Bali Trip

Wow, it's been a long while, but I'm back. I've had this blog rolling around in the back of my head for so long that I actually forgot I hadn't posted it. So instead of being three weeks behind, I'm more like five (totally guessing here, by the way) [*editor's note, turns out it's more like six].

After my trip to Ramelau, I had a few more weeks of teaching, and then it was off to Bali to renew our visas. The trip to Bali was ten days of adventures, gorgeous beaches, hordes of beautiful tourists, and, of course, a semi-serious allergic reaction to, I think, soap maybe?

The flight to Bali was unspectacular (which is probably a good thing when you consider the kinds of things that might make a plane trip “spectacular”. Fireworks, for example, are often “spectacular”. I'll take banal, thanks.) but we were both so stupid excited to get out of our tiny Dili world that the trip was a pleasure. Any excuse to sit and read for a couple hours is a good one in my book (heh, book. Get it? No? Oh, it's because I said any excuse to READ is good in my BOOK. Eh? Eh? Still nothing? Huh, alright, well maybe it'll come back around). After landing in Bali, we grabbed some visas, got sent back to re-fill out our immigration forms because we used red ink (next time I'm bringing a crayon) and then scolded for “taking so long” to get to the immigration desk with our correctly black-inked forms (definitely using a crayon next time). While we were moving out to exit the airport we collected tourist brochures along the way. At one point we got sort of lost because the way we thought we should go was closed off, so we went around via several glass doors and tight corridors. We passed several guards who clearly saw us, but no one did anything. When we emerged from the corridors, we realized that we completely circumnavigated the customs bag check. No one even noticed. Maybe I'm just over sensitive because of extreme American TSA regulations and security, but that just seems sloppy. Alexis and I felt kinda weird about it, so we walked in the exit of the customs bag scanners, explained out confusion and apologized, and then sent out bags through with no problems. Out the door, into a taxi, and on our way to Kedin's Inn, the small hotel where we would be staying for our time in the hyper-tourist beach town that is Kuta. Since we only had a half day to work with at that point, we basically just settled our things and explored the shops.

Our first full day there, we went surfing. Yeah, surfing. It was awesome! With the help of my longboarding experience and a lot of assitance in the water from people who were clearly experts I actually did quite well. Better than I thought I was going to do for sure. My expectations were not high after the “master instructor”, who gave us our on land instruction, spaced out for the forth time mid-sentence. Once or twice? Okay, he's a busy man (dubious). Three times? Okay, that's odd, but maybe he's a busy man who also just lost his train of thought (sure...) Four times? This man has obviously spent at least 30% of his life on his board with his cranium being set to broil by the intense sun. The pauses were not little, um... wait, right so what I was saying. These were literally ten, fifteen second pauses were he would just kind of stand there with his hands on his hips looking around. Try to allow for a fifteen second pause in a conversation. Drop of in the middle of your sentence and see how long it takes for the pause to suddenly switch to uncomfortable. Go ahead, I'll wait. How long did it take? I bet no more than three seconds before it was obviously something was wrong to all parties involved. Stretch that out for four, five, six...fifteen seconds. Awkward silence? No, no, no – Excruciating silence. But the experience was really excellent, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has the means or is in Bali. Alexis really enjoyed it although she had to sit out near the end because of a unfortunate knock on the head from her own board. Not before she got a chance to take me out at the ankles just after I'd, barely, gotten to a standing position.

That night we treated ourselves to a gourmet meal. There was a restaurant just down the way from our hotel which was still under construction during the day, but opened for business during the night. Sandbar, the name of the joint, was having it's grandopening, so they had a half-price menu. Alexis and I both got thick steaks with steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes, mojitos and cocktails, and a dessert of chocolate cake and a sampler of different crème brulees. It was probably the best meal I've ever had at any restaurant ever, and the bill came and went leaving us only $25 lighter.

The next day we spent wondering and planning for the rest of our trip. We made some arrangements for touristy things to do the next day and then went to get a massage. In Kuta, massage parlors are something like Starbucks in the states. EVERYWHERE. We picked a parlor more or less at random and went in. The parlor we chose had a good price for a combination full-body massage and earcandle, which I've always wanted to try. The massage was fine (hard to have a bad massage really) but it wasn't great. My earcandle was, let's say, productive. Disgustingly, 'that came out of my head?!” productive.

The next morning, with awfully clean ears I might add, got up and headed down for breakfast. The night before I had purchased a razor blade and some lemon scented shaving cream, which was covered in Indonesian and Thai writing along with the English, and shaved. The razor blade was surprisingly sharp and the soap smelled wonderful. Lemon is an excellent name and scent for shaving cream, by the way, you really get what you are expecting. “Spring day”, “mountain rain”, “glacial rush”? What scents are those exactly? “Lemon”? Smells like lemons. Now shaved, fed, and with glistening ears we waited for our shuttle bus to go on to the next town. One of the brochures that Alexis picked up was for a “Bali Tree-Top Adventure Park” in the town of Bedugul (emphasis on the du) which was about the same distance from the town we were heading to as the town we were heading to from Kuta. One of the things the brochure mentioned is that flipflops were not allowed, which was the only kind of shoe that Alexis had bothered to bring (we both like to pack light and had no idea this place even existed, so no faulting her for that). The man at the station we bought shuttle ticket from check in with the shuttle and told us that it was going to be a bit late. Since we had time to spare, Alexis needed shoes, and there were a plethora of shops across the alley from the restaurant, we decided to use the time preparing for the adventure park. While deciding which store to go to (“store” is generous, they are more like stalls) while sitting in the three walled restaurant, I made the mistake of pointing to one of the stores (again, stalls). The storekeep (stallkeep) saw my gesture and took that as an invitation to start his normal sales pitch/hussle you into the store (stall) talk – from across the alley while I was still sitting at a table in a restaurant. I figured at that point that it would be beyond insulting to choose a different place to check for shoes (it was also the closest one that had what Alexis was looking for) so we headed over (after giving it enough time so that, hopefully, the owner got the hint that we were coming because wanted to and not as a reward to his hassling people who might still be eating and make the mistake of eye contact or, worse, glancing at his wares). Alexis found a nice pair of red vans and asked how much they were. The man proceeded to suggest a ridiculous price, Alexis countered with a reasonable one. As this was happening our shuttle bus pulled up. I told Alexis that it had arrived and that we needed to go. Alexis, cleverly, used me trying to pull her from the store(stall) as a lever against the store(stall)keep and got the price she had originally asked for. Haggled.

