A Thai Diversion

If you are following along, you know that last month was Ramadan in the Muslim world (see last post). What you might not know however, is that a holiday known as Idul Firti (the Indonesian name for it, AKA Eid al-Fitr) follows Ramadan. Idul Fitri is basically a festival celebrating the breaking of the fasting associated with Ramadan and therefore marks the end of Ramadan. Break out the snacks!

It’s officially a one-day thing like our Christmas, but like our Christmas holiday season, everyone converts it into at least a week, and it’s pretty much a week of holiday chaos for 95% of the 250 million Indonesian Muslims on this archipelago. So ya, best comparison is our Christmas week where no rational person would expect anyone to be working or anything official to get done. Adding to the chaos is the Indonesian custom of “mudik” which basically means “homecoming”, and is the tradition of returning to your hometown for the holidays (“I’ll be home for Christmas” kinda thing). Literally a week of utter chaos where every road, every bus station, every airport, comes to a grinding halt of humanity, and anything remotely related to holidays and time off (restaurants, hotels, shops) is bursting at the seams. So what is a Canadian couple living in Indonesia to do with a week off in the midst of holiday chaos? Well, how about Thailand!

Oh, speaking of “couple”, the really big news is that AMY’S HERE! She arrived, for good, a couple weeks ago. Not one to stand still for long, Amy insisted we get outta Dodge for the week, which suited me fine of course. As mentioned in a previous post, the true value of where we live is being within taxi range of the Jakarta airport. From an 18-dollar Uber ride to the airport, we’re within a 2 to 4-hr flight radius of every country in southeast Asia.

So, Thailand. Neither of us had ever been, and it’s just one of those “must-do” countries. With only a week, we specifically set our sights on Railay, the rock-climbing Mecca. Being Nelsonites we knew of Railay from the endless Railay talk at potlucks among our climbing friends. A perfect one-week target. So we packed up our rope and set out to see what all the fuss is about.

To be completely honest, the climbing angle was just an excuse for us. Basically we brought our gear in case some climbing broke out. The real draw for us was simply the lure of tropical beaches, Thai food, and watching the sun set over the ocean. Amy’s internet sleuthing skills found us, what in our opinion, is the only desirable place to stay in Railay: the Railay Beach Club. Pricey for sure, but given the alternatives, definitely the best value for money in the area. The best way to describe it is “a house in the jungle”. Centrally located, quiet, self-contained with kitchens and beer fridges and covered patios, and on by far the best section of beach, it was the perfect base. A major highlight was the outdoor bathroom/shower. Nice! You know, you just can’t beat a hot shower in the rain J

Railay is a world-class rock-climbing destination in southern Thailand, known for its endless limestone cliffs projecting out of the surrounding turquoise waters and beaches of the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean). The topography is technically known as “karst” or karst formations, which are common across southeast Asia. Karst is formed by water flowing over and through the rock and dissolving it as it goes, which is the reason for the very cool rock formations which include the standard caves, stalagmites, and stalactites that cover the pages of National Geographic. To climbers, it turns everything into one huge outdoor climbing gym (complete with sand beach and ocean view!). Just miles and miles of vertical to over-hanging rock with outrageously huge jugs (climbing talk there). If you’ve ever wondered where climbing gyms get the ideas for the pre-fab holds that are bolted to the wall, this is it! It all makes sense now J

We actually did get some good climbing in, which was fun. Although being “low season” (AKA monsoon season), we had to fit it in between the downpours, so it definitely wasn’t perfect climbing weather. Of ridiculous coincidence, and firm proof that the world is indeed a small place, we randomly ran into our Nelson friends Ico and Aga, who were on a family reunion trip of sorts. What the??!! I know, insane, but true. So, that was fun, and especially because they are kick-ass climbers who could rope-gun for us (to the non-climbers: “rope-gun” means climbing a route first to get the rope to the top, so other less-worthy people like us can climb on “top-rope”).

