SULAWESI (PART 1), IN WHICH WE JOIN A TORAJAN FUNERAL PROCESSION

We are stranded for at least the afternoon, maybe the whole evening because of the downpour, so I am forced to stop an finally get around to blogging. You see, the trouble is I am a lazy blogger who only writes when so inclined, or, when I'm stuck at a guesthouse with no place to go, as it were.

Nicole and I are in Myanmar now; it's our third day here and here in the region around Yangon it's rainy season. It's rained all three days we've been here so far. As the guy from the guesthouse who rode with us on the truck said, ever so matter-of-factly, "It's raining cats and dogs." Earlier in the week, he said, it was raining "cats and pigs," which is apparently even worse. But now we're stuck and there's no hope of getting to see the Golden Rock of Mt Kyaiktiyo. Maybe if we're very lucky, we'll get to go tomorrow. But now is a good time to begin the game of catch-up with my blogging. Being strictly chronological, I am still in Indonesia.

So... Where were we? Ah yes: After a few day on Pulau Seram, we returned to Ambon for a night and then flew to Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi. The flight wasn't anything special but as we were disembarking, the pilot, who was standing at the exit, caught my eye. He was my neighbour in Jakarta! I don't know his name, but he lived (or lives, actually) in my same tower in my apartment. I've barely talked to him beyond the occasional "Hello," but we've shared many an elevator ride together. I also know he has an Indonesian girlfriend, who I have chatted with several times before. He recognized me right away as I walked past, and there was a moment of surprise and a quick greeting as I went past. I've said before how most of the expats in West Jakarta seem to be teachers or pilots; guess it was only a matter of time before someone I knew ended being the pilot for one of my budget flights.

There wasn't much to see or do in Makassar. The day we arrived, we hired a car to take us to see some cave paintings and a waterfall, which was neat, if a little lackluster. Mostly it was just hot. I don't know how the Muslims endure not drinking all day during Ramadhan. I really, truly don't think I could do it. My favourite part of our stay in Makassar was walking along a long public seafront area. It was getting to be evening and people were coming out in droves to enjoy the night and get ready to break their fasts. The most popular item to have on hand seemed to be some sort of jelly drink in a plastic cup. (Think of juice with small jello cubes floating inside.) There was a large and beautiful mosque sitting over the water, modeled in a modern style. As soon as the call came out across the loudspeakers, everyone unlidded their jelly drinks, waters, juices and downed them within moments. There was a fairly festive atmosphere and people seemed to be enjoying themselves. (There was also an unending line of fried banana stands along the way. I mean at least a hundred carbon copies of the exact same sort of stand! The idea of branching out and selling something unique, say pineapple, is apparently just not done. We joked about how the sellers must just hope a person gets tired of walking in front their particular stand. Do they ever lend each other bananas? What would happen if you did open a pineapple stand? Questions without answers...)

As interesting as it was to see everyone break their fast at sundown, the downside to it being Ramadhan was that the city was largely shut down and it was difficult to find food. Beer, even at a convenience store, was not a possibility. The next day (after a visit to Fort Rotterdam, in which we spent more time playing cards in front of the museum instead of touring,) we ate lunch indoors in a stuffy restaurant with its windows and blinds closed because they didn't want to flaunt the food when most people were fasting. I wasn't much hungry anyway. We had been on a mission to find pineapple (and not fried bananas, damn it!) the night before, but only found one at a grocery shop. Well, it was a bit off, and the next morning so was my stomach. We were all ill to varying degrees, Nicole and I getting the worst of it.

Earlier that day Nicole and I had renewed our 30-day visas at the Makassar immigration office. Neither of us were feeling well, but Nicole was feeling worse just then so she left me to do the "negotiations". The so-called "song and dance" for which she did not have the patience at the moment. I was so proud of the subtlety and dexterity with which I navigated my first bribe: "I'm sorry miss, the visa takes three days to process." "Ah, no. You see we must get it today. Must. What is the price for express processing?" "I don't know miss. I am new and I don't want any trouble, but I will ask my boss..." Some moments later... "For express is 500,000." $50 more or less. So then our passports disappeared behind closed doors for some 45 minutes. When I gently inquired as to their status, the clerk went back to check and produced them a few minutes later. They don't need three days to process them. They don't even need thirty minutes. After you give them your information and fill out a form, they put the appropriate sticker on a page, stamp it and sign it. It's a process of about, oh, 10 seconds. Maybe 20 if you had to find a new package of visa stickers.

On the way back from the immigration office, I started to feel very poorly as well. I managed to hold it together until we got out of the taxi, and then had the lovely experience of vomiting - twice - onto a grassy curb between street and shop. Was it the pineapple? Was it the runny egg I made myself eat with the free breakfast that morning? Probably both. At least Matt and Scott didn't get too sick, maybe just a bit of an upset stomach. It's kind of inevitable at some point when you're travelling Southeast Asia.

That night we took the night bus to Rantepao, the biggest town in the Tana Toraja area, and arrived about 5 AM the next morning. We checked into Hotel Pison, ate breakfast, and promptly fell asleep for a much needed one-hour nap. Nicole had already contacted someone about being our guide in Tana Toraja, but since we had not confirmed, he was already with someone else. He did, however, set us up with another guide, Yulius, who turned out to be a great guide. After the nap, we were ready to go - no point in wasting a morning - and set out right away to see one of the famous/infamous Torajan funerals.

We had a minivan, a driver, and Yulius. Not too far outside of town, we turned off on a side street and went up and down a few country roads before stopping. Like any big gathering, there were cars and trucks parked all along the road, so you knew it was going to be a big to-do. "Big to-do" isn't even remotely getting close to describing just how big of an affair this funeral was. First, perhaps, a bit of background knowledge.

Our Lonely Planet guide says that for the Torajans, "life revolves around death," and we found this out to be absolutely true. Torajans save all their lives for their funeral rites to properly send their loved ones to the afterlife. Of course people die all the time, and families will have private, small-scale ceremonies at the actual time of death, but that's really just the beginning. Bodies are preserved with chemicals and kept at home. In the case of a husband or wife, the deceased is placed into the couple's bed and remains there until it's time for the big funeral. For the case of another family member, the body might be kept in the common area. The person is not referred to as "dead," but "getting sick." While the family member is "getting sick," the extended family is contacted and plans are made to return to Toraja in the summer months. There are funerals all year long, but July and August are known as the funeral season. The big funeral involves the extended family, a huge arena about the size of a football field, hundreds of buffalo and pig slaughters, tons of food, processions, and eventually a splendid burial. Funerals usually last about 5 days. The more important the person was in the community, the bigger, more expensive, and more grand the funeral is likely to be.

As we made our way up the hill to the funeral area I remember seeing a family making their way down. The look of horror on the young daughter's eyes made us wonder what exactly we were going to find. At the entrance our eyes got wide as saucers, and stayed that way. 

The first thing we noticed was the livestock. Buffalo were being lead into the funeral arena by their nose rings and pigs were tied hand and foot (or hoof and hoof?) to bamboo frames and left lying on the ground to be carried in later. Donors' names were often spray-painted onto the animals' sides. 

Seeing the pigs tied up disturbed me a lot; obviously they didn't like it and they squealed a lot. The noises they make are just so unnerving: screams, grunts, and squeals of distress. It's a sound of panic and not of pain, but it still cut through me and bothered me at my core. They shelter the pigs from the sun, laying big leaves over them, and making sure they're okay, but they will still occasionally thrash and kick and foam at the mouth. And this was just at the entrance. I knew that if I didn't steal myself, I wouldn't be able to even enter the rest of the funeral.

Yulius got us a place in the section of the pavilion housing the second son of the deceased lady and his extended family. Tradition dictates that guests bring a gift, usually sugar or cigarettes, to the family. We had already stopped en route for Yulius to pick up a gift and he now handed me a carton of cigarettes to hand to the family head. We removed our shoes and climbed up into the section of raised pavilion. We sat on the floor mats with everyone else and were offered some snacks and a very earthy tasting coffee while we did some introductions. It felt weird to be there. Afterall, we were basically crashing someone's funeral. But while the tone was serious, it wasn't at all dour or sad, it was more of a celebration. The younger and better English-speaking generation asked us questions and introduced themselves. I slightly bowed my head and handed our gift over to the family elder, the second son, humbly saying, "Here are some cigarettes for your family." I reflected that I had never said, nor would probably ever say again, that particular sentence.

Yulius informed us that we were invited to join the family in their procession if we would also join them to eat afterwards. We looked at each other, blinked a bit, and slowly said, "Uh... yes..." Because how often do you get to join a Torajan funeral procession? It's along the lines of what you call a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so, we had to say yes. The different families of the deceased lady's children took turns throughout the day making a procession across the arena to sit in a small, central pavilion for a while. The men and women stood in separate lines and we waited for a long time while a man on a bullhorn announced the animal sacrifices brought by each member of the family. Each child, we were told, would be expected to bring buffalo, and for every buffalo, four pigs. Since the lady had eleven children, this amounted to about 70 buffalo and close to 300 pigs... from the immediate family alone... for one lady's funeral. 

Eventually we made our way to the pavilion where the grandchildren, dressed fancily in traditional clothing (and makeup for the girls) greeted us. The men were offered cigars and cigarettes. The young women were offered candies and the older women took betelnut. On heading back to the family's own area we got separated from Matthew and Scott but just followed our hosts.

There was a lot of butchering going on at this point. It was the third day of the funeral and that meant pig butchering. The buffalo fighting and sacrifices would come later in the week. I saw a lot of graphic images, such as the charred bodies of the pigs after they had been flamed to remove the hair, blood spilling out of such a charred pig as it was set on the ground for butchering, and the uncoordinated hacking with machetes on the ground that passed for butchering (can't remember if they actually had a tarp down or not.) These sights were very gruesome and bloody, and yet, they didn't bother me too much. Hearing the pigs squeal in distress was far worse and sickening for me than seeing the aftermath of the killing and butchering. It made me reflect that death doesn't bother me so much as suffering. And even so, the pigs didn't suffer too much. The pigs and buffalo are respected for their roles in the funeral and so they're treated well in life. At the funeral, of course they're distressed because they're tied up, but they are still kept in shade throughout the day. And the killing itself is quick. I think. (Didn't actually care to see it for myself.) It also made me think about the animals whose lives end at factory farms who probably suffer a lot more. That's not cool. So you see now why I was quiet and pensive and my eyes were wide as saucers.

