Mama, I’m Comin’ Hoooome

Sitting on the second of three ridiculously long flights today, I have a couple secs to review some choice moments of the last 2 months. I’ll begin with the most recent.

I flew out of Manila this morning en route to Tokyo. Rollin into the airport around 7 AM, I go through the first security check to enter the actual terminal, only to go through security again after check-in, and then ONCE AGAIN at my gate before I finally board the plane. Three times seems a little excessive, no?

Perhaps more disconcerting is that you KNOW it’s only a matter of time before US airports get word of this and feel the need to up the ante. Before we know it we’ll be forced to strip naked and surrender urine, saliva and blood samples to brave the gauntlet of no less than five security checks before boarding a plane. F. Word.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t speak so soon since at the airport in Bali, this old dude is getting held up at security and they make him go through his bag… First item out? A switchblade. No big deal. The guy seemed pretty amused to boot and/or was in late stages of dementia. Oh what? I can’t bring this on here? Another time in France, another old man was being held up all confused-like and from his carry-on they pull literally 3 bottles of wine. Right after he finished saying he had no liquids in a Ziploc. So close. Those were juuuust over 100 ml buddy.

Anyway, I get through everything unscathed and realize I have like 150 Philippine pesos left, aka about $3. So naturally I figure I might as well buy something and rid myself of otherwise useless cash. Little did I know I was embarking on an impossible task. I look around duty free but obviously ain’t affording no perfume or Gucci shades for 3 bucks so I try to settle for what I really wanted anyway – decent chocolate to eat later in the day (let me just say - Asia, your food is so tasty but your chocolate just sucks).

So I’m perusing the Lindt, Ferrero Rocher and the like but of course it’s all too rich for my blood, err, wallet. I spot a bag of peanut M&Ms and I’m saved, or so I think… I kid not when I say the M&Ms were priced at $8.30. And yes, the price was in US dollars just to drive the gravity of the situation instantly home. EIGHT dollars for peanuts and chocolate blanketed in a tantalizing candy shell! How do these people sleep at night?! Those M&Ms better have been coated in pure gold otherwise I don’t even know how that store pretends to sell anything.

Reluctantly, I finally resigned myself to the fact that no chocolate will be had (decent or otherwise) since I think the airport shop owners conspired to do everything in their power to make it impossible to buy anything besides Ramen noodles for less than $6. Brutal. After searching fruitlessly for a few more minutes through bags of dried pineapple and durian candies (that stinky fruit that I can’t imagine WHO wants immortalized in taffy form), I shuffle to my gate.

Minutes later, I somehow find myself standing in a ridiculously cold air conditioned airport licking an ice cream cone topped with 2 scoops of chocolate & mango ice cream. At 7:30 A.M. What the. How did I come to this? So desperate to spend $3 on something, ANYTHING… it was another instance where I realized I need to think about making some changes in my life…

Anyway I got to Japan for the first of many layovers in Tokyo. I’ll make this short but I know the Japanese are famous worldwide for their technology and this is no more true than when it comes to their toilets. They can sing, blow bubbles and read your kids a bedtime story before you empty your bladder. I just have to ask though - are there more dirty bums here or do the Japanese just really love the bidet? They are everywhere! In every public toilet! Why?! No further questions on that.

Tokyo is also an interesting airport cause if what I was told is true, apparently no major intercom system is in place to call people airport-wide to their gate. As a result they have these genteel Japanese airport people constantly walking around looking for passengers. Case in point - as I type this a small gray haired man just walked by calling final boarding for KLM passengers going to ‘Minneaporis’. Aah Engrish.

Speaking of funny Engrish, the Philippines seemed by far the most Westernized of all the SE Asian countries I visited (I get why, due to US imperialism in the country and whatnot) but even their impeccable English was not immune to funny signs… For example:

Finally. Finally!

They sure didn’t waste anytime there. It drove the Bush grill out of – ah, nevermind.

Aaand my personal favourite:

Ahahaha. I thought some of our shirts with mistranslated Chinese characters were funny but we got NOTHIN on this. Was it some sort of conference? At any rate, somebody really needs to let dude know… you cannot just walk around wearing that.