The trip from Kuta to Ubud was beautiful, and a nice relaxing trip where my time was split between reading the first book of the Dresden Files (an incredibly good series for those into Sci-fi/Fantasy/Magic stuff) and just enjoying the ride. The shuttle bus dropped us in the parking lot of a supermarket at a busy intersection with three ways to go; each looking like viable options for a hotel. I literally just pointed randomly down one of the streets and we started walking. Less than five minutes later we were in the lobby of a tiny hotel asking rates. Turned out they were cheap and the rooms were really quite excellent. I'm just going to throw this out there now, First-World hotels suck. They are uniform, and boring, and entirely too nice. Third-World hotels are awesome. Each room is unique and interesting, and when you get one that actually meets all your needs as a human being it's that much sweeter. The Pondok Frog was the name of the hotel where we would stay for the next three nights (we quite liked it and Ubud, so we stayed longer than we had originally intended). It was at this point that the little red blemishes on my face started to get a bit more tactile and three-dimensional. At first Alexis suggested that I was breaking out, so we got some acne stuff, which only seemed to enrage it. Wait, I mean me. Enrage me. Why? Because “Ow, dammit, Ow, Ow, OW!” That's why. “Deep cleaning pore exfoliation” does nothing except burn and sting when what's really happening is hypersensitive skin brought on my allergies. Before I managed to finally ask someone directions to the nearest Chemist (that's “pharmacy” for those of you who know how to talk) and get some anti-histamines and cortisone cream. The allergic reaction lasted several days, was actively painful even when I wasn't talking, laughing, eating, or otherwise moving my face at all. It was very, very visible and did a lot of things to my self-image for those four or five days.

Despite this allergy business, Alexis and I did not slow down our vacation. The same night that we got there we went to a traditional Balinese dance called “Kecak” (kay-chak). It was confusing, beautiful, boring, interesting, and exciting all at different times. I'm really glad that I went and saw one, but it was quite long and completely over my head. The most impressive part was definitely the fire dance at the end in which a man danced though a fire. Not around, not over, but through. It wasn't like the ember walking you see on TV either, it was a small bonfire that he knocked over, danced  around in, and then left alone long enough so that it could be rebuild by men with the fire equivalent of squeegees, and then he danced through it again. He did that maybe for times, each time many of the embers would land on his feet and legs and you could watch them slowly go from red-hot to black ON HIS SKIN! It was truly amazing.

The next morning we got picked up by a van filled with bicycles and headed for the top of a volcano. The couple that were already in the car (and along for the trip) were Adam and Janine from New Zealand. We actually got to know them quite well over the course of the car ride, especially when the van got a flat tire and we were forced to wait on the side of the road while the driver and several assistants went to get the proper tools to change to the spare. The four of us chatted for the better part of an hour while this was underway, and then we were back on the road headed up to the near the peak of an active volcano. We stopped one more time, this time it was prearranged, to check out a plantation and sample a bunch of different coffees. For an extra charge you could get a cup of Kopi Luwak, which is coffee that as been eaten by a small creature called a Luwak (mongoose sorta critter), digested, and then excreted to be picked up, cleaned off, roasted, and brewed. This was the kinda thing that's weird enough that you've got to try it, at least once in your life. I'm not a coffee connoisseur. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, really, so I'm sure all the intricacies of flavor and the subtleties of consistency or richness or whatever were completely wasted on me. I liked it, but it wasn't any better than a lot of coffee I've had before and will probably have in the future. One of the other coffees there, however, was a ginseng coffee sweetened with palm syrup and evaporated coconut milk and was hands down the best coffee I've ever had. We even bought some to bring back to Timor as a house present. After the coffee plantation we headed for the top, no more distractions. Once we arrived we were given a breakfast, included in the package that we bought to do this trip, and got more opportunities to shoot the shay with our new buddies from the far south. Adam, as it turned out, is an avid runner, so we spent quite awhile discussing out experiences and plans for the future. He recommended a book on running (with a focus on barefoot running), which I have had no luck finding here and will probably just end up downloading, called Born To Run. Alexis and Janine, as it turned out, were both very crafty. Crafty as in did craft related projects, so they had that to talk about. Once breakfast was over the main attraction began. Downhill bike tour!

Also called a “pedal-less bike tour” (not true, the there was a bit of pedaling), this was exactly the kind of thing that Alexis and I could both get behind. Me for the “bike tour” her for the “downhill”. After two intense uphills right at the beginning, the downhill became constant albeit varying in it's gradient. Most of the trip was on roads, some of it was down dirt paths through fields and villages, and all of it was beautiful. We stopped often for breaks and touristy explanations of local attractions, but not so frequently as to really break up the simple joy that is a relaxed bike ride with friends. Although it's difficult to describe what exactly made the trip so worth it in just a few words on a blog, I can assure you that it was. Stunning views, interesting facts about Bali, seeing parts of the country that we would never have had a chance to see had we not done the tour, and drinking coffee that had at one point been excrement. It was magical really.

We got back to Ubud pretty late because of the delay we had with the flat tire on the way there, but we had had a full day so we found a nice place for dinner that served a potato soup that Alexis fell in love with, and then headed back to the Hotel to sleep.

