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.

Because I’m cheap, I took the slow boat. Because I’m an incompetent fucktard who shouldn’t be allowed within miles of a child, I switched my phone off and slept through the alarm. And because I’m jinxed, by the time I surfaced Zac was late for school, and the childcare gal had sent me 18 text messages, most of them from outside my house, then taken another job.

New in Bali, knowing few people, and being far too tight to hire an agency nanny, the only available substitute was her boyfriend, who I figured should be introduced to my spawn before, ya know, picking him up from school and looking after him for four days.

The dude can’t cook – not even mie goreng! – but Zac has a limited repertoire, sufficient to feed himself for four evenings with reasonable variety anywise, and he’s quite happy shopping for ingredients, so that’s all dandy.

The need for childcare derives from the fact that he can’t really get himself to school without a motorbike or a bitch of a walk, not to mention someone to shout him out of bed in the mornings. And, further, looking after himself in the evenings solo in a house that’s just been burgled while I’m on a different island for four days could be scary.

But I digress. Push comes to shove, instead of leaving Canggu around 8.45am to catch the slow boat 11am-ish and ride from Lembar to Kuta around teatime, arriving long before sunset, I’m leaving Canggu in a flustered-even-for-me mess around 4.15 pm and getting the 6pm boat.

The type of people who are interested in doing more than hanging out topless by a mosque on Gili T on a shroom comedown and wondering why the locals are acting shirty.

I’m a big fan of the Lombok slow boat. It takes five hours, but you don’t get seasick because it’s big, and travel lore states it sinks/catches on fire less often than private boats in these parts. (Top tip! Never Google “Indonesian ferry disaster” before boarding an Indonesian ferry).

Further, it’s a great place to meet Indonesian travellers, and Indonesians on their way home, and a genuinely nice class of bule traveller, too, the type of people who are interested in doing more than hanging out topless by a mosque in the Gilis on a shroom comedown and wondering why the locals are acting shirty. It’s also a great opportunity to practise my rubbish Indonesian, which is sadly neglected in Bali – I’ve even brought my dictionary!

I’m happy as larry, not least because the Sasak attitude to Ramadan is, like Sasak attitudes to much other stuff, relaxed. In contrast to the more rigorous Middle Eastern Islam, many believe you are excused fasting if you’re travelling, so the galley floor is awash in Pop Mie cartons, peanut shells and replete, snoozing travellers.

I’m chatting away to a new Balinese friend, who’s a bartender, a dude from Sumbawa who tells me they’ve finally fixed that godawful road, and some guys from Lombok, who think the Bau Nyale festival might have been and gone already.

This makes me rather nervous as I’m a Bona Fide Travel Writer on Assignment® and supposed to cover the fucking thing, and there won’t be much of a story if I get there after it’s happened, given I’m not Hunter S. Thompson or P.J. O’Rourke, either of whom could spin 10,000 words of deceptively effortless copy out of that sort of clusterfuck, and the client’s an inflight magazine so doesn’t want gonzo anyway, ta very much.

I’m modestly clad – loose trousers, and a long-sleeved cardigan over a non-spaghetti-strap top – and my handbag’s under the seat, so I figure I should be fine.

I mention my intention to get to Kuta tonight. “It’s too late for you to ride that road alone,” says my Balinese friend. “We’ll ride with you to Mataram.”

The wisdom of this sinks in, briefly. Yeah, it’s dark, I’m on a bike, I’m a woman on my own, yada yada.

And then it disappears. By the time Lembar harbour hoves into view, I’m fully caffeinated and fully geared for the blissfully enormous empty well-built road that whizzes for 60-ish Easy Rider kilometres across Lombok.

Also, frankly, the idea of navigating Mataram in the dark does my head in. I actually like Mataram for the same sorts of reasons I liked Tarakan, and like mid-sized Indonesian towns in general, but its charms are not immediately obvious to the casual observer.

It seems easier just to belt down to Kuta, given I know the road. I’m decently clad – South Bali short-shorts and tank top replaced with loose trousers and a long-sleeved cardigan – and my handbag’s under the bike seat, so I figure I should be fine.

The guys look solemn. They offer to escort me to the junction.

“Give me money,” one of them says. I look at him, vaguely surprised by the cheek of this. He’s about 12. Well, 18. “No,” I say, in my finest schoolmistress/mother of teen boy tones.

I lose them at one point, after they do a tight overtake between a lorry and an oncoming pickup and I then take a wrong turn. This is when I get my first indicator that Lembar-Kuta solo on a bike in the middle of the night during Ramadan is possibly not the best travel idea I’ve ever had.

I ought to note that my personal scale for really bad travel ideas is pretty high, running from hitch-hiking pre-apartheid South Africa solo to paddling my spawn down the Mekong in a skiff sans lifejacket via dropping acid on beaches patrolled by guards with guns. So this is definitely on the possibly-not-the-best scale at the moment, rather than actively bad.

My map falls out of my bike. I turn to retrieve it. A bike pulls up. Two kids get off. I pick up the map.

“Give me money,” one of them says, just as I stand up.

I look at him, vaguely surprised by the cheek of this. He’s about 12. Well, 18, or thereabouts. “No,” I say, in my finest schoolmistress/mother of teen boy tones.

They look equally surprised, and bugger off. Off I head, and find my white knights at the correct junction. (The map is less help than it might be as the road wasn’t built when the map was printed, so there’s all sorts of crap happening that’s not on the map, and anyway I’m rubbish at map reading, what with not knowing my left from my right and all.)

The guys bid me farewell. I thank them, profusely, and whirl off down that absolutely fucking wonderful open road. It is – fact fans – a two-lane dual carriageway, a rarity in Indonesia in general, and an absolutely gorgeous ride, day or night, because there’s rarely anything on it. In the warm, empty dark, I feel…

Well, I feel A.M.A.Z.E.! I’m on an adventure for the first time in what feels like absolutely bloody ages. And I have no one to answer to but myself. I can do exactly what I want, when I want! Stop where I want, when I want! Got wheels, got cash, can travel! Yay!

