house several narrow, winding side streets off of the main road in Banglamphu, an older, residential section of Bangkok that runs along the river. Almost every other house prepares and sells food: noodle soups, sate sticks of grilled meats with sticky rice, pad thai, omelets over rice, geometrically carved fresh fruit. They sell to their neighbors and trade dishes with each other.

Every morning we buy our sweet, milky Thai iced tea from the family who has taught us how to say “two iced teas, please” and “thank you” in Thai. The tea is served in a clear, plastic bag with handles and a straw and goes perfectly with the crispy, golden chicken fried in a wok by the woman who appears only on the weekends.

We have become familiar faces in our neighborhood. The dogs next door no longer bark at us (though they continue to bark throughout the night) and the old man who sits shirtless in his doorway, reading his paper and scratching his back with a backscratcher when he isn’t napping in his hammock, saves a small mango from his tree for Willa when we walk by.

We are across the canal from Khao San, temporary home to masses of backpackers, crowded with cheap accommodations, street carts, bars, cafes and massage salons. It is Khao San that often represents Bangkok in movies and on television. I imagine that at night it looks as it does on the screen, but I’m on Willa’s schedule and have yet to stay awake past 10PM. The Khao San we see is one of vendors setting up, street cleaners and tourists nursing hangovers with late breakfasts in the cafes that border the street.

Early in the mornings we wander through the giant markets or ride the river taxi to random stops then slowly walk back. We visit museums and temples. Unfortunately for Johnny, both Willa and I have a low threshold for temples and can visit no more than one a day before we get bored and cranky from the heat.

This morning we take the ferry across the river. Walking along the white-washed halls of the alleys we come upon a small temple with no tourists, only Thais who’ve come to pray. We join the line of people and ring the row of bells that end at two card tables where old women are selling lottery tickets. You select your ticket/s from those printed and laid out on the table. We slip off our shoes and step inside the dark temple, cooled by the shade and electric standing fans. In front of the gold statues of serene Buddha, monks wrapped in saffron-colored cloth are gathered, kneeling and chanting. The faint scent of incense floats in from outside as we sit, listening to the monks’ beautiful voices, gazing up at the ornately painted, high wooden ceiling. In the alley behind the temple, a monk tosses handfuls of water at the open hood of a car, blessing the engine. Several other monks stand around watching.

We continue on our walk, in search of drinking water and another temple Johnny wants to see. But even by 10:00AM, it’s too hot to be out. We make our way through a live fish market to the nearest dock to catch the river taxi. Willa screams and cries, worn down by fatigue and heat, frustrated that we won’t stay and watch the fish and eels in the giant tubs. But it is too hot and I can’t bear the smell. At the dock, in the water, hundreds of huge catfish swarm, writhing and splashing, competing for the crumbs being thrown. The scene is surreal and grotesque to me, but Willa quiets. She and Johnny are fascinated by the fish. When our boat pulls away her wails resume.

We seek relief from the afternoon heat in the giant, air-conditioned MBK mall. The mall takes up about two whole city blocks, rises 10 stories high and, still, it’s claustrophobically crowded with people. Clusters of women in burkas, teenage boys wearing tight jeans, rock t-shirts and shaggy, “Klute” haircuts; tiny women pairing peasant blouses with short shorts or skirts and strappy sandals; backpackers, tourists and, here and there, no-nonsense shoppers. Stores selling pirated DVDs and software programs sandwich beauty salons. On display behind the glass walls women lie in rows, receiving facials and eyelash tintings.

We ride the escalators up and down - furniture floor, clothing floor, food floor, electronics floor, make-up floor - looking at ourselves in the ceiling mirrors, getting lost in the mall maze and re-orienting ourselves with the enormous multi-floor poster of the King of Thailand.

