Bali it is

I am on 5-weeks teacher training at Denpasar, Bali. When I tell/write friends this, somehow attention is drawn to the last word, which is "Bali" (Then followed by an urgently important message: bring me some souvenirs!). The truth is, "teacher training" takes most of the place and no, I'm not really on holiday. Still, I do my best to make it feel like one.

Apart from the religion, I don't think Bali is much different to Semarang (I'm living in a hotel with my colleagues from Semarang. That's explain a lot). I spend most of my time at IALF (Indonesia Australia Language Foundation), the institution who provides the training. It's quite a nice place apart from the fact that it's my work place. To be completely honest I kind of like this place, especially the library (they call it Resource Centre or something). There're lots of books and magazines, free internet, lockers, TV, videos, and a burning incense to add the Balinese atmosphere to the place. If only they have sofas, coffee maker, crisps, pillows and a massage service! There's also a pleasant cafetaria where I always have my delicious mango juice and feed the fish in the pond with my leftover food (don't do this at home!).

The training lesson is in general okay, but the most interesting part of it is -of course- the teacher. There is this teacher: a young, bariton-voiced, hunky English bloke who always put gel on his hair so it looks like porcupine. He also wears tight, fashionable T-shirt and delicately ironed trousers so he almost seems like an Armany guy who is in Bali for holiday but forget to bring his holiday outfits. Anyway, he makes an infinite source for our cruel jokes. In my spare time I will dip myself into a pint-sized swimming pool at the hotel where we stay until my skin gets wrinkled, or read 'Eat, Pray, Love' by  Elizabeth Gilbert. I know it's so last year but I like to read something that suits the theme (or in my case, that's the only option I have. I only bring this book). Once in a while I'll see my friend Dyta who works at Sanglah hospital. We went to Kuta beach festival on the other day, where we had one litre of Balimoon (Balinese cocktail) for two of us only! We could not walk straight afterwards although Dyta had to be on call in the morning. I just loved it.

Weekend is the best part of my staying at Bali. Last Saturday, me and my colleagues went on a tour in South Bali. We did water sports in Tanjung Benoa, we visited some excellent, white-sand turquoise-water beaches, saw Kecak dance at Uluwatu at dusk and later had roasted-fish dinner at Jimbaran. Ok, this sounds like I'm bragging about my weekend but actually the best part of it is just the fact that we travelled in a bunch and therefore we'd got to know each other better. After all, this is what matters when you are stuck with a group of people for a full month training!

Singapore Sling

"I'm at the airport. I'm going to Singapore. I have no place to stay. My flight will arrive at Changi at about...errr, 10 minutes after midnight. Could I crush to your couch tonight?" I desperately called my sister's friend, Richard, just a few minutes before boarding. I could not get into him via mobile phone. I was using a public phone in the airport which charged me a lot for every single minute.
Tick...tick...tick...
"No problem, I'll pick you up." Richard answered succinctly.
"Thanks a zillion," He had saved my nerves and money.

I waved to Richard in the arrival gate and he looked at me with a slight shock.
"Gosh, I thought you were a Vietnamese maid!" (Trust me, Richard never really sees any Vietnamese maid for whole of his life. He said that only because I was carrying a cone hat)
"Really?" Opposite of my expected reaction, I sounded especially proud. "I'm starving. Shall we go for food?"
"Ngg...yes, sure," Richard checked out the time on his wrist. "I'm surely up for an extremely-early morning breakfast. But it's much more expensive to eat here. Is it OK if we wait until we're near my flat? There's a good-priced food stall open until 4," he suggested.
"Cool," I said light-heartedly, but just before I saw the queue for taxi. Four planes had landed at the same time, leaving three rows queue snaking down for about ten metres long. God bless my stomach!

