Brief notice: return #3 to Asia is a Go

I believe I overwhelmed the system with expectation on my last post. I'm notoriously bad at this, but seeing as I last took a stab at regularly reporting on the invAsian no less than fifteen months ago, I am going to make the (possibly laughable) claim that, older, potential a tiny bit wiser and even less potentially more apt to be noticeably more dutiful in keeping of records, I will make another attempt to journal my adventures in Southeast Asia. I am motivated to try anew because, as it stands, I am slated for a Friday night flight. Back to Jakarta. Round 3 of the Dylan invAsian. 48 Hrs and counting.

I will recap the past fifteen months in overview format in my next post. This should not be hard to do; I have something like thirty five hours of sitting down to do before I pop up in Indonesia, not least of which will be seven and a half spent propped against a wall next to a sea of snoozing grandmothers and small children in Doha int'l airport, Qatar. No complaints here though--Qatar is a ridiculously comfortable airline, and aside from winning the lottery and doing the trip on Singapore Airlines (or in any business class ever), it's about as good as it gets for an mega-flight.

The only thing I AM bummed about is the loss of an opportunity to actually stop over IN Doah, which would have, hilariously, ended up as my first trip to the middle east. The loss of the layover is collateral damage from my decision to extend my trip home. I arrived in the States for the holidays on December 14th, and had a wonderful Christmas with my family at home, new years with my girlfriend in DC, and had originally intended to jet back out on or around January 12th. However, there was more I wanted to do here before I picked up the backpack again (to be detailed in a further post), so I bumped my flight back by another month. Unfortunately, I lost what was going to be a thirteen hour layover in Doha, intended for an all-night citywide ramble, poking around the restaurant district (supposed to be a delicious spot) and checking things out before crashing back on the floor of the airport pre-flight. Instead, I land at 7 something PM and am back in the air, bound for Jakarta, by 2:30 AM. We'll see, though. There may be time for a little bit more exploration, if I push it.

So, that's all for now! Finishing up the process of getting ready, trying to make sure I've got what I need and have replaced all the things that have worn out or otherwise died since my last trip home:

Brown leather shoes: not designed for motorcycle riding in floods. Pants: khakhis/dockers are also not compatible with regular motorcycle use, nor with Indonesian sweet soy sauce. Shirts: SAS (Sweaty American Syndrome). They will sadly never be the same. Hard drive: the "my passport" is not built for dust, water or travel grime. Laptop: innards replaced for free by Dell. +1 for warranty! I suppose Timorese power surges are not kind to a computer. The Dell repair guy: "I have...never seen this happen before. See? It [the heat sink/cooling fan]'s all blackened and scored...how does that even happened?!" Ipod: replaced by Apple. +2 for warranty! Hard drive failed in the line of duty. Suitcase: completely shot, metal sticking out, zipper separating from bag, wheels sound like the New York subway. Not a stealth bag). This does not include the items which apparently grew fed up with my adventures and simply jumped ship along the way. This includes my headlamp; the thing was a real veteran item, been with me since I started college and stuck it out through four summers of backpacking in the wilderness. Toughed it out through six months of blackouts in Banda Aceh. Managed to sit patiently in my bag, unused, through two months of mostly-stable power in Jogjakarta and a bunch of months in Jakarta. I think, though, that's where it drew the line, and somewhere between getting on a bus in Bangkok to head overland to Cambodia and flying out from Jakarta to start an office in East Timor, the little guy bailed out of my bag, went AWOL and never came back. I'd like to think some old Thai busdriver is now using it to climb up into his cot in the baggage compartment of his bus, or maybe a Cambodian moto-chariot driver gets some use out of it fixing a broken axle or two in the middle of the night. And yes, parts of Cambodia are full of moto-chariots. Motorcycles with two-wheel trailers bolted onto the back. The contraption is called a Remorque.

(The Batman remorque, hanging out in Siem Reap, Cambodia)

I also managed to part ways with both my regular glasses and my sunglasses while living in East Timor. The glasses? I have no idea. They made their way out into the wider world sometime around the Dili Marathon. Note: I did not run in the Dili Marathon. Nor did I participate, in any official way. However, I did wake up very early that morning and stumble out into the sunshine to photograph my friends and other random participants as they stumbled past my road up the hill towards Taibessi market. Got some good shots too! More to come in another retro-post.

