around the world in 180 days

            We’re leaving Indonesia/Bali, but our Asian section of our trip is just beginning. Of course, things are very different here compared to NZ and AUS, which were both typical first world, western countries. For much of the rest of our trip, we will be immersed in cultures that are completely different from what we are used to. It will require (and already has) quite a bit of adjustment on our part, but I’m looking forward to India and Southeast Asia.

            We’re still not sure where we’re going after we leave this area of the world. There’s a possibility we could be here for the rest of our trip. We’ve also discussed flying to Istanbul in Turkey, crossing the Bosporus into Europe and making our way north through eastern Europe, towards Scandinavia, before flying home. This week, Paul got us thinking about a North Africa trip, starting in Cairo, Egypt and working our way west, through Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria and ending up in Morocco. I hadn’t given much thought to that section of Africa, but, compared to the rest of the continent, those countries are stable and safe, and the trip sounds like quite an adventure. It’s something we’ll have to think about and look into further.

            I think we’ll be going to Nepal. Anna’s mother wasn’t too keen on it, having read the State Dept warnings about the instability caused by Maoist insurgents, but most of that has died down since the Maoists entered the Nepali parliament. Also, on her way to Bali, Anna’s mother spoke with a mountaineer on his way to Nepal to climb in the Himalayas, and he said what we’ve heard before, that Nepali insurgents don’t target westerners and tourists, because tourism is one of their only economic strengths. Nobody wants to slaughter the golden goose.        

            The next big decision, then, is when to go. Should we see India first, and then visit Nepal, or should we head straight for Nepal and then see India. The trouble is the weather. In May, India and the low areas of Nepal get very hot, like 45 Celsius, which is something like a billion degrees Fahrenheit, I’m not exactly sure. After the heat, in June, the monsoons begin, starting in the south and working their way north. Should we use April to see southern India and head for the Himalayas when the heat hits in March, or should we go straight into Nepal when we know the weather will be nice and do what we can of India later, leaving when we get too miserable? It’s a tough question, but like most of the rest of our dilemmas, it doesn’t really matter what we choose. We’ll be happy either way.

            In Bali, we got our first taste of haggling, which I find both fun and exhausting. Walking through the markets, a person is accosted by vendors from every direction, all saying, “come inside, take a look, I give you cheap price.” Two days ago it rained for much of the day, so sales were way down for the vendors in the Ubud market. There were bargains everywhere, because the people needed to sell something just to have enough money for the day. The average daily income in Bali is 30,000 rupiah, which is about 3 bucks US, so most people are extremely poor anyway. Sometimes it seems a bit crass to haggle over $1 or $.50, but that’s how things are done. Those dollars add up and the vendor won’t agree to a price if they aren’t making enough. The strongest tactic that a person has as a buyer is to walk away. We usually offer our final price, and if they vendor won’t accept, we walk away. About 9 times out of 10, they vendor will say, ok, ok, and we’ll get the price we asked.

            Bali has kept us busy, even though we’ve stayed out of Kuta and we haven’t gone to the beach once. I’ve done about all the shopping and haggling I can stand for a few days and I’m ready to leave tomorrow, which is convenient, because we do.

            We took a cycling eco-tour today, which was much better than I’d expected. It was designed to give some insight into Balinese culture and Balinese ecology. We visited a plantation and our guide, Darma, showed us some of Bali’s native plants and told us their uses, be they medicinal or edible. We tasted some Balinese coffee and afterwards were in a small gift shop when one of the salesmen tried to sell us some. I told him we’d been in Guatemala recently and had bought some there, so we didn’t need any, and he invited us to compare the two. Unfortunately for Bali, Guatemala’s coffee is much better, although I didn’t tell the salesman this. Balinese coffee is bitter, too much for my taste.

            After the plantation, we hopped on bikes and coasted downhill for a while. We stopped and visited a Balinese housing compound, where generations of a family live together, aunts and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren. We’d visited Putu’s home (our previous tour guide) and it was interesting to see the contrast between his home and the more typical home we saw today. Putu’s family is dong well for themselves.

