A VISIT TO THE GOLDEN ROCK, OR, CRAMMED INTO A TRUCK IN THE POURING RAIN

When Nicole and I left Yangon to see the Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo (we can't pronounce it either, that's why we just refer to this part of the journey as Golden Rock,) we learnt of the Burmese penchant for playing melodramatic music videos during the entirety of a long bus ride. From this experience, I can only strongly advise against falling in love in Myanmar because it inevitably leads to lingering, forlorn looks, rolling around on beds and staring at photographs, melancholy gazing across park ponds, and general misery. Your partner will leave you and you will despair. This particular ride featured the same artist in video after video and I came to really pity the poor woman whose fifteen separate lovers left her every single time.

We arrived at our destination in the pouring rain, and it just never let up. With no language skills and the thick, soft Burmese accent to contend with, I tried to double check we were at the Golden Rock by pointing to a small, felt poster of said rock that was hanging in the bus window. Yes, they confirmed, we were at the Golden Rock. We were quickly shuffled across the street and from one songthaew to another (the trucks with two benches on either side of the bed and a covering on top.) Fortunately it turned out that a guy from our hotel was there so he could bring us directly to where we were going, along with some others. He was a very pleasant young man with a bloody red betel nut smile. He was the one who informed us that at the moment it was only raining cats and dogs here in Mon State, but that a few days ago it had been even worse: it was raining cats and pigs.

Driving through the driving rain we were soon soaked from head to toe. A mere covering over the top of a truck doesn't really keep you dry. The young man with the red teeth (I want to say his name was Ko Ko) didn't have a place to sit so he balanced on the tailgate and got the full force of the rainstorm. I watched rivers of water run down his shirt and across his face, and yet, he remained stubbornly cheerful. The Burmese people were incredibly good-natured we learned. (I would swear we also saw people up a pole fixing an electrical wire in the rain. It went by so fast, yet I'm sure I saw it. One of those things that make you scratch your head and say, Hmmm... What exactly did we just see?)

We got to the hotel and futilely set out our things to dry. The rain just increased its pummeling of the earth and we were effectively stranded. (Forcing me to blog as it happened.) We also met a fellow stranded traveler, the German guy I mentioned in my previous post. Flo (short for Florian) had only one week in Myanmar and was going through at turbo speed before meeting up with his friend in Bali. Naturally he wasn't happy about losing a day to rain. The three of us got on well from the get-go so we spent that night and the next day together. (Flo also asked me for my blog site, which I gave him, telling him he might feature in an upcoming post. Well, just over five weeks later, it's true. Flo, if you're reading this, just want to say hi and hope your time in Bali was relaxing!)

The next day the rain let up a wee bit. We could walk around and feel merely damp instead of soaking wet, so we decided it was now or never to visit the famous Golden Rock. The rain jacket I have with me would be more accurately described as a "mist jacket", just the thing to keep you dry when you suddenly find yourself in a fierce morning mist or fog. So, basically it's crap for actual rain of any sort. I bought a $1 "Convenience Rain Jacket" from a girl who must have spotted the moment we walked into view as a tourist in need of a plastic poncho. It worked though; I just put it over my mist jacket. And when I say it worked, I mean it kept me a little bit dry in the torrential downpour.

Nicole, Flo and I got into the tourist transport truck, which had seven rows of benches, each of which was supposed to fit at least six people. Of course, it wasn't possible with people such of ourselves of Caucasian-sized limbs. Sitting down, my knees went right into the back of the person in front of me, much as someone else's knees dug into my back. Turns out having half a foot of space between rows makes it rather cramped. Flo, whose legs couldn't manage that level of contortionist folding up, ended up straddling his knees around the two Burmese ladies in front of him, which of course we had to give him a hard time about. The lady in front of Nicole found that using her legs as a backrest was much preferable to actually supporting herself, so she just slumped back and let Nicole do the work of holding her up.