Rob: top-rope courage

Amy: killing it at Railay

So, Railay, the review: definitely a beautiful place, surrounded by the iconic symbols of tropical paradise we imagine, i.e., sand, turquoise water, palm trees, but, as is usual for such a place, are we loving it to death? There is little doubt that 30 years ago, this was paradise lost. However, 30 years of unchecked unregulated development has turned Railay into a somewhat chaotic unregulated mix of luxury hotels adjacent to backpacker slums, interlaced by mud trails leading to an army of “guys with boats” shuttling the hundreds/thousands of daily camera-touting tourists to their next hour’s destination.

The biggest thing one needs to realize, is that Railay is not "authentic" pristine Thailand. If you're looking for Thai culture, keep going. Like other tourist havens such as Banff and Whistler Village, Railay is a tourist area in the middle of paradise, entirely created and catering to tourists. If yer looking for that perfect Thai street-food experience, or want to experience Thailand waking up in the morning over the rice paddies, this ain’t it. But, if you want to buy a “I love Thailand” tank top, go on a snorkeling tour, work on your tan, and get 2 for 1 cocktails at sunset, this is your place. (full disclosure: I bought the tank top J)

Now, don’t get me wrong. It's a fun place with tons to do. The climbing is, as it was, and that is world-class (with a bit more polished rock). From a climbing perspective, this is the place. My question is: what are all the non-climbers doing here?

 

In case you thought it was all deserted beaches

 

 

It's Ramadan

Editorial note: This post was written before the Orlando shooting. The timing of this post about Islam and Muslim traditions in the wake of the Orlando event, is purely coincidental, and has nothing to do with anything.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, meaning there are more Muslims in Indonesia than anywhere else on the planet. By the official stats, if Indonesia was 100 people, 86 of them would be Muslim. In Bogor, where we live, that number is almost certainly more like 95. There is the odd “Christian” around (if you are not a Muslim, you are a Christian, that’s the rule), but they are a rare and isolated breed. In my office of 50 Indonesians, there are 4 Christians (and 46 Muslims obviously).

OK, so if you are a student of religion and know your world religions (or a Muslim J), you are acutely aware that we are in the middle of Ramadan – the fasting month. But if you are like me, and clueless about things Muslim, you are thinking….hmmm, I have heard that word, but….what exactly is Ramadan? Excellent question. Technically, Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is a commemoration of the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. Whoa! OK. Got it.

Joking aside, Ramadan is a vitally important part of being a devote Muslim and basically represents a month of reaffirming their devotion, among many other things that I do not profess to know anything about. On the ground, the biggest things us bules notice are: (1) it is a month of daily fasting, and (2) the daily rituals like the call-to-prayer and praying are ramped way up.

The fasting part of the equation is incredible. By incredible, I mean you have to see it to believe it. The rule is: no ingestion of anything from sunrise to sunset. By “nothing”, we mean nothing, nada, zilchola. No food of any kind, and, get this, no liquid of any kind, not even water. Basically the only thing allowed to pass by your lips is air into your lungs. There are exceptions made for illness, pregnancy, mental issues, and things like that, but pretty much everyone is on the program.

My go-to lunch spot with the blinders on

As you can imagine, that tends to change the daily equation. Imagine not drinking a drop of water (or coffee!!) from about 6 am to 6 pm, every day, for 30 days….while maintaining your life, job, house, kids, etc. Gotta hand it to them on the devotion thing. Makes for a lonely coffee room these days though! Just me and the Christians. Although anyone who is not Muslim, and not fasting, is encouraged to keep a low profile while enjoying the sinful pleasures of food and drink. OK, I’ll grind my beans at home instead of at the office J

Of course the biggest tragedy for us bules, oh yes, and the Christians, is the complete lack of street food, a mere smattering of open restaurants, and a serious reduction in the already scarce supply of drinking establishments. Basically all things infidel are reeled in. Finding lunch, and an after-work beer has become rather challenging. However, I was warned in advance, and therefore made a special trip to one of the two places one can buy beer in this city of 1.5 million people, and filled my beer fridge (yes, dedicated beer fridge! Loving it).