He’s on me, steering one-handed so he can grab at my upper arms, though not, mercifully, my breasts. I make a trial attempt to shake him, pushing the bike up to 100k or so, but it’s not happening.

It’s rising midnight when the guy falls into line about a metre to my right, and starts chatting, thereby revealing one of the disadvantages of being female on a motorbike, which is that you’re entirely exposed to passing sex pests, with neither windows to roll down or doors to lock.

I try and give him the cold shoulder, but answer the routine questions, “From London.” “Bali.” “Kuta.” “My husband? In Australia.” “Working.” “For the government.”

And then I make the mistake of looking at him. My first reaction is “Jesus, he’s a kid, he’s just being friendly, nothing to worry about here!” He has chubby cheeks and might, perhaps, be 21. He’s also shorter than me, not that that makes a great deal of difference.

I suspect he may read my expression of relief as a delighted response to his charm and good looks.

From this point on, he’s on me, steering one-handed so he can grab at my upper arms, though not, mercifully, my breasts. I make a trial attempt to shake him, pushing the bike up to 100k or so, but it’s not happening.

My bike can do a reasonable lick – I’ve never come close to maxing it – but his bike’s bigger, more powerful and manual. Further, he’s from Lombok so rides a bazillion times better than I ever will, and he knows the fine details of bumps and surfacing on the road, so there’s no way in hell I’m going to outrun him. He keeps up effortlessly, continuing the persistent grabbing and banter.

There is no one around. Absolutely bloody no one. A car steams past at about 140k on the opposite side of the road, and that’s it. But at least the road is lit.

I run a quick calculation which runs as follows: if he wanted to physically run me off the road and rape my bleeding corpse/steal my tasty-yet-cunningly-hidden electronics, he would have done so already.

What’s odd, here, is that I’m not scared. I spend most of my life in a state of brain-tingling, pulse-pounding neurosis, but when the shit does actually hit the fan, I’m strangely calm.

I run a quick calculation which runs as follows: if he wanted to physically run me off the road and rape my bleeding corpse/steal my tasty-yet-cunningly-hidden electronics, he would have done so already. Ergo, I can relax.

He is undoubtedly harassing – actively enjoying the fact that his attentions are unwanted – yet he’s also in a place where he can self-deceive that he’s just being friendly. Further, he may genuinely believe he’s in with a chance with this bule whore-slut who’s out on her own in the middle of the night with neither female companions nor husband.

By far the biggest risk to my safety, I decide, is that I try to outrun him, lose control of the bike, and find myself splattered all over Lombok’s finest tarmac, bleeding to death from internal fractures. Provided I don’t lose control of the bike, I figure, I’m actually fine.

Top tip for ladies! You can press a bike horn continuously for a good couple of minutes, and it only takes 5 seconds to recover once it falters.

This isn’t to say that the constant grabbing is pleasant. It’s pissing me off, and I’m worried about controlling the bike, so I use my lights and horn, which is all I’ve got.

For a bit I tail a stray car, flashing lights to signal help, but it’s going faster than I’m comfortable going on a bike, particularly with someone grabbing one of my steering arms at unpredictable intervals, and the driver shows no sign of noticing.

Then I use the horn to drown my suitor out, get him out of my face and just conceivably attract attention from the houses. (Top tip for ladies! You can press a bike horn continually for a good couple of minutes, and it only takes 5 seconds to recover once it falters.)

There is, still, no one around, although the road is well lit (splendid road! Recommend it, especially by daylight!). I’m concerned that if he tails me all the way down to Kuta, we hit a genuinely dark and creepy forest road, which is also windy and potholed in places, and my exit strategies narrow.

On the other hand, there’s nothing open, not a warung, not a hotel, not a roadside stand, most of the houses have all their lights off, and I don’t want to stop unless I see someone to stop BY, because he will read that as an invitation, and that could be disastrous.

So I continue, thumb on horn, and he continues grabbing at my arm, then falling back, then grabbing at my arm, then falling back and it’s all – well, annoying. Not scary, per se, just rage-inducing.

I have a tankful of gas, I’m pleased by how well I’m handling the bike, despite the mauling, and the second I see a fellow human being I will pull the merry fuck over.

“Evening, ladies!” I say politely, in my finest rubbish Indonesian. “Sorry but there is a man on a bike – big problem. Do you know where I can stay?”

After what feels like hours but isn’t, I see – hallelujah! – a group of women, on my side of the road, heading out to (I’m guessing) a pre-dawn feast in festival gear and festive mood. I screech to a halt and unleash my rubbish Indonesian.

“Evening, ladies!” I pidgin politely. “Sorry but there is a man on a bike – big problem. Do you know where I can stay? What can I do?”

There’s a hotel 5k down the road. They give me the name, and a description, and I stay chatting with them for a while until I’m confident my suitor has got bored and buggered off, and, frankly, even if he hasn’t, it’s only 5k more.

Back on the road, he appears to have given up, which is nice, though I have never been so pleased as when I wheel into the blissfully safe, guarded car park of an Indonesian business hotel.

And, further, I’m not bloody immortal, so I should probably exercise some basic common sense and take advice when it’s offered. Not rocket science, is it?

The hotel’s only available room is a junior suite, which in this neck of the woods – a part of Lombok which is clearly expecting a gadzillion international business travellers from the still-fairly-new international airport, drawn, of course, by Lombok’s thriving international business scene – means $50 for a table with a telly crammed in a corner by the bed and a dubious looking LAN point.

Whatevs. It’s clean. I’m off the road. And… They have beer. And wifi!

