Author: dfast

Most of the time we go through the day in the bubble of routine, planning, doing, feeling.  We play the scales of our emotional range blindfolded: pissed at being cut-off; happy at the pat on the back, the cute cat video.  Then every once in a while something huge occurs, vast beyond our understanding, and the illusion of our control is peeled from the bone, and we are left fragile and exposed in the face of a power that takes no notice of our precious selves.  This happened last week in Nepal, when a massive earthquake turned the country upside down.

We had been in Kathmandu just a few weeks earlier, so the experience was still very immediate.  Our shipment from there was sent 4 days before the earthquake struck.  I am thankful for that, in my own self-interested world, but I am also thankful that the payment to the friends there that we do business with was processed in time, and they have those funds to use in what will be a very difficult time.

Our first concern was with the people we have got to know over the last 12 years.  Three responded the first day that they and their families were OK.  After that, as expected, communication became more unreliable as cell phone batteries died.  The power supply in Kathmandu, sporadic at the best of times, had now ceased completely.  We also learned that good friends of ours, Kathy and Bruce Macmillan, were trekking in the Langtang valley, not far from the epicenter, when the quake hit.  Slowly news started to come from others in the capital.

For all the destruction that it caused, it could have been worse. Saturday is the common day off in Kathmandu, and offices, schools and many businesses were closed. People were outside with friends and family. Our friend Arif was working on his motorbike in a friend’s garage. The ground started shaking so violently that he was thrown onto the bike. They made their way to the door, to see the building right in front of them collapse. Arif walked through the broken streets back to his home, where family were safe, but outside, afraid to go back in. They spent the next two days sleeping in the street, doing what they could in the neighbourhood. Like most people in the capital, Arif knew friends and family in the surrounding villages. With other friends he started organizing trips into the countryside, taking food and supplies to give away. It soon became clear that no other aid was going to make it to these places, and he appealed to us and anyone else he knew to help in whatever way they could.

Meanwhile we received devastating news about Bruce and Kathy.  They were in the village of Langtang when a massive landslide swept it off the mountain.  The picture of it posted on the amazing facebook page, Langtang missing/found people taken by Finjo Lopchan on May 1, needs no words.  Another account I heard from a Canadian trekker who was in the next village gives one a sense of the power that overwhelmed them.  He was sitting in a lodge when the shaking began.  The guides told them to run outside.  For four minutes the ground heaved and buckled, leaving cracks beneath his feet as he watched the stone buildings around him turn to rubble.  When that subsided and they were pulling people from the debris, a thunderous wind came out of nowhere, at least, he estimated, 100km/hr.  He looked up and a black cloud of snow and dust was rolling down the valley: the aftermath of the plunging slide that took Langtang.

Everyone knows the paralyzing grief of losing loved ones, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  We take inspiration from the example of how to live left us by our dear friends, and the courage and resilience of the people of Nepal.  Arif, the son of our Tibetan jewelery maker, is doing great things with his ground-level relief efforts, and we have set up a groupfunding page on a site called fundrazr which can be found here: htts://fundrazr.com/campaigns/0z8Ba. For some descriptions and pictures of what Arif is doing, we have made a facebook page:  “Arif’s On the Ground Nepali Relief Fund”.  Donations that are made we forward directly to Arif.  During May Western Union is only charging us $1/ transaction for the relief funds.

We are also staging a fundraiser of our own at the Community Farm Store in Duncan on Vancouver Island (5380 Trans-Canada Hwy, Duncan, 250 748-6227).  On Saturday and Sunday (May 9-10) we will be holding a sale of our goods with all proceeds going to either Arif’s relief fund, or a charity of your choice where the Canadian government will match dollar for dollar all the money we raise.  We will have a selection of our beautiful duvet covers, table cloths, jewellery, clothing, art and much more.  To view some of our inventory, go to kebeandfast.com.  Our sale will be held on the mezzanine from 10-6 both days.  We are donating our goods for the event, and the Community farm Store has generously donated the space.

We have been humbled this week not only by the power of our planet, but also by the people, near and far, who have stepped up to help.  For a moment let us put aside our cynicism, move beyond the bubble of uncaring comfort that is our default, and celebrate instead the indomitable spirit of joy and bravery I have seen rise from the wreckage of this tragedy.

This blog is in memory of old friends.  Bruce and Kathy, and the city of Kathmandu that we knew and loved are gone, and things will never be the same again.

These were all taken in Kathmandu in March and early April.  Click for a larger image, or go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet/sets and view the Kathmandu and Patan albums as a slide show.

 

 

We are back in a corrupt dictatorship where information is censored and political dissidents languish in prison, having left a country that has peaceful general elections and is enjoying a functioning and pluralistic democracy.  That used to be the way it was going from Thailand to Indonesia.  Now the roles are reversed.  Not much looks different here on the surface, except that the protest barricades are gone, and there is a slight but noticeably greater military presence on the street.  Proceedings are now underway, however, to imprison the last prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and we are hoping the mood doesn’t get ugly after she is found, one presumes, guilty.  She would be among the 150 members of her party that have now been judicially banned from politics; a party that has won every election since 2001.  In general terms, her party, the Pheu Thai, represents the countryside and the north.  People here resent what they see as repression from Bangkok and the south, and there is even talk of separating and forming their own country, with Chiang Mai as the capital.

It wouldn’t be the first time.  Chiang Mai was the center of the powerful Lanna kingdom for hundreds of years, and was at it’s peak in the 14thC.  Not that that ended particularily well: Lanna was sacked by both the neighbouring Thai kingdom of Ayutthya and the Burmese.  Yet it still maintains a cultural and linguistic distinctiveness, and a long-standing antipathy to the south.

There is no doubt that Thailand is navigating dangerous political waters: but we aren’t here for the revolution.  We have a cute apartment on the edge of town, and spend the days cooking, filling the house with flowers, shopping, painting, studying Thai and exploring the area searching for good temple murals.  The biggest problem in our privileged universe are roosters.  The neighbours across the fence, 3 m away, are a bit, well, suffice to say we call it the Ozarks.  They have a scruffy lot and a pack of scruffy dogs and a collection of fowl that are made up disproportionally of roosters.  There is only one reason to have that many roosters – cock fighting.  It is illegal here, but still widely popular.  Someone else had the same problem, and he was basically told there was no option but to live with it or move.  Cockfighting is controlled by the local mafia, who pay off the police.  If there were complaints everyone would assume it was the local farang (foreigner) and it wouldn’t end well for him.  Sometimes, however, I reach a snapping point, say when we are having a morning coffee on our lovely deck and all we can hear are these plumed rapists a few meters away incessantly crowing on about how very macho they are.  There is a barrier of trees, but I have a small pile of rocks.  The roosters are getting to know me, and move off (sometimes) when they see me moving with intent.  We also try broadcasting hawk calls.  The roosters are, perhaps, a touch perplexed, but it certainly silences the rest of the birds in the area.

Cooking here is always a pleasure, mostly because it is an excuse to go to the markets.  See our recipe for tam som o (pomelo salad) below if you are interested.  The search for temple murals is fun, but I expected there would be more around.

 

The older ones are always in poor condition.  We went to one wat, U Mong, with a reputation for it’s paintings, and they had all but disappeared!  The monsoon climate is of course a major factor.  There is also a tradition of repainting old murals, which makes perfect sense if it is the story rather than the art which is important.  The painting was done by monks, and besides the life of the Buddha there were numerous tales from scriptures and local Buddhist legends to be explored.  I love how village life and everyday scenes became part of the narrative.  There is also a curious emphasis on the hell realms, and the tortures that await those who follow a “sinful” path.  I don’t want to read too much into this, but the painter-monks really seemed adept at depicting the most graphic and gruesome tortures being perpetuated on naked women.  These horror paintings really are prolific, and are especially popular in the newer wats.  It’s not something most non-Asians associate with Buddhism.

Because we haven’t found it worthwhile to send a shipment from Chiang Mai, we only buy what we can carry, store it in Bangkok, and then bring massive bags back with us as our baggage allowance.  Always popular are the brightly-embroidered cushion covers, from Ya, and we have more of those, as well as the silk-screened bookmarks by Sirimar.  There are also two new products we found this year that we are quite excited about.  One is the indigo work by a Hmong tribal artist, Khun Win.  Win is passionate about his art, and gives courses in his village about indigo dying.  He uses a block printed resist-dye method, applying wax to the fabric with a carved wooden block, and then dying it.  And dying it.  And re-dying it.  It takes about 20 dye and dry immersions to get the strong colour on his pieces.

 

And, as strange as it may sound, we are bringing in some hand-sewn Japanese full-length wool kimonos.  FINALLY, you might say. They are just perfect for those winter outings to the local ryokan for a round of hot sake.  We found these beauties in a shop, and they were just too good to pass up.  There are only four, so whether they make it into the shop is an issue we have not yet decided.