The sunglasses were a real tragedy. A pair of prescription ray-bans that came free when I got my regular glasses last December. They served me well on bikes, motorbikes and motorcycles for nearly a full year, and many a morning they spared my eyes riding into the sun on the morning commute down the coast in Dili. They made their bid for freedom on the mountain road from Balibo to Maliana, ten miles from the Indonesian border in Timor-Leste. We came down the mountain in a driving monsoon rain, riding slow (motorcycles), the last leg of an all-day ride to the western edge of the country then south to the city of Maliana. This was less than two weeks before I left the country. The rain began to let up, the sun started to go down, and the sunglasses were so caked with water and road grime that I could barely see. I made the foolish choice to take them off, mid-ride, and hang them off the neck of my poncho until such time as I could safely stop and stow them in the bag strapped to my bike. Best intelligence indicates the glasses were aware of this lapse in judgement and, once hung in place and knowing I was distracted by wet, crumbling road, seized their chance and jumped. I only hope the Timorese child playing by the side of the road who finds them will discover that my prescription inexplicably matches their eyes, and provides them with an almost magical level of polarized clarity.

And that's it, for now. More to come as I take other breaks from putting my things back into bags

RELAUNCH THE INVASIAN!

OK. OK, Ok OK. Yes. It's been a ridiculous amount of time since I posted last. Much, much has happened. I am ashamed. You deserve better. From henceforth, I am RELAUNCHING THE INVASIAN. I have some stories to tell. Adventures in the Kampong (little rural villages in the middle of rice paddies in the middle of the interior of Sumatra). All-night busrides. Elephants and tire blowouts in Thailand. Terrible movies in Malaysia. Oasis hotels, learning the language and a three-week setback that put a full stop on the Invasian and came close to cancelling it all together. This is why I must keep writing though, and for the forseeable, the Invasian is back on, in full-force. Check back over the next couple days, and there will finally be updates for the reading.

In the meantime, I wanted to say that we're all doing OK up here in Aceh, and we didn't even feel the quakes yesterday. I will update as soon as possible if anything DOES happen here, but so far we're alright. Thank you, friends and family, for everyone who checked in to make sure things were ok. I miss you all, and I promise you I will get some more stories on paper to read at your leisure.

So, while my friends and coworkers are out praying,

I figured I should post something. Maybe something cultural, or something relating to the cultural experience, etc. No idea. We'll see what happens.

So, it's Friday, around lunchtime. I am the only non-muslim here at basecamp (the colloquial name for our office; pretty much everyone uses it, including my boss in Jakarta. It was thought up by Dylan I. Yeah, last year my job was held by another Dylan. A much taller one. It's kind of funny being another Dylan in the same position, as our name is unusal, definitely one that most Indonesians have never encountered [it seems Bob Dylan was less popular here than in Brazil; there, people sometimes just called me Bob]. So, for the people who know both of us, I'm either Dylan Dua (2) or Dylan Baru ("New Dylan"). I prefer the latter, 'cause I'm not a continuation, I'm a different person. Ah! Pardon the tangent.). On Fridays, most muslims, even some of the more culturally-muslim muslims, will go to answer a couple of the calls to prayer. I would love a crash-course on islam, by the way; if anyone knows some good books, please leave a comment here and let me know. T'would be greatly appreciated.

DISCLAIMER: this particular post differs from many in that it is the first to feature some of my own opinions. If you are interested only in the travel and adventure side of things, you may perhaps wish to jog on to the next entry. If you want to see my take on certain aspects of local culture, stick around.

Almost always, I am entirely open to local cultures. You don't get very far around here with preconceived notions and holier-than-thou American ideas, especially concerning theology, democracy and the value of a life. However, there is one cultural value I've quietly begun a little war over. A small guerilla war. I'm vastly outnumbered, and will probably lose. But for what it's worth, I'm taking my little stand.

Smoking.