I chug two, head online to bitch and whine a little, then hit the sack.

The moral of this story? Some parts of travel really ARE different for girls.

And, further, I’m not immortal, so I should probably exercise some basic common sense and take advice when it’s offered. Not rocket science, is it?

Image credit: Motorbike by Beverley Goodwin on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

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The Time I Drove Our Motorbike Into The Hotel Bar

On arrival in Dili, Timor Leste, we were kind of knackered. There’s something about a challenging border crossing followed by an hour-long wait until the bulldozers have finished making the road that does that to you.

So when the lights of our hotel appeared on the road we’d been following for a couple of hundred k, I turned right on in there.

A tricky ascent of the pavement, should, perhaps, have warned me that this really wasn’t a driveway. Yet, despite the howls from behind me — “NOOOOO, Mum, NOOOOO, that’s the bar. Wait! Wait! Let me OFF!” — I persisted, doggedly.

It was, indeed, the bar. “You alright there?” asked an Australian chap, as I reversed around the pot plants, my spawn cringing in the background.

Z’s observation? “I have NEVER been so embarrassed in my LIFE.”

The Time Our Indicators Broke

Z’s embarrassment threshold was further tested when our indicators broke a couple of days later. Timor Leste’s traffic police are remarkably effective, at least within Dili itself, and rather more expensive to bribe than Bali’s more flexible cops.

Which means that, within Dili at least, motorcyclists almost always use their indicators, a phenomenon I have not seen anywhere else in South-East Asia.

Rather than drive around town looking for a place to fix our bike, I approached the problem Indonesian style, and had my passenger do the work. “Turning right! Big wave! BIG wave!”… “Indicate left! NO! LEFT!”…

Given it cost less than three dollars to get them fixed, I’d probably choose that option in future.

The Corner of Doom

You don’t get to beaches this deserted on good roads. And learning to surf in Kuta, Lombok, entailed regularly ascending and descending a particularly tight, steep, scree-strewn corner that we called the Corner of Doom.

On our way back from a restaurant one day, some guys in a pickup truck were making their third attempt at an ascent, machine-gunning rocks as they did. They waved me merrily across the road, to a particularly vertiginous approach.

My anxiety intensified first by the imminent approach of their large, accelerating vehicle and secondly by a particularly curious audience, I panicked. Locked the front brake. And, umm, fell over, EXTREMELY slowly.

The next day I decided that our surf instructors could drive us to the beach instead. Ascending the Corner of Doom on pillion with my eyes tight shut, I heard a clank from behind us.

And, lo! My son’s instructor had tipped HIS bike over, EXTREMELY slowly, precipitating Z onto the scree for the second time in two days.

Corner of Doom 2. Poor Z? Nil.

The Lake of Farts

South-East Asia has some epically bad roads. But the prize for the worst road yet goes to…

The road from Banyuwangi to the Ijen Plateau in Java, where we had to be rescued by a friendly vulture after our bike refused to move.

The “adventure” continued when we were beaten back by beaten back by toxic gas clouds and learnt more than anyone needs to know about the role of engine oil in motorbikes…

The Time I Locked My Keys In The Motorbike

I might have come a long way since my learner driver fiasco in Cat Ba island, Vietnam, but sometimes I surprise even myself.

Locking your keys in a motorbike?

Is that even possible?

Well, yes. As I learnt in Timor Leste.

But All The Same…

Yet, here we are, after all this, about to motorbike around Central Laos, with our BFF, H…

Are we gluttons for punishment? Have we learnt ABSOLUTELY nothing?

Or is there just something about the total freedom of movement you get with a bike, and the dazzling beauty that surrounds you, that makes this option so appealing? Answers on a postcard, please.

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“I don’t know,” I say. “In Phnom Penh, none of the weed dealers seemed particularly bothered I had Z with me.”

In Phnom Penh, in fact, they were verging on persistent. One guy tried three times to sell me weed in the space of an evening. And, walking the streets at night, even with Z in tow, I’d get a couple of offers every two hundred yards.

I am, to be honest, kind of dubious about the Gilis. Three low-lying, tear drop shaped islands off the north-west coast of Lombok, not that far from Bali, they repeatedly make lists of world’s best destinations – they were one of Lonely Planet’s top picks last year.

I’ve heard they are touristy. Know they are, for the area, expensive. And they are also a significant detour away from our ultimate destination, Papua.

But Z is not to be moved.

“Look,” I say. “I’m not sure we really need to go to the Gilis. Particularly with Sumbawa coming up, it feels like all we’re going to be doing for the next fortnight is slobbing around on beaches.”

“And what, exactly,” quoth he. “Is wrong with that?”

“Err,” I begin . . .

Kuta, Bali, is rapidly becoming a textbook example of over-development. Package tourists from Australia, in particular, though you’ll find them from all over the world, are funneled through its traffic-clogged streets and eroding beaches at a rate of knots. Often drunk, on motorbikes, and wearing Viking helmets.

If you exclude the tat for sale in the tourist arcades and the offerings still lovingly placed in the shops and stores, there is nary a sign of Bali’s unique culture. You could be in any tropical resort area, in Kuta, Bali, which has all the authenticity of Cancun, Mexico.

It does have some things going for it, of course. The Waterbom water park. And its proximity to the slick beachside luxury and genuinely beautiful spaces of Seminyak beachfront.

Kuta, Lombok? It’s only one island along, but a world away. Cows and goats still wander the beaches, and at weekends the local Sasaks celebrate weddings and festivals in their unique take on Islam, Waktu Telu.

Drive the atrocious road that winds east over a series of headlands, through traditional villages and farmland where buffalo wallow, and flawless bay after flawless bay opens up before you, vast expanses of beaches that you can sometimes have entirely to yourself, where local kids teach themselves to surf on boards and driftwood.

Did we learn to surf? Not entirely. It’s not a skill you master in a day, or even a couple of days.