            Our tour finished with an enormous feast, with all of the best Balinese and Indonesian foods: smoked duck, satay, fried noodles, gado-gado, and peanut sauce made from real, fresh peanuts. The peanut sauce here is phenomenal. I could eat it alone.

            Us Minnesotans may like to pride ourselves on our niceness, but the truth is, people are just as nice and even moreso the world over. In Guatemala, we were invited into a stranger’s home for 10 days and treated like part of the family. In NZ, we subsisted on the kindness of strangers and here in Bali, the people are warm, friendly and easy-going. All day today, as we passed children and working people, they would smile and wave and say “hello!” to us. Minnesotans are nice, but we don’t have the market cornered.

As I stood at the top of Mt. Batur and watched the sun rise over Lake Batur, the Indian Ocean and several other volcanos this morning, I was thinking of my father, whose birthday was yesterday. We, meaning Anna and I, Anna’s mom Mary, and Paul and Patty, awoke at 2:30 am, rode in a car for an hour and climbed Mt. Batur in by flashlight so we could watch the day’s first light touch the horizon. We arrived at the top sweating and tired, and it reminded me of how I felt at the beginning of grandma’s last year, sticky with humidity, and I thought of my Dad and his training for grandma’s this year. I hope that you had a great birthday, Dad, and I hope that your training is still going well. Sorry that I didn’t get to call you, but in Bali, we are 11 hours different, which makes timing difficult. I will try to call tomorrow.

The gentleman who suggested we climb the volcano was our driver from the airport. We are staying in Ubud, which is a village that is inland from Kuta, the main beach/party area. On the way from the airport, we chatted with our driver, asking what there was to do in Bali and whatnot, and found out that, ever so conveniently, he is also a tour guide. He suggested a few things and gave us his card.

The following day, Mary was arriving in the afternoon and Putu was also picking her up. We called and arranged to have him show us around the south of the island, the area around Denpasar, which is where the airport. He was the best guide we could ask for. He speaks fluent english, so there was no language barrier or communication issues, and he has lived in Bali all his life, so he is very familiar with the culture. Traveling with him has allowed us to see and understand things that we otherwise would have missed.

For instance: this week, there is a large Hindu celebration in Bali. Bali is 93% Hindu, despite the fact that Indonesia as a whole is the most populous Muslim country on earth. The celebration is for the annevesary of the temples and is something that every Hindu participates in. There are large processions, where groups of people walk together to temple and pray as a group, and the temples are decorated with brightly colored flags and large dragon symbols woven from palm leaves and bamboo. Because we were with Putu, we were able to enter the middle courtyard of a temple while this ceremony was going on today–the inner temple is for Hindus only. He dressed us in sarongs, sashes, which headscarfs for me and Paul, and we walked with the rest of the worshippers to the temple.

The walk to the temple was some of the best people watching I’ve ever had, and it was entirely watching their response to us, five ridiculous looking white people whose sarongs didn’t match their sashes and shirts didn’t match their sarongs. We walked single file, with Anna and I at the back, and it was great watching their faces as we passed. At first, they contained themselves, as Paul passed, few could suppress a smile, and as I brought up the rear, a lot of them started laughing. Every single time someone laughed at us, it made me laugh too.

Entering the temple, we could hear a drum troupe playing music that is specific to that temple. It was very melodic, with lots of bells tuned to scales that were not western at all. This area was elaborately decorated, but quite peaceful. As we passed through the gate into the middle temple, there were many more people and many more drum troupes, some playing and some not. There were pigs and chickens and ducks that were to be sacrificed and used to feed the visitors to the ceremony and, through another set of gates in the inner temple, there were priests leading prayers. It was overwhelming and we stood there for about an hour, just looking around and soaking everything in.