Lots more photos have been uploaded to flickr.  Here are some, and you can see the rest at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet/sets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tam Som-o

Though a traditional salad with crab here’s is our version
Half of a pomelo will serve 3-4.
Peel and remove tender flesh from each segment. Discard all tough skin. Tamarind is sold in a sticky brick-like state with lots of fibrous bits and seeds.
Soak the tamarind block in enough boiling water to cover the fruit and leave about 10 minutes.
I used a fist-sized amount.

Stir until you have a saucy paste. Think of it as a sauce rather than a salad dressing, you will need more than you imagine. Do not use store bought tamarind sauce, it’s flavourless.
Press thru a sieve. Discard the skins and fibrous bits.
Finely chop 1 garlic clove & 1 birds eye chilli add to tamarind, along with 2-3 tbsp rice vinegar and 2 tbsp light oil and a generous dash of fish sauce. Use less chili to start, and season to taste if you don’t want it spicy.
Grate 1 tsp or so palm sugar into it and juice from1/4 of a lime.
Season to taste.
Mix well broken up pomelo into dressing, dish onto plates, top with

fried shallots, peanuts and finely chopped kaffir lime leaves.

Perhaps culture is the human response to environment.  It would explain a lot about Bali.  For example it doesn’t just rain here; an aubergine-coloured cloud mass invades your horizon, signalling its intent with cracks and rumbles, not really moving towards you as much as occupying more and more sky, until you hear the across the fields the swish of bucket-sized drops on big broad extravagant leaves.  In 5 minutes you will be soaked.  So too the Balinese don’t just have a funeral.  They save and save and when the funds are there and the time is auspicious, they spend weeks making a huge papier-mache figure of a bull, and an enormous multi-tiered tower.  These are carried through the streets on bamboo poles borne by hundreds of  the young and strong, followed by an entire gamelan orchestra.  At the cremation ground the body is transfered from the tower to the bull, and then everything is ignited in a massive blaze.  Drama.  Colour.  Power.

And everything is like that.  Sit at night outside any village, and you will be engulfed by a syncopated wall of frog voice, punctuated with a rythmic, clear call of a jungle bird, and lonely checak vocalization.  Then listen to the percussive complexities of the gamelan, (the only advanced musical tradition without written notation), and hear the similarities.

We have based ourselves in Ubud for the month of December, and still, after so many years of coming here, we are always amazed by the beauty of the place.  For better and for worse, we have also come at the onset of the rainy season, and one of the major festival seasons.  I actually quite like the rains.  They clear the air of the steamy heat, and watching the clouds build and the monsoon pour from the shelter of a cane chair on a broad clay-tiled veranda is a wonderful experience.  Being caught on a busy road on a motorbike in a downpour is less delightful.  And indeed, if we had wanted to make any beach or reef time this year, it would have been a frustrating month to do it.

It is important when you arrive in Indonesia to look at a calendar, and note when the “red days” are.  These are holidays, circled, predictably, in red.  Locals will generally observe the ones specific to their community, but banks, governments, institutions and many businesses are apparently more inclusive, and will be closed for all of them.  And there are a lot.  So now in Bali, in addition to the Christmas and New Year observations, there is the Galungan festival, beginning on Dec. 17, and ending with Kuningan on the 27th.  It is a celebration of good over evil, but for our Balinese friends, especially the women, it is a marathon of processions, temple offerings, and making decorations.  The most spectacular of these are the penjor, towering bamboo “flags” festooned with woven palm leaf, rice stalks, and bright fabric, set up on the street outside of many houses and shops.  They are also the inspiration for the umbal-umbal, the ceremonial Balinese flags, which we carry in our store.  The days before the penjor go up are especially busy for merchants such as Wayan, who we buy our umbrellas and umbals from.  He works non-stop to supply locals with penjor accessories.  Festivals have no small economic impact: a basic pejor will cost around $20, and the most elaborate can be 10 times that much.

The day when all the penjor are put up is quite magical.  Suddenly, from the little village lane where our house is, to the busy streets leading into town, we are driving under a vast living art installation.  The ornate dangling tails of the flags bob in the breeze above our heads, waving at us, as if we are royalty, and our subjects are beautiful slender gigantic tree creatures.

As mentioned earlier, it’s not the best time to get things done in Bali, and many of our trips to see merchants or source new products have to be postponed as the shops are closed.  But giving ourselves a month here means we have time to do things at leisure, and we are happy, at the end of the day, to have made orders with old suppliers as well as new.

Wayan, our flag maker, is our longest running connection here.  He has come a long way from his early days, when both his and our budgets were tight, and our modest orders were a big boost for him.  Now he can even see the bright side of the two shops across the road converting to similar temple accessory businesses: it makes this corner a destination, and actually brings in more customers.

We have also been working with Gus for several years.  He makes our cast concrete sculptures.  As with Wayan things are very busy with him at the moment.  He does most of the work himself, along with his wife, and the pressure of filling orders, along with the added demands of the festival season, are taking their toll.  I think I sense some relief when our order is reduced from last year, and there is a long time line to finish it.  The reality for us is that, as popular as they are, the concrete sculptures are extremely difficult to move about week after week.  The heavy ones, especially, are prone to chipping with a lot of handling, and in one of last seasons most depressing moments, I discovered that about 30% had been damaged by Canada Customs during the inspection of our container.

This will be the second year, after a successful debut, that we have bought parachute-nylon hammocks from the lovely Riga.  She operates out of a tiny shop on Raya Andong, and is also optimistic about this year, but mainly because she owns her property.  Real estate is going crazy in Ubud, and investors are snapping up everything they can lay their hands on for unrealistic prices.  This means that landlords are forcing the leases up, and a lot of small businesses will be facing a crunch as rising costs squeeze their already-tight margins.  I worry that this is merely another manifestation of the global war on independent operators, that we are destined for a future of big box conformity.  Citizens! Resist!  Support small business wherever you find it!

We are always on the lookout for the interesting and the original, and in Kadek we found an artist that goes so far in these directions that we had to keep asking ourselves “but will it work?”  Kadek is a carver who uses the medium of animal skulls.  There is something primal, a little Lord of the Flies about his tiny studio, but any misgivings about dark motivation are immediately dispelled by the wholesome nature of Kadek himself.  The eighth son of a farmer, there is nothing Goth about this man.  Instead, he is enthusiastic to show off his creations.  Some, like the Indian chief with a war bonnet, are less successful than others, but he knows his market, and Kadek says they sell in Korea.  We loved the delicate work of his flowers and vines, especially on the curved-tusk aggression of the boar skulls.  We also couldn’t resist a couple of un-carved water buffalo skulls, just to show off what a massive creature it is.

On the other kinder/gentler side of our product line we bought more Javanese sarongs from Ibrahim, whose grandfather came from Madras to open a textile business in Jalan Sulawesi, Denpassar’s cloth bazaar, and who’s 84 year-old grandmother still tends the store on a regular basis.  We are also bringing in bamboo wind chimes, produced by a woman named Bella.  Now, there may be a gasp of surprise from some, as we have generally put wind chimes in the same category as drop-crotch sultan pants and didgeridoos.  But like Riga’s hammocks, we have lived with a bamboo wind chime, and are sold on them.  You don’t have to believe me – come down to our sales and hear them for yourself!

 

 

Here are some more photos of Bali and some of the goods we are bringing back.  There will be a more comprehensive collection on the sales page of our website https://www.kebeandfast.com when some technical problems have been worked out.  Shortly.

Speaking of photography, I welcome everyone along on the journey with our new camera, a Nikon D5200.  I am carrying 2 lenses: a fixed 35mm with f1.8; and a 18-200mm f3.6. It is a learning experience, and if you are interested, please check out some of the results as I post them on our flickr site.  Go to https://www.kebeandfast.com/, and click the flickr link at the top of the page.

Best to everyone, your foreign devil corespondents,

Katheryn and David

 

The time is coming when our Asian season ends and our sales season is about to begin, the time when everyone is wondering: when will Kebe and Fast be here, and what will we buy from them?  The first part is easy.  This is our 2014 sales schedule:

• May 15-18 Willow Point Lions’ Hall, 2165 South Island Hwy, Campbell River.
• May 22-25 Errington Memorial Hall, 1390 Errington Rd.
• June 5-8 Rossland Miner’s Hall, 1765 Columbia Ave.
• June 12-22 Hart Hall (Old Anglican Cathedral Hall) 501 Carbonate @ Ward, Nelson.
• July 3-6 Galiano Island Community Hall, 141 Sturdies Bay Rd.
• July 9-12 Mercury Theatre, 331 Brae Rd. Duncan.
• July 16-19 Salt Spring Island Farmers’ Institute, 351 Rainbow Rd. (next to the Recycling Center).
• July 24-27 Pender Islands Community Hall, 4418 Bedwell Harbour Rd.
• July 30-Aug. 9 Roberts Creek Masons’ Hall, Roberts Creek Rd. @ Hwy 101.
• Aug. 12-15 Agricultural Hall, 465 South Rd, Gabriola Island.
• Aug. 21-24 Mayne Island Agricultural Hall, 430 Fernhill Rd.
• Aug. 28-31 Fulford Community Hall, 2591 Fulford-Ganges Rd., Salt Spring Is.
• Sept. 11-14 Cobble Hill Community Hall, 3550 Watson Ave.
• Sept. 18-21 Gabriola Is. Community Hall, 2200 South Rd.