I’m sad I only got to spend like 5 days in Philippines, most of which was in Boracay aka tourist island paradise but managed to do something cultural besides get my tan on and saw a cockfight (note: word choice will be watched carefully in this paragraph…). Before PETA looks me up and stabs me in the sleep, let me at least say it’s legal in the Philippines. And the fights would’ve happened if I was there or not. That’s all I got.

Ironically, I had just watched the ‘The Little Jerry” episode of Seinfeld literally the day before so I was primed and ready for what I had once thought was a humane, dignified sport. Just kidding, I never thought it was humane but all I kept thinking the whole time was lines from the show.

It was kind of an interesting experience and a lot less gory than I expected. Basically it’s just a ball of feathers and roosters jumping over/at each other and then it’s done with one laying on the ground. Apparently it takes more than a day to see what’s actually going on with their foot razor things.

All told, people watching was a lot more interesting. Apparently normally women aren’t allowed in so me and this other girl from my hostel were like 2 of 5 girls in the whole place while the rest was men going bananas betting on the birds. The point right before the fight starts is the best cause the whole place just erupts with dudes yelling the same word over and over and gesturing wildly. Somehow this supposedly works out to a semi-effective betting system.

I was pullin’ for Chan-Chan and Jr. Tulubhan. Don’t ask me which birds they were.

So at it stands, I’m on a plane bound for Seattle and eventually I’ll land in E-town whereupon I will proceed to promptly die on arrival. Apparently it was –42 CELCIUS (people keep not believing me when I say that) there the day before yesterday. THE HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!! I could go on with the exclamation marks. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again, I’m reminded why I haven’t lived in Canada through the winter in 5+ years. My worst nightmares have come true. Asia’s been good to me so at least I can say I died happy. The one bright spot is I get to see my German again. Shout out to him. I’ma go take a nap.

Merry Christmas kids.

Sungai Geringging

Last Sunday night after two flights on yet another shady Indonesian airline (I’m lookin at you, Lion Air) and a 2 hr cab ride through the country – during which the lost driver stopped to ask for directions not once, not twice, but thrice – I finally got to the Hands On Disaster Relief base in the country outside Sungai Gerringing.

Note: to date I have taken 4 flights within Indonesia on 3 different airlines. I have yet to take a flight that has taken off less than an hour late… Just sayin.

So to back the disaster train up a little: at the end of September two crazy earthquakes – 7.0+ monsters on the Richter scale – struck this part of Sumatra and wreaked some havoc. People died, houses got ravaged and consequently, mad quantities of NGOs rolled in to help with much-needed cleanup and rebuilding. While I was in Yogya, I found out about HODR and a combination of the following led me to believe I should probably go… 1. No plans for the rest of my time in Indonesia/no plans on how to get to Manila from Yogya, and 2. Feeling like I should maybe actually do something for someone in need after engaging in pretty much wholly unbridled hedonism for the last month and a half (heck, maybe the last 23 years?)

Plus, how often am I in Indo – or anywhere for that matter – where I have a free few days to help with disaster cleanup? Game time.

The work mostly consisted of demolishing houses that were made unsafe by the earthquakes having shifted walls and cracked girders and such. Do I know what a girder is? No… but I’ve always wanted to say that. After demolition (or “deconstruction” as we were supposed to refer to it since it sounds less like young kids just going to town tearing houses apart… even though that’s basically what it is) we’d salvage and sort through rubble for bricks, wood, and other good stuff to use for rebuilding.

A day in the life consisted of rollin out stacked 10 deep in the back of a pickup to work from 7:30-11:30 AM and again from 1:30-4:30 PM in some crazy heat and humidity. Let’s just say I got my sweat on reeeeeeal good and I can confidently say I’ve never been so dirty in all my life. Felt good though. I tried at all costs to avoid a sweet farmer tan complete with glove lines but I’m not sure how successful that was….

At the base there were about 30 volunteers between about ages 19 and 35 all living in this converted local house. Cold bucket showers, 2 squat pot toilets between the lot of us and the same exact meal every meal for 3.5 days. ‘Nuff said. It served as a poignant reminder of why I have a strong hatred for the North American version of that experience: camping. Except people camp for “fun”.

I kid. It was all good. Plus, anything more than the basics in that kind of situation just wouldn’t feel right.

The people I had the opportunity to work with were cool and there was a sprinkling of people from all over the world though it seemed most cats were from the UK, Australia and the States. A dude from Ontario, another from Quebec, and I held it down for the Canadian club.