In the afternoon, Putu took us to the house that he grew up in, where his three uncles live now, with their families. He explained how the house was set up to align with the cardinal directions and how this was meant to make man aling with God, man align with man and, in the back, where the gardens and animals were, man align with his environment.

In Bali, balance is an important philosophy. One must find balance between all things in one’s life, never becoming too intent on prayer, or money, or food or any one thing to the exclusion of others. All things have their place and all things have their time. I like that.

Well, there’s more, so much more, but I’m sweating and it is impossible to distill life into a blog entry, so I won’t continue to try. I hope all is well at home!

            When you land at an airport, clear customs and are trying to figure out how to get to a bed as quickly as possible, there’s something comforting about seeing a guy holding a sign with your (or your wife’s) name on it. It means you can relax, because the rest of the trip has been taken care of.

            We’re staying in Ubud, which is north of the main beach and disco area and is much more of a cultural destination rather than the party scene that the main tourist areas can be, which is fine with us. Bali reminds me of Fiji in some ways, but it’s nowhere near as expensive and there is more than just beaches. They both have a tropical climate, though, so it’s hot and steamy during the day and warm and steamy at night. We’ve got a room with A/C here, which is well worth the extra cost.

           We spent the day with Paul and Patty, wandering around Ubud, ducking into different shops and looking at paintings, woodcarvings and other crafts. We also took a walk through the monkey forest, which is not just a clever name. At first, it was cool to see so many monkeys running around wild and free, just being monkeys, but it was surprising how fast it became commonplace. They were sort of pests, because they would steal any food they could get their hands on and they’d bother anyone who had anything that looked like food.

            We also walked up to a rice terrace area, which was very cool. Rice paddies stretched off into the distance as far as you could see, and, way off, you could see three volcanos. I think we’re going to climb one of them, starting early in the morning so we can be at the top for sunrise. It sounds spectacular, as long as the weather cooperates.

            Tomorrow Mary (Anna’s mom) arrives after many long flights and many long stopovers. The four of us are going to make a day of it, riding down with the driver in the morning and checking out things along the way before picking her up from the airport. The driver will be the same one who picked us up from the airport, and he was very knowledgeable and polite and spoke excellent English. I think he’ll make a good tour guide.

    I keep thinking that for all the crap the rest of the (western) world likes to give the US for being the biggest polluters and consumers and going on our silly military adventures, they sure do spend a lot of time trying to be just like US. We don’t come across it much, and when we do, it’s pretty subtle (a snide remark here, a backhanded insult there), but for whatever reason, since we’ve been in AUS, I keep thinking that if you people think you’re so much better than the US, that if you think Iraq was such a terrible idea (and it was) and you think the US’s political and economic weapons are wielded unfairly (and they are), then why the hell don’t you do something about it besides pissing and moaning? Oh, the US sucks, the US thinks they’re the center of the world, the US this, the US that. I just want to tell these people to face facts. If Europe and AUS had a real problem, excuse me, if the European and Aussie governments (cause that’s who it is, both in AUS, Europe and the US, not the people, whoever they are) had a real problem with US policies, they’d do something about it. The fact is, the western world (‘s governments) is (are) too busy making money off the US to really care about any of the evil stuff we (they) do. So take the holier than thou attitude and shove it, ok? I don’t like any of that crap either.

            The other thing that irritates me about, well, AUS and NZ anyway (since we haven’t really been anywhere else), is that despite the fact that we’re what, 15,000 miles away, the radio still has the exact same crappy classic rock we have in the states. I mean, seriously. Do we really need to hear the same stupid Fleetwood Mac song for the one hundred billionth time? No. We don’t.

            Guatemala didn’t have any of that crap. Instead, they had Shakira singing something in Spanish, or traditional Guatemalan music or (my personal favourite) US pop songs remade in Spanish by someone noone’s ever heard of. I think there’s two people, a man and a woman, and they sing about 10 new songs a day and they go on the radio the day after. The music industry is powerful, but they don’t own Guatemala. Yet.