We ate a lunch of pork, rice and other dishes, self served into a brown paper packet. While we were sitting and eating with our adoptive family, someone came up to our section and handed the family elder a large pig haunch, still raw and bloody, which he causally set beside him. It was, overall, a fascinating, eye-opening, somewhat bizarre, and quite bloody experience.

We stayed for several hours, but eventually Yulius lead the way out and we went back down the hill with partly dazed expressions much like, What did we just see? 

For the rest of that day we toured some traditional houses and then returned for a Torajan meal. We had chicken and pork, each cooked (steamed maybe?) in a bamboo shoot which then gets shaken out onto a platter at your table, along with rice and veggies (because you haven't eaten unless you've had rice). It was delicious, leading Nicole and me to decree Torajan food to be some of, if not the best, food we've had in Indonesia. (A thought that was confirmed in the next days.)

That was the first of our three days with Yulius, but I'll leave off there, because if I don't post something soon, I might just never get around to posting anything at all. As always, more to follow.

MALUKU, IN WHICH CORAL, BARNACLES, AND GRAVEL ASSAULT MY LEGS IN THE ORIGINAL SPICE ISLANDS

We flew into Maluku on  small plane, about the size of what I fly from Minneapolis to Chicago, but it had propellers attached to either wing. Once we landed, we took a bemo (like a van / bus) into the main part of Ambon. You can take a ferry across the bay from the airport to the city, but bemo only costs $1, even if it is a bumpy and cramped hour-long ride. 

Ambon was not exactly pretty. We got dropped off in a market area and had to wander some pretty squalid streets and ask frequently the way to our hotel, seeing as it didn't exactly have an address, just a nearby street. We remarked that if we had 5000 rupiah for every time someone shouted, giggled, made some sort of noise at us or solicited us for an ojek ride, we could have stayed at a nicer hotel, or maybe flown Garuda instead of Wings Air (whose motto is often written as, "Fly Is Cheap".)

The order of the night was to send our laundry for express cleaning across the street, hire two ojeks to take us to an internet shop, and find dinner. In dirty, gritty Ambon where almost no one spoke English, these things might have been overwhelming and impossible if we hadn't just come off two years in Jakarta. A meager understanding of Bahasa Indonesia and an acclamation to less than pristine and hygienic conditions has gotten us through a lot.

The next morning we found a thumb-sized cockroach scuttling out of our bathroom. At that size, you really don't want to squash them (at least Nicole and I don't) so our solution was to trap it under a teacup and leave said teacup undisturbed in the middle of the room until further notice. (Further notice was a man with a can of bug spray who defly scooted the teacup out into a corner of the hallway and sprayed the poor, disgusting critter until it was twitching on its back.)

Around noon we took a bemo back to the airport to pick up Matthew and Scott, two college friends of Nicole's. We had to do some haggling before we left, sadly. For the same journey that cost us 10,000 rupiah each the day before, the driver and his buddy asked for 20,000. Granted, this is about a $1 difference (less even with exchange rate the way it is) but it's still 200% of the real price. And this is an old, tired game which we are familiar with. We knew exactly what was going on.

We said, "No," and stuck to our guns. They tried to insist. We didn't budge (literally and figuratively - we were already inside the bemo). While pinching my skin I said, "Kulit putih, kulit cocklat, sama sama," which translates to "White skin, brown skin, the same." The man's reaction was to throw back his head and laugh and offer 15,000. What... feces of a male bovine animal, if you'll pardon my French. We still said no and eventually got our way. We didn't get out and paid 10,000 apiece at the end.

Matthew and Scott arrived successfully in Ambon after two days of flying. They came off the plane in surprisingly high spirits (maybe they were just dazed and confused?) and we happily set off for the ferry to take us to Pulau Seram. We arrived in time, or so we thought, only to find that Ramadhan had thrown a monkey wrench in our plans and that the ferry had already left little less than an hour before. Well, poop. (A stronger synonym may have been employed, I don't recall.)

So how? as our students would say. What were we to do? The man at the dock with the best English, who was explaining all this to us, informed us that we could catch the ferry at 9 the next morning and that he and his buddies would give us ojek rides to a nearby hotel. Having little other choice, we said okay. While Nicole and I were bummed out that our plans for the night had fallen through, the guys were ecstatic that they were already getting to ride a motorbike.

It wasn't all bad though. I think Matt and Scott were actually relieved to not be on another mode of transportation. That night, Nicole, Scott, and Matt taught me how to play Eucher, a partnered card game. We played it almost every night after that; we definitely played cards of some sort every day.

The next morning the ojek guys showed up bright and early as they said they would, urging us to leave asap. The only difference was that this morning there were only three of them. The 4th guy just didn't show up. Ferry was getting ready to leave, we needed to go, so... my backpack went with another guy, and Nicole's bag, Nicole, and I all got one motorbike. I was wedged between Nicole and the driver (Charlie, the chap with the good English) and Nicole's hefty backpack went between Charlie and the handlebars.

It felt like madness; we had never thought we would actually try the old three-to-a-motorbike thing, let alone with a great, hulking backpack of about 15 kilos. But we were off, zooming to the port. A few minutes in, it started to rain. And a few minutes after that, it began to pour. I discovered that getting whipped in face by raindrops hurts when you're speeding along. I kept about half an eye open to avoid getting smacked in the cornea. There was nothing for it anyway but to hold on to Charlie and hope we got there in time in one piece. We weren't in bad spirits though, we were laughing at the whole thing.

We did get there in time in one piece. We were lucky enough to get some of twenty last tickets too.

The trip from Ambon to Seram was... tumultuous, to put it nicely. We started smoothly, but soon the seas turned moody. First came the lurching forward and back, bad enough for someone such as myself who's prone to motion sickness, but then the lurching side to side came as well and the whole passenger area became a cacophony of moans, gasps, whines, and retches. Not mention the actual vomiting and the sickly, sweaty smells that suffocated the air. Matt - whose mother had made him pack a pharmacy in addition to his first aid kit - had motion sickness pills, but they weren't making me any less queasy, nor were the knocking me out. I was a pale, ashy ghost, eyes closed and damp with sweat, clutching the edges of my seat. When at last I felt like I was really going to throw up - now - I went to the front of the passenger area where a hatch had been thrown open to the bow to allow some air to pass (AC towers weren't working). I walked right out into the open to vomit over the side, but I found that the cold, wet wind and forward facing position erased my need to vomit.

Instead I just clutched at the hatch door and stood on the deck, finding it better than going back into the passenger area. Eventually I got shouted at by someone above on the ferry's bridge to get back inside, which I did, sort of... I sat at the top of the stairs to the hatch and faced outward, face and torso in the open, looking ahead and letting the cold keep me alert. For once I was selfish and didn't care if I was blocking air flow. I wasn't budging from my spot and going back to the rocking, sweaty, vomit noises.

Eventually Nicole joined me. (Matt wasn't enjoying himself by any means, but was managing; Scott felt fine and could have chowed down on a granola bar to pass the time, and told us as much.)

Sitting in the cold, wet wind wasn't exactly pleasant, but with a just-one-more-hour, just-thirty-more-minutes, this-too-shall-pass attitude, well, it did pass. But I sure felt like a miserable, drowned, seasick rat when we finally squeezed of the boat. (Or maybe a mouse, since I prefer them to rats.)

Some confusion and haggling followed as we tried to communicate and negotiate with the driver there to pick us up. The price seemed to have changed on us. Not something to brighten our moods. We got the price down a bit after walking away and trying to get a ride with someone else. Then, it was a few more hours drive through twisting roads and over the mountainous hills of Seram. And then... another boat! This time, it was a narrow and almost canoe-like one that took across a stretch of water to our homestay.

We were four of maybe fifteen tourists total in the village, and the only Westerners, so it felt very authentic; there weren't any tourist resources, just the activities that the guesthouse could arrange. Like in Raja Ampat, we ate what was given us for all three meals.

On our first full day we did a snorkeling tour. The coral and fish were nowhere near as impressive as Raja Ampat, but it was still good, of course. The highlight of the day was lunch: a small picnic with freshly grilled fish (as in grilled in front of us and popped onto the platter) in a shady grove where we stopped for the afternoon on a little island, just for ourselves. It was a delightful lunch.

On day two, a man from a nearby village took us on a jungle trek. The jungle trekking itself was pretty mild, less than two hours I think, though not without some rough patches. Whereas most guides in Indonesia wear flip flops and have a cigarette in hand, chain-smoking all the while, ours was barefoot and carried a machete and a black plastic bag. I don't know how he managed to walk through some of the tighter spots without falling and killing himself with the machete, as I would have inevitably done.

There was a canopy platform

RAJA AMPAT, IN WHICH WE LOOK AT AND EAT A LOT OF FISH

We have just returned from 10 nights in the stunningly beautiful area of Raja Ampat off the Bird'sHead (Vogelkop) of western Papua. Imagine for a moment the scenes of brilliant, sunny, blue and turquoise waters over white sand beaches beneath palm trees; the sort of thing they put on posters to mount on the ceilings above dentists' chairs so that you can look at something dreamy and distant while a dental hygienist scrapes away at your gums. Raja Ampat was like that (but with no gum scrapping): dreamily brilliant blue and turquoise and white, complete with palm trees leaning over the beach, but... real. How do you even begin to describe that? (Without feeble references to dental office posters that is?) My main concern, heading into this blog, is a dearth of appropriate adjectives I can use to describe the place. "Beautiful" doesn't really cut it and I'm at risk of over-using it anyway. Other options would include "gorgeous" or "stunning" but even so, what are these next to a picture? I'll include what pictures I can, and let them do what my paltry adjectives cannot.

