Where to go, where to go? This year’s travels will take me to Indonesia — a group of 17,000+ islands in the South Pacific that ranks as the world’s fourth most populace country and includes islands with such names as Java, Sumatra, Papua, and Bali.

Indonesia is an archipelago, which simply means that it’s a group or chain of islands. Think of it as the United States if every state were an island. Don’t worry if you didn’t know what that word meant … I only learned that after I bought my ticket. See kids, traveling makes you smarter.

Time to do some pre-trip homework and read Eat, Pray, Love (apparently Love takes place in Bali). Stay tuned for travel details and adventures.

Travel time means time to buy a new travel toy. I plan on doing a lot of water-based activities while in Indonesia including snorkeling, diving, rafting, and swimming. Unfortunately all these wet encounters would ruin my walking shoes and be difficult with flip-flops.

So say hello to my newest footwear: the Vibram FiveFingers. The Vibram FiveFingers Sprint to be precise. These innovative shoes may be funky and unattractive, but they’re as close to being barefoot as possible. The company claims one can run, hike, and go in the water with them … and I’m going to confirm each one.

Watch out Indonesia… there’s a new sheriff with ugly shoes in town.

People frequently ask how I am able to travel with only one backpack, so I’ve put together this detailed overview on what, why, and how I pack.

Jeans and shirt

Clothing. A pair of jeans, shorts, and three shirts. Swimming trunks and pajamas too.

Shoes

I take a pair to wear on a daily basis (being black, they double as shoes to wear out at night), flip-flops for the beach, and my new ugly five-toed shoes.

Socks and underwear

Three pair of each. You don’t need to see them.

Toiletry and health-related accessories

Toiletry bag (including Pepto Bismol), a well-packed first-aid kit (including new for this trip, suturing equipment in case things go wrong), and suntan lotion and mosquito repellent.

Reading material

A Lonely Planet book (travel bible) and two leisure books: 1) Eat, Pray, Love, which is a terrible book, but since I don’t like to leave books unfinished, I’m stuck with it, and 2) Dante’s Inferno … to remind me of the hell that is Thornton I will return to back at work. Oh and the GQ provides entertaining articles as well as cologne samples that can be rubbed on your face if you want to go out at night. Practical and really classy.

Diving mask and snorkel

Since this delicate face only tolerates my own equipment.

Toilet paper

Never leave for another country without it, unless you (and your hand) want to risk it.

Accessories

Small backpack, hat, sunglasses, super absorbent towel, etc.

Fancy electronics

Digital camera, LED flashlight, power outlet converters.

Eye shades, ear plugs, and Ativan

Turn a 14-hour plane ride into a sleepy, forgettable blur.

And that’s it. Now shove all this …

… into a backpack and you are ready to voyage almost anywhere in the world.

Hello from Indonesia! My trip starts out on the island of Bali, in the city of Ubud. (As I learned yesterday, the correct way to pronounce it is “oo-bood” … and not “you-bud”.) I am staying in the very peaceful Ubud Bungalows pictured below. Mine is the bungalow on top.

These bungalows are on the main strip called Monkey Forest road, which, like the rest of the roads in Bali, is very narrow, twisty, and noisy and packed with cars and taxis and buses and motorbikes. They also drive on the left side of the road, so on my first venture outside I thought traffic was completely clear after looking to my left … only to step out and have a minibus nearly crush me from my right.

I started off my first morning in Ubud with white water rafting. The drive picked up me and several other people at 9am, and we met up with a much larger group. After being outfitted with our gear, we walked down approximately 1000 steps down a steep gorge to reach the river.

After about an hour of exciting class 3 rapids, we stopped for a few minutes. Here is my rafting group: an Irish guy from Australia, me, and a couple from San Francisco.

Because we were completely drenched in water by the waves over and over again, I didn’t take out my camera during the rafting itself, but luckily someone from the company took this action photo. I’m in front, with the mean point.

After returning home, I decided to explore the famed Monkey Forest, for which the main street is named. It is a medium-sized forest with approximately 500 monkeys … monkeys who are not nice. I bought a few bananas just before going in, and I put them down for a split second to put the cash back in my pants. The moment I lay them down, a little hairy hand swiped them away. I yelled out an expletive loudy and chased after him, but all the guides were shouting “Don’t chase monkey!” so I stopped. This is me after a fight with yet another monkey, one that climbed up my body to try and grab my banana (banana fruit, you perverts). I’m about to throw that banana at him.

At the end of the day, one monkey had stolen from me, one had attacked me, and another had humped my leg. These guys are aggressive and they gang up. I’m actually a little afraid of them now. But here is a nice monkey baby and mom just to show that a few of them have the potential to be cute.

