To begin with, let me point out that besides the two immediately below,
there aren't any pictures on this page.
If
that
bores the
living
daylights out of you, then I understand. I haven't
scanned
any more in yet.
Below are bits of my journal from the eight months that I spent in South East
Asia during 1996 and some of 1997. Sections of Pauline's journal will eventually
be here as well. First, two pictures, to whet your appetite:
To the right is the first orangutan we saw in the jungle. It was in Central Borneo, and was a place dedicated to returning orphaned orangutans to the wild.This one sort of fell/dropped to the ground, approached Pauline and held his arms WIDE out to be picked up. Below is Nanda and his wife with Pauline and me.
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You can jump to:
June 17th
June 21st
July 5th
At this point I was staying in a very small town called Martapura, in southern Borneo, with a family I had met. The only one in the family who spoke any English is named Nanda (or Gusnanda Effendi). I also stayed for a little while with a family whose English speaker is named Hamdaini. I still write to these people, and they are doing well. I'm afraid I was getting very annoyed with Hamdaini at this point, so my journal is slightly nasty when I talk about him. Ah well.
There's no fresh milk. They made me powdered, hot milk. It was very sweet. I said, "wow, is it always so sweet?" No, he said (without tasting it), maybe she put in more sugar than usual. Than usual? What's the usual amount of sugar for milk? Meanwhile, they eat star fruit with soy sauce and chili. And the bread is always soft and sweet. Even for pizza.
It's a Thursday, and that means that there will be ghosts in the graveyard tonight. I have volunteered to sit there alone for one hour to prove that there's nothing to be scared of, but Nanda feels that maybe the ghosts (Hantu) would ignore me because I'm white.
It takes me an hour to get to Banjarmasin from here (Martapura). Then I have to get to Telkom; then, I wait in a line (or not) to have the operator organize a collect call (which cannot be done from Martapura!). Amazing amount of work for a phone call.
Lemme tell you about my English-Indonesian dictionary. It has the following (English) words: Quadrature, punkah, pule, pushful, tootle, and pyxis. These words it has. It also has the words, tracting, and punnet. It has “rabbet” which it translates as meaning “distribute.” It has “zither” which apparently means Sitar. All these words are in the dictionary, and if you need to say one of those things in Indonesian, you're set. However, the dictionary has no mention of the words, “only,” “buy,” or “need.” Incredible, and the grammar section has to be seen to believed (they conjugate the verb “cat”).
Now, a few words about the typical wedding in Banjar. The man and woman get married. That's the first thing. They are married at the bride's father's house (but remember, the kids live at home 'till married, so it's the bride's house, too). Only the bride's family (and a small amount of the groom's family - but not the groom's mother) is there to watch. Then, the next day (or that afternoon) come the parties. Each family has a party. The groom is at the bride's house most of the time, but once in a while dashes back to his family's party for half an hour or so. The two families are not together, and the parties run simultaneously.
The bride and groom sit in full traditional Banjar dress for as long as people want to have pictures with them (sometimes three to four hours). They just sit there. They don't have to smile, as it's not really the custom to smile for pictures (any pictures).
And get this: when you go to the party (whichever one you're invited to), you give a gift, yes, But - the gift is money to the father! Whoever is throwing the party gets money for it (a token amount, really - maybe 100 to 10,000 rp. I.e. less than five dollars). I've now been to five Banjar weddings.
Today I woke up and found that my pillow had fallen onto the mosquito coil and had a huge hole burned into it. Nanda's family laughed. I said I'd replace it, and they laughed again. "Don't worry, you can't replace it; it's handmade." Great.
Went to the museum in Banjarbaru yesterday with Hamdaini. It's the biggest museum in South Kalimantan and it's mostly exhibitions of traditional ways of life. Since I see it every day, it wasn't that thrilling. One exhibition that was illuminating was that of Hamdaini's lack of decency. He is a chain smoker (that means at school, in the halls, with his students, at every house whether the hosts smoke or not; in crowded cars and buses) and lit up in the museum, disregarding the No-Smoking signs. But what absolutely disgusted me was what he did after blowing out the match. He leaned over the railing of a display of antique ceramic bowls, and tossed his match in one as if it was an ashtray! This was not a deep vase (bad enough!) where you at least can't see whatever you throw in it, it's a bowl, and he was happy to see the rest of the visitors see his match sitting in what remains of Banjar culture. I shamed him into removing the match.