There are a few changes from 2013.  We are pleased to be back at the Willow Point Hall in Campbell River after the absence of a year.  There is also a new venue in the interior: we are at the beautiful and historic Rossland Miners’ Hall, instead of down the road at Warfield.  Nothing against Warfield: we had one of our favourite sales there, but the hall was unavailable for our dates.  We are also returning to the Gabriola Is. Community Hall, as well as being at the Agricultural Hall: it does sometimes seem that north and south Gabriola are two different islands!

As for what you can buy from us, well…  We are very pleased with our sources this trip.  By changing our timing slightly we visited our Indian suppliers at the peak of their inventory holdings, and consequently we were able to choose our goods from the largest possible selection.  In particular our Madreama line of screen-printed table cloths and duvet covers is outstanding.  We are also adding cushion covers and curtains from them this year.  Move your cursor over the image for product info.

By popular demand we are introducing a line of twin size duvet covers (60” X 90”) with one pillow sham for the first time.  They are “resist” block-printed in a style called “ajrak”, where an adhesive is blocked onto the fabric instead of a dye.  Then the fabric is plunged into the dye vat, and the dye adheres to the areas where there was no adhesive.  One advantage of this traditional method is that it is much easier to have a uniform background colour   other than white: we have chosen maroon, blue and green.

We are also adding three more styles of kurtas to our clothing rack.  The endlessly-adaptable kurta (Indian blouse) can range from cheap-to-the-point-of-disposable to high-end designer chic.  Ours have all been tweaked from the basic original design, and are made – this is important – from quality cotton with finished seams.

As usual, we spent more than we intended on our Indian purchases, but we feel there were mitigating circumstances this year.  A large selection meant that there was a rare chance to stock up on the best pieces of three of our favourite items: zari-work wall hangings from Pakistan; cut-work appliqué bedspreads (to which, in the twin size, we have added tabs to form spectacular curtain panels); and hand-woven wool jacquard blankets.

Over at Mr. Negi’s amazing collection (see blog: The Wonderful Warehouse of Mr. Negi) we were once again spoiled for choice.  Eclectic and charming was our criteria, and we came away from there with a camel caravan’s-worth of (among much else) coal-fired irons, antique well-dippers, apothecary cabinets, painted stools, and a Lama’s folding prayer book table: in short, something for all of our tasteful eccentrics.  You know who you are.

Speaking of, with this year’s order, we surely must be carrying one of B.C.’s best supplies of Buddhist singing bowls.  Along with the exquisite hand-hammered bronzes and the popular cast bowls, we have brought in more of last-year’s big hit: the large cast aluminum bowls.

Here in Bali we have just wrapped up our orders, and they are being picked up by our shipper as I write.  I know last year I was moaning about the decision we made to buy cast-concrete statues.  For a store that has to be packed up and set up every week, they are miserably heavy items to be hauling around.  It seems I have learned nothing.  We have bought more than ever, including several new styles of Ganesha.  We sold out fast last year, so if you are interested in a particular piece for your home or garden, let us know, and we will set it aside.

You might also want to pre-order our folding teak chairs.  This is the last year we will be able to offer them at this price – check on-line, ours are the best deal out there.

The last new item I will mention is one directly inspired by our stay on Kanawa Is. (see the previous blog) – hammocks.  Back here in Bali we found Riga, who runs a one-woman operation and is exactly the kind of entrepreneur we love to support.  She makes quality hammocks of her own design, but is continually improving and improvising.  She has just come out with a “yoga hammock” that a European client wanted to order.  Apparently you can use the suspended stirrup-like rings to do asanas while swinging above the ground, but she admitted to being as stumped as we were as to how it worked.  Maybe we are passing up a hot trend – add “yoga” to anything and double the price – but we are staying with her traditional style.  In fact, we are test-driving it now…

Of course I’ve only mentioned a fraction of our goods.  For a more complete idea, please visit our website, and browse through the “products” section.

 

 

 

 

A house reef, in diver parlance, is a coral reef that you can swim out to.  It is also implied that there is accommodation close by on the shore, hence it is the reef of the “house”.  Here at Kebe and Fast, we are dedicated to the quest for Asia’s best house reef.

Not only that, but it has to be economical.  We are on a budget, and can’t afford the Pulau and Bunaken kind of Conde Naste fantasies.  We are so tight, in fact, that we don’t even dive: we snorkel.  Grab your mask from a simple bungalow on a white sand beach, wade into the turquoise water, swim out and explore the aquarium colours on the live coral drop-off all day, and then have a coconut curry and a beer, cooled by an on-shore breeze tickling the palm trees in the evening – now that is something to aspire to.

For several years we have been content with the east coast of Koh Tao, in Thailand (see blog Thailand: The Way of Koh Tao).  Hin Wong Bay is a relatively secluded spot of large granite boulders and palm trees on an otherwise-overcrowded island.  Being only 8 hours away from Bangkok can be a curse.  It seemed, however, that as our expectations rose the quality of the site diminished, until last year, with one impinging development too many, we left early, glad to be gone.

The Andaman Islands (blog: Where the Giant Dum Dum Trees Grow), a remote archipelago belonging to India, has cache among divers.  Radha Nagar Beach on Havelock Island is probably the most beautiful beach we have ever seen.  The one resort that was allowed to build on it is out of our range, but with an idiosyncratic commute on the local school bus, it felt like a “house reef”.  Tagging along with a large school of gigantic bump-head Napoleons remains a peak snorkelling experience, and the Elephant Bay reef, reached by a hike through old growth jungle and a mangrove swamp was also wonderful.

Two years ago we went to the Philippines, and ended up at Blue Cove resort (blog: Manila: Palawan: Blue Cove), on a tiny island off of Port Barton.  Again, a very beautiful spot, but the reef, which is now protected, has been dynamite-fished, and

is only starting to recover.

Last year we fell in love with Sulawesi (blog: Sulawesi: 10), and the marvelous Togian Is. archipelago.  The house reefs on a number of the islands we that we stayed on were abused and disappointing, with Waleakodi, the furthest island, being the exception.

Unfortunately it has been a rough couple of decades for coral reefs around the world, with population pressure and climate change causing massive destruction.  Here in Indonesia the situation is critical, but it is an enormous

country with perhaps the most diverse tropical marine environment on the planet.  Right now, Rajah Empat, in the far east of the archipelago near New Guinea, is the coveted destination for divers.  However, access there is difficult, there is no accommodation, and anyone who wants to experience the coral has to get there on a live-aboard boat.

Not so far from there in the South Molucca group of islands are the Bandas.  This was our original destination, but connections from Bali proved to be too expensive and unreliable to suit our schedule this year.  As it turns out, 2 of the 3 boats which sporadically call in to Bandaneira are currently out of service.  Delays are being measured in weeks.

We ended up going to western Flores, to a tiny island off of the town of Labuanbajo, called Kanawa.  There are frequent cheap flight connections from Bali to Bajo – we flew with Sky Aviation for about $60 each (note: delays and cancellations without notice are common, so be prepared to improvise).  It’s only a one-hour flight, but if the sky is clear it takes you over some incredible scenery.  First there is Bali’s own Mother Volcano, Gunung Agung, followed shortly by the 3 jewel-like Gili Islands off the coast of Lombok.  Then we skirt the rice-terraced flanks of 3726 m

volcano Gunung Rinjani.  Off the east coast of Lombok we could see another pair of intriguing-looking islands, which turned out to be Gili Sulat and Gili Pentangen, at this point totally undeveloped.  Then the flight crosses the large island of Sumbawa, and treats us to a view inside the caldera of 2850m Gunung Tambora, formed in a massive explosion 200 years ago.  After Sumbawa the seatbelt sign goes on as we prepare for the approach to Labuanbajo.

We are now over Komodo National Park, eponymous home of the famous “dragons”, the world’s largest lizards.  All the softness of Bali has been left behind, and Komodo’s spiky, barren ridges look menacing and forsaken, a fitting place for a prowling reptile that kills by letting the septic pathogens from its bite infect and slowly putrefy its prey, which the dragon follows until it succumbs and dies.  Don’t crash on Komodo.  The surrounding archipelago of islands and atolls, however, look like medallions of jade set in pearl set in emerald, scattered on the sea.  This is where we are going.