Next post: Bali naming culture.

There seems to be a shortage of names in this place. My hotel owner is named Wayan, so was my greedy and unhelpful taxi driver, as was our rafting guide, medicine woman, and countless others people here. God forbid anybody gets named Sam or Jenny.

It turns out that there are only four names in Bali. They are Wayan (pronounced “why-Ann”), Made, Nyoman, and Ketut, and they mean “first”, “second”, “third”, and “fourth”, respectively, to indicate which order you were born in. So the first born child is named Wayan, and so forth. Number five gets named Wayan and the cycle starts again. Now I’m tempted to yell “Wayan” on the street and see how many people turn their head. Anyway, please call me Wayan from now on.

I was woken up this morning not by my alarm or a friendly wake up call, but a rooster. A good old “cock a doodle doo”ing rooster … at 5am. Who knew these things existed outside of childrens’ cartoons? All of which reminds me I’m living in a zoo out here. I live up the street from a monkey forest where monkeys wander (and attack) freely. Anywhere I eat, pee, or use the internet I see a new lizard hanging out next to me. And, I swear there is a bird in my bathroom, though I just can’t get him to show his head. Here is the a-hole that woke me up. If I ever get close enough to grab him by his neck, he’s going into a cage and straight to the butcher.

Today was Day of Food. In the morning I attended a great cooking class taught by a local chef with decades of cooking and teaching practice here in Ubud. The class was made up of approximately 15 travellers who have an interest in cooking. We first learned about the various local ingredients and then prepared a traditional Balinese meal. Here are some of the people at the preparation table.

We used this large mortar and pestle (Balinese food processor) to crush peanuts into a fresh-made peanut sauce, which was much better than anything I’ve had in any restaurant.

Here I am stir-frying our meal, and looking over to make sure she wasn’t doing a better job than I was.

Immediately afterwards, despite the great feast we just ate, a few Australians and I decided to seek out Warung Ibu Oka, the famed local food vendor that prepares an amazing roast suckling pig. They cook that pig for over five hours and serve it from only 11am — 3pm. After a little walk we found it, and luckily it was only 1pm. For only $5 we each got a plate of tender, flavored pork with “crackling” (roasted pig skin) with tons of spices on top and rice on the side … and a big bottle of Bintang (local) beer.

After stopping by my bungalow to change shirts, I then immediately set out in search of a highly-recommended restaurant. It was a long walk — over 2.5 miles one way! — but I decided to commit to it. After a grueling uphill walk for several hours, discouraged at times since there wasn’t another white person in sight, I finally found it …

… and it was closed. Two hours of hiking the humid heat, and it was closed. Since when is anything closed here? So I made the return walk — also 2.5 miles — tail between my legs, and came across another place people speak well of, Naughty Nuri’s. I went inside, partly to honor a friend from home and mostly to have one of these:

Four hours, five miles, and one stiff martini later, I arrived home and jumped straight in the pool under a full moon.

I was woken up this morning by the following events in succession, starting at 2am:

Rain
I’m not talking about a gentle shower, I’m talking torrential downpour with thunder and lighting. As many people know, I am afraid of thunderstorms, mostly because I hate being startled unexpectedly, least of all in the middle of the night. This storm was so loud I half expected the raindrops to break through this thatch roof and pour directly on me.

Rumble
Less than an hour after the rain eased up, I felt subtle movements in my bed. Subtle, but definitely present. The movements got much stronger in amplitude over a few seconds, and I realized this was actually an earthquake. Normally I don’t mind earthquakes, being from California and all, however, here on this tiny island, I was concerned the quake would bring my bungalow crashing down. Also who knows, maybe this richter 3.0 earthquake (or whatever it was), was actually a 9.0 out in the middle of the Pacific, and a tsunami was on its way soon to drown Bali. I identified where I kept my diving mask and snorkel (just in case), and tried to get back to sleep.

Rumble again
The time has come. Shortly after the quake I thought I felt the start of an aftershock, but I was feeling movements only … down there. I tried to walk it off, but things only got more painful and crampy and violent, and I realized I was bathroom-bound very soon. These things felt like contractions, people. I have been slacking on my Pepto Bismol regimen since I arrived, so maybe I should starting being more compliant.

Rooster
This thing needs to die. Enough said.

Anyway, later in the day I was at a bar with a TV showing this:

Looks like I was right … unfortunately. And pretty spot-on with my predictions too. Those live shots of the massive destruction occuring in Japan are actually very frightening, and I hope the waves don’t make it anywhere near my little island chain. So as of now now, the list of things that are threatening me in Indonesia are as follows:

1. Active volcanos
2. Rabies
3. Vocal roosters

I guess I should add “tsunami” now.