This is the same conceited sonofabitch who haughtily tells me that another group of museum-goers is only there for "entertainment" (not for learning, like the great Hamdaini). This judgement was passed after seeing them for about five seconds. The guy really annoys me. And he couches his judgement in a supposed request for my opinion. "What do you think about that group?" He points at five or six people who just passed. "Well, what d'you mean? What do I think about what?" "Well, I think they're only here for entertainment·." Blah blah blah. He never shuts up about the poor quality of human resources in Indonesia, carefully excluding himself from the pack. He's a bore.
Meanwhile, Nanda's house (besides having a phone, my own room, decent food, and a communal TV) is filled with young, fun, funny people who are happy to just have me around to joke with, rather than lecture all the time and introduce me to every person in the school system in order to get ahead. Nanda introduces me to family, Hamdaini to his superiors. He's a climber and he makes me sick and bored.
Back to topTook a long walk today to "meet the people." That means I played around with people instead of just waving when they yell Hello Mister. On the river the houses are on stilts way up. In front of each house is a raft-like thing on the water but attached to shore. From this bamboo raft they do their laundry, bathing (while wearing a sarong), and swimming. Each raft also has a small structure for squatting inside as a bathroom. The little canoes float, but just barely. The occupant sits half in-half out of the water. That is, the whole boat is half in-half out.
Anyway, today I hung out with people and showed my pictures (my standard way of drawing a crowd and getting friends).
Back to topNanda and I have had not one but two conversations about the nature of “Marlboro Country.” He will not be convinced that it is not an actual place on the map. “I can see on TV that it's very hilly.” As far as I'm concerned, the true Marlboro country can be found in any hospital's intensive care unit.
Met up with two Dutchies in Banjarmasin today. I had met their whole travel party before (six of them), but they were obviously more used to tourists than I am and weren't very excited about me. I invited them to Martapura, and although they said they hadn't stayed a single night with a "native," I doubt they'll ever show.
Akrom (Hamdaini's kid) is eight years old, and sits there while his mother feeds him. Only child.
It is later. I've had an interesting night. At the school they're having a sleep-in thing. All the schools have it all week, even though they're on break until July 15th. They use the time to teach morals and religion and stuff.
Well, I went over (at Hamdaini's request) for an hour or two (actually it became 2 ¸ -3 hours). At first I was bored and miserable. I felt miserable physically, and sitting there in the teacher's office was very dull. After a while I needed a bathroom (of course). They show me to the room which is a typical Indonesian toilet, but there was no light, only a small candle. For a short time I was afraid the candle would go out while I was squatting. It was a short worry because it did not take long for the candle to actually go out, and leave me in the dark with the mosquitoes and my imagination. After finishing (although you're never really finished when you're sick like this), I left. I walked out of the bathroom to find about ten kids who'd been waiting patiently for me. “Ahhh,” they all said as I came out.
Then Hamdaini asked me to speak to the kids - boys first. So I sat there (literally, on a mat on the floor) and told them why they should study and work hard. They listened attentively to Hamdaini's translations, and the only madness came when everyone tried to shake my hand at the same time.
Then came the girls!
Oh my God! The screaming, clapping, and grabbing of clothes! The Beatles, Mike Jackson, and me. Everything I said brought screams. How old are you? “Twenty seven.” SCREAMS, CLAPPING!
D'you have a girlfriend? Well, I'd had that one before, so I was prepared when I showed Pauline's picture. But when it was time to go, and they were begging me to stay, and grabbing/pulling me, it was mayhem. I almost lost it I was laughing so hard.
Back to topEleven month anniversary with Pauline. Those girls came over today. I remained seated the whole time, so there was a lot less pulling and tugging. It's funny, some of the girls at that age (11-12) are beautiful, but I've very rarely seen a beautiful Indonesian who's 20 years old or older. I don't know what happens. Nanda's wife and her family are exceptions. They're pretty.
| Hamdaini keeps the SYDGU on the TV. When he wants to change the channel or volume, he gets up (GU) and uses the SYDGU; then puts it back on the TV and sits down again. Why have a remote if you don't use it remotely? |
I was just reading VOA magazine, and there was a question sent in by a person from India asking, among other things:
“What are the primary considerations for a negotiated marriage,” in the United States.
