On Roading and other extreme sports

What’s On-Roading, you might ask? Well, similar to its sister sport Off-Roading, On Roading is driving, except ON a road. Driving to a somewhat remote village Laman Satong yesterday for “Hari Hijau” (Green Day, a celebration of HIH’s reforestation efforts) provided a fine example of such sport. The level of dereliction of the roads here beats even the worst post-holes the US has to offer by a long shot. Additionally, it seems the problems can appear suddenly, and where there was once a fine road, suddenly there is the ultimate drivers test. In fact, because of how bad some of the roads are here, it appears that the shoulder is often favored and the roads grow wider and wider as they expand off road. In these cases, it is driving on the road that is infinitely more difficult than off. Thus, we often found ourselves driving a 4WD ambulance with one set of tires off the road while the other set bumped through behemoth potholes and the less fortunate riding in the back bumping their heads on the ceiling with great frequency.

In short, getting anywhere seems to always be a bit of an adventure around here. I found this out right from the start. After traveling from Bali to Jakarta to Pontianak, suffering a few delays and spending the night, I took a “taxi” (on another of the bumpiest roads I have ever seen) to Rasau to catch a boat to Melano, a town about a half hour away from Sukadana, my final destination. While the boat ride was a bit cramped but exciting, the real adventure was still to come. After this 4 hour boat ride, I found myself riding an “ojak” (motorcycle taxi) to the clinic with my suitcase tucked in the front between the drivers knees and my backpack on my back, purse over the shoulder; in short quite the spectacle. So, why did my organization send me a man on a motorbike to pick me up with all of my luggage, you might wonder (as I did wonder during the course of this rather uncomfortable half hour ride)? Answer: they didn’t. In a dangerous combination of knowing enough Bahasa Indonesia to ask very simple questions, but not knowing enough to say a lot, and also knowing how much of Indonesian transportation is based on the motorbike and being comfortable with that, I was deluded into thinking that this random man who asked me, “Sukadana? ASRI klinik?” when I got off the boat had been sent to pick me up. I said yes, as that was where I was going, to which he took my stuff and strode away beckoning me to follow him. When we got to his motor, instead of a car or truck, I was a bit suspicious and I asked if he was from the clinic. The answer was akin to “yes yes, get on” ….so in my pseudo-delirious state, on I went and off we went. The shock on people’s faces when I got to the clinic in this unorthodox fashion was clear. It turned out, of course, that my boat had gotten in early and Agus, the real ASRI driver who had been sent to pick me up, had not gotten there yet. Meanwhile, this random dude must have known that the only “bule” (white people) for miles around were associated with the clinic* and had thus offered to take me there. The good news is that I arrived safe and sound.
*this is not entirely true, there are a few other NGOs that work in the forest as well as some field researchers

In other news, things are going very well here so far. As a reminder, the organization I’m with now is called Health in Harmony (check it out!) and is absolutely wonderful. I’m living in a small house right with two other girls, one of whom is a 4th year Yale Medical School student, and one of whom is a 4th year Indonesian med school student from Jakarta. We have a traditional squat toilet and scoop shower, both of which I was vaguely skeptical of at first but have since adjusted to. While there is no hot water, a cold shower feels absolutely wonderful most of the time since it’s ALWAYS hot here on the equator (people joke the Indonesia has many seasons….mango season, durian season, rambutan season). We are also living right next door to Kinari (the founder of HIH) and Cam, which is absolutely brilliant because it means we can mooch off of their wireless internet and borrow their adorable kittens for cuddles. The town of Sukadana itself is rather ideally situated on the western coast of Borneo at the edge of Gunung Palung National Forest, the forest that HIH is working to protect and home to 10% of the worlds orangutans by some estimates, with two beaches a 5-10 minute walk from my door.

Highlights so far include a trip to an island off the coast last weekend and Green Day. We were purportedly going to go snorkeling, but the visibility was extremely bad that day, so after recovering from small speedboat induced motion-sickness, we ended up swimming around a bit and exploring the island instead. Tip #79: flip flops are not ideal for walking up steep slopes in tropical rain forests. The biodiversity here is phenomenal and apparently it is very common to spend a whole day walking through a forest and not see two trees of the same species (granted, you would have to be able to identify them in the first place).

Green Day, as I mentioned earlier, was a celebration of reforestation efforts and was very cool to see. Various members of the community came out, including the whole middle school and men from the national park. The ASRI team is very musical and performed a number of songs for the event, one of which included almost everyone (for those of you who have heard me sing, don’t worry, I sang quietly). There was a semi-symbolic planting of seedlings in which we all (~200 people) got to grab a seedling rainforest tree and head out into a field and carefully plant our seedlings, adding compost, water and a bit of love. Overall the day was a success and a great reminder of hope for the future with people working together across levels from the local community, the NGOs, and the park service.

Bromo and Bali: a recap

Hello from Sukadana! So, since Christmas, a rather lot has happened I guess, though it doesn’t appear to have included me writing about it. As I try to backtrack this post grows long, so if you don’t have the time/energy to read an epic, I forgive you.