Before we could leave, the grumpy truck-master (for lack of a better term) decided we didn't have enough people in our row. As is often the case, they don't get going until they've maximized their profits and overstuffed the vehicle beyond all reasonable capacity. He frowned at us and muttered something in Burmese like: "Scoot over! Go! Do it now!" We were costing him money, after all. We had to demonstrate that we literally could make about six more inches of room, and that another human body was simply not going to fit in our row. This made him very unhappy, as if he expected us to just shrink and fold in our limbs. The idea of getting 42 slight-of-frame Southeast Asians into the truck was laughable to begin with; reaching that number with big-boned Westerners thrown in was just impossible. Once we got going up the mountain road, however, I found that being so tightly wedged between so many people somewhat lessened the shocks and bumps. Only if we remained in place, however. At one point my butt slid off the seat and I had to hang on for dear life; it took me quite a while to regain the bench.

Halfway up the mountain, we stopped at a small crossroads with a scattering of buildings in order to... Well, we never found out. We stopped for about 10-15 minutes. The driver got out, went somewhere, a few buses came down the mountain road past us... It seems to be a rule in Asian transportation that you can never go directly from A to B. There is always an unexplained stop in which nothing seems to happen before you're allowed to go on. So there we were in the open-air bed of the truck, uncomfortably stuffed like sardines in a tin can, when of course it started to rain, and hard. The only thing to do was pull up our hoods and huddle. Cold, wet, but not totally miserable. We were still laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

By the time we got to the top, the rain was really coming down. We sheltered under a covered section of souvenir stalls for a while before saying, "Screw it! We can't possible get any more wet than we already are." We bought an over-priced entrance ticket, deposited our shoes at the beginning of the designated holy area and gingerly climbed the slick marble stairs up. There were only a few tourists about, seeing how awful the weather was, but there were a lot of workers there: women carrying loads of brick, and men carrying sacks of what I guessed to be concrete through the main walkway of the large holy area. (It wasn't a temple, nor a pagoda, but it was holy because we couldn't wear shoes. Calling it a "holy area" is about the best phrase I can use.) The no-shoes (or "foot-wearing" as one sign said) is a rule. Doing construction, or moving an incredibly heavy statue (as we saw a large team of men doing as we left) does not warrant an exception.

As for the rock itself? Well, let's just say that later on, Nicole joked that she felt she couldn't send her grandparents a postcard of it and have it be an accurate representation of what she saw. The postcard contained a bright, gleaming, golden photograph, and if she wanted to send something more true to life, she would have to smear it with whiteout first. It was misty, windy, wet, and generally miserable. The real kicker was that Nicole and I couldn't even go up to the rock because women are not allowed to approach it. Only men may apply the gold leaf that covers the entire thing. (The reason being that women are not on the same level of holiness as men. Where did I put those Cultural Relativity spectacles that I had to use in Tana Toraja? Ah, there they are.Thank goodness the lenses are especially thick and waterproof, or wouldn't have been able to appreciate a thing on top of that mountain.) Nicole and I waited as Flo went to have a closer look, but there was such poor visibility that he only took a minute or two. We didn't let it get us down however; we enjoyed it for what it was: a ridiculous journey up a steep mountainside, crammed into a truck with

about three dozen other people, all to see a mist-enshrouded rock sitting above some truly majestic scenery which we couldn't see, all in the pouring rain and howling wind. After about 10 minutes we left the rock to explore the rest of the area. As we were leaving, my feet flew out from under me on the wet marble (in about as cartoonish a way you can imagine,) and I fell flat on my butt. It didn't hurt (my amply-sized derrière cushioned the fall,) but it did manage to get my hitherto dry underwear soaking wet. And once your underwear are wet on a rainy day, well, there's no point in holding on to hope for warmth and comfort any longer. We spent about another 10 minutes walking to the end of the compound but literally didn't see much of anything. We headed back the way we came and got some hot tea in cups about the size of shot glasses, which only could warm us a tiny bit.

We waited with some other tourists for the truck to head back down the mountain and made friends for the day with a British guy and French girl who were fun to chat with. We waited and waited and waited, chatting to pass the time. Everyone had finished their visit within half and hour and it was a full-on monsoon by now outside the shelter of the truck pavilion. Still, no one came to drive back down for what seemed like ages. Eventually a few more people came and we were hopeful and got into the truck. However, whoever was in charge told us that we couldn't go until the truck was full. We knew that they would once again insist on getting half a hundred bodies into the truck and that it would probably take another two hours before we could fill all the seats to their satisfaction. A deal was proposed: everyone had to pay extra and we could leave sooner. And to whom was this proposition directed? The tourists of course. I really don't think they said the same thing to the locals at all. I asked if everyone would pay, and the guy said something vaguely affirmative but mostly non-committal. It was pretty obvious that it would just be the tourists who paid extra. Being white in Southeast Asia is one long chain of instances of people trying to rip you off. I don't even say that with much bile, it's just true, a fact of tourist life. We waited it out a bit longer and eventually did not end up having to pay any extra, for which I was glad. You can't stand to get ripped off all the time after all.