The King’s image is everywhere in Bangkok. Photos of him as a young man in the army, older in a business suit and, as he is now, elderly and draped in a silk, yellow robe. Yellow t-shirts and polo shirts with national insignias are very popular and flocks of yellow blur past us as we sit on the bus. We sometimes walk a block and only a handful of people will be wearing non-yellow shirts. I’ve seen several Lance Armstrong books promoted for sale and “Live Strong” rubber bracelets on people’s wrists. I wonder if there is really a large Lance Armstrong fan-base in Bangkok, or is it his association with the color yellow that endears him to Thais?

In the evening, we walk to the park near our house. Sharing the lawns are jugglers, capoeira dancers, children flying cheap, plastic kites; violinists who can’t help but slide into the rhythm of the capoeira drums; an aerobics class with participants drifting off into their own routines when the instructor loses them; and breakdancers, dancing to heavy metal cassettes, incredibly spinning straight on tile with no cardboard. Willa holds Johnny’s hand and they walk in circles. She laughs and runs, chases birds and children. We spread out on the grass, eating mangoes with sticky rice, enjoying the setting sun and the breeze off of the river.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

April 12 - Singapore





We’re in Singapore, a city of clean streets, clockwork public transportation, high-tech gadgetry, video surveillance, high-priced, glossy shopping malls and signs politely instructing that it is our responsibility to keep Singapore safe.

On the subway large, flat screens air PSAs. One we watch flashes horrific photos from the train bombings that have taken place around the world over the past few years. Following is a filmed dramatization of a male passenger stepping aboard a train, exactly like the one we’re on, with a large, black, bulky bag. He looks suspicious. We know he looks suspicious because he fidgets and clutches his bag close to his body. The other passengers eye him warily, as they’ve been instructed to do by our government narrator. He also wears a baseball cap low over his eyes and has one too many buttons undone on his shirt. [As we’re watching, we can’t help but furtively check out fellow passengers and scan under the seats for unattended bags.] The other passengers continue to monitor him and when he leaves his bag and steps off the train, they call out to him, “Excuse me, Sir! You left your bag!” Over his shoulder he replies, “It’s not mine!” But we know it is! One of the passengers, a tidy young woman pushes the emergency call button and alerts the authorities. She gives a detailed description of the man and what he was wearing. She and the other passengers are instructed to exit the train at the next stop. Though the car is crowded, everyone remains calm - no shouting or panicking for this group - and the young woman kindly helps a frail, old woman off the train ahead of herself.

The passengers are departing the station when our narrator warns that terrorism doesn’t just take the form of bombs. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than we see a woman stagger over to the stairs. Gagging and choking, she throws up and collapses. The best part of the film is the ticker tape banner running beneath, which reads: “This train will terminate at Punggol Station.” This “on-site cinema”, as Johnny calls it, a story set in the location that you are viewing it from, is fascinating and we almost miss our stop.

We are staying in Little India and the streets are filled with the scents of curry, spices, flower garlands, incense, money changers, tailors that promise to make saris, business suits and shirts in less than 24 hours, gold jewelry shops, restaurants featuring both North and South Indian cuisine, and Indian pop music stores. Willa bops her head and rocks her body back and forth when we pass the stores’ outdoor speakers. Actually, we have yet to find a type of music that she doesn’t enjoy and physically react to.

Last night we took a walk around Little India after dinner. While there are a lot of Indian men in our neighborhood, congregating heavily around the train station and the market, the number of men out last night astounded us. We walked down streets and to a park, on the edge of which large buses were continually pulling up and emptying full loads of even more men. There were literally thousands of men out: talking, eating, shopping, playing cricket and soccer, talking and texting on cell phones, napping on the park lawn. No women in sight. I wish I had gathered the nerve to ask someone where the women were and/or how this all-male gathering came to be. I’ve never felt so conspicuous.

We’re being true tourists in Singapore, taking the sky tram, visiting the disappointing aquarium, plastic Sentosa Island Beach with its imported sand, playing ‘picks’ in the Singapore Art Museum and Mint Museum of Toys, taking a river boat tour, checking out the lobbies and room rates of expensive hotels, and going to the zoo, which is well worth the price of admission. There are no cages, few enclosures and ring-tailed lemurs, two-toed sloths, monitor lizards, orangutans and other monkeys roam freely around the zoo.