            Still, I owe the music industry and that ubiquitous classic rock a special thanks for a supremely surreal moment, a moment I think Adam will particularly appreciate: yesterday, while we were eating our dinner, I Come From the Land Down Under started playing on the radio. I stood up, took my hat off, and stared uncomfortably at the Australian flag for almost a full verse before I realized that it wasn’t the Australian national anthem. Who knew? Luckily, the kitchen was busy, so no one noticed me being strange and I sat back down,  thanking the creator I wasn’t locked in a steel box somewhere, losing my mind.

            But enough, eh? Enough of that. Australia, or rather, Sydney, is a beautiful place and we’re both having a wonderful time here. It’s nice to just relax, sit on the beach, wander through aquariums and zoos and museums, ride the bus/train/ferry, and read without worrying about missing some fantastic and amazingly beautiful sight somewhere in Australia, like we did in NZ. Of course we’re missing something fantastic, we’re missing everything. It really takes the pressure off.

            If you do happen to find yourself in Sydney, and you’re looking for a used book store, I’d recommend Desire Books (it’s not like it sounds) in Manly (again, not like it sounds). The owner is an ardent book lover and, unlike most secondhand bookstores we’ve wandered through thus far, she kept her shop organized, even alphabetized. It actually made it possible to find what you were looking for, which is something that is almost unheard of in the used book industry (at least in my experience). If you’re ever in Sydney, I’d say it’s worth the ferry ride.

            Actually, the ferry ride is worth it on its own. At something like $5 one way, it’s by far the cheapest harbor cruise. The ferry goes past the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge (only they spell it Harbour, weirdos) and gives you some of the best views of downtown you could ask for. It’s as good as the $30 harbor cruises they offer and much cheaper. It’s also included on our bus/ferry/rail passes we bought our first day here, which makes those (the green passes) an incredible value, much better than the Sydney Pass, which is $100 more expensive for, as far as I can tell, nothing.

            Well, on and on and you’ve got to stop sometime. That sometime is now.

    For a city, Sydney is a pretty cool place. I’m not all that much of a city person, and Lord knows Anna isn’t, but we’re having a good time here. I think we’ll be ready to leave by the end of the week, but hey, that’s when we leave! Boy, that works out great.

            Part of the reason we’re enjoying Sydney is because we’re staying in an area called the Northern Beaches, which is about 40 mins from city center (or centre, as they write it here). It reminds me a little bit of LA, in the area where Nate lived, or maybe moreso Manhattan Beach, without all the rich people. Collaroy Beach is quiet and calm, but it’s just up the shore from Manly, which, along with Bondi (bond-eye), is the main tourist beach in Sydney. Up here we get the best of both worlds: it’s quiet and not too touristy, but all of the touristy stuff and the best beaches are a 10 min bus ride away.

            That’s another thing that we’re loving about Sydney: we can ride the train, bus or ferry at no extra cost with the weekly transit pass we bought when we got here. Both today and yesterday we’ve ridden on all three. The ferries go all over the place and take you right through Sydney harbour; the bridge and the opera house are right there, and you get the best views you could ask for. One day this week, we’re going to take the train to Parramatta, which is in the far east of Sydney, and take the “River Cat” ferry all the way out to the city center. It’ll be a great view of Sydney’s waterfront and it won’t cost us a penny.

            Today, we spent the morning sitting on the beach at Manly. Just as it started to cloud up, we left for city center and went to the Sydney Aquarium, which was awesome. They had crocodiles and sharks and turtles and rays and seals and all sorts of cool stuff. I guess it isn’t saying much as I’ve been to two aquariums in my life (in Seward, AK an in Maine), but it was the best aquarium I’ve been to. We spent about three hours there and probably could have spent longer.