I think that people's questions tell you much more about their way of life than their answers do. It took so long to understand how they do marriages here because the guy explaining it and I were starting at such different points. The things that he considered too basic to explain - I had no idea about.
| I can't wait to get to a city that doesn't have chickens and goats running wild. |
Went to Pulau Kembang with Nanda et.al. Pulau Kembang means “Flower Island,” but there are no flowers there, and even if there were, that's not why people would go there. The locals call it "Pulau Monyet" which means Monkey Island, and now we're getting somewhere. There are supposedly hundreds of macaques living in the trees and the Chinese temple there. I say supposedly because there were none in sight today. There was a bit of a festival, but really nothing too interesting (aside from the fact that about a hundred guys were dancing without a single girl in sight). What was interesting was the three hour boat ride upriver to the island.
Well, we passed all the huts and houses on the river, with their occupants swimming, washing, and drinking in the water. But as we got closer (and into) Banjarmasin, the houses (and shops) actually began to be floating on bundles of bamboo rather than standing on stilts. They were tied to land (or more frequently to stilted houses) by ropes and huge logs, or more bamboo, which they used for walking on in order to go back and forth.
Most of these houses had a sort of outhouse thing at the very end of a dock (I had the pleasure of using one). These were often just four big boards arranged for privacy around a hole in the dock. Some of the houses outside of town seemed to have no outhouse at all, and we saw people squatting over water with little or no cover. As women get older they apparently are considered sexless or something, 'cause old ladies don't worry about keeping their breasts covered when they bathe (I'm positive that this only goes for a certain socio-economic class. Nanda's mother would certainly never walk around like that). The floating house people had canoes, and there are plenty of shops along the river for supplies.
I also had a long discussion with Nanda about sex and Islam. That is, what's acceptable in his brand of Islam and what isn't. Skip the next three paragraphs if you want to; I present it as an interesting cultural discussion.
On the forbidden list: Oral and Anal sex, Bondage, Blindfolds, manual stimulation (this means that a husband can never touch his wife between her legs except with his penis), any position where the woman and man are not facing, kissing in public (even on the cheek), any sex during menstruation, and, of course, the obvious things like pre- and extra- marital relations, etc.
On the socially unacceptable list: Putting your arm around your wife in public. But Nanda's wife disagreed with him there. She put her arm around him in the dark (after sunset) on the boat. It was only after I pointed it out and asked if it was acceptable that he said no. She wouldn't take her arm off him, saying that it was o.k. because he was her husband.
Guess what's o.k.? Masturbation! (but only to reduce your desire for sex, not in front of your partner for fun; and the woman may not masturbate when she is menstruating). So at least unmarried people have some guilt-free release. Also, putting a mouth on the breasts seems o.k. I asked if one was allowed to kiss and lick legs and toes and fingers and arms. He had obviously never considered doing anything of the sort, but felt that anything outside of the naval upper thigh region is fair game. It was really a funny conversation, with him occasionally translating to his wife and everyone laughing.
And something else happened that I found interesting. While our little klotok (sort of a very big motorized canoe with a roof. But you sit on the floor, there are no benches) was put-putting along, a big, fast longboat came cruising directly at us, and at the last minute turned away, leaving us to eat his wake. Everything and everybody was soaked. I was the only one not in jeans, so was less affected.
I thought, "Man, what a prick! Why would he do that?" In fact I was so pissed off that it took a while to dawn on me that everyone was laughing. They'd just had polluted water dumped on them by someone else's utter thoughtlessness, but they were laughing. Everyone had to squat until the floor dried, and then they sat back down again. Squatting isn't exactly easy, because the roof leaves barely enough room for sitting. If you've never seen twelve people squatting, ducking, and laughing at the same time, I recommend it.
Anyway, I started thinking that they really had the right way of looking at things.
I eventually got to Singapore the exact day that I was out of visa time for Indonesia. Whew! I spent a day and a half in Yogya [Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia] which I liked (got a letter From Pauline), but otherwise it was all busses and boats.