Still, it was a nice dinner (or breakfast for Richard).
"Last order!" the waiter cried. I thought his appearance was quite distinct: a long white bleached hair, a massive necklace chain (with a name tag?! Ex-prisoner?), tight polo T-shirt and shreded blue jeans. Put that altogether with a typical chinese face of a man in his 60s. Quite distinct eh?
"Hey, Richard, is he the guy in the banner?" There were four big banners in the food stall. Each had a big picture of someone: a cute girl dressed up like a pole dancer, a man with a football costume, the waiter guy and another pretty girl dressed like another pole dancer.
"No way. That banners are everywhere in food stalls," Richard said absent-mindedly, but then he looked closely to the banner then the waiter, and again, and repeated it several times.
"Oh yeah. You're right! And also those girls standing there next to the taxi!" He happily identified more people from the banners. The night was not young, the foodstall was almost closed but the girls still hovered around a taxi on the road.
"This place is a bit weird," Richard murmured when he finally gulped down last of his food. Yet I thought he's local.

"I have to wake you up at 8 tomorrow morning," Richard told me while preparing a makeshift bed in the livingroom, "My landlady will come tomorrow to collect the rent. It's coincidence, you come in the exact date. She always collects money on the 11th," he explained.
"OK," I said.
"She never allows a female guest to stay in this house. You see, I share this house with two other guys. One day the guy next to my room invited his girlfriend to stay a night. In the morning, the landlady told him off and posted a notification on the front door. She lives downstair,"
"Oh crap," I mean it. I hope Richard mentioned this earlier, because I don't want to make him in trouble, but I was also thankful for him to take the risk.
"So could you hide in the next room tomorrow?" he asked.
"No problem," 

It was a smooth escape for the landlady was only around for a few minutes. Richard knocked on my door and said that she's gone. I took out my rucksack and started doing my laundry. Well, actually Richard did it for me when I said I had no single clean clothes for the next day. Since I needed clean clothes desperately, Richard put my laundry out of the window to dry up under the sun.
"It'll be quicker," he said.
I agreed.
Then we went for a walk around Singapore. We had coffee, we ate, we talked and we scanned a CD store after a book store, before Richard got a phone call. From the landlady!

"I found knickers flying from your flat," she said coldly."I am wondering if you always wear woman underwear because I also found a flowery bra hanging on your laundry line,"
After making a lame excuse that his mother came visiting the previous day, Richard told me that it wasn't very clever to hang the clothes outside. As if we had not had enough trouble, suddenly it started raining so heavily! Then we knew that all my laundry must be drenched. And so were we when we tried to get home in a taxi.

We sipped another cup of coffee in Richard's flat. I had taken my laundry back in and we laughed at the landlady for caring too much about someone's laundry. Richard said she had nothing else to do but being a landlady, and that's what a landlady does: spy the laundry!
"I think I love Singapore," I said.
"Oh yes. You're very much welcome," Richard replied assuredly.

I dream of Vietnam

Due to huge success (for coming back home one piece) in the first travel across East Java, I decided to make its sequel: "Travel 2: Vietnam feat. Seb and bunch of his friends (and second cousin)"

