9pm Mon Nov 26: Hi...if you didn't get this pics link on email, you can see some pics up to Japan a few weeks ago here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agrantabroad/PublicFirstTravelling
And remember you can comment on this blog if you wanna, click on'COMMENTS' tab below.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Hobbits, Indonesia's Machu Picchu, communication blackout, a fruit frenzy...and the Cornflake Game strikes again!
11.30am Thu Nov 22: Our Suzuki people carrier (Nati, me, German Lufthansa air stewardesses Anusch and Claudia and Dutch traveller Marieka) is snaking through the twisted, tortuous mountain forest roads of the wild and remote east Indonesia island of Flores, famous for perfect volcanoes, fascinating traditional wooden villages and the 1m-tall, Dean Valler-esque prehistoric hobbit-human, discovered in 2004 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm).
This patch of Indonesia is nothing like humid tourist hot-spot Bali: the Aussie hol-and-surf mecca (scene of the tragic 2002 and 2005 bombings); lots of sunshine holiday fun, an air-con hotel we love and tropical scenery; but also overcrowded and with the fat-old-blokes-looking-for-women factor; set to hog the world news from Dec 3 at UN climate change conference (*** now featuring famous ecologist Mandar! ***).
In contrast, lush Flores, visited by just a dribble of travellers, is Bali's anthisesis.
Take Bena, in Flores. We must walk (many Flores roads are stomach-churning but this one was just too bumpy) to the traditional and very poor village of wooden huts, ancestors' graves and buffalo-slaughtering posts in the front yard, boasting a first-view and jaw-dropping perched mountainside location both strangely reminiscent of Machu Picchu.
Arriving in our hotel in Moni (pretty village blessed with towering and enveloping forest-coated mountain valleys; the base for pre-sunrise treks to Kelimutu volcano's coloured lakes), candles illuminate our room. The promised electricity fails to arrive...and the (ice cold) water runs out as I'm coated in soap in the shower. This is a surprisingly-common dilemma in Indonesia.
In a restaurant in Ende, just round the corner from the dramatically-short airstrip we take our lives into our hands by departing from, we order our meal and, a moment later, spy our waiter tugging away on a rope in the kitchen. He is collecting water from a genuine well. You know, the hole in the ground in a medieval castle variety...but this one's in the kitchen floor of our restaurant.
And the buses. Oh, the buses...a constant source of entertainment. People hanging out of the doors, on the roof, on the rear bumper (barging the trussed-up live chickens for space), being tossed in and out of pot-holes...and almost falling off when posing for photos.
As you might imagine, communication here is, erm...challenging. In Labuanbajo, as phone and internet lines had been severed by road-workers, I buy mobile credit for a guy's phone to make an essential call to Qantas. Yeah, you guessed it...the signal was awful and the battery ran out.
So, everything was set up perfectly to wish my sister Susie a happy birthday on the Nov 22. I succeeded in dispatching a text only after tracking down three non-working small-town internet cafes on our rumble through the jungle, and bypassing a mobile phone service black spot.
Indonesians are fantastic people - maybe the friendliest I've ever met, despite many being very poor.
The key thing is people, even from the worst-off areas, seem happy with their lot in life, getting by farming or running a small stall, making enough to provide food for their families. No British-style moaning about not having for the best iPod, complaining about poor salary rises and contributing to the London Underground attitude problem.
Indonesians, especially away from the main tourist areas, almost always wear a big grin. They smile and love the chance to shout "hello, mister" at funny-looking white bloke (Nati doesn't get it, they all think she's Indonesian!). And the kids are amazing, inquisitive and fun.
The country has a lot to offer...and we've seen just a part in three weeks. It's a vast place, the world's fourth biggest country (top three anyone?), peppered by 129 volcanoes - the most of any nation - and blessed with lush forests jam-packed with every fruit you could imagine. One of our hotel gardens had mangoes, bananas, pineapple, papaya, cactus fruit (prickly pear) and tamarind (sour, in long nut-like shell)...and we picked coconut, grenadine and avocado and saw cloves and a spice-rack full of other spices. After all, Indonesia is the famous 'spice islands' that Britain, Portugal and Holland scrapped over a few hundred years ago.
We're a short flight hop from north Australia and half of this country actually has Oceanic rather than Asian foiliage. Our Komodo Dragon-spotting bush walk, on the island of the same name, was more like the outback than the tropics. We took our eyes off the trees when a 2.5m monster lizard chased us down the beach.
Took a three-day boat trip with ultra eco-friendly company Perama to Komodo and Flores, livening up "proceedings" (as a hairy uni friend of some of us would say) by leaping into the sea from the 10-metre mast and staging the most riotous hosting of the (increasingly world-famous) Cornflake Game on deck. The music was pumping, the beer penalties were flowing and Betty, a fantastic, fun Californian lady in her 60s, brought the house down by somehow bending to floor level to of the tune of " USA, USA." Okay, okay, I apologise for footballifying the occasion.
