Ever Slept Outside an Airport?

Correction:  Jen and I are now OUTSIDE the airport.

We have been kicked out of the terminal due to fogging (what the heck is that???).  Jen thinks it might have something to do with precautions about the avian flu…

Ever Slept in an Airport?

It is currently 00.35.

Jen and I are currently in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

We have been here since 22.00, so only about 2 and half hours.

Our flight to Hanoi leaves at 06.30.

It’s going to be a long night…

Bukit Lawang, Indonesia

Medan is the third largest city in Indonesia and most tourists visit the city not for any of its own attractions (it’s a very rough city – industrial, polluted, noisy…), but because it has an international airport and it is close to several of Sumatra’s best destinations, including, arguably, its top two.  Bukit Lawang is one of those.  It is home to “Taman Nasional Gunung Leuser” where people go trekking in search of orangutans.

The becak is a common form of public transportation
in Indonesia.  We used it to get from our hotel in Medan
to the minibus that would take us to Bukit Lawang.

Bukit Lawang is only about 50km away from Medan, and yet it takes a good 4 hours to get there.  Why?  Well, some of the roads are in decent condition, but some stretches rival what we’ve experienced in Mongolia.  Potholes aren’t exactly an appropriate term anymore when the area covered by the potholes exceeds the area of paved road.  The ride is bumpy and long.  And in our case, hot and crowded too – think about 18 people crammed into a minibus that is designed for maybe 11 or 12, no air-conditioning of course, and locals who, for some unknown reason, don’t like to travel with the windows open.

Here we are enjoying our first becak ride, still in Medan.

The long trip was worth it though, as upon arriving at Bukit Lawang, we were greeted by a small village right on the river and nestled in the middle of the jungle.

Jen and I took a little stroll up river.

Back at the village, some children were playing in the
river while their mothers washed clothes and bathed
their little siblings – apparently chicken fighting is a
universal water sport practiced by children around the
world.

Besides the main attraction of the orangutans, Bukit Lawang is a nice place to spend some time because of the peaceful atmosphere.  As Jen liked to put it, “this place has a good vibe.” 

Hot and humid, we put our feet in the river to cool
down and watch the locals go about their daily
routines – washing clothes, bathing, playing games.

The bridge that we crossed many times throughout our stay.

Kuta, Indonesia

Kuta. Oh, what can I say about this place? It was certainly a change from Gili Air. A fast paced city full of people trying to sell things to the throngs of foreigners (mostly Australian) who invade the city.

Kuta is famous for it’s surfing. This beach was full of
wannabe surfers who were trying their best to stay on
their boards – some were better than others. It was
pretty cool to watch.

Kuta is the city where the 2002 and 2005 bombings took place. Jeff and I didn’t like it too much. It has a different vibe than what we’re looking for. The people visiting Kuta are there on vacation, looking for sun, surf and good times. Club music blasts late into the night every day of the week giving no rest for the weary (unless you are lucky enough to have ear plugs). The restaurants along the main drag are pretty swanky and charge outrageous prices for not great food. We ended up eating at the local mall for much cheaper (we were also lucky enough to enjoy some live music outside the mall). We’re looking to travel, not really to vacation.

 

Mmm… we found a most delicious bakery at the mall.
Bread Talk was full of baked treats. A wonderful discovery.

Our time in Kuta was spent mostly fending off offers for things to buy and trying to avoid being run over by the motorbikes that drive everywhere. You can buy anything in Kuta, it’s a shoppers paradise. Bootleg DVDS for a dollar, bathing suits, fake Coach purses, real Billabong gear, and marijuana are all available for a price. Some shops are more legit than others – the guy offering us weed was whispering from behind by a tree on a dark street.

A surfer in training – a young boy tries his hand at
boogie boarding.