We stayed at two homestays, four nights at a place called Kordiris on Gaam Island, and six nights at a place called Koranu Fyak on Kri Island. Liveaboards are another option for visiting Raja Ampat, but not for the likes of humble, poor, workaday teachers like Nicole and myself. Even so, our homestays were expensive compared to the usual price of homestays in Indonesia. Accommodation was very simple. We slept on mattresses (comfortable enough) under mosquito nets in thatched, bamboo huts with wooden planks as the floor. Every lunch and dinner consisted of a big colander of rice, and more often than not fish and boiled spinach or another vegetable. Once we got chicken (we think; it was hard to identify exactly,) squid another and beef one other time, but otherwise it was fish, fish, and more fish. Usually they would serve us some new fish for one meal and at the next lunch or supper it would be refried, and then it would make one final appearance, dressed up heavily in some sort of sauce for a third meal. The first couple of days I felt hungry a lot because of the low calorie meals and no snacks, but I guess I got used to it after a while. (Did get a bit tired of fish/rice/spinach though.) The bathrooms consisted of squatters and non-flush toilets, and also mandis, or bucket showers, which were new for me. For the mandis, you just scoop water to pour over yourself. I came to appreciate them quickly; you tend to use a lot less water that way. Most Indonesians shower that way anyway. We also had phone service (but no WiFi) and varying amounts of electricity, depending on how long they let the generator run.

Our days were spent lounging about and snorkeling for the most part. I didn't go diving at our first homestay because their operation looked just too small and unprofessional, but I did at the second homestay. Actually just walked down the beach from Koranu to Yenkoranu, owned by the cousins of Koranu. (Someone told us there are just four main extended families in this area of Raja Ampat.) Yenkoranu had a larger operation and there were some Americans and Europeans there whose brains I picked as to the safety and professionalism. Hearing only good things, I went for a dive that day, and what a dive it was! Diving in Raja Ampat might spoil me for life, I'm afraid. I saw so many fish! It's not just the variety, because the variety was amazing. I've never seen so many different, colorful, vibrant, interesting fish of different shapes and sizes. But beyond the variety, it was the quantity! Schools upon schools of fish. Hundreds in some schools, thousands when it came to the little fish. On the first dive, I saw two schools of barracudas, reef sharks, and had a triggerfish try to attack me.

When I tried to go back to Yenkoranu for another dive later that week, I was told that they couldn't take me, that I'd have to use the dive shop at my own homestay. Because they are related, they are a little touchy about business, not wanting steal each other's customers and create bad blood between them. (At one point in time, we asked if we could move to  Yenkoranu - this is an entirely different story - and were told no. Even though they had room, we had to stay at Koranu Fyak because we were already doing business with them. I understand it's to do with family relations, but it doesn't make for a great business model.) Anyway, we eventually got some new neighbors at Koranu. The day our middle-aged German neighbor, Lutz, moved out, we got Ava and Eric, an American couple about our same age. They had been working in Australia and were now traveling in Indonesia. I enjoyed their company a lot and found it easy to get on with them right away. They went diving several days in a row, and found everything to be fine, so I joined them on our last full day, along with our most recent neighbor, Alex, a Malaysian living in New Zealand, who had arrived the day before. I did three dives that day, and they were all great. Some of the highlights included a Napoleon fish (they're big!), a giant clam, extensive fan coral, turtles, nudibranches, sharks, pipefish, and most amusing of all, fat old sea cucumbers and a comical looking flounder that looked like a piece of carpet shuffling on the sea floor with barnacles for eyes. I'm always surprised by how big and fat the sea cucumbers are. Before I knew any better, I had always naively assumed that sea cucumbers were the size of, you know, garden cucumbers. Instead they are like monstrously fat, primordial sea slugs, a foot or two long, and maybe four or six or more inches in diameter.

I am so glad I learned how to dive. It feels awesome to be able to explore underwater. Sure, the descent is always a little scary, and so is relying on so much equipment just to breathe and see and maintain buoyancy, but being able to explore reefs and see fish, sea cucumbers, nudibranches, turtles, and sharks in their natural habitat is very cool.

Besides the diving, the highlight of Raja Ampat was the trip to the Fam Islands. We went with three other guests from Yenkoranu: Marina and Jack, a Canadian-Australian couple, and Bastian, from Germany. It was an all day excursion. Our first stop was called Manta Sandy, where you can sometimes see manta rays, but we were not so lucky, seeing as it was low season for them. We then went snorkeling at a place called Fam Wall, which offered a lot to see underwater. Before lunch, we stopped at a lookout place called Pianemo. This looked like what you might see if Google "Raja Ampat": island clusters, almost like mushrooms, surrounded by a turquoise-blue bay. It was so picturesque, it was hard not to continually snap photos, knowing they would all end up looking the same. After drinking in the sight for a while, we descended to the dock (apparently the president is coming to visit soon, so it's been decently built up) and jumped into the bay and swam a bit. It was very salty - we floated with ease.

We had lunch on a little, unfortunately litter- strewn island. For all its charms, Raja Ampat is not free of litter. At this point, I don't think I will find a litter-free place in Indonesia. There were some monitor lizards scrounging about, and we watched them (although I hate the way they move, it creeps me out.) With monitor lizards scrounging further afield, we all safely took naps on the beach.

The last snorkeling spot was the best of the day, in my opinion. Melissa's Garden was too choppy, and the current too strong, so we moved on to Amborek village. We walked around the village a bit and then swam at the jetty. There were cool things to see like big old lionfish, a lobster, and even a black and white polka dot fish! I really did see one! It was the craziest thing. It was white with perfectly round, black dots. (A Google search tells me it might have been a Panther Grouper.) But the most impressive thing was the number of fish. Like my first dive, there were so many schools of fish. They clustered around the jetty in the hundreds and thousands, swimming together in huge streams, flashing silver every once in a while. The best was to swim down and come up through them, like parting a solid curtain of silver-blue fish as they squirmed and flashed away. I never got tired of that. Diving was awesome, and it's hard to hold a candle to the Pianemo lookout, but the Amborek jetty ties at least, in my humble opinion.

The Fam Islands trip was the day before my birthday. The next day was my golden birthday. I'm 25! I'm one-quarter of a century old and officially an old geezer. (Pretty sure I'll say that next year too.) The best part of the day was snorkeling by our homestay and seeing a big, leatherback turtle, swimming lazily along the reef. I saw turtles three days in a row, starting that day. They're very fun to watch, taking their sweet time as they glide through the water.

All in all, Raja Ampat was calm and quiet. It's low season now (November being the high season). As you snorkel or go by boat along the shore, you see that it's still mostly undeveloped. Far more trees and empty stretches of beach than buildings. The homestays have a handful of cottages / shacks each, and they are in the process of building more, but even so, there are so few people, so little noise and light pollution. I could see the stars very clearly, and even the Milky Way, I think. I'd love to go back, it's easy to enjoy letting time slip by there, but it's hard to say if that will ever be  possibility. In the meantime, I've got all my photos and inadequate words to remember it by.

SO, THAT'S ABOUT THAT: WRAPPING UP TWO YEARS IN INDONESIA.

It's hard to believe, but my time in Jakarta will be done in just two days. Tomorrow, Nicole and I will go to Singapore, spend the day there and hang out with our friend Mildred, and return with new visas-on-arrival. (Our work permits were cancelled a few days ago. It would have been really nice to keep them until their expiration at the end of July, but the school wants done with us. It will be easier for them to bring in more expats if they officially release us.)

Then again, when I look around my apartment, I get a bit of a reality check. How did I get so much stuff in two years? It's not that it's so much, actually, just more than I can fit in two suitcases. Some is being shipped home, but I think in the end I will have to pay for extra baggage. Oh well. I suppose I can deal with that... Papers. It's darn papers and books that always take up the most room. Notes from students, handouts from professional development, teaching books, and always the miscellaneous "Other" category that takes up the most room. That Thai cooking book I got during a cooking class in Thailand? I'm not going to throw it away. Nor the music for the dizi I have accumulated, now that I actually have a dizi (Chinese flute.) My friend who taught me how to play it is very generously letting me keep the one I have been using. I can't get rid of those. And yet, everything takes up room. Alas!

But you are not interested in my packing woes, nor the myriad ways in which I procrastinate in dealing with them. (Say, by blogging.) In this post, I want to write a little bit about what my life in Jakarta has meant to me and what I'm going to miss most about it, as well as some of the surprises, pleasant and otherwise, I have had being a Jakarta expat for two years.

This is not the end of the Teaching In Indonesia blog. First of all, I have about three more Indonesia-related blogs I want to publish, which I have simply been too busy/lazy to get around to publishing yet: the ones about Chinese New Year, term break in Sumatra, and some of my observations about social issues. These might need to be published later however, because after Nicole and I return to Jakarta with our visas-on-arrival, we will be leaving Tuesday night (the 17th) for six weeks of travel in Indonesia. There are many places in Indonesia we have never been to (for example, most of the 17,000 islands that make up this nation.) It has always been the plan to travel once the contract was done. (Makes sense, since we're already here.) Right now, our plan consists to going to Raja Ampat in Papua, Maluku, Sulawesi, and Flores - all different islands in Indonesia. This will bring us to the end of July. It will be the beginning of Idul Fitri then, and everything will be closed, so we will lay low in Bali for a few days, stop in Jakarta to take care of assorted business, and then head to Myanmar. There may be time to visit either Cambodia or Laos too, after Mynamar, but that much is not certain now. I will, however, visit Taiwan for a week before heading home to the states. Many of our Chinese-language teachers come from Taiwan and I will visit them in mid-September. The long and the short of it is, come Tuesday, I will be on the road, with inconsistent internet access, and although I plan to continue to blog, I don't know when exactly you'll see posts. I plan to finish up the three blog posts already mentioned, but I will also write about my travels too.

Which brings me back to my previous point. In a couple days, I am going to be gone from Jakarta for good. I am going to miss my Jakarta life. I am going to miss my life here in general. This is the first time I've made a life for myself. Of course, I lived away from home during university, but that's different in a way. I'm not saying that school-life is any less "real" than work-life, but it does feel different. Also, when I lived in Morris, I was about a three hour drive away from home. Something about always being 35-48 hours away from home (by plane), being as far from home as it is almost possible to be, makes you take a deep breath and really think about being independent and relying on yourself. Then again, Skype has made it very easy to stay in touch with people at home too. Sometimes I will call my parents to ask them a trivial question, just because I can. Even if it takes 35-48 hours to be home in person, at least I call home at any time.