Greetings from the island of Flores. This tiny island is east of Bali and is quite under-developed. Their main street is very similar to a back alley in America.

This morning a few of us rented a boat for a day trip to Komodo Island, home of Komodo National Park, itself home to the famed komodo dragon. These ugly beasts might appear slow, slothy, and boring in photos, but in reality … they’re exactly the same. They don’t move or do anything exciting. But they do have viciously sharp talons and very powerful tails that can snap goats in half. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of that action, and I wasn’t even allowed to get next to him for a photo.

On the way back we had our boat stop at one of the tiny islands for beach and snorkel time. Islands like these are abundant here, and nearly all have untouched white sand and luscious green flora. They are also completely uninhabited. The one we stopped at, pictured below, would have taken us at most 15 minutes to walk around its perimeter.

After a good snorkel we made our way home in our boat, which I should mention may possibly be the slowest thing ever to move on water; I think ducks were swimming faster. Not a problem, however, since we all sprawled out and fell asleep with ease. As we docked, we were greeted by an army of very young, very short, and very naked local children … all of whom enthusiastically rushed our boat, climbed aboard, and tried to impress us by jumping into the water. Definitely the most amusing part of the day!

One of the little guys showing us his skillz.

That evening, we recovered from this tiring day with lots of beer and cards.

Island life is very stressful so I took it easy today. Here is what I did from dawn till dusk, hanging out with Mardie, a fun solo Dutch traveler I met who arrived on Flores the same time I did. (In addition to everything below, I also took three cold showers to wash off the intolerable humidity.)

Started the day off with breakfast of champions: mango fruit juice and a plate of fresh cut tropical fruits.

After sitting around reading and relaxing, it’s time for lunch. The hotel girl fires up the grill,

cuts open the fish I just selected,

and prepares what was truly the juiciest and best-tasting fish I’ve ever eaten, really.

Then more sitting around.

We decide to be productive, and ended up finding a completely secluded beach to the north, with very warm water and this great view.

I now sit here in The Lounge, drinking an arak ginger (essentially a Moscow Mule but with locally produced alcohol), eating a pizza covered with chilis, and enjoying the tropical rainstorm outside.

Out of Flores and back in Bali — but just for the day. Before flying to my next island I had nine hours to kill at the airport, so I decided to venture into the heart of Denpasar, capital city of Bali. It’s just another overly congested, polluted, and noisy city, one that even Lonely Planet says has no compelling reasons to visit. Here I tr to cross the street without getting hit by a motorbike or ten.

However, there is good food here apparently. According to LP, the best dish in Bali can be found in a tiny restaurant deep inside Denpasar, and another well-reviewed one is nearby. Descriptions for both sounded great and I couldn’t make up my mind … so why not go to both?

First stop, Cak Asm, where allegedly I can find the island’s tastiest meal — calamari in a salty garlic sauce. After the taxi driver and I both struggle trying to locate it, we finally arrive. I enter this modest little restaurant, which was filled mostly with government employees.

I order the famed dish, which was much easier said than done, since they don’t speak English in this non-touristy area. With little regret he informs me they are out of that dish (it’s only noon though!), so I order what I think is the next best-sounding dish, calamari in chili sauce. Out it comes, and while simple-appearing — an oval plate full of large calamari circles, in a sauce – it was quite tasty. I could have eaten a bowl of just that sauce alone.

Off to destination two, Ayam Goreng Kalasan. The dish to order here fried chicken (ayam goreng), marinated in a lemongrass sauce for just over forever. As I walk in, the restaurant supervisor spots me and runs over to greet this tourist. He suggests which dish to get, and lucky for him it’s the same one I already had planned. I play dumb a little bit just to humor him  — Is the chicken good here? Is this a chair? So what country are we in? — since I really seem to be the first white person to enter this place in ages. I then take a seat under the staring eye of every customer there.

Out comes the dish that will soon become my favorite meal in this country so far … along with a small bowl of water for washing my hands. Finally, I can eat with my hands! However, I start worrying about how to attack this food with my bare hands. While I may be the master of Indian naan and Ethiopian injera, I’ve never eaten rice with my bare hands … and not only that, just the right hand (the left hand is forbidden as it wipes your, you know, poop hole). I’m afraid I’ll embarass myself by having just to throw the rice at my face in hopes of getting some in my mouth, so I start staring at other peoples’ eating habits to come up with a strategy of my own.