I arrived at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City in the evening. There's no time difference although my watch was 10 minutes faster in general (useful for checking in, waking up, etc). I didn't know how my host Kha Le looks like, so I looked for my friend Seb with his fantastically-popular curly hair. I found him with five other unknown people waiting for me. One of them is Kha Le. Then two other friends are my fellow couchsurfers, Andy and Lisa; the rest is Johnny, Seb's second cousin and Seb's Vietnamese friend (whose name I forgot immediately but I remember that the other girl we met the next day has exactly the same name. Vietnamese name usually consists of one syllable only, unlike Indonesian which has too many syllables!). Apparently Kha also hosted three other guests that night: two French boys, Yan and Clement, and an American girl named Sarah. The ten of us went for dinner together afterwards. I knew nobody but Seb yet we talked as if we were long-lost relatives (well, there's an element of truth here in Seb and Johnny's case). Lots of new people in one night, and that's just a start.
Day one.
I had no single đồng and had relied my life to the kindness of my traveling buddies. There was traveler's cheque but it seemed that this mean of money isn't very famous in Vietnam. We spent half of the day trying to exchange my TC. We got lots of hand waving, a 'renowned Vietnamese gesture' to say no, can't or not possible. We went sightseeing Saigon on foot and although I dislike big cities, Saigon was fine to me, thanks to its nice cheapo foods. We went to War Museum just before it was closed at 5 pm.
Day two.
Booked a tour to Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnel. We teamed up with Andy and Lisa, our affable Austrian friends. Having stayed in Vietnam for almost a year, Seb was believed to know the most about almost everything. However he confidently predicted that the trip would only take about 30 minutes when in fact we arrived at the temple in a good 3-hours drive! I was lucky to find a Filipino girl called Nash, otherwise I would be left cold in the bumpy journey. We saw Cao Daists had their daily ceremony at the temple. I found the religion interesting because it combines so many famous entities. Cu Chi tunnel was overly claustrophobic: narrow, dank, tight and pitch-dark. I felt my breath was taken away, literally. In the evening we had dinner cum Seb's farewell party. There were some more foreigners turned up (aka Seb's friends)! I don't even remember how many people were there, but it was quite a nice bilingual che-drink party.
Day three.
We took an overnight bus to Da Lat, a town in the highland. Seb were talking to Johnny the whole journey, adding a buzzing-bee sound to my sleep. Despite the lack of sleep, we hit the cable car immediately. I met more foreigners again. Luckily this new friend, Vu Le, is not particularly xenophobic. Alas, he's engaging and hospitable. That night we ate rabbit cooked in many different ways. It was delicious although I didn't devour as much as my other four male counterparts. Later on, we visited night market where I met another foreigner, Kimitoshi, (another) Seb's friend from Japan.
Day four.
On the trip to waterfall we were turned back by a flock of Cao Daists. Vu said he was impressed by their ability to ruin our meticulous plan. We decided to go to the lake instead, but we mistakenly entered another attraction, which was a kind of amusement park with very random characters and a zoo filled with animals I suspected were contaminated by Agent Orange. There was a dance by an ethnic minority group that we happily participated. Then we took a stroll to The Valley of Love, where I don't think was the best place to visit with four indifferent boys ^_^. The silk embroidery exhibition was cool, especially for its free entry (but the tea was awful). We eventually had dinner with Vu's parents who are very sociable and speak fluent English.
Day five.
Johnny had left for Cambodia. We continued to Nha Trang, a beach city in the northeast of Da Lat. The view from Da Lat to Nha Trang was amazing! I wish I camped or hiked among those mountains and waterfalls instead of paying an entrance fee to a puny flower park. For sometime Seb was busy with his mobile phone because he had no place to stay that night. The reception was bad too. Fortunately everything was alright in the end. I made friend with my host Derek from Canada also Lena and her sister from Denmark before falling asleep in a couch (experienced a real couchsurfing at last!)
Day six.
I went to the beach with my CS friends very early in the morning to take some photos of the sunrise (I guess Seb would have loved this). On the way back I was lost and got barked by some dogs that I decided to broke into a stranger house to phone Derek. I was lucky to find a nice (and good-looking ;-p) French guy who lent me his mobile. Then the rest of the day was spent chatting and drinking by the sea (with another Seb's friend called Huang), which was indeed very pleasant and relaxing. I was full in a holiday mood. Yet the best part was the lovely spring roll dinner which still makes me drool even now.