Over the course of my short few days there I saw some interesting stuff, not limited to: 3” giant scorpions, the first Asian woman I have seen smoke a cigarette (that doesn’t sound too exciting but ALL the men smoke and I’ve never seen a woman light up in almost 2 months here) and a couple trained monkeys on really long leashes shimmy up suuuuper tall palm trees and throw the coconuts down to the owners. I need to get me one of those.

It was interesting working at some of the houses that were closer to town because people would constantly stop by to watch what was going on… not help, but watch about 99.9% of the time. That was a bit strange. The local kids would also come watch, usually help til they got bored/tired and inevitably share whatever English they knew. This was always “What is your name, where are you from?” and counting 1-10. They also waved and yelled hello like it was the first time they had seen foreigners every single time the truck passed going to/from sites. That never got old. (That was actually genuine. The fact that I have to point that out is probably indicative of a cynicism problem…).

For sleeping, I scored the coveted bottom bunk right next to the open window. Though ridiculous mosquito bites were an unfortunate side effect, I felt like I was in another world when I could fall asleep under the brightest stars mine eyes have ever beheld and then be woken up at dawn by the haunting melody of call to prayer coming from the neighborhood mosque. Moments like that make this whole travel thing worthwhile…

To sum it up – my time there was short but really worthwhile and I was super glad I got the chance to be a part of the whole operation if only for a few days. If anybody ever wants to volunteer to work on any relief efforts, HODR pretty much sets up wherever help is needed and takes volunteers for as long/short as they can come out. Good deal. Check it out: http://www.hodr.org.

I left yesterday from Padang to get to the Philippines (I’m on a bus now, about to get on a boat to Boracay and it’s been 21 hrs since I left. I have yet to see a bed…). I got 5 days left in Asia. Sad truths right there.

Before I end this, a couple comments/questions I need to throw out there in the world:

Who is buying $1350 shark fin at the airport? While I’m walking to my gate in Jakarta, I pass a “Marine Products Store” selling, among other things, 2 foot by 1 foot size giant dried shark fin. Bear in mind this store is located past security so whoever is buying fin is doing so solely on impulse. What. The. Plus, if that fin tip isn’t a weapon, I don’t know what is. At the same airport I also watched NHL highlights and got a massage while I waited for my connecting flight… so it was a bit of a mixed bag.

Also in the airport was a HUGE sign over baggage claim that read “Drugs: cost is not worth such satisfaction”. For some reason it seemed funny at the time. Satisfaction?

Add this to the list of things that have been yelled my direction by locals: “Hello, thank you!”. Just get all the English you know out there in one go.

I Believe It's Jogging or Yogging. It might be a soft J…apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild.

As of Wednesday I’m coolin out in Yogyakarta, still in Indonesia. I decided, sick as Bali was, I should see some of the rest of the country especially since Bali is supposed to be so different. Enter this ville.

So far I’ve visited a village that got straight mowed down by lava after a volcano eruption in 2006, a silver shop, dragon fruit “orchard” (somebody correct me on that one…?), and some rad Buddhist and Hindu temples.

On the rando crazy Asian side – I saw a monkey dressed in shorts & a t-shirt riding a tiny motorcycle on the median at a stoplight while his master played a drum in the hopes of makin some extra scrilla. Now that is the kind of street theatrics I will gladly support. At another stoplight, traditional Javanese dancers complete with costume, makeup and music rolled into the intersection, danced for 30 seconds, then walked around to cars to collect change. This needs to catch on elsewhere... I’d never be bored in traffic again.

Then again, maybe people here just need something to break up the monotony of never going any faster than an average speed of 40 km/h. EVER. Alright, correction, I once hit 50. But the fact that the speedometer in the van I’ve ridden in for the last 3 days tops out at 120 km/h (aka, what 70 mph?) means obviously nobody is getting anywhere near that. I have proof traffic moves this slow in the fact that a dude got off a moving bus today to yell at some lady to move her car, jogged to catch back up to the still-moving bus, and hopped back on.