The next morning we decided to check out what Ubud was really famous for – The Sacred Monkey forest. It was probably a three minute walk from the our hotel to the entrance of the park, we bought some tickets, $2 a piece, and a bunch of bananas to split (hahaha, banana split! Man, you guys are so lucky to be reading this. Genius!) between us. We were heading into a monkey forest, so of course the bananas weren't really for us, but rather to give away for a chance to get up close with the critters. We walk into the forest, beautiful and green filled with huge trees that have clearly been around for many hundreds of years, and are immediately greeted by a rather large monkey. A crab-eating  macaque, as we were later find out they were called, saw Alexis and made a b-line. Alexis, usually a lover of animals and in good control of her faculties immediately started back-pedaling while making little whimpering noises between quiet but panicked little shrieks of “Connor! Connor!....Connor!” She then threw the banana feebly over the monkeys head while pulling her arms in tightly to her body. The monkey looked at the one banana, and then at the other three still in Alexis' hand and clearly made his choice. He went back after Alexis. She dropped them all on the ground and as quickly as she could, while not running, went around the primate and rushed over to me. The monkey happily grabbed the three bananas he scared from her hands a second ago, and then wondered over to the previously tossed banana and sat down to feast. We explored the forest, a grabby monkey literally pulled the bananas from my hand, and had a good time of it. We were probably in there for over an hour, but would have stayed longer had my stomach not been acting up. This was the inevitable part of the trip where I got sick. It wasn't serious and it didn't stop us from doing anything we wanted to do, but it did slow us down a bit.

I was still taking anti-histamines and using the cortisone cream on my rather nasty face-hive things, and sick, but we had things to do and Bali to explore. We decided to follow up on Alexis' Bali Treetop Adventure Park idea, and got a shuttle to take us up to Bedugul where it was located. The drive to get to the city was equal parts beautiful and nauseating. I don't always get car sick, but when I do it's really hard to shake. Usually my only hope of getting rid of it completely is to get out of the car and have no fear of getting back in again. Basically the end of the trip. When we got out of the car we were greeted by four things: Fresh mountain air, a bit of chill in the air, strawberry vendors, and three or so people trying to get us into their taxi to take us to a hotel. One Taxi was actually just part of a hotel down the road and offered us a free ride. Well, we had no idea where we were, nor where any hotels where, AND we were actually looking for exactly that. We took our chances. Turns out we made a good move, because the hotel was not only very close, and affordable, but also built into the hill directly on the edge of the sacred lake for which Bedugul is known. We signed up to do a dawn boat ride out to the temple on the water (which was the picture used for the back of the 5000 rupiah bill (fun fact)), and decided to check out the botanical garden, the other facet of Bedugul for which it was known. Unfortunately my stomach caught up with us and we were forced to make an early retreat to the hotel. I was hoping to make the most of that night by checking out at a local cafe or something fun for dinner after my stomach was all cleared up, when all at once the prescription strength anti-histamines I'd been taking caught up with me. One minute I was reading while we tentatively waited to see if my stomach had in fact been appeased, and the next my eyelids are so heavy my head go dragged down to the bed along with them. It was 6:00pm. Alexis stayed up and read, but I was waking-up-from-surgery tired. That irresistible tired which makes everything seem far away and unimportant. The tired where only the sleep and the need to sleep exist. It worked out reasonably well that that was the night which I got pulled under, because, as it turns out, dawn is quite early. We dragged ourselves out of the warm, comfortable bed and down to the dock with the boatman. It. Was. Freezing. Attention readers, you should probably take anything I say regarding temperature with a grain or three of salt. I am used to Timor weather, and when I was in Bali, I was spending a great deal of time in the sun. Getting up before dawn, in a town up in the mountains, to go OUT ON A LAKE... I was cold. The same way Alexis hadn't packed any shoes but flipflops due to a lack of foreseeable need, I hadn't packed any pants. Or long sleeves. I doubled up on underwear, t-shirts, and socks, but it didn't do much good. Despite the cold, the trip out was completely worth doing. We (meaning our guide while Alexis and I sat curled in little balls shivering) paddled out to the temple on the water. It was quite beautiful, but I was more taken with the scenery of the lake and the surrounding mountains. The fleet of photographers moving in one large clump. They must have actually been one of those touring photography groups based on the equipment they had, plus the fact that they didn't seem interested in any view other than the one through there lenses.

Back on land we decided to make the most of our day. We got breakfast at the hotel and headed up to the botanical gardens. It was about a mile and a half walk, and most of it was up hill, but my stomach was feeling better and we had just had a lovely morning and a nice breakfast. We stopped by a little cafe on the way and had some coffee and a pan au chocolate before finishing the walk and heading into the park proper. The park is particularly well known for it's collection of orchids but, as it turns out, we were there in the orchid off-season. The park was still beautiful and very well maintained with neat and tidy open grassy areas along with clusters of different types of plants and trees and large statues running along the little road that gave vehicle access to the far end of the garden. We walked around for a little bit, but quickly located the Bali Treetop Adventure Park, which took up a small portion of the botanical garden itself, and headed straight in.