Here's a surprising statistic: Indonesia has the highest per-capita smoking rate of any country in the world. I had never considered the possibility until I got here. EVERYONE smokes. Almost every man I have met in this country is a smoker. Most teenage boys copy their fathers, starting from somewhere between the ages of 13 and 15. Many women seem to do so as well, although it's on either a more clandestine or more private basis (smoke around the house, not while they are out in public). Adults smoke, it's a choice, it happens. My problem kicks in when it engages the younger set. This is a coffe shop culture here. I'll have to explain more about it later, but for now suffice it to say that sitting in a coffee shop and chatting for hours is the primary social activity in Aceh, for young and old alike. It is the number one most popular business to be opened by young adults (in terms of entrepreneurship, it's a pretty easy choice; low start-up costs, broad general appeal, staggeringly good local coffee available for a low price, and an easy clientele of the owner's own age? It's a perfect set-up). The problem is, the primary sponsor for these coffee shops are the cigarette companies. Lucky strike: a smoother version of ourselves. L.A Lights (colorful banners). There's even one, whose name escapes me at the moment, which is showcased in its television advertisements with three rockstars singing to a bunch of tweens, and being super-cool for the stuff they smoke. Cigarette banners line the walls of these coffee shops. They're outside the shops. They have personal endorsements for every big coffee shop. It's crazy.
The problem then becomes the kids. On the Takengon bike trip (which I will finish telling you about soon, I promise), I ended up riding with a group called "Bike 2 School." They are a group of maybe 15 high school kids who mountain bike all over the place as their prime mode of fun. They're a great bunch of guys, they're a riot, and they're a fun group to spend your time with. They also happen to smoke, almost every single one of them. We walked down a street one night on our way to grab some grub, and they pulled out their smokes. They offered me a smoke. I politely declined. They asked me, why don't you smoke? One guy said "Smoking makes you Stronger, man!" He flexed his muscles. His buddies said yeah, yeah! *Flex* It was like something out of a bad early-nineties D.A.R.E commercial. I tried to convince them otherwise. Nope. They are utterly certain that smoking makes you a man. It legitimately makes you stronger. Probably makes you better in bed, too. That's actually where I finally got them, though. We looked at a cigarette box, where it warned of "impotensi." I came up with a suitable, undesirable rude hand gesture. They died laughing, got the message, agreed it was not a welcome side-effect. They began to listen, a little bit. There's a lot you can say to a group of smoking teenage atheletes that'll get through. Just got to pick the right vehicle.

Another fairly powerful tool is $$ (or, in this case, Rupiah, the Indo currency, Rp). I sat down with them and figured out how much it cost, every year. Same with a buddy or two here in the office. For a guy who smokes three packs a day, that's three dollars a day at a dollar for a decent pack. Twenty one dollars a week. Round it down to twenty for inconsistencies, and times that by 50 wks, to be on the conservative side. One thousand dollars a year, or 10,000,000 Rp. Ten Million. That's nearly three months' salary here for someone with a college degree (stop and chew THAT one over for a second, yeah?). Probably not too different in percentage for a smoker in many families in the states. But here, when you tell a kid they could buy three to five iphones for that price, or just tell an adult that final figure in Rp, people take some notice. I'm trying other techniques, but only with my close friends. I'd prefer not to antagonize people. After all, it IS a cultural thing, and especially for adults, it's their choice. When it's kids though, and its based on pretty much zero information on health consequences, a little bit of information never hurts...

Takengon, Part II: The First Day

(continued from previous entry):

I rolled over and woke up from a solid sleep at something like ten AM; a lordly five hours of rest had done me good. We soon discovered, however, that there wasn't enough water in the Mandi for us all to shower yet (Mandi = the all-purpose plastic scooper and water cistern in an Idonesian bathroom. The scooper bucket is your shower. It is also your sink, and your toilet-flusher. You ladle water into the throne, or kingly squatting-hole, to send things on their way. I embarrasingly had to ask how to do this my first day in-country, when I went to flush my plastic western-style toilet [I'm damn lucky for that, by the way; I have to thank my boss, Brian, for having it installed last year] and realized that it wasn't connected to any sort of water source or toilet-tank. There was a fairly physical demonstration, and I learned that this was a 'traditional' toilet). I've actually grown somewhat fond of the mandi, especially under certain circumstances. Here, we routinely suffer from a little phenomenon known as mati lampu (dead-lights, or power outages). The great thing about a Mandi is, you don't need power. You can ladle yourself down, and keep flushin' that toilet, just as well by candlelight or no light, when any other water source would just be dead. My mandi tank also happens to be huge; I honestly use actual running water, in the house, only about once a week, and that's only to refill the Mandi. That and the occasional luxury of turning on the tap (which means going outside to plug in the rickety electric water pump) to wash my hands in the "kitchen" instead of using the scooper to do so.