Anyway, back to the van I’ve been riding in… Dude at my hostel, Mr. Adi has driven me around to all these places rollin deep in an ‘85 Suzuki Super Carry 1000 (I did not make that name up), aka a van without a grill. Yeah. Like inside the van, the front under the dashboard is just wide open. You can watch the ground fly by beneath you. Grill was probably the incorrect term there but whatever.

This grill-lessness allows for a nice breeze to flow through the vehicle during nice weather, but yesterday it starts raining and all of a sudden I find myself being pelted in the face from below. The physics of this were possible due to the fact that my legs are too long to sit in the front of the van so I have to sit in the middle of the 2nd row to accommodate my limbs. This provides an ideal climate for the raindrops to fly in off the wheels, through the hole and at a perfect trajectory to land on only me and my mug. A delight.

Please note the fact that this ice cream bar is referred to as an Instrument of Delight on the bottom. Yes, yes it is.

Before the rainstorm, I had decided to go check out Borobudur a Buddhist temple (Prambanan, a Hindu one, was the next day). Really cool old temples, circa 9th-10th centuries but maybe more interesting – since you can go Wikipedia that noise – is that people here are funny.

I swear, I exaggerate not, when I say people asked to take a picture of/with me upwards of 25 times in 2 days. I counted. It was 27. And I caught people videocamera-ing (it’s now a verb, tell your friends) me on three separate occasions. Just creepin. Paparazzi what? After a while I started to throw my camera into the mix so I now have a plethora of pictures of me with several groups of enthusiastic Indonesian strangers. The perfect souvenir. And I thought the staring had tapered off indefinitely after Cambodia.

For example…

And those are only the ones I got pictures of.

At the silversmith workshop, the cat that runs the place gives me a tour and then proceeds to tell me he’ll give me a better deal only if I bargain in Indonesian. My vocab literally includes banana, careful, thank you and maybe 4 other words (including the numbers 1, 2 and 5. I consistently forget the rest…) so clearly that wasn’t gon cut it. All in the name of a sale, homeboy gives me a mini-vocab tutorial which I dutifully recorded on my giant man-hand. I can make copies if anyone needs one for your next vacay to this part of the world. Maybe the best part is I didn’t even end up buying anything cause I wear gold. Ah well.

I just want to say that I also ate fruit that was the literal consistency of pulled pork. Like shredded, and spiced and shiz. Gudeg? I think that’s the name. Yeah. Made of jack fruit apparently. Interesting… but I’ll keep my food group consistencies separate from now on.

This is fruit.

Finally, while at the store last night I discovered sprinkles in Indo are called chocolate rice (or at least the brand I came across), as I read on the package… maybe explains why the niece of the dude that owns the hostel literally has rotten teeth at age 4 (they are brown and half disintegrated, no word of a lie) since I see her eating them by the spoonful for breakfast, lunch & dinner. Good thing you get a second set for your parents to try again, kid... In the meantime, rebranding those might help with the apparent misunderstanding.

Oh, I head up to Padang, on Sumatra to volunteer for Hands On Disaster Relief rebuilding houses for people that lost them in 2 massive earthquakes that happened up there at the end of September. Should be a cool experience and it’s probably about time I did some good in the world…

Gator Boots

The internet spot I’m currently sitting in is no joke blasting “This Endless Love” (I know anybody who ever attended a wedding in the ‘90s knows what I’m talking about) so I’ma try to keep this short in the interest of not cutting off my own ears. Here we go.

Malaysia happened a week ago and I have to say I was a little underwhelmed. To be fair, it really didn’t have a chance to begin with since it was monsoon season so it poured rain in KL and all the supposedly amazing islands on the east coast were inaccessible due to high waves.
So note to self: monsoon season in Asia is not the same as monsoon season in Arizona which basically translated to the skies might open and it could rain the 2 out of 3 times it rains all year. Maybe.
After getting soaked in KL for a day, moms and I decided to skip out to Langkawi on the west coast where the rains are supposedly reversed. After Thai beaches I should’ve known nowhere else really had a chance but don’t say we didn’t try. Fortunately my mom was impressed so it wasn’t a total loss. Also fortunately, I live to tell about the 3 days there after the croc farm incident.
After a day of moto riding around the island, we decide to try to find this crocodile farm/zoo where they apparently breed the beasts to be made into goods. Gator boots, handbags, all that good stuff. After a few wrong turns we find the place and scope it out. They got baby gators & crocs (I’ma just refer to them as one and the same from now on), deformed ones of which my mom was given a free postcard, big ones, old ones, you name it.
Out of nowhere in one of the pens (?) we see this small Malaysian dude just chillin’ atop the biggest one in the park just havin a leisurely smoke. LIKE HE’S NOT SITTING ON TOP OF A GIANT GATOR. I wanted to tell the kid, you really need to think about making some changes in your life when a gator back is the best spot you can think of to have a cig… but unfortunately I was interrupted mid-thought as his buddy announced that I too could have my turn on the great beast.

