We are now two weeks into our time in Indonesia and (gulp) far into the fourth quarter of our travel overall. (We return home in just over two weeks!)
Today is a down day for us, as yesterday was a travel day from hell with a boat ride then a car trip then a plane ride followed by what was supposed to be a 3 and 1/2 hour car trip, though the latter was made more complicated when we learned we were slated to travel those hours, over mountainous roads in central Java, in a van with no suspension, no AC, and no seatbelts — no thanks. That discovery triggered great scrambling and long delays as another vehicle and driver were procured on a Sunday afternoon in Semarang (easier said than done), though that replacement driver had neither directions to our destination nor any ability to communicate with us nor (apparently) any ability to heed Google maps. Fun!
Alas, now both kids have spiked low-grade fevers, so they are in the next room with the rare luxury (for them) of all-you-can-eat iPad. (Given what they stoically endured yesterday, I am in no mood to impose limits.) David is on the outdoor patio on the phone trying, hopefully not in vain, to sort out an annoying health insurance issue. (Life’s headaches do follow you, no matter how far you roam.) And I am taking this time to take stock and also marvel that, for all the tens of thousands of miles we’ve logged, this was really the first travel snafu, which is kind of miraculous — and these are also the first fevers, also miraculous and very, very lucky.
So, Indonesia. We arrived in Indonesia on July 14th flying from Tokyo to Ubud, Bali of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame. Ubud was interesting enough — and a sensible place to begin — but, as we had been warned, it (like Santorini and Tuscany) is really straining under the heavy weight of its own cache. The traffic down the town’s main road stands positively still, and the lush terraced rice fields, for which the town is famous, are increasingly giving way to designer boutiques and five-star dining. Still, we tried to enjoy it for what it is, sampling both the high-brow (below, the view from our hotel’s outdoor restaurant)
and, the decidedly less glitzy. Here, our gregarious guide, Jack, along with Elliot and David, dig in to some streetside Bakso, one of Bali’s signature soups and a childhood favorite of Barack Obama.
We also drove about an hour out of town to go on a half-day hike, to see some of those famed terraced rice paddies before they’re all gone.
From Bali we traveled — over the course of thirteen hours on three flights — to Pangkalan Bun, Borneo, which is as off-the-grid as it sounds. There, we met up with our crew and set out on a five-day, four-night houseboat cruise (see our well-outfitted houseboat below) up the Arut river to see the region’s great apes.
When we set out on this trip in April, I was looking forward to this leg of the voyage probably more than any other, and, I am so happy to report, it was all that I had hoped.
The best thing about the trip was just how little there was to it. We were utterly without wi-fi or cell service (which is unusual, we’ve found, even in seemingly remote areas). We couldn’t swim because the river was dreadfully polluted by upriver mines and also teeming with crocodiles. There were no chores to be done because there was a crew of five, so we were exceedingly well cared for. And, we only got off the boat occasionally.
So, what was there? Ahhh, there were books to be read. (I’m making my way through Elizabeth Pisani’s brilliant “Indonesia, Etc.” and also, with Elliot, listening to the classic “Swiss Family Robinson.”) There was TV to be watched. (As a family we’re devouring “Friday Night Lights” — definitely the greatest series of all time — which is frequently “Inappropriate!” as Connor and Elliot gleefully point out while covering their eyes but chock full of important life lessons for adolescent boys.) There was music to listen to. (Happily, we and the crew shared the same folky taste.) There was bridge to be played. (If this trip has revealed nothing else, it has shown that Connor is a cold-blooded card shark, much like his mother). And, there were spectacular sunsets to behold.
Also, of course, there were orangutans. LOTS of them — and up close and personal.
There was a little good to be done. Below, there are pictures from our morning volunteering at a reforestation project. (Notice Elliot’s and my little political messages.)
And, on one day, there was a hike to endure. (“Endure” is the right word here, as notice what we’re wearing, to protect against the ubiquitous and disease-carrying misquitoes, and recognize that it was very humid and somewhere over 100 degrees. The fact the boys are smiling in the photo is an honest-to-God miracle.)
There is, of course, much more to say — about the dark legacy of Dutch colonization followed by the brutal Japanese occupation, the challenges of melding some 17,000 disparate islands boasting thousands of disparate cultures into one unified state, a creeping and worrying rise of religious intolerance, the horror of deforestation and habitat loss, the ravages of the gold mining and palm oil industries etc. etc. etc. BUT, I will leave all that for another day. For now just know, we survived the trip that the Lonely Planet aptly calls “the African Queen meets jungle safari” — and we had an absolute blast.
Fanatical Sabbatical 