Bali: The rumors seem true

Where Taman Negara definitely fulfilled our expectations for a dense jungle, Bali feels like a beautiful, well-tended tropical garden. Here is where we had lunch upon arrival in Ubud:

We sat side-by-side on cushons at a long wooden table, directly in front of this pool covered in lilly-pads.

And here is our homestay from the first night (outside the family compound):

Jen in front of our room...

These were not very carefully chosen shots. Everything in Ubud is lush and beautiful. There are flowers, coconut trees, and ornate stonework everywhere.

As we walked the streets, I was excited to find what looked like a temple from its decorated stone walls and statues. It turns out that it was just a normal family compound. On every street there are at least a few such walled compounds which all look like exotic temples. Here is another pretty average entrance.

Remember: they all look like this. It's pretty amazing. The streets are narrow, and with the exception of a few main tourist thoroughfairs, fairly quiet. Here's what the street looks like right outside our homestay:

For you chess fans out there, we also found the Ubud chess club, one street over (though it seemed to be closed when we walked past).

The food has also been excellent. We've been eating a lot of vegetable, tofu, and tempe curries. A delicious meal and a fresh fruit juice is about $1.50, so we've felt very spoilt.

We went on a 2-hour hike out of Ubud, along a ridge next to the small river canyon (there are many rivers that run north-south through Bali). Here's a good shot of the edge of Ubud in the distance.

Futher along we got into the rice paddies.

Tomorrow, we move to a different homestay--with a Balinese music teacher! I can take lessons in Balinese drum, or any of the Gamelan instruments for $8/hour, so you'll likely hear more about that as well.

Resting in Kuala Lumpur

Both Lima and Kuala Lumpur have a mystique about them I can only attribute to "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego". (It's too bad I'm still only a gumshoe, and we won't be going to Cairo).

Lima, I'm sorry to say, didn't really live up to it's mystique, but Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the Malaysians call it) does. We think KL is pretty keen.

Normally I'm not one for edifices (at least, of the non-philosophical variety, har har), but the Petronas Twin Towers are really cool. Here are Jen and I standing in front of them!

In the basement of the towers is a sweet shop called La Cucur, which specializes in traditional Malay sweets (about which more later). Here is Jen enjoying a sampler plate:

In general, we liked the food in KL a lot. There was a fantastic Indian restaurant near our hotel where we could get Roti Telur (egg Roti, pictured below) with curry dipping sauce for 1.60 Rm (which is 45 cents), as well as my favorite Teh Tarik ever for an additional 30 cents. In the afternoon, I would go through about 4 or 5 of them as I sat and did my math (which I've been told to spare you the details of, even though I've been working on really cool and interesting problems). A little further on, there was another great Indian place where we could get a delicious Thali for about a dollar.

Almost every day we were there, the evening brought a pretty substantial rain storm, which was also fantastic. Here it is just starting to rain in China Town. You can kind-of make out the fruit seller, and the cauldron of roasting chestnuts.

After a delicious dinner, we returned to find that the street our hotel was on had turned into a river!

Pretty much everyone spoke at least some English, so it was very easy to navigate our way around the city and attend to our business. It was the work of a single day to find the Indonesian embassy and get our 60-day tourist visas, as well as to get a prescription for our anti-malarials and purchase enough to last until the end of our SE Asia leg (plus 30 days). (we had some pills, which we've been taking, but not enough).

That's it! Next we go to Ubud, the arts and cultural center of Bali!

Taman Negara

We've just returned from several days in Malaysia's Taman Negara jungle--an approximately 160 million year old rain forest. We took a 3 hour bus ride from Kuala Lumpur, followed by another 3-hour ride on longboats to the Kuala Tahan village at the park's south entrance. From the water, the jungle looked rather quiet and still--statuesque, almost. At the "village", there were several restaurants on floating pontoons, and accomodations up a short hill.
We booked into what was described as a "bamboo chalet" in the Durian guest house about a 5-minute walk from the river.