Had a few other great nights out. One on roof terrace of small Kuta (main Bali resort) club - great view and bassy, bouncy, dirty house tunes from unbelievable speakers, while being blasetd by terrific air fans. Heard more great house beneath a sky bulging with stars in the fabulous Gilli Islands, a trio of white-sand jewels packing in turtle-snorkelling, coconut plantations, awesome azure sea and seafood into one splendid package. Half a kilo of king prawns...oh my God.
Back in Bali now, brushing up on world history (thanks to my Lincoln pal Phil's book loan), and going to Singapore tomorrow, then Malaysia and Thai islands for Christmas.
Thanks for the emails and glad this blog seems to be entertaining some of you. Hope you're well wherever you are and drop Nati or I a line to say hi if you fancy it. We always enjoy hearing from family and friends - and remember you can comment on this blog if you would like to...click on 'COMMENTS' tab below.
Ali & Nati
This patch of Indonesia is nothing like humid tourist hot-spot Bali: the Aussie hol-and-surf mecca (scene of the tragic 2002 and 2005 bombings); lots of sunshine holiday fun, an air-con hotel we love and tropical scenery; but also overcrowded and with the fat-old-blokes-looking-for-women factor; set to hog the world news from Dec 3 at UN climate change conference (*** now featuring famous ecologist Mandar! ***).
In contrast, lush Flores, visited by just a dribble of travellers, is Bali's anthisesis.
Take Bena, in Flores. We must walk (many Flores roads are stomach-churning but this one was just too bumpy) to the traditional and very poor village of wooden huts, ancestors' graves and buffalo-slaughtering posts in the front yard, boasting a first-view and jaw-dropping perched mountainside location both strangely reminiscent of Machu Picchu.
Arriving in our hotel in Moni (pretty village blessed with towering and enveloping forest-coated mountain valleys; the base for pre-sunrise treks to Kelimutu volcano's coloured lakes), candles illuminate our room. The promised electricity fails to arrive...and the (ice cold) water runs out as I'm coated in soap in the shower. This is a surprisingly-common dilemma in Indonesia.
In a restaurant in Ende, just round the corner from the dramatically-short airstrip we take our lives into our hands by departing from, we order our meal and, a moment later, spy our waiter tugging away on a rope in the kitchen. He is collecting water from a genuine well. You know, the hole in the ground in a medieval castle variety...but this one's in the kitchen floor of our restaurant.
And the buses. Oh, the buses...a constant source of entertainment. People hanging out of the doors, on the roof, on the rear bumper (barging the trussed-up live chickens for space), being tossed in and out of pot-holes...and almost falling off when posing for photos.
As you might imagine, communication here is, erm...challenging. In Labuanbajo, as phone and internet lines had been severed by road-workers, I buy mobile credit for a guy's phone to make an essential call to Qantas. Yeah, you guessed it...the signal was awful and the battery ran out.
So, everything was set up perfectly to wish my sister Susie a happy birthday on the Nov 22. I succeeded in dispatching a text only after tracking down three non-working small-town internet cafes on our rumble through the jungle, and bypassing a mobile phone service black spot.
Indonesians are fantastic people - maybe the friendliest I've ever met, despite many being very poor.
The key thing is people, even from the worst-off areas, seem happy with their lot in life, getting by farming or running a small stall, making enough to provide food for their families. No British-style moaning about not having for the best iPod, complaining about poor salary rises and contributing to the London Underground attitude problem.
Indonesians, especially away from the main tourist areas, almost always wear a big grin. They smile and love the chance to shout "hello, mister" at funny-looking white bloke (Nati doesn't get it, they all think she's Indonesian!). And the kids are amazing, inquisitive and fun.
The country has a lot to offer...and we've seen just a part in three weeks. It's a vast place, the world's fourth biggest country (top three anyone?), peppered by 129 volcanoes - the most of any nation - and blessed with lush forests jam-packed with every fruit you could imagine. One of our hotel gardens had mangoes, bananas, pineapple, papaya, cactus fruit (prickly pear) and tamarind (sour, in long nut-like shell)...and we picked coconut, grenadine and avocado and saw cloves and a spice-rack full of other spices. After all, Indonesia is the famous 'spice islands' that Britain, Portugal and Holland scrapped over a few hundred years ago.
We're a short flight hop from north Australia and half of this country actually has Oceanic rather than Asian foiliage. Our Komodo Dragon-spotting bush walk, on the island of the same name, was more like the outback than the tropics. We took our eyes off the trees when a 2.5m monster lizard chased us down the beach.
