May 2008

Yes, that's right - just pictures and short stories. No essays to read...
Easy

Dup, Jana and Francois at a tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands.

Workers collecting tea at one of the plantations in the Cameron Highlands.

Dup needs some alone time at a watch tower in the Cameron Highlands as he informs us that his Celebrity Televised Swim Gala with Gold Medalist Michael Phelps has been cancelled. Personally, I think he was lying.

Tea plantation. My favourite pic in Malaysia, I must admit.

Me beneath the Petronas Towers.

Dup, this time in business mode. He comes to this bar to razzle and dazzle the KL elite. There's actually a pool in the bar and this night he refrained from doing a few lengths at midnight.

Bird Park in KL. I swear these birds were trained to kill people! I couldn't shake them off my head! The one on the right attacked me only moments later.

Rickshaws in Malacca. Some of them have booming sound systems, which detracts from the historical significance of the place when it is only inches from your eardrum

Borobudur, an ancient Buddhist temple near Yogyakarta.

Very impressive. The top tier at Borobudur is really amazing - the surrounding views are truely awesome, and the structure itself is just huge.

Its hard to explain how unique my freckled skin is in some of these places. These guys thought I was taking a photo of them, so someone pointed at me and shouted something, and then they all started to pose. So I got them to do the model pose of pointing and looking like Derrick Zollander! The blue guy on the right needs to talk to someone though, he may have a problem...

Me on top of Mount Merapi. Fantastic climb, whjich began at midnight with torches, and had us watch the sun rise over the horizon. Thats sulphuric gas in the background.

The view from the top - this time with a couple of volcanoes in the background for good measure.

Javanese kids challenging me to a duel to the death at the base of Mt. Merapi. I was tired from the walk and in no mood for trouble, so I whipped their asses.

Prambanan - also in the Yogyakarta area. Its hard to believe but this structure has been completely rebuilt following a massive Mt Merapi eruption hundreds of years ago (can't remember date) that covered the whole thing in ash and rock.

Yogyakarta guys playing football outside my B&B. Love this pic.

The plateau from the top of Mount Bromo. What a view - totally surreal being here.

Mount Bromo - the jeeps take you right to the foot of the mountain and off you walk.

Sunrise reveals the Tengger Caldera crater in Eastern Java, with Bromo bullowing out steam constantly.

Great diving here at Menjengan Island off north-western Bali. Great walls and slopes filled with life. This was a little beach we docked at between the dives. Thats Bali in the background.

Balinese troops practising karate. Anti-terrorism is taken VERY seriously in Bali nowadays...

Paddies in Bali - really beautiful.

Kite flying is a great pastime for Indonesian kids. You see kites being flown anytime there is a mild breeze.

Father and son, and musician on my bike trip over the mountains in Bali.

There are little Hindu shrines everywhere in Bali. EVERYWHERE. They bless houses, shops, fields, roads, cars, everything. Perhaps thats why the drivers drive like they're invincible!

Boatmen cleaning their boats before the next tide I think - Bali.

More rice paddies.

On the way to Gili Trawangan, off the large island of Lombok.

Gili Trawangan. Every evening, I'd go to the west side of the island, beer in hand and watch the sun go down. There was quite a crowd of us gathering after a few days there. So so chilled.

The moon sets weren't too bad either...!

Divers horsing around on the way back from a dive. That was my instructor - as you can imagine, dives were good fun!

Hmmm.... my bar - Rudy's. I stayed here, and as it turned out this place had everything to offer, and plenty of big parties.
Awesome bar staff!

The dog and rooster - Bali's monsters. Roosters for waking me up at 4am everynight! and dogs for barking constantly!

The last place I stayed at: Amed in eastern Bali. Famous for the USS Liberty wreck dive - what a fantastic dive.

Cats rule Gili Trawangan and are ready to pounce on any restaurant plate!

OK, thats enough oics for now - more to come in a month or so...
Right now - I'm in Manila, Philippines... its a little dodgy I must say.
Adios.

