Boring Banda

You know you’re in a one-horse town when the chief draws are mosques and as yet unrebuilt tsunami sites. Had a really eerie feeling visiting mass graves, one with 14,000 buried, another with 46,000. Here are the photos.

I spent the first two days in Banda Aceh with Maxim and Nabil, two Arab guys from Quebec City studying at Laval, whom I had met on Pulau Weh. They’re cycling down the length of Sumatra, taking a month to do it. Quite cool, actually, and it was nice to spend the time with them. Nabil was helpful in pointing out that Pulau Weh is Kilometer Zero, i.e. the northernmost point in Indonesia. It serves as an interesting experience of contrast to chalk up, especially after having visited Kanyakumari, the southernmost point in India (and another major tsunami site in its own right).

New Years Eve was spent in the Country Steak House, one of the few places in town where you can get beer. But they closed at 10 PM, so it wasn’t exactly a blow-out. New Years Day was spent with a nice Sino-Indonesia girl from the hotel, who took me around in an SUV packed with female relatives and tons of kids, to do the rounds of greetings with friends and family around town. First time I ever celebrated New Year’s on the day itself, rather than the night before.

Indonesia as a country is a culinary wasteland, too, and I’ve found myself constantly hungry for the last month. Anyway, the star attraction is yet to come: Big City Saigon. After this, it will be all fun, all the time. And eating my fill!

Pulau Weh

See for yourself the lush tropical vegetation covering hills and mountains. Turquoise waters teeming with corals and multicolored marine life. A bay, dotted with tiny verdant islands, reducing the surf to almost nothing. For sheer topographical beauty, I am hard-pressed to come up with something that surpasses Pulau Weh. The weather is nothing short of splendid. It only rained the first night, and then never again. The air temperature was a most comfortable 27 Celsius, while the water was 26. While other beaches may come close, there is a unique magnificence here that will stay with me forever.

Following the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, NGOs poured into the province of Aceh, and a peace agreement with GAM rebels made the place secure. On Pulau Weh, there was more damage to property than loss of life, although the extent of the former can’t be overstated. This however provided a unique opportunity for the fledgling tourist industry to find its bearings and share the loveliness of this island only two hours by ferry from Banda Aceh.

Iboih beach is said to be the more social venue on the island. NGO staffers, both foreign and Indonesian, tend to spend weekends here. Being the Christmas season, there has been somewhat more activity. There are even intrepid travelers who, like me, came for the scenery and also reckoned that it was an exotic enough locale to make for interesting conversation long after travels have concluded. There is also a smattering of resident expats, married to locals, who have set up shop here doing one thing or another. Acehnese children are an inordinately cute lot, and the Euro-Indonesian children are even more so.

Around the world, it must be said that all the beaches I tend to be drawn to feature scuba diving as a recreational sport, and strange as it may seem, I had never actually taken the course. Until now, that is. There was an Indonesian NGO staffer, Rheinhardt, from Banda staying at the same guest house (the one with the shared bathroom), along with Frank, the German dive master. A course was about to begin, and it would be much better with two students. It seemed that events had conspired to make me, quite literally, take the plunge.

I was presented with a rather thick tome that was surprisingly well written, going on about water pressure and diving equipment, and safety precautions and procedures. We watched an amusing video. And on the second day, Frank put us in wetsuits, fitted us with inflatable vests, a scuba tanks, masks, snorkels and fins, to take us to the beach (only 5 meters away) to breathe with scuba equipment for the first time. It was pretty cool.

The next day, after more theory lessons, we actually went for a swim around the beach, and of course did more exercises. This time I saw some real marine life. On the third day, we actually went diving to a depth of 12 meters. I had equalizing trouble with my ears, and suffered a nosebleed. Learning to dive is like learning to drive for the first time. You are constantly multitasking, concentrating on so many things at once, that the underwater scenery is secondary to all the things you’re trying to keep tabs on. Maintaining neutral buoyancy is quite a challenge. I found myself either sinking to the bottom or floating to the surface, and was invariably struggling with that.