Kuta is the place that made us ponder why we are on this trip. Why travel? While Gili Air was nice, it seems like a far way to go for such a short trip. We could have gone and hung out at Sable Beach in Ontario for way cheaper and it would have been a fairly similar experience (aside from the fish and the turtles). We’re hoping that the following weeks will provide us with opportunities to figure out why people travel. You can’t even begin to scratch the surface of a culture in two weeks – after spending a year in Korea and Mongolia I still can’t even begin to comprehend the cultures. The environmental impact of our trip is high. Our bank account will take a beating. Are we really seeing things so different than what we would see back home? This sounds pretty pessimistic, but it’s something that both Jeff and I have been thinking about over the past couple of days.

I’ll start by asking you: Why do you travel? What’s the purpose?

Gili Air, Indonesia

Gili Air is small.  Really small.  I’ve already mentioned how you can walk around the outside in 90 minutes.  It’s one thing to read about how small an island is, but then to actually walk from tip to tip (south to north for us) in 20 minutes gives you a new perspective.  So it is no surprise then that the pace of life here is pretty slow.  Jen and I definitely took some time for ourselves here.

A view of Mount Agung, the highest peak on Bali at 3142 m,
from the northwestern beach of Gili Air.  When we get to
Sumatra, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to make it up to the top
of Gunung Sibayak or Gunung Sinabun.

As has already been mentioned, there are no cars here.  No motorbikes either.  The only motors here are the outboard ones on the boats that transport goods to and from the island (there are some generators too, since the electricity can sometimes be spotty…).  So after landing on shore after our long ferry ride, we were taken to our bungalow by a cidomo, or horse drawn cart.  Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate to walk 20 minutes with our packs to get to our bungalow, and in fact, I was still all for it.  Jen, however, was a little less adventurous (some might say more reasonable…) and pointed out that since we didn’t really know where the place was and it was completely dark, we’d be wandering around for hours before we found the place.  So we sucked it up and paid the big money for the 5 minute cidomo ride.

Not all of horses were as ornately decorated as this one,
but some drivers put a lot of effort into making their horses
look great. 

The locals take the cidomos as well, probably for a cheaper
price.  And they are also used to cart around all the fresh fruit
and other tasty goods. 

On our second day, we decided to do a little snorkeling.  Costing us a whopping $7.50 each, we headed out on a glass bottom boat at around 9.30am.  Watching the coral sweep by as we sped around the three Gili islands was a treat and I still can’t believe how clear the water was.  And that was just looking into the sea through a pair of windows.

Diving into the sea blew my mind.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  You see underwater documentaries on TV and their cool.  And if you’ve ever seen an IMAX film, you know how immersive those can be with such a huge screen making you feel like you’re actually there.  Crank it up about another 3 or 4 notches above that and then you might imagine what we saw.  (Or, you can just remember your own snorkeling experiences if you’ve ever been.  That’d work too…).

We were completely surrounded.  Everywhere we turned there was something new to look at.  Brightly coloured fish, giant corals, and miniscule jellyfish whose stings felt like tiny pinpricks.  There was one time where I had an entire school of fish swim right around and past me too.  They were in front of me, behind me, to the left, the right, everywhere and they were almost close enough to touch.  I wish I had had an underwater camera!

But the highlight was definitely the turtles.  We had three sightings and it was so easy to just float effortlessly on the surface and gaze down at them slowly cruising by.  It was a small glimpse, but for those three brief dives, I felt a part of the underwater world.  Very cool.

One of the locals selling us some delicious mangos.

Another horse hard at work.

It may sound surprising, but it wasn’t always peace and quiet on Gili Air.  One of the restaurants/bungalows held a “Darkmoon Party” that lasted all night long, pumping out a constant flow of frenetically paced rave music to keep the party-goers dancing well beyond sunrise.  A fellow traveler later told us of how he was offered “crazy peanuts” at the party.  Luckily for us, the bungalow that hosted wasn’t ours.  Unluckily for us, it was next door…

How about another sunset photo?  Had enough yet?

Gili Air fun fact #27:  Jen bought another lovely piece of fabric.  Starting price – $15.  Final price – $4.  And she didn’t even try.  She kept saying no, she didn’t need it.  And yet, for some reason, this guy REALLY wanted to sell this fabric to her.  Everytime she said no, the guy would come back 10 minutes later and give us a lower price.  True story.

Some local children exploring the tide pools.