Pardon the diatribe. So, a few of us managed to stumble out of our place and down the hill in search of coffee and something to stuff our gullets. We ended up at one of the coolest Waru Kopi (Coffee Shop)s I've ever seen. It's a very cool, rocked out place, covered in paintings and artful graffiti by local artists, mostly young ones. The place has a giant "Parental Advisory" warning from an American music album on its sign, and bills itself as a meta-cafe. It's a concert venue, a place to hang out, a place to chill and a place to meet. It also serves some of the spectacular local coffee, called Gayo coffee, some of the best I've ever had anywhere. The local specialty is a cup of coffee that also has some kind of whipped egg in it, a Gaston special, if I may. It's a little too rich, but it'll sure as hell wake you up in the morning, and give you some protein to get the day started. Just don't ask too many questions about it.

After our caffeinated protein mud, we wandered outside, not sure quite what to do. Then Ricardo said we were getting in a car. Apparently, somebody, someone's friend, or an administrator, or public official, or something, had driven up and we were going to go to their house. I didn't know what else was going on, so I shrugged and hopped in the chase car (the guy in question was up with some of our other friends in a Jeep type thing that actually did look like it could eat mountains for lunch. Never actually met the guy). Instead of a leisurely trip to the other side of town, though, we blasted out of the city, down a small road towards the mountains, into...something resembling the American old west. With mosques. We stopped on an empty country road in the middle of a vast valley, a lonely track that led off and up into the hills. At first glance, the open country around us looked like prairie, but when you look closer, it's actually just dry rice stalks. During the rainy season, that land must be incredibly fertile. For now, though, it's just open horse country. We piled out of the car and wandered down onto the paddies, following a little dirt track up to a family of nearly-wild stallions grazing near a wood shanty. I assume they were the property of said shanty-folk; the Gayo are prizewinning horsemen, and hold festivals and competitions of the like that are famous nation-wide. Also, being Indonesia, where it's cool to just let your animals graze wherever (the middle of the highway is a choice spot for cattle, it seems; a real test of motorbike prowess is dungheap dodging at road speed), we just...wandered up to the horses. In the middle of the ricepaddymidwest. Started taking pictures. My buddy was just standing there, trying to pat a little foal while the mother whinnied disapprovingly. The road lost itself up into the foothills down the way; a brightly-colored Labi-Labi (turtle-turtle, the slow-moving trucks with benches in the back and an open door you can fall out the back of; they're the local form of bus. I'll get a picture up later and tell you about our labi-labi party sometime. They play a style of music, labi labi music, that sounds kind of like a techno party that ran into a rasta gang, got stoned, stumbled off the dance floor and found its way into a hammock somewhere) rolled past incongruously, reflecting the gleaming silver domes of the mosques in the foothills off its shiny hubcaps. If John Wayne had stumbled out of that shanty in a coolie hat, I would not have been surprised. Where the hell am I?!

So that was awesome. We got back in the car, and headed up into the mountains. Then, we passed our guide, and...I never saw him again. I think we did pass his house, at some point. No big deal. Instead, we were just on this tiny, one-lane mountain road, twisting off into coffee-plant-filled jungle infinity. Sometimes there were chunks of road missing. Sometimes there really wasn't much road. Then, all of a sudden, we'd be in a tiny village, nestled in the folds of these mountains. We passed a wedding, where pretty much everyone from the surrounding areas was standing in and around the road, as well as some kind of small bus that had made its way back in there. We drove around like this, staring agog at this magic place outside the windows, for a solid half hour. Almost skidded off the road only once. Bottomed out on a rock only once. Then back to the ginormous lake, back to town, a fast lunch at a local fish joint (tiny fish seem to be the specialty, very crunchy) and, finally, jumped into our gear and strapped on our helmets. To the bikes!

To be continued...

Breaking the silence! Adventures in Takengon, Part 1

My friends, I apologize. I have broken my promise of regular updates pretty spectacularly. The last update was one of necessity. This one will return to the original purpose of the blog. So, my adventure in Takengon!

It started on Friday, around lunch time. I got on the motorbike and met my friends Helen, Yvonne and Piva across from Hotel 61 in town (a strange, modern establishment that is built on top of, and around, an A&W Root Beer restaurant ("Real American Food!" It's like a burger and fried food joint, specializing in enormous pints of A&W root beer, sold in frozen glasses with a dollop of vanilla soft-serve ice cream in the middle. Pretty great). However, this was not our actual objective. We rode out down the road and turned down a small lane, headed for one of the city's most forbidden and succulent sins: THE PORK RESTAURANT! It's this small joint, a little secluded restaurant room behind a house-compound wall, sheltering a typical food-stall-cart in the back...loaded with Pork. I think it's one of maybe two such joints in this whole part of Aceh, though I could be wrong. I have no idea how they even get the pork to the restaurant, but I'm sure they have their ways.