But we got our skills up to a level where we felt we could brave what we’d heard was a great beginner’s wave that broke right on a beach in West Sumbawa, the next big island across from Lombok.

And, at least for us, the Gilis did too. Though I’m not sure whether it’s the islands that are spoilt, or us.

In fairness, if you had a big pile of books and a week or two’s holiday in which to recharge depleted batteries, you could very happily spend it here, in one of any number of Sasak-themed bungalows with tall thatched rooves and floaty white nets draped around day and night beds.

And, obviously, if you’re after shrooms, Gili T is as good a place as any to get high on the beach.

But all three of the islands –- Gili Trawangan, Gili Air and Gili Meno –- are tiny. You can walk all around Gili Air, where we stayed, in an hour or less, and every single stretch of beach is backed by a nearly identical set of bamboo stilt pagodas or lounge chairs.

Although you still can see cows grazing in the coconut groves and men mending their boats around the far side of the island, there’s very little sign of the indigenous culture left, because tourism is the islands’ main industry.

Cutely, there is no motorized transport on the islands. Less cutely, we are routinely assailed by horse carts offering wildly over-priced rides along the dirt paths around the island. And touts for both restaurants and hotels are almost as active as the vendors of bracelets and shoddily made sarongs.

Well, the Gilis are touted as a dive destination. And there is a great deal of marine life here, from turtles through to seahorses and enormous puffer fish, though manta rays pass through only a couple of times a year.

But the coral is, honestly, not in the best condition. There’s damage from dynamite fishing. And, apparently, bleaching, too. Which makes snorkelling in the currents between the to-ing and fro-ing boats less rewarding than it might be. At least not compared to Pulau Derawan or north Maluku.

And the food, too. I’d kind of figured that with a tourist density higher than Bali’s and accommodation prices higher than Bali’s, there would be some serious restaurants.

Yes, you can enjoy grilled fish of a zillion species in any one of a number of beachfront places. And, yes, you can drink cocktails based on imported spirits, and enjoy foods branded as organic.

But international class restaurants these are not. And what the land of the lotus eaters really needs is lotuses to eat…

And, as we head out on the little boat from Gili Air to the mainland, where our bike awaits us, we are, frankly, quite ready to leave Lombok behind for fresh adventures.

The post Two Kutas and Three Gilis appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

He has something to tell me. Or maybe ask me.

“Excuse me, ibu,” he says. “I have just had a baby!”

“Oh! Congratulations,” I say. “How old?”

“Just twenty days,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. “Still little. Much happiness.”

“Yes,” he says.

And pauses.

Sasaks are a bit more tentative about personal questions than the Balinese, though, as all over Indonesia, soon after they get to the “how old are you?” stage they get to the “where is your husband?” stage. But he’s clearly building up to something.

Z has completed 500 words of story, 300 words of blog post and three Mathletics exercises in record time, after receiving a parental rocket about self-discipline and a South Park ban. He is now gaming vigorously while text-chatting on Skype with his father.

“Your son is clever!” he says. “How I can make my son clever like your son?”

“Clever?” I say. “Thank you.”

“Ya!” he says. “He can use a laptop at ten years old. He’s good at maths. What do I need to feed my son to make him clever like yours?”

A’s question throws me, more than a little. This confrontation between the developed West and Lombok, Indonesia, which, for all its burgeoning sophistication is still at heart a simple, rural region of a developing country.

What do I say?

First ensure that your child is born in a wealthy country and has access to technology from birth? That he has access to books, free schooling with small class sizes, university-educated parents, grandparents, carers?

None of this is achievable for A. He’s a young dad. They all are, here.

I’d say he’s 21, probably. 24, maybe, at a push. His son’s future survival, with infant mortality rates here, is still not yet guaranteed.

But I need to answer A’s question in the spirit it is intended.

“First,” I say. “You need to feed him breast, not bottle, for as long as you can.”

“You,” he says. “How long you breastfeed him?”

This opens up another can of worms. We’re not good at breastfeeding in the West, largely because so many women work outside the home and, unlike here, babies and children aren’t welcome in the workplace.

Plus, when you’re paying for childcare by the hour, as I was, the notion of spending a swathe of one’s working day expressing milk is, well, expensive.

I did it. But it didn’t take Z long to work out that the delivery system on a bottle was faster.

“Me?” I say. “Well, only five months. You see, I had to work, so other people looked after him, so he was on the bottle soon. The way you do it here is good.”

At our guesthouse, the lovely little 2-year-old we play with is still firmly breast fed.

“Till one, two years?” he says.

“Exactly,” I say.

The role of dietitian comes easier to me in Lombok since Sasaks are slenderer than many Indonesians, so Z does not look like a scrawny child in need of feeding up here, just tall and on the slim side.

“Then, not too much rice,” I say.

“Rice is bad?” he asks, with a note of horror. Rice is virtually a sacred substance here.

The default Indonesian diet –- unfortunately being replaced by instant noodles packed with salt and MSG –- is a paper packet of rice with a smidgen of meat or fish and spices smeared over the top, or perhaps an egg.

“No,” I say. “Rice isn’t bad. But when you eat too much rice you don’t eat the things that are good for you, that make you clever. You need to feed him lots of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit…”

Vegetables are served here. But they’re sort of a garnish, known by the generic term sayur, rather than a component of the diet. Our fondness for salad has brought us a curious audience in more out of the way places, as we mainline vast quantities of sayur, UNCOOKED!

“So, lots of fish,” he says.

This is achievable, here by the sea. You can buy a big, yummy, pre-cooked reef fish from stands by the roadside for 5000 rupiah, for a fraction of that sum raw in the market.

The daily wage for a builder/cook/restaurant worker is 35,000 rupiah, skilled workers, such as drivers, pull in 50,000 rupiah: a litre of dilute petrol from the streetside stands comes in at 5,000 rupiah. There’s 9,000 rupiah to the dollar.