However, on the last day of the course, we went out in the boat to an underwater mountain, that we circumvented, going to a depth of 25 meters. It was on this dive that I really took a good look at my surroundings, and had a true National Geographic hour. We saw a barracuda swim by in the distance. It’s an incredible experience to swim right into a school of luminescent tropical fish. Back on the boat, someone from the more advanced group asked us if we had seen the sharks. I am told that if you do get to spot them, it’s only at a distance and they pass very quickly. Although white boys are a favorite treat the world over, sharks are actually more interested in bona fide marine life. Having seen Jaws, and other PBS programming, I knew that sharks could smell blood from many miles away, and my constant underwater nosebleeds had placed a bee in my bonnet, so to speak. No, we hadn’t seen any sharks. But I can tell you that if I had, I would have shit my wetsuit, to be sure.

I never got to see cool stuff like this when I lived in Jakarta. Most of my tourism consisted of weekend jaunts, and the “bigger” trips I took with my English flatmate, so I had never been able to experience village life in action. By this time on Pulau Weh, my Bahasa was fully functional, and I could both observe and participate in all manner of interactions. It was a strange and exhilarating feeling to be in such an exotic and different place, and yet understand everything.

The music situation at the guest house was spotty. There were lots of CDs. Some were actually OK. But the old Sony Discman used to play them wasn’t so reliable. When the diving course was over, on Christmas day, I decided to deploy Uncle André’s Great Box of Wonders to rectify the situation. Bachtiar, the guest house custodian, former seafarer, former GAM fighter, purveyor of bong contents, sat with me and we enjoyed the exquisite view from the balcony and some more than decent tunes. Just as the munchies set in, Akbar and Maxi, two adorable Euro-Indonesian children who reside permanently on the grounds, brought us cakes and chocolates. It was a Holy Moment. Later, I treated them to the Fantastic Four on VCD.

Alas, being Indonesia, the food situation was not good. Bali seems to have been an anomaly. The grub in Banda and on Pulau Weh conform more closely to the national norm I was subjected to during my sojourn in Jakarta. As a result, I was constantly hungry. The dives had turned my innards to mush, and three days after the course my ears were still blocked. This was the most unpleasant aspect of my stay. As was boredom. Iboih is a friendly and social place, but I have been on the road for a long time now, and I find my thoughts wandering to Big City Saigon at times, but more often to my San Francisco job prospects. I want to do something. It’s time to get back into a routine. I’m actually glad that I’ve arrived at this point, even though there are two months left in my trip. When it is finally over, I want to be glad of it. So I continue whittle away the time.

I rented a motorbike to see more of the island. I almost didn’t take the helmet, but at the last moment, being the klutz I am, it seemed wisest to don it. Of course I took a spill and scraped my knee. I also managed to damage to foot brake. Later that evening, the bike shop owner came to claim the helmet and keys. I knew he would mention the damage. Let me say something really positive about Indonesians, and let it be known that the following encounter is emblematic. He waited until everyone had left the restaurant before talking to me. He mentioned the damage. I mentioned my fall. He told me the cost to repair it. I realized that it was a fair and real amount, and immediately handed it over. He then inquired about my knee scrape, offering to bring bandages (unnecessary). The point is, people here go to extraordinary lengths to help you save face. I’ve never seen such consideration of this type before, although that may be because I have the language here.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that every single resident expat in Aceh I’ve met has had either dengue or malaria, or both. The Lonely Planet health section clearly states that this region is a risk. I have been taking anti-malarial medication since India, as a preventive measure. Such a tropical paradise is bound to be filled with mosquitoes; the two go hand in hand. And yet, in this particular paradise, even the mosquitoes seem to be cooperating. With my precautions, and their surprisingly sparse numbers, I am almost bite-free. Let’s just hold our collective breath until after the requisite incubation period.

