Borobudur

Smaller than Angkor Wat, yet at least as majestic, this serene, 8th-century temple is one of the world’s great religious monuments, and especially awe-inspiring when shrouded in mist. If you can, visit during Waisak, the three-day ceremony for Buddha’s Birthday (it falls on 11 May in 2017), to see it in all its vibrant glory.

Bromo

Possibly the most iconic of Indonesia’s volcanoes, Bromo stands stark amid a sea of black sand, where the local Tenggerese still ride horses as they have since time immemorial. It’s volatile and very active, and the Tenggerese still propitiate the volcano with offerings at the Yadnya Kasada festival in June.

The Ijen

Just a short hop from Bali, the Ijen plateau offers tranquil highland landscapes, coffee plantations, perfectly conical volcanoes and the Kawah Ijen crater lake, from which miners draw chunks of sulphur. It’s possible to stay at hotels in Banyuwangi, like the Hotel Santika Banyuwangi, but, although accommodation is more basic, the highlands themselves make a better choice.

Krakatau

Java really is at the epicentre of Indonesia’s Ring of Fire, and Krakatau, midway between Java and Sumatra, rocked the world when it erupted in 1883. There’s little of the original volcano left, just the shattered edge of a caldera and Krakatau’s “daughter”, Anak Krakatau, which continues to rise from the sea at a spectacular 6 metres per year.

Yogyakarta

Indonesian cities can be hard to relate to, due to largely uncontrolled development, pollution and litter. But cultured Yogya, with its vibrant modern art scene, attractive old town and university city lifestyle, is the exception that proves the rule. It’s also a perfect base for exploring Borobudur.

Dieng Plateau

While today Java is overwhelmingly Muslim – albeit with some distinctly Hindu and animist features – this serene highland landscape is scattered with literally hundreds of Hindu temples. The temples themselves aren’t stunning, but the crater lakes and rural landscapes are: consider staying in Wonosobo for a better choice of accommodation.

Ujung Kulon

The Sumatran rhino might get all the press, but in this national park in far west Java, the rare Javan rhino is still occasionally seen. Not far from Krakatau, with striking offshore islands and unspoilt forest full of bird life, Ujung Kulon is rarely visited.

Bandung Tea Plantations

Back in the Dutch colonial era, tea grown around Bandung was a rival to the British plantations around Assam and Darjeeling – and, while most teas are mass-market, a handful of growers are producing organic, hand-crafted teas for connoisseurs. Stay here for colonial hill stations and misty tea plantations, many of which are open for tours.

Image credits: Borobudur 4 by Thrillseekr, Mount Bromo by Ronald Tagra, Sunrise from Ijen Crater, Indonesia by Jimmy McIntyre, #Krakatau by Valdemar Anthony Kornholt, Kereta Kuda, Malioboro, Yogya by Danumurthi Mahendra, Telaga Warna Dieng Plateau by Jimmy McIntyre, Orange Umbrellas by Riza Nugraha and Tea Garden in Indonesia by Skyseeker, all on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

The post Eight Reasons to Visit Java appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Not least because much of my work requires sitting still in one place with reliable internet and, you know, writing stuff. Not to mention answering questions from editors, invoicing, chasing accounts departments, pitching other stories to keep the throughput running, and so on.

But – for I have many faults but a lack of optimism is not one of them – this only dawned on me as the eclipse chase wound into its final phase and I ducked out of a cooking class to take a call from an art director in Singapore.

“So…” I said, tentatively. “I was wondering if we could actually push this freediving story until I’m back from China, now that it’s moved forwards an issue.”

“Well,” he says. “We can if you want, but I’ve actually got an underwater photographer booked for Tuesday. No, really, we can if you want…”

Bugger. Not only have I got a freediving course lined up, there’s some stupidly well paid underwater photog giving up two undoubtedly lucrative days to take photos of… well, moi. Underwater. Cancelling at this stage would be highly, highly unfair on the photographer, a minor pain in the arse for the people comping me the course, and a complete clusterfuck for everyone at the mag.

Bollocks. Or, as they say in France, noblesse oblige.

We’ve technically been travelling together for the last ten days, but as he’s had three mates along our interaction has been largely restricted to grunts.

You see, at my advanced age, there are certain prerequisites before having one’s photo taken, particularly given the art director’s brief includes full page shots of, ummm, me. Underwater. In a wetsuit.

Ideally, preparation for a shoot would include, but not be limited to: losing 10 kilos (or at least doing some sit-ups), Botox (no judgement unless you’re my age or older, puhlease), mani-pedi, wardrobe rethink and “doing something about my hair”.

As it is, I only have time for one and a bit of the above, and so I message the Bag Lady, who is between places, so using mine as I’m not going to be in it very much and then she can “babysit” Zac while I’m away, and ask her to arrange a hair cut.

She’s been trying to persuade me to go blonde for a while now, on the grounds that it would look cool and youthful. I’m open to this partly because I spent many happy years as a bottle blonde prior to travel but mainly because I now have several undeniably grey hairs about which SOMETHING MUST BE DONE OR I WILL LOOK OLD and plucking them out ain’t cutting it any more.

If I book a flight for 3pm, I figure, I can get my kit packed up, hair blonded and my sorry arse on and off the plane just in time to catch the last public boat to Gili T. And, gulp, promptly freedive to 10, or even 20, metres.

And so, I say a fond farewell to Zac – we’ve technically been travelling together for the last ten days, but as he’s had three mates along our interaction has been largely restricted to grunts – and gear up for the hair cut. The Bag Lady gives me some handy direction on what people who are cool wear on the beach and lends me a very chic black shirt dress.

“You’re going in the WATER?” she says, waving a directive hand at her assistant. “Well, yes,” I say. Has my social secretary not communicated this?

“It’s for a photo-shoot, right?” says the VERY cool blonde who runs the salon, as her assistant pastes the first of a series of chemical layers onto my hair.

“Yeah,” I say brightly. “I’m doing a story on freediving in the Gilis, and they’re sending an underwater photographer along, so I wanted to…”

“You’re going in the WATER?” she says, waving a directive hand at her assistant.

“Well, yes,” I say. Has my social secretary not communicated this? Goddamnit. Anyone would think the Bag Lady had a life of her own. “There’s pool work tomorrow and then the ocean after that.”

“You can’t go in the pool tomorrow,” she says. “Your hair will go green. You’ll need to wear a swimcap.”

It is a little after 10am. My flight leaves at 3pm. I’m not sure a swimcap is going to look very good in the photos, but it’s too bloody late now. We have started, so we’ll finish.

“Is there anyone who can get you one?” she asks. “I got mine from Galleria. It was about $30.”

The Bag Lady asks at the pool. They direct her to a sports shop in Canggu.

In the absence of Made, who mystifyingly would rather earn $2500 a month, accommodation and meals found, in the States than work for me for 100,000 IDR per half-day, I’ve acquired a friendly ojek driver named Dewa. Dewa lives round the corner, has plenty of initiative and can be trusted to go off with large sums of money and come back with the item it was supposed to purchase. I call him. I’m in the salon, I say. He’ll arrive in a minute.

The pasting resumes.

“Don’t look now,” says Cool Stylist Chick. “There’s a reason we don’t have mirrors at the washbasins.”

It’s a pleasantly social place, the salon. A friend of the Bag Lady who I’m hoping to adopt as my friend too swings by, and we chat about diving. My hair passes the point of no return – ginger.

And Dewa materialises. I give him 400,000 IDR. He looks at me as if I’m bonkers. And, to be fair, gussied up in a robe, waving wads of cash around, I must be some way past normal-for-bule and heading towards full-on-lunatic gila. “You are giving me 400,000 to buy a swim hat?” he says, in the slow, cautious tones of someone unwillingly interacting with an imbecile.