They set us up with harnesses and took us through the safety training. The harness was your basic rock climbing harness, so that was nothing new to me, but some of the gear on it was. There were two carabiners along with a rather large metal contraption with only a thin but strong sheet of metal between two or three wheels and the flat top. Under the wheels it was open on one side, so that allowed the contraption to basically function as a large heavy hook with wheels. Any guess what that was for? Yes, it was for zipline, or flying-fox as they called it. The instructions in the training were simple. Always remain clipped in with at least one of the carabiners. Our training area was four trees immediately in front of the little building we had just used to pay for the Ticket. Between the four trees were a range of one to three cables, depending on the challenge, stretched taught. At the beginning of cable, where it was wrapped around the tree, was multicolored tape which acted as your guide. One strip of red tape means clip one carabiner here, two strips of red tape mean clip both carabiners here, and one strip of blue between two strips of red meant clip both carabiners here and your zipline contraption between them. After training we were told to go to the orange course. It was full so we got redirected to the blue course. When we actually walked from the training area into the adventure park proper, all you could see were cables and nets and odd little obstacles strung up between trees and the people who were working to climb, cross, or otherwise complete various courses with a wide range of difficulty. We started on blue, and went through the course. I'm not afraid of heights. Never have been. Do I do have a reasonable caution towards them. I respect that a  10 meter fall could hurt me quite badly depending on how I landed. Alexis, however, seemed to have no concern at all. Zero hesitation. Once she knew she was strapped in there was no fear in her. I was impressed. From a girl shrieking and throwing bananas to evade a monkey walking towards her two or three days before, to this amazon in the trees. It was good to see. We got through blue with relative ease, and then moved on to orange. Orange was not only more difficult, but also a lot longer. It took us maybe thirty minutes to complete that course, which consisted of walking on tight ropes, moving around and between wooden obstacles, climbing through playground sized tubes that bobbed and twisted with every minor adjustment of weight, wooden bars which acted as steps but hung from cables and therefore swung freely, and ziplines. It was a lot of fun, and we were both starting to get tired. The red course was next, and also the second most difficult course. It was 16 meters above the ground, most of the time, and much more difficult than either of the previous courses we'd completed. One of the obstacles consisted of three cables stretching between two trees. One for your safety line, and two that were about a foot and a half apart with a series of ropes hanging from them. On the ends of the ropes were, basically, stirrups. It looked simple enough, but the amount of swing that each one had, it was both very difficult and extremely amusing to try and get through. Alexis especially struggled with it, mostly because of her tiny little legs. The best trick I discovered to make a move from one foothold to the next was to use my adductors to pull my legs together and then use one of my hands to pull the next step into position. Although that was the best way I found to get across, as soon as I'd arrived at the other side, my legs informed me that I had made a grave error and my punishment would be no less than two days of slightly awkward walking. Having crossed such an amusing and difficult obstacle, we were glad to face one that was straight forward. Wait, did I say glad? I meant terrified. I know, I know “but you guys were strapped in. No real danger, right?” Of course but being told that you are now to clip on to a rope, and then jump off the 16 meter high platform, swing across a sizable gap, and then let go in order to grab the spiderweb like net you're swinging into is still a rather daunting task. Alexis asked me to go first. Having bungee jumped before, I was more well prepared for this sort of psychological barrier hurdling. It took me a probably ten seconds to gather myself once my safety line was attached to the rope, but then I took the plunge. Living in Vernonia, we spent a lot of time out in the woods. One particular summer we spent pretty much every waking moment out playing in one particular area or woods that had a rope swing. We spent hours on that thing. So while I was flying through the air towards the net, I was reminded of this. And you know what? It didn't help at all. Bam! Hit the net. Drop the rope. Grab the net with both hands. Find a foot hold. All that in about half a second. I was so full of adrenaline at that point that my legs were basically useless they were shaking so much. My brain also had a misfire, apparently, because without really thinking about where my safety line was supposed to go, I disconnected from the rope. After I let it go, I realized that I was on the net, with no safety line. Whoops. I quickly found that any part of the net that wasn't involved in one of the intricate knots that made it a net instead of just a bunch of rope was thin enough to clip on to. I clipped in one at a time with my carabiners and worked my way to the top where there was an actual safety line. I had to climb a short ways to get to a point where I could actually turn and see Alexis, but once I did I began shouting encouragement. It took her a bit longer to get her self amped up to do it, but I'm proud to say not much longer. She did everything right, including staying attached to the rope for the short climb to the top of the net, and was soon caught up with me. The rest of the red course was challenging, but nothing like the rope jump (Tarzan leap, as they called it), so once we were through with that the rest was down hill, adrenaline speaking. At the very end was a 160 meter long zipline that was the reward for making the rope jump and getting to the end of either the black or red course (they joined right at the end and shared this last leg). The zipline was excellent, we even ended up buy a couple of pictures of us on it from one of the employees whose job it was to take pictures of people while they were climbing about. Alexis chose her activity well. That might have been the single most fun thing we did the entire trip. We stayed in Bedugul one more night, and then headed back to Kuta early the next morning. We bought a shuttle ticket, but there were only two other people who had, so they just took us in a private car for the same price. It was really quite nice. We got back to Kuta and got a hotel room. I don't remember what we did that night, but it was probably just relaxing from the previous days of of walking and adventure parking.

The next day we decided (I decided, Alexis agreed, but it wasn't one of those negotiable things. I was going Hell or high-water (which don't really seem comparable...)) to go try and see the new Batman movie: Dark Night Rises. We arrived at the theater (only one in Bali, as far as I could tell) and got in line. Typically I wouldn't consider going to see a movie as necessarily part of a vacation, but this was important. Why? Because Timor does not have a movie theater. At all. Any where. Doesn't exist. And I really wanted to see this movie. We got there and got in line. It was almost out the door. I found out later that the theater only has two rooms in which they show movies. One was playing Dark Knight Rises back to back to back, and the other was playing Spiderman and Ice-age 4 I think. We finally got the front of the line to get tickets. It was about 1:30 at this point, and the showings were for 1:00, 4:30, and 8:00. 1:00 was basically wide open, but we'd already missed a half an hour, 8:00 was completely sold out, and 4:30 only had ONE ticket left. Defeated we left the theater and decided to try again tomorrow, but we were right next to a giant mall, so we decided to make the most of it. Inside we found a nice place to eat and had lunch. We were going to head home when I spotted a store that caught my interest. Alexis and I went upstairs to check it out. It was an arcade, and it was awesome. We bought about 10 dollars of credit (instead of tokens they put credit on a card that you swipe) and went to town. We played games and hung out for maybe and hour or so and then left with our winnings, a stegosaurus stuffed animal for Alexis and some ice cream to share. The trip out to the theater turned out not to be a total bust, but we only had one more chance to see the movie because of our impending trip back to Dili. That night we got massages because, well, because we could. Turns out the first place we went really did offer only mediocre work, because the place we went the second time was AMAZING. Best massage I've every had, hands down.

The next morning we got up, grabbed an excellent breakfast, and then grabbed a cab to head to the mall early. This theater had a policy that you can only buy tickets for the same day, and the box opened at 12:00. We aimed to be there for 11:00-11:15, but the traffic on the way was awful. We ended up arriving around 11:40. It took an hour of waiting in line to finally get to the front (it really was out the door this time) and when we did we were rewarded for our patience. Two tickets to Batman at 1:00. We had to wait for about fifteen minutes for them to open the theater to go and find our seats, but we were well settled by the time the trailers started. An interesting thing about this theater is that the seats are assigned. When you buy your ticket, you also choose where you will sit. The movie was awesome, I loved every minute of it and wanted to see it again the second it was over. But alas, we were only in Bali for one more day. We grabbed some ice cream at Cold Stone (yeah, they had a Cold Stone), and then headed back to the hotel. We went to the beach for an hour or so, Alexis sunned and read while I played in the waves. When the sunset we went and had dinner at Sandbar, the place that was super gourmet, and each tried something different this time. I was still a bit sick stomach wise, so I ended up only eating about half of what I ordered, even though it was on the lighter side of foods. Alexis wasn't particularly please with her meal either, but we had some delicious drinks and desserts, so we left happy.