Oh, and the curtains. Forgot about the curtains. You see, one does not want to temp the fasters with the sights and sounds of food and drink. So, in an ever-so-clever ruse, eating establishments that choose to stay open during the day hide their infidel customers from the outside world via curtains. I’m not making this up, it’s true.

OK, then there’s the “call to prayer”. The call to prayer, is the Muslim equivalent of church bells calling you to the church (the mosque in this case) – except for a few very significant, and very noticeable items. First thing we notice is that it’s every day, 5 times a day. Yep, by every day, we mean every day. No days off. Ever. Every day is Sunday. By 5 times a day every day, we're talking about starting at 4:15 am (ish) until the last one around 7 pm (ish). You may have caught the 4:15 am kick-off. Yep, not sunrise (which is more around 6 am), like in the Lawrence of Arabia movies. This is pretty much middle of the night. Pitch dark. Moon out.

Now, what happens you ask? Well, imagine an air raid siren going off outside your house at 4:15 am, every day. I know, you think I’m exaggerating. It can’t be that loud. I would think that too. Cuz you’re thinking: that’s impossible. That just wouldn’t happen. Welcome to Indonesia. J

You see, Indonesians are very fond of technology. And what has technology brought to the call to prayer? Electronic amplification of sound! Typically 4 speakers mounted at the top of the mosque tower (called the minaret) facing the 4 cardinal directions. The louder the better. I know what you’re thinking. Why not just live outside of earshot of the mosque. Well, we would all love there to be 50 square centimeters of Bogor where that would be true. That 50 square centimeters just doesn’t exist. In fact, it’s more like Mosque wars than anything else. Whoever is the loudest wins. However, I am told by the Christians that you learn to sleep through it. We’ll see.

Interestingly, and somehow more incredulous than ever, now that it’s Ramadan, the 4:15 am kick-off has been shifted ever so slightly earlier to 2 am. Yep, screaming microphones at 2 am in the dead of night. First time it happened I launched out of bed thinking I was having a heart attack. You see, everyone has to get up earlier so they can make food, feed the family, do the usual morning routine, and then get to the mosque, all before sunrise. By the time people get to work, they have been up and moving for 6 hours or so. So when do Muslims sleep?, you ask. Good question.

Ramadan Mubarak

 

A week in Jogja

Yogyakarta – a city of half a million people in central Java –  AKA Jogjakarta, or just jogja (pronounced “johg-ja”) is the cultural heart and epicentre of Javanese heritage and tradition. Given the cultural importance of the place, and the prevalence of language schools, this is where they send bules to learn Bahasa Indonesia (remember: bahasa = language). So here I am, in Jogja, on a 1-week language course. Cool.

Indonesian (or simply ‘bahasa”) is a fascinating language. As briefly touched on in a previous post, Bahasa is a modern language essentially invented in the early 1900s as a unifying language for Indonesia. Derived from Malay (i.e., the language of Malaysia), it is similar to Malay, except they control-alt-deleted the grammar out of it. Quite literally, there’s little, if any grammar.

By no grammar, we mean, there are no verb tenses, no verb conjugations, no articles, no gender, plurals are not used/important, pronouns are optional, and very weirdly, there is no verb “to be” (I know, how can that be? It just is – excuse the pun). By comparison, apparently there are approx. 80,000 words in Bahasa, versus a million in English. So ya, for every word in Bahasa, there are 10 or so varieties of that word in English (plus/minus, of course). Basically it’s caveman language. Which hey, makes it easy to learn (so they say anyway, we’ll see). Saya bule! Trans: “I am a bule” J Amy, “dia guru” = “she teacher”. Actually, there is no he/she (“dia” is gender-neutral), so it actually doesn’t even translate.  Crazy.