Inside there were two beds with mosquito nets, and an attached sort-of bathroom. There was no hot water, but the beautiful part about the jungle is that you only want cold showers, so it worked out perfectly.

The walk to the chalet from the river took us through a grove of what appeared to be rubber trees. The white discharge coming out of the tree is actually solid (or was when we got to it), and if you pulled it, it snapped and streched like rubber!

For our first full day we went for a nature walk along a short loop trail with placards that gave us information about the plants. Our spirits were high at the prospect of walking through what seemed to us at the time, a quite dense and jungle-like place. Little did we know that this was but a gentle first taste.

We continued with a very exciting (and virtually free, which was nice) canopy walk! This also proved to be a dry and comfortable way to see the jungle. The photo below was taken moments before Jen spoted what we think was Jackfruit growing on the trunk of a tall tree almost within reach.

* * *

With such a succesful and event-filled first day, we decided that the next day we should book an overnight spot in an animal hide. The tour information we had said that they are built above artifical salt licks, and that you can stay over and watch the jungle animals at night. "How charming!" I thought, vaguely imagining an experience something along the lines of the canopy walk. This was not exactly how thing were to turn out.

In the morning, we stopped by the park's information desk to reserve our spot in the hide. We also double-checked that we would be able to walk there ourselves without guides. "Oh yes," they assured us, "no problem. It gets dark around 6:30 in the jungle, so just make sure you get there before dark."

Upbeat and excited, we set out at around 2pm. Once across the river, we became somewhat confused because the only trail appeared to go in the opposite direction that our map indicated we should. There was a small village at the trail head, so Jen and I wandered around until we found some people to ask. Jen asked in Indonesian if they spoke English, which they did, and we described our confusion. They told us that the path would split later on, but they seemed hesitant. After much discussion amongst themselves in Indonesian, they said that the trail was not very good and they were afraid that we would get lost. We reasoned that if the split in the trail didn't look good, we would change our plan and continue on the main trail to another hide further along, so, remaining optimistic we set out again.

This trail was nothing like the relatively sunny and flat nature loop we'd been on the previous day. The trail was steep and uneven with roots and vines. Vegetation was everywhere and even at 2 it seemed very dark. Within 20 minutes, our clothes were entirely soaked through with sweat as if we'd been swimming. We recommend viewing the next set of photos after spending 30-60 minutes in a sauna, to better appreciate the atmosphere.

We passed hornet nests in the trees, and huge termite mounds on the ground.

A 3-4 inch flying beetle with a fat shiny black body dive-bombed my head. While climbing over one of the many fallen logs that blocked the trail, a cutter ant got on Jen's pants and started biting (or cutting) her. (This would later happen to me as well). As we paused to inspect a superhighway of termites, Jen noticed a grotesquely mobile leech on the ground:



We were starting to get nervous because the trail wasn't splitting when we finally arrived at the split. There were signs with arrows, but they had been knocked to the ground and broken in half. The split going in the direction we wanted had intentionally been blocked with branches.

After a brief conference we decided we'd try to take the split, and if it ever seemed questionable, we'd go back. A different couple might have thought that an intentionally blocked path was itself questionable. We didn't have that thought. I left a marker at the trail head indicating which direction we'd gone, took a compass reading, and we were off. The trail started fairly well, but got increasingly narrow and overgrown as we proceeded. After about 5 minutes it disappeared entirely into a bog. As we were in the process of deciding to head back we noticed that the creepy leeches we'd seen earlier were now on us. Not only had they crawled onto our feet and legs from the ground, but had also (it seemed) dropped from the trees on to our upper-halves.

We may not have handeled this discovery with perfect poise and composure, but we did succesfully pull them off ourselves and pull ourselves together. The shock of the leeches drove home just how vulnerable we were in the jungle, however; also, just how alone and in a bog we were at that particular moment. Jen had always feared that the jungle was teeming with life that was out to get her, and right at that moment, alone in the noisy bog, her fears seemed very real and justified. I doubt it took us more than 1 minute to get back to the original split in the trail.