Gili Air, Indonesia – The Boat Ride

After spending a day in Ubud, we headed off to the much celebrated Gili Islands.  There are three of them, each of them with their own unique characters.  We had some friends who had been to Gili Air a couple of times before us and had thoroughly enjoyed their stay, so we decided to follow their recommendation.  To get there we had to take a 4-5 hour ferry ride.  It’s a long trip, but the weather was beautiful and so were the sights.  The time just melted away (much as we did in the heat!).

Currently, Jen and I are sitting in The Coffee Bean (which we discovered while in Korea – so many things remind us of our time in Korea now!) in Kuta, Indonesia.  It’s definitely a stark contrast from our time in Gili Air, but we’ll get to that soon enough.  There’s more to tell you from Gili Air, so we’ll try to catch up soon.  For now, enjoy some photos of our ferry ride out to the island.

Jen reading while I toyed with the camera.

I got my hair cut before we left for easier maintenance.
It still looks weird to me… 

Jen just can’t shake her urge to pose for photos Korean
style.  This is the lasting impression that Korea has
made upon her! 

I really hate smoking, but I must admit, this photo
wouldn’t be the same if it was just someone’s hand
without the cigarette. 

It’s like a stock photo from just about any tropical
island around the world, but it still stirs the heart.
Jen wondered if we lived in a place like this, would
we ever get tired of the spectacular sunsets.  I’m not
sure that you could. 

Day 1 – Ubud, Indonesia

Day 2 on our little trip across South East Asia and Jen and I are sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast and enjoying a much slower pace of life watching motorbikes and vespas drive by, drinking freshly squeezed (blended?) strawberry juice, and eating tasty (and inexpensive too!) foods.

Yesterday we arrived in Indonesia early in the morning and slept in for the first time in a long while.  We took a bus ride north to the town of Ubud, which is full of little shops selling everything from carved wooden objects and bolts of colourful cloths to silver jewelry and handmade purses.

A man sits outside his shop, hard at work.
 It’s amazing how talented some of these craftsmen are.

In between all of the shopping (the good thing about this trip is that there isn’t a lot of space in our packs for Jen to actually BUY a lot of stuff!!), we also visited the Monkey Forest Sanctuary.  Though technically the macaques are wild, they are certainly very much habituated to human contact.  You can buy bananas at the entrance to ostensibly support the sanctuary, though I suspect that this fact is less a motivating factor than the desire to feed “wild” monkeys.  At any rate, it was fascinating to watch the behaviour of these animals, as they often exhibited mannerisms that are so akin to our own behaviour.  Equally as fascinating though, was observing the behaviour of our fellow human beings as they interacted or attempted to interact with the macaques.  Despite the multitude of warning signs that these monkeys were wild – though highly habituated to humans, they ARE wild – and their behaviour could be unpredictable, people continued to treat the macaques as pets and toys, trying to get fun photos with them and not letting go of the food that they are giving them until their friends/family could get the perfect photo.

I could have watched these macaques for hours.

Yesterday was such a relaxing day, having no schedules or agendas to adhere to.  We did a lot of walking and exploring, a lot of shopping, and a lot of eating – the food here is wonderful, especially after having spent the past year in Mongolia.  We were finally able to let the stress from the previous year’s work wash away.  Definitely a successful day.

Today, in less than an hour, we’ll be on our way to Gili Air, a small island off of Lombok.  It has no cars.  It will take us about 90 minutes to walk the circumference of the island.  Though I have a sneaking suspicion that I will get bored there, I also feel like I need a little boredom in my life.  At least enough so that I can re-energize for the next adventure.

And we’re off!

It’s hard to believe, but we have finished our last day of school here in Mongolia, have packed up our apartment, and are waiting to get on a plane to Korea. I shaved off most of Jeff’s hair today and we’ve tied up our loose ends.

The year here has been interesting, hard, and amazing. I will truly miss my kids and the people of this country. Mongolia is blessed with blue skies and vast landscapes. I seem to have inadvertently fallen in love with Mongolia.