Day seven.
Boat trip. I really love the feeling of jumping off the boat to have a cocktail while floating on the sea. Love the feeling of hopping with the waves when did a little bit of swimming with my new friends Zoe from China and Isis from Venezuela. In short, I love Nha Trang's sea. I will call it The Nice of South East Asia. Well, at least the coffee price is a bit like one in Nice (read: ridiculously expensive).
Day eight.
A strange day. Our bus annoyingly broken down twice and we spent twice as much time on the journey as we should have. However, Seb amazingly made more and more new friends during this accident (what a chap!). When we finally got to Quang Nam to attend someone's wedding, it was high time for lunch. This is my first time coming to a stranger's wedding the night before D-day and joining the groom's family. I suddenly felt 'familiar' with Vietnamese wedding.
Day nine.
The wedding. In fact, I wasn't quite sure what to do but it was rather...interesting. It was like the old days when me and my friends turned up in a strangers' wedding to have free foods. Anyway, after the wedding we went up to Da Nang, another beach city which is a bit off the tourist track. Dinner with three other foreigners who are also our hosts. We gorged sea foods and ice cream, before posing in front of a flashing neon-colored bridge that is kind of a landmark of Da Nang.
Day ten.
Hoi An. This ex-Champa city has plenty of art and craft shops littering on their charming old town. Seb had his suit made in one of the tailor shop and he became poor at once. We accidentally meet Dzung, another(!) Seb's friend from Hanoi and I intuitively decided to go to Hue with her the next day! Going around for a while, I immediately fell in love with Hoi An: free temples everywhere. Also, I had the nicest drink ever in this town. On the way back to Da Nang we took the super slow minibus, even two girls in a bicycle overtook us. Then we went night swimming on Da Nang beach which was surprisingly almost deserted after the rain.
Day eleven.
Hue. Went visiting the tombs. The entrance fee is more expensive for foreigners as usual, so I asked my Vietnamese friends to buy the cheaper tickets for me (because I am from a third-world country full of poverty, beggars, corrupted officials, malaria and all). It was a boiling hot day and I was tired of waking up so early that I heard nothing from the history the tour guide told us. I only could recall that the emperors were so lavish in their death, as seen from the ornate decor of their tombs. Perhaps they couldn't hardly wait to die. In the evening I went to a traditional Vietnamese song on the boat. The highlight is floating a candle down to the river. Afterwards my friends invited me to karaoke. I refused since I had not learnt anything from the singing performance on the boat.
Day twelve.
Dzung kindly took me for a rickshaw trip around Hue. At first I insisted to go on foot because I spent one sixth of my money in Hue only! But mostly my Vietnamese friends are so generous and they think a few thousands dong is nothing. Back in the tour again, I paired up with another Vietnamese for cheap tickets and made friend with two amiable Italian guys. I saw the majestic Citadel and thanks to my poor navigational skill, got lost in it. For the first time in Vietnam, I took a train. It was to Quang Binh. I wish I could tell more about Vietnamese train but I spent most of my journey sleeping like a baby pig after my wonderful Vietnamese friends stuffed me with foods at all times.
Day thirteen.
Seb planned to visit Phong Nha cave but apparently there wasn't any public transport going there regularly. So we rent a motorbike! It was fun because only a few days ago Seb successfully located the brake. After repeating 'Hail Mary' ten times in my heart, we boarded on a motorbike trip about 8 km outside the town. It worth all the efforts for the cave was above an underground stream runs between the undulating landscape. The boat paddled smoothly to the cave entrance, before it was suddenly surrounded by one boat after another. In the end it was getting more and more crowded that then was similar to a floating market in the cave. Awesome. We climbed to the upper part of the cave and started using our imagination to guess the shape of stalagmites and stalactites. The best was the one Seb named as 'stalagmighty', a stalagmite which 'sat on a throne'.
Day fourteen.
Hanoi. Last stop. During the first hour in this city, I'd already got told off twice. It was great because I don't understand a word. Like other big cities in the world, Hanoi is not exceptionally friendly, especially the traffic. Instead of pushing the brake, motorists will yell, blow horn, and keep zigzagging while avoiding to run you over everytime you try to cross the road. Standard. The best part about Hanoi is when I tried to cook with chopsticks. As a matter of fact, I don't really master how to use chopstick for eating, let alone cooking! Of course there are some nice things in Hanoi like the tourist information centre and the water puppet, but I was quite happy to get to the airport early to take my flight home on the next day.