“Yes,” I say. I want to explain about the fish oils that are supposed to be good for the brain, but my Indonesian’s struggling. “Yes,” I say again. “Lots of fish and vegetables will make him clever.”

He is genuinely happy. Clearly, this has been worrying him.

I recall a similar conversation in Kenya, when Z was five, with a smart, switched on woman who would have gone a long, long way outside the third world.

“You know why African babies don’t cry?” she asked.

“Because they’re with their mothers the whole time?” I say.

“No,” she says. “They have no stimulation. Look at your child. From when he is born, he has toys, he has stimulation. Now he’s reading big books. This is not something we can provide for our children.”

I don’t want to see the array of plastic and wooden crap with which we deluge our infants from long before they can even reach for them, let alone hold them, as essential to development. But she had a point.

And it brings to mind another guy I chatted to in Kenya.

“People think Africans are laid back,” he says. “But we’re not laid back. The reason we lie around like this all day is that our society has massive unemployment. There are no jobs here.”

I tell him about the call centres, then making their way out of Europe to Asia. “I hope they come to Africa,” he says.

They haven’t, yet.

“Me,” A says. “I’m not good at maths.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe your teacher wasn’t good at teaching?”

This is an alien concept to him, or maybe my Indonesian’s not holding up. “You need a good teacher to be good at maths,” I say. “Make sure your son has a good teacher…” I begin.

As if that is going to be achievable for him, in this tiny village. “A private teacher?” he says. “This is what I need for my son, a private teacher?”

“No,” I say. “Just a good school, with a good teacher.”

It doesn’t make sense to him. The teacher’s authority is not something that is questioned.

A’s innocent question has brought me into full and uncomfortable confrontation with my own privilege. The conversation rattles me.

Because I am not so entirely thoughtless that I cannot see the fundamental global inequities which means we can travel and live well in A’s country for less than it would take me to pay rent or mortgage in my home city.

My son and I can travel, learn, live, eat well, surf, dive, because Lombok is poor. My son’s opportunities exist because A’s son’s opportunities are limited.

I like the freedom of being able to work as I travel, to earn from anywhere in the world, the joy of location independence. And it’s something people who want to write have done for many decades, now — base themselves somewhere where it is cheap to live.

But for a moment the realization that sitting in his bar with our laptops, as I earn in a couple of hours more than A earns in a month of long, long hours, and Z accesses educational opportunities that will remain, most likely, far out of A’s son’s reach, hits me hard with its plain unfairness.

It’s a tough question he’s asked me. Tougher, I think, than either of us realizes.

The post A Tough Question appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

And the beach, Selong Belanak, 20km or so west of Kuta, is beautiful.

A vast sweep of bay with white and gold sands, curling surf breaks out at sea, green headlands, pyramid islands and fishing boats rocking on the waves.

Learning to surf?

Wayull…

Let’s just say it’s not a one-day process.

We first tried surfing in Seminyak, Bali, a week ago, on a 9 foot longboard made of soft, rounded, foam rubber. The ultimate beginner’s board, these things are slow, stable, buoyant, as easy to mount as they are hard to fall off.

Here in less touristed Kuta, Lombok, Sandi and Aris have dug up longboards for us to learn on. But they’re six foot, fibreglass, angled.

At first, I struggle even to get on the thing and paddle it without capsizing. Let alone sit astride it backwards, facing out to the ocean, as Sandi wants me to.

We started late, 9.30am, and Lombok’s famous surf is not in a giving mood.

It seems to drop rather than curl or barrel.

And it’s unpredictable. Enough to make one long for the more reliable breaks of, say, Mexico’s Pacific coast.

For minutes at a time, the waves are tiny, bare ripples rising a couple of feet and breaking far closer into shore than we are.

Then all of a sudden there’s a cluster of behemoths, substantial things which, in chest high water, rise so high you have to jump straight through them and even at a jump you are still in the middle of them.

I figure they’re probably all of four feet high. Which is, to be honest, more than big enough for me.

This is beginner’s surf for Kuta. But there’s heavy duty current to contend with, too.

Whenever I look over at Z, he seems to be cruising effortlessly into shore in the cobra position, serenely ignoring Aris’ yells of “Stand up, now! Now! Now!”

One of my son’s better qualities, from a self-preservation context, and more irritating, when it comes to trying to teach him anything, is his unwillingness to attempt anything unless he thinks he will do it well.

(By that stage, also, he has generally worked out his own method of doing it, which is — but of course! — infinitely better than any method anyone else might suggest.)

It dates back, I think, to his first steps, aged ten months. He managed four for the childminder.

Back home, I knelt on the floor, held out my arms and encouraged him to “Walk to Mummy!”

On step three, he toppled.

And I, err, well, I, umm, missed him.

Anywise. Junior is in no hurry to stand up on a surfboard. He wants to stand up on the board in the sea before he attempts to stand on a wave.

“It’s easier to stand up on a wave,” I say, as Aris has been attempting to communicate for some time.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I need to be able to stand up before I try to do it on a wave.”

Me?

I figure I’m going to be wiping out a lot anyway, so why not wipe out at least trying to stand up?

If you’re even less initiated into surfing than us, you may or may not know how it works.

You attach yourself to your board by a lead from your ankle. You paddle out into the sea, through or over the breaking waves depending on their stage, find a good spot, turn your board around and wait.

Then you pick a wave of the right size at the right time and paddle madly ahead of it, continuing to paddle once you’re in it until you feel it catch you.

Then, once you have the momentum and (weirdly) stability that the surge provides, you grip the edges of the board with both hands, extend your body, push up into a kind of crouch, then ascend to standing.

Sound like hard work?

It is.