Making it even easier for us bules is the fact that Bahasa uses the Latin (or Roman) alphabet (i.e., the same one we use), and, pronunciation is more or less the same as English (no tonal stuff like other Asian languages – thankfully). So ya, on day-1 you can be reading out loud like a pro, with everyone nodding in agreement, just not having a clue what you’re saying. Kinda funny actually J

Jogya is decent place. As typical for Indo, lots going on. A highlight of the week was hitting up the Kranton, AKA “the palace”, which is the local sultan’s residence. For the 3-dollar price of admission they put on traditional music-dance shows, which are stunning. Funny though, in classic Indo style, there is no mention of the shows or advertisements for the schedule or related info. It’s all word of mouth. Like, why would you need to know when the show starts? One can only assume that if you need to ask, well, you really shouldn’t be there J

The classical traditional music of Java is the “gamelan”, which is essentially an orchestra of xylophone-like and percussion/gong instruments. Hauntingly beautiful music. If you want to smoke a doobie and contemplate reality, Javanese gamelan is for you.  The music is accompanied by the hallowed voices of several men and women producing a trance-like background melody. It’s all topped off by several sets of traditional dancing. It’s all very similar to the Balinese gamelan/dancing we saw in Bali, expect for one fascinating difference, the Javanese music and dancing is the slow-mo version. Kind of like tai-chi with gongs. Light up another doobie and enjoy the show J (joking aside, don’t do the doobie thing. Indo has the death penalty for drug (including pot) offences, which they are not afraid to use).

Then there’s the go-jeks. “Go-jek” could be the single best idea anyone anywhere has ever had. It’s an Indo thing. Basically it’s the motorcycle version of Uber. You download the app onto your phone, click a few buttons, and wham, a guy on a moto with a green go-jek jacket shows up to take you anywhere you want. They’re just buzzing around town like flies, and the app sends you the closest guy, so the wait is minutes. Five minutes would be a long wait. Price to go across town: a buck fifty, helmet included. If it’s raining….rain jacket included! J Brilliant concept. Of course, like Uber, all the taxi drivers and traditional bicycle-taxi guys hate them. But you know, you can’t stop progress. I used it every day to go back and forth to my language school. No looking back now.

Jogja’s real claim to fame is as a base for visiting the various temples in the region. The bid-daddy of them all is “Borobudur”, the largest Buddhist temple on the planet. If you’re sharp and have been keeping track, you are now thinking: wait, I thought Indo was muslim? Correct. It all has to do with the various waves of conquering religions from centuries past. Islam is merely the latest fade. In the past (we’re talking a thousand+ years ago), Java went through a Buddhist period, and even a Hindu period (which is why Bali is still Hindu today….one answer to this gigantic puzzle called Indonesia).

In fact, the region is also home to the largest Hindu temple in SE Asia, known as Candi (temple) Prambanan. I had an extra day so I rented a bike (3 bucks for the day, nice; decent bike too – Kona hardtail) and spent the day riding through rice paddies to check it out. Borobudur, while the true prize, is a drive, and I just wanted to get some exercise. Besides, Amy and I will no doubt be back to hit up Borobudur. So ya, Candi Prambanan was my target for the day. Built in the middle of the 9^th century, it’s your classically huge, elaborate array of stone temples in the middle of the rainforest, that upon first glance conjures up one word: “wow” (followed by: “cool”). It is fascinating to think that long long long before the Euros even thought of paddling over to North America, people here were building these incredible structures (by hand, which is most amazing). Makes our history seem trivial.

OK, just sitting here at the Jogja airport waiting for my return flight back to the big smoke (JKT). Got my oleh-oleh for the gang back at the office. Oleh-oleh is….ah, that’s another post (google it, if yer curious).

Sampai jumpa.

 

Cimaja

So it had to happen. The first serious motorbike mission. Yep, the motorbike is on the road! Yikes! I must say, leading up to it, I was more intimidated than actually looking forward to it. As mentioned previously, I am a rookie motorcycle enthusiast, and really, Indonesia is probably not the best place on the planet to learn (worst maybe?). But, I just figured I had to get on that bad boy and ride. If we can’t go on a motorbike surf trip…what exactly are we doing here? J

The background to the mission stems from the fact that I had a 4-day weekend. Like in Canada and probably most countries, Indonesia has official stat holidays – in fact, last time I counted there was about 20 of them, plus/minus. I say “about” because like almost everything here, it’s been hard to get a firm and direct answer to the question. I actually have no idea what the stats are for (does anyone really know?), all I know is that I have Thursday-Friday off, adding up to a nice loooong weekend.