“No,” I say. “I’d like you to find one in a local shop. But if you can’t we might have to go to a bule shop and pay bule prices. It needs to be plain black.”

The light of understanding dawns, and off he trots.

Time passes. He returns. “They don’t have in Canggu,” he says. “Maybe I should go to Denpasar?”

“Yes,” I say. “Please go to Denpasar.”

It is 12 when the first layer of chemicals is removed, or almost exactly three hours before my flight departs. “Don’t look now,” says Cool Stylist Chick. “There’s a reason we don’t have mirrors at the washbasins.”

At this point the chap who runs the chopper store down the road enters the salon and doubles up laughing. “That’s a new look!” he says. “Bogan orange!”

“You do look a bit like Donald Trump,” says my (well, the Bag Lady’s) dive friend.

Oh great. Dewa returns, bearing a swimcap which has cost him all of 40,000 IDR. I pay him 100,000 for being honest about the price and a new layer of chemicals goes on. A travelling friend swings by to catch up.

“How long would YOU say to the airport on a bike from here?” I ask Cool Stylist Chick’s equally cool boyfriend, who oh-so-evidently drives way faster than I do.

It’s not, by the way, that I’m not enthusiastic about the prospect of freediving in the Gilis. The reason I pitched the story is that I want to try freediving (yeah, possibly not in the Gilis, but that’s supposed to be one of the better locations in the world, and it’s not only on my doorstep but on the airline’s route map).

It’s just that, right now, after a ten day epic including four separate flights and two nights sleeping on concrete, and with a flight to Malaysia on Thursday, I’d rather be loafing around my lovely home, not to mention redoing a bathroom which has had the sink hanging off the wall since January because it took a while to come to terms with our landlords about a contract extension and then I pissed off to East Indonesia to see the full solar eclipse (thoroughly recommended, fwiw).

Further, one of the reasons that I want to try freediving is that it scares the merry shit out of me.

At 12.45pm, two hours and 15 minutes before my flight is due to leave, my hair is still a rather Tweetie Pie yellow. “How long would YOU say to the airport on a bike from here?” I ask Cool Stylist Chick’s equally cool boyfriend, who oh-so-evidently drives way faster than I do, but I’d like to feel good about my prospects.

“30 minutes?” he says. “Maybe 45?”

Another layer of bleach to lift the colour, then toner. My little backpack is in the corner, ready to roll. I settle the bill in advance.

“We should do a treatment,” says Cool Stylist.

“Can we just leave it on?” I say, clutching my phone as if holding a clock is going to make time go slower.

“Yes!” she says. “That’s actually one of the best things you can do for your hair.”

At 1.40pm, with an hour and 20 minutes to go before my flight allegedly departs – it is Lion, so, I figure, will probably be late – I whack a helmet over my newly blonde and rather oily hair, forget the Bag Lady’s cool shades, and head to the airport.

I spend a while stuck behind a bike carrying two workies, tools, a long ladder and an impressive tonnage of cement which gives it the width of a small car.

I’d like to say I ride like I’ve got the devil on my heels but a) I realise I haven’t changed the oil for a while so the bloody bike could die on me at any point and b) I’m so rabid with neurosis I decide it’s better I only overtake in spaces you could get a London bus through.

If I miss this flight, you see, I’ll likely a) have to spend the night in some fetid swamp at the port for Gili and b) miss the opening explanatory video of the course, with a photographer there primed and ready to shoot. The first would be unpleasant, the second unprofessional.

Traffic is, of course, spectacularly shite: Sunset Road feels more like gin o’clock on Saturday night than lunchtime on a Monday. My cautious approach means I spend a while stuck behind a bike carrying two workies, tools, a long ladder and an impressive tonnage of cement which gives it the width of a small car.

But I negotiate the scary roundabout to the airport OK – unlike the other roundabout I frequent in Bali, this one vaguely adheres to European-style rules of the road, except when it doesn’t, and on a bike I rather prefer the herd approach. In fact, I make it to the airport’s motorbike parking a full half hour before my flight is due to leave.

There’s no way I’m going to manage to get the bike into one of the two-storey parking lots, find a slot, wheel it into the slot (which involves lifting the bloody thing up several times), get out again and still make my flight. So, figuring it will only be there two nights, I dump it down an alley with several other bikes (all of them still in possession of key moving parts) and jog-trot, fatly, to the airport.

I race to Gate 3. This is my fifth visit to Bali airport in the last three weeks and the scenery is getting old.

People are very forgiving when it’s obvious you’re desperate. I race to the front of the Lion Air queue, mumbling “Sorry” in Indonesian, barge in front of the people who are currently checking in, present my receipt from the Lion Air counter at yesterday’s airport and wheeze, “My flight leaves at three!”

By the time the check-in lady finishes labelling the couple’s bags, she has my boarding pass ready to go. “Go straight to Gate 3,” she says, in Indonesian.

There’s a queue at the security desk. I barge to the front of it, apologising. “My flight leaves at three!” I say to the people at the front.

The guy checks my boarding pass and waves me through.

I race to Gate 3. This is my fifth visit to Bali airport in the last three weeks and the scenery is getting old.

And, quelle surprise, my half-hour flight is running half an hour late.

“Speedboat 500,000,” the tout says. “No share boat.” “I take the share boat,” I say. “300,000 for the share boat,” he says, with eminent consistency.

Needless to say, I miss the last public boat to the Gilis, leaving me at the mercy of the speedboat touts and sundry scum. Howevs, I am an old hand at this and, further, my Indonesian is by now quite convincing, at least, in short bursts.

“You want private boat?”

“I want the share boat,” I say, forging my way to the beach and enquiring of sundry Indonesians whether they’re waiting for a boat, which of course they are because this is not a beach anyone sits on for fun at twilight.

“Speedboat 500,000,” the tout says. “No share boat.”

“I take the share boat,” I say.

“300,000 for the share boat,” he says, with eminent consistency.

I can see there are four bicycles, at least 20 Indonesians and a mound of sacks of cement awaiting the share boat. I locate the captain. Rapidly, we acquire critical mass.

“100,000,” says the dude, giving it one last shot.

“No,” I say. “50,000.”

And I’m away, to Gili T, an island which can be a sybaritic paradise if you have the funds to stay in the nice bit, and is otherwise one of my least favourite places in Indonesia after Jakarta airport and Senggigi.

We are warned off both alcohol and COFFEE. COFFEE, I tell you. COFFEE.

I make it to the free dive place just in time to catch the video, and the photog, and slump down in front of the video endeavouring to look natural while also holding my stomach in. As a strategy, this has mixed results, not least because the stomach-holding intensifies my unBotoxed frown.

Further, I can’t help noticing, reviewing the photographer’s shots of me studiously copying down stuff about scary things like Shallow Water Blackout and the Urge to Breathe, that my hair is so bright it almost matches the neon bits on my dress. This dress is not one of the ones the Bag Lady has certified as cool but in fact one of the ones she described, in a moment of wine-infused honesty, as “cheap and tarty”.

But whatvs. We are given a list of things not to eat that increase mucus – this is, I will learn, because you need to pop your ears like a demon when you’re freediving and the last thing you need is earwax – and warned off both alcohol and COFFEE.

COFFEE, I tell you. COFFEE.

One more time. NO COFFEE.

I am aiming for a long, lean profile in the pictures, which is difficult when you’re ten kilos heavier than you should be.

“Have you ever done underwater modelling before?” asks the photog, later, while I’m still flushed with the pleasure of a) not being the oldest person on the course b) not being the heaviest drinker and smoker on the course and c) being MILES better at popping my ears than anyone because scuba.

