Seat of Our Pants » Indonesia

Bali Museum

Jaime — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:07:45 +0000

We had a day to kill here in Bali, so we set up a mini self-guided walking tour of Denpasar. On the itinerary was the Bali Museum. It was just OK. We did find two, um, interesting pieces. The first was a painting of an ecstatic woman who is just a little too into her children (pictured above and described below).

The second was this fine monkey sculpture. And, if you had any misguided ideas about the subject of the piece, the placard spells it out quite elegantly, indeed.

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Babi Guling

Martin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:20:45 +0000

The number one specialty of Balinese cooking is Babi Guling: roasted suckling pig. Having led a mostly vegetarian existence the last couple of weeks, we had a powerful urge to seek out the best Babi Guling we could find. We were told that the Denpasar Night Market would be the place to enjoy the dish in its most authentic form.

Truth to be told, we weren’t totally impressed. The stuff that makes Babi Guling great are things that the western palate normally don’t normally associate with delicious. Crispy, barbequed pig skin (with a nice coating of grease on the inside) and various intestines simply won’t do the trick for us.

The spiciness of the food helped us to get it down. We might have to leave final judgment on the dish’s qualities for next time we visit.

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The Great Mall Adventure

Jaime — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:38:02 +0000

The beach scene in Bali is a sun and surf seeker’s paradise. Since Martin and I aren’t pumped about either of these things (I’ve had melanoma and Martin doesn’t like to swim), we’ve opted to explore Denpesar, which is a typical Indonesian mid-size city.

On yesterday’s walk around the city, we ran across a mall and poof! we were transformed into mall rats. We rode escalators up and down, we bowled (I rocked Martin 132-103, if you’re wondering) and we posed in a photo booth. It’s not always about foreign culture and trekking for us. Sometimes it’s these little slices of home that keep us happy.

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Good OLD Merpati

Martin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:32:00 +0000

This is the plane that took us from Maumere, Flores, to our present location: Denpasar, Bali. It is a battered old Fokker F100. I remember flying in them in the early 1980s, thinking that geez these planes are old school.

Around here, Merpati is known as the airline that never retires their planes, they just wait for them to fall out of the sky. Obviously, they weren’t our #1 choice. The only other alternative was a bum-stunning four day overland adventure using a plethora of delay-prone transport means. To their credit, Merpati did the job alright, and we’re now set to enjoy a couple of laid back days before we zip off to Kuala Lumpur.

Here’s a little tidbit from the Merpati in-flight safety brochure. Note the transition from square four to five. It’s a magical window, obviously. Stepping through it makes you lose your pants and grow a skirt.

We declined the offer for a frequent flier membership.

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Um, Jaime, Where Do You Think We Are?

Jaime — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:50:11 +0000

We struck up a conversation with a German mother and daughter the other night. They told us they’d spent the day at the local clinic. The mother had contracted malaria two weeks prior and needed more medication. Malaria? Really?

It turns out that she contracted it in Labuanbajo, a town we stayed in around the same time as she did (we’re taking anti-malaria pills, so no need to worry about us contracting it). I was surprised to hear that malaria was around. I thought that it lurked in outer limits of Indonesia. I explained this to Martin. His response?

“Um, Jaime, where do you think we are right now?”

He had a point.

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Merkok All the Time

Martin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:41:06 +0000

Merokok is Indonesian for ‘smoke’, and smoke is what Indonesians do all the time, everywhere; in buses, cars, trains, restaurants, bedrooms, ferries and bars. It’s gone so far that today after lunch I felt like having a cigarette. This is just from exposure to secondary smoke.

Worry not. I’m not about to start smoking again, though I am writing this from the smoking lounge of the only internet joint in Maumere.

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The Travel Pact

Jaime — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:18:50 +0000

Our departure date for this round the world trip was April 29^th, which is just over 4 months ago. We need to be in New York, to see my incredible sister Kheli graduate from Vet school in June 2010. This makes our time on the road around 13 months. We may, depending on how well we’ve kept to our budget, drive across the States after her graduation. (Anything to put off the responsibilities waiting for us when this trip ends) That keeps us on the road an additional few months, perhaps taking the total to 16 months.

That’s a whole lot of time on the road.

How do we pass the time? Writing blog posts is an obvious answer. Reading, sight seeing and travel planning take up our time as well. What we’re currently doing, though, is writing. Martin is working on a novel and I’m working on a writing project (of some description). It might be a screenplay, it might be a novel – it changes daily at this point.

Writing is a funny thing. It’s near impossible to concentrate on it if we’re on the move. To avoid confusion (when we’re sightseeing, we’re thinking about our projects or when we’re writing, we think we should be out sightseeing), we’ve made a travel pact. When we’re in travel mode, like we’ve been for the past month, we set our writing aside. When we find a good place to write, we stop all travel, sit on our backsides and write.

Enter Ankermi, a lovely bungalow resort outside of Maumere in Flores. Not only is it a perfect place to cure traveler’s fatigue, it happens to be a fantastic place to write. The bungalows are clean and at a cost of $16/person, which includes breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner, it’s very easy on the ol’ wallet. We’ll stay here until we head to Bali on September 7^th, when we set our writing aside and take up traveling again.

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Quake Hit Far Away

Martin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:05:14 +0000

Just a quick note to those of you who see a headline saying that there has been a big quake in Indonesia and are thinking of us: it struck nowhere near us. We’re a thousand miles away. No tsunami would get us, as we have several mountainous islands in between us and the quake; as well as being on the wrong side.

We’re safe.

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My, What a Beautiful Nose You Have

Jaime — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:53:07 +0000

These are a series of true conversations that took place over the last few months. That it happened once was odd. That it’s happened three times is blog worthy.

Vietnam, circa two months ago:

Hmong woman: “Hello! You buy from me! I give you good price! You have beautiful nose!”

Indonesia, two weeks ago:

Random Indonesian man: “Hello! Where you from? You have a beautiful nose!”

Indonesia, two days ago:

Ikat weaving sales lady: Points to her nose (she’s didn’t speak English), then points at us and gives us a thumbs up.

Strange, but true. Southeast Asia gets pumped about the Engstrom nose.

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Paradise

Martin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:00:42 +0000

I grew up in San Diego, a Southern California city just north of Mexico. Think Baywatch, minus the Hoff. The community is rather beach-centric. Not surprising, given the climate and its miles of beaches.

Indonesia, as we all know by now, has its fair share of beach. We came across one yesterday while hunting for ikat that blew our minds. Miles of black sand beach with not a soul on it.

Nothing short of Armageddon would make a photo of any beach in San Diego look this way.

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