I have certainly felt myself grow as a person and as a teacher. I think I was a much better teacher during year two, just because I had a better sense of what I was supposed to be doing. The academic side of teaching - writing an engaging lesson, for example - has never been too much of a problem for me. It's the whole organisation and classroom management thing that has taken time for me to refine. (Surprise, surprise.) These are a couple of areas where I find myself constantly stealing good ideas from veteran teachers or books. There's no shame in that though; I think it's a good way to learn. And it seems to have worked for me so far.

One of the best parts of teaching is getting a nice note from a student at the end of the year. This, too, I think, is evidence that you're doing something right. A couple of my 5th grade boys wrote me a very nice note that read: "We know that you are quitting BBS this year. To show how much you help us thorugh out this year, here is a small token of gratitude." (They gave me a fridge magnet.) "We all will miss you. I hope you will miss us to. Ms you always help me do anything I cannot and you always make me happy, you always calm me down when i'm stressed... and goodbye I can't bare to say good bye to you. Oooooh! noooo! Goodbye Ms Danna. From, P5-Faith." It was actually very touching, coming from 11 year old boys who normally act like they don't like anything about school. Another student told me this year, "Miss, because of you, I became a bookworm." That was also touching. And meaningful. Proof that at least I've done something right for one student. Sometimes it's hard to assess yourself, but when you get real, positive comments from students like that, it can give you a lot of happiness and motivation.

As far as teaching goes, I think I'm on the right track and I'm looking forward to doing more teaching in America (and possibly abroad again.) One unexpected thing from these two years is that I've really become a science geek. I had some previous experience with this when I taught 6th grade science in Fergus Falls, but these two years have made me think I really want to continue teaching science.

When I had my interview with Bina Bangsa, they asked me which subjects - English, math, or science - I would most like to teach. I said English and science and so that's what I got. I have been the level rep. for 4th grade science for both years, writing the tests and making the worksheets for the grade level. I have also been one of the teachers in charge of the Science and Technology club for 3rd grade to 6th. This club is pretty popular, and we had about 40 or so students who joined this year. The teachers in charge took turns making the activities for all the students. Some of mine this year included doing an acid and bases lab, making musical instruments out of various materials (i.e. anything and everything I could find in the science lab) with a tie-in to sound waves, and a classic baking-soda-vinegar lab. This last one had a twist however. I found that you can use carbon dioxide to extinguish a candle flame, which is very cool. In my own classroom, I got in the habit of answering all the students' various science questions, even if they weren't related to the topic at hand, and they had so many that we had to start a Science Questions jar to answer them. A 5th grader even prefaced a science question to me by saying, "Miss, you're a scientist, right?" It's funny how having a little bit of knowledge makes you seem like an expert in the eyes of a child. As long as I am teaching 10 year olds, I feel like a science expert. When I hang out with my friends who actually have science degrees, I feel like a ignorant middle-schooler. Regardless, wherever I teach next, I hope I will be teaching science.

Leaving the professional side of things alone, I think I have also grown in personal ways too. Moving to a new country with only a few contacts and having to build friendships from scratch has been challenging at times, but very much worth the effort. Also, I fully expected to run into cultural differences in Indonesia, but I really wasn't prepared for the nature of them. Sometimes, those differences felt like more than I could handle. Here's an interesting observation I've made about myself,which I never could have imagined making before living abroad: I am just as open-minded as ever, but I am not as tolerant as I had thought I was, perhaps.

Let me explain. It's taken me a while to come to terms with Indonesian culture, as well as the culture of the wealthy Chinese-Indonesian families. I have a lot of respect for many aspects of Indonesian culture: the hospitality, the warmth, the tendency to share meals, the resilience in the face of floods and storms, the diversity and embracing of so many sub-cultures, religions, and languages within one country. Other aspects of Indonesian culture have taken me a long time to understand and accept, but I simply cannot embrace some of them. I cannot help but feel that nanny-culture is detrimental to kids. This is my opinion. Many children are growing up being raised by their nannies, who only act in the role of servants and don't actually take a parenting role. Sometimes the protective instinct - the sheltering and molly-coddling, if you will - goes to an extreme. I'm talking about junior high kids with nannies; children who don't know their nanny's names, who just call them "Mbak" - an impersonal title like "Miss," or "Girl"; 9 and 10 year olds being spoon-fed; 1st graders with awkward gaits, because they've been pushed in strollers for so long they haven't properly developed the neural pathways for motor skills; children who think that Bali is another country, and when they go there, spend all their time playing an Ipad at a resort; and if you asked our students to find Indonesia on an unmarked map, I think about 98% of them would fail at that task.

The Chinese-Indonesian way of raising kids, so far as I can tell, consists of love, doting, and a weird combination of high and low expectations. Kids are expected to get perfect scores on all their tests, but, knowing how to tie their shoes is not expected. Many of our students - and their parents - live and die for the honour of being named one of the "Top 10" students for the grade level - ceremoniously announced in front of the whole school at the end of the year. So, scores at the 90% level? Yes. Dressing and feeding oneself? Not so much. Parents get very worried if they think their child won't have time to eat a snack at the end of the day, and yet the kids seem to chow down exclusively on hot dogs, instant noodles, chicken strips and desserts. I have much respect for the love, care and concern that parents have for their kids. I cannot respect all the ways they get expressed though. And I think that's okay. I am not Chinese-Indonesian. This is not my native culture. I try to understand it, but, if at the end of the day I don't embrace it, I think that's perfectly fine. (I also have many issues with the persistent racism and sexism I see in everyday life, but that's an issue for another blog.)

There are also many differences in the Singaporean school system that I don't fully agree with. It really just boils down to a difference in personal philosophy. I think that if I decide to teach overseas again, I will seek out a school with a more Western basis. Teaching in a very difference culture and school system for two years has helped me to realise better what is important to me when it comes to school and students. Having to adjust to this very different system has been good for me though. It makes me think that I can handle any number of challenges that might come my way. It also has made me focus on cutting through philosophy - my own Western perspective and the Eastern perspective of the Singapore system - to direct my attention on what my students actually need from me on a daily basis. All of that is good. The long and the short of it is, these two years have really helped me grow as a person and teacher. And it's not all negative experiences either! I don't want it to seem that way. There have been many, many positive teaching experiences for me here as well. (Turning children in science-geeks, for example. Or helping struggling students learn basic skills.)


And now, I believe, it's time for some lists. Everybody loves lists. (Especially if they come with pictures and are easy to scroll through on Buzzfeed. These, however, will require some reading.)

Somethings I never expected to do in Indonesia:
1. Join a Chinese orchestra and learn to read Chinese music. A unique experience and one I'm glad I said yes to. I have made new friends and learnt new skills while trying to master the dizi. Reading the Chinese music was the biggest challenge, but I'm okay at it now.

2. Discover I could put a 19 liter gallon of water on a water dispenser. For at least a year and half never replaced our water jugs when we ran out. I always let Lynsey do it because I didn't think I had the strength. Then I discovered that Nicole regularly replaces their water and though she's stronger than me, it made me start to wonder if it might just be possible after all. Turns out it is and now I replace our water jugs too.

3. Be reduced to tears because someone was cleaning for me. This was an example of big cultural dissonance. After Science and Technology club - which we held in the assembly hall due to the high number of students involved - it used to be that the cleaners would regularly clean up our science experiments. This bothered me immensely. If it was the club doing the activities, why should the cleaners remove our materials and wash our beakers? To me, it felt abusive. I never minded asking the cleaners for help setting up the tables in the assembly hall (because that's part of school property,) but I just couldn't abide them doing clean-up from the activities too. When I mentioned this to my fellow Science and Tech teachers, they casually told me not to worry about it, because the cleaners expected to do it. After all, I was told, they have a good job and get a Christmas gift from the school every year, so it's okay. This basically reduced me to tears because I could not handle the cultural dissonance.  I did not grow up in a culture where one class of people serves another and it was too difficult for me at that time. My friend LeAnne came up a very logical solution: just have the students do the clean up. Oh. Right. That makes so much sense.

I have eventually learnt how to deal with the service-culture a little bit better. The cleaners always do the dishes in the staff room sink too. (That sign you see in American staff rooms, "Your mother doesn't work here. Please clean up after yourself," would only confuse people here, I think.) At first, I'd never hand over my dishes. Again, it felt abusive to have the cleaners do my personal dishes. And yet, that's not their perspective. I had to learn to see things from the cleaners' point-of-view. If I refuse to hand over my dishes, the message coming across isn't: "I'd like to save you some trouble. Please don't bother with doing my dishes." Instead, it's: "I don't trust you to clean my dishes. I cannot even let you do this simple task." In other words, while I might think I'm being nice, my actions might come across as offensive. So, if someone is doing the dishes at a time when I have just finished eating, I now hand them over with a sincere thank-you. (Still feels weird though. If no cleaner is there, I do my own dishes automatically.)

4. Teach the finer points of grammar (adverbial phrases, collective nouns, past participles, present perfect continuous tense, subordinate clauses, etc.) to little kids. I now know more about English grammar than at any point in my life. Because in our school system, when you teach English, you're really teaching how the English language works from a mechanical perspective.

5. Learn how to use a squatter toilet and become totally comfortable and unphased by it. I have gone from skepticism to tolerance to appreciation on the matter of squatters. Sometimes when one is out and about in Indonesia - the real Indonesia, not the malls of Jakarta - there are both Western and Asian toilets available. Often the Western toilets are dirty and wet and nothing I would ever sit on anyway. I have to squat over those as well, so wouldn't it just be easier to squat over a squatty-potty? Yes! They're better in a way because you don't have to make any contact with the toilet. The first time I encountered one of these, I took a photo of it - equal parts fascinated and disgusted - and stuck the photo on this blog as an object of curiosity. Now, to come across one, it's like... whatever. Doesn't even warrant a thought or emotion from me. It's a toilet.

6. Attend two wake services. (Very sad, this one.) The first was during year one, when one of our American co-workers died very suddenly. That was truly shocking and numbing. The second was this year, for the mother of one of my students.

7. Fly to another country for a doctor's appointment. Last year, part of my skull was feeling very tender. For a few months. That on top of a the appearance of some headaches made me panic a bit. I went for a CT scan at an Indonesian hospital (a procedure that cost $100 total.) Even though there was nothing amiss from the head scan, I still felt that I should go to a hospital in Singapore for a second opinion. Aasha and I went to Singapore for fun on a weekend last November and worked in a visit to the Raffles Neurological Centre as well. The Singaporean doctor thought it might be a combination of stress (we talked for a while about the stresses of Singaporean education) plus unconsciously clenching my jaw. This seemed more plausible to me than the Indonesian doctor's theory that wearing my hair in a pony tail was the cause of the problem.