So, we headed back down the hill, made the same mysterious and seemingly pointless stop halfway down again, changed our clothes at the hotel, and the five of us ate lunch together (British man and French woman included). That evening we all ended up on the same bus out of town before we had to disembark in the town of Bago to catch an overnight bus to Mandalay.

So, was it worth the time, money, and wet underwear just to see a big golden rock? No, not really. Meeting Flo, chatting with our new friends while sheltering from the monsoon, laughing at ourselves crammed into truck? Yes. The journey - and the struggle - trumped the end-goal in this case.

YANGON, OR, OFF TO MYANMAR!

Four days ago...

As for the immediate only slightly out-of-date update, Nicole and I are in Laos. We've been here eight twelve days so far, and are enjoying enjoyed the charming little city of Luang Prabang. It's full of cafe lattes, croissants, old French colonial buildings, an alluring night market, and these internet cafes, so I keep on writing while I have access to a keyboard. Heaven knows I've tried tapping out my blog on my mini-tablet, but it's just not the same. (Oh, my first-world problems in a third-world country!)

As for the truly immediate update (because I clearly didn't finish the blog post before leaving Luang Prabang) we are in Vang Vieng, where there are few charming little cafes but instead a bunch of bars, restaurants, and inner tube rental places. But, like Luang Prabang, it has internet cafes, so I'm back at it again, continuing and adding on to our first few days in Myanmar...

We left Jakarta on an Air France flight to Singapore, where we were pampered with entertainment screens and an in-flight meal that contained a wedge of Camembert large enough to satisfy even the hungriest Gallic cheese lover. I ate mine and half of Nicole's before it seemed only prudent to stop. We spent the night at our friend Mildred's house. Mildred usually puts us up when we're in Singapore and is one of the most hospitable and courteous people I know. She'll go out of her way to make sure everything's okay for us. (Mildred, you're awesome!) The next morning it was off to Yangon on a Jet Star flight. We arrived on August 1st and stayed in the country for 26 days.

Coming to Myanmar I had no expectations. Not low expectations, just a blank slate. We had prearranged the paperwork for our visas, similar to what we had done for Vietnam. In Vietnam there were lines and waiting time; not so in Myanmar. The travel agency that arranged our visas must have been a good one because we got out visas immediately, after which we breezed through immigration, picked up our bags, and exited the airport all in about 30 minutes! Without a doubt it was the easiest airport experience I've ever had. And it's not as if the airport was eerily quiet and clearly underused (the way I imagine a visit to North Korea might be.) It was a normal and sophisticated-looking airport, typical of an international terminal, if a little on the small side.

We got a taxi into town and right away the thing that struck me was the appearance of our taxi driver. He was a good symbol for Myanmar in some ways. He wore a crisp, bleach-white linen shirt, starched to professional perfection. On his lower half he sported a traditional longyi and sandals. A longyi is a floor-length tube of cloth that Myanmar men and women both wear. Men bunch the extra material in the front and tie it, women fold them tightly across their midrifts, the way you would wrap a towel around yourself after a shower. This particular outfit, collared shirt, longyi and sandals was the typical outfit for a Burmese man. Some three days after arriving in Myanmar, we were at a Buddhist site called the Golden Rock. (All of this coming up in the next blog.) We had met a German guy, Flo, at our hotel and decided to take the truck together up to this particular site / sight. As we were waiting for the truck to be filled to capacity, Flo asked what we thought of the ubiquitous longyi. My opinion? I said it was great, as if the entire country had collectively said, "No; you can't make us wear pants. We refuse." I think it shows a combination of cultural pride and an attachment to tradition. Of course, people wear pants too, but the longyi are far more common. That's how Myanmar is: this odd and beguiling mixing of traditions with 21st century life. People say that Myanmar is like an untouched land, perhaps reminiscent of Old Asia and the Mystic Orient. I think it's true to a degree. It's not frozen in time - I don't think you can find a place these days that truly is - but it cherishes tradition, leaves its relics in the open for all to enjoy, and treats visitors with great hospitality, just as a matter of course. One day I believe I'm going to say I was really lucky to visit the place in 2014, when the impact of tourists was only slight. It certainly did have the feel of a place that hasn't become Westernized and holds on tightly to its roots.