There is a sleek new steel and glass airport terminal in Labuanbajo.  But it’s not finished.  We taxi instead to a crumbling Dutch relic.  They lock us inside an airless room with one ceiling fan to wait for our baggage, and immediately everyone lights up a cigarette.  I find that by standing directly under the fan the smoke is more or less dissipated, and it is less stifling and unbearable.  Two unfortunate employees are in the cargo hold on the blistering mid-day tarmac, tossing bags into a trolley.  Then they have to pull it by hand to the waiting room entrance, where everybody shouts and points until their luggage is delivered.  On the other side of the waiting room is a glass wall against which every taxi driver in town is pressed, trying to get the attention of potential fares.  As soon as the departure door is opened they try their luck inside.

The hotel I have somewhat randomly chosen is only a few minutes away (everything in Bajo is), but the shortest route is the wrong way up a one way street from the airport.  Our driver simply backs up against the flow of traffic until we are there, good value, in my books, for the $5 fare.

There are two “resort” islands off of Labuanbajo: Kanawa and Serayu.  Serayu, we learn, is closed until May for renovations.  The booking office for Kanawa is on Bajo’s sleepy main drag, and we are a little concerned that our accommodation there – at $40/night at the very top end of our scale – doesn’t even have a fan.  How will we survive?  The heat and humidity here in Bajo levels you like a jackboot. When it starts to rain late that night it is like a pressure valve releasing.  And then it rains harder.  And then it really rains.  And then it pours with such vengeance that we get out of bed and open the door to witness the cracking thunder and purging deluge, pounding down at 100 decibels.

As it turns out, there is no reason to be concerned about Kanawa.  The on-shore breezes flow about our bungalow better than any fan could.  For ten days we have an idyllic beach-front location, the mask and snorkel waiting on the balcony railing the only incentive to do anything.  You have to like a place where you are greeted at the pier by lion fish and sharks in the clear water.  Two species, now that I think about it, that are potentially lethal…  But no need to fear.  The lion fish hang out under the pier, all multi-coloured jutting fins like a carnival costume – you would have to make an effort to touch them and be paralyzed by the toxin in their spines.  And the sharks are not only harmless black-VID_00000683tipped “reefies”, but they are only 30cm long juveniles sheltering in the shallow water from the more dangerous predators out there.  Of which there are no shortage.  Over the days of diving here we see tuna and barracuda and huge rock cod, all, I’m sure, who

would make a meal of what we call the “puppies”.  We also have frequent encounters with their full-grown shark “parents”, who patrol the deeper water in a more sinister-looking fashion.  Every trip into the water, in fact, yields a new catalogue of sightings including large blue-spotted rays, sea snakes, stone fish, bump-head napoleons, turtles every day, as well as the usual but beautiful big and abundant bat fish, Moorish idols, trigger fish, many species of Nemos, and so much more.  But it is the coral which is the real treat.  From 30m off of our cabin the colour begins, a fantasy-land of canyons and stag-horn forests, stretching out to the deep blue of the drop-off, live and flourishing, unlike most of the reefs we have seen.

It is an amazing place, but there is a price for being here.  In the literal sense, it is expensive: the cost of meals, beer and accommodation is several times what we would pay in most other places.  And physically, there are a lot of biting and stinging things out here.  After the first couple of days of assault by bed bugs, jelly fish stings, and ant, spider and mosquito bites, Katheryn is taking antihistamines, and looks like a new species of spotted marine dweller herself.

Over all, though, top marks on the house reef scale.  There is more research to do before a definitive answer can be given, but that is the task we have unsparingly set ourselves.

Your foreign devil correspondents in Indonesia.

If the S. E. Asian nations were teenagers at a junior high school dance, what would they be like?  Laos would be the shy girl in the corner, unaware of how cute she is because she thinks she’s too short.  Burma is the insecure bully who will survive heroin addiction and discover Jesus.  Cambodia is in baggy pants and a hoodie, and raps alone in his room at home with his music loud.  Malaysia does very well in math and chemistry.  Indonesia and Philippines are just cutting loose on the dance floor.  And Thailand?  The teachers don’t understand why a kid like Thailand has this problem about “acting out”.

We are now in the middle of a full-blown crisis here.  The issues – seemingly small compared to those faced by its neighbours –  have triggered a response out of all proportion to what it should be.  Briefly: part of the country doesn’t like an ex-P.M., Taksin Shinawatra, and with the help of the army got him overthrown in 2006 and exiled in 2008.  The other part, who has a voting majority, want him back.  Whenever a government of either side is in power, the other side take to the streets in massive numbers until they resign.  Reset, and repeat.  After 8 years of this, so much bad blood has taken place that it is difficult to see how a solution can be reached.

The current administration is of the Taksin “red shirt” variety, with his sister, Yingluck, as P.M..  Much of the present crisis developed from a bone-headed piece of legislation she introduced, just after we arrived in November.  Perhaps she hoped that there would be enough to gain for both sided in her Amnesty Bill; instead there was perceived to be too much to lose, and nobody was happy.  The bill proposed a wide-ranging pardon for those involved in the tragic events of March 2010, when the last major protests in Bangkok came to a brutal end.  The Red Shirts thought it would exonerate the killers of their un-armed protesters (including, incidentally, the leader of the protests now, Suthep Taunsuban who ordered the army to move in).  For the Yellow Shirts, it was the beginning of their worst nightmare: the pardon and return of ex-P.M. Taksin.

By Christmas the protests were picking up steam, led by the charismatic Suthep.  Suthep was smart enough not to brand his movement as “Yellow Shirt”; he wanted the impression of a more inclusive opposition.  Instead they use the tri-colour Thai flag for their paraphernalia. Their defining symbol, unfortunately, is the whistle – to be caught in a march of 10,000 people blowing whistles is an ear-splitting experience.

All this time the Yingluck govt. was taking a very soft approach; police and soldiers weren’t in evidence; the protesters went where and when they pleased.  They blockaded the government offices: the government moved to an airbase.  They blockaded police H.Q.: the police let them in, and then were handed flowers by the protesters outside.  Chief among Suthep’s demands was the resignation of Yingluck and her government.  In a canny move, Yingluck said sure, I’ll terminate my office now, and we’ll have elections on Feb. 2.  For Suthep and the opposition, the problem with this is that they will lose this election by a wide margin, just as they did to Yingluck in the last one.  In reality they have a point in declaring that the whole electoral process needs reform, but their proposal that an unspecified “reform committee” govern Thailand in the meantime comes across as somewhat disingenuous.

The situation now is that the unstoppable force of Suthep’s no-election protest is about to collide with Yingluck’s immovable election date of Feb.2.  The really sad part is that no matter which way it goes, more harm will be done, and Thailand will be further from any solution than it was before.

The latest developments occured last night, January 21, when Yingluck declared a “state of Emergency” in Thailand.  This gives police extra-judicial powers of detention, bans protests, and censors media reporting of events “to protect Thai people and ensure the rule of law”.  In the paper this morning, for what it’s worth, Suthep said he was having none of it, and the protests would continue.  Here in Chiang Mai, a “Red” (i.e. pro-government) part of the country, life goes on pretty much unaffected by events in Bangkok.  That’s not to say we will be missing out on the action all together.  Our time here is coming to an end, since our condo lease expires on Jan. 28.  We get into Bangkok on Jan. 29, and have a ticket from there to Bali on Feb. 4.

JANUARY 30 BANGKOK

A small incident coming in from Don Muang Airport yesterday: approaching our neighbourhood, the taxi decided to try his luck and take a shorter route through one of the blockaded roads, Wisut Kasat.  At the sandbags and piled-up car tires he rolled down the windows and told the bandanna-topped enforcer he had a couple of foreigners going to Khao San Rd.  Always happy to play the dumb tourist in situations of civil unrest, we smiled like idiots, gave him the thumbs up, and were waved through.  There was actually nothing tense about the situation, and the road after that was empty.

The big Jan. 13 “Shut Down Bangkok” protests were less effective than the opposition hoped they would be, but they have left blockades at half a dozen of Bangkok’s busiest intersections.  Even so, Thais have been remarkably adaptive, as usual, and go about working, shopping, dining out and all the rest of it with little more inconvenience than if it was, say, a sore toe.

The only errand we have that takes us out of our neighbourhood is computer-related.  You may remember a story in our Assam blog about hunting down a power cable in Guwahati: the temporary fix we found with the adapter there has now almost reached the end of its usefulness.  The place to go for such things in Bangkok is Pantip Plaza, but by road there are three obstructed areas we would have to circumvent to get there.  Fortunately there are alternatives, the best of which is the canal.  It turns out to be a straight-forward operation: taking the canal boat to Pratunam, finding the cable, getting lunch, and taking the boat back.  What is reassuring, in a city depicted as an intractable war-zone, is the sheer normality of the experience.