Aceh Comes Alive

Getting to Pulau Weh from Banda Aceh was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. Nevertheless, my previous hunch about more interesting travelers in these parts was confirmed in spades.

Not realizing that the day I chose to travel was Idul Adha, there were glitches in the ferry service. I got up early and checked out of my motel and found a motorcycle rickshaw. This isn’t the Bajaj vehicle that they drive around cities in India, Thailand, Indonesia, but rather a converted bicycle rickshaw attached to an actual motorcycle. Pretty cool.

My driver took me for a bite to eat and over my morning fried rice, he pointed to a building that had not yet been repaired for tsunami damage. He told me then that he had lost his wife and two sons, and his house was destroyed. I asked him if he was still sad. He said that he was over it, and smiled. I admired his fortitude. I said, God has tested you, and you passed. I was beginning to really appreciate having the language, which I was putting to full use by this point.

On the drive to the wharf, there were more obvious signs that a terrible disaster had occurred. The road was still pockmarked. Earthmoving equipment could be spotted at various points. There were memorials in front of buildings that had remained in their destroyed state. At one point, there was even a mass grave. I was later told that there were 22,000 people buried there, one of several such sites around Banda Aceh.

We got to the wharf, and there was a young Dutch couple. Apparently, the fast ferry was cancelled, but there would be a slow ferry at noon. It was 9 AM. No matter. Took another motorcycle rickshaw to the other wharf and waited. The Dutch couple, Lisa and Guido, arrived by and by, and we struck up a conversation. She was working for a disaster relief NGO, and he had set up a company to provide water filtering plants.

After some time, an Australian woman friend of theirs came by, and we went for lunch. Linda had been living for eight years in Indonesia, and had the exact same date of birth as my sister. She had come to Aceh just a few days after the tsunami, and had been taken on by the UNDP as a coordinator of sorts. Her most recent contract was with Oxfam. On the ferry, which in the event only left at 4 PM, she explained a bit about Acehnese history and society. GAM is not a fundamentalist organization. It is an Acehnese nationalist party. Yet, you cannot separate Islam from Aceh. And the imposition of Sharia law actually came from Jakarta, for its own incomprehensible reasons, a few years before the actual peace agreement. So Sharia governs family law, outlaws alcohol, gambling and drugs, and, of course has a few things to restrict in terms of morality. It does not apply to non Muslims. Public morality, you ask…? Yes, just what you’re thinking. Improper relations between unmarried couples, and indeed there have been public floggings, although they stop as soon as they draw blood. Gruesome as this may sound, it stands in ironic contrast to secular Singapore, where when you are caned, the goal is to leave scars, and a doctor is present to revive you if you pass out.

We did arrive on Pulau Weh eventually, although it was already dark. Linda got picked up by her boyfriend. Lisa and Guido took their bikes to pedal the 40 km to their pre-arranged bungalow. I took a taxi with Linda’s boss, Elizabeth from the Netherlands, as well as two women who were friends from Jakarta: one Finnish, attached to her Embassy, and a Frenchwoman, bona fide expat sent from an engineering firm in Paris to work for a year abroad. They were going diving.

I decided to head to Iboih with them, as the Lonely Planet had described that particular beach as more “social”. As it was raining, I picked a place that was early on in our walking, and seemed nice enough. Although it didn’t have an attached bathroom, which is proving to be something of an inconvenience, it was spitting distance from the beach, and there were two very friendly German blokes, who greeted me with a spliff. I was already starting to like this place. Later came the local staff of the beach’s restaurant, a boisterous crowd who were drinking and rolling, too. The conversation was informal and was a trilingual mix of Bahasa, German and English. None failed me.

When one wakes the following morning in a beach location to survey the surrounding in the morning daylight, it is always a pleasant and eye-opening experience. Let’s find out what’s in store for the next ten days.