I look at him to establish whether he’s taking the piss. He appears not to be. “No,” I say. “It’s my first time.”

“OK,” he says. “There’s some hand signals, like look at me, look to the camera – I’ll talk you through them.”

Oh god.

I’d hoped that this freedive course would be a golden opportunity to give up smoking (again). In fact, I still believe a freedive course, when not combined with underwater photo modelling and endeavouring to hit deadlines while your poor oxygen-deprived body is howling for a nap, would still be an outstanding way of giving up smoking.

I had also believed we’d be taught how to stop your diaphragm doing that thing it does when your body believes it’s running out of air. But we’re not going to be taught that. We’re going to learn how to master the power of our minds to make it not matter any more. Oh bollocks.

Further, I am annoyed we don’t get the super-long, super-cool freediver fins. I am aiming for a long, lean profile in the pictures, which is difficult when you’re ten kilos heavier than you should be. Freedivers wear their weights below their stomach, so they can do diaphragmatic breathing, which means my beer gut will be on full display, so I was really hoping for long black fins that could merge with my wetsuit for a long, thin profile, at least when seen from a distance.

There could quite well be pictures of me running across eight pages of the magazine, which has invested quite heavily in getting the photog to come along (considerably more heavily than it has invested in, well, me, but that’s showbusiness). Ergo: not looking fat matters. Or, as a lady photo editor from a renowned British tabloid once said to me à propos of an interviewee, “Well, if she’s rough as a badger’s arse, what are we going to do then?”

It’s extremely difficult to replace a swim cap on your rapidly yellowing hair when you’re hanging off a buoy with one hand in the middle of nowhere, waiting your turn to go down a rope to, well, also nowhere.

I manage to keep the swimcap on for the pool session, at which I think I do quite well, probably because I regularly swim several lengths underwater at home anyway and I know I can go up to the surface at any point, although our teacher, a cultivated chap who moved from the museum world to Gili T and free diving, has this weird thing about stopping me from looking where I’m going.

Out at sea, it’s rather more difficult, not least because there’s more chop than would be ideal. It’s hard to do relaxed breathing through a snorkel when the sea keeps coming over the top of it, and it’s extremely difficult to replace a swim cap on your rapidly yellowing hair when you’re hanging off a buoy with one hand in the middle of nowhere, waiting your turn to go down a rope to, well, also nowhere.

I’m annoyed that all but one of the people who were clearly going to be worse than me are now out of the group. I’m also annoyed that I’m not allowed to look where I’m going. I need to tuck my chin under and follow the line, just look at the line. It’s really quite counter-intuitive. I want to look where I’m going, even though the only place I’m going is down.

Anywise, I manage to go hand over hand down the rope to about eight metres and sit there for a bit. Eight metres doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s easily as deep as the roof of a two-storey house. Also, I feel quite relaxed. Although not as relaxed as two of the guys on the course, who are hanging out at ten metres as if they’re in the front room watching telly. But one is a surfer, therefore used to being under the water in environments so much more strenuous than this one that they’re basically trying to kill him.

And then I go back to base and hit two deadlines on crappy internet while fending off mushroom vendors. Go me!

The guy who runs the joint and regularly descends to over 100 metres – that’s around the height of St Paul’s Cathedral – somehow manages to do both scuba and freediving, but I’m quite attached to breathing.

By the next day, I’ve already decided I prefer scuba. (The guy who runs the joint and regularly descends to over 100 metres – that’s around the height of St Paul’s Cathedral – somehow manages to do both scuba and freediving, but I’m quite attached to breathing.)

Which isn’t to say the day goes entirely badly, not least because I’ve abandoned the swimcap on the basis that my hair can’t possibly get any more yellow than it has. In fact, I even manage to tuck my chin into that weird position – which also helps my earache – and fin down to ten metres. I’m also very pleased we have a yoga class in the morning, because I am bendy, and I figure there’s a fighting chance of me not looking like a complete spaz in the shots.

But, because I am working, and the photog is working, and we both need to be out on the 3pm boat and want to take some natural-looking shots of me snorkelling Gili T’s splendiferous coral before we make the boat (splendiferous was in my special invisible sarcasm font), there isn’t time for me to exactly pass the course. Ahem.

Doing something to write about it can often be very different from doing it (as I’ve observed elsewhere). Sometimes that’s in a good way: I only managed to paraglide without (much) fear because I needed to get a shot of Zac paragliding with me for a magazine story. As with this one, I’d pitched that as a way of getting over my fears.

Sometimes it’s in a less good way. Here, I was more focused on noting the details of learning to freedive, observing what was happening around me and getting the shots the magazine needed than on actually learning to freedive.

Yet, as I hop on the boat and bid farewell to Gili T, I’m actually pleased: I’ve conquered a fear to a degree, I can stay underwater, looking relaxed, with no air, for longer than I’d thought possible, and should anyone drop a diamond ring into waters 10 metres deep or so, I’d have no concerns about going to look at it.

And then it dawns on me. I’m going to be at home for under 24 hours, before heading out again, at least one of which hours will be spent de-yellowing my hair. And all I have for this bigass China trip is a list of stories and deadlines, with no plan of campaign for how to get from A to B. And China is, I am beginning to remember, a very, very large place.

This is, I figure, a learning experience. To be filed under NEVER-AFUCKINGAIN.

Thanks to Bro Jeffrey Pioquinto SJ for Bleach.

The post How Not to Be a Travel Writer, Episode 97 appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Because Indonesia is the only place in the whole wide world where you can set out looking for an island populated entirely by midgets and land up diving with whale sharks. (Probably also the only place where the equivalent of the head of a county council will invite you to his house to meet the spirits of ancestral kings, too.)

I am currently “on assignment” as ponces have it, or “working” as I call it, on the arduous task of researching islands off Sulawesi for a mag. (I’m also setting up a tediously factual website devoted to Indonesian islands, one of many dog-ate-my-homework reasons you haven’t heard from me for a while.) I also have to research some food stuff, which is obviously terribly hard work, and some culture, and I’m collecting a few more stories as I go.

Anywise, this weekend I, quite literally, set out in search of an island full of little people and ended up diving with the biggest fish on earth. Here, have a splendid deserted beach pic. I’ve got loads more where that came from.

In the course of researching islands – AKA talking to people and then more people until you find someone who knows or conclude that the only thing to do is get out there and have a look — I came across two possible amazing stories. One is true, and one, the island of the midgets, is less so.

But let’s start with Pak Ilham. Ilham’s father, major-general Andi Mattalatta, was known as the Rooster of the East during his heyday. This was a tribute to Sultan Hasanuddin, the 17th-century leader who managed to unify Sulawesi’s population, most of whom were more interested in piracy (coast), blood sacrifices (highlands), fishing (islands) and internecine strife (all of the above) than in the larger colonial picture, and lead a heroic if doomed resistance to the Dutch forces.

When dad retired from the army, still only in his 30s, he decided that what Indonesia really needed was water-skiing. And I defy you to imagine any more splendid sight in a nation which loves a good parade, is absolutely addicted to uniforms, and is a sucker for a schmaltzy tune, whether on the guitar or, even better, karaoke, than this absolutely splendid 1950s Indonesian water-skiing video.

Here, have a gander. It’s great!

And so Ilham, following in his father’s footsteps, decided to introduce diving to Makassar. He is, I will realise, an orang besar (big man) in Sulawesi.

Unencumbered by fripperies such as a website, a Facebook page or even, for that matter, a sign, Ilham runs the Makassar Diving Centre, cunningly concealed behind the parking lot of Kampoeng POPSA, the vaguely Singapore-style hawker court he’s set up where dad used to do his waterskiing.