But let's move on to the real purpose of this post, without me waxing poetic about the Mystic Orient any longer. We had a quick and hassle free arrival, and our longyi-clad taxi driver delivered us at our hotel: an unpolished but decent place called Sleep In, in the Chinatown district of town. After finally tracking down a money changer (an entirely respectable place found up an entirely shady-looking stairwell in a non-descript city building,) we set off to find Shewdagon Pagoda, Yangon's most famous and spectacular landmark.

We set off walking using a city map I had downloaded to my tablet. We actually started walking the right way, but the road we were supposed to take changed names and we turned around, thinking we were on the wrong road when we saw the other name. Of course, asking for directions just got us more mixed up. We were pointed in three completely different directions at different points, none of them the way we actually needed to go. Sometimes getting directions is ridiculously hard: A) We don't speak the language, and that's our problem, but B) People tend to give you the most vague hand waves ever to show you the way to go. They don't draw a little sketch showing to turn here and then turn there, they give a lazy flick of the wrist and mutter something that doesn't really answer your question. This is a known and documented phenomenon. Eventually we did figure it out though and began the long walk... only to find ourselves too hungry and impatient by 2 PM to keep it up. We hailed a taxi to bring us to the lunch spot I had picked out.

And quite a lunch spot it was. I had chosen it from Lonely Planet because it was touted to be full of good, traditional Burmese food, but nobody spoke English there and there were no labels (of course) over the pick-and-choose curries, meats and assorted unrecognizable dishes. So we had to pick blindly and ended up with chicken, fish, fish soup, and some mystery meat that turned out to be mutton. Perhaps a bit intense for our first meal in a new country. None of it was bad, per se, it was just the whole not knowing what we were eating aspect. Nicole said she was going to double-check anytime I said I had a suggestion for lunch in the future. 

From lunch we wandered back to our main attraction: Shewdagon Pagoda. We paid the entrance fee and deposited our shoes before taking an escalator up to the pagoda. We learned that they are very particular about the no-shoes thing in Myanmar. Even outside a temple or pagoda you had to take off your shoes well before reaching holy ground. (Or at least what I perceived to be holy ground; holy ground in the Theravada Buddhism of Myanmar seems to include a super-wide holy radius around all areas of interest.)

Despite it being a cloudy day and a bit drizzly, the site couldn't fail to be spectacular. Shewdagon Pagoda is a massive, thoroughly gilt, structure of intense Buddhist devotion. (Actually, it's hard to find anything religious that's not an object of intense Buddhist devotion; the Burmese are very devout and never give up an opportunity for merit-making.) It's not a pagoda in the sense of a multi-tiered flare-roofed Chinese building, but more resembles an upside down bell. The parts of the pagoda include terraces, turban band, upside-down alms bowl, bell, lotus petals, banana bud, umbrella crown, vane and a huge, sparkly diamond at the very top. The thing about almost all Burmese pagodas (Shewdagon being Exhibit A here) is that they containso much gold! Nicole and I think that Myanmar would probably be as rich as Arab sultanate if they gathered all that gold together and sold it. Of course, this would be sacrilege of the highest order. If applying a tiny sheet of gold leaf gives you good merit as a devout Buddhist practitioner, removing and selling it would probably send you straight to hell for your next thousand rebirths. In any case, all that gold makes for an impressive and imposing scene. You can't help but stare in wonderment as you walk around the base of the structure, past each station set up in honour of each of the eight days of the week. (No, that's not a typo; in the Buddhist tradition there is Wednesday morning and Wednesday evening and they're two separate days.)