Banned

Bali is a spectacularly beautiful place, and in retrospect, I’m really glad that I idled my time away in the northern bit of the island. I swam, walked, read, contemplated and ate. On the subject of eating, the last two days, I did my best to ingest as much pork and gin and tonic as I could, knowing that I was coming to Aceh, in northern Sumatra, where Islamic Sharia law has been in force since 2003. Certainly there was a promise of more interesting people to meet in a place so off the beaten track. Bali was certainly a wasteland in that respect.

Nevertheless, on the minibus ride back to Kuta in the south, in anticipation of my flight out, I did chance on meeting an intriguing young man named Xin, from the People’s Republic of China. We immediately struck up a conversation, where it was revealed that he was currently finishing a doctorate in Chemistry, with a specialization in medical imaging, at no less than Oxford University in the UK. Suffice it to say that this chap was a Class A intellectual, with a broad knowledge of world and cultural affairs and issues, and the nonstop conversation was nothing short of fascinating. He shed quite a lot of light on the inner workings of the People’s Republic and the Communist Party, especially on the subject of factionalism in the latter. By the time the bus ride was over, we had decided to share a room for the night, whereby on the morrow, I would catch my early morning flight to Banda Aceh, via Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Medan.

I’m also glad I only spent a day in Kuta, and doubly glad that it was with the cerebral Xin. Kuta is just a pale imitation of Pattaya, Thailand, which is not a compliment. That said, I have gotten more of a sense that Indonesia truly is a fantastically diverse and sprawling archipelago, as Bali seems to come closer to the Southeast Asian norm in many other respects as well, in contrast to dirty and bustling Jakarta, and certainly to Islamic Aceh.

After a day of flying on Air Whatever, by nightfall I had arrived in Banda Aceh. The billboard just after the airport announced that Sharia law was in effect, sporting pictures of a man and woman dressed in clothing that didn’t appear all that suitable for the equatorial climate. Nevertheless the drive into town showed me that it was still very much Indonesia, with national banks and other such flagship brands and institutions.

For many years, a rebel movement called GAM fought the Jakarta government for separation from Indonesia and the imposition of Islamic law. One definitely gets the sense that people in Aceh are more pious by culture. In any event, travel in Aceh was, until very recently, not exactly recommended. Hence, my spontaneous and harebrained notion to come here in the first place. The civil war ended with the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, the third anniversary of which is right around the corner at the time of writing. Aceh was doubly devastated, as the epicenter of the underwater earthquake that caused the tidal waves. First it was flattened; then what remained was washed away. In the devastating aftermath, the GAM rebels sued for peace. The Jakarta government, under the admirable President Bambang Susilo Yudhyono, magnanimously granted far-reaching autonomy, which included Sharia law, within an Indonesian context.

The first thing I noticed was that there was construction everywhere. Nevertheless, like the other Tsunami sites I have visited, like Phuket, the Andamans and Kanyakumari, there were no remaining outward signs that such a disaster had occurred. It will be interesting to see the outlying areas. In any case, NGOs have flooded the province, and as a result, prices are more than what one would expect for an area with this level of economic development.

I was also looking to see how many women were actually in veils. In the airport, there were a number without. I went for dinner at Pizza Hut, which I belated remembered, is always a mistake. Aside from the rather disappointing fare, all the women staff were veiled, seemingly as part of their pandering uniform. And certainly all the female patrons were veiled. Again, knowing Indonesia as I do, it strikes me more as a cultural norm rather an imposition by the authorities. There is supposed to be a Chinese restaurant in town that discretely serves beer. I bet they have pork, too. I wonder, though actually doubt, that ingesting such banned items will lead to my arm being chopped off.