My last few days in Yogya were rather hectic. I decided last minute to go on a two-day adventure to see Mount Bromo, a famous volcano that continuously spews gas and is located in a giant crater with two other volcanoes in East Java, only 12 hours away by bus, a breeze really. Thus, I left Sunday morning at around 9 am, got to the town by the mountain at around 9 pm and crashed until getting up at 1 am to trek to the mountain for sunrise, and then got back on my bus by 9 am and went right back to Yogya. Lunacy, you say? Perhaps. But, it was still pretty cool.

The first part of the trekking was rather thrilling as I set out across the dessert in the crater alone under the stars; however it later lost some of its magic as the road that I was following up the mountain became inundated with Jeeps (the more popular way to get to the top). There is apparently also a walking trail, but no one seemed to know where it was and I wasn’t left with much choice at 1 am by myself than to follow the road. I don’t know what they put in the cars here sometimes, but let me tell you, its not that pleasant to breath in deep gulps of exhaust as you walk up a steep hill. In the end, I ended up taking a motor the last 2 km (it was apparently around 20 total, though that number is dubious) because I could see that the sun was starting to rise at 4:30 and not at 5:15 as they had informed me, and after all the effort I had gone to in order to get there, I was not going to miss it! Clouds had set in while I was walking, but the sunrise was still beautiful and the landscape just extraordinary. Later I was rescued from my long walk down by some Jakartans in a Jeep and just had time for a quick jaunt over to Bromo itself and climbed the 200ish steps to the top in order to peer into the smoking hole where the giant white plume originates. (NB I really am trying to upload my pictures, but now that I finally have my laptop, it seems that my card reader isn’t working or something…)

Back in Yogya my month which had once stretched on into the distant future seemed to have flown by and I found myself hectically running errands and packing, and suddenly it was time to say goodbye to my host-family. Monica and her sisters were so nice and came to the airport to see me off/give me a goodie bag of presents.

Bali was a lot of fun. Between a combination of fun in the sun, the water, some quality chilling time, and some dance performances of dubious quality, it was an all around great trip. That said, I think my two favorite places were not on Bali proper but on two smaller islands. The first, Gili Air is a tiny and picturesque little strip of white sand and palm trees set in turquoise water. The only form of transport is horse-cart, but don’t worry, you can walk around the entire island is about 90 minutes. Gabe and I essentially split our time between kicking it in beach bungalows drinking mango juice and snorkeling. Ubud was nice, though the best part was definitely our sumptuous accommodations. The town itself is very touristy at this point, with lots of shopping. We went to one dance performance, which was plenty. While I find the traditional dance very interesting, I don’t necessarily have the attention span for a full 2 hour show.

My other favorite place was Nusa Lembogan, a small island off the cost of Bali with 7000 inhabitants, 95% of whom are involved in the island’s seaweed farming industry. Not only was the lack of tourism and touts refreshing, but it was also here where I went on some of the most beautiful dives of my life. This, combined with the great group of people meant that I liked it so well that I ended up staying an extra day and would have stayed more if I could have. Post Nusa Lembogan it was time for a bit of culture shock as I went to join Chris and the some of the HMC crew at a resort in Nusa Dua. The place was absurd. It turns out that Nusa Dua is a resort community of about 15 resorts with a collective security gate outside (followed by more security for each one). There were about 10 pools (it had to live up to its name “laguna”) and many Russians. It was funny too the difference between kicking it with low-key backpackers and the fast-paced intellectual conversation of Harvard students. Eventually we left the resort in search of a more authentic Bali, but returning to Ubud was not the answer for such a task. Finally we found ourselves in Munduk, a tiny village on the side of one of Bali’s volcanoes from where the view of rice paddies and forests stretches all the way out to the distant ocean.

Finally, it was time to part ways again and I headed off on my own to Borneo. Traveling in Indonesia requires some serious fortitude and patience. While it is often very quick to get through airport security, nothing else is easy. After a delay caused me to miss my second flight, I had to fight my way to the front of a “goat rodeo” of people all competing for the attention of 4 clerks issuing new boarding passes. Why they couldn’t have a) more people working and b) some sort of organized line system in which each person waits patiently until the next available clerk is available is beyond me, but it sure gave me new appreciation for those lines they have official offices where you have to “wait behind the line.” Later, as I explored the domestic terminal, I think my favorite image was the group of 8 or so guys kickin it together smoking some cigarettes in the walkway to the terminal RIGHT BENEATH two “no smoking” signs. I would have taken a picture, but there was also a sign saying “no cameras”…Honestly, usually I love Indonesia, but sometimes the lack of regard for the rules can get to me. This, of course has larger implications than my mild asmatic response to a smoky terminal: it means that vast swathes of beautiful rainforest that are technically protected are being logged daily, or slash and burned to create new fields for palm oil. And on that note, I think I’ll leave the rest for later.