| Half Way Around the word without a plane |
Indonesia has won us over…1 month since we got to Kupang…it seems so short…on the other hand we have the feeling we’ve always been here…so many happenings, friendships, events…special moments…
I feel it is impossible for me to tell you all what happened for the last weeks…I would not be able to transcript the continuous state of surprise, expectations and happiness we are in, in this country where everything is so different and the people are so welcoming and willing to share! I will therefore throw on the paper as they come to my mind the feelings and stories that I want to share, either because they’re typical, or funny or special…so be ready for a mess of expressions, colourful descriptions, laugh and unexpected happenings…this is just a little bit of our Indonesia coming to you…
Since once month we have :
- Sailed, of course, as usual…and mostly motor sail as we are right in between the 2 monsoons, so the wind is letting us down…but this is no longer what our life is about…now our life is about the anchorages, discovering new places and meeting new friends… - Anchored in 8 islands of the Nusa Tengarra Archipelago : West Timor, Rote, Sumba, Rinca, Komodo, Sumbawa, Lombock and Bali - Visited these islands by bus, bemo (mini bus), motorbike, in the back of trucks, on foot, by push-bikes, by horse cart…
This is the typical Nusa Tengarra Bemo…the funkier, the better : flashy colors, stickers all over (from Beckham to Che Guevara, Brittney Spreas to Ferrari…all the tastes are shown on the stickers!), all sorts of decorations dangling in the cab…and, above all : the stereo!!! Under very passenger seat, there is a huge loud speaker…and soon we learned to avoid the techno loving bemo drivers…or else your tympan are destroyed by the time you get where you want to go!
- We jumped :
We never get bored in this land of contrasts…and every time we land, we become center of interest of a whole village or community…and questions start raining on us…
In English first : “Hello Mister”…which is a sentence we hear every step when we are on land…(the hello miss comes sometimes, when people are a bit educated!!!) “Where you go?”…translation of the “Mau ke mana” that Indonesian use to say “how are you? What’s up?”…they don’t really care where you’re going…so the answer is :”Jalan Jalan”…: I’m walking by…
After those 2 questions, which we hear hundred of times in a day, come the rest of the questions…most of the time in indonesian, as very few people here speak english… When the people see we understand and speak indonesian (thanks to the many hours I spent with my “Teach yourself” book)…they love it, and they will sit for hours on end besides us, asking us all sort of questions…where we are from and where we are going, of course…they also want to know about our families, about our countries (which fruits do we have, how cold is it, …
They have troubles getting to grip with the fact that 1) we are travelling for 1 year without working 2) Our captain owns such a big boat when he only is 29years old.
They conclude that we are super rich
When we tell them that we travel only the 3 of us on the boat, they just can’t believe their hears… Whereas in Australia, people couldn’t believe that we would crowd 3 people in such a small boat, here they think that we should be at least 6 in such a big ship…
Such a huge cultural and economical gap between us!!!
One plate of fried rice with chicken in a restaurant costs 0,5euros, a tea, 0’2euros (A bier, which is luxury here, only for foreigner, 1,5euros!) When we go to an ATM for 100euros, we get 1 million rupiah…
We are indeed millionaires, here!
But despite this, people here are welcoming, they are not interested in our money and they just want to sit down with us and talk, invite us, introduce us to their families and friends, show us around, help us find what we are looking for…
Everywhere we are welcomed like VIP, people get up for us to sit down on the best seats, they look after us, we have been guest stars in the wedding of a fishmonger that we met on the port, the senator’s wife invited us for tea, after showing us around the place with her air-con car (the only one of the city, most probably!), the head of the protestant church sits with us at a beach side restaurant… Anywhere we go, as soon as we sit down for a minute, we are surrounded by a crowd, well intentioned, noisy and interested…everybody speaks at once, information that we give are transmitted to the whole crowd, clarifications and comments are discussed, jokes are made making everybody laugh…kids can’t take their eyes of our white faces…and the small ones are sometimes scared like hell! We are the centre of the world at all times…in the street everybody says hello and smiles to us…it is nice…but sometimes really tiring…especially as all this is happening in a foreign language, which makes our neurones work hard!!!
