besides the food

we have to give a huge thank you to Amelleia who was an incredible tour-food guide, host and brave soul for hosting us without hesitation even though Ari had some suspicious insect bites and an on-coming cold - all while she is in the middle of exams!

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR EXAMS!!!!!

And of course thank you Rudy for (gently yet firmly) goading us to visit Penang and Gerry and Rosalind for letting us crash at your place!!!

Rudy and Amelleia after the Philippines I think you need to start planning a trip to the states!!!!!

Penang invented fourth meal

After sadly realizing our visas in Indonesia were not going to be renewed unless we left the country (hence changing our itinerary) we tried to figure out the most cost effective/time effective/somewhat environmentally friendly next move on our trip and decided on Penang! (This decision was also greatly influenced by Rudy and Amelleia who said with utter disbelief "What??! You aren't going to Penang? You haven't been to Malaysia if you haven't been to Penang! Everything is better in Penang!")

So, off we went. And Rudy, Amelleia you were right. Penang was incredible! if you're looking for cheap eats, a plethora of variety, incredible cost to taste ratio (or is it taste to cost ratio? mmm - low cost, big taste) all on a chilled out little island with beaches to boot - then Penang (Malaysia) is your/our Utopia. Am i starting to sound like a travel guide?

We stayed in Batu Ferringhi for a few days at a cute guesthouse on the beach. Mostly we slept and tried to recuperate from "sleeping" at the airport...


And then moved to Amelleia and Rudy's place to begin a three-day food tour - food stalls, hawker centers, restaurants - Penang was the perfect respite from Indonesia.

Here we are enjoying some fresh soy milk...

Indian food to celebrate Deepavali...

Fresh coconut juice ice cream milkshakes...

Pickled nutmeg (this is the fruit)...

Nasi Kandar - named after the carrying baskets it used to be sold in (we had a selection of chicken, squid, cabbage and okra with rice flavoured with chicken and various curries)

chicken rice, char kway teow and oysters...

and burgers from a night stall - that is two beef patties marinated with some worcestershire sauce, pepper, wrapped in a fried egg topped with cheese, onions, hot sauce, mayonnaise and a partridge in a pear tree.

Don't worry, we didn't consume all of this in one day...actually all this was in two days. haha

So what did we learn? In Penang food is everything. In one day you can have breakfast, brunch, lunch, dunch/linner, dinner and then the original "fourth meal" (as taco bell calls it) which I guess would actually be "sixth meal". This is distinguished from dinner and called supper by the locals. AND the best part is, sixth meal is not just for drunk college kids.

It's not safe

...to ride a motorcycle in Indonesia. Nevertheless, its the main form of transportation for Indonesians, including children and old people.

Today, my bus hit a motorcycle carrying two fifty year old women. It's the second motorcycle accident I've seen thus far in Indonesia. The aggressive driver (they all are) forced the motorcycle off the road, and while passing we heard a couple of loud thumps from the side of the bus. Neither woman had any visible injuries. One was sitting on the grass, completely dazed (possible concussion?) with her helmet five meters way, and the other was angrily arguing with the bus driver and ticket collectors. The bus crew was "kind" enough to get off the bus, move the motorcycle further off the road, and get the women's luggage out from under the bus tire. I got off the bus and gave the dazed woman my bottle of water. There's not much you can do in that situation. Five minutes later we were back on the road. The bus driver didn't seem bothered. I'm sure he'll sleep just fine tonight. Such is life in this part of the world.

Everything changed!!

Apologies - we've been neglecting the blog this week! We spent a week in Penang (Malaysia), but we'll have to do a post-dated post on that. Penang really is king when it comes to food.

Anyways, our trip has radically changed. Janet is back in Hong Kong working on grad school applications. I'm in Sumatra going solo with just a day pack. This pack is so small that I had trouble packing it for a weekend trip back home. Janet kindly took all of my unnecessary stuff back to HK.

If you've heard of Sumatra before, it's probably because of natural disasters. This island is very disaster prone. Devastating earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis are frequent. Perhaps you've heard of Sumatra because of the very strict sect of Islam practiced in the province of Aceh. Sumatra is also known for its diversity of wildlife. Here, tigers, rhinos, and orangutans still live in the wild.

My general itinerary had me flying out of Padang in a few weeks, but apparently an earthquate/tsunami combo just hit the region. Current plans are very fluid..

I'm currently in the city of Medan. According to the guidebook, it's "featureless transit point" with not much to do. This might be true, but its a lot of fun being completely immersed. I'm actually at the point where I can [painfully] converse in Indonesian. People are so surprised to see a white guy speaking Indonesian (in addition to their initial surprise of seeing a white guy, full stop), I have to admit, it's fun.

