Its been a long journey from there to here

Sorry sorry sorry...we know it has been a while since the last posting, but please know it is not for lack of effort. This side of the archipelago is a bit more "rustic"....

Anyway, a somewhat brief update: Toba despite the rain ended up being great. I sneezed three times in a row and according to our neighbors from Holland, that made for good weather the next day. We rented a motorbike and cruised around the island. Gorgeous scenery and we even took in a bit of culture. There were two things on the "tourist map", but sadly we could only find one - the stone chairs, which are exactly what they sound like and sadly not the most impressive things in the world. It was a nice ride though and we got back just in time to take a swim before it started to rain again.

From there we headed the next day to Lombok, a island east of Bali (they dub themselves "Bali's sister island" but we don't like that title....) It was a 4 hour car ride with 7 others (one vomiting most of the way) to Medan and then two planes to Lombok. We arrived late in the evening, but were very happy to wake up on the beach. We were in the main tourist center - Senggigi to do some basic planning since that is the last tourist hub we would see for a while. Senggigi is not much to speak of so we booked our boat to Flores (where we are now) and headed to Gili Air - a small small island off the coast of Lombok quite popular with backpackers. It was nice and relaxing. We had fresh fish for dinner brought in by the fisherman right to shore for us to pick out and we did some nice snorkeling as well.

After 2 days of Gili Air, we headed back to Senggigi and joined 12 others for a 4 day/3 night boat trip to Flores, stopping on the way for snorkeling and a trip to Komodo National Park to see the famous endangered Komodo Dragons. Before you get any glamorous ideas, this was not in any way shape or form a luxury cruise. The first reaction at the sight of the boat was "This is it??" We all slept on deck (10 on the upper upper, 4 on the upper) and the squat toilet was some porcelain around a hole to the ocean. The engine had some trouble and we missed much of one day and there is one day where you sail for 18 hours where we hit some slightly rough seas at 2:30 AM. Everything was slightly damp, if not wet, and the bag of ice that was chilling our 8 beers for the journey was melted by day 2. BUT, with all that said, it was a fine cheap way to get to Flores, we had some really good snorkeling that included a shark sighting, a couple eels and a lion fish. We also caught sight of some komodos, which was cool. We were a bit disappointed as none were chowing on buffalo or really doing much more than lazing in the sun, but they are enormous.

The scenery in this part of the archipelago was amazing as well. Like nothing else we have seen, Komodo and many of the surrounding islands are dry - like something out of a sci-fi movie there are great hills of nothing but scorched yellow grass with a couple random green trees poking out of the tops. Although a long journey, it was pretty.

We had big plans to get some things done upon arrival in Flores at Labuan Bajo, but sadly our efforts were a bit fruitless - the Internet was nonexistent, the boat office we needed was mysteriously closed and the post office as well shut down on Fridays at 11 AM. Oh well. We wandered all we could of Labuan Bajo and then headed to Seraya Island - a small almost completely deserted island about an hour from Labuan Bajo. There is only one little string of bungalows (very simple with electricity only on from 6 PM to 10:30 PM) a white sand beach and a really nice reef for snorkeling. A great hide away and by sheer luck some friends from Jakarta were staying there for Christmas. It was nice to see friendly faces. We had amazing snorkeling here - we followed a turtle for about 45 min (he even let Howie pet him a little on the back) saw a school of polka dotted sting rays, and a ton of beautiful fish and coral. It was a nice escape before what we think will be the real backpacking in Flores.

Flores is a lot less developed than most places we have been. Just to give you some idea, we are in Ruteng, the big city that has - gasp! - a grocery store. The road here was incredibly curvy, actually never straight for the full 3 hours, and we were up in the clouds for a long time. The views were amazing and we hear it only gets better from here. Hopefully so will the internet connections and picture will hopefully be soon to follow. From here we head across Flores to see some of the small villages and volcanos and then on to Dili (East Timor) for a visa run and visit to our friends John and Shelly who just moved there about a month ago.

Happy holidays to all. And Happy New Year (just in case we are not close to a computer then...) Pics to be posted as soon as we have the connection to do so...

Majestic (rainy) Lake Toba

Back in Indonesia after a 5 hour boat ride from Penang and then an almost 6 hour minibus ride to Lake Toba. It was a long day of traveling, but well worth it when we arrived in Tuk Tuk - both a fun place to say and a beautiful spot.

Tuk Tuk is on an "island" in Lake Toba about the size of Singapore. A real little backpacker haven, (well set up for backpackers but they seem to be few and far between) we are at a wonderful little hotel right on the lake. The water is clean and clear and when it was not raining we had a great swim and really enjoyed the spot. Sadly, it has been raining since about 5 PM yesterday, but we are still hoping for some noon clearing as seems to be typical this time of year.

Wednesday we head off across the archipelago to Lombok - an island east of Bali that is supposed to be what Bali was like before it became the tourist hotspot that it is. There are a couple even smaller islands that we plan to hit off of there as well, so I guess Toba is just the start of some good lazing in the sun for us.