After that it was sleep, cab, immigration, plane, immigration, cab, home. It was a fantastic vacation, and I really needed it. I like it here in Dili, but man it can get really claustrophobic after awhile. I've only been back in Dili for a month now, and I'm already feeling like I need a vacation. In all likelihood I will be finishing up here in late October, maybe travel around Southeast Asia for a bit, and then head home for late November/early December. That's the sort of plan for now, but I'll let you all know if anything changes.

Love to my family and friends, hope all is well!

Cheers,

-Rowan Connor

Ramelau

The last few weeks have been pretty wild. Recovering from Malaria, catching up at work, exercise, and then an insane trip to the districts over the election weekend all contributed to making this the most eventful time I’ve had in Timor thus far.

You have already read about my Malaria, so that’s no longer interesting. Work and exercising aren’t particularly exciting either, so I’ll just sum them up as follows: Good. Now let’s get down to the trip to the districts.

Originally this trip had been planned for a few weeks ago, but it’s the kind of trip that you really need a car for, and borrowing a friend’s fell through. Suddenly on Friday morning it looked like we would be able to get a car, so if we wanted to go we needed to decide pretty much exactly then.  A unanimous yes sends Sharanya to go retrieve the car and the rest of us make vague plans about what exactly we may need. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, this is election weekend, so pretty much all the stores are closed. We decide that we can collect bottles of water and snack while on the road the next morning. Friday evening rolls around, Alexis and I head to bed early to be sure we are up for the 9:00am departure while Sharanya and Carrick decide to stay up and pack. Alexis and I are up at 8:00am sharp, packed and ready to go by 8:30. We decide to watch an episode of something from our amble selection of pirated TV shows as there is yet no sign of movement from Sharanya or Carrick. 9:00 rolls around and nothing. I rouse them with a knock on the door and inform them of the time. They don’t seem worried or apologetic in the least. Turns out what was a rigid 9:00am departure when Alexis and I went to bed turned into a 9:00ish in the time it took the two of them to finish packing and watch a half a dozen episodes of Modern Family. Just to be clear time +ish with Carrick is a BIG window. We don’t end up getting out of the house until around 10:30, which is not really a good start as far as I’m concerned, but everyone else seemed to be in high spirits. The hopes I had of a relaxing, fun drive were quickly demolished somewhere between realizing that neither Alexis nor I had seatbelts, the addition of third person to the tiny car’s back seat -- and my shoulder space, and the roads which were beyond bumped and cliffy, for lack of a better word.

Despite the occasional terror induced either through driving right on the edge of a plummet to nothing, a near head on collision with a car coming around a narrow blind corner in our lane, or more commonly both with the latter leading to the former, it was actually a lot of fun getting to see a really different side of Timor than I’ve seen. Dili is fine, but just that. Fine. The districts are incredible and really worthy of more exploration. We took the occasional break along the way to either just get out and stretch or see the scenery. We stopped in a small town along the way for lunch and were treated with a stunning meteorological display from the 360°-view hilltop as clouds came whipping over an adjacent line of hills, down into a valley, and then back up and over our heads as a light fog. The wind that was carrying them was surprisingly fast as we could actually watch their progress almost the whole way (it was pretty faint in the valley, but you could look up and see the fog streaming by overhead).  With full bellies (my first meat other than the tuna from breakfast that morning in a month as June was a “vegetarian trail run”) we got back on the road and continued on. As we got nearer and nearer our destination the road got less and less a road and more like a dry river bed. It wasn’t actually, but the size of the ruts and complete lack of anything constructed in many parts indicates that it was just land that got driven on a lot. We were on a road that was completely dirt and rocks, but really not the worst we had seen or would see when what I had been worrying about the entire time, at least in some small part somewhere in my brain, happened.

Sharanya was driving, Carrick was in the passenger seat (which hear is on the left side of the car like in Europe) and I was behind Carrick, with Alexis in the middle (neither of us belted because of the family who owns the car’s dog is a nervous passenger and finds comfort in indirectly trying to kill us) and Jacqueline belted and in the far right seat (dog liked her I guess). We slowed down as the road narrowed with a more or less fifteen foot drop onto someone’s house (location location location) on the left, and a rather nasty looking puddle on the right. That sounds like an easy choice, but some of the puddles concealed car eating pits of doom. Well, probably not doom, but severe discomfort definitely. Carrick stuck his head out the window to keep an eye on the left side of the car as we tried to navigate around the puddle. Unfortunately, the left side of the road was also wet, and the left two tires slide and dropped right off the edge. We were now completely stuck; high-centered on the muddy edge of a narrow “road” about fifteen feet above someone’s corrugated-tin home. Carrick, thinking quickly, said “everyone get out of the car -- that side” clearly indicating the side of the car where exiting would be met with ground rather than the unbridled force of gravity. We climbed out of the car quickly but carefully before we could assess the situation. The car was in no imminent danger of falling onto the house, but it was also very clearly not going anywhere, although that did not stop us from trying to push it free. Sharanya called ahead to the hotel we were headed to and asked them to send a truck with some rope to get us out. Just to be sure that our need was to clear we had one of the many locals who had started to gather around what was certainly the most entertaining happening for miles in any direction explain the situation in more precise Tetun than Sharanya could manage. A few people came by on horseback or motorcycle, and stopped to talk to the people who continued to come from absolutely nowhere to watch the Malai stand befuddled at what to do next.  About a half an hour or forty-five minutes after getting stuck a truck passed by us the same direction we were going. They stopped to see if they could help, and it turned out it was a hired driver and a tourist from Hong Kong headed to the same place as we were. Just to make sure someone would hear our plea, we sent Jacqueline and Alexis on ahead with them to the hotel to make sure that someone was coming to get us. Sharanya, Carrick, and I just stood and waited, talking to the locals who continued to gather at the social event of the year when we could make ourselves understood. Eventually the truck from the hotel showed up with a rope, but the angle of the stuck car and the road, trying to pull the car forward presented the risk of tipping it over the edge which would send it plummeting down onto the house below. We tried to figure out an angle that might work, but did nothing but dent and scratch the front fender in a poor attempt to get around the stuck vehicle for a better position from which to pull. We were still standing scratching our heads as the sun was setting behind us when our answer came around the corner from the direction we were trying to go. It was a dump truck full of people.

