Solo, but not traveling solo

Last weekend, we went to Central Java to see two temples outside of Solo. There was also a waterfall. Check out the pictures here.

My friend Ian, who is an excellent photographer, also took a lot of photos. Check them out here.

We had a great time and it was calamity free, except for blowing a tire on the way back. This weekend, we are going to Gunung Bromo, one of the most famous volcanoes on Java. I'll try not to fall in, or get pushed in.

The horror! The horror!

Here is a buffalo being killed at one of the funeral ceremonies. Do not watch immediately before or after eating.


Also, I've put the rest of the pictures up. Here are the links:

The sulfuric lake at Ijen Crater

The orangutan rehabilitation center at Bukit Lawang and Danau Toba in Sumatra

Random photos from the last three months

Enjoy! If you want higher quality copies of any of the photos, email me.

Photos, finally

After some pestering from my mother during our last phone conversation, I decided to get my ass in gear and finally start uploading photos.

I'll upload them to Facebook and put the links here. On the Facebook pages, I'll try to put some informative captions so you know what you're looking at. I'm going to start putting the photos up from the most recent to those from about three months ago.

I just returned from Tana Toraja where I witnessed their unique funeral ceremonies and customs; you can view the photos here. The uploading is going fairly slow, but I should have them up by the end of the week.

I saw a lot of buffaloes sacrificed, but the most gruesome experience was when I was on the bus headed to the airport. Our bus ran over a motorcyclist and severed his right leg at the knee. The entire bottom half of his leg was gone. It was the worst thing I have ever seen and I keep having flashbacks to it.

Otherwise, the vacation was great.

Keep checking back for links to more photos as I attempt to recreate the last several months.

Yes, I am alive and well

Sorry I haven't written for so long. Several factors have conspired to keep me from writing. First, the internet went dead at our house for three weeks (service is not rapid here) so we cancelled it. Then my computer went into freakout mode. Also, I've had two four-day vacations and a nine-day vacation since I last wrote, so I have been away from technology quite often.

As soon as I have time to fix my computer, I'll start writing again. Talk to you then. And soon, hopefully.

The last two weeks in bits and pieces

The last week-and-a-half has been reasonably eventful, but perhaps not travel-blog worthy. (Events included a Superhero party, karaoke, and the eating of imported cheese.) As I've settled into my life here, I often forget to write about things that seem normal to me, but would perhaps be strange to those of you back home. My apologies for not writing more frequently.

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I eat a lot of local food. Even at the house, I cook with Southeast Asian flavors. But sometimes I miss the variety of tastes that are available back home. To remedy this situation, my group of friends has decided to do a weekly ethnic food night, which has turned out quite well. We've done Mexican night and Italian night (I made homemade pizza for the first time since I left home), with plans for a Caribbean night in the near future.

I've also been drinking a little more than I should.Despite its distinguished-looking label, this is not good stuff.

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Two weekends ago, we met at a friend's house to try durian, a strong-smelling fruit that the locals love but is hated by foreigners. The locals often describe it as "custardy," but one of my friends described it as "cheese gone bad."Ian thought it was okay but not great, Sinead almost threw up in her mouth, and I thought it was quite alright, though this might have a lot to do with my lack of a sense of smell.



The fruit is extremely sweet, but has a strange squishy smooth texture, and it takes a bit of time to adjust to the way it feels in your mouth.

After our exotic fruit tasting, we went for food at a restaurant near our friend's house. Two of us ordered a dish named "Tofu Bokchoy Mushroom" from a section of the menu clearly labeled "Vegetarian." Of course, the main component of the dish was chicken.

Following our "vegetarian" meal, we walked across the street to Masjid Al Akbar, supposedly the largest mosque in Southeast Asia.
The mosque sprawls over a large area and took five years to build. It also has a tower that offers a view of Surabaya. From the top, we could see several rice fields, the city's hotels, and three cars broken down on the highway.