From the window of our guest house we have a wonderful view of the Chao Phraya River and Rama VIII Bridge.  The odd thing about it, since we were last here, is that there is no traffic on it and it is covered by black fabric.  This is to shelter the protesters camping out on the bridge deck.  It’s only a couple of blocks away, so around 4 we decide to stroll over.

Rising 560 m from the river like an inverted “Y”, the massive supporting pylon of the bridge is a city landmark.  If the design, with its taut cables radiating in artistic geometry looks familiar, it is because the chief designer and the engineer also built the Alex Fraser Bridge.  There is a small barricade at the pedestrian access to the bridge, but no one troubles us, so we just walk up the stairs.

Suddenly I can understand why, apart from the political objectives, the protesters are using the tactic of blockading major thoroughfares.  Walking down the middle of an empty 6-lane freeway feels like you are getting away with something bad, and it is exhilarating.  You have effected change on the established order of the universe, you have planted your biped flag in the heart of the realm of lethal speeding metal, and the forces of internal combustion that seemed so dominant and unapproachable have been throttled.

The spirit of the protesters is so strong that the mood here, with just hours to go before the general election that they are opposed to, is festive.  Tents and mosquito nets fill the entire bridge deck surface, apart from some lanes kept clear for walking.  There is an infirmary tent, and a free kitchen; whenever we go by kind people try to ply us with food.  A stage has been set up, and at the podium is a young girl – she can’t be more than 5 – regaling the small crowd with a powerful-sounding diatribe.  Behind this scene a trans-gender classical dance instructor is stressing out getting her troupe ready for the next act.  I’m beginning to like this “Shut Down Bangkok” thing.  It’s so Thai.  Vendors are pedalling protest T-shirts and mobile phone chargers; if you’ve had enough of the standing you can get a $2 foot massage.

ELECTION DAY SUNDAY FEBRUARY 2

What’s that they say about the best-laid plans?  We have to be at Don Muang Airport at 4 a.m. on Tues, and partly to give us an hour more sleep and partly because no one knows how easy it will be to get out of here Monday night, we have booked a hotel close to the airport for one night.  The problem, we gather from the news this morning, is that it is right in the middle of the most volatile voting area.  Yesterday afternoon Lak Si intersection, a few hundred metres from our airport hotel, was the scene of a gun battle.  All the polling stations in Lak Si and Don Muang have been shut down.  At our local poll, however, where we pass to go for breakfast, all is quiet.  It’s Sunday, and many businesses are shut.  It’s election day in a deeply divided city; more businesses are shut.  It’s hot.  Really, this isn’t very exciting.  Well, one can always go for a massage…

MONDAY FEBRUARY 3

According to the receptionist (who had to pause to get an opinion from someone else) Lak Si intersection is open, so getting to the hotel isn’t a problem.  We are also following the situation on twitter, and there are no reports today on Lak Si.

This is how far we’ve come up in the world: our new hotel has a doorman.  International class, I think they call it.  Pool, sauna, more pool – and it’s time to get some food.  The only place around with shops is – you guessed it – Lak Si shopping mall.

Anyone who has spent time in Thailand knows that here the mall can be your friend.  A) It’s air conditioned.  B) There is a food court.  A Thai food court is a bio-reserve of indigenous cuisine.  They should be declared UNESCO world heritage sites. The best have acres of independent options, brought from villages all over this country.  The prices are fixed and posted, and they are the best deal in the land – usually about 35B – more or less $1/meal.  The hardest part is deciding what to choose…

No one knows where Thailand is headed politically from here.  The election will have resolved nothing, and the most likely scenario is months and years of more turmoil and uncertainty.  Some are even saying that the North and Northeast should separate and form a new country, with Chiang Mai as the capital.  On the other hand, the last few days here in Bangkok have left us with a feeling of hope in the Thai spirit of resilience, and faith that the basic good sense of these people will prevail.  Take the Lak Si shopping mall.  On Saturday bullets shattered the glass doors at one entrance – we couldn’t go in that way.  Today, Monday, what are people doing?  They are ignoring it, behaving normally, and, like us, getting a meal in the food court.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s easy when you are sitting in a comfortable chair in Shillong, with a guide book and a cup of coffee, to make an ambitious plan to for an extensive tour of N.E. India.  We could go from here to Silchar, and then Mizoram and then up through Manipur to Nagaland,

stopping in at Manjuli Island before returning to Guwahati.  That sounds like fun!  But after a couple of weeks of hard travel in

Meghalaya, as great as it’s been, the reality of what this involves sets in.  What it means is lots of bad hotels in transit towns after long days of cramped Sumo seats, and very little information of how and when transportation is available. Plus it’s getting colder.  But we’re not quite ready to leave the N.E. yet, so we scale back the plans and decide to spend a further week on the warm plains of Assam, at the Brahmaputra-side town of Tezpur, and Orang National Park, which is one of the last homes of the Indian one-horned rhino.

A mini-crisis happens the day before we are to leave Guwahati.  The laptop isn’t charging!  Usually this is the fault of Indian wiring, and jiggling the plug around in the socket will eventually find a connection.  This time it turns out our power cable is defunct.  No one here has genuine Panasonic parts, and we spend an entire evening in an auto-rickshaw following lead after lead around the mean streets of Guwahati.  Without success.  The next morning we have one more option left. Purvajoti Infotech, a hole in the wall shop down a grotty alley, had enough marketing savvy to buy an impressive-sounding banner ad in the Guwahati yellow pages, which drew us in. It certainly isn’t the kind of place we expected from their superlative-laced description, but there on the counter is a universal adapter kit, and one of the connecters fits!  We scoot back to the hotel, collect our bags before check out, get back to the bus-stand, and get good seats on a decent-enough bus heading out at 11:30 for Tezpur, 170 km and 5 hours away.

Any long distance bus in India is a bit of an ordeal, with the usual high-decibel incessant honking, the dusty road construction, the dilapidated seats and the lip-smacking betel-chewers.  But even all that can’t take away from the beauty of this place.  We are heading east on the north side of the Brahmaputra River.  The dry paddy rice crop is being harvested, the golden stalks scythed, stacked by hand, and loaded on double-yoked ox carts, like some Asian inspiration for a work of Breughel the Younger.  Small villages set amid palm trees have gardens of chrysanthemum and marigold.  In the distance preside the white peaks of the Himalayas.

We get to Tezpur just as the sun sets and – luck is holding – get a room at the government-run “Tourist Lodge”.  Often these places are institutional and run-down, the guaranteed state subsidies replacing the need for any customer service or maintenance.  The Tezpur Lodge is OK (hard mattress, par for the course out here) and even has a satellite box that gives us the clearest TV we have seen in weeks!

If Guwahati is the hip twenty-something updating profiles by iphone, Tezpur still wears polyester pants and has a moustache.  It’s a throwback to India in the 1980’s – in a good way.  Life saunters along at the pace of the cycle rickshaws on the main street.  For three days we enjoy Tezpur’s languid charm, strolling through the town or along the slow-flowing Brahmaputra.  On the sand banks of the river are a collection of god and goddess figures from an old festival.  Slowly falling to pieces, they seem to be abandoned to the happy dementia enjoyed by former creators and destroyers of the universe when their time on the big stage has passed.  Even the railways have abandoned Tezpur.  The passenger service was terminated a couple of years ago; now kids play cricket by the marooned station, and friendly vendors still smile from their stalls, even though business must be as thin as the weeds on the tracks.  To see our “Quick Tezpur Minute” video on youtube, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptWGx0FleV4&list=UUzPNkH_3cH9Oz3q-g71UkUA&feature=share&index=1

Tezpur has been a pleasant surprise, but the destination for our excursion into rural Assam is Orang Park.  Although having the second highest density of rhinos of any place in India, no one seems to know anything about Orang – such as where it is.  It’s not in the guide books, and we only discover by looking out the bus window on the way to Tezpur that it isn’t – as the tourist info and the web suggest – 32 km from the town, but 32 km OFF the Tezpur highway, from a junction 67 km from here.  We are confident there is a tourist lodge there, but not certain.

The bus drops us at the hamlet of Orang, a small collection of shops along the dusty margins of the highway.  Then it leaves.  No one approaches us, but the eyes of every man woman child and dog are glued to us as we try to figure out a next move.  We have no idea how we will make the next 32 km, but this is India, and something always happens.  A man with a car says he will take us to the park, but his price is outrageous. I tell him how much I am prepared to pay, and he waves to an auto rickshaw across the street.  That settled, we bundle into the 3-wheeler, and putter off into the unknown.

It’s a relief to find there is a Tourist Lodge at the park gate.  They do have a room: mildewed walls, broken windows, and coir mattress and pillow barely covered by Mickey Mouse sheets. We soon meet Ali, the precocious fixer.  He looks 15, throws out uncertain English colloquialisms, and can arrange anything is this, his little domain.