OK, 4 days. Perfect length of time to load up the bike, and head south. South here means towards the south coast of Java, and into the surf zone. All surf in Indonesia is born as swells thousands of kms away and coming from the Southern (Antarctic) and Indian Oceans to the south and southwest, which then break majestically onto the first bit of land they encounter: the south shores of Indonesia.

The closest mapped out surf spot to Bogor is a place called Cimaja (pronounced see-ma-ja), a low-key surf area near the town of Pelabuhan Ratu (see previous posts). Bit of a ride because of the insanity of Indo traffic chaos, and roads laid in by villagers before Columbus discovered the Americas. The 100 or so kms takes about 4 hours. Yep, average speed: 25-30 km/hr, if you’re going 40, you’re killing it.  

The main break at Cimaja is a consistent right-hander that peels off Cimaja Point (starting to get the lingo here J) and breaks on a steep rocky beach with a serious rip. Not beginner friendly unfortunately (I am a zero on a scale from 1 to 10). But from what I can tell listening to my new California surf dude friend, Ryan, (this guy is the poster So-Cal surf dude with the long blond hair, and calls you dude; he’s a beach lifeguard near San Diego, nuff said), it’s a good wave, and worthy of the trip to come here. Sounds promising. Maybe one day we’ll be all growed up and we can surf here J

Fortunately there are other waves around (it is the ocean, after all). The kiddie pool (i.e., beginner area) is a sandy beach break (more lingo) down the road called Samudra. So OK, off to the kiddie pool then. I rented a board and lined up an instructor/guide/lesson (again, not really clear what he is) to take me out there. So in walks Hanki, the standard Indonesian 18-yr-old ripped surfer dude in shorts and flip flops that looks like he was actually born on top of a surf board. OK, so we’re going now? To which he replies: Yes, OK, we take you motobike. What?! Like, with you, and 2 surfboards!? He obviously has no idea that my total accumulated experience with this motorbike is under the average length of a couple good movies. OMG, do we have to? Yes….we do. I don’t know, I thought maybe he would have a van with a nice Thule rack or something. J

So we survived the motorbike shuttle. Barely. On the way back, I mistook a patch of greenery for ground, when in fact it was a 1-m drop off. Both me and the motorbike go down into the depths of the shrubbery. I realize now that having my wet slimy flip flops on was a bad move, and failed to catch my fall, despite the thumbs up reassurance received from 18-yr-old Indo surf dude that flip flops are perfectly good motorcycle footwear. Rookie mistake, won’t happen again. It, or something like it had to happen. Growing pains, as they say. Luckily this was a zero km/hr event, and the biggest damage was done to my manhood.

Insult to injury then occurred when one of the Brazilian surfers witness to the whole debacle calmly asks me “why don’t you use the moto with the surf rack on it?” And there it was, around the corner, the moto with the surf rack on it, generally available for anyone to use. Doooh!! So ya, lesson learned: always ask for, or rent, the standard surf rig in Indo: motorbike with surf board rack. Got it.

So Cimaja. Kind of a strange layout. You wouldn’t know you’ve arrived, unless you have it loaded on your google maps phone app, and the little blue dot tells you you’re there. In fact, I rode right past my accom, The Chill House – the low-budg surfer option, great people, fun times – on the first past. Everything, other than the wave, is nowhere near the water. From what I can tell, surfers don’t seem to care, as long as the wave is good, and you can feasibly get to it somehow. The 5-mins walk down the trail from the road qualifies obviously. Unfortunately though, it’s a tad disappointing to not be living on the water.

Not to worry though. As mostly a recon mission, the area has now been thoroughly scoped out, and the perfect beach bungalows with beer and comfortable chairs (which are shockingly rare here in this land of 90-degree straight-back wooden chairs) has been located down the coast, and complete with beginner beach break. Now all we need is Amy, and another long weekend! No doubt, the topic of a future post. See you then.