Cameron Highlands

                                                            

I know I promised many things for this next post, but first let me show you where I went this weekend. It made me very happy to go, and I am therefore very impatient to blog about it. Malaysians warned me that the Cameron Highlands are very cold. I agree--it was probably only around 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I nearly went into hypothermia, but luckily I had a hoodie. The area is full of tea plantations and strawberry farms, with plenty of opportunities for tourists to ogle impossibly green hills and scarf down scones with strawberry jam. I took full advantage of these opportunities. I was in the region for an English camp which was also a lot of fun. English camps, one- or two-day affairs that bring together students from different schools for a Saturday of fun activities in English, are a real highlight of the ETA experience. You get to see kids come out of their shells a little bit and stop worrying about getting the correct answers. The ETAs usually do a really good job of running high energy camps. I never thought I'd find myself in front of 60 high schoolers leading them in rousing renditions of silly songs (including motions!) but somehow this works at English camp.

Here are some pictures from the Cameron Highlands that will make you think I made a long detour to Ireland, or maybe Austria or something. I had a really excellent time and really enjoyed the scenery, so I will overload you with pictures now.

Good thing I always have to go to the bathroom. This was the view from the window at our first stop for scones. 

We refrained.

Alpine village?

Cloud shadows always make me think of my dad,  I think because he was the first person to point them out to me. Thanks,
Dad.





Cafe/museum/one big advertisement at the Boh Tea Plantation. Boh is the brand I drink here. Can't say it's excellent, but they sure have a nice plantation.

Out of focus, but I wanted you to see the furry texture of the tea plants.

Reading: On the Way to the Wedding, an only-semi-trashy romance novel. I enjoyed it, actually.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Awesome so far.

Still still still remembering things past.

Catching up

Ok, here's what I finally have to say about Yogyakarta:
It was really hot and uncomfortable. It made me do a lot of soul-searching about whether I really am the rugged, intrepid traveler that I thought I could be (or maybe that I just wanted to be), or whether I am actually a big western lump who just wants to eat Cuban food and watch touristy dance shows in Bali. Conclusion: Still not sure, but I do know that it's a lot more fun to go to places that are kind of different and hot and uncomfortable for you when you're not already living in a place like that. That is, I enjoyed Bali because it was something different from day-to-day life in Malaysia. It was hard to enjoy Yogyakarta as much because I was back to the world of crazy traffic and insane heat and squat toilets that I knew would also greet me back in Malaysia. Therefore, it felt like less of a relaxing vacation time. Whereas if I had come directly from home, maybe I would've been like, "Oh, a week of craziness, I can do this! And hey, good for me for doing it!" Part of the problem with exoticizing new places is that the exoticism just wears off after a while.

Here's a good example of what I'll call the "Yogya phenomenon": Immediately after we got off the plane from our 6 am flight to Yogya, we took a super-bumpy bus from the airport. A creepy man on the bus asked if he could follow us to our stop. We got misdirected to our hostel. We walked in the heat in the wrong direction for 15 minutes. We got re-misdirected. We finally got a taxi that even agreed to use the meter. (Score!) Of course, it was still only about 8:30 am, so the hostel wasn't ready to let us collapse in our room. We dropped off our things and then set out to try to find food, drink, and air conditioning. (Yes, it was already sweltering at 8:30.) We chose the wrong way to walk from our hostel and ended up in winding residential backstreets that actually reminded me a little bit of Sevilla. They had really tiny streets between houses that were shaded just by virtue of being so narrow and letting the houses block the light. Finally, we stumbled upon a stall, ordered lemon ice tea, discarded our fears about unfiltered water in the ice, and slurped it down. Looking back, and even at the time, I could tell that this was a cool experience. If I was in Philly, and someone said, "Hey, would you like to explore the backstreets of Yogyakarta today?" I would be super excited. But in the moment I was too physically uncomfortable to really enjoy the unique chance to see these non-touristy areas and look at people's little backyards and see people waking up and jumping on their motorbikes and kids walking to school and brightly colored houses and amazing graffiti and such.