But, of course, the big question every day is, “What do you want to eat?” There is every type of food available here and we have yet to spend more than $10 for a meal that amply feeds the three of us. There are ‘hawkers markets’ everywhere, filled with stands preparing Thai food, Indian food, Chinese food - Dim Sum, Cantonese, Szechuan, Vietnamese food, Western food, Malaysian food and all sorts of desserts, my favorite being Indian pastries and sweets. Thank goodness the food is so inexpensive because nothing else here is.

Our room is tiny, literally the size of a cruise ship cabin, and Willa-scale. Furniture is perfectly distanced for walking, she can climb on and off the bed, cabinets just fit her body. She’s so rightfully proud of her mobility and gets frustrated when we limit her. Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of safe places for her to walk and crawl, though I have given up on trying to keep her from the wide floor expanses of airport terminals and museums. They’re just too tempting. So, we wipe clean her dirt-blackened hands, knees and feet and keep vigilant watch over what goes into that little mouth of hers. Oh, a fun new game she made up in Bali: sometimes she puts something from the ground into her mouth and sometimes she just pretends to put something into her mouth. Either way, Mama freaks out and, if it’s a case of the latter, Willa laughs her throaty chuckle.

These battles of wills aside, she’s a dream travel companion: cheerful, laughs a lot, not a picky eater (she will try anything at least once and surprises us with the levels of spiciness she can tolerate in food), friendly and outgoing, initiates conversation and is excited to be a part of things. As long as she gets plenty of sleep, shares the bed with us and doesn't have too many baths, she's happy.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Thursday, April 5, 2007

April 5th - Bali & Java, Indonesia


This entry is long. We haven’t had wireless since we left Ubud in Bali, almost 3 weeks ago. Some of the below is copied from our journals, other parts inserted upon remembering. Please forgive the changing of tenses. Think of it as free time travel.

Our first stop in Indonesia, Purnati, feels as though it was both days ago and months ago. Before leaving, we were fortunate to experience both an oton, a life milestone ceremony, and the Balinese new year of Nyepi.

The oton was for the 18-month old daughter of Wayan Sumadra, one of the managers of Bali Purnati. In Bali, every stage of life is celebrated, from ceremonies marking the third month of pregnancy to death and cremation. Children, especially, are lauded, as the Balinese believe that the younger you are the closer you are to God. In order to keep babies as physically close to God as possible, Balinese babies are always carried and do not touch the ground for the first 200 days of their lives. A baby’s first ceremony, oton, marks when its feet will first touch the earth. Thereafter, otons occur every 6 months and may even go on into adulthood, depending upon the family’s wealth.

Wayan’s house compound was filled with family and friends, tables piled with various fried crisps and sweet coconut treats, and the center pavilion festively decorated with large and colorful offerings filled with flowers and burning incense. Several cocks were in cages upon pedestals surrounding the pavilion and children in shoes that squeaked when they stepped would run up to them, encouraging them to cock-a-doodle-doo.

Following is a description of the family compound from Lonely Planet: Bali, much more informed than the one I gave in our last post: “The Balinese house looks inward - the outside is simply a high wall. Inside there will be a garden and a separate small building or bale for each function - one for cooking, one for washing and the toilet, and separate buildings for each ‘bedroom’. In Bali’s mild tropical climate people live outside, so the ‘living room’ and ‘dining room’ will be open veranda areas, looking out into the garden. The whole compound is oriented on the kaja-kelod axis, between the mountains and the sea.”

A very old priestess, I’m guessing well into her 90’s, agilely climbed up onto the platform atop a table and sat cross-legged to perform the ceremony. For all the production, there was surprisingly little attention paid to the ceremony by the guests, who continued their conversations. At the evening’s end, the young girl we were honoring greeted each guest at the door, pressing her hands together, bowing her head and smiling, “Salam,” and, “Terima kasih,” thank you, to everyone. At 18-months old!

