The Nusa Tenggara

I left Singapore feeling hugely better, but without having done much apart from spend money like it was going out of fashion. Apart from a new camera lens, one thing I did have was a two month Indonesian visa, which was a huge bonus as the queue for visas at Denpasar airport, Bali, was hours long.

I stopped in Bali for a night before picking up a flight the next day; it was just long enough to be ripped off by a taxi from the airport (almost impossible to escape this) and to stay in Seminyak, a "hip" part of Bali north of the fabled tourist nightspot of Kuta - that was where the bombs exploded in 2002. Seminyak had a grey beach filled with tourists, hawkers and masseuses, but it was possible to find a little warung and eat cheaply whilst watching the world go by. It wasn't set up well for the solo traveller, so after an early night I boarded a small flight westwards to Labaun Bajo, on the island of Flores to the east.

From Bali, the chain of islands that stretches east goes Lombok - Sumbawa- Flores - Sumba - Timor and is called the Nusa Tenggara; I didn't have time to go as far east as I wanted (preferably East Timor) but settled on Flores, from where in Labuan Bajo it is possible to visit the islands of Komodo and Rinca with their famous dragons, as well as dive in some of the most pristine waters in the world. I also wanted to head to eastern Flores, along the tiny road that winds it's way tortuously along Flores' mountainous spine.

The reputation of Indonesia's multitude of domestic airlines is not great - Indonesian airlines are banned from European airspace due to certain safety issues. My TransNusa flight, however, was perfectly acceptable - the food was even edible. I was relieved not to have been allocated one of the seat rows that was sitting on the runway rather than in the plane though....

In Labuan Bajo I hooked up with an Australian called Matt who had come along for the diving, and after establishing that I was unable to get a group together to hire a car, booked in for 3 days of diving with DiveKomodo, one of several local operators. Last year another place in town - a PADI 5 star centre no less - made international headlines when it "lost" a group of divers who had drifted a long distance in an exceptionally strong current. The divers were found alive and well after a couple of days, but I made a note not to go with that company, something Matt and I were pleased about the following day when their boat broke down.




Despite a little bit of sea sickness the first day, the diving was all it was cracked up to be. On two days I saw manta rays - huge animals several metres across - and plenty of sharks and turtles, but it was the variety and quality of coral and fish that really blew my mind. The currents were also something else, far stronger than anything else I had experienced. At one point we emerged from a canyon next to a group of giant trevally and bumphead parrot fish in an incredibly strong current. Matt and I clung on next to our dive master to get a lbetter ook at them - my mask began to be pulled off my face when I turned my face out of the current. Letting go of the rocks was a little like what I imagine jumping out of a plane would be - very fast and pretty exciting!


This colourful thing is a nudibranch. They are REALLY cool.


The other people on the dive boat were all nice and in the evenings we would head up to the local sundowner bar, where a live band would be playing whilst the cold beers and inescapable banana pancakes were being served. The local restaurants all served a variety of excellent fish dishes, and it was also our debatable luck to be in town when the "Labuan Bajo Idol" contest was being held - either the locals didn't usually applaud after each performance, or else they really thought the songs were as bad as we did.





On the last day we also made a quick side trip to Rinca to see the area's most famous occupants - Komodo dragons. In reality the dragons are just another species of monitor lizard, albeit the biggest in the world and ones that eat people with alarming regularity. The dragons tend to kill their prey by waiting near waterholes then biting their victims - the dragons' mouths are full of bacteria and the prey dies a week or two later from the infection.






At this point I began to run...

As well as the dragons, Rinca is home to waterbuffalo, wild boar, deer and a variety of venomous snakes. Usually people see at least one of them; we were lucky to spot a waterbuffalo and deer, and then our guide almost trod on a spitting cobra. It was not a happy bunny - although this didn't stop us getting stupidly close.



Somehow after my third day of diving I managed to find a couple of Portuguese doctors on their way to East Timor and another English girl, Hannah, and we departed eastwards in a hired car the following morning. It promised to be a long day, even though it was only 250km or so to our destination of Bajawa that evening. The road on the whole was not too bad, but the neverending bends and hill climbs, plus the occasional stretch of vast potholes took it's toll on both the car and our rear ends.

The interior of Flores is dominated by a range of mountains that runs east to west, and makes any attempt at road building fraught with difficulty, especially when you're in Indonesia and it has to be done with improbably small tools and a cigarette in one hand. The scenery was beautiful, dominated by endless rice paddies and small villages. The rice harvest was about due, so the usual verdant green was replaced by larger yellowing plants in paddies that had often been drained.