Here in Timor, dump trucks are more often seen carrying people than stuff, especially during political rallies. This particular truck was filled with people who had just finished voting and were heading back to their respective towns. The ridiculously skilled truck driver got around the stuck little Mitsubishi Pajero jr. and stopped. Sharanya negotiated with the driver of the truck who convinced everyone to chip in and get the car free for something like a dollar a piece (which turned into $50, but what the hell else could we do?). The sun now well set, one person got in the driver seat, and another forty or so got behind the car to push on the rope attached to the front to pull. Carrick and I in were in the latter group. “Satu, dua, TIGA” and we all pulled/pushed like crazy while the man in the car got the wheels spinning. The car came free and there was much cheering and scattering as we celebrated our success while desperately trying to get out of the way of the car now moving towards us rather quickly. We paid the leader of the group, liberally distributed thanks, high-fives, and handshakes, and then jumped in the car. The last leg of the trip was about another hour, but after what had been a ridiculously emotionally exhausting experience it seemed like the longest single stretch of the drive. We got to the “Posada”, which is a hotel, ate the dinner which was provided along with our rooms for $15, and then hit the sack as we had a very, very early start.

The guide was to meet us at 3:00am on Sunday morning, so we all got up around 2:00am to be sure we had everything that we needed and were dressed very warmly. It was already cold in our rooms, and where we were going it was only going to get colder. The power was out for the entire hotel, so we had to get dressed and packed in the dark. At one point I used a little flashlight that came on my cheapo Timor phone to get down to the bathrooms and have a morning pee, only to be scared half to death upon exiting when the surprisingly cat-like Jacqueline, who had come down to use the adjacent bathroom, looked up at me wearing her glasses with built in flashlights. Not only was I alone in the dark before she stealthily moved into position, but the glasses with the lights sent my mind reeling, desperately scanning for something that fit that meme. “Alien!” definitely (and embarrassingly) passed through my still half sleeping brain before “Person + glasses+lights” fell into recognition.

3:00am rolled around, the guide showed up, and we started walking. After about twenty minutes of gentle uphill strolling, the real hills started to show themselves. Out of nowhere, we were suddenly walking up loose dirt and stone roads at an angle that could teach stairs a thing or two. After about ten minutes of this, Alexis couldn’t take anymore. I love my girlfriend, dearly, but she is not in good shape. These hills had been described as “beginner”, “more like a walk than a hike”, “easy”, which is unfortunate, because they were none of these things. Between the lack of food, early morning, and serious exertion, Alexis had to stop. She then threw up and we decided that she needed to go back to the hotel. I told the group to go on ahead and that I would catch up and led my poor dizzy/sick girl back down the hill to the hotel. By the time I got her settled back in bed with a bit of water in her stomach to make up for what she lost, it was 4:10am. I now had only two and half hours to catch up with the group or make it, without a guide by only the light of the moon, to the top of the tallest mountain in Timor.

The reason for this time limit was two-fold. One I couldn’t stand the idea of getting part way up, and then meeting the group on their way back down and being forced to join them, therefore not being able to summit. The other time constriction was the fact that this was a sunrise hike, which is why we got up so damn early in the first place. I was now more than an hour behind the group and had to redo part of the trip. I emptied anything from my bag that I thought was unnecessary, including some of the waters the others had packed and were adding too much weight. I took off at a slow jog for the first portion of the walk that had been legitimately just easy, but then slowed down about a hundred feet from the first of the serious hills because we had been accosted by a couple of dogs that must of lived on the nearby farms, and figured running by would only further provoke them. Although I was probably right, that didn’t really stop them. The couple of dogs had turned into a pack of three or four who got together and came at me. They were probably just trying to scare me away, and were not planning to attack, but I didn’t want to take that risk. I grabbed a large rock from the road and threw it to intentionally miss and yelled “SEI” which means “go away” and people are constantly saying to dogs here. The dogs made a few more moves forward and I lobbed a few more warning walks, but eventually they lost interest as I got further and further from their houses. Now really on my own, I could get down to business. I hiked up these monster hills for about thirty minutes, stopped for five to stretch and grab a drink of water, and then got back to it. There were a few times when I didn’t know which way to go, and just took a look at the summit and guessed. One time I climbed a particularly treacherous hill that I thought was the path, but it turned into out to just be a dry river bed and dead ended into a mass of shrubbery. I lost a lot of energy and a bit of time to that mistake, but eventually got back down to the main trail, somehow without breaking my ankle on the loose dirt/stones on a steep decline in the dark. I could only really see the trail in front of me and the trees or lack thereof around me. I could tell when the drop off the path was just a steep hill, and when I was actually walking on a cliff, but that was about it. I could not see very far for most of the journey except when the moonlight caught a distant hill in just the right way. In addition to the moon to give me light, I also had Venus to give me inspiration. I’m not saying that in any weird astrological way, I just love Venus and have never been able to see it so well, so would look up every once in a while and it would cheer me up enough to keep moral up. Probably about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, the path became harder and harder to follow, despite the light of the moon and now the first traces of twilight. The path was no longer a clear strip of sometimes packed sometimes loose dirt and stones, but more like a small line of patted down grass. In addition to that the nearer I got to the top the more opened it became, and the right direction became less and less intuitive. There were a lot of moments when my body was start to give out and beg for rest, but from years of cross-country and wrestling, I’ve learned that the mind will always quit before the body. I adopted a new motto while I was moving to help encourage myself to keep going, and even found myself saying it out loud a number of times. My motto was “Slow Not Stopped”, or SNS as I would say to myself. The idea being that instead of stopping to rest, I would just slow way down, but keep moving. I would usually just take very small steps, but try to keep my feet moving at about the pace I wanted them to be going. At one point, lost in my own head, I thought I heard someone say “Connor?” I looked up, but could only see bushes. I probed the still air on the mountain, “Carrick?” Sure enough, Carrick was just about fifteen seconds further up the hill resting on a log. I gave him some water from my bag and offered him a bread roll (of which I had brought two) but he could only take a few bites before his upset stomach wouldn’t allow more. I knew exactly how he felt. We walked together for about five minutes as he explained where he had separated from the group and about how far ahead he would guess they were, but then he encouraged me to go at my own pace so I could potentially make the sunrise. I continued on, really just slogging up the hills, occasionally taking a few beats of stand upright, take in my surroundings and pick the most path-like bit of ground I could find. After another twenty minutes or so of this grueling pace, the ground began to level out and the sky started to open up. It was now light enough that there were only two or three stars visible in the sky, but it was all pre-dawn light. When the ground flattened out, I could walk to quickly that I felt like I was sprinting, but then it would turn into another hill and I suddenly I would be dragging seventy pound shoes. The closer I got to the summit, the more tired my body became, and the more it just wanted to collapse. As soon as I saw the top with Sharanya, Jacqueline, Paul (the Hong Kong tourist from earlier), and the guide all at the top, I nearly did. One brief but brutal set of stairs etched into the side of the mountain and I was at the top. Just before dawn.