Goodbye Java
So I left Yogyakarta and headed on a 2-day bus trip across the eastern half of Java, with an overnight stay at Mount Bromo. I am sorry to say it, because Mount Merapi was an exhilarating climb and the dawn was really something to remember, but... Mount Bromo beats the pants off Merapi. There are a lot more tourists, which sucks, but the volcano is incredible. You literally get dropped off in a jeep about 500 meters away, walk up some stairs to the rim, stand and watch as the smoke billows out and then survey the plateau all about you, which is devoid of any trees (just tufts of grass) and looks really surreal. You can walk around the entire volcano rim, and just snap away at all the amazing views.
Then it was back into the bus again, and Indonesian busing is something else. Put it this way, to do about 500km's took a solid 22 hours of busing over 2 lo-o-o-ong days. I eventually arrived in Bali, and what a place.

Bali
Once again, my expectations were a little different from what I saw - this time, when I arrived in Bali. The island is massive - over 100km's long, and the surfing that it's famous for can only be found in a few spots, all in the south. I first stayed on the north west coast in the town of Pemuteran, near the diving island of Pulau Menjangan, famous for its wall dives. Little did I know, but its pretty much the most expensive town in Bali, with a few awesome resorts filling its beaches (my dive book fails to mention that the town is also unaffordable to most people on earth). They even MAKE coral there, sticking little thermometers into the water's edge to encourage reef life. I managed to find a cheapish place ($20 a night) after arriving at 9pm on a scooter for 20km's through dense national park forest. The scooter driver wasn't a big fan of using headlights, which was a bit concerning, especially since he didn't understand any English, which made it difficult to get the flashlight signal across to him! Arriving at that time left me with little option but to accept the first place I came across. Ah, long bus journeys in Indonesia, I do love them.
Although it has amazing beaches, Bali also has some massive mountains - remnants of old volcanoes. I took it upon myself to hire a scooter (at excessive Pemuteran prices) and headed into the hills. I covered 200km's of the western tip of the island, and it took all day. The weather changed dramatically as I zipped up the twisting roads, going from a humid 30-odd degrees at the beach to a heavy forest rainfall and having to seek cover for half an hour up in the mountains. Hiring a bike in Bali is dangerous! Not because of other traffic or the animals - the roads are just perfect for rally cars!! You cant help but take the roads at pace, either up or down. It's an awesome day trip, and the locals up there don't regularly see foreigners, or Bule, as we're called, so they wave and greet you, and want to talk at any opportunity. The Balinese are good and easy-going people, they're rarely interested in you just for the money - they enjoying chatting to foreigners. Sometimes though, you get those trying to sell something. In those cases, the conversation is as follows:

Balinese: Salamat Pagi (Hello) / Hello Mister! (if 15 years or younger)
Me: Hi
B: What your name?
M: David (pronounced Daafid) [No Stuart, not Daffyd]
B: Where you from?
M: South Africa.
B: Ohhhh... (Nodding a lot, yet complete confusion).... But you WHITE!
M: Yes I know.
B: Ohhhh......(still the confusion).
Got girlfriend?
M: No
B: Got wife?
M: No
B: How old you?
M: 20- something...
B: Oh. Want girlfriend?
M: No.
B: Want cooldrink? Want bir? What can I do for you?
M: No, nothing. Thanks bud, cheers.

The Balinese also enjoy playing guitar and music all the time. You'll often be at a restaurant and the guy across the road will come out of his shop and start plugging away at some old tunes. Next thing you know, his neighbor is sitting down next to him with a drum and they're playing away. Awesome! They are very musical people.