* * *

It was almost 4 as we continued to the next hide on our map. We decided that if we didn't find hopeful signs by 5, we would turn around so we could get out of the jungle before nightfall. (We had headlamps, but didn't exactly relish the idea of having to use them to tromp through the dark). After another hour of walking, we arrived at one of the traditional villages that the tour literature boasted guided tours of. I asked one of the inhabitants in Indonesian if he spoke English, but he didn't. Fortunately, we spotted one of the tour guides who did, and he described how we could get to the hide. Even though it was 5pm now, it seemed quite close to get to the hide, and we were feeling reassured by the presence of other people nearby.

So we set out again, picking leeches off ourselves about every 10 minutes or so, trying to quicken our pace as we heard thunder in the distance. Finally, at around 5:40 or 6, just as we were debating giving up, we found the hide!

Inside we found 6 wooden bunkbeds, all pushed together in the center of the room, two large viewports, and a number of smaller windows around the rest of the room.

At once, several things seemed fairly clear: 1). there was no salt-lick, and it seemed unlikely we'd be able to spot any animals in all the vegetation, 2). there was no need to book ahead because no one else was going to be coming to the hide, and 3). since the hide was completely open to the jungle, and we had no sleeping bags or mats to put on the unpadded wooden bunkbeds, we would probably not be sleeping terribly well.

Just then, one of the most torrential downpours I've ever seen began, and didn't abate for most of the night:

As it got darker we attempted to use our headlamps to see if there were animals, but it was obviously hopeless. I did actually see an animal, however; I almost stepped on a fairly large frog that had somehow found its way up the steps and into the hide. I also discovered a large spider on the bunk beds and was very disturbed to find that no matter how hard I tried, or how quickly I moved, I could not kill it. Though I swung my sandal as fast as possible, its reflexes were faster and it somehow always managed to run out of the way. This completely blew my mind; I was totally helpless to do anything at all to this spider. So we left it be.

Despite having to sleep with only the soaking wet clothes on our backs, we slept pretty well and awoke in the morning feeling refreshed and optimistic, considering the circumstances. The rain had let up, and we were ready to head back. Though we didn't relish having to face the leeches again, we were resigned, if not accustomed, to the routine of their discovery and removal.

The jungle had one last surprise for us, however. As we left the hide we heard a very loud and harsh barking noise. This was the first signal we'd had of larger wildlife, and we weren't particularly egar to encounter it away from the hide, though the sound was still far off. After our return to Durian, I tried to reproduce the noise for the hostel keeper, and he said he thought it was a barking deer (though at the time Jen and I were both thinking: "Tigers bark, don't they? Sure they do. I sure hope that's not a tiger!"). Now that we're back in touch with the Internet, I agree that it was the deer. Here is someone else's recording that is very similar to what we heard (though ours was somewhat lower in pitch): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVmEpZeD3wI

We can safely say that we pushed ourselves to the limit of the sort of jungle experience we want to have, and are happy to have done so. Jen is completey covered with bug bites, and the places we pulled leeches off are still visible on our feet and legs. (We decided to spare you the photos of these). So, though we enjoyed our adventure, we are also happy to be back living an air-conditioned, leech-free life in KL.

Malacca (views and impressions)

It's taken us a few days to adjust and orient ourselves, but we think we could do quite well in Malacca. We've been staying a few blocks away from the interesting but somewhat touristy center of the old China town, called Jonker Street (pronounced "yonker"). The majority of the tourists are Chinese, however, so it doesn't feel as touristy as it might, to us.

Jen has a linguistic theory about the origin of the name "Jonker" street. Malacca was controlled by the Dutch for a long time, and she thinks that perhaps the word Jonker comes from the Dutch name for the Chinese sailing ships called junks.