In Singapore I met up with Roger (U.K) and Maxine (Kiwi). I met Maxine at breakfast and suggested we hang for the day, and while taking a break in Chinatown we met Roger. So now we're all in Malaysia, going to find a beach to relax on. I'll call WWOOF while I'm here to see if I can find work. [WWOOF stands for "Willing Workers On Organic Farms." It's an organization that includes organic farms all over the world which allow travellers to come and work for room and board]
I'm afraid my days of free lodging are dead and in the grave. Maybe after a few months Pauline and I can resurrect them. Anyway, I can use a beach.
The relaxing beach was called Cherating, and it was very nice. The water warm and clear, the company generally good. Maxine turned out to be a mix of stupidity and misguided idealism. She told me that ghosts only come if the person died before he wanted to. I said, “don't a lot of people die before they want to?” I mentioned war, and eighteen year old kids with terrible wounds. She said (this was actually her argument) that on the contrary, most of the times she saw soldiers on TV, they really wanted to die by the time they did!! How do you argue with that sort of logic?
| Jane bet the girls' massive bar bill that she'd beat this local guy in a footrace on the beach. The Malay guy actually bought new shoes for the event, but ended up quitting just before Jane lapped him twice. |
We also met Helen, Jane, and Alice (whom I called Singapore Sue the entire time I knew her because I could not remember her name). They were three very nice English girls. Singapore Sue was living and working in (guess where...) Singapore. We all joked around for a few days and when Roger and I left, having disengaged from Maxine, I had a contact and a free place in Singapore. Next stop was Tasik Cini.
Tasik Cini is very hard to get to. The bus doesn't go, so we had to hitch-hike. It's a series of twelve lakes and a sort of river surrounded by jungle and covered with water lilies. We arrived and stayed at an overpriced lodge-thing, but the next day moved to the only other place to stay, which was run by an Indian guy named Rajan Jones. At Rajan's place you used a well to pull up muddy water with which you mandied (past tense of mandi?). [A mandi is the method of bathing, common in SE Asia, by which the bather scoops water from a basin or tub, and pours it over himself.] The toilets were Asian style but with no water at all. Still, it was great.
We immediately met Dan and Michelle (also from the U.K., what a surprise), a couple just out of college on their “last big trip before real life” expedition. Very nice, bright, and witty people. First thing we did was get a large canoe-ish boat and all four of us set off to explore. The area was completely untouched by industrialization, which I loved. We saw a kingfisher or two, as well as plenty of jungle. I was the only one wounded.
I was in the back, and we were slowly rowing through an area where the jungle closed in on us a bit. Suddenly a huge thorny vine attacked me for no reason at all. The boat could not be stopped quickly enough to carefully pick the vine from my side, so instead I was ripped and left with six or seven monstrous thorns stuck well in. They didn't bleed 'til I pulled 'em out; anyway, it looks worse than it is. I was also the only one wounded in the Cameron Highlands (where I sit now), but that's a different story.
Dinners at Rajan's were fun. We all trouped in the half dark down the country road to a group of houses down by the water where we were fed (by candlelight for lack of electricity). Then, that chore finished, we stumbled through the complete dark (trying to avoid the cows and their refuse) back to our humble huts.
When we first went to the little eating house, everyone looked at me to translate to the old lady there. I kept asking whether we could have food. She'd say, “when do you want food?” I'd say, well... now. She'd say, “half an hour.” It took me a while to realize that she had prepared no food for us, but would prepare it when we asked for it. Since she cooked on coals and nothing else, it took a while for her to boil water, or do whatever else she was going to do. It wasn't a restaurant, it was her kitchen.
We were joined by two German girls who were susceptible to bouts of uncontrollable giggling. The first night we (the German girls, Roger, and I) were attacked by biting ants. I remember looking at an ant as it walked along the outside of our mossie net, and then casually stepped through the mesh to the inside. I was horrified. The German girls next to us started screaming at the ants, which started me laughing, and we were all being bitten. I went on the offensive. While Roger laughed at me, I began killing each one I could, but it was like trying to stop the tide.
As it happened, the girls and we were essentially in the same hut, separated by a plank that reached to about two feet below the ceiling. They threw us their insect spray over that plank, and I really went on the hunt.