Took a three-day boat trip with ultra eco-friendly company Perama to Komodo and Flores, livening up "proceedings" (as a hairy uni friend of some of us would say) by leaping into the sea from the 10-metre mast and staging the most riotous hosting of the (increasingly world-famous) Cornflake Game on deck. The music was pumping, the beer penalties were flowing and Betty, a fantastic, fun Californian lady in her 60s, brought the house down by somehow bending to floor level to of the tune of " USA, USA." Okay, okay, I apologise for footballifying the occasion.
Had a few other great nights out. One on roof terrace of small Kuta (main Bali resort) club - great view and bassy, bouncy, dirty house tunes from unbelievable speakers, while being blasetd by terrific air fans. Heard more great house beneath a sky bulging with stars in the fabulous Gilli Islands, a trio of white-sand jewels packing in turtle-snorkelling, coconut plantations, awesome azure sea and seafood into one splendid package. Half a kilo of king prawns...oh my God.
Back in Bali now, brushing up on world history (thanks to my Lincoln pal Phil's book loan), and going to Singapore tomorrow, then Malaysia and Thai islands for Christmas.
Thanks for the emails and glad this blog seems to be entertaining some of you. Hope you're well wherever you are and drop Nati or I a line to say hi if you fancy it. We always enjoy hearing from family and friends - and remember you can comment on this blog if you would like to...click on 'COMMENTS' tab below.
Ali & Nati
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Pounding techno, big sandwiches, cycling and yellow spiders
6.30pm Sun Nov 4: I type this having just polished off two mountainous ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato toasted sandwiches, giving me the energy to kickstart my brain after an epic and absolutely thumping night of Tokyo techno ending at 8.30am this morning.
Nati, our Japanese pal Mariko (a girl we met on the train) and I hit Japan's best AND second-best nightclubs in one fantastic night, combining a gorgeous Japanese meal (shoeless, naturally), a stream of beers bizarrely served in mini-glasses, jam-packed Club Air and Club Yellow (both completely hidden in basements; Yellow is so underground it doesn`t even have a sign...and only the club only opens at 5am due to a police-imposed midnight-5am dancing ban due to no licence!), and booming basslines in two phenomenal 360-degree soundsystems from DJs including Detroit techno godfather-figure Derrick May.
As you might gather from the paragraphs above, it went off with spectacular aplomb.
What a way to end two weeks in a country where everything feels familiar due to the comfort and developed-country-ness...but is actually very different. Same same but different, as you would say if you`ve visited Thailand.
Take cycling. In London, you have to be a nutter to pedal into the centre - but EVERYONE In Japan cycles (on granny-style bikes with shopping baskets), bikes get priority on pavements and they`ve even got bike racks outside nightclub. This must give rise to obvious problems, while we also witnessed the amusing but suprisingly-common offence of sending-a-text-while-cycling.
Everyone here is soooooo polite. Ask for directions in London and some chav would probably mug you. Ask for directions in Osaka, as we did, and a guy on his way home from the office spent 40mins helping us find an obscure bus stop. And the lady who ran our Japanese guest house (called mishuku, no beds but sprung tatami mat floor and men`s kimono dressing gowns...sexy) said "you`re welcome" and bowed her head so many times I thought it was gonna fall off.
Taxi drivers? Not some rude cockney bloke with a beer belly and beeping at girls...but an elderly gentleman with suit and flat hat, casually flicking a button to open his back passenger door and beckon you in.
And road/building work. Every Japanese house/pavement/roadworks has a guy with a luminous yellow strap-jacket wafting a red glow stick so long Luke Skywalker could fight Darth Vader with it, all in case someone
might inexplicably not see the enormous double barrier round that work colleague repairing a small paving slab.
Since our last update a fortnight ago, we had three days in a superb hostel near Mount Fuji`s lakes, where we got lucky and saw the snow-capped colossus before a typoon blew in. We were whisked to Kyoto by the shinkansen bullet train (exhillarating 188mph ride; the random factor was the woman next to us singing) and then the day after the typoon I got sunburnt in a heatwave at Kyoto`s very fun wild monkey park.
Chugged round Shikoku`s mountain gorges and Thai-esque surf beaches on trains tinier than the Metheringham to Sleaford school train (that will mean something to some people reading this), passing through even tinier stations. Walked over a vine bridge spanning a river just after dawn and stayed at a surfers` hostel sounding like an extra from The Usual Suspects, the brilliantly-named Minami Kaze.