Just as many of the cities in Peru had roaming stray dog populations, Malacca has stray cats everywhere, which I greatly prefer. I expect it's probably a good way to keep down the cities rodent population, as well.

We're really growing to like the familiar sights around our daily routine in Malaccal. Here is a bridge that we cross every day to get to the hawker center.

And the Dutch church on the other side of the river...

Malacca seems especially beautiful and welcoming at night. There's something very safe and comforting-feeling about night-time in a very warm and humid place. There are always lots of people out eating and enjoying themselves, everything is lit up very beautifully.

There's a Chinese temple across the street form our house which has, for three nigths in a row, had a large banquet, music, a lion dance, and ceremonial burning of paper on the street. I thought it might be associated with hungry ghost month which is happening soon (maybe now?) but our host Howard thinks it's something else.

There's also a mosque a few blocks away, so we've been enjoying hearing the muezzin call to prayer 5 times a day. It's very beautiful, and I'm sorry I haven't made a recording of it yet, but we should have plenty of chances later.

Finally, a random picture we took outside a pet shop on one of Malaccas many side-streets:

Malacca (food first)

Leaving Singapore by bus, there were buildings all the way up to the water. On the Malaysia side of the bridge, there were no buildings at all; only trees growing out of the water. The 4 hour bus ride underscored our sense of truely being in a jungle country.

At the bus station in Malacca, a very friendly group of smiling teenagers with emo haircuts helped us figure out how to walk to our hostel. They seemed a little surprised we wanted to walk, but our map seemed to indicate that it was very close. After a 45 minute walk through the heat and humidity, most of which was along a road without sidewalks on the outscirts of town, we finally found our destination. Howard, the hostel owner laughed when he saw our map. It's 10 years old; exactly when the bus station moved outside of town. On the up side, we saw a quite large monitor lizard in the river.

The hostel owner, Howard, is also extremely friendly. When he found out we were from California he asked if we spoke Spanish, and has since said almost everything in both English and immediately afterwards in Spanish. On our second night, he drove us to a street market in a residential section of town. There were many temporary stands set up selling produce and prepared foods. Here's a shot of the market:

This vendor is making "carrot cake"--a Chinese stir fry made from raddish cake and egg. (You can see the large, flat white raddish cakes on the right side of his walk).

Another stall had many different kinds of steamed dumplings. You'll notice that the prices all say RM 1.00. 1 Ringgit is a little less than 30 cents.

On the first night, we enjoyed the fare at the Newton hawker center, where they had many of the same Malay dishes Khir showed us in Singapore:

Here, they are often not called Malay dishes, however. A cendol (a dessert with coconut and palm sugar) or laksa dish (spicy noodles) will be called "nyonya cendol" or "baba laksa", indicating that they are dishes of Chinese immegrents who assimilated into Malay culture. It's not really clear what the difference in naming is about.

We have also been enjoying many different kinds of treats. There are lots of shaved-ice desserts with fruit (strawberries, mango, etc.)

Jen has also discovered her addiction for Cendol, the dessert I mentioned earlier.


It's got coconut (usually coconut cream), palm sugar, and small noodle-like segments made from rice flour heavily infused with the flavor of pandan leaf. The ones we've had in Malacca also usually have shaved ice and sometimes beans.

Two Malay Weddings

When we left for Peru, mom said "maybe you should bring some nice clothes along too."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, in case you get invited to a wedding" she said.

We lugged our nice clothes around Peru for 6 weeks without using them once, so we left them behind in California before coming to SE Asia, telling each other "invited to a wedding; that's silly. Why did we think we would get invited to some stranger's wedding, anyhow? Where does mom come up with this stuff?"

Well, today we were invited to not one, but two Malay weddings. Mom was right after all.

* * *

A traditional Malay wedding has, apparently, 1000-2000 or more people attending and lasts all day. The bride and groom's families each have seperate, concurrent receptions in different locations where well-wishers show up and leave whenever they like throughout the day. There is a buffet with food, and you can sign the wedding book, eat, and make merry.