            We’re staying at the Sydney Beachouse YHA, which gives us our 2^nd taste of a big hostel (the place in Auckland being our first), and this one is much better. Of course, we’ve got a double here, so we’re not in a dorm with 6 other people, but it’s better anyway. There are a few things that we’re not used to, though. At most of the places we’ve been staying, the kitchens are fully stocked, as in, they have cutlery and dishes and everything you need to make a meal except the food. Here, if you want plates and cups and whatnot, you’ve got to slap down a $20 deposit, which we’ve not done because we have our own dishes. Also, because this is a YHA hostel, there are group activities, which the holiday parks we’d mostly stayed at in NZ definitely didn’t have. Last night we tried to get in on a BBQ (but we were too late) and tonight we were asked if we wanted to play ping pong (which we didn’t). They have activities like that every night of the week, although we’ve got enough other things to do that I don’t anticipate participating in any.

            Well folks, I believe I said my piece for this evenin’. G’dnight!

            Travel days are always exhausting. You get to the airport hours before your flight leaves and the airport people ask you all sorts of semi-accusatory questions like “do you have any flammable materials in your luggage?” Me, being the trouble averse sort of person that I am, had of course stowed my matches and a lighter in my checked luggage, knowing that in the US, these items can’t be carried on the plane. Not so in NZ. In NZ, they can’t be checked and you have to keep them in your carry-on. Weird. It was fun digging through my pack at the check-in counter—I’m glad I knew were they both were, or we could’ve been there for a while.

            You get a little break while you’re in the air, but when you land (at least for int’l flights) the semi-accusatory questions begin again. What kind of food are you carrying? Do you have any used camping gear? What were you doing near farm animals? How long are you staying? Where are you staying? It’s never fun, but customs in Australia wasn’t bad at all, especially compared to NZ. We were off the plane and through in 45 mins. It probably took twice that long in Auckland.

            Once you’re done with all that, you’re still in the airport, and you’ve got to figure out how the hell to get where you’re going. There’s plenty of people to ask, of course, because everyone there is in the same boat, but the trick is finding the proper person, the one who knows the answer to your particular question. Every info booth seems to have answers to one question only. We did quite well with this as well, managing to secure our transport (via public train, bus and ferry) for the whole week, along with a ride back to the airport. It only ran about $50 each, which doesn’t seem too bad at all.

            But we made it. We had a little trouble finding our bus once we got into central Sydney, and once we did find it, we were on it for almost an hour, but we made it and we’re in our room right now, with NZ nothing more than a memory and a vague plan.

            What a memory it is, though. We were really treated to the best the country has to offer in our last couple of days. The Avalanche Peak hike was awesome. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky all day, the temp was in the mid 70’s (or low 20’s, depending on your scale) and there was just a light breeze. The views from the top of the mountain were spectacular, 360 degree mountain scenery, with glaciers and snow-capped peaks and everything one wants in alpine beauty. It was well worth the incredibly steep climb up and down and I’m especially glad the weather was so pleasant.

            The rest of our time there was no less wonderful. NZ is a beautiful country—it’s a small wonder so many movies are made there (when we were leaving the Rees/Dart hike, we drove through the set for the next Narnia movie; we had to wait while they finished up a shot before we could pass through). My only regret is that we didn’t plan more time there; I would have liked to have been able to do some more long hikes. The country is so full of them that it seemed a shame to only do one, although the one we did was about the best we could have found. We’ve already talked about going back someday, but it’ll be a long time, I think. We’ve got other things planned for a while. I can wait, though. NZ is worth it.

            The other bit of good news today is that we returned our rental car and do not have any additional charges. The whole deal was a headache and I still wish it had never happened, but at least it didn’t cost us anything. (yet?)

            Anyway, enough is enough. Time for bed. Goodnight!

            Today was a fine day. The rain from yesterday cleared and the sun was out for most of the day. We followed the west coast north, to Punikaki (my spellings of NZ town are terrible and I’m too lazy to look them up, please forgive me), where the famous pancake rocks and blowholes are. We headed up there primarily for a different hike, though, one that followed in the Inland Pack Track up a river to a couple of caves.

