The one that I actually forgot to mention was the dolphin-spotting we enjoyed two days in a row while on our snorkeling trips. After we were done for the day and headed back to Poya Lisa on our first day out, our boat driver (the older gentleman least with a weather-beaten face as if he's lived most of his life at sea, which he probably has,) started to make a weird, arching U-turn, which confused us all. What was he doing? He couldn't possibly be lost, or mixed up, could he? No, not at all. It turned out he just had better eyes than all of us and had seen dolphins jumping in the distance. He killed the motor and we watched for a while. These dolphins were the most amazing show-offs. They would not just jump in the air, but do about three complete flips before diving under the water again. They were true acrobats. It was almost as if they were trying to put on a show. The next day we saw more, though they couldn't quite outdo the spectacle of the day before. After that we'd get excited if we thought we saw a dolphin while on the boat but it almost always turned out to be a floating coconut instead.
The second thing I left out was the strange incident of me stepping on some weird, unidentified, venomous thing that left the end of my toe black for weeks afterward. On our last day at Poya Lisa, I decided to go snorkeling around our little island, as I hasn't done so yet. As I was wading out from our bungalow, mask and snorkel in hand, I stopped to look at an oddly coloured, spiked thing in the water. Some sort of odd starfish or plant or sea creature perhaps? As I stood there, putting of my mask for a better look, I felt a painfully sharp sting on my toe. For a brief moment I considered ignoring it and swimming on but the pain was growing exponentially. With my mask on, I examined my toe in the water and saw a pinprick sized wound that oozed blood when I squeezed it. Within moments the pain had become unbearable and I literally hobbled to shore in agony. Nicole helped me out immediately, getting soap and water to wash it while I squeezed my foot and compulsively rocked back and forth to deal with the pain. The pain was intense, maybe 5 or 10 times worse than a wasp sting, and I might have even cried if I wasn't so shaky. I alternated soaking my foot in cold water and applying pressure and rocking to deal with the shock and pain. (Now I know that if you get a poisonous sting, you are supposed to soak it in the hottest water you can stand. Oh well. It's not like we had hot water anyway.) The sting - whatever it was - was on the fourth digit ("ring toe?") of my right foot. Pretty soon the toe started to swell up and the end of the toe, where I had been stung, started to become discoloured. Well, sh*t. (Now that I know my grandmother is an avid reader of this blog, I don't think I can swear anymore. Only quasi-swearing will be allowed.)
With Nicole's help, I hobbled across the island and up the stairs for dinner where the nice kitchen staff got me ice cold water to soak my foot in, which really helped with the pain. Two young women who had arrived recently at Poya Lisa were doctors from Slovenia, currently doing their residencies. They had been swimming at the same time I went in and had seen me get out of the water. They came over and began to examine my toe with all manner of medical authority as soon as I told them what happened. They decided it would be okay, since the swelling and discolouration seemed localised, and gave me some anti-histamine medication. And it was okay in the end... but it was weird. My toe stayed swollen for over a week and just before the swelling went down, the right side of my right foot also became swollen. I felt tinglies up and down my leg (real or imagined, I don't know) and it was at that time I decided if my leg began to swell I would book myself the first flight to Singapore. The anxiety was for naught, however, because the swelling went down. The tip of the toe, however, turned black and became hard. I thought was a blood blister and tried to pop it at one point, but nothing came out. Eventually the blackened skin came off, rather in the manner of a scab, about three weeks later. It was just a thick layer of hardened, blackened skin, and now new, regular skin is growing in its place. So weird, right? I panickedly looked up everything about poisonous stings while the swelling was still going on. I still think there might be a slight chance it was a stonefish sting. Those can be fatal if you get a puncture wound to the chest or abdomen. Would a pinprick wound on the tip of your toe make it swell up for a week and kill the skin around it? I don't really know. I wonder now if that odd looking sea-creature I originally wanted to examine was a stonefish. Maybe I couldn't see how close I actually was to it. Or perhaps it was something else that sent a stinger out my way. In any case, I think I'm lucky. I mean, it hurt like a bitch (sorry Grandma) but just imagine if I had stepped on that thing?
That last night wasn't all pain and misery. After soaking my foot in the icy water, the pain went down and I talked with some of the other guests after dinner while Nicole joined Max, Karlyn, Roberto, Tom and a new Danish girl in some games of cards. It was the only mar on an otherwise perfectly lovely week. As you might be starting to understand, it's been a string of injuries and lesser ouchies. Usually by the time one heals, I get a new one. Fortunately, none of it has actually stopped me from getting around.