8. Understand the every squirm, wriggle, and gurgle of my digestive tract. My stomach is fine-tuned to what is going to make me run to the toilet in an hour and what is not. I have a much more intimate relationship with my digestive system these days.


Things I'm going to miss:

1. Lychees and mangosteen. My favourite tropical fruits!

2. Cheap massages. A 90 minute massage costs about $12. Perhaps $14-15 when tip is included.

3. All the fancy restaurants in Jakarta. Jakarta has a pretty decent night lift and many good places to eat.

4. $3 movie tickets. So cheap, lah!

5. Micro-travelling. What an awesome time in my life when I can go to Bali for the weekend on a $100 round trip ticket.

6. Hanging out with my friends. Going to Starbucks with Aasha and Amber. Drinking by the apartment pool with LeAnne and Duane. Getting a creambath with Mildred or Nicole. Having queso and margaritas at Hacienda. Eating Indian food at Amaya every chance we get.

7. The expat life and the diverse expat friends I have made. Going to the Jakarta comedy club. Meeting Bonnie and Dan through LeAnne and Duane. Seeing Dan's expat band play live at Eastern Promise. Getting to know Simone, an Australian friend my age. (She taught at English First and now has a teaching job in Bogor that she will return to Indonesia for. She helped us to place orders for tailor-made dresses at Pasar Mayestic, the cloth and fabric souk. I regret that I met her so late though. I hope we will meet again. Guess this gives me a reason to visit her in Australia!)

Speaking of expat friends, I have a great memory of sitting around at Royal Mediterania pool for my friend Kari's going-away party. Kari and her husband Ole are from Norway - how did you guess? - and they left last June. There were many people from many different places at the going away party, and I figured that some of our home-countries included Norway, Iran, America, Singapore, Indonesia, Austria, and South Africa. Among us we probably spoke about 10 language or more. (English, Norwegian, Farsi, German, Afrikaans, Tamil, Indonesian, etc. And those were only our first languages!) I enjoy the diversity and how being in a foreign country with other foreigners brings you together.


What I'm not going to miss:

1. Traffic jams.

2. Pollution so thick you could cut it with a knife.

3. The wonderful perfume of the sewers and canals. (AKA: Jakarta Fresh.)

4. All the various illness associated with life in Jakarta. Mostly...

      A) Sore throats and ear-nose-throat infections.

      B) A persistent, hacking cough, known as Jakarta Lung.

      C) Any manner of digestive problems. Even if you're careful you can still get bad food in you, and then the diarrhea comes, or the vomiting, or if you're very unlucky, both, at the same time. It happens. As much as it is a fact of life, and really no more unusual or unsettling for me now than getting a cold or sniffle, I still use any number of euphemisms for this: "A Disgruntled Digestive Tract," or "Major Protests in the Lower Intestine," for example. There have only been a few times when it got so bad I really had to stay home and was incapacitated. Otherwise, you just deal with it. (Even at school, kids will tell you they were home sick because of diarrhea. No embarrassment or shame about it. It's like reporting you had pink eye, or the flu.) On the plus side, my tolerance for street food (and the perceived coolness I'd like to think comes with it,) isn't half bad at all.

The first two illnesses on the list above tend to get drawn out and aggravated by the omni-present pollution. It's true that some days the skies are actually clear. There are the occasional sunny, blue-sky days and clear nights with a few stars. However, it's also true that there have been a couple days during my time here when the smog was so thick you could see it at eye level, like fog. The last sickness on the list can happen to you anywhere in Indonesia.

Another fact of life: Rare tropical diseases are not that rare when you live in the tropics. During the past two years, I have personally known two people who got dengue (and very likely more than that, unofficially) and two who got typhoid. One of the people who got dengue was Lynsey, my roommate. It had to have been caused by a mosquito bite (while still in Jakarta, might I add - in fact, both cases of dengue were in Jakarta.) It made her weak for a week and gave her lots of headaches and pains, but, as she said, "At least it's not malaria." As for me, the worst I suffered was when I got severe diarrhea and vomiting for about three days at the end of September, 2012. I was bedridden for a couple of days, completely weak, dehydrated, famished and uncomfortable. It was awful. Could it have been dysentery? I still wonder.

But despite illness, pollution, traffic jams, floods, and all my crazy school experiences... I absolutely do not regret moving to Indonesia. I'm afraid I've drawn attention to too many negative experiences in this blog post. I should make it clear that there have been so many good experiences too. The best experiences have centered around travel, friends and food. Personal and professional growth has been challenging but rewarding. Seeing a new part of the world has been invaluable. I don't know. How do I even end this blog post...? I know. By saying, that's that, and going to finish my packing. That way, I don't have to end it. Besides, I've got more to write later.

THE REST OF 2013 (INCLUDING VIETNAM) PART II

Happy May Day! We have the day off because it's Indonesia's Labour Day, like a lot of other countries. This term has had a lot of random one-day-off-in-the-middle-of-the-week holidays. By Nicole's reckoning, only 4 out of 11 weeks this term are full five-day weeks. Seems like a good day to blog.

And so our tale continues. In this episode, we find our heroine kayaking around the limestone cliffs of Ha Long Bay, climbing through the Cu Chi Tunnels last used during the Vietnam War, teaching students how magnets work, marking about 120 composition penned by up and coming English Language Learners in two days' time, and making friend with a family in Abu Dhabi.

I'll switch out of third person now. Let's go back to Vietnam. When last I blogged, Aasha, Dipesh and I had finished a full day of ambling around Hanoi. The next morning we got picked up at our hotel for the 3-4 hour drive to Ha Long Bay which is north and east of Hanoi. The others in our group were 1 elderly Asian man (I presume Vietnamese, but I don't actually know,) 5 British girls, and 3 American guys. The guys were from California and of Vietnamese descent, two brothers and their cousin. They claimed that all three of them put together could speak Vietnamese, but only as a team effort.

Our boat disappointingly did not have typical Chinese junk sails like I was hoping, but it was still a good boat. (Despite one rat sighted during the voyage.) Once onboard, we had a seafood lunch as we sailed into the bay past the magnificent "limestone monolithic islands" (I lifted that, but it's a good description.) Sadly, my camera had stopped working at this point. It was a problem with the lens. The telephoto lens was still working but the normal one wouldn't. Whenever I put it on the camera it just made weird electronic adjustment noises and showed a blank black screen. I ended up taking pictures with the telephoto lens and my tablet instead. But still! That's why I brought a different camera back with me for 2014 - one that isn't so delicate and can stand being tossed around in a backpack a bit more.

After a few hours we had made our way well into Ha Long Bay, green and white limestone towers passing by us on all sides. Just do a Google image search for "Ha Long Bay" and you'll see what I mean. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been a little sunnier and clearer, but it was still impressive. The first place we stopped was at a huge cave. We toured around inside this cave with other groups on boat excursions. The path into the cave and out again was fairly long because the cave was immense and cavernous and it's limestone ceiling stretched high above us. This was not  a cave to cause claustrophobia - just the opposite if anything. I'm still not certain of the geological history of the cliffs there, but I know the limestone plays into it. Very neat to walk around inside one anyway. 

We got to go kayaking after that. Happily, I got paired with the most sporty of the five British girls so we really took off and kayaked all over the place. We went around a small floating village in the bay and around any cliffs we thought looked interesting. We were the first ones to leave the boat and last ones back. That evening, after dinner, the British girls, the American guys and the three of us sat on the uppermost deck of the boat to play cards and drinking games. Local women would row up to our boat in small dinghies to sell vodka and snacks. The girls had bought some vodka so we were set up for the night. One of the games we played was Bullshit, but because of the British girls, we decided to call it Bullocks instead. And if you wanted to call "Bullocks!" you had to do it in an English accent. We goofed around and talked and had fun. 

The next day included a tour of a small pearl farm, and then we picked up some passengers who were headed back from a three-day tour. With the new folks, who included some American and British couples, we got a mini-cooking class and made spring rolls. I think the best part of that day was getting to know one of the British couples. They had been travelling around for a few months on their honeymoon and doing some volunteering as they went. She was a doctor, almost done with her residency, and he was a primary school teacher so they had found it easy to find volunteer opportunities. Everybody can use doctors and teachers. They were very fun to talk to and share some stories with.

Back in Hanoi, a few hours later, we just had time for some delicious sandwiches before heading to the airport to go to HCMC. Nicole and Claudia were already there and had found a hotel. The plan was to arrive around midnight and head out on a tour the next day with them. 

Standing in line to check in at the Jet Star queue we found that once again we had another flight delay. As it was already getting late and we knew that we would now arrive after midnight, this was pretty frustrating. This was just the tip of the iceberg however. The Hanoi airport is probably the worst airport I've ever been in. Everything about it was awful. I'm not a picky person, I usually just roll with the punches, but the number of factors conspiring against us at this airport put me over the edge. In between the check in on the lower floor and the security check on the ground floor there seemed to be hundreds (yes, actually hundreds) of people hanging around. Doing what? I could not tell you. They were just a big, pointless crowd of people. Some with luggage, some without. Not queuing up to check in to flights, not waiting for arrivals, just... there. And they didn't go away. It was mysterious, and, seeing as they completely blocked the way and it was a nightmare to push through them, very annoying. It wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't had to push through them about five times. 