And since we’re on the subject of banned items, being the subversive dissenter that I am, the book I have been reading since Bali is banned in its native Vietnam, my next destination. As such, I am diligently plowing through the 700 pages, in French translation, of Duong Thu Huong’s No Man’s Land (Terre des Oublis). On returning from the forest one day, Miên, is shocked to find the man she had married fourteen years previously, and whom she thought killed in combat, has returned. However, in the meantime, Miên has remarried a wealthy landowner and businessman, which whom she has a child. But Bôn, the communist veteran, reclaims his wife. Under pressure from the community, Miên returns to her first husband, to live in despair and poverty. The book has some pretty damning metaphorical commentaries regarding the authorities, but is engaging throughout, with some piercing insight into the characters of men, women, human sexuality, and the contrasts between the peasant and bourgeois mentalities. Food is also amply described and used as a literary device, and in such a way that I am eagerly anticipating my upcoming culinary experiences in Vietnam. Interestingly, Ms. Duong was a member of the Communist Party, before being expelled for some of her earlier works. Only since 2006 has she resided full time in France.

The war had an impact on Vietnam and its society to an extent that is impossible to enumerate in these few lines, if at all. I plan to visit the war museums and memorials in Saigon, come what may. America is reeling to this day from that spunky country that left the Empire with egg on its face.

Iraq is the Vietnam of this generation. The country’s leaders willfully misled the people, getting it into a mortal embrace with a tar baby. Nearly obliterating America’s credibility abroad, perhaps the good that has come out of this morass is that it has shaken people out of their usual complacency, improbably turfing out the Republicans in 2006 from Congress. It also seems likely that the Democrats will recapture the White House in 2008, in a groundswell of disgust for the misguided direction that the country has been led in.

On that note, it is good to see that the Democratic primaries are actually shaping up to be a real competition, rather than a coronation of Hillary. For the record, I want to see Barack Obama take the nomination and the Presidency. He is a uniter, and not a divider. He has lived and traveled abroad and can heal America’s image through actions based on well-grounded understanding of the actual facts, rather than prejudice and conjecture. He is the face that America has truly become. If he stands by his principles, and doesn’t cave into vested interests, certainly a tall order, he could be a leader of historical dimensions. One can hope and pray. One can also campaign and get out the vote.

Bali Photos

Few places on earth are this beautiful. Click here to see for yourself.

Return to the Spice Islands

I awoke in a bungalow, surrounded by tropical greenery. On my way to the (included) breakfast, I spied a most fetching swimming pool. I took my pocket bilingual Indonesian dictionary that I had wisely purchased in Singapore and began to look up high frequency words. It began to come back to me.

After breakfast I headed out to the beach, which, Bali being one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on the entire planet, was simply exquisite. I could barely believe that I was finally back, and had made it to a place that had escaped me during the year I resided in Jakarta. The temperature of the water was of course perfect, and best of all, there were no waves, which is just the way I like my beaches.

A stroll on the boardwalk got me into a conversation about Hinduism and Buddhism, and sufficiently schooled in the Hindu pantheon from eight months in India, I was “invited” (for about $3) to be taken to a Buddhist temple. As a demographic aside, Bali is an island of Hinduism in this vast archipelago of Islam, and it certainly adds to its uniqueness.

The ride took me across stunning views of mountains, tropical vegetation, terraced rice paddies, until finally we got to the temple, which was also beautiful in itself. I sat in the sanctuary and did half an hour of Vipassana meditation. Walking around the temple grounds, I began my first real conversation in Bahasa Indonesia, with the driver of the scooter. And back it came. The language. I still got it! Wow, it is SO MUCH EASIER than Hindi!!

The following day I resolved to spend tanning by the pool. I took the dictionary with me and brushed up on more vocabulary, while tanning. It actually is a surprisingly effective way to study. I still have a tan from Kovalam, so now I can deepen and darken it, along with the language.

As it turns out, Bollywood is quite popular among the Balinese locals, and as a result, Uncle André’s Great Box of Wonders, with the Bag of Media, has made me very popular among the hotel staff. Naturally, I have used this to my advantage to have more conversations in Bahasa Indonesia.