After leaving Poya Lisa, we had a crazy 24-hour travel blitz (as previously mentioned in the last blog.) We waited in Ampana at the cottages we had previously stayed at until 4 PM. We had been told that we'd get picked up at 5, but you know, Ramadhan, so... nothing you're told is reliable. And of course, our old travel-agent buddy (whose name I just can't remember) didn't tell us this until 4 PM when the van rolled in. It was not a good journey. We know better than to expect to actually get going when you're picked up, but we weren't in the mood to deal with it. First they drove us to their headquarters and switched drivers, then we picked up several more people from their homes around town, then we pulled into the gas station, with about 50 other vehicles queued up. They never, ever, ever, fuel the van before they pick you up. This seems to be some sort of unwritten law. And people were just being jerks. They stared at us through the windows, obnoxiously tried to get our attention, and a person or two even reached through the open window to try to touch my arm. It's not the first time or last time that would happen to me (Ooh! I touched a white person! How exotic!) but it really pissed me off at that point in time. DO. NOT. TOUCH. ME. (I was just discussing this with Nicole today. Not this particular incident, but just throwing the theory out there that empathy - in so far as putting yourself in someone else's shoes - doesn't seemed to be practiced or valued in Southeast Asia the way it is at home. If that's true, and I think it might be, it would go a long way to explaining some peoples' behaviour.)
Once we were on the road, it wasn't much better. The driver was a real J.A. (an acronym for a disagreeable old donkey that I learned via Grandpa Bergantine.) He tail-gated at dangerous speeds and sometime around or after midnight stopped for a 20 minute break, solely for himself. I understand if he needed a bathroom break, but that should only take 5 minutes. Instead he was lounging with a coffee on a little bed at a roadside stop, because, well, he felt like it. Which is so discourteous when people are relying on you to get them to the airport on time. He was rude and brushed us off and was very arrogant in all he did. We slept a little bit on the way to the airport, and when I woke up in the morning, I found our driver in the back seat, smoking and coughing, if I recall right, while his buddy drove instead. I don't need everything spic-and-span and to-the-second punctual, but I do appreciate a smithereen of professionalism. This guy just didn't care.
But we did arrive on time at the Poso airport. We had an early morning flight to Makassar, flew from Makassar to Denpasar, Bali, and finally from Denpasar to Labanbajo, Flores. For the flight to Flores we were once again on a little, propeller-winged airplane, the type that only lets your board from the rear, because the cargo goes in the front.
Labanbajo is still up and coming I think. There's a healthy, thriving dive-culture there, with dive shop after dive shop lining the main drag of town. There's also a healthy slew of restaurants, cafes and hotels catering to tourists. But the town itself is really small. I was expecting something more like a small city, but "town" is probably a more accurate word. The airport too is a recent change. As in, there is one now. When Nicole visited last year, there was a crappy little building for an airport, quite small and rinky-dink. Now there's a shiny new airport that looks great, but is still mostly empty. Nicole was really shocked when we disembarked and the new airport greeted us.
That night we were able to meet up with Lynsey and Kristina, because our paths crossed at that time by luck. We met up for dinner and swapped stories, laughed a lot, and showed off all our "injuries and lesser ouchies," each one with an interesting accompanying story, of course. It turned out they had just gotten done with a budget liveaboard in the area (yes, such things exist!)
The next morning we got on a boat with a handful of other tourists to a private resort island called Kanawa. Nicole, Lynsey and Kristina had all stayed here the previous Lebaran break (when I was in Gili Air and Lombok with Aasha.) They loved it so much they were all eager to return. By describing it as a "private resort island" you are probably imagining something really grand and expensive, sparkling white with a tiled pool and fresh fruit on silver platters. Instead, it is a private island, but it has three types of accommodation: tents, bales (like a bungalow the size of a king-sized bed, with a roof, roll-up sides, a mattress, mosquito net, and hanging storage cubbies) and the regular bungalows. Nicole and I had a bale, Lynsey and Kristina had a tent. The meals were a bit pricier than local eats, but if you stuck to the Indonesian menu, it was all right. One of the best features of the island was a small, sheltered area over the water with hammocks strung from the beams. Most all of our free time was spent here. (Another interesting tid-bit about the island is that it hosts refugee goats who have been delivered from the now-extinct practice of goat-feeding-time on the islands with Komodo dragons. They live on the hillside there.)
Nicole, Kristina and Lynsey had a lot more free time than I did. Since they had been there already, they were content to just relax. We had two full days, plus half a day on the day we arrived. I had plenty of hammock time on our arrival day, but after that I used my time for excursions. The first full day I went on three dives with a company called Ora Dive. I had foolishly neglected to follow up with Kanawa's dive situation. They used to have a very popular dive shop, but the contract was recently terminated. When I contacted them, it was still up in the air, but I felt like it was bound to be renewed once enough money had passed hands. Alas, such was not the case. Just before we left Labanbajo, I went to some dive shops to see if they would pick me up at Kanawa for some diving, but most seemed reluctant. One French family who was headed to the island with us had already booked with Ora, however, and I was able to quickly get in on the dive with them for that day.