Out comes my food: a super crispy piece of fried chicken with the great aroma of lemongrass, a handful of fried coconut shavings, a small mound of rice cooked in coconut milk, and sambal (chili sauce).

I jump right in, grab some rice, and miraculously deliver it to mouth with one smooth movement. Turns out I’m a natural. (the trick: use your thumb and push the rice along your fingers into your mouth.) Here is Dr. Amir during and after his initial bites of food. Note the people staring at me, including the miniature thugs outside trying to sell me bootleg DVDs.

And afterwards, with a big dopey grin:

The rest of my meal was pure joy. I had an extremely enjoyable time eating, and in a stunning upset over the meal at Cak Asm, this was easily my favorite meal of the trip … and for less than two dollars!

With a satisfied belly, I head back to the airport, not at all aware I wouldn’t be eating until the next day.

So much for what started out as a good day. Satisfied but exhausted from three flights, hours walking around, and many different airports, I arrived on the island of Sulawesi in the town of Manado. I have to spend the night here before taking a boat to the tiny diving island of Bunaken tomorrow. I didn’t make any reservations for this night since I assumed that wouldn’t be an issue.

Well I was wrong. This is the only room that was available in this town. Yes you’re seeing the entire thing.

Let me start with its positives:

1. It still has a ceiling
2. It costs $4.

Other than that, this is a perverted little jail cell that barely fits me and my backpack. It is a microscopic box that has exactly the following: a desk, a window, a skinny bed, and a pillow. Did you hear me say towels? That’s because it doesn’t have them. Did you hear me say a fan? No, because it doesn’t. Did I say it had blankets? No, I did not.

I’m not too pleased with the environment either. There’s a guy moaning down the hall; someone is breaking glass bottles on the street outside; and to make things completely bizarre, there are a few white guys in orange HAZMAT suits walking around outside (no joke). What the hell is going on here?

And to top it off, I just pissed all over my feet in the public hole in the ground they call a toilet.

Good night.

Greetings from the tiny tropical island of Bunaken. This island is a one-hour boat ride off the island of Sulawesi, home of the crappy hotel room. Here we are on the boat, my poor North Face bag dwarfed next to a big pile of rice (or something).

Bunaken is a very small island — it’s L-shaped, with each leg 3 miles long — and has two beaches that are filled with tourist accomodations; the rest is filled by the native villagers. This is the shore as we near it with the boat.

I am staying at Living Colour, by far the island’s most upscale resort, which is run by a Finnish married couple. This place boasts the best service and meals. More importantly, they run the island’s most professional dive trips with the best equipment. This is the main entrance to the resort, which is accessed directly by incoming boat (I’m standing in water for the picture). Off to the left are some very useful hammocks, and to the right is the Safety Stop bar, cleverly named after the stop one needs to take ~15 feet below the surface, when ascending from a dive.

My huge terrace:

And the view from that terrace:

Days are pretty routine here since most are here to dive. We eat breakfast at 8am (three delicious home-cooked meals provided daily), go for two dives, return for lunch, go back for another dive, relax, and then have dinner. This is what I do after my dives and before dinner, putting both hands to good use:

Staying here is a cross between the Swiss Family Robinson and summer camp, given the layout of the bungalows within the trees and the (semi) regimented way the days are run. But really, in terms of accomodations, service, diving, and food, you cannot find better on this island. If you like diving or relaxing, I highly recommend it.  

There were some additional activities after dinner tonight since it was a special night for two reasons. First, it was Friday so there was a live band of local resort employees: 

and I got a cake because it was my birthday.

Fun times here in Bunaken!

Time to dive finally. Indonesia, in particular Bunaken, features some of the world’s best diving and I was lucky to get several consecutive rain-free days to enjoy its underwater beauty. This is us walking to the dive boat in the morning:

In three days of diving I did eight dives, which was a lot for me. The first day I did a refresher dive as it had been two years since my last one, followed by two normal dives; the next day we did wreck diving; and the final day we took a day trip to the nearby Bangka Island for a very pleasant change of underwater scenery. Overall I got to experience several new types of dives, including the following. (I don’t have an underwater camera, but one of the divemasters took these photos for me.)

1) Wall dive — Where you dive along a wall of a large and seemingly bottomless hole. You move around keeping the wall of coral to one side of you while looking up and down at the sights. A little scary looking down, but beautiful scenery at your side. Here is a view from one of those dives:

2) Wreck dive — We visited a World War II Japanese cargo boat that was sunk by the US Navy in the 1940s. Coral has since grown all over the boat, creating a miniature reef. This was a deeper dive, at 31m (102 feet) below. This was a spectacular experience. As the wreck came into view while we descended, it felt just like a National Geographic documentary, as usually there’s no other way to see sights like this. At this depth good photos were hard to achieve.