Kids in Ruteng, en route to Bajawa

Arrival in Bajawa that evening was cold, relatively speaking, and the fleeces and long sleeves were broken out from their hibernation at the bottom of my bag. After a delicious meal and some remarkably good live music - I've never heard Indonesians singing in Spanish before, but it was excellent - we decided that, as a group, we lacked musical talent but liked singing along anyway.

The next day we continued on the seemingly marathon journey, stopped first in the village of Buka - a traditional village full of animist culture and thatched houses, that is being desperately preserved in order to draw in the scanty flow of tourists in these parts. The village was pretty, and the people very friendly; we turned down the offers of both the traditional weavings available and the chicken sacrifice (that would have cost extra). Our driver, Jamie, deserved a mention for being probably the safest driver in Indonesia, rarely exceeding 40km/h and liberal using the horn to warn off pigs, goats and small children.



After getting to the southern coast of Flores with it's black sand volcanic beaches, we stopped in the port of Ende for lunch and pushed on, driving uphill for the next few hours to reach Moni, our final destination from where we would visit Kelimutu, volcano of the fabled Three Different Coloured Lakes (I guess it's more of a local fable than one of international renown). We checked into a friendly guesthouse and after a distinctly below-par meal, trekked through some muddy rice paddies in the pitch dark to find our way to some hot springs - they were well worth the mud and stubbed toes.



The following morning we were gone by 4.30am for the highlight of our trip, sunrise over Kelimutu. The volcano, which hasn't been active for some years, has three small crater lakes which change colour every few years - currently they are light green, dark green and black, but in the past have ranged from red to brown and blue. It was cold - colder than Bajawa a couple of nights before - and we were thankful of the enterprising locals who trekked up with us to offer expensive cups of tea and coffee (as well as the usual "local" weavings). I felt myself getting a cold, along with the rest of the guys in the car.




The sunrise was all it was cracked up to be, and well worth the effort of the journey and the early morning. Just before hypothermia set in the sun rose above the horizon and took the edge of the biting wind, whilst the lakes gradually shone into view. It was lovely.

After heading back to the hotel for breakfast, we went back to Ende to leave the Portuguese girls to their East Timor mission - some kind of NGO doctoring work. Jamie was keen to press back to Labuan Bajo that day - a 16 hour drive - so after negotiating we managed to settle on a stop in Bajawa again that night, and Hannah and I relaxed in the 4x4 as Jamie cruised back along the winding roads. The day passed surprisingly quickly - I slept a lot - but was awake when we nearly ran over a toddler who ran out into the road in front of the car without a care in the world - it was a very close shave.

In Bajawa we picked up a couple of quiet English lads for the ride back, and made good time back to Labuan Bajo the following day - stopping only to change a set of obliterated brake pads (they were molten in places) that Jamie had already replaced at the start of the journey. I booked into a quiet bungalow and set about trying to rid myself of the cold, sort out more diving and a ticket out of Flores.



After two days of rest, laundry and reading, I was feeling well enough to descend to the depths again and go diving once more. I went with DiveKomodo again, principally because I could hire my dive master's camera, and tried to record what I was seeing - with limited success! I may get to putting a few videos on YouTube if I ever find a connection fast enough. It was another great day - 3 dives this time - but disappointingly I failed to see any more manta rays. That evening I was around when one of the dive masters found an injured kitten and brought it to me - there's nothing like bumping off a kitten to bring a bad end to a good day.






The morning after I left Labuan Bajo on a cruise to Lombok. My original plan of flying back had been scuppered by overbooked flights, and my fall-back plan of taking an overnight boat failed too. My last option (and I drew the line at the 40 hour ferry-bus-ferry combo across Sumbawa) was to take a 4 day trip past Rinca, Komodo and northern Sumbawa to get to Lombok. The journey was made much easier by the presence of Francisco and Michela, an Italian couple who I had met at Kelimutu and were on their 9 month honeymoon. They were on possibly the world's longest visa run - they had hired a moped in Bali and were driving to East Timor and back, a mammoth undertaking that seemed harebrained to say the least. They were great. At the last minute our little cruise was joined by Sebastian, Isa and Shimon, a Polish-English couple and their Polish friend, and our little group of 6 left port on a surprisingly seaworthy looking boat.