After we went through security we thought we'd find a wifi spot and e-mail the hotel to tell them we were arriving late (we had arranged airport pickup again.) We got through security to the gates only to find there was no wifi whatsoever. The next course of action was to find a phone. There were none. I brought my concern to an airport staff member. They were very unhelpful and eventually I found out there was no phone or wifi at all and no one could, or would, help me. So, once you get past security there is no way to contact anybody outside the airport. I exited security, pushed my way through the hundreds of people milling about in a small space and went downstairs to find a phone. The Tourist Information Desk looked promising but their phone could only make local calls to Hanoi. The people at the Jet Star desk were able to help me at least. Back upstairs and through the teeming masses and security once more. We waited around on uncomfortable plastic chairs, keeping an eye on the departures board. On one walk up to the departures board I discovered that our flight was no longer there. Simply gone. Poof! What the heck! Already in not the peachiest of moods, I asked of an airport staff - still diplomatically - what was going on. The infuriating woman wouldn't even acknowledge me. She did not deign to make eye contact, or even mutter a vocalisation, but tersely waved me away from her desk. I tried again and all I got was the frigid hand wave. Well [expletive expletive] you and what the [expletive expletive expletive] is this [expletive expletive expletive] and I mean [expletive]! This of course, in my head, not out loud. The solidly built walls of my composure finally blasted away, I blustered past security once again, forced my way through the multitudes of people uselessly taking up space, stormed to the Jet Star desk and asked for their help in figuring out what the [expletive expletive expletive] was going on. They told me my flight was boarding now and I better hurry upstairs to the gate. Maybe this time I swore out loud. I don't remember but it's a distinct possibility. I ran upstairs, shoved through the throng, and this time security didn't even bother making me pass through the scanning machine. Aasha and Dipesh and I queued up... only to wait around for 30 or more minutes. They boarded another flight first while everyone on our flight stood around waiting. And it took forever because for at least 10 or 15 minutes they called latecomers to the gate and didn't seem to want to depart until everyone had arrived. Excuse me, but if someone can't get to their flight on time - on a delayed flight nonetheless - they don't deserve to hold the entire flight and all those after it back while they are summoned. But that's not how Southeast Asian logic works. (Logic? What logic?) Needless to say, we were all feeling pretty bitter. The final kick in the pants was when we arrived in HCMC and it took an excruciatingly long time to get to the terminal. One last little jest at our expense. In my exhaustion and anger, I briefly considered if I had died and gone to some sort of purgatory where I would be taxiing on the tarmac from now until the end of time. 

But eventually we did arrive and sure enough the driver from the hotel was still waiting (at last, some redeeming gesture of goodness from humankind!) I hope I'm never in the Hanoi airport again - what an experience!

The next day we headed out on our tour with Nicole and Claudia. Nicole told me about their visit to the War Remnants Museum the day before and how emotionally shook up it had made her. She said that she was shocked and horrified by the things she learnt American troops had done to the Vietnamese during the war. The pictures, stories and artifacts from the museum were overwhelming. She shared some of the horrible things she had learnt with me and even the secondhand shock was unbearable.

When she shared some of these stories with me, some of my ire from the day before faded. Maybe that unbelievably rude woman who just waved me away when I asked for help lost a father or mother in the war. Maybe her family was tortured at the hands of our troops. Maybe someone in her family still suffers from severe disability due to Agent Orange. How do I know that there aren't real scars, even now, and that dealing with upset Americans at the airport is more than she can handle, thus the no eye contact? How can I know? It got me to thinking and really sobered me up.

The first stop on the tour was a bizarre temple (in my opinion just because it was so different from anything I have ever seen) of the Cao Đài, religion. According the Wikipedia article I have just read to refresh my memory, it was established in Vietnam and most of its adherents are Vietnamese. Their god is represented by an eye (The Left Eye of God, to be exact), their beliefs include a rich cosmology, and their temples are extremely colourful. We were allowed to enter and observe... a ceremony? worship? meditation and prayers? Je ne sais pas. Row after row of dutiful practitioners sat on the floor inside. All the women wore white robes as did many of the men. Some men wore bright red or blue or yellow robes too and some had fancy looking hats. What is it with religions around the world and weird hats? They mostly sat in silence and occasionally would all bow at the same time, seemingly before a bell had even been rung. It was just so mysterious. Talk about the "Mysterious Orient" - I would say this was the epitome of it. It was colourful and weird and ornate and totally beyond my comprehension. A mural on the wall at the temple entrance showed Vietnamese leaders with Victor Hugo painting words on stone tablets. Stranger and stranger...

We ate lunch at "the only place in town" (i.e. the restaurant of my business partner with whom I have a deal to bring busloads of tourists every week). I was more insulted by the lie itself than anything else. Not very convincing when you drive past half a dozen place to eat on your way out. Ah well.

The last stop on the tour was the Cu Chi tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels - and here I need no visit over to the interwebs to refresh my memory - were built as means for the Vietnamese to disappear from the dangers of war on the ground. Some communities lived underground for years, etching out a meager existence and fighting guerrilla warfare. With our tour group we watched a surreal pro-Communist video about a young girl who was an American-Killer Hero of the highest order who had bravely found against the American Devils and protected her community. It must have been made very shortly after the war, judging by the age of the film. It was too bizarre, surreal as I say, to be truly offensive. How can you be offended by such obvious propaganda and political spin? They weren't trying to force the propaganda on us anyway. The video was presented more in the light of being an artifact and it was followed with factual information about the tunnels.

The tunnel entrances were teeny-tiny. I used to think Indonesians were small people. It's the Vietnamese who are truly slight of frame. The entrances were about the size of a large shoe box. Or a tile on the floor. You can go through some of the tunnels. They have been widened for tourists and they're still very small. We went down the entrance (this one was had steps, not just a hole in the ground.) Aasha, Claudia and Dipesh decided they didn't want to do it. Too small. Too claustrophobic. Although we knew the tunnel wasn't very long, it's scary to just head into it, not knowing where it goes exactly. Those in the group who wanted to go went down the tunnel one after another. Nicole went and I started and then backed out, claustrophobia crashing in. But then, somehow, I pushed down my fear and made myself go back in. And once you're in, you really can't back out. It was too small to walk, but tall enough not to have to crawl, so Nicole and I crouch-walked through the whole thing, hearts beating fast. Some areas were pitch black so you just had to follow the person in front of you. It really wasn't that far, but it was completely exhilarating and terrifying and I thank my lucky stars that I will never have to live in a tunnel.

During our tour we also saw all the horrible, nightmarish traps that the Vietnamese soldiers made to stop, maim and kill the American troops. Some of them were unbelievably ghastly and made me feel sick. That, combined with the information from the propaganda video, made me realise that both sides had done plenty to torture each other. It would seem the Americans were as cruel as the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese were as sadistic as the Americans and vice-versa and all of it was unbelievably, unspeakably inhumane. The lesson I took away from this is that there is nothing worse than war and people can be truly awful. Awful isn't even a strong enough word. Repugnant, maybe. Diabolical. What's the point in piling blame on one side or another? It's a small comfort to try to distance yourself from things like that, but it's hard to do that when you realise this happened less than 50 years ago. 

By the time we got back to the city, it was night already and we spent the rest of the day going around one of the bigger night markets and eating dinner. The night market was full of the same North Face and other brand names we saw in Hanoi (real or knock-off, hard to say). I didn't get any North Face but I did get another pair of travel pants! And I am happy to say that our last dinner in Vietnam was truly the best. All our food was fresh and tasty and delicious and I would go back to that restaurant in a heartbeat. It was a good way to end an exciting and sometimes emotional trip. It was a trip full of "woahs" and "wows" (in fact, that's what Nicole called her blog post about it.) I'd like to go back though. I feel like there's a lot more to see and do. Also, I'd like more Vietnamese sandwiches, cinnamon curry stews, mango salads, and spring rolls please.

As for the rest of 2013... School has been much easier this year, as I mentioned before, so time went pretty quickly. By Week 8 of Term 2 we were into our biannual mega-testing mode, the craziness where kids as young as 5 and 6 take eleven exams in a two week period on which the totality of their academic merit and much of their self worth is based. This is also very mysterious to me. More mysterious than the mysticism of Cao Đài, and certainly a lot more frustrating. We don't have any lesson plans during this time, but we do come to school and mark papers for 6 hours a day. Every written composition needs to be marked twice and if the two markers have a disparity of more than 3 marks (points) a third marker must be called in. Ai-yi-yi. Oof dah!

There were a few other trips during this time. Aasha and I did a weekend trip to Singapore before Vietnam, and we also went to the Thousand Islands with other friends after October. There was even a trip to Bogor (about an hour away from Jakarta,) in which Nicole and I got on the train in the nick of time but Aasha had the automatic doors close on her and, just like something out of a movie, we were banging on the window glass as the train started to pull away and gather speed, leaving Aasha on the platform. Fortunately, another train to the same destination followed 15 minutes later. 

Overall, the time went by quickly. Now that my time at Bina Bangsa is almost done, I can reflect on all that has happened and all that I've learned and how I've changed. It's hard to pinpoint when all of these changes and learning experiences have happened, but eventually at some point I have come to feel at home in Jakarta. That's not to say I wasn't very excited to come home for Christmas.

Looking spectacular in tall tube socks, sports sandals, travel pants, and my Damn I Love Indonesia sweatshirt (from the Damn I Love Indonesia store) and to top it all off, carrying a didgeridoo, I flew from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur. There I scrambled through many long lines and dragged my approximately 50lb luggage up a non-functional escalator going from the crappy low-cost-carrier terminal to the fancy-pants, sleek and shiny international terminal. I had booked my ticket through Etihad, so my flight from KL took me to Abu Dhabi in the UAE. (I learnt that all Etihad flights start with a travel prayer from the Koran.) As a Christmas present to myself I had booked a room in a hotel near the airport. The timing was right and I didn't need a visa ahead of time and I really wanted to stay in a hotel in Abu Dhabi. I had visions of fluffy bathrobes and those cool, waterfall style showers. I just had to.

In line to get my visa-on-arrival stamp, I double-checked with the man in front of me that I was in the right spot for visa-on-arrival. He had an American passport so I figured I might as well ask him. It turns out he was travelling with his wife and five kids. They had lived for a long time in the US but now were permanent UAE residents. We chatted amiably in line for a few minutes. 

On the other side of security, I needed to exchange money and get a taxi to my hotel. I didn't know where to go, but I saw that same family by the luggage claim. The mom was bedecked in a full black burka, only a small slit showing her eyes and the bridge of her nose. Their three daughters were older than the two boys and all three wore colourful hijab. The kids looked like they might be between 7 and 15 or 16. Since they had been such a nice family to chat with, I decided to ask them where I might find what I needed. The mom asked where I was staying and told me that it was actually quite close to the airport and on their home way. Since their driver was coming to pick them up, why not get a ride with them? Uh... Time for a split second decision. To trust or not to trust. They seemed nice, but that doesn't really mean anything. I had more faith in the fact that they were travelling with five kids than their seeming niceness. I know of Middle Eastern hospitality. Perhaps they were just trying to be kind and generous. I decided to trust. When I was telling this story to my friends after Christmas, Kristina said, "You  know, I'm surprised you don't get kidnapped more often." It was definitely a risk, but my gut instinct was correct in this case. 