After lunch we decide to stroll through the neighbouring village.  If Tezpur was India in the 1980’s, this is India @ 1890.  A visitation by alien beings wouldn’t have caused as much of a stir, and we see people running across the field to tell neighbours.  It is a really bucolic place, with neat mud huts, rice sheaves piled into golden mounds, and rich afternoon light pouring through the palm trees, but with the entire village silently following us, and more arriving all the time, it’s getting a little uncomfortable, and we turn around to go back.  To break the ice I decide to take a photo of Katheryn with the kids, and show it to them.  Miming what I am going to do, I am taken by complete surprise when they all scream and run away.  Well, not quite all.  For two or three kids – the ones, possibly, who will go on making their own choices – this is just too much fun, and they crowd around and point and laugh at the view screen.  Then the others rush back.  Soon almost all have decided the benefits of this game outweigh the risks. With the kids onside and happy, we leave the village as friendly monstrosities, rather than just strange and unpredictable life forms.

It isn’t cheap to visit a National Park in India as a foreigner, and after a few no-so-great experiences it is one of the reasons we have rarely done so.  Official prices for everything are magnitudes higher if you are white, and this morning’s excursion – entrance to the park, jeep ride to the elephant staging area, elephant ride and jeep back – will cost us about $100.

The early morning light needs an accompanying harp it is so soft, as it angelically splays through the foggy forest canopy.  All we get are the revving gears of Ali’s ancient jeep, as we bounce around its sharp edges standing in the back.  He lost pole position to the only other vehicle to have shown up here, it seems, in weeks; a plush private jeep with a guide hired by a Czech couple, and we are forced to eat their dust with mounting resentment.

We all arrive together after ½ an hour at the staging area, which is the compound of a beautiful forest bungalow set on a bank overlooking a vast plain of tall elephant grass.  Prime rhino habitat.  I want to stay here, and when I ask Ali about it he says it is only for government officials.  The Czech couple, at least, aren’t doing the elephant ride, so we won’t have them as our view for this, the most interesting part of the trip.  After a while our mount arrives.  He’s a big old tusker, marshalled in by a park ranger sporting an iron-tipped goad in one hand and a shotgun in the other.  The ranger tries to tell us the elephant’s name: it sounds like “Sacrot”.

We love riding elephants.  They don’t stride they sashay, each foot fall landing with a soft “poof”, somehow cushioned by the sheer good will the world has for its distinguished elder states-creatures.  Sacrot, however, isn’t happy.  He lets out a bellow and starts to veer for the underbrush.  The ranger corrects him with a thwack from the goad.  What happens next is best appreciated by listening to the audio clip (the video wasn’t on) we happened to catch on the blackberry, but in case I can’t get it posted I will try to describe it.

The elephant shouts out at the top of his lungs that he has had it with howdahs, and his tooth hurts, and he didn’t get his breakfast and above all he really has to pee.  This sounds to us like he’s possessed by Satan and is about to birth the antichrist.  He is backing into a tree, and I am worried that he is going to use it to smear us into a paste.  The ranger gives him an almighty whack on the skull.  This seems to have no effect except to make Sacrot vent louder.   Then he lets loose a vast torrent of urine.  The clinking you hear next in the clip is me handing the footboard chain, which had come detached,  to the ranger, and then the not-entirely-convinced “Are you OK?” “Yup. You good?”  And we continue.

Soon we turn off the trail onto the elephant grass wetland. There is a boggy stream to cross, and suddenly and surprisingly we are in muddy water up to the elephant’s belly.  If I were our tusker, planning revenge for his sore head, this is where I would do it.  All he has to do is roll over and lie down for a couple of minutes, and we are left embedded underwater in the mud, to be disposed of by whoever finds us first: the tigers or the crocs.  But I judge his temperament too harshly; all he wants is breakfast, which he takes by pulling up stooks of succulent marsh plants in his curled trunk.

There is impressive bird life on the flats, with snowy egrets and massive maribu storks unconcerned by the elephant bulk; but no rhinos.  Ali had warned us not to be too optimistic: at this time of year the elephant grass is at its highest, and they are hard to see.  And then there is a rustling by the river, and I’m sure we’ve flushed one out!  We plot a course through the grass to intercept the wake of rippling stalks…and it’s a wild pig.  There is no doubt it is great fun riding an elephant through tall grass looking for rhino, and we have to content ourselves with that.  The closest we get are lots of tracks and fresh poop.  And a tiger pug mark for consolation.

All in all, as much of an adventure as it is, I don’t think we’ll be back to Orang.  But as far as Assam and the wonderful N.E. States, it won’t be too soon.

To watch the Orang Nation Park  video, including the incredible elephant rant, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnpnSGHSxpo&list=UUzPNkH_3cH9Oz3q-g71UkUA&feature=share

 

 

 

 

 

In all of these years of travelling in India, I would have to say that the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya have become one of our all-time favourite places.  The capital of the state of Meghalaya, Shillong, at about 1500 m (5000’) is on the highest plateau of the region, high enough to see the distant snow peaks of the Himalaya to the north.  In November it is cool at night; you can see your breath, and we pull on heavy quilts to sleep.  The days are immaculately cloudless and warm.  We have made our base camp in Earl’s Holiday Home, serving explorers in the Khasi Hills since 1910.  Just down the road is Ward’s Lake, still a peaceful spot for a romantic paddle boat, just as it was for Hugh Arbuthnott  and J. O’Brian, signaller.  Both are buried in nearby All Saint’s Cathedral: Hugh killed in the Sudan wars and O’Brian in the Naga campaigns.  The Nagas, a few hundred km east of here are still restive; in fact there are so many fractious tribal groups in this part of India that Australia has designated it the 4^th most dangerous place in the world.  That seems like utter nonsense from our Spartan-but-twee room at Earl’s.  The people we have met have been incredibly friendly and hospitable. Bombs do go off, one acronym-challenged group or another taking credit, but I would say, without being at all cavalier, that no one should be deterred from visiting most parts of the N.E..  Flaunting the Australian Government, we make a plan to go to Mawlynnong, ominously billed as “The Cleanest Village in India”.

Starting in the filthy and chaotic Bara Bazar Sumo stand, things can only get tidier.  A Sumo is the Indian version of the Toyota Land cruiser, built to seat nine, but not considered full until there are 11 crammed inside.  We get squeezed into the back seat of a Sumo bound for Pinursla, from where we will have to change to go to Mawlynnong.  The back seat, in a conventional Sumo, is the worst place to sit.  The bench is slightly higher, and there are often wheel wells and spare tires to further restrict leg room.  On a milk-run Sumo, such as this, it has the advantage of having no doors.  Therefore when the driver of the already-full Sumo stops en-route to pick up even more passengers, they get forced into the first two rows.  Soon we are seated 5 X 5 X 4.  The next flag-down goes on the roof, much to my relief, but then we stop for a woman.  Seeing only four in the back she tumbles in, and somehow space is found.  When we arrive in Pinursla we are 15 inside and 10 outside.  The 60 km journey has taken 3 hours.

Penursla, like Bara Bazar, has no pretensions for India’s cleanest village award.  Sumos are flecked along its main drag like flies on a fly strip.  Still, it has an interesting and lively market, and most villagers wear the characteristic Khasi blanket on their heads, and a wide-strapped cloth shoulder bag.  It’s not easy finding the Mawlynnong sumo, and when we do there is no one in it – not a good sign; it means a long wait.

So far – as much as we could see the scenery – we have been travelling on a surprisingly-treeless plateau, broken by dramatic deep canyons.  When we finally depart after a 2 hour wait for Mawlynnong we start to descend, and we are soon travelling on a rough road through beautiful forest.  Having zero idea what to expect in Mawlynnong, I am relieved when we pull up and there is a sign for a home stay – it’s getting late, and I really couldn’t face a ride back.  The owner says she is full, which I didn’t expect, since we have seen no foreigners since coming to the N.E., and this place in on no path, however slightly beaten.  But even in our state of homeless exhaustion, we already love this village.  Betel palms punctuate a red evening sky, and we walk down a path over a river past flower-filled well tended gardens.

It isn’t long before Ricki, the town fixer, takes us under his wing, and after a couple of unappealing options finds us a room in his brother’s house.  The bathroom is outside, the mattress is coir, but the view out the window is an undisturbed jungle valley.  A flower garden frames a cute stone church, and kids laugh uproariously as they kick a soccer ball around by moonlight.

At Mawlynnong we have come to the very southern edge of the Khasi Hills, where the escarpment plunges precipitously to the Bangladesh plains.  An old stone-paved trail out of town was once a trade route, and even a short walk through the verdant forest full of butterflies and birdsong brings us views of the utterly-contrasting country below.  It’s a steep drop down, and we turn back after awhile, but the only other foreigner we meet in town – a Montrealer doing a book on global villages – went all the way and didn’t realize he was in Bangladesh. The police picked him up, took him to the station, questioned and released him, but on a bad day it could have turned out much worse.