We are continually impressed by Indonesian babies and children. We almost never hear them crying and, even at parties and gatherings with other children, they don’t shout or scream and very rarely act out.

About a week later was Nyepi. After an early dinner, just as it was starting to get dark, we followed the groups of people making their way up the main road to one of the large, public outdoor pavilions. Everyone was out, either walking on the road, or hanging out roadside, chatting and waving. Most of the men had been drinking for the better part of the day and were cheerfully boisterous and in high spirits. Everyone was welcoming and inclusive, ushering us around to better vantage points and explaining what was happening.

The energy was intoxicating and palpable. We heard the gamelan music faintly, looked up the road and in seconds it was upon us. Giant lattice-work frames of bamboo, carried by groups of boys and young men, held each of the ornate, menacing papier mache monsters, the ogoh-ogoh. Flashlights lit the monsters’ faces from below, making them appear all the more scary. The boys would run in unison to the left, then quick to the right, then front and back, shaking the giant ogoh-ogoh above them. It was amazing and terrifying and thrilling to watch. The structure would be coming right for you and turn just inches from colliding. About 5 of these monsters passed by, each one made by a sub-section of our village of Batuan. One was shaken so hard its head came off, and the crowd went crazy, yelling and cheering. The gamelan musicians followed the last one and, en masse, we formed the parade down the road to another outdoor pavilion, where the ogoh-ogoh had all collected. Gamelan music is amazing and to hear it live, loud and in a parade is the best way to experience it.

As we neared the pavilion, a whoosh of flame shot up. The largest and tallest of the monsters had been set on fire in the middle of the road and the flames were as tall as the trees, the embers dancing up into the stars and the clear night sky. Really, one of the most beautiful moments I’ve experienced. One by one, the ogoh-ogoh were set on fire, each representing the evils and sins from the past year. But even the Balinese have their vanity and the better monster heads were cut off as keepsakes and spared the burning.

After the first ogoh-ogoh fire, Willa was ready to go to sleep, so I walked back to Purnati with her, while Johnny stayed on to watch. Batuan is a safe village and the night was perfect - breezy, clear skies and road lit by moonlight. I encountered a family of four and we walked together for a ways, introducing ourselves and talking about our children (a very popular subject in Bali.) How old, how many, names, etc. We both had 14 month-old girls asleep in our arms and the father asked me, “What time she go to sleep?” I replied, “Usually about 8. What time does your daughter go to sleep?” (Sadly, I can’t even speak pidgeon Balinese.) He replied, “Same. About 8.” We walked on for a bit in silence and then, “What time she wake up?” It made me laugh out loud. Even in a village in Bali, I’m having the same conversations.

We headed into Ubud early the morning of the 20th to catch a shuttle bus to Munduk, a small town up north in the mountains, near the volcano Danau Bratan. Upon arrival at the bus station we learned that they were closed, still respecting the holiday, so we checked into a nearby home stay. Our room was pretty depressing with no mosquito net, no hook for a net, bars on the window, and motorcycles vrooming by our window. But, it was cheap, clean and we were only there for one night. What we did get out of our night’s stay was an introduction to the jaffle, a greater appreciation for Ubud and a new destination for the morning. Jaffles, simple sandwiches made in those George Foreman waffle-grilling like machines, are popular and cheap, and come filled with either jam, banana, chocolate or chicken.

Ubud has a wide array of galleries, spas, restaurants and cafes (had one of the best burritos ever at Dragonfly, followed by crepes with roasted shredded coconut and palm sugar syrup and chocolate mousse) and some posh boutiques for clothing, jewelry and home collections. The city is charming with its old architecture, narrow streets with steep, dug-out gutters on either side, beautiful shops and tiled sidewalks. I made Johnny play ‘picks’ with me in the shop windows and while he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, he grudgingly went along with it.