We waited for a few minutes and then the driver arrived. He had a stereotypical handsome Middle Eastern look, dressed from head to toe in white clothes with white cap and a full, wispy white beard. His features were angular and hawkish. He didn't speak English. Like almost every other working person in the UAE, he was an expat. It was quite a squeeze to get all of us into the minivan. Being the guest of honour, I got a bucket seat to myself. One of the boys sat on the dad's lap in the front, the other boy sat on the mom's lap in the other bucket seat, and the three girls crowded into the back. We had a pleasant, short trip to my hotel and I took the opportunity to invite them to come and have dinner with my family, should they ever find themselves back in the states. It seemed like the thing to do. I was grateful that I know the Arabic phrase "shukran" (thank you) from my parents and used it several times. 

When we arrived at the hotel, before I got out, the mom pulled back the veil over her face and said, "Here's what I really look like." I'm certain those were her words. It was strange but I instantly felt like I was being let in to a little world of trust and hospitality. I thanked the family again and they took off. I might not see them again, but I'll always remember their kindness and their crowded minivan.

The hotel was not over-the-top in its level of luxury (it had to fit my budget after all) but it was very nice and I had a very restful stay there. The next day I walked outside in the pavilion and had the taxi driver take me to exchange money. In that way I felt like got some real - albeit very short - experiences outside the airport. The flight to Chicago went smoothly. (I had a window seat and there was no one next to me!!! I could sit cross-legged!) Soon enough, I was back home.

Well, that wraps up 2013. Sorry if I've been sparse with some details and overly generous with others. I tell the stories I remember in my own way and in my own time and at this moment I can't think of anything else to share. 2013 was truly a crazy year with plenty of ups and downs. It was a year that seemed like it must have been more than just 12 months. And, almost all of it was spent in Asia, from early-mid January to mid-late December - the longest stretch I've ever been away from Minnesota. 2014 has also had some excellent stories and I will be eager to start sharing those soon. 

THE REST OF 2013 (INCLUDING VIETNAM) PART I

Well, this really lowers the bar. I mean, really. It was bad enough when I was blogging in December about things that had happened in August. Now I'm six months behind schedule. That is half-a-year! It's April and I've got to tell you about October. There is, in fact, more to tell of  2013. I'd like to tell you about the rest of last year, after my August holiday in Lombok up until I went home in December. The main focus of the blog post will be Vietnam, since that was the most interesting thing to happen in the 2nd half of 2013, though I will also share a little bit about work and life and going home.

We only had three weeks of school before the two-week August Lebaran break, so it was almost like starting school over again when we came back for Week 4. Overall, I've got to say that everything has been better and smoother this year than last. Last year I was a brand new teacher in a system I didn't understand with minimal guidance and a lot of pressure to perform. I've downplayed the extent of my struggle in the blog, but there were times I seriously considered if I should just go home. I'm glad I didn't, because Year 2 has been loads better. First of all, I have one year of experience under my belt, which is simply necessary to ever move up and on. Second of all, I know the Singapore system (as interpreted by Bina Bangsa) now. Some things are still very frustrating to deal with, but these are not unpleasant surprises, they're just your run-of-the-mill, normal frustrations. I can deal with things, I can cope, and in fact, I can do well. I know how the game is played. Getting through the first year was the key.

So, the school year is progressing pretty well I would say. I am teaching three of the same subjects as last year (4th grade science, 4th grade English, and 5th grade English) but also have two new classes: 3rd grade health and a year-long research project class called Young Investigators (YI) with my 4th graders. 

It's nice that I have the same class of 4th graders for English, science and YI. I've really gotten to know that particular class and form a closer bond with them, which isn't always possible with this school model. I also love the 5th grade English class too because it is a pull-out class with 8 students who particularly struggle in English. I really enjoy working with them. And who can complain about an 8-student class? I get to give them lots of individual attention. Health is easy to teach. There isn't actually enough Health curriculum to last the whole year, so I just extend lessons. A two or three-lesson set about nutrition got turned into the entirety of Term 2 (10 weeks) because I've seen what our kids eat for lunch (noodles, chicken nuggets, hot dogs with mayonnaise, etc.) and I figured this would be worth spending more time on. 

YI is a little bit more challenging, but not too bad, and the 4th grade science is as enjoyable as ever. We just finished our units on Heat and Temperature and The Effects of Heat. These two are probably our most dangerous units because of the activities we do. I always need to boil water in an electric kettle or cool it in the Science Lab fridge. And the first lab of The Effects of Heat has me heating a metal ball over a Bunsen Burner to show that a metal ball will expand when heated and contract when cooled. (It's the old pass the metal ball through a ring, heat it in a fire, it no longer fits through the ring, wow, that's amazing, now let's cool it and look, it magically fits through the ring again. I don't remember doing anything like that in elementary school, but maybe others have.) 

I've been generally lucky, dealing with all this heat and fire, but not so terribly long ago, during Term 3, I was boiling some water in the plastic electric kettle and pouring a bit out into a beaker when the kettle exploded! It was truly frightening because I felt a shock and heard a blast and pivoted away to protect myself instantly. Plastic shards flew across the lab. Some hit me. I burned my thumb and got a decent-sized bruise on my thigh. Fortunately no students were around, I was only doing prep. Another science teacher and a cleaner were the only other ones present. But now I can say I've survived a lab explosion. I hope it's the last time. 

So that's the school situation at the moment. Suffice to say, I think things are going well and I'm happy that I feel myself improving as a teacher. Right now we've got 6 more teaching weeks left in the school year. Week 8 of this term starts year-end exams. No teaching, just exam after exam after exam. (Those poor kids...) 

Leaving school, let's move on to the holidays. 7 weeks after Lebaran and it was already time for term break. For this trip, it was off to Vietnam!

Going to Vietnam for term break was an idea hatched in my mind back in June. I proposed the idea to Aasha, who was on board, so we started planning. A few weeks before we left, Nicole and Claudia (a new teacher this year who has quickly become a friend of mine) were also looking for something after their plans to go to Malaysian Borneo didn't work out. They joined us at the beginning and end of the Vietnam trip, which was from 4 October to 13 October. Aasha and I were also joined by Aasha's boyfriend, Dipesh, who's from London and has an insane number of Indonesian visa-on-arrivals in his passport (he's travelled with Aasha a few times before for term breaks. They met online and their first "date" was going to Thailand together! I don't know how he manages to make it over here so often.) 

This trip involved a whole lot of plane travel since it was the most efficient way to see all the parts of Vietnam we wanted to in 9 days (which really wasn’t enough to do it justice; might have to go back someday.) We flew to Singapore on Friday night and slept in the airport. Fortunately, Changi airport in Singapore is just about the nicest airport you could hope to kill time at. Turns out it’s true that armed guards patrol at night and ask to see your boarding passes. If it turns out you’re just crashing and have no onward flight, you get caned on the spot. Just kidding. But that part about armed guards is true. 

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City the next morning. (For anyone who cares about these things, Ho Chi Minh City is the new name of Saigon.) My first impression of Vietnam was that it is not as spotless as Singapore, but not as littered as Indonesia, making it... fairly normal. Our arrival was smooth. Fortunately we had prearranged our visas. Vietnam is one of the few countries in SE Asia that doesn’t offer visas on arrival for US citizens. We just so happened to run into a friend from another campus at the HCMC airport. He was also spending break in Vietnam, but had neglected to get approval ahead of time and ended up paying an outrageous amount for a rushed visa. We didn’t stay in HCMC but got a connecting flight to Da Nang, which is in central Vietnam. 

At the Da Nang airport someone from our hotel picked us up and drove us to Hoi An, a town next to Da Nang. Da Nang is more industrial and has resorts and an airport. Hoi An has a smaller, quainter, more cultural feel. It reminded me a lot of Chang Mai in Thailand. Both places were beautiful, charming, and relaxed. After checking in to the hotel, we walked around and found dinner. I was totally psyched to eat authentic Vietnamese food. It’s one of my favourite cuisines and I always love eating Vietnamese food in Minnesota. I figured it would be even better from the source! Sadly the pork and noodle dish didn't sit too well with me. I’m not too used to the fatty pork and my stomach was pretty suspicious of it. That didn't stop me from trying new (different) foods after that however.

We were completely enchanted during our walk around Hoi An that night. The city comes alive at night. The old quarter is really meant for walking and the streets are lit by a rainbow array of Chinese lanterns. There was late night dining and night-markets and cute little kids dressed in traditional clothing selling little candle boats to float down the river. Their overwhelming cuteness is a marketing ploy of course, but it worked on us. We got some info on a cooking class for the next day before exploring the night markets and heading back to the hotel. Nicole and Claudia had arrived by that time and we saw them at the front desk just as we were coming back. We all decided on the cooking class for the next day.

Our cooking class took us on a market tour to pick up the ingredients we would need. I guess it wasn't the first time I had seen a wet market, but I loved it all the same. It was interesting to see the women binding the claws of live crabs with bits of plant-fiber string. Then it was back to cook up some delicious Vietnamese food. The thing I learnt about Vietnamese cooking is that it’s the fresh ingredients that make all the difference. Without super-fresh ingredients, the food wouldn’t be the same at all. We made a "mother-in-law" soup (meant to impress said relative with your culinary skills), a special sort of pancake, chicken, and green mango salad (the last was probably my favourite.)

After our cooking class, we walked around and explored the city, including an ancient Chinese bridge and lots of little shops. Something I noticed which really surprised me when I got to Vietnam was that people really, legitimately, wear those conical hats. A lot. I always figured these were such a stereotypical piece of clothing that nobody really wore them in everyday life, but it’s simply not true. They’re everywhere, which is awesome. Nicole and I tried to take a picture of two women in conical hats carrying fruit baskets, but of

course they saw us. Next thing we knew, we were being made to put on said hats, carry said fruit baskets, have our picture taken and pay the women five bucks. Crafty old ladies. Well, that’s what we get for trying to sneak photos of them. (FYI, those baskets they carry on the yokes over their shoulders are really heavy!) Besides making tasty food, my other accomplishment for the day was the purchase of two light-weight, hand-made shirts, perfect for travel. Tailor shops are everywhere in Vietnam. I almost regret not getting something tailor-made, like a dress or pair of shorts. Still, I was pretty pleased with the shirts. (I did make a quick trip to a roadside tailor though to get the straps on my backpack mended.)