After spraying the entire room, Roger and I started coughing. He spent the entire night with a shirt on his face, while I just braved it out. We would stop coughing for a few minutes, then suddenly the girls would start. When they coughed, we laughed hysterically, and vice-versa and it was a long time before anyone fell asleep.
The next night was insect-free. Rajan took us on a jungle trek. We wore hiking boots, shorts, T-shirts, and lots of insect repellent. Rajan wore suit pants rolled up to his knees, and a dress shirt with the sleeves down and buttoned the entire time. We also had two fearless “orang asli” (native, as opposed to Malay - more on that below) girls, eleven and twelve years old, wearing flip flops and running ahead all the time.
When we were carefully placing our feet while crossing a creek (on a slippery log), those girls were running across to tell us whether it was safe for us.
Orang Asli means original people. These are tribes which existed before the Malays took over. There are tribes all throughout Indonesia and Malaysia.
Tasik Cini is a refuge for some of these people, but they really don't live their traditional life there. They do occasionally hunt for their food, but generally no. These two girls were really cute. They kept grabbing flowers and making little wreaths to put in the German girls' hair. They also used leaves to make drinking cups. They were having fun.
I asked Rajan why the girls weren't in school. He knew that I could speak some Bahasa, so he told me to ask them why. I did, and the older girl told me that her mother won't let her. Rajan said, no, that's not true. The girl stuck to her story, so Rajan told me that actually, the girl quit school on her own. He said that pretty girls often don't bother with school because they know that wealthy Malay and Japanese men will marry them, and they won't need an education.
It reminded me of when I first got to Malaysia, and a woman jokingly asked me if I wanted to marry her daughter. I (also jokingly) said, hey, I can't afford a wife! She asked me (now seriously, I think) how much a wife costs where I'm from. I wasn't sure how to answer that, and when I translated to Roger, I wasn't sure if I should say that she was joking or not, because I didn't know.
But back to the jungle trek with Rajan. We saw a couple of iguanas which Rex the Wonderdog barked out for us. We saw (and Rajan explained) all sorts of health plants, including four for male potency and one to help tighten the vaginal walls (after pregnancy, but I asked if it could be used at any time, and he said, “sure.”). He also chopped down a tree so we could eat heart of palm. It was very good; incredibly fresh as you can imagine. We were all a little shocked that he chopped it down, but Rajan shrugged. He said that this was a very common tree, which I guess is true. Still, we were uneasy about it. We also ate wild honey, which wasn't that great.
I was struck most by the self-defense of the plants. Spikes and thorns everywhere (even on big trees), and incredibly hard bark (ebony). We also got to see a couple of carnivorous plants, like the Pitcher plant, which traps bugs.
The Pitcher plant.
We all four (Dan, Michelle, Roger, and I) left and headed up the nice, cool highlands, where I wounded myself again (not fatally - do not distress) and found time after eleven days to continue my journal.
We were staying in the town of Tana Rata, in the middle of the Highlands, and being awaked every morning by construction. We've moved out since then, but it was a pain. The entire construction site was walled in (not fenced in, but walled, so you couldn't see the construction), and in a fit of silliness, I decided to do a pull-up on the wall and see what they had to hide. I had already decided to report cities of gold built by white slave-children, but when my hands hit the (very sharp?) top of the wall, they came down bloody.
I surmised that either the top of the wall was covered in blood, or I had cut myself. Judging by the pain, I had to go with the latter. My right hand looked pretty ugly. My ring, middle, and index fingers were all cut, but the middle one was really bleeding badly. At this writing it's bandaged and just a nuisance, but a fair amount of flesh is gone. When I complained about being the only one who ever gets hurt, Dan said (in his most British English) “well, I actually broke my leg, but I didn't want to make a fuss.” So much for sympathy. [By the way, I still have a scar on that finger.]
Dan was hilarious, by the way. He's the only Welsh person I ever met on the road, but unfortunately he went to school in England, so had no Welsh accent. Actually, he said that he sometimes felt uncomfortable in Wales because people think he's English.
He told us a story about when he was going through the third degree while trying to get a government job in a nuclear energy plant. The MI6 guy leans back and says, “So Dan, tell me, d'you like girls or boys?”
Dan, completely misunderstanding what the guy was getting at, says, “well, both!”
Well, folks, that's all I've done for now. Keep checking back, 'cause there's still a ton left to put in here. See ya!
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