An Indonesia novice would assume that any business without a website or street signage would be barely functioning and, when it comes to diving, more likely to kill you than not. Far from it!

Pak Ilham is a NAUI-certified deep dive instructor, has been diving for 40-odd years, operates a resort on the island of Kapoposang, and has an absolutely bona fide dive boat with two well-maintained 200HP engines, plus gear, plus staff, plus a professional compressor set-up. Further, he has sunk sundry items, including a broken down minibus, a jetski and some substantial classical statues off the island of Kodingareng Keke, to create an impromptu coral garden.

I explain I’m doing a diving and islands story for an inflight mag. Pak Ilham says the boat’s going to Barranglompo and Samalona tomorrow, and why don’t I join? In fact, I could dive with his family this afternoon if I fancied it? Sadly, I’m too busy trying to work out which islands are which to go diving that day.

I ask, tentatively, about the midgets. “Hmmm….” he says doubtfully. “I think there USED to be many midgets on Langkai, but with better nutrition and less – what’s the word? — incest, there aren’t so many.”

Nonetheless – and I recognise that curiosity about people of small stature is neither the most noble nor most cerebral of instincts – I am beginning to fixate on this island. Not least because I know that I will kick myself later if I am 20 miles from an island possibly populated by midgets and don’t get there. Here, have another beach picture.

You meet a nice class of people diving, I always find – especially in the more out-of-the-way spots. Our group comprises Yuda, the captain and dive guide, plus the chap who looks after the boat, plus Bert, a marine biologist looking to revisit an island he worked on 30 years before, Angel, a Chinese-Indonesian dentist whose parents used to let their house to scientists including Bert, and Anwi, who I don’t talk to that much because she’s rather vomitous and I’m being lazy about speaking Indonesian, but is clearly an extremely good photographer.

Our first stop is Barranglompo, the type of densely-packed, villagey Indonesian island of which I’m very fond – rather like Pulau Derawan, in fact. In one of those glaring contradictions that would drive all but the hardest-core fan of Indonesia screaming up the wall, it’s simultaneously a scientific research base and a centre for harvesting and culturing products for aquaria. Further, most fishing is done using dynamite, an activity on which the only possible positive spin is that it’s safer for the end consumer than cyanide. (I am far from hippie-dippie about toxins in food, but I won’t touch small Indonesian fish unless they’re in a restaurant I know and trust.)

The diving is about as rubbish as you’d expect, with equipment problems adding an extra layer of magic to the sheer joy of diving on devastated sand in murk. However, it’s interesting to watch Bert at work, bagging his specimens neatly, and fab to watch Angel, who’s won prizes for underwater photography, doing her stuff too.

On land, it’s fascinating. They’re farming seahorses – poor little seahorses! They’re cultivating gloriously coloured giant clams. And they’re snatching soft coral after soft coral for some fancy aquarium somewhere, and storing them in concrete channels full of seawater.

We stop at the home of an old friend of Bert’s. He and his daughter – who’s just learned to dive with the current batch of scientists – welcome us in. He lost his son recently, in Kalimantan, diving, Angel tells me.

Out comes the mobile, and on goes the video, with footage of her big brother’s body being dragged from the water. Questions that my English mind consider intrusive, such as how bloated he was, go back and forth, and the ritual wailing stops as we pause the video to inspect the head wound they think killed him.

“He was spearfishing a big fish,” Angel explains.

“Oh,” I say. “So the fish took him and dragged him down?”

“Dragged him into something,” she says.

I find it difficult to look at his corpse. In my culture, death is private, secretive, almost every element of it, from care of the dying to preparing the body, from flower arrangements to diagnosis, is professionalised and hidden. I’ve been to cremations in Bali and watched bodies go up in flames, which I suspect is an easier way to process death than watching a sealed coffin slide behind a curtain, but my death taboo still stands.

His father brings out photos of his handsome son posing with enormous fish – 80- or 100-kilo monsters that could easily drag a spearfisherman to unsurvivable depths. Here I can say something. “He was a good-looking man,” I say. And he was. A stunner.

Death comes frequently in Barranglompo, I learn: as on the Philippine islands not so far from here, commercial diving is done hookah-style, using a pipe attached to modified truck brakes, with close-to-zero measures to prevent death from the bends or, for that matter, good old diesel fumes.

Samalona is our next stop, an island that’s on the backpacker radar already (the Millers spent some time here in 2013). Which is to say it’s bloody impossible to walk past Fort Rotterdam, the old Dutch trading fort in downtown Makassar, without both becak drivers and boatmen touting trips out to it.

The diving is better at Samalona. We’re all fundamentally tagging along as Bert, who’s been diving off interesting islands for a living for over thirty years – and can we all say three cheers for the absolutely bloody fantastic career choice of being a marine biologist?! – whizzes along the current looking for stuff, but there’s clearly interesting weird stuff to be seen when you’re not chasing after a coral-crazed scientist.

I request a stop on shore: it’s the dinkiest island and I want to take a look. You can walk across Samalona in approximately 90 seconds, and there really isn’t much to it, but I figure it might be a splendid place to pass a night or two – there aren’t just rooms but an entire house for rent — and I note that the warung sells beer. Yay!

I ask again about the little people, whose putative island is now whizzing around my head in big tabloid capitals – INDONESIA’S ISLAND OF THE INCEST DWARVES. Part of me, however, is beginning to wonder whether both this and the possibly-legendary leopard people up north may just be a genetically challenged group of individuals, rather than an amazing off-the-path story.

The name Langkai keeps coming up. Therefore I need to get to Langkai. Here, have another island picture. You’re welcome.

There is, of course, the actual commissioned element to arrange. I want to get to Kapoposang, where Ilham has his beach bungalows, again unencumbered by any form of digital marketing, which makes sense to a degree given there’s no phone signal on the island.

Obviously, the mag doesn’t pay expenses – who does, nowadays? But, when it gets around to it – that’s 60 days after publication or many months after work has been done — it does pay enough to cover a reasonable amount of research and travel, even if most of the profit comes in on other commissions around this base story.

We work out a deal where I’ll cover staff wages on the island, tip the crew, buy food for myself and purchase the not-inconsiderable quantity of petrol required to get to all these islands; boat, dives and gear come free.

So, I’ll go with Yuda and his helper – whose name I cannot remember, and by the time you’ve got horribly drunk with someone on an island it’s far too late to ask – to Kapoposang. We’ll stop at another island someone has told me about, which is apparently the prettiest of the group. We’ll dive Kapoposang and overnight in the resort.

Then in the morning we’ll pop in to check on the incest dwarves, stop at Kodaringeng Keke to check out the sunken bus, and head back to Makassar. This seems like a decent plan for the weekend.

It’s also, I realise, the kind of proper worky travel writing – as opposed to doing fun stuff and writing about it – that would drive my spawn absolutely bloody bonkers, or, rather, leave him sellotaped to his computer. He’s staying with friends on Bali, then off to school camp, while I explore.

I spend an absolutely splendid afternoon buying maps, sampling yet more of Makassar’s fantastic food, and meeting a chap who explains in patiently simple Indonesian how the hundreds of islands off these shores join up. I have neglected to bring my dictionary, but all this enforced Indonesian language conversation is helping my language along no end.

And setting out on the boat, I realise how very much I like my life. It’s a paradoxically pretty journey. Makassar is a major port so bigass tankers and container ships come right into the harbour, close to shore and right in the heart of town, although there’s a second at Paoetere for sailing ships, big fishing boats and public boats to sundry archipelagos.

Multi-storey blocks, container cranes and tankers fade behind us. An ocean studded with white-sand islands stretches ahead of us, clumps of forest just popping out of the sea. There HAS, I feel, to be something absolutely great out here.