The first day we stopped at Rinca, the second at Komodo..... in all we mader a lot of stops at various deserted beaches and interesting sites, but for me the best bit was just sitting on the foredeck and watching the sun go down each night, as we gently chugged our way westwards. It was fantastic. We stopped on day 3 at a freshwater point in north Sumbawa and that was great - walking upriver to a little waterfall where we could wash and get the salt off ourselves. I was a little sad on the morning of day 4 when we steamed into Labuan Lombok, although banana fritters for breakfast were definitely beginning to wear a little thin.




In case you're wondering, that is actually something's guts hanging out of the dragon's mouth...






Together with Sebastian and co, we hired a car to take us across Lombok where I was heading to Sengiggi and the next leg of my trip. Believe it or not, I now have a plan that takes me right up to arriving in Australia on 20th October (one days before my visa would run out), and includes a visit to New Zealand to see my sister and Fran before they head off again. But for now, I'm heading eastwards to Java.....

Highlands

If the ride from Bukit Lawang was rough, the transfer on to Berastagi in Medan was so smooth my feet barely touched the floor as I was hustled from one bus to another - I didn't even get to touch my rucksack. Three hours later - most of it in torrential rain with a significant proportion of this draining through the roof onto my shoulder - and a good deal of slow uphill motoring, and I arrived in the central agricultural town of Sumatra's northern Karo highlands - some 1500m above sea level and deliciously cool after the heat of Medan.

On the Sumatra backpacker trail - or at least what exists of it - Berastagi is often skipped as having little do. However, the climate and lack of hassle you get adds another dimension - that was worth at least a couple of days. In my guesthouse I met Janick and Inge, two Dutch girls on the last leg or their Indonesia trip, and we booked a day-long tour of the Berastagi area.



The country around Berastagi is recognised not only for it's amazing vegetable growing potential (more interesting for some than others) and also the Karo Batak people who live there. The Karo Batak have a distinctive style of house which is now dying out, but can still be seen in a few traditional villages. There are also a few active volcanoes in the area - as per usual, trips to climb them (and finish in the hot springs at the bottom) are common.

Something that had not bothered me until Berastagi was the call to prayer each morning, aired from the speakers of minarets in mosques all over Indonesia around 4.30am. In Medan, with a huge and famous mosque, I had slept through it much to peoples amazement. In Berastagi, you couldn't. The call to prayer can be a tremendously evocative part of travel in a Muslim region, as long as it is done well. Sadly, in Berastagi the muezzin sounded something like the cat that had been wailing outside my door for the other part of the night - it was not a particularly restful sleep. What was more suprising was that Berastagi was the first region we had visited where the population were predominantly Christian - churches abounded.



Our trip started at Se Piso Piso waterfall at northern end of Lake Toba - more about that below - where it plunges 120m to land somewhat closer to the lake than it started. It was impressive, aside from the usual litter and graffiti associated with most Indonesian landmarks. It was also pretty close to where we would head after leaving Berastagi - not the best in forward planning, but there you go.



We stopped in the Karo Batak village of Dokan, where there were a few traditionally designed and roofed houses left standing (and in use). The presence of satellite dishes and new-build brick and concrete houses was testament to the headlong rush into modernisation, although after a look through one of the dark, smoke-filled and musty houses that was home to 8 families, you couldn't really blame them.



It was the first time in Indonesia that I had seen anything like a traditional dress worn by many people - mostly the older women who wore a distinctive head dress to protect from the sun. They also spent a lot of time chewing betel nut - the site of a 50-something woman drooling red juice with a large gobstopper in her mouth was particularly common. Tourists were also pretty uncommon, judging by the numbers of "Hello mister" greetings and the regularity of being stopped by school children for an English interrogation.

Our final stop on the day tour was at some hot springs at the base of Mount Sibayak, one of two volcanoes that towers over Berastagi - both are still slightly active. The hot springs seemed a little unusual - there was not the overwhelming reek of sulphur to start with - and many locals were there enjoying the warm water whilst covering themselves with whitening pastes of various kinds. The whitening phenomenon is common across Asia where as far as skin goes, the whiter the better. For me, the most surprising element of this is that locals do not use suncream to stop themselves from turning a darker colour, but use various creams, potions and lotions after sun exposure to make themselves whiter again..... with questionable results.

After another day in Berastagi, trying to upload photos to the internet and tearing my hair out at the same time, we left for Lake Toba in a car hired between us and couple of American guys we had met. After winding our way back almost back to the waterfall, we headed down the east side of the lake to Parapat, a small town on the Trans Sumatran Highway that sits on the edge of the lake.