The third dive turned up a big variety of different sea creatures: lionfish, scorpionfish, an octopus, sweetlips, reef sharks, and (spotted by me!) a crocodile fish. The crocodile fish was very ugly and excellently camouflaged. I only saw it because it moved, then settled motionless on the floor.
The diving was excellent and I also enjoyed getting to know the French family and an American father and son who were my dive buddies for the day. The crew was also fun. Our divemaster, Yadi (who was my same age), insisted we take selfies during our break time on the beach. The French family had their youngest child along, a boy of about 12. He did short, shallow, one-on-one dives while we went deeper, as he didn't have any real training. I got to practice my French with the whole family too, which was nice.
The next day was my Komodo dragon excursion! I signed up with other guests from Kanawa, including a Belgian family and a Canadian family living in Jakarta. We visited Rinca Island, since there's a better chance of seeing them there than Komodo Island. We were lucky to see four dragons. One was a juvenile walking along at a distance as we entered the park. We also saw a big, fat female lounging by the ranger's station before starting on our hike, a juvenile climbing a stream bank during our hike, and a big, fat male lounging under a tree back by the headquarters when we finished. The adults are really big and fat. They just look so huge, like obese
dinosaurs. Lying flat on the ground, they look like they don't have any muscle tone, they're just huge reptilian blogs with crazy feet and claws. Walking, however, it's a different story. You have to keep quite a distance from them as their bite can kill you if you're not treated immediately. The plethora bacteria in their mouths is ultimately what kills you (or the buffalo they hunt.) Did you know they also eat their newborn babies? As a defense mechanism, baby komodos spend the first three years of their lives in trees. What brutes! The other interesting thing about the hike was the landscape: dry and beautiful, and not really what I had been expecting. I went on the hike with the Belgian family. Unfortunately, the guides were not too generous towards us. They have a rule that there must be one guide for every five people. The Belgian family were five, and I made six. We tried to reason that since we were just one, small group, one guide would be fine. Of course, they didn't listen. If they have a stated rule, I guess I can understand they don't have to budge on it. But the thing was that they only gave us one guide! Everyone else was busy, so we just had one. That guide said we could wait around for another guide to finish a tour and join us, but it really wasn't necessary, so we said no. I tried to get my money back at the end (because I paid eight dollars for a non-existent guide) but you can guess how that went. They were very brusque with me, which I didn't appreciate. In the end they told me our guide would get paid double, so I said ok, because I knew it was a lost battle, but I wonder if that's even true. This on top of entrance fees, camera fees, and a snorkeling fee (which I simply should not have paid, as they have no way to enforce it.) Each fee is easily three times greater for a foreigner than a local. I paid over $25 in fees that day! If I thought that any of it was going to the preservation of the Komodos, I might not mind, but I have absolutely no faith in that. I know where my $25 went - straight into some ranger or bureaucrat's pocket. I apologise if the culture of corruption has made my cynical, but... I'm also not all that sorry. Get ripped off, cheated out of my fee, and pay for somebody's wife to go shopping in Jakarta? No thanks.
Despite the bad deal with the park fees, it was still worth it just for a chance to see those great, lumbering, terrifying, fat creatures in the wild. I really hate the way they move; I find it very creepy they way they lumber in that reptilian way. Still... what an awesome experience!
We left Rinca, did a bit of snorkeling, and then headed to a fishing village on a little island halfway between Rinca and Kanawa. The local kids flooded us like we were minor celebrities. I think they just find it fun to hang on to tourists and show them around, but they also ask you for things. Like in Toraja, the kids want candy or pens. I literally had nothing to give them, so I didn't. A girl wanted my hair tie, but I said no. She insisted. I insisted. They don't have a right to the things off my person and I feel it's a slippery slope to give the kids everything they ask for, cute as they may be, and as poor as their families are. What I did do was walk around with a gaggle of giggling girls who delighted in showing me around. As often happens, they told me they liked my white skin and that they were jealous. As usual, I told them, no, you're skin is beautiful, I like it, I'll swap with you. It was then that I coined the phrase, "coklat cantik". In my limited Indonesian, this phrase is about the best that I can come up with. It means "beautiful brown" and I used to try to convince the girls they don't need white skin. Because that's also a slippery slope, and too many women I meet in Asia already think that brown is ugly and white is ideal. (Part of this comes from the fact that if you are poor, you probably have to work outside, hence a darker shade of skin.) The whole thing upsets me, so I wish I would have come up with "coklat cantik" sooner. It has an alliterative sound in Indonesian because the c's both make a "ch" sound.