And Kapoposang, two hours from Makassar by speedboat, is wonderful. We dive with sharks – two big ones that come a little close for my comfort, though Yuda’s relaxed and reeftips have hardly ever taken so much as a nip out of a human – not to mention turtles, tuna, trevally and barracuda, moray eels and pretty things.

I try and fail and try and fail to get the money shot of turtles taking off from the wall with its pretty sea fans. But I can’t get both turtle and wall into a composed shot.

And then Yuda and his mate, good Indonesian Muslims that they are, break out a crate of beer for sunset and I improve my Indonesian language skills yet more.

A fisherman swings by, through the shady forest that lines the white sand beach. There are whale sharks off the island, he says: eleven of them, following a school of tiny fish and krill that comes through regularly around this time of year.

He gives Yuda, who knows the islands backwards, directions to the spot.

“Do you want to see the whale sharks?” Yuda asks.

DAMN RIGHT I want to see the whale sharks. I cannot imagine a single diver who would not want to see the whale sharks. The gentle giants of the shark world, they cruise the globe following patterns that no one fully understands.

People fly thousands of miles just for the chance to swim, snorkel or dive with whale sharks. And I don’t have to choose between whale sharks and midgets – the whale sharks are actually en route! It’s a 100% Indonesian piece of serendipity. I’m super-chuffed I fronted up for the extra 50 litres of petrol.

More beer is drunk and I improve my command of Indonesian obscenities no end.

All of us are a little under the weather at 6am the next day – in fact, having missed the sunset due to washing, I almost miss the sunrise too. Following three hours of reasonably deep diving with five bottles of Bintang is not exactly what the dive books recommend, but I eat, hydrate and caffeinate, and we leave at 7 as planned.

The whale sharks’ presence is hard to miss. Every single fishing boat from every single tiny island is out here, stretched like strings of bunting along the pancake-flat sea. There’s joy in the air. The catch is boundless! Polystyrene crate after crate of tiny fish are loaded. Men grin below the makeshift turbans that shield them from the sun as they haul in nets and pick out their silver catch. Some boats are tag-teaming – running loads back to shore to store on ice so that others can continue to harvest this marine bounty.

Yuda pulls out a carrier bag and swaps some of the dreaded Aqua glasses to fill the bag with fish.

And, OMFG, a whale shark! The first one, maybe three meters long, leopard-spotted and graceful, glides beside our boat, a fleeting vision: we squeal and snatch at pictures.

But where are the rest? We to and fro among the fishing fleet, taking directions every which way. They’re always somewhere else, but there’s a big one, seven metres long, somewhere out there.

“Snorkel?” Yuda asks.

I’ve been stripped down to my culturally-more-appropriate vest-that-should-really-be-a-T-shirt and shorts-that-should-be-a-bit-longer-this-far-out snorkelling outfit for a while. Flippers on, and we’re in the current, me following Yuda. He shouts through his snorkel: another! There are mantas, too!

“Want to dive?” Yuda asks.

“Yes,” I say.

I must admit that I’ve retained some baseline diving trauma – rescue course notwithstanding – from Zac’s death drop in the Blue Hole. I love diving. But bottomless walls and strong currents make me nervous – despite the fact I love what you see down there.

Diving a brand new site, surrounded by fishing nets and fishing boats, in the open ocean with unknown currents, is a big step for me, and involves a lot of trust. I trust Yuda, not least because he went diving in Bali and decided against diving Tepekong, an amazing but famously difficult and dangerous dive site, because “he’d rather live”. (I might consider this when I bank my thousandth dive.)

“No more than fifteen metres, and not on the wall,” I say in rubbish Indonesian. The site is a sandy bottom that looks to me like the top of a sea mount, which means there could be all sorts of nasty currents – down, up, out to sea, down and out to sea… – around the edges. On this, it appears, Yuda and I are aligned. “Have you got reefhooks?”

Yuda has two serious-ass reefhooks: not tent pegs on a rope, but bona fide claw anchors. I take one, he takes the other, which means if something hideous happens with the current, or if we find a spot we want to stop at and the current’s too fast to stop, we can anchor ourselves to the reef.

I do my usual checks – I’m mildly OCD about pre-dive checks by many people’s standards, and make myself do them even when we might miss something like a whale shark – and roll backward off the boat, Yuda gives the signal, and down we go.

Seamounts are interesting places – I’ve dived with thresher sharks at one on Malapascua, and with hammerhead sharks off another on Malapascua. They seem to function a bit like service stations on the ocean road: sometimes they’ll have entire coral gardens and cleaning stations, with fish waiting for their larger clients to come along, sometimes they’re just flat and dull.

This one’s pretty bland, apart from the sharks, and decorated with long fishing nets rapidly filling with catch, which also can’t do the coral any favours. We’ve just got down when Yuda squawks through his regulator. There’s a whale shark cruising right above me, a juvenile, just three metres long.

I bang out a couple of photos, realise I won’t get a decent shot without a wide-angle lens and a strobe and exposure control, and resolve to just watch the sharks instead. This irritates Yuda, who can’t see why on earth someone would be in the water with the world’s largest fish and a camera and NOT take pictures, so he takes my camera, which I’m cool with. The fishing net shot above is his, and I think it’s really rather good.

Then we’re in the cloud of krill. It’s like diving in fog – I even think my mask has fogged, but when I look up to the surface or close up at my computer, there’s no fog there. I follow Yuda. For ten more minutes, we fin along the seamount, down and up over the unbeauteous corals and sea grass.

No more whale sharks. Yuda calls the dive. We only have a tank each, and another dive to do. Slowly, we ascend to safety stop depth.

And it’s my turn to squawk through the regulator. “Wark!” I yell, articulately, as we hang in the water.

There’s such a majesty to sharks, all kinds of shark. They just materialise out of the blue water, almost ghostlike, like Polaroids onto paper. One minute there’s nothing. The next, there’s a shark. And then they fade away again. Even scientists don’t know where sharks go, or even how they navigate – the best bet is a form of geomagnetic sensing in which sea mounts may play a part.

This one is perfect, the textbook picture if one had the timing and equipment.

It’s right behind Yuda, heading towards us, wide mouth gaping, sieving krill. Cleaner fish hang from its belly like streamers, feasting on parasites (fun fact! Sharks get STDs too).

It’s perfect, just textbook perfect, and as we emerge, we’re buzzing. White sand island, whalesharks, what could be better? Well, midgets, obviously.

And, I realise, I think this dive into the unknown has finally cleared my diving trauma.

While we’ve been diving, Yuda’s mate has been chatting midgets with the fishermen. They’re not on Langkai, the island we thought they were on, but Lanjukang, the one along from it, a pretty little place with a gorgeous golden sandbar.

There are only 15 families on Lanjukang – Langkai is a metropolis with 300 households! – but they and the fishermen who frequent the seamounts around here support a little warung. The lady has – yay! – coffee and – major yay! – believes Yuda when he explains in considerable detail to a group of curious islanders how the crazy bule doesn’t like sugar or even sweet milk, or anything sweet, not even sedikit, ta muchly.

We sit in the makeshift bale and chat as I drink my coffee. Apparently, two Spanish and American tourists came through only a month ago, making Lanjukang quite the destination and causing quite the stir. It boasts a rather optimistic sign with a map of the island likely created long after dynamite fishing nuked the reef.

There’s a man who knows the midgets, and can bring us to them, but we’ll have to pay if we want a photo. Yuda thinks I want a photo. For some reason, he also thinks I’m writing a book, or, possibly, he’s just decided that people here will understand the idea of writing a book better than they will the idea of an inflight magazine based in a country that’s neither Indonesia nor England. I resolve to bring mag copies with me next time I do this sort of thing.