Lake Toba is the largest body of freshwater in Southeast Asia, some 60km long and nearly 20km wide in places. It is an old volcanic crater (and the world's biggest crater lake at that) which makes for spectacular scenery and some very refreshing swimming. Within the lake is the "island" of Samosir (actually linked by a narrow isthmus to the crater wall), upon which is found the Tuk Tuk peninsula, home of the majority of tourist places in the area. Back in the day when Sumatra was a big feature on the backpacker trail, Tuk Tuk was chief party spot for all of South East Asia. The local Batak people (different from the Karo Batak) enjoyed drinking, making music and generally having a good time - an agreeable coincidence for many likeminded backpackers.

Nowadays, Tuk Tuk's numerous guesthouses and hotels lie mostly empty, restaurants are relieved when they have a single table full in the evening, and souvenir shops are almost on a self service basis. The crowds have departed for Koh Phangnan's full moon parties, and the trickle of foreign tourists and weekend trippers from Medan cannot make up those numbers.



We booked ourselves into Hotel Carolina, chiefly for it's good swimming spot although the flushing toilets and hot water were not to be sniffed at. The good rooms were a little over-the-average price, but the basic ones at US$2 a night were a bargain - our American friends decided the latter were a better option, whereas I was craving my first hot shower for a couple of weeks and went expensive (US$8 per night).

Tuk Tuk and Samosir islands are big enough to warrant a set of wheels to get around, so I rented a moped for a few days to cruise around Tuk Tuk and explore the northern parts of Samosir. Although the lake is comparatively young - some 70,000 years - remains of megalithic cultures exist at Ambarita, just north of Tuk Tuk. Here, amongst the traditional Batak houses (very different to the Karo Batak style) are two sets of stone chairs where village elders used to discuss matters. Local history recounts that villagers where also tried for misdemeanours here; those found guilty were moved to the second set of chairs where their skin was sliced and rubbed with chilli and garlic, before they were beheaded in a very savoury death; historians are little more unsure about whether the unfortunate were then eaten with a portion of sticky rice.

The volcanic soil of the area provides very fertile land for rice growing, and a large part of Samosir is taken over with rice paddies. Rice harvesting seems to occur all year round; after harvesting and threshing, the rice straw is then burnt which provides most of Sumatra with a pale haze for much of the year - Malaysia makes yearly complaints as the smoke drifts across the Melaka Straits.

Detail on a traditional Batak house

By night, Tuk Tuk was a strange, almost lonely experience. Gone were the days where bars thronged with hedonistic backpackers willing to try the abundant local magic mushrooms; instead there were empty restaurants where an sleepy owner had to be found somewhere down the back on a mattress that had seen better days. I decided to forgoe the dubious temptation of "Special Mushroom Omlette" or "Special Mushroom Tea" - clearly the mushrooms hadn't demised along with the tourism. Janick and Inge were keen to see what the local disco had to offer, so we walked up to a place of pounding house music and flashing lights, encircled by a few mopeds. Walking in we found perhaps the entire 18-25 population of males from Tuk Tuk; Janick and Inge found their curiosity dried up as fast as the local's was aroused and we left in short order, never to return.

All that is not to say Lake Toba does not have charm - it does, albeit rather sleepy. There are lovely Batak houses, beautiful rice fields, many restaurants to sit in solitude gazing out over the lake whilst reading a book and sipping a fruit shake. But after 5 days it was enough for all of us, so we headed back to Parapat and caught the night bus to Bukittingi, several hundred further kilometres south.

The bus ride was distinctly average. Sitting at the back of the bus next to the toilet, I had a friendly Belgian guy on one side, and a local woman with her hyperactive toddler on the other. It had aircon which was promptly turned onto "refrigerate" setting, and a thankful lack of karaoke machines. The Trans-Sumatran highway, for most of the 15 hour journey, would have been more aptly named the Trans-Sumatran farm track; once the child next to me settled down with hypothermia I lent the mother my sarong to keep the little nipper warm - she promptly vomited on her child and used my sarong to wipe it up (and didn't tell me). As I said, average.