Also, in Yogya we kept getting stuck in thunderstorms that put a damper on our visit to major temples, we rode super bumpy buses with creepy men who always wanted to talk to us (ok, yes, Philadelphia is sometimes like that, too), and we had to actively avoid getting ripped off in a way that was pretty tiring and sometimes unsuccessful. Things I was looking forward to, like seeing the sultan's palace and a shadow puppet show, turned out to be somewhat disappointing. That said, I'm still glad I went. Have some temple pictures.

PRAMBANAN
Absolutely beautiful. I decided not to bring my camera, which was a mistake. But it got heavy! And I wanted to be in the moment! So I resort to stealing this photo from the lovely Achsah, who is an excellent photographess. All the temples in the complex are covered with intricate reliefs which are a pleasure to view.

BOROBUDUR
I was super excited about seeing this one, because I had learned about it during my single, solitary class on Southeast Asian history at Cornell. Unfortunately, our weather was bad, a 3-day weekend brought out droves of Indonesian tourists, and I dropped my camera down the stairs a little bit. Classic Liz. The camera still mostly works, and Borbudur was still mostly awesome.

Buddha, the back of your head is ridiculous.

Spoiler alert: Inside these bells, there are Buddhas!

Oh, reading. Thanks for the reminder, Ky'lea.

I read Cloud Atlas over the course of the trip and really enjoyed it, even if it had kind of heavy-handed "moral values" at times. Up to Volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past and terrified to put it down or get distracted and lose the already pretty nonexistent narrative thread. Just downloaded The Sense of an Ending because I wish I could've gone to book club night with Mary Lynn. 

Stay tuned for some reflections on teaching, exercise, volunteering, an island adventure, being or not being a martyr, unnecessary ascetism, a nice hotel, and even a wedding--read to find out if it was my own! Spoiler alert: Hell no, are you crazy?

Balinese Temple Mania

Ok, trying to keep in the blogging habit despite extreme fatigue. I think I'll just post some pictures of the many, many temples and interesting places I got to see in Bali and put off my thoughts on Yogyakarta for next time. Thoughts are tiring (and sometimes tiresome), I think you'll agree.

Taman Ayun

Spot the temple cat. 

Pura Bratan

My favoritest EVAAAA.

Tanah Lot

Leapin' Lizards! Holy snake!

Strawberry Stop

We stopped at a hillside strawberry place where you can pick your own (not that day) and enjoy delicious strawberry treats. 

Ok, yes, it's very backlit. Deal with it.

The only beach we visited in Bali.

Git Git Waterfall--also featuring, what else, a temple! 

Good night and good luck, folks. 

Sallying Forth to Indonesia

After my last blog post, my good friend Breanna wrote me, "Sounds like you need a vacation." It hadn't hit me at the time, but that was exactly what I needed. It was a little rough getting back into the groove of teaching yesterday, but a short trip to paradise is worth the jarring return to reality, right?

So here's what I did: I went to Indonesia with four ETA friends--Achsah, Katie, and Qorsho--and briefly met up with another ETA, a self-styled (but ersatz) Kentucky colonel (look it up) named Ken. Our first stop was Bali, and then we spent 3 days in Yogyakarta. Side note: Yogyakarta is impossible to spell, so you can pretty much write it however you want and call it Yogya (or Jogja) for short. One postcard I bought of "The Olden Days Indonesia" spells it Djokjakarta. Who the heck knows.

I left thinking I would love Yogya, the "cultural heart" of Java, and tolerate Bali, the playground of Julia Roberts. In the end, my experience was exactly the reverse. Expectations are a funny thing. I would recommend against having them, if I didn't find fantasizing about trips almost as fun as the actual travel.

Bali felt like a wonderland. First of all, we stayed here:

Ok, to be fair, this is a view from the main hostel building, not the small outbuilding next door where we stayed.

Our hostel was about an hour's drive away from the center of a town called Ubud, in the interior of Bali. I don't even want to tell you how incredibly cheap it was. Let's just say that the conversion rate between the Indonesian rupiah and the good ol' USD is 10,000 to 1. We arrived in the evening (free airport pick-up!) and the weather was cool. Actually cool. As in, I put on a hoodie and enjoyed having a blanket for the first time in months. 