I don’t really want a picture of me with some people of short stature (hell, I’ve been to Hobbit House in Manila). I wanted to find the island of the midgets. However, this appears to be the island of the midgets, and, further, the midgets’ significantly-larger but still-not-actually-terribly-tall brother is coming to meet us, so I’ll pay for the photo and bung a few tourist rupiah into the economy.

Amazingly, the midgets’ brother speaks some English! He has an Indonesian book of conversational English, and assuming that the English conversation you want to make is an outtake from Brief Encounter – “Good afternoon! This is my friend, Smith!” – I’m sure it could work rather well.

And, lo!, behind him, his brother appears. He’s about up to my waist but in proportion, with bandy legs and a facial structure that suggests Pak Ilham may have been on the nail about inbreeding. In the days before the outboard motor, when the siblings were born, the genetic pool must have been tiny. We make introductions, and off we trot to Casa Midget – or, rather Casa Brother Midget.

I don’t want to take these people’s photo. Or, rather, if I had the time to do a proper study and place them in their home and their environment and talk to them properly which would require a translator since my Indonesian isn’t good enough for nuance, I would like to. As it is, I’m objectifying these poor people horribly.

I realise, in fact, that I hadn’t got any further in thinking about this story than: “Find out if the island of the midgets exists.”

There are two midget brothers and a sister. The men work in fishing. The sister keeps home. We are all equally unenthusiastic about the picture, but Yuda takes one, me a giant in a wetsuit with mask hair, the three of them together. And, at least when I look at the picture, it really is me who looks out of place and wrong-sized, not them.

Then we talk money. Yuda thinks 100,000 is fair. I hand over 100,000. The brother wants another 50,000, at which I initially baulk – that’s crazy money out in the badlands of the Spermonde islands – but he explains it’s 50,000 for each of the siblings, which, both Yuda and I agree, is fair. Dimly suspecting the life of people of short stature on a remote Indonesian island is far from the bliss of that gold sand beach, I don’t nego.

Job done, we head back to the boat. “They live in the forest, the midgets,” Yuda remarks darkly as we leave. I am still processing this.

The post THIS Is Why I Love Indonesia appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Yep, that’s right. The mass destruction of rainforest and peat swamp is making a nation that’s home to up to 15% of plant, mammal and bird species one of the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases. And we’re worrying about the Aqua cup?!

Admittedly, Indonesia is home to more than a quarter of a billion people, who collectively consume and then discard a hideous number of Aqua cups. The bloody things are ubiquitous: in government offices, lawyer’s office, dentists, hospitals and schools, at weddings, funerals, ceremonies and parties.

But… Why the merry hell are people who have *flown* into Bali on their holidays getting het up about the environmental impact of the Aqua cup?! (A return flight from Bali to Perth generates over a tonne of CO₂.) Surely not for the selfish reason that the litter spoils the beach?!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m every bit as opposed to the Aqua cup as the next bule. While not quite as evil as the fruit drink designed to make a pretty flower when kids threw it on the ground and stamped on it, the Aqua cup is wrong on so many levels, both symbolic and actual, that it’s almost impossible to express.

In the Aqua cup, we have a multinational (Danone) actively marketing water to a country that does not yet have clean drinking water, effective waste disposal or anything by way of recycling in the single most environmentally unfriendly fashion possible. Until recently (and quite often even now) Indonesian wrappings were biodegradable – banana leaves, woven palm, just possibly paper – so, in most of the archipelago, the cups are treated the same way. They are thrown on the street, then washed down to the ocean, or occasionally burned, which is arguably even worse.

The very concept of the Aqua cup is environmentally repellent: a profligate waste of fossil fuel and emissions to produce plastic destined to litter and pollute the oceans. The fact that a tiny proportion of these cups find a second life when scavenged – they are repurposed to hold small portions of cooking oil for sale – does not make it less disgusting.

And Danone’s claim that it is “committed to conduct business responsibly for environment and society” – on a page devoted to Aqua that mysteriously omits the Aqua cup – makes me want to spit. Still of all the problems Indonesia has, let alone of all the environmental issues Indonesia faces, the Aqua cup is not a priority.

My personal Aqua cup epiphany happened on Christmas Day. My parents were visiting, so we’d ordered a babi guling (sucking pig). Thanks to a Hindu ceremony before Christmas, the smallest available pig was a whopping 20kg, so we’d invited my neighbourhood (lingkungan) over to share it.

There I was, stocking up dutifully on all those things that Indonesians generally drink and foreigners generally don’t, like Teh Botol “iced tea” and Benylin-flavoured Fanta Stroberi. In Indonesia, the colour “fanta” refers to the neon-pink of this noxious product, which is the only drink I can think of that is actually improved by mixing with the now-banned Cap Tikus (“Rat Brand”), a Sulawesi moonshine used by locals as an alternative to petrol during the recent price hikes.

“I should get Aqua cups,” I said to my Ma. “But I hate Aqua cups! They’re the devil’s work! I’m going to leave glasses by the water dispenser and people can serve themselves.”

Anyone who has ever lived in Indonesia can guess how this one ends.

Dear Putu, the wife of my lingkungan head, brought round an armful of Aqua cups for the hopeless bule (as well as the ready-cooked rice I – gasp! – did not have to hand, since we thought some might come with the pig, and, what with not being Indonesian, I don’t keep great vats full of cooked rice in the kitchen in case someone’s hungry).

Most of Putu’s Aqua cups are still in my cupboard: I did ask her to take them with her, but, no, they were a gift. Still even the most superficial carbon footprint comparison – or simply adding up the ten or so flights Zac and I take each year – tells me that the person who needs to get their environmental house in order is not Putu, but me.

Want to help get rid of Aqua cups? Bottle for Botol is trying to get water bottles into Indonesian schools in place of the dreaded Aqua cups; or, of course, you could contact Danone.

The lead image is mine; both Lombok beach pictures are from Travelfish.

The post Is THIS the Biggest Environmental Issue Facing Indonesia? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

And, my god, even by Indonesian standards, even after tourist development, Toraja still has a WTF factor that’s quite extraordinary. By which I mean that folk hanging out their laundry in front of sacrificial buffalo skulls barely raises an eyebrow.

Herewith a few WTF moments from our overnight hike in the countryside.

We’re in a tourist restaurant in Rantepao, watching buffalo wrestling on TV, while we await our buffalo steaks. Toraja has its very own TV station, Toraja TV, which, like the rest of Toraja, is utterly obsessed with death and covering the latest and most elaborate funerals.

To add an international feel – or perhaps because the departed likes football – the buffalos appear to be done out in football colours, with the names of favourite players. I believe it’s Barcelona versus Liverpool, but the camera keeps panning away to dignitaries so I can’t get a fix on the names, and both of us are terrible on footie, anywise.

I get chatting to the owner about funeral practices, and caste. He says, “Oh yes, we used to have four castes, but since independence we only have three.”

“Oh,” I say confidently. “So you lost the priest caste?”

“Not exactly,” he says, which is about the closest I’ve heard an Indonesian get to “no”. “We used to have a slave caste, and they could be sacrificed at funerals. But with independence they got rid of slavery.”

We’re hiking through the countryside. I see a striking tree with red berries dangling from its trunk.

“What’s that for?” I ask Daniel, our guide, who’s been informing us about the traditional uses of various trees as we walk.

“Oh,” he says. “We used to bury cats in that.”

“Cats?!”

“Yes,” he says, explaining that in the old religion, Aluk To Dolo, you couldn’t pollute the earth goddess by digging holes in her to bury dead things – the old beliefs die hard here, making Toraja arguably Indonesia’s most litter-free region. “We eat dead pigs, buffalo, chickens, and dogs. But you can’t eat cats, so we’d leave them in the trees.”