Endured a night in a bizarre control-freak hostel (somehow Lonely Planet`s top recommendation for Kyoto) with 1,000yen late check-out fines, a kitchen/lounge closed for most of the day and even notes on a tiny sugar pot about not dirtying the spoon with coffee...hello, I left nursery 27 years ago! Upped sticks to the awesome K`s House hostel chain...no notes on the sugar, a beer machine cheaper than the supermarket, free lifestyle/clubbing mags and an International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun (Japan`s biggest English paper) to read listening to funky music in the lounge (yes, I was happy).
Also...realised the government must be oblivious to the mass of tourists here as hardly any signs in English; saw a few geishas; ate various strange combinations of raw egg, chicken cartilage, crazy veg and enough noodles to stretch from London to Tokyo. Tried at least 14 different types of beer (honestly not a bad egg among them...Asahi Extra Dry is my fave), and; Nati almost had a heart attack when she tried on a top with a four-inch yellow spider in it.
That's it, thanks for emails we've received and hope all is well with you. We're going to Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow so will blog about that in a week or two.
All the best
Ali
Nati, our Japanese pal Mariko (a girl we met on the train) and I hit Japan's best AND second-best nightclubs in one fantastic night, combining a gorgeous Japanese meal (shoeless, naturally), a stream of beers bizarrely served in mini-glasses, jam-packed Club Air and Club Yellow (both completely hidden in basements; Yellow is so underground it doesn`t even have a sign...and only the club only opens at 5am due to a police-imposed midnight-5am dancing ban due to no licence!), and booming basslines in two phenomenal 360-degree soundsystems from DJs including Detroit techno godfather-figure Derrick May.
As you might gather from the paragraphs above, it went off with spectacular aplomb.
What a way to end two weeks in a country where everything feels familiar due to the comfort and developed-country-ness...but is actually very different. Same same but different, as you would say if you`ve visited Thailand.
Take cycling. In London, you have to be a nutter to pedal into the centre - but EVERYONE In Japan cycles (on granny-style bikes with shopping baskets), bikes get priority on pavements and they`ve even got bike racks outside nightclub. This must give rise to obvious problems, while we also witnessed the amusing but suprisingly-common offence of sending-a-text-while-cycling.
Everyone here is soooooo polite. Ask for directions in London and some chav would probably mug you. Ask for directions in Osaka, as we did, and a guy on his way home from the office spent 40mins helping us find an obscure bus stop. And the lady who ran our Japanese guest house (called mishuku, no beds but sprung tatami mat floor and men`s kimono dressing gowns...sexy) said "you`re welcome" and bowed her head so many times I thought it was gonna fall off.
Taxi drivers? Not some rude cockney bloke with a beer belly and beeping at girls...but an elderly gentleman with suit and flat hat, casually flicking a button to open his back passenger door and beckon you in.
And road/building work. Every Japanese house/pavement/roadworks has a guy with a luminous yellow strap-jacket wafting a red glow stick so long Luke Skywalker could fight Darth Vader with it, all in case someone
might inexplicably not see the enormous double barrier round that work colleague repairing a small paving slab.
Since our last update a fortnight ago, we had three days in a superb hostel near Mount Fuji`s lakes, where we got lucky and saw the snow-capped colossus before a typoon blew in. We were whisked to Kyoto by the shinkansen bullet train (exhillarating 188mph ride; the random factor was the woman next to us singing) and then the day after the typoon I got sunburnt in a heatwave at Kyoto`s very fun wild monkey park.
Chugged round Shikoku`s mountain gorges and Thai-esque surf beaches on trains tinier than the Metheringham to Sleaford school train (that will mean something to some people reading this), passing through even tinier stations. Walked over a vine bridge spanning a river just after dawn and stayed at a surfers` hostel sounding like an extra from The Usual Suspects, the brilliantly-named Minami Kaze.
Endured a night in a bizarre control-freak hostel (somehow Lonely Planet`s top recommendation for Kyoto) with 1,000yen late check-out fines, a kitchen/lounge closed for most of the day and even notes on a tiny sugar pot about not dirtying the spoon with coffee...hello, I left nursery 27 years ago! Upped sticks to the awesome K`s House hostel chain...no notes on the sugar, a beer machine cheaper than the supermarket, free lifestyle/clubbing mags and an International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun (Japan`s biggest English paper) to read listening to funky music in the lounge (yes, I was happy).
Also...realised the government must be oblivious to the mass of tourists here as hardly any signs in English; saw a few geishas; ate various strange combinations of raw egg, chicken cartilage, crazy veg and enough noodles to stretch from London to Tokyo. Tried at least 14 different types of beer (honestly not a bad egg among them...Asahi Extra Dry is my fave), and; Nati almost had a heart attack when she tried on a top with a four-inch yellow spider in it.
That's it, thanks for emails we've received and hope all is well with you. We're going to Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow so will blog about that in a week or two.
All the best
Ali
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