Being so far from the big tourist centers, I find myself very much alone. It has taken a while to adjust to, but now it fits me well. Although I’m traveling for a year, this still seems like something of a holiday. I guess that’s what Bali is for.

You Can Count on Singapore

In the end, with all my errands and comings and goings, I was left with only one full day for proper tourism in Singapore, and I made the most of it. I took the MRT to Harbor Front and stumbled onto some wonderful hawker stalls, where I had an exquisite breakfast of rice porridge with duck, and big glass of lemonade, all for S $3.30. Big signs drew me to Sentosa, Singapore’s artificial beach and amusement park, where I spent the better part of the day taking pictures, seeing exhibits, going on rides and generally enjoying myself.

The monorail back dropped me straight in Vivo City, an immense mall of everything interesting. First I looked at an 8 GB MP3 player for only US $150, but further browsing brought me to an optical shop, where I purchased a much needed new pair of spectacles, Porsche Design, no less. After eight years of frameless, I now sport very stylish frames, and have a new chic look about me.

Later, I went down to the Orchard Road shopping area and picked up all my onward tickets, plus the visa required to enter the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. And from there, it was off to Little India with Mahesh and Jayashri of the Indian High Commission for a farewell dinner. Little India was just super. It was a piece of India in wonderful and orderly Singapore. It says a lot about leadership and vision. If only they had more of it in India itself. In the event, I ate my final south Indian thali on a banana leaf, and spoke my last words of Hindi, and said my goodbye to India in a more concrete way than I had in the mad rush to get out of Hampi and Bangalore.

Some people assert that Singapore is something of a dictatorship. That may be true, at least to the extent that you are well advised to keep your opinions to yourself. But it isn’t despotic, and there is an unspoken contract between government and the governed, that in return for obedience, prosperity will follow. And what an amazing place Singapore truly is. From the humblest of origins, with no resources at all, in a few short generations, this country, through grit, sacrifice, incredible discipline and hard work, catapulted itself from the third world to the first. In many ways it is a model of development: infrastructure, education, enterprise, with a strong social bent to help the weaker sectors. It helps that the population is small. But I reckon that the principles remain the same.

I was left with a very hectic departure day, what with picking up my glasses at 10 AM at Vivo City, checking out at 11 (no other time would do, inexplicably) and meeting Mahesh and Jayashri one last time for lunch, before heading off to the airport for a haircut, sushi meal and GST refund. Let me tell you that if a series of events has to go off in the proper sequence, in Singapore, it will. I managed everything, on public transit, with time to spare.

Nevertheless, upon claiming my tax refund, I examined my Vietnamese visa more closely, only to discover that it was for the wrong dates – December, designated for Indonesia, rather than January, the time meant for Vietnam. This put me in something of a huff, because I had paid S $230 to the travel agent to arrange the visa. However, a Monday morning first thing phone call to Singapore yielded promises to investigate and rectify. I suspect they’ll be able to do it, too.

My Singapore Airlines flight to Bali went off without a hitch, naturally, and there was a ride waiting to take me to the hotel I had booked. What I hadn’t realized was that it was over 100 km from the airport, and it took some two hours to arrive. Exhausted, the impact of arriving back in Indonesia after an absence of twelve years was somewhat lost on me, and had to wait until the next morning.

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Ah, Singapore. So clean. So honest. Everything works. What a breath of fresh air! Bought clothes for prospective job interviews at Banana Republic, and just generally spent an inordinate amount of money. But I’m feeling kind of down, since Mikael and I are no longer traveling together. I suppose, in some ways, that the end was inevitable. But it happened badly, and I feel like shit.

So now I’m just making my ongoing travel arrangements. Bali is coming up in a few days. From there, I’ll go to Aceh, which is rather off the beaten track. And on to the rest of Southeast Asia, before heading Stateside mid-February (to Florida for starters – I’m not that stupid).

So there it is. The rest of the India photos have been updated, so check out the photo album link on the right side of the page. And don’t send any condolences please.