Anyway, we were sitting over our lunch of sin, when Ricardo (Helen and Piva's boss, he met us there) brought up the fact that a bunch of them were leaving, that night, for a city in the mountains called Takengon. They were headed out for the three day weekend (holiday on monday) to spend a few days mountain biking around the area. That's all they really told me at the time, aside from "hey! Why don't you come with us?" I was thinking that this would be a relaxing weekend hanging out around Banda Aceh, or maybe somehow grabbing the night bus down to Medan with some friends from here on a quest to find a movie theater playing Harry Potter (there is not a single movie theater in the province of Aceh. Aceh is about the size of Alabama). I was having my fill of adventure just making my way here and, kind of uncharacteristically, wasn't really up for a crazy romp. So, this new idea, of hauling my out-of-shape tukus up some mountains nine hours away by car, was only partly appealing, especially last-minute. However, as we sat over some of those root beer floats a little while later, and Ricardo kept saying "spontaneous is wonderful, man! Come on! Spontaneous! You can borrow bike. I lend you water bottle, gloves, helmet, come on! We have space in car!" I was a little more tempted. I've been trying to find a way to get myself to start getting back in shape (my post-thesis, post-college physique is a bit lacking), and this, coupled with a love of biking, DID sound good...My girlfriend actually gave me the final push, helping me get psyched to go and do this thing. I dropped by a bike store, picked up the requisite bike shorts, bottle and helmet, threw stuff into my backpack, dropped a fast line to the family and hit the road.

We met at a coffee shop on the outskirts of town. Three SUVs and an enormous dumptruck-type-thing. The truck was full of bikes. We grabbed a little food, piled into the cars and set out into the night.

The open road in this country is somewhat of a terrifying proposition. Imagine your typical two-lane country road. Chop off about a meter of roadway on either side, so that cars most of the time have most of a full lane. Throw in some twisting turns and landslides. Take out random chunks of pavement. Add an assortment of wheeled vehicles, and let people graze their herd of cattle on the road itself. Now make it night time, and fill this road with a mix of country folk on motorbikes who live with no driving rules or customs, and a passle of hyped-up, suicidal van drivers and turbo buses who are trying to do the 12 hour drive to Medan in eight. This is the main highway through eastern Aceh, and we were basically racing on it. We hit the road at 9 PM and drove through the night, dodging goats, people and fate, and right around 4:30 AM we rolled into Takengon under the stars, stepping out of a car-climate from the tropical floodplains below into the cool, crisp mountain air of this lakeside city. We stumbled into our hotel up on a hill, a building that reminded me of the meeting hall at my old summer camp, and when the girls went off to their bedrooms, us guys piled onto a handful of mattresses that were made up on the floor of a conference room. We were so tired it didn't matter, and as soon as we figured out how we'd all fit, I happily passed out.

To be continued...

Checking in on the morning of the Jakarta Bombings

Hey everybody,

I wanted to check in quickly and ease some minds: I'm very much ok. The bombings this morning happened at the Marriot Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Jakarta, and I am safely more than a thousand miles a way, in Banda Aceh. I hope that the friends and family of everyone reading this are safe as well, and if there are any problems, please contact me directly or comment on this post and I will do what I can immediately.

Best, and please stay safe,

--Dylan

Please do not feed the monkeys!

Hi! I'm Dylan. I'm keeping a blog. This blog. I'm not a blogger by nature, nor have I been particularly good in the past at writing down my adventures and experiences. I'm gong to attempt to change this, and I've got a decent reason for doing so. I'm in Indonesia for the next 365 days.

This blog will follow my life as a Princeton in Asia fellow and intern at Search For Common Ground Indonesia, an NGO doing work all over the archipelago. For the first few months, I'm living in Banda Aceh, way out on the tip of an island called Sumatra.
I'll be here for about four months, longer with a little luck. If you catch me slacking off in writing about it, feel free to give me. I'll try to catch up on the past month or so as this week goes on. So, sit back, relax and, I hope, enjoy, as I eat with my hands, shower with a plastic scooper bucket and awkwardly rock my way around this country!

Coming at you live from GMT +7 ,
Dylan