Within minutes of arriving at the pagoda, a strange little monk came up and began chatting with us. Our experience with monks up until this point in time came from our 2012 visit to Thailand. The image of a public announcement poster that read, "Ladies, don't touch the monks," from the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok is still etched clearly in my mind. We were operating under the assumption that we shouldn't approach monks at all and in general, stay out of their way. The chatty little monk made us nervous, so we replied to him in as short and polite of phrases as we could until he went away. We began our walk around the pagoda and drank in the sight of it, impressed and humbled. When we had gone about halfway around the whole thing (and we were going slowly,) it began to rain and we quickly ducked into a pavilion off to the side to shelter there. A tour guide of sorts began talking to us, but we got him to go away through the same teenager-ish method of short, non-committal responses. We didn't really want a tour, and we didn't want to pay anybody for information either. Then, another monk started talking to us. Since it was raining, there was no escape. However, a few minutes into the conversation it became clear that it would be okay to talk to him. He initiated it, after all, and a genuine friendly feeling came across. He wanted to practice his English, but he also just wanted to share information about his beloved pagoda that he visits everyday. He asked us questions, we asked him questions, and before you knew it, he had his phone out (yes, monks can have smartphones!) to see if we could find each other on Facebook. More than one surreal look passed between Nicole and me as we tried to fathom the fact that a monk was trying to find us on Facebook... on his smartphone. (Unfortunately, even though we thought the friend request went through, we never did find him online.)

After the rain stopped, Anya, for that was his name, began to show us around the pagoda to many interesting spots we might not have found on our own. He showed us a photo gallery with black-and-white pictures of Shewdagon in the olden days, a walking photography tour of the important places in the Buddha's life in India (upon completion of which we were both given a Buddha image by the photographer himself), the imported Bodhi trees around the perimeter, and the secret spots to see the diamond glow at night. In certain spots (that seemed to be largely unknown to everyone else) you can see the diamond glow red at the night. Take three steps forward and it glows orange. Another three steps brings you to yellow. Someone had written it in scraggly white-out letter on the tiles, but you'd hardly notice it if you didn't know where to look.

Eventually Anya had to leave and bid us goodbye. We had become rather attached to our monk friend. We got a photo with him before he left. We were careful to to touch him though. Friendly and gracious as he was, he was a monk, and we are ladies, and ladies just don't touch monks.

Remarking how awesome the entire day had been, we took a final look around Shewdagon and headed for dinner before going back to Sleep In.

The next day it was more pagodas and Buddhist sites. We saw Sule Paya, which is, in fact, a roundabout with a golden pagoda in the middle of it. It was here that I saw one of - if not my favourite - Buddha images in all of Myanmar. This one wasn't particularly splendid or golden or ancient, but it looked loved in a way, as if the prayers directed were genuine and heartfelt, and that this made it more alive and more special than the unreachably high, impossibly big, grand Buddhas we saw everywhere else. It was one of those inexplicable things that hits you immediately and powerfully. I fell in love with that tiny, little Buddha statue and looked on at it reverently for a quite a while while devotees came to pour little cups of water over it, as is traditional.

We also visited Botataung Pagoda, originally built to hold eight sacred Buddha hairs, transported from India. (Sacred Buddha-hair relics are everywhere. And it's easy to see why. You can only get so many relics out of finger bones and so on, but Buddha hairs, like Buddha footprints, are inexhaustible.) An interesting and unique thing about that particular pagoda is that you can walk inside of it and of course, as you would imagine, the entire thing is gilt: the only thing that's not golden is the floor. So much, so much, so much gold! Dare I say it...? Maybe... too much gold? The idea doesn't exist in Burmese thinking. Gold = good. Gold = devotion. Gold = spare no expense for the most splendid ornamentation. Gold = fast road to easy merit-making. Gold = the best there is.


We went off in search of lunch after that - a pleasantly achievable task as the streets of Yangon are in a logical grid! It was a luxury to be able to navigate by ourselves as we could never do this in Indonesia. Even Singapore isn't that grid-like. We didn't find the Indian biryani shop we were looking for, but ended up at option #2: a Shan noodle shop that turned out to be cheap, delicious, and a perfect place to wait out the rain that began in earnest soon after we sat down. (It was always raining when we first got to Myanmar. We weren't dry for at least three days.)