The main reason we have come to Mawlynnong (and to Meghalaya) is not for this pretty village – which is a real bonus – but to see the living root bridges.  This is the wettest place on earth.  The nearby town of Cherrapunjee gets an average of 11 m/ year! Almost all of it falls in the months of the summer monsoon, and during that time the run-off turns rivers into monsters of unstoppable force.  Besides the daunting logistics of transporting building materials through such steep and forbidding terrain, the Khasi people discovered that the strongest river crossing they could make was by patiently training the long aerial roots of ancient fig trees to join others across the chasms.  It takes 30 years to “weave” a bridge, but they last for centuries.  The bridge near Mawlynnong, they say, is about 200 years old.

The finished product produces an architecture as unique as anything in the world.  The roots harden into a distorted macrame “V” shape, with chest-high “rails” and a matted, thick floor into which flat stones are often laid.  The whole thing flows down from the massive parent tree like a web cast from its gnarled trunk.  The bridge doesn’t stop growing, and some of its thigh-thick shoots start to reach back skyward,  growing branches and leaves.  Many others continue on their disrupted journey down to the soil and water, dripping rope-like from the bed of the bridge.  Communities of parasitic epiphytes that inhabit the parent trees don’t stop their colonization just because the host has taken on a new and eccentric form, and ferns and orchids festoon the bridge walls.  The entire effect, when seen from a distance, is as much like a marooned spell-cast pirate ship as anything else.  Fittingly so; the root bridges are magic creations inhabiting an enchanted land.We return from Mawlynnong to Shilloong glowing with a big inner smile.  If this was all we were to see in the N.E., I would be happy, and we haven’t even been to the star attraction at Cherrapunjee yet.

Mawlynnong we found by accident; Cherra is in the guide books.  According to the guide books, there is only one place to stay, and it is on top of the escarpment, 2000 stairs above the valley of the bridges.  Lonely planet also mentions a “basic” accommodation at the valley bottom, and living in dread of a 4000 step day we decide to stay on top one night, and then take our chances on the shaky valley option the next.

The well-known Cherrapunjee Holiday resort (they have painted their advertising on what seems like every boulder and bridge on the 18 km road from the town itself) sits pulpit-like on a spur of the escarpment, from where the ebullient owner, Mr. Denis, conducts a virtual monopoly on visitor comings and goings.  Its popularity attracts the few foreigners who make it out this way, as well as a full house of domestic tourists.  All that we could rustle up was the 5 bed dorm.  Apart from the personal attention bestowed on all by Mr. Denis and his son Joel, it would have been a bit depressing were it not for the surroundings.  On one side the prow of land on which the resort perches drops off toward the Bangladesh plain.  On the other are the walls of the Grand Canyon-scale escarpment, jungle covered where the sheer cliffs end.

It’s that canyon wall we head down the next day, starting from a small village called Tyrna.  For anyone wanting to by-pass the Cherra Resort, it would be possible, getting an early start, to get a taxi from Cherrapunjee town directly to Tyrna, and hike down to the valley in one day.  Just make sure you start the descent by 2 pm. It is getting dark this far east at 4:30, and you do not want to be doing the stairs at night.  The walk down is unrelentingly-steep, 2000 closely-placed steps with no let-up at all. K is counting.  At the bottom there is the option of going left to the village of Nongriat, where we will stay and where the famous “double decker” root bridge is, or right to the “long” bridge.  We go the short distance upstream for a look and a rest, and then back towards Nongriat.  This is the part that K wasn’t prepared for.  She had psyched herself up for 2000 stairs, but after we cross a rather flimsy wire suspension bridge we have to climb up and down another 1300! The village of Nongriat doesn’t come any too soon.

It is, like everything else in this part of the country, totally delightful.  Bernadine, the pixie-like manager of the guest house, meets us on the trail, and takes us there over the double-decker.  Then she goes off to get us some local tangerines, while we sit in the sunny garden and watch the butterflies.  The place certainly is basic – squat toilet, dim bulbs, coir mattress and slab of pillow – but there is a room.  We don’t have to go back up the cliff.  Inspired by the beauty of our surroundings we head further up the valley of the Umkynsan River that afternoon to another set of bridges.  It’s as if the entire valley is a botanical garden; the village economy is based on the harvesting of bay leaves, wild pepper, betel and oranges, but there are no plots or fields.  The crops are integrated into the forest itself.

The first bridge is steel cable, rusty and dodgy, but picturesque.  The next is a beautiful root bridge whose parent tree has sent off massive girder-like horizontal arms that span the trail.  The whole thing looks like it could only be possible as a computer-generated set on a Lord of the Rings movie.  It’s pleasantly warm at this elevation in the afternoon, and there are supposed to be some swimming holes just upstream from here.  The path starts to climb steeply, and I expect a trail off to the left at any moment.  Still it climbs, more steeply than the one we’ve just come down.  At some point it’s obvious even to me that we’ve missed the turn-off, and now our legs are really beginning to feel the accumulated 1000’s of stairs. There are a few groans and yelps on the walk back, and the rock-hard mattress that night doesn’t help things either.  Still, we stay another day, and have enough mobility to find some amazing pools that aren’t on our map, as well as the path that we missed yesterday.

The next day it is another 3400 stairs back to the top.  And that’s not even the hardest thing about leaving this magical valley.

 

 

For many more photos and videos, you won’t want to miss our flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet/sets/

Greetings, and welcome to Kebe and Fast’s travel blog for 2013-14.

Our 2013 sales season was our most successful ever, although it ended on a bit of a sad note. On the last day that I was using our big red truck, taking the last load of empty boxes to the Cowichan Valley Recycling center we blew an oil cooler hose, and the engine seized. It was a big loss. Big Red had been with us from the very beginning, and was our third partner, and business icon. We loved that truck. R.I.P. Big Red.

With all of our end-of-season wrap up duties, the shape of this trip still hadn’t taken shape until the very end. We had our tickets to Bangkok, but after that, with less than a week until departure on Oct. 31^st, I didn’t know if we would first go to Nepal, Indonesia, or India. Taking our current huge inventory into account, we ruled out Nepal, with great reluctance. Bali is a great place to start out a trip, and I am very excited about a new Indonesian destination, the remote Banda Islands. But that would mean leaving the buying trip to India for the spring, and they always, always screw up the shipment. Last year it was so late we didn’t have our new goods from there until the second week of July! So India first made the most sense. As well, leaving out Nepal gave us a window to get to one of the places on the sub-continent we have yet to explore: the N.E. corner.

Most people think of India as roughly diamond shaped with Bangladesh on the east, Tibet and Nepal on the north and Pakistan to the west. But there is a narrow corridor between Bhutan and Bangladesh through which  the compacted pressure of India seems to have herniated a whole new territory, wrapping itself around the distended bulk of Bangladesh, and pushing out a vast balloon of land into the hills of Burma.

Until very recently travel was highly restricted throughout the N.E..  Permits were hard to come by, and arrangements had to be made through tour companies, and were very expensive. In 2011 many of the restrictions were lifted on a trial bases. It’s now almost two years on and nobody really seems to know what the present situation is. We are currently in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, and neither the state tourist office, nor the Govt. of India, whose job, one would think, is to know, can tell us if we are allowed to travel by road to either of the neighboring states.  All I know for sure right now is that Arunachal Pradesh, the state that borders Tibet all the way from Bhutan to Burma, requires a difficult to obtain and expensive special permit, and Assam and Meghalaya, where we are now, do not.

We began this journey a week ago. Since the only cheap flight I could find from Bangkok to Calcutta arrived at a horrible hour (2:00 am) we decided we would just tough it out in Calcutta airport overnight and make a morning connection to Guwahati, Assam. I know, we are all about the glamour, and it doesn`t get much better than sleeping rough in Calcutta. In fact, since we were last here in the spring, a whole huge shiny new airport has appeared, and we follow the trend set by other passengers (and staff), and pushed conveniently-unsecured benches together to form an impromptu bed. Still, new or not, Calcutta is Calcutta, and in my sleepless clock-watching I counted four species of birds INSIDE the terminal, including a pair of minas who seemed intent on triggering a security door to get out.

Guwahati  (pronounced Go Hottie) capital of Assam, on the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra River, gateway to the tribal N.E. should be more exotic than it is. But then again, as far as a YABDIC (yet another big dirty Indian city) goes, I`ll take it. There are the usual garbage-strewn broken streets and the snarled, honking, exhausting traffic, but the people are friendly and very chilled out, paying no attention to the sight of foreigners strolling through their neighborhood.

The real reason we wanted to come to the N.E. wasn`t to see Guwahati, or even Assam, but to go to the state to the south, Meghalaya.  A few years ago I came across a photo of a bridge constructed from the inter-laced aerial roots of living fig trees, spanning a jungle-draped river, and it looked amazing.