As pathologically under-used back, stomach and thigh muscles whinge in creaky protest only an hour or so into our first surfing lesson, I realise quite how unfit our sojourn in Bali has left me.

I’ve gone so native with the motorbike that I’ll hop on it to make the 100 yard trip to the shop.

I also realise that Z, who about a year ago passed the stage where he feels less fear than me on theme park rides and waterslides, is now at the stage where he acquires new physical skills faster.

I’m still bigger than him –- should be so for a while.

And faster than him –- for a couple of years, I guess.

But we are definitely past the point of no return.

There’s an undeniable pleasure to waiting for the wave.

Lolling on your board, feeling the rhythms of the ocean, letting one wave or another tilt you and release you, waiting for the right one to arrive.

It’s pretty zen.

I’ve always liked sitting by the sea, trying to predict when the next big wave will come. And this is doing that but on the ocean, with the prospect of some adrenaline when the right one comes along.

But even with little waves like these, watching a swell appear on the horizon, and build behind you towards a peak, is scary.

When you miss one, it’s beyond frustrating.

You paddle like hell, upper arms aching, feel the big peak build under you, tug and then –- oh anticlimax of anticlimaxes! –- wash past, leaving you stranded in absolutely the wrong position for the next one.

But when the wave catches you, the surge pushes you forward and upwards, you stabilize and you’re riding the water into shore with the surf roaring in your ears –- it’s a rush.

I’m a sucker for bodyboarding. Learning to surf is harder, there’s no two ways about it.

But, just as when I was learning to ski I could feel the potential of future grace, even as I snowploughed bandy-kneed down the nursery slope, there’s the beginning of a sense of just how good surfing could be when you get it even vaguely right.

It gets later. The swell is bigger, choppier, the water murky as the receding tide sucks detritus out to sea.

I go for a big fella, which feels five or six feet tall.

My board gives that tell-tale lurch, engages with the wave, but it’s not catching me and pushing me forward, it’s tipping me from the horizontal to the vertical amid a roar of breaking surf.

As my head heads towards the invisible sand and my board and I part company for the twentieth time I clasp my arms around my head for protection.

It is, as the cliché has it, like being in a washing machine. I am submerged, tumbled over and over, water up my nose and in my mouth, awestruck by the power of the ocean and wondering when the board will hit me.

It doesn’t.

I surface in the shallows, coughing ocean.

“Are you alright?” asks Sandi, my teacher, a well-honed Sasak with a dramatic ginger bleach, who has muscles in places where I have back fat, and an impressive range of scars courtesy of coral reef, broken surfboards and a motorbike driving style so, erm, audacious that we drive ourselves to the beach next day.

Sandi’s been surfing since he was five, much to his mother’s displeasure. Aged 22, he’s been married, divorced and lost a child already.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Don’t take the big ones,” he says. “It’s dangerous. You go through them on the board, ya?”

“I’m going for a cigarette,” I say, heading for the beach shack where the ibu is watching my possessions.

Three hours in, and I still haven’t managed to even stand up.

I’m beginning to doubt whether I have the strength to do it on a board like this.

Even on this entry-level beach, I am aching.

We break for lunch.

The surf lesson goes better after a bowl of instant noodles. I catch a few waves and ride them in the cobra without wiping out.

I begin to push up.

I get as far as my knees and ride the board all the way in, kneeling, arms out in a wild hallelujah.

It’s a small triumph. But a big step for me.

Sure, I fall off a lot, but when you fall off once you’ve caught the wave the force is dissipated.

And then comes a big fella. “Go, go, go,” yells Sandi.

I go for it. I feel the lurch. And then I feel the board tip down to the vertical.

The wave churns and spins me, underwater. My head and face scrape along the bottom, my neck at an uncomfortable angle to the rest of me.

I didn’t get my arms up to protect my head, and there’s no chance of persuading any part of my body to do anything other than exactly what the ocean wants it to do, which is flail in spastic, tangled ellipses along the bottom.

My board pops along and says a brief, yet plangent, hello to my ribs.

My mouth and nostrils are full of sand and salt water, and I don’t have a cat’s chance in hell of surfacing until the wave has finished with me.

It lets me go in the shallows.

I surface, fully exfoliated and with a full head of sand, eye the oncoming surf beady as King Cnut, retrieve my board and head for shore.

Tomorrow is another day. But for today, I have had enough.

Z’s muscles don’t ache. He’s ten.

Mine do.

We’re back unschooling, so I suggest that for a learning project, he might want to use the internet to identify the names of the various muscle groups of mine that ache.

“The ones at the top of your shoulders, by your collarbone, the ones in your lower back and the top set of abdominals,” I say. “Oh, and that long one that goes down the side of your thighs.”

“Does your butt ache?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “Just the thighs.”

“I know that one!” he says.

“Really?” I say, impressed. “What is it?

“It’s called Thunderus Maximus,” he says, poker-faced.

Laugh?

I nearly cried.

*: We’ve been learning with Blue Sea surf shop, near the market in Kuta, Lombok. 300,000 rupiah ($33) buys a four hour lesson with two instructors for two people, including bike transport to Selong Belanak beach. You might reach them on +62 (0)819 0796 4618 or you might be better just stopping by.

The post We Learn to Surf… appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on an Indonesian or Filipino ferry, but if you have, you’ll know that if there’s one thing more challenging than getting on the things, it’s getting off the bl**dy things.

You see, they disgorge everyone, people, vehicles, all together, in one unruly scrum through one single hatch.

Families hand children and bags over the stairwell and surge through the opened hatch as lorries, buses and a hideous horde of motorbikes school like fish in a dark and toxic cloud of fumes.

It’s terrifying as a pedestrian. As a newbie motorcyclist making one’s ferry debut, it is, frankly, plain embarrassing.