We discovered that we own a tool to make people happy : our camera!…people, especially kids, love being photographed…they don’t care about the result, just being in front of the camera is good enough…but when they discover they can see themselves in the digital screen afterward…this is endless shouts and laughs!! When we have a special relationship with a family or individual (like for the wedding or other family invitations…there is so many), we use the POLAROID…(this was really a bright idea to buy it!)…seing the picture coming out and their faces appearing slowly is pure magic for them…they love it! When we start making pictures, the whole family, then the neighbours, then the whole village ends up showing up in front of the camera!…Now we only put a few sheet in the box, so that we can say “Sorry no more paper”…otherwise we would spend nights and days making pictures!
Mooring in Rote Island
Rote Island. We anchored near a small village…very soon we were « coached » by and elder : Om Bea (‘uncle bra’), who showed us around the whole village, stopping everywhere to tell our life story to all…and very soon the whole village escorted usto the beack to see the boat…obviously we created an event when we got the camera out for this picture…which was later printed on A4 paper and given to Uncle Bea.We felt like neighbours after 3 days spent in this village.
In my opinion, the Indonesians are the “latino” of the asian continent : a talkative, cheerful, extrovert and musical people… The music is everywhere in the country : in the street, in the buses…the musical production is of a very good level and plentiful : rock, reggae, modernised traditional music… People dance in the parties, even men, and every body know a few chord on the guitar… We were by chance in the town where the “rolling stones of Indonesia”, a group named Slank where performing a show…this was an amazing experience, a world class concert, with thousands of young people coming from all the islands around, dancing and shouting the words of the songs…we were the only foreigners in the crowd, and we got more than our share of “what do you think? Do you like Indonesian music?”
So far, all the islands we have visited are very different, culturally and geographically. The southern ones are drier and lower, whereas Sumbawa, Lombock and Bali have got higher peaks and lusher vegetation. People have reached a mix of traditional and modern living, the balance varying from one island to the other, one village to the other…everywhere we see men in traditional sarong on Honda motorbikes, old women with their teeth red with betel nut next to teenagers in flashy clothes and mobile phones…
Of course, as we are apprentice anthropologists, we look for places where traditional living is preserved and we can see what the crafts, architecture and way of life where like, before they disappear. In Sumba, we explored a few traditional villages, the Kampung Raja (Village of the Raja), where the noble families, parents of the Rajas are still living the traditional way : we spent with them some very good moments, people being very welcoming and willing to share their knowledge… Everywhere, though, corrugated iron is replacing thatched roofs and coaches and TV appear in the traditional bamboo houses!
Sumbanese traditional village of Payawang. This village, inhabited by the Raja family is still leading a traditional living : subsistence agriculture, traditional architecture, monolithic tumbs richly decorated (the last one is only 2 month old!), Ikat weaving and betel chewing…
Everything tends toward a so called « modernity »…but the Indonesians are keeping strong their culture of savoir-vivre and taking the time…here the human relationship haven’t lost their rights to stress and productivity! Indonesians are master in the art of siesta…there is no way an Indonesian will move during the hot hours of the day (the temperature can easily reach 40degrees!) From 11 to 16h, the streets are empty and the shop closed! Houses are designed for siesta. Traditional houses, which are elevated on stilts, have a weel ventilated front veranda. This is shear happiness to lay on the bamboo or wooden floor of those places, which are the fresher places to be during the mid day heat.
Those places are also places of conviviality, and most of the time, when we are invited to take sit in them, we have no chance to let ourselves drift to sleep as the whole village will usually call in to watch and chat to the “bulé” (Foreigners)
Obviously this local custom has demanded great capacities of adaptation from us…without joking, staying 4 or 5h without doing anything than just chatting is something really hard for productivity trained animals like us, and we have to overcome our fear of “doing nothing”…
Siesta time in Kampung Raja…this young girl has tried to seduce our Captain…but in hearing the high price of the dowry for this girl of the raja family, our Captain gave up on taking and Indonesian wife…and is still looking out for a “cheaper” French girlfriend!