That particular root bridge is near the town of Cherrapungee, also famous as the wettest place in the world, receiving around 11 meters of rain per year.  To get there from Guwahati you first have to take a Sumo to Shillong.  This isn`t as hard as it sounds.  Sumos leave regularly from various points around town.  Based on the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Sumo, built in India by Tata, is the transportation workhorse of the N.E.. We received our initiation into the art of Sumo riding a couple of years ago in Sikkim.  At its best, tickets are sold – 3 in front, 4 in the middle seat, 4 in back –  it departs when full, and doesn`t stop to pick up more along the way.  At its worst…well, we`ll get to that.  Guwahati to Shillong was a good Sumo.  We got the front seat with the driver.  Even though it was only the three of us, it was still so tight that K had to sit with the gear shift between her legs, the driver expertly and discretely running through the gears.  Reverse was the worst.

All over India the British built high-elevation hot-weather retreats called Hill Stations, from where corseted mem-sahibs could wax nostalgic in their little ersatz Albion over breakfast G&T`s, and sit on church committees planning charity balls for the benefit of proselytizing campaigns among vicious, benighted tribes like, say, the Khasi.  Shillong, where we are now, is one such Hill Station, on what was once and is again Khasi land.  Among the Khasi the proselytizing was certainly successful, as they describe themselves as “100 %“ Christian.  The Khasi have kept some older traditions, however, that are perhaps not typically Judeo-Christian.  Worshipping sacred groves of trees is one, and a matriarchal system in which inheritance is passed through the youngest daughter is another.

The British are gone, but the new overlord, the State of India, has not been very kind to the Khasi, or Shillong.  Much of the character of the hill station has been built over with drab concrete, and traffic often comes to a standstill, the drivers inching forward and switching their engines off to save petrol.  The Khasi themselves have some 23 distinct languages among a population of almost 3 million, so language extinction is happening quickly.  They are listed as a “scheduled tribe“ in India`s bizarre and complex system of affirmative action, which gives them educational opportunities and tax-free status.  The down side to being an educated, fair-skinned, tax-free people with inheritance passed through the daughter is that it hasn`t escaped the attention of the rest of the country.  If a businessman from, say, Gujarat can marry here, he can get tax-exempt status, and as a bonus inherit his wife`s family`s property.  All this has led to a backlash against the influx of India, manifest in marches, strikes, and occasionally violent confrontations.  I can fully understand the frustration of the people of the N.E..  This should really be a separate country.

Stay tuned for the next blog: we will be going to the enchanting valleys of the living root bridges!  In the meantime, more photos can be seen on flickr (go to the link on the tool bar of our home page), and videos on our youtube channel.

Khublei (thank you in Khasi), and thanks for your kind attention.

I remember in my youth buying my first Beatles record, a double anthology of their music from 1966-1970, putting it on the turntable and “discovering” extraordinary song after extraordinary song for the first time – Sulawesi this last month has been something like that.

It’s been on my radar for a long time.  In fact when I was 8 or 9 and had a map of the world above my bed what caught my interest was this extravagantly-shaped island, all flailing limbs like a freaky life form, straddling the equator. That, I thought, must be an interesting place.

So finally this year we made the decision, and flew into Sulawesi from Bali on Nov. 21.  If you haven’t been already, I would say you must go, so here are some of the practicalities, and our recommendations.  The photos can give you a better idea of the beauty of the place than words can, and you can run your cursor over them if you want to see what they are.

MAKASSAR

Also known as Ujung Pandang (an important point when you are trolling the web for flights), this is the big steamy capital where it is probable that you will arrive.  It has a new and well-organized airport from where you can catch a bus from the ground level downtown, or take a taxi for a standard fare of 85,000 rupiah (the exchange is 9,600/C$, so it’s easy to divide by 10,000) plus 15,000 for the toll way.  We decided to go to the Suada Indah Hotel, a good but very quirky choice.  For 250,000 you get AC, breakfast, and a big room full of furniture heavily carved is what can only be described as Chinese rococo.  Wifi can be picked up in the lobby.  We took a walk down to our second choice, the Lestari, which is a similar price, maybe more comfortable, but no windows.  There’s little reason to spend more than a day in Makassar; the best thing about it is its name.

RANTEPAO, TORAJA

Several ultra-comfortable private companies do the (theoretically) 8 hr. trip up into the mountains, and we chose Litha, leaving at 10 a.m.  Tickets are 115,000 each, and we paid the hotel clerk a well-earned 25,000 to go get them in a rainstorm.  Each company has their own station, and we got to Litha with a half hour, 30,000 taxi ride.  Roomy as the buses are, they don’t have toilets, but make food stops every 3 hours or so.  The scenery kept getting more and more spectacular until night fell, the rain started, and we were still a good hour away at our supposed arrival time.  By a huge stroke of luck the rain stopped just as we arrived in Rantepao.  We liked the sound of Duta 88 Cottages, and a “guide” (there are many in this town) met the bus and took us there.  They were full, but Daoud, the owner of a small homestay was there to scoop up the overflow, and led us to his place, the Riana, which was 120,000.  Nice, if you don’t mind toddlers underfoot, and no wifi.  We rented a motorbike the next morning from Alex at the internet cafe across the street from the Wisma Maria II for 60,000/day, and went hotel hunting.  The place we were hoping for, the Rantepao Lodge, was closed, and we ended up with a great room with wifi and balcony looking out over mountains and rice fields at the Pison Hotel (I know!) for 150,000.  We stayed there for 8 days, and loved every minute.  Typically, the clouds gathered and the rain poured at about 3 p.m., so we took the bike out into the countryside and tried to be back by then.  Anywhere you go is spectacular, so if you can try to be a the big sites – Kete Kesu, Lemo and Londa – when there aren’t crowds of tour buses outside.  All of those are cliff-face burial sites, with old carved suspended coffins, piles of skulls and bones, and staring tau-tau effigies arranged in hollowed out balconies.  Kete Kesu has an avenue of tongkanan, the beautiful Torajan crescent-roofed houses and rice barns, but as you drive around the area you see that they are everywhere.  A gorgeous excursion is on a rough road up to the ridge top of Batutumonga, which has a few bad-value hotels.

TENTENA

There are numerous bus company offices in “downtown” Rantepao, and we chose one leaving at 9 a.m. for Pendolo, on the shores of Poso Lake, a couple of hours south of Tentena.  100,000 rupiah, and they pick you up from your hotel.  Not quite the luxury of the Litha liner, but not bad.  It was supposed to be a 7 hour trip, but it took 10, partly due to a massive rainstorm which caused the one windshield wiper on the bus to pack it in on the steepest, roughest part of the road.  The driver soldiered on, but it was like looking out through a waterfall at an impressionist painting of a road, and we were glad to arrive in Pendolo as night fell.  A German couple on the bus, Inge and Klaus, decided they’d had enough and packed it in at Pendolo as well, and joined us when the rain stopped to find the Mulia Lake Hotel.  A little bit of bargaining got the price down to a more reasonable 225,000, although there was no way we were going anywhere else that night.  All the power was out after the storm, and we shared a meal and some un-chilled Bintang beer in a street-side warung by candlelight as the curtains blew in the window.

From Pendolo we flagged down a Kijang – a Toyota Pathfinder – and hired the whole thing to take the 4 of us to Tentena for 200,000.  Like everywhere in Sulawesi, at least a basic knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia is necessary to get around.  Katheryn had been doing some lessons on line in Bali, and was now able to joke with our young driver dude, and translate some of the sappy love songs he was playing.  “I love you!” he said, was the only English he knew.  We found rooms in Tentena at a lovely spot, the Tropicana, for 120,000, and stayed for 2 days.  It’s a great place to break up a trip between Toraja and the Togeans.  The second day we rented a bike for 80,000, and went out to a gorgeous waterfall where you can swim in cool clear pools. On the north end of Poso Lake there is a small resort with an OK beach, but I would rather stay in the delightful town of Tentena.

A bemo from Tentena to Poso cost 20,000 each, and we arrived at its sad and empty bus station at 11 a.m.  The only buses from Poso to Ampana go at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., so instead of waiting at least 3 hours at the sweltering and depressing station we hired a car for 420,000, which got us to Ampana in 3.5 hours, instead of the scheduled 5.

At Ampana we found a good AC room at the Oasis Hotel for 180,000, but you have to live with their karaoke until they shut it down at 11.  We fought through the flame-thrower afternoon heat to get some snacks and looked for boat tickets for the next day’s sailing on the good ship Lumba Lumba to Malenge in the the Togeans.  But for that un-missable story, dear readers, you will have to wait until next blog.

Salamat malam and good night,

Your Foreign Devil Correspondents

Sulawesi coffee