Checked e-mail and Johnny had received one from friend Ann Graham, suggesting we connect with her friends in Tirta Gangga while in Bali. Consulted our map and the bus schedule and turned out there was a bus leaving for Tirta Gangga the next morning at the same time as our other bus. Took it as a sign and the next afternoon we settled into a room at the home stay Good Karma in Tirta Gangga. Johnny described Tirta Gangga perfectly and I’ll paraphrase: it’s as though someone dropped a giant stone onto the earth; the ripples forming the stunning rice paddies, reaching out in steps up the steep mountain and down across the valleys. In the distance was the volcano Gunung Seraya with smoke gently billowing off its top, and the image was paradise on earth. Tirta Gangga is famous for its rice paddies and the water palace with all of its pools, also spread out in steps descending from the palace. The palace promotes the pools as fountains of youth and we swam in the cold, fresh water one morning while it drizzled.

Good Karma served up some delicious tempeh and vegetables in green curry (we ordered it three times during our stay) and banana pancakes with tea in the mornings.

BANANA PANCAKES
Prepare batter with white flour, whole egg, sugar, water and pinch of salt. (Is all that separates crepe from pancake ingredients the baking soda?)

In a nonstick skillet, on medium/med-high heat, melt about 2 tablespoons of butter, and pour in a thin level of batter. Cover with one layer of banana slices. Flip the pancake (the woman I watched prepare, flipped it in the air and easily caught it in the pan) and cook some more. When golden, flip again onto a plate, so pancake is served banana side up. Eat as is, or squeeze fresh lime juice on top and/or pour some honey.

We visited with Ann’s friends, Bill Seely and Baxter, and enjoyed their entertaining stories of living in Tirta Gangga after expatriating from Boston 17 years ago. They both return to Provincetown, MA, every summer to work as house staff for the wealthy, so that they can support their lifestyle making art and having house staff in Tirta Gangga the rest of the year. They’ve built a beautiful home and studio, covered and filled with Baxter’s mosaics of mirror, colored glass and tiles, which have inspired me to try making some when we one day have a house.

Tirta Gangga was beautiful and we loved the pools, but the tiny town itself depressed me, with people constantly trying to sell us something, anything, a tour, a guide, a ride, and, after two nights, we hired the services of a driver and headed along the north coast of Bali to Lovina.

Hit hard by the lack of tourism brought on by the 2 Bali bombings, the earthquake and the tsunami (as is all of Bali and Indonesia and much of Southeast Asia), Lovina’s a beach-front town that has suffered from neglect. Aside from the black sand beaches, there’s very little attractive about Lovina. Every hello was followed by some offer to take us somewhere, sell us something, give us a massage, to take our money. The clingy-ness and hard desperation of their manner was almost frightening. Even Willa, who by this point reaches out her arms to all passing Balinese women, shied away from people and cried when anyone other than Johnny or myself made a motion to pick her up. Dogs fought in the streets and older people and fishermen walked by us without making eye contact, ignoring our greetings. We quickly grew wise to any gestures of friendliness; everyone’s got a hustle in Lovina. It was so off-putting that we checked out of our home stay the next morning and jumped on the first bus we could find, eager to get out as quickly as possible.

We caught a ride in a red bemo, a public mini-bus, to the port of Gillimanuk to catch our ferry to Java. The ride was one of our most pleasant experiences. The side door and all of the windows were open, filling the cabin with fresh, cool air with warm pockets coming off of the beach and the woods we followed. The driver picked up and dropped off school children along the way and it was relieving and entertaining to be invisible to these teens, so self-absorbed that they barely noticed our small tourist cargo in the back seat.

We arrived at the port in Java at about 3:30PM, walked to the train station, and learned that the next train to Surabaya wasn’t leaving until 10:22PM. Not only did we now have 7 hours to kill in the rain in a port town resembling Deadwood, but the whole point of our taking the train had been to see the Javanese landscape. We waited in the ‘executive’ waiting lounge at the station where a TV played crappy American movies (Vertical Limits and Marines), alarmist newscasts, and shows with teenagers and genies who meet inside of coconuts and other secret locations and fat, shirtless men with midget friends. We traded off taking Willa for walks around the station where cats with short tails prowled in the grass, stalking bugs and lizards and digging through trash. To each one, Willa would wave and call out, “Hi,” in her sweet, high voice. We filled up on cheap packaged snacks of cookies, ‘happy tos’ corn chips, strawberry milk and unidentifiable fried salty things.