Especially when you are positioned to be first off, they’ve stacked all the bikes together and no one can untangle their bikes until you’ve worked out how to untangle yours, and you then have to weave through a fog of vulnerable road users, feeling like the ultimate touron…

And then your child, who –- because you are not entirely stupid — you had trialed with 5 hours on a motorbike in a day before purchasing said vehicle, starts complaining of butt ache.

The ferry had its highs and its lows.

Highs? The sunbeds on the top deck, looking over to Nusa Penida, that first view of the Lombok coast…

That wondrous sense of being on the move, the lull of freedom in a rocking boat.

Low?

Now, the safety record of boats in Indonesia is, well, not the finest, even by Asian standards.

Boats go down all the time, sometimes with horrific loss of life, and there are never, ever, ever anything like enough lifejackets to go round.

Ergo, whenever junior and I embark on a ferry, we always sit at deck level or higher, and I snaffle two lifejackets so we can use them as pillows and, well, y’know, be prepared.

On this ferry I am challenged for the first time for this, admittedly bizarre, activity. “They’re for emergencies,” says the guy.

“I know,” I say, playing the mummy card. “But my child is up there and there aren’t any lifejackets up there.”

I’ve had to descend two levels to find the cabinet which contained all of, ooh, 15 jackets. This, obviously, is not an activity one wishes to attempt on a sinking ship full of panicking non-swimmers, especially with a child in tow, not to mention the fact that they wouldn’t be there when we got there.

After a lot of gesticulating, and a minor, polite tussle, we get to keep the lifejackets.

But it is, well, wearing.

Not what one wants after two hours on a bike following waking early with a gin hangover after a farewell ‘do’ so spectacularly cocked up it resulted in Facebook messages headed “Madness” and emails asking “are you alright?”*

The plan was to spend one night in the capital of the island of Lombok, Mataram, extend our visas the next morning, then pootle down to Kuta, the surfing and beach paradise in south Lombok, with a couple of leisurely stops en route.

I had figured that, after 3 hours on a bike, plus 5 hours on a ferry, plus unspecified time hanging around the port and a further allowance for getting lost, with a riveting morning of visa hell to add to the previous day’s Indonesian driving license hell, my travelling companion might appreciate an upgrade from our usual $10 accommodation budget.

Then I could also leave him with the digital babysitter while I tackled the vile miasma of paperwork and pointlessness that is an immigration office in Indonesia without a whinging, bitching, pint-size critic on my case.

The prospect of a hotel with wifi, international TV and a pool was quite sufficient to bribe Z out of his slough of despond and, for that matter, butt ache, particularly once it was clear that he wouldn’t have to get up when I did.

He planned his morning out in loving detail. It would begin with a 9am wakeup call so he could game, in bed, for half an hour, before his painstakingly itemised breakfast was delivered to the boudoir at 9.30 on the dot.

He would then consume it in bed.

(Presumably while gaming. I didn’t ask.

So at least one of us had a day that went to plan.

I will say only that, if you’re in Mataram, the Hotel Raya Lombok, at c. $50 including breakfast for two, is not only the best hotel in town but a fine place in which to sit with a dictionary and a furrowed brow figuring out 8 different pieces of Indonesian-language paperwork.

After my fourth and penultimate trip round Mataram’s one-way system, in a bright blue poncho, on a motorbike, in the p*ssing rain, to immigration, it became clear that we would need to spend another night there.

It was only the keeper of the purse-strings (me) that had the slightest qualm. Quite a large qualm, in fact.

But the next day things turned round, as they do, with the serendipity you sometimes get in overland travel.

The boat journey between Hindu, long-touristed, Indonesian Bali to predominantly Muslim, less-touristed, Indonesian Lombok is much more of a cultural shift than crossing many European borders.

There are beautiful, jewel-coloured mosques, the call to prayer ululating. A myriad, party-coloured pony-carts, with stocky little ponies in gorgeous head-dresses.

Scarved women in wonderful, spangled fabrics. The languages you hear are the five dialects of Sasak, as opposed to the three dialects of Balinese.

There are karst hills surreal and conical, studding the landscapes, great expanses of vegetable gardens, buffalo basking in mud, baby goats knock-kneed at the side of the road.

I’d seen all this, of course, as we headed from the ferry port at Lembar to the capital, and marveled at it, but the impending nightmare of navigating a one-way system in a strange town with a baleful child and a one-page street map from the guidebook, followed by a day at immigration, had, well, clouded my vision.

This day the sun was warm, not hot. The skies were blue. A lovely day to ride. We stopped at the little market of a small town called Ubung to admire the pony carts waiting to take folk from the market.

We overshot the village where the women weave multiple threads pre-dyed in stripes on incredibly complex looms to create the style of cloth known as ikat.

Whatever, I thought. We’ll get another chance.

On the outskirts of the green and sprawling town of Praya, we stopped at a roadside place for coffee and fizzy pop, and were welcomed as friends. And then we came to Penujak.

Past the market, and the ceremonial space folk were decorating for a wedding, with Sasak music jangling out of giant speakers, we saw a sign, in English, saying “Traditional Sasak Pottery”.

We pull over. This is one of the joys of a motorbike, over a car, that you can stop it anywhere.

“We’d like to see the pottery being made,” I say, in Indonesian, to the ibu who runs the store.

And she takes us through the earth alleys and shacks that make up the village, where women make pottery in their homes, fighting cocks crowing, fat pigeons weighted down with stones around their necks being fed up for the pots, washing drying on the woven walls…

And we see the women working their clay. “The women make them. The men sell them,” she explains. “It has always been this way.”

Z, as a pyromaniac, wants to watch some being kilned. I ask her.

She takes us back to the shop and hands us over to her friend, who hoiks her four-year-old son onto her hip, and shows us a kiln filled with rice husks and ready to burn, giant coil pots, sitting on their wheels.