Gili Trawangan

Lombok is famous for the three Gili islands on the north-west corner. I went there and once again found myself sweating like Dingaan's armpits after 4 midday stick-fights. Luckily the water was a cool 29 degrees and the beers weren't too expensive, so I managed to find some respite from the heat. I hooked up a few dives and saw the best visibility i have ever seen. Perhaps 45-50 meters. It was incredible! Swam with a number of white-tip reef sharks, countless large hawksbill turtles, some huge bumperhead parrotfish, and many other smaller fish. It was great diving. The island has probably changed a bit over the years - I compare it quite a bit to Ko Tau in Thailand, just smaller. So its quite developed now. Most of the younger tourists seem to spend their time either flexing their guns on the main beach or doing some serious bikini tanning. I guess its a good way to take a break for a while, but the place does have a bit of The O.C. feel to it I think. Actually met some awesome Californians/West Coast and German people while there and we had quite a few good nights out.
On the half-hour boat ride back to Lombok, not a word was said amongst the dozen people leaving Trawangan. Everyone was just staring back at the islands getting smaller, wishing they didn't have to go. It is a lovely island, I'll be back for more I'm sure. I'll always remember it for the song "Welcome to my Paradise" - all the bars play it, all the time. Perfect place for it.

Got to the port at Lombok and we were completely surrounded by ferry ticket touts...! Paradise was definitely behind us now! I was left shouting at some tout "I don't trust you! I don't trust you! I wouldn't give you one cent of my money!" The guy was the dodgiest b@stard I have ever come across. In the end though I had to buy as there was no government office around to sell decently-priced tickets. That's traveling - the good unfortunately comes with the bad.
So now I'm back in Bali and going to KL tomorrow to stay with Dr. Dup du Plessis. He isn't coming to Kota Kinabalu anymore, cos he says he has some international charity gala against Michael Phelps or something. Nice story Dup...

Finally, I have decided to introduce my travel tip section with each new entry from now on:

Travel tips for this entry:
Don't ride buses in Indonesia. Walk if you must.
Learn to accept roosters - they will cockodoodaldoo at midnight, or whenever they damn-well please.
Learn to love scruffy, scrawny, mangy Indonesian dogs - they will bark whenever there is a cockodoodaldoo and they don't know what you're shouting at them cos they don't speak English. Accept them.

Final Note: The Beautiful Beard
There have been some unnecessary comments of late about my immaculate and well-groomed beard that I have carefully grown over the last few months. These have not been taken very well. Gowar, Whitfield, Waterman... I have your numbers. In fact, I was considering grooming it, or, dare I say it, taken it all off, because during the last few dives I kept getting water in my mask and couldn't see anything. Hopefully my mask and 'rooibaard' can learn to live with one another.

PICTURES: Will update as soon as I can... sorry, I just cant find internet cafe's that allow me to either downsize the photos or read my portable hard-drive.

I've been trying to convince myself to eat something really local on this big ol' world trip at least once. Well, on my first night in Yogyakarta I had pigeon. It still had its head and beak on, so I left that bit. Actually, it wasn't too bad. And in all seriousness, there's way worse stuff to eat in Cambodia, I just never had the guts to try then (or perhaps it's just my hatred for pigeons after all those years of cleaning pigeon droppings from my old Honda's bonnet every morning before work). So for the last few days I have been in Indonesia. I'm in a little city called Yogyakarta. It's famous for one of the world's most famous Buddhist ruins - Borobudur - its monolithic. And also for some Hindu ruins - Prambanan - and lots of volcanoes. As I flew in, I could see a number of volcano's peaking out from above the clouds - just immense. After four days, I think it's safe to say that I will be enjoying Indonesia very much. It's pretty different from other south east Asian countries. One thing that stands out as soon as you get here are road crossings. It's something of a suicide mission attempting to cross main roads here - there are so many hordes of bikes flowing down main roads that the traffic simply doesnt stop flowing - you have to kind of find a small gap (very rare) and wander across into the lanes (very slowly) facing the oncoming traffic (very bravely) and start waving your hand around (a little desperately in my case) at the scooters and cars. You gradually get across. They don't always slow down very much, but a sort of slipstream develops in front of you and its possible to walk away unscathed!
A sight for sore eyes were 'scooter-guards.' They wave down motorcyclists, who pull over, hand the bike to the guard to park, tip the guard, and leave their helmet with him. There are literally legions of these uniformed guys guarding the many thousands of bikes all over the city's pavements.
Saturday nights are usually reserved for open-air music concerts by the look of things. So I enjoyed wandering the streets for a while, watching the shows. Tourists are not present in huge numbers here... so locals keep taking pictures of me. Maybe its the immaculate, designer beard.