And now we’re off. First we head for a short day trip into Seoul to visit friends, then we fly to Indonesia. After two weeks there we’ll spend a couple of days in Kuala Lampur before heading off to Hanoi (in Vietnam). We plan to travel down Vietnam and cross into Cambodia where we’ll spend about a week touring a bit of the country. After Cambodia comes Laos, followed by (hopefully) a couple of days in Bangkok before we fly home to Toronto via Ahbu Dhabi on August 15th.

I have a feeling that the next few weeks will be a whirlwind tour.  While I love to travel, I don’t really like to be a tourist, so it should be an interesting turn of events. I’ll go from being a local and knowing my way around a place to being brand spankin’ new and trying to figure out how things work. I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. We’ll be sure to post pictures and blogs about our adventures over the next weeks. I must say though, I really am looking forward to seeing my friends and family at the end of our trip – it’s been a long time!!

Periogies

Yum! These are probably one of my favourite foods, and one of the things that just isn’t available in Asia. So, I learned how to make them. One of my friends in Korea first introduced me to the idea that you could actually make periogies instead of buying them at the store, wow, what an introduction! She gave me a simple recipe – mix equal parts sour cream with flour, knead the dough and roll out. Add potato filling and throw them in a pot of boiling water. After a couple of batches made using that recipe I found that I needed more. I needed more flavour, more punch, more zest. So I added some Indian spices to my potatoes. Tandori masala, tumeric… I experimented. But, I still needed more. After arriving in Mongolia I had already made a few batches of (VERY LABOUR INTENSIVE!) periogies. Already I could feel that we may never go back to the storebought ones. Back home I was picky about my periogies, I liked one certain brand that could only be purchased at one store (if I was lucky…) but now that I make my own I’m not sure that I can eat those from the store. The unfortunate part is that making less than 100 periogies takes me a whole afternoon – and intense afternoon. But it’s totally worth it.

After playing around a lot with recipes, I’ve finally found one that I enjoy. I will share it here with you. I think that I found it on some Polish center’s website. I’m sorry I don’t have the original link!

Potato filling - Indian style

Periogies

5 cups of flour

5 tbsp. melted butter (or 6 tbsp. oil for the poor folk!)

2 tbsp. sour cream

2 whole eggs

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cup lukewarm water

Beat the eggs. Melt the butter. Mix the salt and water.

In a big bowl mix 4 cups of flour with the butter (or oil) and sour cream. Add the eggs and water.

Knead the dough and add the extra cup of flour. Cover and let stand for 15 minutes.

Before I make the dough I make a ton of mashed potatoes (about a kilo) and add various seasonings. Sometimes it’s Indian spices, other times it’s just some fresh herbs, cheese, sauteed garlic and onion, and salt. You can feel free to be creative!

Mmm... these ones haven't been boiled yet!

Roll the dough into a long snake. Cut pieces of the dough and roll flat. Add the potato (or yummy apple!) filling and press some water along the edge of the dough to seal the periogie. Throw (or gently place) the periogies into a pot of boiling water and let them cook. When they’re finished you can put them on a cookie sheet to let them cool then put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. When you want to eat them just heat up the frying pan and add a bit of oil. Yum!

Boiled and ready for the freezer or the frying pan.

I have tried adding apples – basically I make an apple sauce – to my periogies and they too are delicious. Apples are expensive here so when I received some from my student’s parent I made a fresh apple sauce and scooped it into the periogies. Serve warm with ice cream, yum!

Apples for the periogies

Photos from the vault

I was just sorting through a few photos (I have a lot, and Jeff has even more….!!!) and came across a few that I thought I would share with you. I think they’re from November. These were taken when Jeff and I made a trip to the big Buddha by our house.

The big gold Buddha that lives near our home.

Jeff threatening the tiger. I'm not sure that he was that scared...

I tried battling it out against the dragon... Sadly, I too lost.

Korean Drum - Boy was this thing fun to hit!

The traditional blue cloth that is found everywhere in Mongolia. I love it!

As the days go by I’ll post a few more pictures that I’ve come across. Just memories of our time here in Mongolia. I can’t believe how quickly these last few weeks have gone.