            The drive up to Punikaki was fantastic. The road followed the coast and wound through mountains and crossed tons of streams and creeks. The coast is jagged and full of bays and peninsulas and the views were incredible. In Punikaki, the pancake rocks and the blowholes were the main touristy things, but they were some of the coolest touristy things we’ve seen so far and they weren’t even at their best. The blowholes are supposed to be best at high tide, and we were about 2 hours early. The pancake rocks are layers of limestone laid down on top of each other so the rocks look like stacks of pancakes. Creative, eh?

            The caves were excellent as well. We hiked about an hour and a half through the rainforest, crossing a couple streams and walking through an area that had obviously been flooded in the last couple of days. There was a deep layer of sand across the trail and long leaves were wrapped around the bottoms of tree trunks, pushed there by running water. At the caves, only one of the two was safe to go in, but you could follow it about 200 meters back into the side of a cliff. There were all sorts of formations on the walls, floors and ceilings. It wasn’t like some of the tourist caves back in the states, but then again, there weren’t crowds of people or lighting or guides. We shut off our headlamps and stood there in the blackness for a minute or so, listening to the water dripping around us and seeing absolutely nothing. It was creepy.

            It looks like we’re still on for Avalanche Peak tomorrow. We’re in Arthur’s Pass, and the weather looks good. We’ve got our lunch all packed and we’re about to head for bed so we can get an early start. We’ve got tomorrow, and then we fly out the next day and we’ve still got a lot to do, like find a place to stay that first night in Sydney. It will all work out. It always does.

As our last days in NZ are slipping away, we’re busy trying to make the most out of the time we have left without driving ourselves crazy. We left Queenstown yesterday and drove north through the Crown Range and then Haast pass. We checked out some of the day hikes along the road, which traversed some incredible mountain scenery, but were left sort of unsatisfied. All of the hikes were short, like 30 mins or so, and most were crammed with people. They were alright and the scenery was incredible, but we both realized today that we’re looking for a hike that’s a bit more satisfying. We feel like we’re wasting our last days in NZ doing this touristy stuff. I guess this is one of the drawbacks to not planning ahead–some days the only things you stumble across aren’t what you really want to do.

We tried for a better hike today, settling on a 3 ½ hour hike to a seal colony, which would have been fantastic, had there been actual seals at said seal colony. I guess it was the wrong time of the year or day or something, but we saw one seal sitting out on a rock. They must be endangered. The walk itself was ok. We went through a dense rainforest-y area that was pretty cool, but we wore sandals instead of boots, which was a mistake. The trail was rocky and pretty muddy but oh well. We survived. We just got dirty feet.

Tomorrow will be better though. We’re spending tonight in a small, touristy town on the west coast called Hokitika and tomorrow we’re driving north to the pancake rocks area (Punikake), to do a river hike, as long as it isn’t raining. The hike is supposed to be beautiful. After that, we’re going to backtrack back down the coast a bit and head inland to Arthur’s Pass (which I keep calling Albert’s Pass for some reason) and on Friday we’re going to climb Avalanche Peak, again as long as the weather is good. Saturday we leave, flying to SYD to start a new section of our trip.

Last night we met some more Americans. Now that we’re getting ready to leave, they’re coming out of the woodwork. These two were retired gentlemen who were biking their way around NZ. They were from southern Illinois, but had spent a lot of time on the north shore and in the BWCA, so we talked a lot of MN, of fishing and of all the things we should check out next time we come to NZ. They were interesting and I enjoyed talking with them.

The other bit of news recently that some of you already know is that Anna got into St. Kate’s, so we’ll definitely be moving to the cities when we come back. This, along with our leaving NZ, has got us both thinking about what things will be like when we get back. Anna will have a lot of things to try to figure out from overseas and I think it’ll be stressful for her at times. I hope that I can help, and I hope that everything works out. I suppose it will—it always does.

Ok. It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. This will be a long post. Click on the link below if you want to read it all . . .

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