We’re white water rafting, and admiring the rather stunning dinosaur-style aquatic lizards that are called sailfin dragons in English, or iguanas if you’re in Sulawesi. “Enak!” (tasty) exclaims one of our rafting guides.

“Are you Minahasa?” I ask in my still embarrassingly basic Indonesian.

“Yes!” he says. “How did you know?!”

Well, because it’s a) a bloody lizard and b) almost certainly an endangered species and you’re planning on eating it, is how I know. We eat dog for the first time that evening – when in Rome, and all.

Most Torajans are proudly Christian, despite their funeral practices, ancestor worship and extensive sacrifices, and like a lot of Indonesians manage to blend their traditions and religions rather well. The estate agent we found our house through is marrying the most modern, Jakarta-educated Torajan chick later this year, and will have to wear ceremonial axes, not to mention fronting up for sacrificial buffalo. (He’s Italian, and his parents are a little WTF-ed by the buffalo.)

So when I see golden Merry Christmas bunting fluttering above the skulls of sacrificed buffalo in the tongkonan house we’ll be staying in, this isn’t a particular WTF. For all its natural beauty, not a lot happens, apart from farming, funerals, preparing animals for funerals and eating animals from funerals, in the Torajan countryside, so I can see how one might want to make the Christmas magic last all year.

Still, back in town, I can’t help noticing that the Christmas lights are still on. There’s a giant cross towering over town and a number of miniature tongkonan houses with some absolutely splendid fairylights all around the streets.

“Isn’t a bit long after Christmas to have the lights still on?” I ask, channelling my mother, who is rigid about everything festive being out by Epiphany.

“Oh,” says Daniel, cheerily enough. “I think they usually leave them on all year.”

Daniel Pasapan is an outstanding guide – you can contact him on danielpasapan AT yahoo DOT co DOT id. Conventional wisdom is that if you want to see funerals you should visit Toraja in August-September: in fact, they happen all year round and we passed several on our hike.

The post Toraja: Just Plain Mental appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

The post Friday Photo: Balinese Kris appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

And, unusually for us, all proceeded without any drama at all. He was back at school the next day, fully functional (although no sport, bike-riding or motorbikes until his humerus is more like a limb and less like a piece of fine Swiss cheese), and remains mysteriously resistant to my attempts to pump him full of superfoods. He’s also had no pain relief since the day of surgery.

Which causes me to think about hospitals, and what makes a good hospital, and what we expect of hospitals, and why.

As a Brit, I don’t expect much from a hospital. I expect staff who know their stuff, caring, if required, and to be allowed out as soon as possible, thank you very much. I don’t expect a hospital to be a place I’d choose to spend time in, and, given that healthcare is free (funded by taxation), I don’t expect anything terribly fancy by way of aesthetics.

I was slightly discombobulated when the chap who examined me shoved a gloved hand up my vajazzle with just the line “I’m going to examine you” (I’m not sure what I was expecting – perhaps flowers? A gin and tonic, at least?)

I opted for a very knackered historic teaching hospital to have Zac, on the basis that if something went wrong, which it didn’t, I’d rather have specialists and ICU on hand, and that a teaching hospital probably had good specialists not to mention a decent ICU.

There are, in fairness, few worse times to have a baby than over the Saturday night to Sunday morning shift change, where both sets of staff are missing a chunk of their weekend and some – perish the thought – may even have been out all night, or close to it.

But – ya know! There was a machine, to monitor my spawn’s heartbeat. There were doctors on hand, should one be required (in the UK, delivery is midwife-led unless you’re high risk), and the fact that one of the windows in the room in which I delivered had broken some time ago and been patched with plastic binbags didn’t bother me, because the machines worked and the staff knew what they were doing.

It probably also helped that I didn’t have any delusions about birth being a pleasant process. I was absolutely livid, obv, to learn that my carefully honed birth plan of “hold out until it gets really painful then hop me full of every drug you’ve got” wasn’t going to happen as I’d held out too long (it happens!).

Further, I was slightly discombobulated when the chap who examined me shoved a gloved hand up my vajazzle with just the line “I’m going to examine you” (I’m not sure what I was expecting – perhaps flowers? A gin and tonic, at least? – but, anywise, I certainly wouldn’t call it birth rape, because, well, he really wasn’t going to be examining any other part of my anatomy in the circs, and in comparison to the obliterating agony that midwives euphemistically refer to as “Do you feel like pushing, yet?” any number of indignities pale into insignificance), we both went home six hours after he was born, both of us healthy, fit and well.

Which is what you want in a hospital, right?

Hygiene was so lax that I, as a foreigner with one of those horrible tummy bugs people tend to get in sub-Saharan Africa, was allowed to use the loos INSIDE THE OPERATING THEATRE. On the plus side, they didn’t seem to use the operating theatre very much.

Some hospitals, however, are definitely below par. The clinic in Mongolia, where Zac eventually arrived with his broken arm, had some nice elements – friendly, delightful staff, relaxed approach to food in rooms, enormous woodburning stoves, etcetera. Yet it was also lacking some key elements of a functional hospital, such as running water, X-rays and, umm, basic medical training.

Still, it was preferable to the hospital in Mopti, Mali – which, I learn to my surprise, is referred to as the “Venice of Mali”, presumably by people who’ve visited neither Venice nor Mali – where I was hospitalised twenty years ago.

Hygiene was so lax that I, as a foreigner with one of those horrible tummy bugs people tend to get in sub-Saharan Africa, was allowed to use the loos INSIDE THE OPERATING THEATRE. On the plus side, they didn’t seem to use the operating theatre very much, which while unfortunate for the many people who undoubtedly died of operable conditions, probably spared them septicaemia, not to mention my stomach bug.

Further – and this was in the days before mobile phones or internet, so if you wanted to know something you had to go to a place with a phone and ring someone – the French-speaking doctor asked me to read the (French and English label) on my antibiotics to find out whether he could take them for his angine.

I didn’t check out the hospital in Siwa, Egypt. Given the advice from locals was to bus it nine hours to Alexandria rather than darken its portals, I figured I’d let my wound from our car crash sort itself out with some aloe vera rather than risk bad stitching (I had bad stitching on a knee injury in Israel, which was OK, because, you know, it wasn’t my face, but didn’t encourage me to risk it again).

That worked out fine, in the end. I have a small dent in my forehead, which I suppose I could attribute to duelling in Heidelberg if trying to impress, although I guess a jeep smash in the Western Desert with a Bedouin smuggler also sounds exotic, if a little more low rent. And scars, unless disfiguring, are souvenirs, in the end.

Our private room had floor-to-ceiling windows, a white leather sofa, Kiehl’s products in the private bathroom, and a lovely console thing which enabled you to work everything from the A/C to the flatscreen TV to the curtains and the lights from the comfort of your bed.

The ne plus ultra of hospitals, in our experience, was, of course, The Union in Hong Kong, an enormous private emergency hospital, where our private room had floor-to-ceiling windows, a white leather sofa, Kiehl’s products in the private bathroom, and a lovely console thing which enabled you to work everything from the A/C to the flatscreen TV to the curtains and the lights from the comfort of your bed. (No, we weren’t paying.)

The staff were stunning – Zac’s surgeon had qualifications coming out of his ears, while the nurses were efficient as only the Cantonese can be. And the testing equipment on the lower levels where, between a terrifying allergic reaction and some unnerving test results, we spent more time than I would have liked, would have put the very best London hospital to shame.