The rain finally stopped and a wedding taking place next door to the station went into full gear. They had two towers of speakers covered in plastic. The music was as loud as a jet engine and had been playing since we first arrived. At the opposite end of the station, off in the distance was a mosque broadcasting the call to prayer on a loud PA speaker. It had the tone of a loud transistor radio with a strange mix of Indonesian and Arabic blaring in an off-key, whining, long line of sound. The two sounds met at the train station and the mix was so terrible and the whole scene so bizarre that it made me shake and cry with laughter. Johnny, more kind than me, described it as being so bad it was almost good.

The train arrived early and, thank God, we were at the station and not out strolling around. Had we missed this train I don’t know if we would have mentally survived sleeping at the station.

On the train, now after 10PM, Willa was still awake and a little manic. She stood on Johnny’s lap, pressing her face against the glass. Outside all was black except for an occasional single bulb or fluorescent tube passing in the distance. We were each given a narrow blanket and a foam pillow and not a moment too soon as the AC quickly reduced the temperature to the 40s. We could almost see our breath and were frequently checking Willa. A steward came by to collect money for the pillows and blankets. We couldn’t believe that our ‘executive’ tickets didn’t include the 12,000 Rp ($1.20) charge for the blankets. It was too cold to lose the blankets, though, so we shelled out the money. The bright lights in the car never went off but as it rocked and swayed its way west the three of us managed to get intermittent sleep. At the second to last stop, after every passenger who could be charged for blankets had been, the AC was turned off and we were all sweltering by the time the train pulled in to Surabaya.

Bleary-eyed, we staggered off the train at 4:30AM and were immediately greeted by an energetic man explaining in broken English that he could take us to a clean, cheap hotel. We agreed upon a price, climbed into a taxi with ‘our guide’ in the passenger seat and his silent accomplice behind the wheel and headed to hotel number one, run by his friend. No vacancy. We went to hotel number two. No vacancy. We went to hotel number three, next door to a night market that was just shutting down. The man told us that all would be gone by 6AM, when other business starts. He repeated how Surabaya was a business town, not like a tourist town. At hotel number three, Johnny went up to look at a room. It was grimy and dank, one step up from a cell. We were all three fully awake at this point so we decided this was no place to stay and that we would go back to the train station to catch the next train to Yogyakarta. The man made one last attempt to ‘help’ us, stopping at a private bus company with a dilapidated sign in a tiny alley. He banged on the closed door until a woman yelled from inside. When the woman opened the door, her price was exorbitant. We headed back to the train station, the man now wanting double what we’d originally agreed to. We shook our heads, turned, and walked into the train station. Everyone’s got a hustle in Surabaya, too.

The sun had now risen and the Surabaya train station is a very pleasant and breezy outdoor pavilion with lots of warungs (food stands). Our favorite being the ‘chicken and donuts’. We sat on a bench, eating donuts with our tea and coffee and Willa had her milk and Cheerios. We people-watched, listening to a Javanese band play country songs including ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’. It couldn’t have been much better.

We finally got our train ride through Java, through green paddies of rice, fields of sugar cane, through slums with tethered sheep, cities with billboards, fields of corn, and more rice paddies. Along the way were many mosques with shiny, silver domes on top.

It was pouring in Yogyakarta when we arrived, but our taxi driver and hotel staff were friendly and didn’t try to sell us on any tours. The city reminded me of Nairobi with the high, zebra-striped curbs, roundabouts and bouganvillea and frangipani blooming in an urban setting. In need of rest and relaxation, we settled in to stay for a while.