The cutest little girl was named Ranila, who had a terrific, light-up-
We headed back to Labanbajo the next day. Lynsey and Kristina got on a Pelni cruise-liner: an experience that's whole new level of insane pandemonium, even by Indonesian standards. I knew that the Pelni would be chaotic, but I got to see it first hand, at a distance, from the porch of our hotel room that evening. I smiled to myself and was glad I wasn't there.
I will try to make the next part short. (Because this blog is getting long, and I'm paying for my time here at this internet cafe.) Nicole and left the next afternoon for Bali and made our way south from Denpasar to Bingin beach. For two days we relaxed, read books, lied in the sun, occasionally threw ourselves into the ocean, and happily ate lots of Western food. Oh, the food! To quote my Facebook status at the time: "I have come to appreciate the fish / rice / vegetable regime of Raja Ampat, Maluku, and Sulawesi. I have. But being in Bali now has been a real culinary treat: BLT on a baguette, black bean burrito, yogurt with muesli and fruit... I have been eating like a queen these past 24 hours and I am savoring it, because who knows when I'll get it again. I love food." And that pretty much sums it up. We found a delicious, health-conscious, vegetarian-friendly, whole-foods-orientated place (Aunt Deb, you would have loved it!) called The Cashew Tree and we ate there for four meals during our short stay. We consumed all our Western favourites with delight, including some great chocolate cake. (Consequently, there were some mysterious rumblings in the digestive system later. What is this? Western food? Argh! I don't know how to deal with that anymore!)
A picture I really like from that time is one of me sipping a vodka
The purpose of the short stint in Binging, Bali was to avoid the official Lebaran holiday, which can change based on the moon. We gave time for the official day to pass before we headed to Jakarta to take care of some banking business. Or so we thought. That's right: Indonesia had one last head-banging-against-the-wall bit of chaotic confusion to throw at us. Now, granted, the blame actually falls on us for being so stupid as to assume, even after two years, that things in Indonesia would be similar to how they are at home. The banks didn't just take the day off for the holiday, or even a couple of days (as we had allowed time for, hence lying low in Bali,) but were closed for the entire week. And we had money to withdraw! And a flight to catch before the banks reopened! Cue the panic. We found the best solution was to withdraw our daily limits from the ATM and Nicole will return later to wrap up the rest of the business for us. Not ideal, but it will work. Oh Indonesia, always throwing monkey wrenches. That's how it goes: over two years there and it's still sometimes a love-hate relationship.
I loved our time in Bali, and Flores, and Sulawesi, and everywhere else. We met awesome people, did amazing things. And also were subject to several people trying to rip us off because of our skin colour. I just can't stand people trying to take advantage of you because of who you are. Even on our last day in Bali, our hotel called a cab for us and the man wanted the price that would normally be to hire a care and driver for a full day. He wanted 400,000 rupiah instead of the normal price of 160,000, which we had paid in a metered taxi when we arrived. We said "No, absolutely not. Give us the real price." He refused and drove away (what a waste to come all that way!) and we started walking. Within a minute we came across a metered taxi parked by the side of the road, with a very nice taxi driver who agreed to take us right away, even though we were headed to an area with heavy traffic. See what I mean? One minute, someone is ripping you off, the next, someone's helping you out.
In any case... Despite all this love-hate nonsense, it was sad to say goodbye to Indonesia. We chilled out in Jakarta for a few days (after the panic subsided) before leaving for Myanmar. By a very good stroke of luck, two of our friends and co-workers who renewed their contracts let us stay in their apartment at our old apartment complex. One of them was still there, even though it was the holiday. It was easy to be back in a place so familiar. We could take care of our errands and go eat at our favourite places before we left. We also found there's a new self-service laundry place under our apartment building! Oh joy! (No, really. Wish that place had been there while we were still there.)
We left Jakarta the day our contract ended and returned six weeks later. I'm glad we went to as many places as we did though. I feel like I can really say I've experienced Indonesia. (Just hope I don't forget my Bahasa Indonesia vocabulary.) The whole thing was great, despite scratches and wounds on my legs, despite people trying to rip us off and pocket the profits, despite seasickness and sunburn. Because the good of it all, the beaches, the diving, the Torajan funeral rites, Matthew and Scott, the friends at Poya Lisa, the mantas, the komodos, the vodka slushies and Comso on the beach... all of it far outweighs anything bad.
I think I'm finally ready to move on to writing about Myanmar. (And about time too, seeing as I'm not even there anymore!) Myanmar was amazing, perhaps my favourite country I've been to in Asia. In fact, I think I can definitively, it is. Next up, I'll be writing about Yangon and our wet and misty visit to a giant golden rock.
Waaah, it's to late for me to read a wall of text with no pictures. I shall read it tomorrow! :D I bet it's awesome.
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