I would like to thank everyone whom I mentioned in this post and lots more unmentioned. All would be impossible without your help and supports. Specially I thank Seb for making a highly organised itinerary although sometimes didn't work out very well ^_^ (but I really appreciate him for being a superb host). As if this post isn't long enough, I made a list of things I remember the most about Vietnam (apart from dozen bowls of phở, few glasses of che, scrumptious Vietnamese coffee cà phê sữa đá, bitter colorless iced tea and Johnny's Banh Bao):

1. Plastic chairs. It's lucky that there's not so many extremely fat people in Vietnam.
2. Cacophonous horns. Who needs a brake when you have the loudest horn?
3. Minibus for 10 metres/hour. It's always the same speed for this kind of transport (I took it twice!) I'm sure I can walk faster.
4. When we drove motorbike without license, the advice was "Pretend you don't understand Vietnamese!" Well, I don't need to pretend, really. Despite my very Vietnamese look, I have zero linguistic ability.
5. Vietnamese music video which is not much better than Indonesian's. Thank God.
6. Seb's singing on the wedding. Nobody sang as close as in Vietnamese idol, but his painful face really said what he felt when singing (constipated). It's the highlight of my journey!

An unpublished piece of writing

I want to share this writing in my blog because otherwise it will be hidden somewhere in the corner of my messy desk. I attempted submitting it for travel writing competition but I am still far from the short list. At the very least, I would like to hear something from my blogger mates.

I did my first work as a fresh graduate physician in Papua. It was an incredible experience and I always love writing about it. One day I wish to write a full version on Papua, its people and other issues. Wish me luck on this, guys!

Oh, I haven't got any title for this. I'm opened for suggestions.

I couldn’t help myself from feeling heroic. I’m in a twin-otter aircraft gliding amidst mountains in Baliem Valley, Papua, Indonesia. As a medical trainee, I am to provide health service to the native Yali tribe in a village called Ninia.

I poke my head out the window to look. The undulating landscape below is idyllic: lush green pyramids with a few bald patches like heads shaved with broken electric razors. Decorating cliff walls are minuscule terraced waterfalls, hazy with fleecy clouds. The aeroplane rounds sharply and its machines roar beneath my strapped seat, the propellers whirling tenaciously. We are about to land.

My modest expectation is to be greeted warmly by the people, although some folk-dancing by half-naked women in jute skirt and nude men with noses pierced by pig’s bones and penises wrapped in gourds wouldn’t do any harm. Instead, everybody is busy taking squealing pigs out of the plane’s hold. I‘m Indonesian, yet foreign. Other passengers are being hugged and kissed; I’m left alone. It’s significantly disappointing to see everyone wearing clothes with pictures of grinning politicians.

The mantri, someone responsible for the small clinic I am working at, takes me to my so-called house. It isn’t old, just badly made. The handle disconnects when turned; the door has to be lifted to open it. Cracks are gaping here and there, and mice are running through them as a biting wind repeatedly enters the house. Lying on creaky bedframe is a filthy mattress with a centimetre-thick layer of dust. It will be hard to spend the night here.

I’m saved by a heaven-sent honai (hut), which also serves as a kitchen. Made and covered mostly by hay, this incredible two-floored traditional house is warm enough to sleep in. It has four pillars in the middle surrounding a fireplace with a rack above for drying the firewood.
Olince is asked to guide and assist me. She is one of a few schoolgirls who understands Indonesian. She brings her little brother along. The day’s spent on endless patients who aren’t actually ill, just coming merely out of curiosity. At noon, Olince shows me how to get water. We walk over stiles and walls made of stones. Pigs are wandering around. She teaches me how to make fire and pick edible roots. After sunset, we lay down to rest. It’s raining. The small sweet potato field outside is wet and muddy. Nobody wants to go out although the smoke from fire hangs thickly under the thatch like cobwebs.

Midnight. I desperately need to empty my bladder. Stepping out, I squat and urinate. It’s remarkably peaceful, only the sound of a distant river flowing in the background. The pale silver moon has made every shadow look purplish. Back in the hut, I glance at Olince’s face lit up by the dancing light of the fire’s embers, so at her brother’s. In repose, they look almost serene.

I am not the hero I thought I was. They have been taking care of me.