Yogyakarta is jam-packed with motorcycles, mopeds, cars, buses, people, bicycles, and becaks, bicycle-driven rickshaws. Entire families ride on the back of motorcycles with babies (many wearing ski-caps and sunglasses) up at the front, holding on to the handle bars. The traffic pollution coupled with the breeze-less sun and heat in the afternoons often drives us back indoors, to our hotel room and the pool.

Jogja is crowded with sellers of batik (cloths, clothing, covered-furniture, wall-hangings, etc.), silver, antiques and leather puppets; food carts frying up cubed tofu and tempeh, egg and scallion-filled crepes, donuts, chicken egg rolls, bread rolls, vegetable fritters - all of it deep fried in giant woks or on giant, slightly concave griddles; women squatting or seated on low stools, grilling short, slender beef and chicken sate skewers over tiny charcoal fires; sweets carts with glass boxes showcasing chewy, neon-colored, gummy coconut sweets with a surprise burst of palm sugar syrup in the center; and produce stands with small piles of local fruit: durian, mangosteen, jackfruit, bananas, tangerines, avocado.

The Sultan’s Palace, in the center of downtown, is a working palace that houses a great dusty lawn in front. Driving around in our becak, we witnessed calisthenic groups, barefoot joggers, and school children in their uniforms playing soccer and practicing javelan-tossing. One afternoon, the lawn was cleared for the Sultan’s 2 elephants, who live in cages to the side of the palace. In the open-air pavilion on the other side of the palace are free morning performances of gamelan music, puppetry and Javanese dance, which we were always arriving at the wrong time to see. Families live within the palace walls, but don’t know how it’s determined who has that privilege. The residential streets within the palace walls are quiet, narrow, tree-covered, hugged by colorful, flowering bushes.

In Jogja, we spent days walking around our neighborhood and the markets, looking in antique shops, swimming and reading. Most evenings we went to the carnival, just north of the palace, running the whole week we were there. The carnival was a bizarre experience of bright lights, blaring Indonesian rock music and covers of American hits, and carnival paraphernalia, including stands filled with strange plastic toys, cotton candy, roasted corn, roasted and candied peanuts and tons of rides, manned by cheerful and friendly carnies. People rode motorcycles through the walkways and the crowd numbers reached into what must have been tens of thousands, but there was never a moment of tension. In fact, we realized that not once have we witnessed any arguments or expressions of frustration between Indonesians.

We took 2 day trips while in Jogja: to Prambanan, a Hindu temple complex with about 50 temple sites, and Borobudur, a Buddhist temple. There are about 1,500 narrative panels and stupas lining the terraced hallways of Borobudur. Each illustrating Buddhist history and teachings. The entire complex is a huge three dimensional mandala that you physically pass through to experience. We walked around and up and down the terraces for hours, studying the faces and images in each one; trying to decipher the stories and meanings, trying to figure out how they should be read, in which direction and order.
We visited Prambanan on an overcast, rainy afternoon. Strangely, coming upon the temples from the grounds made us think of the feel and look of old English manors, something akin to Wuthering Heights (at least in my mind.) The moors of emerald green grass, the grey clouds threatening rain, moss growing on and between the dark blocks of stone. The temples are truly awesome and it felt somehow tragic to see the ruined smaller temples of Prambanan, razed by 2006 March’s earthquake. Just last year! These temples were originally built in the 9th century and had managed to survive all this time.

We returned to Bali (by one-hour plane this time) on April 2nd, and are now in Legian, in a beautiful bungalow by the beach. Johnny’s surfing every chance he gets and Willa and I swim in the pool, take walks on the beach (she’s afraid of the ocean waves). We speculate about the relationships between the people we see as we walk around town, window-shopping, Willa waving to cats and dogs. This region has a beautiful, wide and long beach with soft sand and is renowned for its surfing, which means it’s also filled with tourists with sunburns and cornrowed, beaded hair (mostly Aussies, Italians and South Africans), and very expensive. We leave tomorrow for Singapore.