I’m sure the gator appreciates being used as an ashtray

Once again - not of my choosing - I find myself entangled in a ridiculous situation involving wild animals. Unlike last time, however, this critter never had a chance to be cute and normally would most likely just swallow me straight up. With these circumstances in mind, I obviously decline… until once again interrupted, this time mid-sentence, by my mom. Taunting me.
I’ma let you finish, but let me just say, Beyonce had the – sorry, what I meant to say is that let me just say that a mother shaming you into what is essentially a sure-death situation amounts to peer pressure the likes of which few can say they have ever experienced. I really didn’t want to do it, but come on, when a 59 year old lady is telling you not to be such a chicken and just get on the gator’s back, you saddle up and you get on the damn gator’s back. The woman did give birth to me after all.
And yeah it doesn’t make sense to me in retrospect either.
So for a mere $5, I put my life in the hands of the smoker kid who gave up his place on the gator’s back to stand in front of it with a 1-inch wide BROOMHANDLE on gator’s jaws/face. I felt so relieved to know dude was protecting my life with such sophisticated equipment.

At the end of it all, I sat on the 33-year old, 2000 lb. gator’s back for max. 65 seconds but only because that’s how long it took for me to revisit the events of my life and realize I didn’t want to die so young. From now on I’ma just stick to wearing gator.

Other than that, we chilled at the beach and tried to nurse my mom back to health. Turns out people really do get swine flu. Who knew. Good thing she lied about being in the vicinity of anyone with the disease within the last 2 weeks to get into the country. Her justification – "I wasn’t near anyone who had it. I had it".
And now we see where I get my logic skills. Care of my mom, the Meek family can now add “importing disease to a foreign country” to its illustrious resume.
After a return trip to KL to pick up my cousin A, we rolled to Bali and sweet glorious sunshine. Bali is awesome, though I still think Thailand had better beaches. I promise that’s the last time I’m gonna say that.

The first, last & only sunrise I will have ever gotten up to see.
We started in Ubud for the first few days, hiked around, saw more monkeys, took part in a Hindu procession to the temple (and pretty much had no idea what was going on the whole time) and prayed with devotees in holy baths outside the city. After, we rolled to the east part of the island to Amed to snorkel this US shipwreck site, then Lovina in the north to see some dolphins and finally Sanur in the south. Covered some ground in 10 days…
Also, we stayed here:

Free lesson for the kids: turns out it's actually a Hindu/Buddhist symbol for good luck/wealth/good fortune… But still. I couldn't help but feel a little awkward walking in and out of that place. Yipes.
In unrelated news, I may or may not have fallen off my moto in Amed going a little too fast down a hill into a sharp turn… sand shoulders really helped my cause. Fortunately the road rash was minimal and I managed to keep it under wraps from a worried mother for like, 45 minutes til we went snorkeling and she busted me when she saw my elbows, foot and whole upper right quad scraped up… Don’t tell Dad?

Pink Helmet. What more can I say.

Since moms & A left on Monday I biked down to the southern tip of the island to peep the famous surf spots – Ulu Watu, Padang Padang, Dreamland etc. It was cool and I meant to take lessons but it never quite worked out so I just watched people that knew how to get it done. Lame yes, but maybe next time. I also figure what with my having to get back in the gym in a month, maybe I should avoid more injury-inducing activities… K, no that wasn’t really it. I mostly just didn’t want to get up at like, dawn for a lesson so I’ll just go with the first more legit excuse.

I finished up in Kuta aka dirtbagville for a night which was taken over with Aussie schoolies gettin drunk off their chops. Unpleasant but I had to chill before I fly today to Yogyakarta, another city in Indo on Java. Someone try to tell me that doesn’t sound like a pretend cartoon place.