Mount Merapi:
I signed up for a volcano walk....... some would see this as a silly thing to do, as Mount Merapi is one of the world's most active volcano's. Nonetheless, I joined a group to the volcano and off we trudged at 1am to get to the top. Nerves hadn't been made any better by continual commentery in our group along the lines of: "It hasn't blown in nearly two years... what's the worst that could happen?!" Walking in steep furrows and narrow water run-offs made for some adventurous muddy wipe-outs on the way up, but after nearly 4 hours the group arrived at the top of Merapi (2914 meters). Just in time too, my dodgy torch that I rented was busy spluttering to death and it was still pitch black. The smell of sulphur was incredibly strong.
So, what's at the top of a volcano??? I wasn't sure what to expect - a crater lake full of bright red lava perhaps?! No, instead there are lots of rocks, hot steam vents and some icy winds. The effects of previous eruptions was clear - for the top few hundred meters of the mountain there is nothing but lava rocks, and no life whatsoever. I sat on a vent for a while to keep warm - it was seriously chilly and I didnt want to risk the cold, regardless of how comical it may have looked!
The dawn broke and I must say, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. Well not quite, but it was very beautiful. Got lots of pics but will have to display them another time as I can't upload here (too sloooooooooooooooow).

KL and the Legend of Dup du Plessis:
So prior to arriving in Indonesia a few days ago, I spent ten days with Dr Don Juan "Dup" du Plessis, an old mate from school days and East London (South Africa), who has the nasty habit of always bragging about that swimming record he broke when he was 13, back in 1687. After arriving in Kuala Lumpur, we stayed on a mate's 20th floor balcony looking over the KL skyline, sipping ice cold Tiger beers til 5am, getting an hour's sleep and heading off to the Cameron Highlands for some forest exploring. The Cameron Highlands are stunning. The dense forest growth, the size of the trees, the size of the whole forest - its breathtaking. We stayed in a backpackers called Daniel's where the owners have a deep grudge against the Lonely Planet for comments made two years ago about 'Spartan" rooms and some other stuff in their 'On a Shoestring' issue. There's a big blunt sign at the door that between many four lettered words, seems to indicate that LP travel writers are not welcome. After asking about it, and being drawn into a long discussion on why the LP is a crock of bull, I made a mental note not to bring up the topic again. The entertainment and transport for the weekend was provided by Francois and Jana - two ex-pats living in KL, hailing from Cape Town. Ah, good times!

We headed back in Boesman (F&J's old Landcruiser) to KL where I spent the remainder of the week. There's enough to see in the city - the bird park, the Pretonas towers, the KL Tower, the National Museum, but it was great to just chill out in one place for a while, without packing my life into a bag again (backpacking quarter life crisis??!!) I must admit - sometimes you crave malls, big screens and McDonalds burgers. KL is certainly a step ahead of most of south east Asia - it is an advanced and heavily built-up city. I can't compare to Singapore yet, as I've spent no time there so far, but I imagine its the next biggest economy in the region. It has a number of advanced sky/overhead rail systems - it makes getting around the city quite easy. Its also not as massive a city as I thought - 40 minutes by rail to any destination is lengthy. Many people reside in high-rise apartments looking over the city.
I also spent a day in Melaka (ie. Straights of Malacca) - the old trade city of the east. Its immensely historic and well worth a visit. The Portuguese were there in 1511, then the Dutch, the Brits, Japanese - everyone seems to have had a piece of the pie.
Malays love food. There are food markets and stands EVERYWHERE. Food is a major part of the culture. The people are split into three major groups: Malays, Chinese and Indians - its amazing that they get on so well, there aren't many countries in the world with such diversity.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm off to Gunung Bromo and then Bali. Til next time, sampai jumpa...

Pics to come in the next week (i think).