We stop at her friend’s house. “You want to learn to make pottery?” she asks Z.

And so we sit, on the craftswoman’s stoop as she presses and slices her rounds of clay, and Z, our new friend and her little boy make turtles and whistles shaped like dolphins out of clay.

It’s a lovely moment. Pure serendipity. No cash, or purchase, required (though I give her son some pocket money).

She’s happy that we’re interested, that is, honestly, all.

We wind our way back to the shop. The ibu isn’t bothered whether we buy — she’s sat with friends assembling parcels of rice and veggies for the wedding — but I thank her and press a small note into her hand.

I hope it was the right thing to do. (In a small town in Kintamani, Bali, where we rousted a coffee farmer away from his lunch by asking at the store whether anyone had a coffee farm we could see, he was mystified by the gift of money.)

“Would you like to come to the wedding?” they ask.

I would, of course. Z is keen to get to Kuta, and the beach. So we regretfully decline.

“Would you like to eat something?”

Again, I would. I know Z wouldn’t.

Again, I respectfully decline.

And then out they come, from the house next door, all the wedding party, in sequins, spangles, and bright makeup, including the groom.

“I wish you happiness,” I say, in rubbish Indonesian. We watch them progress up the street, then hop on the bike and amble on our way.

It’s an amazingly good road out of Penunjak. In the glory days of the Dubai economy, UAE developers bought a lot of land down south, and this tarmacked four-lane highway is clean and fast for a few kilometres at least.

We stop for lunch at a café in a village named Sade, with thatch-rooved Sasak houses and marketplace that feel created for the visitor, watch dogs fighting in the street.

And then we cruise the last five kilometers into Kuta.

It’s a magical beachside landscape of deep, sweeping bays with white sand beaches, vertiginous hills framing secret surf breaks, some barefoot bars, a couple of surf shops, yet bullocks, goats and chickens foraging by the beach.

We scope a few places. Z picks out one he likes.

And I realise, as I drive the bike up muddy footpaths, across cattle pastures, on the fringes of the beach, that I’ve gone local with the motorbike.

We can go anytime, anyplace, anywhere…

Our first mission? To learn to surf.

It may take longer than expected.

But hell, we’ve got time. And we’ve got wheels, too.

*: The madness is a long story. Honestly, not as bad as it sounds.

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I’ll be posting a lot, lot more about Bali (including some great dive sites) once we return there in January. After almost three months in Indonesia, we’d barely scratched the surface, so rather than heading for Latin America we’re going back to the archipelago, thence to China, Nepal and India by way of Laos… But more on that later.

Still, if you like a little adrenaline, without the ocean channel risk to life and limb, read on for probably the best waterpark in South-East Asia, rafting down 12km of almost constant white water, and a chance to leap through the trees, zipwire, balance and Tarzan swing up to 30m above the ground. Oh, yeah, and a gorgeous double waterfall with enticing rope swing too.

Few things in life offer as much concentrated fun as a waterpark, and for value and scale Vietnam’s Dam Sen waterpark (in Saigon) and Ho Tay (in Hanoi) are, frankly, hard to beat. But Waterbom, Bali, positioned amid the package tour hell of Kuta, has probably the best waterslides anywhere in South-East Asia.

Highlights? The Boomerang, down which you soar in a double-tube, to rebound terrifyingly close to the top of the slide; the Superbowl, which sends you spinning solo into a circular vortex that dumps you in the pool below; the Smashdown, which drops you from 21m in a couple of seconds; and the aptly-named Climax, a slide so steep you start in a cage, from which the bottom is ripped away, drop 15m in under a second at an angle of 70 degrees or so, then whizz round a complete full loop and out the other side before you’ve even had time to scream…

There’s a gentle lazy river, a host of leisurely, windy slides, and a hilarious kiddies pool with miniature slides, water cannon, and a giant bucket of water which dumps unpredictably… And, if you can face the trip to Kuta, it’s a highly entertaining way to spend the day.

The landscape of Bali, with its dramatic central mountains and river gorges, makes it a fun place to dabble in whitewater rafting. Tours run to the Sungai Ayung, with rapids which never exceed Grade II, making it perfect for the nervous and young families, but probably rather dull for the rest of us, and the Telaga Waja, whose Grade III rapids offer quite a bit more drama as they race through gorges and rice terraces, populated by the odd head of cattle, the occasional monkey and those crazy-ass water lizards they call iguanas in these parts.

The Telaga Waja rafting course spans 12km of almost constant whitewater — with one dam you have to portage on foot. You whirl down this little river through a beautiful rural landscape, under bamboo bridges (lean back flat!), bouncing off canyon walls and soaring down chutes between dark rocks, pausing occasionally to hang vertiginously from the top of a rock.

Its undisputed highlight? Shooting the 5m-high dam at the end of the course. You will be glad you had your helmet…

In beautiful Bedugul, amid botanic gardens set on a crater lake in a climate so damp and cool they grow not only strawberries but apples, Bali Treetop Adventure Park takes the zipwiring concept several steps further. You’re not just whizzing (harnessed) at high speed down wires strung between trees up to 30m above the ground, but scrambling along an aerial assault course to reach them.

There’s climbing walls, high wire balances, scrambles through barrels, complicated balancing acts over moving bars at great heights — secured at all times by a pair of safety carabiniers you attach yourself. There’s six different courses (and a training course) with one course suitable for age 4-up, four for age 8-up, and the remaining two for persons over 12 with a raised-arm reach of 180cm or more and a degree of physical fitness. (The 7m climbing wall is relatively tough.)

Oh, yeah, there’s also the occasional leech. But don’t let that put you off… And stop at the nearby waterfall of Gitgit if you’re headed north or east, where you can swing from a Tarzan swing over a beautiful waterfall set amid idyllic countryside with coffee, cacao and vanilla nestling among hibiscus and bananas.

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