On another note, Obama arrived in Indonesia on the same day as I did. Its much nicer to have strangers excitedly talk about Obama (who spent his childhood here) than talk about American priests burning Qu'rans. Most of the little food stalls had their TVs tuned in to his speech today. It was subtitled in Indonesian. I was thinking back to any time a foreign leader speaks for an American audience, and realized that it's always dubbed [poorly]. Are we too lazy to read?

Oh, yeah. No more pictures. I don't have a camera. I do have my flip though.. expect plenty of videos and low quality screenshots of the videos in place of pictures.

our fifteen minutes...or seconds

http://www.p-wec.com/news/en/2010/p-wecs_school_visits_with_american_volunteers.html

but what i really think they meant is "p-wecs school visits with north american volunteers"

Kawah Ijen Sulfur Miners

This post is long overdue. What amazed me more than the natural beauty of the crater lake was the daily struggle of the local sulfur miners. Twice each day, they walk several kilometers up the mountain, climb down into the volcano, dig out 60-80 kg of sulfur, climb back out of the volcano, and walk back down the hill. According to Lonely Planet, they make about 600 rupiah per kilo (roughly USD $10 per day).

A miner mentally prepares to descend into the crater

There weren't many tourists, but most of the ones that do come here stop at the lip of the crater and don't climb down the steep path to the lake. Our guidebook mentioned that a French tourist fell and died some years back. Perhaps it happened again, because by the time we got there it was "forbidden" to go down.

Kurang selamat

So naturally I went down. At first I was hesitant, but I really wanted to do it. After all, I thought, if these guys can do this every day with 80 kgs on their back, why wouldn't I be able to? And it helped that one of the miners was urging me to come with him. I pointed at the sign and said to him in Indonesian "less safe," but he shrugged his shoulders, and so off we went. Janet decided to wait at the top, as she's prone to trip on your average sidewalk.

Following my guide down into the abyss.

As we got closer to the bottom, gusts of smoke would hit us. My guide gestured that I use my shirt to breath through. At one point the smoke was so thick that he pulled me to the ground. We squatted there, blinded by smoke, coughing. At the bottom, it was almost constantly that thick.

Just another day at the office.

When we got to the bottom, two guys with gas masks told me not to go further. When they weren't looking, my guide pulled me further. After more than five minutes, I handed my guide 7000 rupiah and headed back up the cliff.

The bottom of the volcano during a very brief moment with less sulfur smoke.

Sulfur smoke is not pleasant. You duck down and hold your breath. You can't see. You can't breath. Your eyes burn. Tears pour out. Your lungs burn a different type of burn than you've ever felt. A sharp, crisp, poisonous burn. And if you're my guide or the hundreds of other laborers, you suck it up and dig out some rocks.

As you can see, there is no high-tech pack to distribute the weight to his hips. All of the weight is resting on one small part of his shoulder.

If you ever hear me complaining about my job at any point in my life, please punch me. Much respect for these guys.

natural instincts

let's say you were walking in the forest with a friend and you saw a 16 foot python would you

a. run away
b. run away
c. decide that your best option is to kick the python and catch it in a bag, bring it home, skin it and eat it

if you chose c, you are correct! particularly if you are a 13 year old boy. DING DING DING DING DING (sound of excited bells going off)

well - that's what our Deepavali (happy deepavali by the way!) open house host family's son did. And he had the dried skin to prove it.

if i was in the jungle i would want him there. just saying.

sleep tight

ari has some suspicious looking bites...a nice red ring on his back.

i guess we'll see in the morning.
but for now we'll just sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite (more).

Random videos

Below you can see a guy having a casual cell phone conversation while driving.. his motorcycle! The video quality isn't very good.. I was filming from inside of an angkot (public transportation van).


And here's Bromo (our most recent volcano):

gunung bromo

you're probably as tired of reading as i am of writing...so basically we went to mt. bromo with three other volunteers from PWEC. The views are supposed to be spectacular but we were plagued by rainclouds and sulfur clouds. All volcanoes on Java are being closely monitored for increased seismic activity - hence the additional sulfur smoke. However, we optimistically got up for sunrise and then hiked up to the volcano itself.

And for your enjoyment, here are the highlights in photo form.

the extent of the sunrise

gunung bromo and gunung semeru smoking away

hopefully you can see this if you zoom in, but this is a photo of ari and toby hiking around the crater

the group!