We stood and rested on the peak for sometime as we watched the sunrise. We bundled against the cold of the wind with whatever clothes we had brought along with the extras I had in my bag. About forty-five minutes after we parted ways, Carrick arrived. We took a ton of pictures, which will hopefully be put online soon as none of the cameras were mine, and then headed back down. Jacqueline, Paul, and the Guide all went on ahead while Carrick, Sharanya, and I took a snail’s pace back down the mountain. Many of the views which had been lost in the dark of the night were now in their full glory. Walking down felt like a different trip entirely at points. We continued to stop often for breaks in the shade, made especially necessary by our being completely out of water and Carrick and my extreme whiteness. We didn’t make it back to the hotel until something like 11:30 or noon. We took a few hours to recover at the hotel, and then got back on the road headed to Dili.

We were now aware of the terrible road conditions and the limitations of the little car, so the trip back was fairly slow going. We stopped to get gas in the town where we had stopped to have breakfast on the way out. Unfortunately there wasn’t a gas station, per se, just a guy with a tank of gas and a funnel. Immediately after getting enough to make it back to Dili, the car started behaving very strangely. It was losing RPMs in waves and Sharanya was doing all she could to just keep it going. It would struggle anytime that we hit an uphill, and flat was problematic but not as bad, and downhill was completely fine as we mostly just coasted. At first I thought that we had just gotten a tank of either terrible gas or maybe even diesel and the car’s time was limited, but after a while we began to think that it may have just been coincidental that the problem started right after getting gas and maybe it was a problem with the transmission. It seemed to have trouble every time it downshifted, or tried to, but if we got a steady speed on flat or any speed downhill it seemed to be fine. The trip back took hours -- miserable “the car is going to die any second” hours. Sharanya did an awesome job of keeping the car going and getting us back to Dili, but there was nothing she could have done to make that not suck.

We dragged ourselves up the stairs to our house and all pretty much instantly hit the sack. Poor Sharanya and Carrick had work in the morning, but luckily for mes, my boss had given us a five day weekend (Thursday, Friday, and Monday off) so I got a day to recover from the lunacy of the day before.

Next week I head to Bali to renew my Visa here in Timor, so I may write a blog from there about there, or you might have to wait for another substantial amount of time before I get another one up. Hopefully this ridiculously long post will be enough to keep you all satisfied until then.

Love you all,

Cheers!

Very sick

Hey all, just wanted to give a brief update on my current state in Timor-Leste. The night between Saturday and Sunday, I kept waking up feeling nauseated. It wasn’t enough to get me out of bed, but enough to make me feel sorry for myself, blame something I ate, and curl up into the fetal position to quell the sickness. After an entire night of doing this, sometime around 9:00 or 10:00 on Sunday morning I got up, rushed to the bathroom, and proceeded to empty myself in pretty much all ways one can. It was drastic. I stumbled back to the room dripping sweat and climbed under the covers to recover. After that I had to stagger back to the bathroom for pretty much the same routine, minus the vomiting, every half hour or so. It wasn’t until around 1:00 that I finally convinced myself that I needed to go to the clinic.

                Carrick was hadn’t heard much from me since I’d pretty much only been in the bathroom and the bedroom up until that point, but the second he saw me he reached the same “Connor needs to go to the clinic” conclusion that I had. All of my joints were in pain and my skin was very sensitive to the touch. Basically it felt like an amplified flu at this point. The ride to the clinic was tricky, because I was really dizzy, sore, tired, and every pot hole we hit (which was relatively few because of Carrick’s awareness of my condition) sent serious pain the whole way up my spine.

                  We arrived at the clinic, walked inside and I was immediately seen by the doctor on staff. I described my symptoms and she stuck as thermometer in my armpit(?). While still listening to my long list of health issues, she pulled a small packet out of a box, took my hand, and began swabbing my finger with alcohol. She opened the small packet and pulled out a small white flattened piece of plastic about the size of a match box, only thinner. Still with the thermometer pitching a small vertical tent by my left shoulder the nurse took a sample of blood from the recently swabbed finger and put it on the matchbox like piece of white plastic. We talked a bit more about my symptoms and how I felt at that moment versus how I felt in the morning before she looked down, back up, and said you’re positive for malaria. Malaria, huh.

                After some language barrier hurdling (she didn’t speak great English) we figured out what we needed to do with what she was prescribing (mostly Carrick, I was running on a half a brain at this point) and headed back home. I had the rather ambitious task of not vomiting after taking my pills. This was very important as my medicine consisted of only two parts. One part was rehydration salts to be taken with one and a half liters of water (at least) per day for the next three days, which wasn’t really a problem. The second part, however, was a bit trickier as it required me to take EIGHT anti-malarial pills in one go. Not necessarily one mouthful mind you, but all at basically the same time. If I threw up, then I would need to return to the clinic to get more to try again. I waited for a few hours until I thought I was clear, ate a spoonful of oatmeal to test the waters (the food recommended to me by the doctor) and then took the dive. Fortunately I was able to keep everything down and because of that a mere three two days later I am feeling much better. I’ve still been dealing with profuse sweating, fatigue and general stinkiness, but the other, and more unpleasant, symptoms have pretty much stopped.  After hearing the horror stories of Carrick and Sharanya’s experiences with Malaria, I’m incredibly lucky that I got off as easily as I did.