Here are me, Juliet, and Alistair sitting on the wreck.

Here is the wreck with angelfish swimming around coral growing on the ship:

Here you can find me at the edge of the wreck, apparently doing jazz hands:

3) Muck dive — An unusual dive that takes place in murky brown waters to explore the unusual sea life there. Visibility was very poor — ~5 feet — and the dirty brown water felt like I was swimming in sewage. At least it was warm. I never had interest in a dive like this, but I’m glad I did it. While it wasn’t my favorite dive, it was interesting to see a different set of sea life.

Diving in Indonesia was close to ideal. The water was very warm (the temperature at depth was around 30° C!), and it features a wealth of sea life: beautiful fish swimming alone and in large schools, colorful hard and soft coral, and other creatures such as shrimp, eels, rays, and sea turtles. This majestic guy was about four feet long:

Some clownfish relax in their home:

Diving in Bunaken was a great to wrap up my trip (slowly). Next order of business: buy an underwater camera … time for more moonlighting.

Some additional diving-related stories.

• More on that underwater wreck that we explored. The ship was named the Myoken, a Japanese transport ship that was used during World War II. It was sunk off the coast of Sulawesi by the US Navy by the USS Swordfish in 1942, using a torpedo that apparently didn’t detonate, based on available evidence and leftover wreckage material. Getting the historical background makes it so much more interesting when seeing it in person.
• By far the most beautiful sight of the trip was just after I finished one of my dives. I was floating on the surface, waiting for the boat to pick me up when I spotted — at about 100 feet away — a big fin coming out of the water. And then another one. I nearly shat my pants (ok, wetsuit) because I thought they were sharks and this was gonna be it for me … Indonesia was where it would all end. But then I saw 5, 10, and then maybe 20 more fins, all moving in an arc-like motion above water. I realized this was a small school of dolphins traveling at the surface, in and out of the water. It was the most amazing sight, being next to this large group of dolphins swimming so gracefully and beautifully through the water. I just wish I had my camera with me.
• Speaking of soiling my wetsuit, a few minutes into my first dive I realized I had forgotten to pee … so, I just went in my wetsuit. Yeah, we do that. And there’s no sensation in the world that’s simultaneously so soothing but so utterly disgusting as the warmth that fills up your wetsuit during this activity. (I just realized this is the second time this trip I’ve described peeing on myself. I should probably stop that — both doing it and writing about it.)

Sadly it’s time to leave Bunaken … but not without working for it. I paid a nice sum of euros for my resort to arrange a boat to take me back to the mainland, so I expected a red carpet rolled out to my front door. Well, I thought I thought.

Someone arrived to fetch me and right away offered to take my backpack. Normally I don’t like to give my work to other people, but today I felt generous and so I handed it right over … but in exchange he handed me two big empty water-cooler jugs to carry. Apparently this is the boat that takes the recyclables from Bunaken to the mainland, so I was expected to help. No big deal, so I grabbed them.

We then walked into the jungle – I thought we’d walk towards the water, but whatever — when another man joined us, this guy carrying eight of these huge jugs. I felt guilty for carrying only two, so I offered to take two of his. Up to four jugs now … no big deal still.

Finally the guys decide to head towards water. Because it was low tide, the boat couldn’t come up directly to land, and so to reach it we had to walk into the water. But first came the quicksand. I walked towards the water and immediately sunk down to my shins. I tore my feet out of the ground but the sand had swallowed my flip-flop, and so I had to put my four jugs down (and being empty they started floating away) and sent in my hand after my flip-flop. After rescuing it, I took both of them off and carried them in hand. Some sand-dwelling parasite must have latched on to my bare feet and is now inside me.

I ventured on, still in quicksand, watching the water get deeper with each step. Soon I was in a mess of mangroves, seaweed, and starfish, with the water now up to my groin — of my normal clothes, not swimming trunks. The only thing I cared about was my camera, so I used whatever fingers I had left to hold up my left pant sleeve; I let my right pant sleeve — with my money– suffer. Things I’m holding now: four huge jugs, two flip-flops, and one pant leg. The locals found me amusing to watch.

Once I got to the boat I finally emptied my arms … but then was put to more work moving cases of beer. Ten of them. No problem, I thought, since empty bottles can’t be too heavy. Turns out these were full bottles, and when I picked one up the cardboard was so soggy from the rain, 24 green bottles of Bintang came crashing down. All this for a ride to the mainland.

One hard-earned boat ride later, I now sit confined to my hotel room, waiting for my pants and money, spread out on the bed, as they try to dry.