Zac’s treatment there, where his plate was inserted, cost a cool US$20,000. I’m told it’s where all the top CEOs in Hong Kong go, when the duck and dim sum finally clog the arteries, and I’m not bloody surprised. But I come from a country where healthcare is free. And a corollary of free healthcare is that it tends – as we also found in Greece, when Zac had routine surgery there – to be functional, rather than pleasant.

The Union was a delightful treat. I’d have to be a gadzillionaire to go there again.

Given most of the myriad motorcycle accidents on Bali end up there, their orthopaedic team are more than familiar with the art of unscrewing plates from bones.

In Indonesia, and on our own dime, we chose Sanglah, which is the teaching hospital for Bali. Sanglah seems to be where anyone who’s seriously ill on the island ends up anyway, not to mention where you end up if you need a specialist, so it made sense to start there in case anything went wrong.

It’s not sheeny-shiny and pretty like the more bule-focused hospitals, and it certainly doesn’t have a marketing department, but given most of the myriad motorcycle accidents on Bali end up there, their orthopaedic team are more than familiar with the art of unscrewing plates from bones. We went for the Amerta wing, where foreigners and wealthier Balinese usually go, which felt like a European state-run hospital.

And, so far, we’re pleased. Zac has a neat-looking wound – he got sunburn on the old scar, so we asked the surgeon to remove the keloid scarring, which he did. He went into surgery on the nail (despite my forgetting his X-ray); he had minimal post-operative pain; the orderlies and surgeon were lovely; and he got his metalwork to take home.

Coming out of anaesthetic, he was hooked up to an appropriate machine, with an orderly on hand to help him to the loo when he needed it. He was sent into surgery with a wristband with his drug allergy on it (which I’d expect), but five different people asked us about the drug (it isn’t one they use in Indonesia, which was encouraging.

Further, I wouldn’t expect an Indonesian medical team to explain to Zac exactly what was going into his IV line. But they did. Which is how we know he had antibiotics during surgery. And, though it’s odd as a Briton where medical care is free to think about hospitals in monetary terms, the cost came in at almost exactly the estimate I’d been given – I’ve heard of bills running to three or four times estimate in other hospitals on the island, because of unnecessary procedures and ludicrous charges for things like changing bandages.

Indonesian medical culture still dishes out antibiotics like sweeties, like the rest of the world used to fifteen years ago.

That said, some of the protocols were different and – please note that I Am Not A Doctor – not different in a good way. There was no ECG before anaesthesia – they don’t offer them unless you’re over 40. This didn’t matter to us as Zac’s a healthy 14-year-old boy who’s had two surgeries under general anaesthetics already, and there’s no heart disease on either side of the family, but might well matter to others considering paediatric anaesthesia. (That said, I’m sure we could have requested one.)

The bandaging was old school, and, Zac thought, on the tight side, so he rejigged it (that Outdoor First Aid course is still paying dividends!), and then we went down to a more modern skin strip.

Further we were shipped off with five days’ worth of prophylactic antibiotics, in addition to the IV antibiotics during surgery – while that could be a function of a tropical climate, where it’s easier to get infections, and Zac’s taking them, I think it’s just that Indonesian medical culture still dishes out antibiotics like sweeties, like the rest of the world used to fifteen years ago. I’m mystified as to why he was prescribed mefenamic acid instead of, ya know, Ibuprofen, so we swapped in Ibuprofen that evening and Zac’s had no pain since.

Fundamentally, though, we’re happy with his care. The wound’s healing well, we have follow-up on Tuesday, the surgeon seems to have done a good job, and as our first real introduction to hospitals in Indonesia (bar the eye infection in Manado), we’re both pleased.

And, to be honest, isn’t that what hospitals are for? You go in, they do the job, they send you home – all sorted!

The post On Hospitals in Indonesia appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

The world’s most famous jellyfish lake is in Palau. Yet Indonesia is home to several jellyfish lakes: there’s one on Maratua, also in the Derawan archipelago, another in Sulawesi’s Togean islands, while this academic explored tens of marine lakes in Borneo and Papua. All jellyfish lakes are open only for snorkelling to preserve their ecosystem – no scuba, sorry!

Love Indonesian islands? Head over and visit me on pulaus.com!

The post The Friday Photo: Jellyfish Lake appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Want to do it? We were guests of Borneo Tour Gigant: their Mahakam river boat prices start from around US$500 per person, including food and transfers.

The post The Friday Photo: Our Mahakam River Boat appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Once a year in Kuta, Lombok, Indonesia, the palolo worms that live in the reef come out to spawn, and locals celebrate with the Bau Nyale festival.

Child jockeys come from Sumbawa and East Lombok to race horses on the strand.

Like Firman, 7, from Bima in Sumbawa.

Who fell, horrifically, yet cried not from the pain but because he hadn’t won.

After the race, young men do battle with rattan sticks and leather shields; retired fighters act as umpires.

It’s friendlier than it might look, though.

No Indonesian event would be complete without an MC, and this one was loving it.

Some diehards stay late that night, at the myriad food and drink stands which line the ceremonial route, looking for the worms. But they won’t come in any numbers until tomorrow.

The next day, a vast, costumed carnival snakes for miles from Kuta to Seger Beach. The prize on offer? 15 million rupiah, well over a thousand US dollars, and more than a year’s salary at Lombok’s minimum wage.

Rain puts a damper on proceedings. But only slightly.

A lot of women dress as Princess Mandalika, the princess who turned herself into the worms. So does one brave chap.

Government dignitaries arrive, along with a posse of black magicians who test their oil of immunity by slicing their stomachs with razor-sharp kris swords. (Indonesians, generally, take magic very seriously.)

And then the drama begins, telling the story of Princess Mandalika, who leaped into the sea to stop a war between rival suitors, and returns every year as worms.

Thousands upon thousands turn out to see the bands. There are two girl groups from Lombok, and Kotak, flown in from Jakarta: the lead singer is a judge on Indonesian Idol.

A wayang puppet master performs an environment drama, sponsored by an NGO, complete with roaring motorbike.

While men and women engage in a ritual exchange of utter filth – in Sasak, Lombok’s local language, not Indonesian – folk begin to head down to the beach to wait for worms. Patience is a virtue, here. The old sleep; young mothers arrive with rested children, ready for the day; the beach boys prowl impatiently up and down, zooming off on bikes to beaches where there might be better pickings.

And then there’s a roar! And a surge! The worms are in! And the beach is crammed with people. Hunting with fishing nets, bottles, buckets, old paint tins, by flashlight and mobile phone….

The worms come in four colours: blue, red, green and white. They are not beautiful.

Especially not en masse.

But that doesn’t stop the searchers looking, wading far out, barefoot over sharp coral and sea urchins, dancing with joy as each breaking wave sweeps in a new bounty.

As dawn rises, the strand is still alive with people.

The blue and white worms are turned into magic oils that bring success in life and love. The red and green? You eat them at home, or sell them to the market traders.

And then housewives buy them in turn.

Hardly anyone in Kuta has slept that night, and some haven’t slept for forty-eight hours. But there’s more. A boat race, an old tradition revived for tourist pull, in the single-outrigger fishing boats so typical of south Lombok, a vertiginous balance between wave and reef.

And then for me – though not the beach boys and the surfers – it’s time to sleep. It’s been,

Want to go? The Bau Nyale festival happens in the tenth month of Lombok’s Sasak calendar, usually in late February or early March: a gaggle of traditional experts set the date a few weeks ahead of time. The 2016 date for the Bau Nyale festival is 28-29 February, with some events on 27 February: you can book discount Kuta accommodation on Agoda or splurge on Novotel Lombok which is right in the heart of the action.

The post Photo Essay: Bau Nyale in Lombok, Indonesia appeared first on EscapeArtistes.