Things continued to be magical on our first full day. I thought my eyes might pop out of my head during our first ride into town. You can't help but notice, aside from how vibrantly green everything is, how ornately decorated every mundane nook and cranny of the island is. It seems that there is a Hindu temple every 10 feet, and everywhere you look there are beautifully carved stone gates and statues. Everything was even more done up while we there, because the town was preparing for a festival. The temples were swathed in colorful fabrics and the streets were overrun with huge bamboo poles strung with colors (see pictures, hard to describe). I kept stepping on little tiny plates made of bamboo with offerings of flowers and food in them. I hope this is not majorly bad karma. 

When we got into town, the feast for the eyes continued. We quickly gawked at the temple in the pictures below and then decided it was time for a feast for the stomach. Luck led us to an incredible restaurant called Casa Luna that served Western and fusion food that was actually good by Western standards. Unheard of. We went there twice and had things like Balinese style paella, pumpkin ravioli, a Mediterranean sampler plate with baba ganoush, and smoked salmon with guacamole and feta cheese on toasted French bread. Oh, and an avocado and coffee milkshake. Oh, and the most I paid for a meal (drinks included) was under $10. After lunch, we wandered around town, did some shopping, and found ourselves getting completely legit hour-long massages for $6.50. 

Qorsho and Katie, imitating carvings again. Typical.

They do a really good job with doors in Bali. Forgive the badly-framed photo. Sorry, Donna! 

Bamboo pole thingy!

Obligatory.

The next thing we did was pretty odd. We decided to go to the Antonio Blanco Renaissance Museum on a whim. It looked cool when we drove past it. Also, it was an excuse to walk down this street:

Despite the fact that I remembered reading in the guidebook that Blanco specialized in "erotic art," in we went.

The first thing we noticed was the miscellaneous assortment of colorful tropical birds in cages outside the museum. Then this:

The mysterious object you see in scaffolding is a huge sculpture based on Don Antonio Blanco's signature. The brochure bills it as "the world's largest signature." Dubious. Turns out our Antonio is a crazy Spaniard who married a Balinese dancer. Most of his paintings feature scantily or not-at-all clad Balinese dancers. Some involve terrible poems he wrote. Some involve Michael Jackson. The brochure dubs him "the Dalí of Bali," but I'm not buying it. It was absolutely the most hilarious museum I've ever been to. It had nothing to do with the Renaissance, by the way, unless you consider Blanco's own personal rebirth in Bali, I guess. The view from the roof made it all worth it, if the laughs weren't enough to convince you:

My days in Bali are all blending in my mind. It might've been this same day that we went to a traditional dance performance that tells part of the story of the Ramayan. The dance is called kecak, and the performance we went to was 100% for tourists. Still delightful. One of the most exciting parts for me was in the beginning, when a chorus of men came out chanting/singing and then sat in a circle around some candles and did a song/dance that was much like this scene in The Fall--of course this made me think of all the ladies I've watched that movie with, principally my long-lost sister KATHLEEN, with whom I've watched it more times than I can count. It's completely ridiculous that the simple fact of this dance being in a movie would make me so fascinated, but I was internally leaping out of my seat and yelling, "This is just like that movie!" I guess part of it  was because I thought the scene in the movie was completely made up, with no basis in reality. Beyond that, though, there is just something about seeing things come to life that you've read about or seen it a movie that adds excitement. I wonder what that's about on a psychological level--in a way it doesn't really make sense that this should be so thrilling. Maybe it's about expectation and imagination and fantasy once again? Anyway, the program said the dance would involve a man walking through burning coconut husks. I assumed this would be like walking across hot coals and would involve stepping over embers. Nope. A stringy old man on a hobby horse walked across a heap of still-very-much-on-fire coconut husks, kicking them to the sides of the floor where the audience was seated and making tourists like me draw back their feet in alarm. He did this for a good five minutes, and I couldn't take my eyes off it. It looked really painful. 

Burning coconuts, see?

That's all time and the internet will allow for now. Stay tuned for future installments, probably next week. The rest of this week is taken up with a Fulbright meeting and a 3-day English camp.