For our 3rd day in Vietnam, Nicole, Claudia, Dipesh, Aasha and I hired a driver through our hotel who took us to the ancient site of My Son. Yes, it's really called My Son (or, Mỹ Sơn) though I don't think it's pronounced just like that. After ambling over our first ruins we heard music and found a traditional dance performance going in a shelter area. The rest of the ruins were well populated with tourists, though it wasn't overwhelming. The ruins are mostly temples clustered by date and style and location and are made of crumbling red brick. I saw some of the same interlocking block features that I have seen at Borobudur and Prambanan. The setting of My Son is also very beautiful, with rolling green hills all around. I also enjoyed seeing some of the information placards in French. (Turns out my French professors weren't exaggerating: there is actually a noticeable French influence in the former colony.) We also saw our first references to the Vietnam War (called the American War in Vietnam.) Namely, big craters in the ground where explosives fell. It was sobering, but nothing compared to the things we were going to learn about later.

The second part of the day was spent at Marble Mountains, a truly breathtaking place where huge, beautiful Buddhist statues have been carved into the caves of mountainy-hills. Our journey took us at a leisurely pace for a couple of hours, climbing up and into the hills on winding, stony paths. Alters and statues surprised us as we turned corners and climbed hills. The first temple we saw was pretty building with a very big, white Buddha statue. I snapped away at my camera, admiring it. Turns out this was nothing in comparison to what we were about to see. Tucked away inconspicuously along the path was a small detour to the right, leading under a low-hanging rock. Following it we discovered a rough-hewn temple in... Well imagine a forest clearing where light pours in around a thick circle of surrounding trees. It was like that, but made of rock. A... clearing in the rock. The stone rose up on all sides, but not in the middle. Around this clearing were a few caves with large statues set back in dark recesses. One statue in particular took my breath away. I suppose I use that phrase, "breathtaking" quite a lot. But here it's totally justified! It was the effect of seeing such a beautiful, tall statue set back in such a quiet, unassuming spot. Just waiting for you to turn the corner and find it. Light was streaming in from an opening in the rock high above. It was heavenly. And I don't mean delightful. I mean heaven-like.

As we made our way, we continued upon statues, shrines and alters. Some paths lead up rather sheer hills, but the views from the top were worth it. We also ambled up some caves. We entered one where a small hole led to an exit on top of that cave. (It was sort of like a hollow hill, in some ways.) Nicole and I found we could shimmy through it, and ended up in a secret kind of spot where no tourists were. We wandered out to a small lookout perch and enjoyed the view all to ourselves. Eventually we decided we should probably rejoin the others. The view of the hills and Da Nang and the sea was beautiful though. Most surprisingly, there were cacti growing on the hills! I kid you not.

The highlight of the Marble Mountains came towards the end of our hike however. An unassuming path led to a huge cave that even made those that had come before it seem lacking. Let me use a nerdy sort of reference: imagine from the Lord of the Rings movies the great, cavernous halls of the dwarf kings, towering pillars carved from raw rock to make a huge, lofty arena. That's sort of what this was like. No pillars, but instead, some alters and shrines set around a spacious, cool, damp, dim cave. Most breathtaking of all was an enormous Buddha sitting serenely in the towering wall of the cavernous cave. And he looked so... peaceful. As if he had merely plopped down in a quiet, cool spot, away from the noise and light of the world to meditate and reflect. I wondered how in the world anyone had ever carved such a thing in so remote and tricky a spot and yet it looked so utterly natural. It had the weird effect of looking small and distant, and at the same time, unmistakably gigantic. Imposing, yet calm. The center of attention, but undemanding in its attention, as if you had just happened to come across him, quietly keeping to himself in his secret spot. I could have stood there all day, drinking in the sight, and still not have gotten tired of pondering that statue. I'm putting in a picture to give an idea of what it looked like, but it doesn't do it justice. At all. (Sadly my camera had died at this time, so I've only got pictures from other people.

Of all the steep hills, lovely temples and towering statues we saw that day, nothing else - in my opinion - compared to the giant Buddha in the cave. I really think, and hope, that image will be sealed in my mind. We made our way down the hills, through the marble-ware shops (bought a statue for my parents; it broke in transit home in December... boo!) and met our driver.

That night we went back to our favourite restaurant, Morning Glory, for more glorious Vietnamese food. Since I don't always have a big appetite (despite loving food,) I didn't order anything. Instead I just got a plate and everyone gave me a bit of their food and I chipped in a fair amount at the end. I think I got the best deal of the night that way. The next morning there was a little time to walk around Hoi An one last time before Aasha, Dipesh and I went to the airport to fly to Hanoi. I walked around for a bit by myself.

As I meandered, I knew I was headed in the direction of the market, but approaching it from a different angle. I ended up in an area that was chock full of locals eating lunch. I only saw two or three other tourists at all. I wanted to take pictures, and I did, but felt a little funny, the Westerner snapping away at townspeople as if they were exotic animals at the zoo. I mean, I was more subtle than that obviously, but I felt compelled to at least buy and eat some rambutans to make up for the picture taking. And then I thought, well why not eat lunch here too? This was one of my proudest accomplishments: sitting down and ordering chicken rice like a pro, wielding chopsticks like a local, finishing my plate, and walking away with not so much as a hint of suspicion or unrest in the digestive tract. Street food conquered!

After lunch, followed by a coffee and a pastry at a French cafe (sigh... the memories of such good food...) we headed to the airport, only to find that our flight was delayed by three hours. It used to be at one point in my life, I cherished every time I got to go to an airport for the promise of an exciting journey ahead. And that feeling still exists for me, but given the amount of time I just spend sitting in airports on terribly long layovers and delays (and the delays on the budget airlines are frequent, almost regular)... I spend so much time sitting in airports! (*Cough! First-world-problems! Cough!*) On the plus side, we met two girls from Australia with whom we chatted and exchanged travel notes. Might not see them ever again, but we are friends on Facebook now. Funny how that works.

Once we (finally) landed in Hanoi we met our driver at the arrival gate. (I've learnt that hotel pick-up is a wonderful thing. Many hotels seem willing to do it for a very reasonable price and it's nice not to have to worry about finding your hotel in a new city.) Our hotel was a great find. We had only planned as far as Hoi An, and were using my new mini-tablet and the computer at our old hotel to find and book our new flights and hotels. This one was tucked away on a modest but busy street only a few minutes from the main backpackers' area. And it had hot water and a bathtub and comfy beds and everything!

That night we discussed options with the hotel manager for going on an excursion to Halong Bay (the main reason we went to Hanoi in the first place.) We pored over options, including one boat called the Imperial Junk (a name that always makes me giggle.) In the end we decided not to get up and leave early the next morning after having only arrived in Hanoi around midnight; instead we explored Hanoi the next day and went to Halong Bay the day after.

Hanoi is a bustling, crazy city. It is an almost impossibly perfect melange of people in traditional conical hats on bicycles, pushing carts and carrying wares on yokes mixed with even more motorbikes than Jakarta (who would've thought that was possible?) cars, taxis and pedestrians. In Hanoi, the streets bustle and teem with life. In Jakarta, they just bustle and teem with vehicles. In Jakarta, the cars are on the streets and the people stay in the kampung or at the mall. In Hanoi, and HCMC as well, the street is the most important social sphere. This makes walking around a terrifying, exhilarating, personal experience. In Jakarta, the traffic is never ending, but if you boldly stick out your hand you can halt traffic and cross the street. In Vietnam, the traffic doesn't slow down for you ever. They merely swerve around you. There is no good time to cross the road in Vietnam. You will stand there forever deciding when to cross. You just have to close your eyes and take the first step (except don't actually close your eyes.) As for the social aspect, people seem to live their lives on the streets. I'm not sure if dining rooms exist in Vietnam. Everyone seems to eat on the street at low tables, sitting in low chairs. From evening well into night-time, everyone and their mother (and their children and their cousins and their uncles and their friends and their uncles' mothers' cousins' friends) are out on the street.

On our day out and about in Hanoi, we saw a temple in a lake, walked up and down the streets, stopped for some cheap, "fresh" beer (that's just what it's called) and went following some mysterious rumor about a "Dim Sum Market" which turned out to be total bogus (some sort of miscommunication there.) We ran into another traveller on our fruitless dim sum quest who was also wandering around. He was an architect from Winnipeg who was working and travelling at the same time. We decided to all have lunch together. Unfortunately I can't remember his name but I recall he was a nice, funny guy. I have found that 99% of travellers you meet on the road are.

After lunch, we visited the Temple of Literature. This temple is set in a Chinese garden and was a pretty interesting place to check out. There are large stelea with Chinese inscriptions set around the perimeter of the garden. A placard tells you you are looking at "The Doctor's Stelea." *Cocks the head, raises the eyebrow...* The Doctor's Stelea? Well, obviously this points to the mischief of Time Lords. But then again, should we be so surprised that the Doctor has been intervening in medieval Vietnam? I think not.

We visited the National  Museum of Fine Arts for 30 minutes before it closed and, failing to get a taxi back, ending up taking a loooong walk back to our hotel. (Passed a mannequin souk - that was creepy...) The night ended with going to a water puppet show. There was a series of short stories told with half-human-sized puppets controlled from underneath a layer of water set to music played by a traditional orchestra. The best was when puppets - sometimes fish, or a phoenix - would suddenly pop out of the water and start splashing around.

And... you know what? I'm feeling really tired and this blog has been a huge undertaking because I write so damn much, so I'm just stopping for tonight. Anyway, I'm sorry I'm so bad at blogging. I actually enjoy blogging but it always takes time. That's the darn thing. So when I next continue this tale, it will be to tell about Halong Bay, Ho Chi Minh City, and going home for Christmas. And then I'll be done with 2013! Stay tuned.