Even the Komodo Dragons are conforming to siesta time !
Another indonesian custom which demanded some adaptation is « the mandi », or bathroom. Indonesian toilet-bathroom is the most authentic version of the Turkish bath : a big vessel full of water, a plastic scoop and a hole-in-the-ground type toilet…that’s all.. Yes you read well : no toilet paper!… You need to get used to it, but it is very hygienic…I’m not going to enter in further details… Most of the time the “Mandi” in thoroughly clean, even in “public places”, like restaurant, where it very often is the bathroom of the owner of the restaurant.
After a hot and dusty day, the “mandi” is a real treat : the water is generally fresh (uisually filling of the tanks take place early in the day…or whenever the public pipe work is working…) and the aim of the game is to splash all around the bathroom with the scopp (the bathroom is like a huge bathtub with holes in the ground… This is a real Turkish bath, refreshing and relaxing!
The Kamar Mandi of our hotel in Sumba. Being in a port, it was hard to bath in the sea (the sea near any town is just disgusting), so we got an hotel room to be able to use the mandi…and save some water from the tanks.
A Day in Indonesia.
Street wake up around 5h30-6h00…people breakfast of local doughnuts-type cakes or noodles soups, sold in small trolleys in the street. Kids are going to school at 7h00 Shops are opening around 7am and administrations around 8am
In the morning the market draws all the town activity : sellers bargain, laugh or just watch people go by. I love the markets…but it is even more fun when we have to purchase stuffs for the boat… We can find the same veggies as we are used to : tomatoes, eggplants, cucumber, potatoes, carrots…everything is organic, obviously and we rediscover the real taste of things…
There is also huge amount of various “leafs” as I call them, which are like spinachs or water lilies leafs, used in the asian cooking…we’ve been trying those very successfully in our own cooking!
As for fruits, the choice is plentiful : both sugar banana and plantain banana, rambutan and longans (similar to lychees), various fruits from the citrus family, juicy mangos, water melon and so on… Rice shops are huge : up to 10 different sort of rice… Dried fish is also part of the diet…but the smell is still putting us off for the time being…we prefer fresh fishes grilled on the port by the fishmongers! As for meat, we have given up buying it ourselves, as we are not sure about the freshness and we have nothing to keep in on the boat…but we do enjoy all sorts of meat in the restaurants, where we eat most of the time when not at sea : mostly fried or grilled chicken, beef curry, goat curries and kebabs, even some pork (when not in muslim area)…
Sumba market. This is one of the biggest shop in the market. Most of the time the villagers come with a few maizes, mangos and bananas from their garden, which they dispose on a lontar sheet on the ground.
Around 11-12am, restaurants and warung (small street outlets) fill in for lunch. Then it’s siesta time until the warmth becomes bearable again…families gather on their veranda or on bamboo platform in front of their houses. Men drink tea, smoke and play cards, women weave, talk or look after kids...
Life spreads out again in the early evening…shopping time again : people walk the street, more as a social behaviour than to spend their money… People sit outside their place, preparing the evening diner, or talking with the neighbours and passers by…young people go for a soccer or gather together. Shops are open until 10pm or even midnight, and the people stay awake until late…evening is the best time of the day…
Here are a few of our feelings about this month travel…I hope I have transmitted to you a little bit of our enthusiasm and friendship for this touching people… I hope above all that we will keep having encounter of this quality with people, now that we are reaching touristy areas like Bali…Time will tell…
The boat will stay in Bali for 1 month, while our captain goes back to France for Xmas. Romain and I will play the anthropologists and visit Sulawesi island and the Toraja…
More about our adventures early January!!!
In January, plans to go towards Thailand have changed, as we decided to follow the north coast of Java and the west cost of Sumatera to enjoy Indonesia longer. In Sumatra, we will leave the boat as Vincent keeps going towards India and we will travel through Malaisia and Thailand Est coast to Bangkok
In the mean time we send you a mango and iced tea perfumed kisses
11:42 - 8/12/2006 - Ajouter un commentaire
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From New-Caledonia to France without using a plane.
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