Bukittingi is another town with guide-overload and tourist underload; even as we headed up to a cafe from the bus terminal for breakfast, we were "shown" in by a guy who had followed us up the other side of the street then acted like he brought us there, earning himself a little commission in the process. Bukittingi is a fairly unremarkable town but it's surroundings are much nicer - very similar to Berastagi. After a kip our little gang - 3 Belgian lads, Inge, Janick and myself - headed around the market, which saw few enough white people to make this an absolutely hilarious occurrence for many. Once again, the fresh chicken was available "while-u-wait" - simply pick your chicken as it pecks around the cage, look the other way and... hey presto! A fully sliced and diced chicken.... "would you like the giblets with that mister???"







After the Belgian boys moved on and I washed my sarong and slept, I headed off with the girls on a day tour of the area with Fikar, a local guide who worked from a cafe as part of a co-op - we were happy to give him our money. The girls went as passengers on motorbikes; I had my own and we were soon cruising through rice paddies on our way to the Harau Valley, a spectacularly picturesque valley made of some kind of rock that I can't remember. Fikar was pleased that I seemed to be able to drive faster than 40km/h, even whilst wearing a comedy helmet made mostly of duct tape.





I had my own motorbike so that I could stay at the end of the day at Lake Maninjau, another volcanic lake near Bukittingi. We stopped at the top of the steep descent down to the lake via a series of 44 hairpin bends; the view was mostly obscured the haze generated by the smoke from fires burning in many rice paddies.


On the way to Lake Maninjau



Once at the bottom we pulled into the Beach Inn Guest House, my home for the next couple of nights. There was a steady onshore breeze and small waves lapped at the beach, whilst inside the friendly owners cooked up a range of delicious local food. After dark, Janick and Inge headed back to Bukittingi with Fikar- they were flying home the next day - and I settled down to a couple of days of tourist free isolation, with only a range of poor secondhand books to keep me company. In the end I was relieved I had not decided to stay longer - there was an overwhelming smell of fish from the fish farms in the morning still; at about 1pm the wind started as if turned on by a switch. The best bit by farm was the excellent food.

I headed back to Bukittingi via the lookout over Lake Maninjau - still obscured by smoke - and after buying a few traditional boxes. The local people around Bukittingi are called Minangkabau, with yet another distinctive architectural style and set of traditions, mostly based around the strength of the water buffalo, and in particular, it's rather large horns. Local legend tells the story of the origin of the Minangkabau name whilst fighting Javanese invaders; rather than pitching two armies in battle against each other, they chose to declare the victor based on the outcome of a contest between two water buffalo. The local Sumatrans, knowing that the Javanese had a much stronger and more powerful animal, starved a week-old buffalo calf and laced it's horn buds with small razors which promptly eviscerated the larger animal as the calf desperately started looking for milk. Minangkabau, in local dialect, means "the buffalo is victorious".


Traditional Minangkabau house

In Bukittingi I resolved to climb at least one of Sumatra's many active volcanoes; the one I chose was Merapi, which towers above the town to almost 3000m. We left at 11pm the following night, a small group of 4 of us who trudged slowly up through the cloud forest towards the summit. It was a long haul in the dark, but as we got above the tree line the views of Bukittingi were magnificent by night, we stopped for a very early breakfast to take in the view. By 6am we were on the summit and awaiting sunrise; it was a little cloudy but still very satisfying, and afterwards we walked around the still active crater that belched hydrogen sulphide and steam.



The cloud dropped down on us suddenly at about 7.30am, and we started the long descent as gentle rain started to fall. After an hour it became very heavy and with sodden clothes, aching legs and sore knees we eventually got back to Bukittingi in time for lunch and a well deserved sleep - I would leave for Singapore in the morning.



The following day was remarkable only for the speed of descent from the highlands to the coast near Padang, on the central west coast of Sumatra. It has long been the exit point for Sumatra, despite being barely half-way down it's length; that leaves over half of the an island as big as France unexplored. Padang is full of old Dutch colonial architecture that I missed; a few days previously Fikar had taken Janick around in search of family relatives who were thought to be based around Padang somewhere.

In the airport I saw more tourists in one day that I had done in on almost any other day in Sumatra. They were all surfers, mostly professional and sponsored by Red Bull, sickeningly good looking and all with beautiful girlfriends. I felt extremely inadequate.

In Singapore, I found and settled into a "boutique flashpackers" hostel close to Orchard Road, primarily because of it's proximity to the Indonesian embassy. It was also handily close to a doctor, which was lucky as I felt a little rough when I arrived, and rapidly developed what I thought (and the doctor thought) was a protozoal infection..... so far I've slept most of the time here. I'll let you know how it goes.