At some point during the day the groom and his attendants leave the groom's reception and make their way to the bride's reception. All of the bride's female relations will block his way when he arrives, and he must beg, argue, and, in the end, usually bribe his way past them to gain access to his bride. He then brings her back to his family's reception.

At the first wedding, we were present for this return. Here's what it looked like:


And here's a short video of part of the ceremony:

At a Malay wedding, the bride and groom are called "queen and king for a day", and are, quite literally, treated as royalty. In this video, "bodyguards" are honoring their arrival (in royal dress) with a display of the Malay martial art pencak silat.

Here the procession is trying to get inside, but has again been temporarily barred by female relatives.

Inside the reception room, the couple take their "thrown", and the same group of musicians performed a very beautiful song. Though there isn't much happening in the video, I included it for the music.

* * *

At the second wedding, we arrived after all the excitement, but not too late to be invited to have our picture taken with the bride and groom (which made us very shy). Jen had learned the appropriate phrase for congradulations in Malay, which was a big success.

Mustafa

We have just been somewhere that's like having the whole Internet in a single store.

Mustafa is two full city-blocks long, six stories high, and sells everything. You can buy fresh produce, frozen Paratha, diamonds, gold jewelry, kitchen knives, badminton rackets, toothpaste, dishwashers, flat plasma screen tvs, sarees, books, music, movies, magazines, and a whole host of other things, all under the same roof. And it's open 24 hours a day. And the prices are cheap. Awesome.

More good eating

A few more exceptional meals in the last few days.

Eating at the Hawker Center

We decided to visit the market in preparation for cooking, and ended up postponing our own cook to eat at the bustling hawker center upstairs from the market.

Here I am about to enjoy a whole spread of different Malay foods (not by myself; I had help). There were several vegetarian dishes, as well as skate wing a spicy-sour sauce, and beef rendang which is an extremely common Sumatran dish. Eating off of banana leafs turns out to be quite common. At the train station we even saw plastic plates that were shaped and ribbed like the the banana leaf and colored green in imitation.

The beef rendang was especially good. Khir explained that it's cooked by boiling it in coconut milk (and spices), and as the oils release from the coconut and the liquids boil off it naturally transitions from boiling to frying in coconut oil. It was extremely tender and flavorful.

Another favorite of ours was a spiced potato croquet which we ended up cooking for ourselves the next day (about which more in a minute).

For dessert, we had freshly fried banana fritters. There are many different varieties of banana here that vary widely in texture and taste. My favorite fritter was of a banana that's much darker in color (the flesh looked , pulpier in texture, and which has a strong citris taste). Here are the ladies who ran the shop...

Cooking

The next day we cooked a 5-course lunch for ourselves (with Khir and two friends). At the market you can buy freshly grated coconut. Here is one of Khir's friends squeezing the freshly grated coconut to get the juice out to use in our curry sauce.

Here are Jen and I frying potato for one of the appetizers.

Here's the curry pot before adding the tempe, tofu, shrimp-paste and coconut milk.

Here is Khir preparing the layers of special 3-layer drinks he made for us. The bottom layer is reconstituted basil seeds (seen in the bowl on the bottom). I forget offhand what the other layers are, but the whole thing is topped off with rose syrup, crushed ice, and evaporated milk. Very delicious!


And here are the dishes: This was the potato fritter dish we had at the hawker center yesterday. You fry potatoes, then crush them with a morter and pestle, mixing in nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, fried shallot, parsley, salt and pepper. Form them into loosely packed croquets, dip in egg and fry.

Here are our boiled gong gong (the mini conch-like shellfish in the top bowl) and cockel.

Here are some crabs we steamed, the tofu and tempe curry, and our freshly made sambal.

And everyone (minus Khir who's taking the photo) sitting down to eat!