Keeping our heads while travelling

We headed north to the island of Madura. If you google "Madura" and go to the images, the first picture is of a man from Kalimantan holding the severed head of Madurese man. Rowan discovered this when she searched for pictures of the island.

Madura, and the Madurese, have a reputation of being rugged, a rough land where the men are quick with a knife.

However, we found the people to be amazingly friendly and helpful. We had some lengthy conversations despite the fact that we barely speak the language.

Although the island is a short ferry ride from Surabaya, we headed to the main city of Sumenep, which is over four hours inland by bus. Fortunately, we had air conditioning for the ride there.

We arrived at our hotel, which cost about $5 a night. After eating a late lunch, we went in search of a Chinese temple that was briefly mentioned in some of our travel literature. We could not find it, and none of the locals we asked had any idea what we were talking about.

So we rode a becak to a restaurant/cafe/karaoke place/gym/pool hall.(Our becak didn't look like this, but we didn't have to ride with ten other kids, either.)

We sipped some non-alcoholic drinks and shot some pool. (We had heard rumors that Madura is a dry island, and while alcohol is difficult to find, we did track some down the next evening.)

The following morning, my friend Ian and I checked out the sprawling local market. We got a mixed response: some people simply said, "Buy!" over and over again, some wanted to say hello and ask where we came from, and some wanted their pictures taken. We smiled and shook hands and spoke Indonesian poorly.

Some interesting things were for sale.Later in the day, we commissioned a van and went to two of the island's beaches. The weather was nice and the water was warm, and we had our pictures taken with piles of local kids.

After the beaches, we went to Kalianget, where we stayed in the best rooms in the only hotel in town for less than $4 a room.

That evening, we bought some beers at the local convenience store (an accident, really; we weren't actively looking for beer, but my beer-dar started going off like crazy when I entered the place) and then sat on the second-story balcony of the hotel and watched the rats run around in the courtyard below.

The next day, we took a big wooden motor-powered canoe across a small channel to a nearby island. We wandered into the village, and also looked at some of the utilitarian beaches the island had to offer.
Then, our friend Ian asked one of the becak drivers if he could pedal for awhile.We took a boat back to the bigger island, and then climbed on a crowded, A/C-less economy bus for the six-hour journey home. (We would have had to wait five hours for the better bus.)

It was slow and sweaty, but we made it back in one piece, our heads still firmly attached to our bodies.

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For more pictures, visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75620&l=b7812&id=547792060