Eating, Dining, Snacking and Grazing

We saw off my parents on Monday and then headed for Penang, Malysia on Tuesday because my visa was expiring. Wednesday we spent the day eating. No, really. Here's the damage so far (all at different stalls/restaurants) and we're planning on hitting the Chinese night market on the way home:

10:00 - Breakfast of toast and jam at the hotel.
12:00 - char kwao tiaw (Malay stirfried noodles)
12:30 - a fried red bean bun
1:00 - a veggie curry puff in Little India
2:00 - asam laksa - sour fish soup, a Panang specialty
2:30 - some crazy 'sherbert' drink that claims to be the most thirst quenching drink known to man - not bad
3:00-5:00 - nap/food coma
7:00 - back to Little India for oothaban, some kind of savory Indian pacake that is fun to say and to smother in sauces

Tomorrow it is off to a national park for a hike to a beach then it is back to Indonesia in a few days.

A villa, some Parnes, and a whole lot of orangutans

Although it has been our first couple weeks officially as nomads, they have been quite luxurious. It has been an easy entry into life in the road and living out of our packs. The Parnes arrived in Bali last week and we met them at Villa Padi – a stunning villa in the middle of a rice padi about a 500m walk to the beach. We had our own little private pool and a Balinese style living and dining room. The package included one free half hour massage for each of us (which the men forfeited over to the ladies so we could have an hour each), a free seafood bbq (nice red snapper that served as a Thanksgiving dinner), and a car and driver for 8 hours a day (who took up to Ubud one day for a little culture even though some had to be a bit dragged from the villa). Our chef cooked us breakfast in the morning and had the coffee waiting, we were the only people on the beach every time we were there…it was paradise.

From there we did a repeat of The Cohen Family trip to Indonesia and headed to Jogja. It was more of a repeat than we would have liked as Leslie was not feeling great that day, so much like Sharon, she spent one day curled up in the lovely Mercure hotel bed, while we wandered the bird market. We did make it to Borobudur the next day though and we had a great day weaving our way to Magelang, a mid stop on our way to Semarang where we had to catch our flight to Kalimantan to see the orangutans. There is not much between Jogja and Semarang so although the stop was a bit strange – a sort of circus like hotel in the middle of nowhere surrounded by volcanoes and a lovely rolling river – it served its purpose and had a pretty cool swimming pool with a water slide that the young Parnes quite enjoyed.

The flight to Kalimantan, Indonesia’s part Borneo (Malaysia and Bunei share Borneo with Indonesia) was very smooth despite the 10k weight limit on the bags and the small prop plane. A little re-arranging of the Parnes large bags they have been schlepping for 3 weeks since New Zealand, a bag left behind in the Semarang airport (which was there with all its contents when we returned) and some magic motion-sickness prevention wrist bracelets made it a breeze. Upon arrival in Pankalanbun (town of about 39,000 and the gateway to the national park) we were met by our guide where we took a car to a boat that took us to the Rimba Lodge. The lodge is in the middle of the national park and where we spent the night – when you do this trip your only choices for accommodation are sleeping on the boat or the lodge and while the boat is pretty cool, the lodge was a bit more “parent friendly”. The boat ride there was great and there was some amazing monkey and ape sighting on the way. It was a really good sign of things to come. We caught a tree full of proboscis monkeys with the coolest profiles and long hanging tails and we even saw a giant orangutan female in her nest settling in for the night. She was incredible – high in a tree but she stood out with her bright orange hair hanging on to one branch with a long arm and staring right back at us. We were definitely in the jungle.

The next day was all about orangutans. We started at one of the camps about an hour down the river and watched a feeding. The orangutans are released into the wild slowly and the feedings act to both supplement their diet and to help the researchers keep track of various orangutans. It is a simple platform in the middle of the jungle strewn with bananas and some buckets of sweetened milk. It took little patience but slowly you would start to hear trees rustle around you and suddenly they were coming in from all angles. Typically the dominant male comes in first (the males have these huge identifying cheek pads and are really large), although some of those young men did get a sneak in before he got there on this feeding. He has his share and then the mothers and babies generally get in on the action. It was totally incredible. We were so close to the platform and the orangutans were not fussed at all by our being there. They went about stuffing their faces with bananas, swinging on trees as if there was nothing strange at all going on.

From there we went on to Camp Leeky about another hour down the river for another feeding. There are more orangutans who just hang out at Camp Leeky so here more than the first place you are very up close and personal with the apes. Actually, we were so up close and personal that when we arrived there was an orangutan and her baby waiting for us when the boat pulled up. I could not help myself and I sat down pretty close to her on a step. She sauntered over, put her arm around me, clamped one of her feet around my ankle and that was it, we were friends. You are not supposed to touch the orangutans and even though I knew it was wrong I could not stop. Her name was Princess and she is a naughty orangutan who has grown up in Camp Leeky. She knows sign language, has about 5 children and 2 grandchildren, and she has been known to steal a canoe or two and paddle up river. She made me scratch her back – she actually lifted my hand and put it on her back – and we are buddies. AMAZING. Howie sat with her too, but that was not about friendship, she was looking to pick his pockets. The feeding that followed was similar to the morning feeding, except this one included a wild boar who ate the banana peels that fell to the ground and seemed to really freak out some of the orangutans. Again, it was an incredible sight and hard to explain in words.

Now we are back in Jakarta and the Parnes will head back to Arizona tomorrow. We have purchased cheap glasses, had a huge success at the outlet malls and eaten some very fine meals. Howie and I even made it to a nice goodbye party for a couple of our friends moving to East Timor last night. It is weird to be a nomad in a city we lived in and still feel like we do, but we are having fun. The real adventures start December 4^th when we head to Penang Malaysia for a visa run. From there we have no idea where we are going or what we are doing, but we will keep you posted.

For more pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/howieandhaviva/ParnesFamilyTrip