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This past weekend, I went river rafting for the first time. The company we went through seemed amazingly well run, and everything went smoothly. We spent a little over two hours on the river (which featured class II rapids), including a stop for fresh coconuts and a jump into the river from a bridge ten meters above the water. I took the plunge first, and then waited while the girls built up courage to do the same. All of them did eventually jump.

After the rafting, we were given an excellent buffet lunch. Here are some of the girls relaxing after out time on the river.We are planning on doing it again in about a month, but as part of a combination rafting-camping trip. I'm already excited.

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Thursday is a holiday, but school still makes us come in on Friday. Lord forbid they give us an extra day off. But I managed to schedule vacation, so I am headed west, first to the town of Semarang to visit a haunted building known as the "Thousand Doors."

Then I will carry on to Bandungan to check out the Gedong Songo temples, which are over 1200 years old. The temples sit on a natural terrace in the mountainside.

I will then swing through Yogyakarta and Solo on the route home.

Knee deep in trouble

Last night was one of the worst rains in years. My roommate and my friend all finished school early, but we had to wait an hour-and-a-half before a taxi could make it down to the school to pick us up.

The main road home was closed, so we made a large detour. However, the detour wasn't much better. We could feel water hitting the bottom of the car, and in a few spots it felt like we were floating.

The driver got us somewhat near the house, but we then had to walk five blocks through knee deep water to get home. Fortunately, our street, and our house, were not buried by the deluge.

Other friends made it, as well, and we settled into a pile of homemade Mexican food while the streets cleared.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

We had no indication what awaited us. We assumed the drive south to the beach at Sendang Biru would take three hours, the walk to the lagoon would be one hour, and porters would do all the heavy lifting.

We rolled out of Surabaya a little after 11am. Traffic backed up near the mud volcano; rains had caused some minor flooding. Six hours later, we arrived at the beach. We had planned to make it to the lagoon that day, but it was too late. We would have to wait until morning.

So we set up camp in a somewhat dry patch of dirt and grass near the beach's security station. And we drank. And chatted with the locals. And sang and danced. And crawled into bed shortly after three to sleep for two hours before going on our jungle trek.We awoke in the morning, packed up camp, and went on our way. We didn't know what awaited us along the path.Every step was treacherous. The rainy season had made mud. Ian, who was still drunk, kept falling down, and twice lost his shoes in the mud.

Shortly before the "bridge" made of four small logs, I had my only wipe out. I almost careened into a hole. I was fine, but Rowan started to panic slightly. She made it across the bridge, but the path continued to get worse. We walked along a narrow ridge where a misstep could tumble us into the water. We were worried but wished for the best.

Three hours after we began, we arrived at the lagoon. On the very last step of the path, Sinead slipped and landed hard on her tailbone. Fortunately, she was only bruised. We began to worry about the trip back.

Despite the struggles to get there, the lagoon was amazing. It was big and clean, and fed by water from the ocean that crashed through a hole in the rocks.The rain that had accompanied us on our journey soon subsided, and the weather was absolutely amazing. We set up base camp, a compact mass of tents.
We had packed some good food and some digestible drink, so we ate and drank and played in the surf and relaxed.The beach was busy, and had a pleasant vibe. People swam and slept and frolicked and played guitars around campfires.

The next day, we faced the reverse march back. We had come in with three porters, but had only one for the return; I am not sure why, since we had indicated we wanted three.

We were all overloaded and tired. We had decided to "luxury camp" but now regretted the amount of stuff we had brought. Ian had gotten too much sun and not enough water, and we worried that he might pass out with every step.

But we marched on and made it out of the jungle without incident, and plopped down in the inlet where our boat was waiting to take us back to the mainland.
We had gained some sore bodies, but also a little bit of knowledge of how to approach the situation. We will go back, but in the dry season when the path is friendlier.

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For more pictures from the trip, click here.

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On Facebook, EF has posted some photos from last week's volunteer teaching, so here are some shots of this guru (Indonesian for "teacher") in action.