After checking out the main market in town - an overwhelming sprawling mass of jade shops, fringed by other souvenir stalls - we headed back down the street. We bought rambutans as a snack from a street-side fruit stand and promptly ended up giving them away to woman who was begging. Rambutan-less, we continued on and this time did find the biryani shop in time for dinner, where we sketched out a plan for the rest of our 25 days in Myanmar. (It was at the biryani place I learned that in Myanmar they use party streamers for toilet paper. No joke. Their tissue really, truly looks like party streamers. Weird, yes, but I guess it works.)

That night I bought snacks at the grocery store for our bus ride the next day. I always like grocery
shopping in foreign countries because it interests me to see what sort of things they stock on the shelves. Mundane, yes, but interesting all the same. Nicole would say it was mundane, period, so I enjoyed my humble little grocery shopping trip alone.

All in all, Yangon was a great, if slightly damp, introduction to Myanmar. Not only did I enjoy seeing the splendid, golden pagodas, but the mundane things were also highly interesting to me as well. There were the market and grocery store, as I already mentioned. There was also a unique technology available on the streets: roadside telephone booths that are actually just a few land-line telephones set up at a folding table with chairs. Sure, everyone's got their mobiles, but I like the fact that you can still call from an ordinary telephone on the side of the road. It's old-fashioned things thriving in the modern world again. There were also many run-down buildings that showed that oddly alluring combination of entropy and beauty. Something about the concrete or, I don't really know what, seems to make the buildings rot and decay. Not good, of course, but it made for some arresting sights.

The next day we left early for our next destination: the Golden Rock of Kyaiktiyo in nearby Mon State, which also contains a sacred Buddha hair relic (or so they say...) It would prove to be a interesting, if entirely wet, experience.

FLORES, IN WHICH I SEE A MANTA RAY!!!

On to the last blog for Indonesia! But first, two important episodes from the Togean Islands that I forgot to write about. Nicole has already admonished me for not writing in a more timely manner and forgetting to write about important things. Well, one thing I forgot to include, the other I left out on purpose in order to publish the blog on time before we left for our night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.

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 dives with absolutely AMAZING! Besides Raja Amapat, they were the best dives I've ever done. I am spoiled, I know. I've only done 15 dives in my life, but they've been in some truly spectacular spots and I just don't know if I'm ever going to find anything that compares. If I had my travel journal or dive book at my side, I could write down more accurately all the things I saw, but I do remember some particularly cool ones. On the first dive we saw about ten reef sharks, the closest just chilling out a few mere meters away! I also saw a decent-sized ray. On the second dive we saw pygmy seahorses and giant trevally. At one point we found ourselves in a little trench and when you looked up, there were tons of giant, gleaming, silver fish. The underwater scenery and sea life combined to make a beautiful and stunning picture. Over that trench the current was quite strong and when we descended we had to grip rocks with our fingers just to hold on. I wasn't sure why we were stopping and looked at the divemaster a few times to try to figure it out. He pointed and I looked and all of a sudden, out of the blue, there it was! A manta ray! It was really majestic. It had a black top and white belly and was just hanging out in the current, maybe getting itself clean or filtering for food. It's gigantic fins (I'd call them wings because they look more like that) undulated slowly in the current and gave the impression of some big bird of prey, gliding on the wind. That's what really took my breath away (which wasn't good, given that I was breathing with a regulator; I coughed and spluttered a bit): it's resemblance to a beautiful bird of prey took me aback. It didn't flutter like a fish, it just glided and imposed its beauty and grace. We were lucky to see it too, because just the day before they had been to the same spot and hadn't seen any mantas.

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-

the-room smile. She was small, so I carried her part of the way as we made a circuit around the village. We snapped a photo before getting on the boat, and we both have on beaming smiles. Those kids just went wild as our boat both arrived and left. You'd think the circus had come to town. Perhaps we crazy tourists are like the circus.

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

slushy and reading Comso magazine, because it's sort of the quintessential, south-Bali, touristy thing to do. I never read Comso and it was equal parts delight, horror, scorn, and hilarity. But, sometimes it's fun to read fluff, and heaven-knows the Bali scene was a fun change of pace. (Another thing I read was, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime." I'm a slow reader, but I finished it in two days. Great book - highly recommend it.)

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.