                So that’s my update for you all, hopefully everyone stateside is healthy and happy!

And the nomination goes to...

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to part three of my life in Timor-Leste. Tonight I would like to introduce you to some of the cast/characters that make up this little crocodile island.

                Connor, Alexis, Sharanya, and Carrick: We are housemates in the upstairs of a lovely family’s house in Bairo Pite. The house is decorated with an incredibly unique sort of 50’s diner theme including large black and white tiles on the floor as well as purple and pink walls. Connor (or Rowan as I’m known at work) is our beloved protagonist, but wouldn’t even have a story to tell if it weren’t for the amazing supporting cast -- Alexis who makes this trip emotionally possible and Carrick and Sharanya who both constantly make it better and better. Alexis has her own blog, which is mostly about knitting, but is actually very funny and well written. I highly recommend it even for the non-fiber arts enthusiast: Alexis-findingmyknitch.blogspot.com. Carrick also has a blog and his funnier than both Alexis and I combined: toofarover.blogspot.com.

                Drivers: Although not aggressive in an emotional sense, the drivers here do have a particularly, let’s say, recklessness. If there is a car length, they will but a car there. If there isn’t a car length, they will put a car there. Cars, however, aren’t the only hazard. Large trucks which seem to run on coal are just as eager to fit into car sized gaps and emit an exhaust that actually seems to be filled with particulates. Your best bet with drivers of any vehicle, be it motorbike (scooter or proper motorcycle), car, truck, or microlet (a van that is the main public transportation here) is to keep your distance. The safest place to be is without a doubt in front of them. All vehicles will without warning or provocation slam on their brakes or swerve wildly to avoid parked cars (seriously, they won’t move an inch to avoid an oncoming bike, but they’ll give a parked vehicle two car widths). Taxis are the worst offenders of all. They go incredibly slow when they are looking for a passenger, and have a tendency to, I can only assume spitefully, sit near the middle of the road. This makes them hard to pass because they are taking up the space typically allotted for splitting lanes (riding between traffic) and if you try to pass them on the left (we drive on the left here) there is a good chance they will be swerving in to pick up a fair – motorbikes be dammed.  

One particularly notable driver is the one who nearly turned this whole Timor adventure into a very bad trip indeed. Carrick and I were headed to the gym and were forced to stick to back roads as the main street through was closed for a religious procession (think parade but with none of the fun) for Corpus Christi. On our way down a pack street, we were slowly moving forward amongst the cars, as is the primary benefit to being on a scooter, when a UN driver decided it was time to make a sudden left but he wanted to keep it on the DL (I can only assume that is the reason for his lack of turn signal). His path was, unfortunately, impeded by us. Well, it was about to be at least. I hit the brakes but realized that there was no way I was going to be able to stop both Carrick and myself with the little tiny Honda brakes before hitting the front corner of the van. We very well could have ended up going under the wheels had that happened. I released the brake and hit the throttle. The sad little engine made a great deal of noise and, barely, gave us enough power to swerve around the turning van. Another problem that I have yet to mention is that we were already up against the edge of the street, so all there was to the right was car, in front of us was about to be van, and to the left there was an impossibly insurmountable curb. The drive way that the van was using, however, provided and access of sorts. Before I knew it, I was up on the sidewalk, well out of the way of the van before gently easing on the break and coming to a stop. The driveway itself was out of the question because my speed made the 90 degree turn impossible. Carrick later told me that he heard screams from nearby people who saw the close call. All I heard was my pulse.

                Bosses/Co-workers: I don’t want to go into too much detail here because I’m not eager to bring too much overlap between my personal life and my working life. I will say that I really like my job, my co-workers are awesome, and my bosses have been incredibly helpful and supportive of my developing ability. I definitely see the possibility of some solid friendships coming out of this.

                Animals: Fuck Roosters. Chickens are fine in general, but roosters should not be pets. At all. Ever. Cock fighting is really common/popular here (on so many levels I don’t get the appeal), so many people keep roosters outside of their homes on little leads tied around a leg. We can always here their crows, but they are typically muffled by the thick concrete walls for the house and those of our room. For the week our air conditioner was broken, however, we were forced to “sleep” in the living room to avoid being broiled. That stereotype that roosters crow when the sun comes up? That’s like saying people breathe at high noon. Yes it’s true, but it is also happening EVERY OTHER MOMENT. The roosters were so frequent in their crows that I actually can identify two or three of them by their voice. 

The dogs and people here generally just live in harmony/disinterest with one another. Dogs wonder around and eat whatever they can find, and people let them be. Dogs are not usually pets here. There is currently a litter of puppies downstairs which are ridiculously cute but slowly learning from their mother that they need to be wary of people. We’ve been exposed to the puppies enough that I hope they won’t become like some of the full grown dogs who lived in the area before we moved in. One dog in particular, we call him Bones rather descriptively, makes a huge effort to bark at us whenever he can for as long as he can. Often that means as soon as we begin our entrance to the driveway, while we’re parking, while we’re climbing the stairs, and even after we’ve gone into the house. 

Pigs are fine. I live next to a bunch of them for something like a week when I first got here. They make some awful noises, and can be incredibly loud. I only say they are fine because I haven’t had to deal with them in the same way I dealt with roosters. If I was stuck listening to that disgusting snorting and grunting all the time, I would probably hate them too.

                Landlords/neighbors: Although there are many, many people who fall under this category, I’m only going to talk about three: Elder aka Mr. Smiley, Angela aka Mana, and Gilcson aka Colbain. Elder and Angela are the parents of our landlords and speak essentially no English. They are both incredibly kind and sweet despite the difficulties that come along with the language barrier. Colbain is their son who speaks quite a bit of English and can only be described as a bad ass. He has a sweet bike that he takes very good care of, he has a lot of friends around the neighborhood, and has quality tattoos covering his entire back. That being said, he is just as kind and sweet has his parents (he is the younger brother of our landlord).

All right, so those are the main players in this little tale of mine. I hope this is enough to tide you all over for the next couple weeks. Please, keep me in the know about your lives. I would love to get some emails or comments about what’s going on back home.

Love you all!

Sláinte,

Connor