Bali

It’s about time that I decided to relax a little bit while I’m traveling. My flight arrived in Bali at 6:30 last night and as I peered out my cab window through the darkness and the rain I passed by several lavish resorts, the Hard Rock Hotel, street vendors hawking cheap fried food, McDonalds, a Nike store, a giant Billabong store, tiny surf shops, and finally the narrow alleyway that led me to the small Indonesian resort I would stay at for the night. Bali exemplifies everything that is kitschy and stereotypical and touristy about traveling… but I expected that and I even welcome it. After spending a week in Papua, where nothing resembling a decent restaurant or a comfortable hotel even exists, I’m ready to kick back and spoil myself for a few days – even if it means subjecting myself to the ways of the Western tourist masses.

Before last night I had stayed in cheap grungy dives every night I had been in Indonesia. It was time to change things. The cheapest room I could get at the Kuta Puri Resort was $55 a night, but it’s by far the nicest place I’ve stayed during the trip and indescribably better than the places I usually stay while traveling. I think the fact that I need a place like Kuta Puri to stay is evidence that I’m turning into an old man. At age 23 and 24 I had no problems with staying in a $10 shoebox in Vietnam or a $6 scum-hole in Delhi. Things are changing. Two years ago I wouldn’t have considered blowing $55 for just one night in a hotel room. Now I’m thinking this might be my new standard – when I travel I want to be comfortable, and that’s just the way it is.

I’ve been looking forward to surfing again since I left Costa Rica in February 2008, so it was exciting today to finally run out into the ocean with a board. I had a blast catching some waves today, but I think I either forgot a few things I learned or I forgot how much I have left to learn or both. If surfing had a handicap, mine would be about 87. I could catch the smaller waves after they had broken and usually I could stand up on the board and ride it into shore, but any wave bigger than five or six feet would just throw me around like a rag doll. I watched several tourists, as well as local Indonesians, as they were surfing, and many of them made standing up and carving at the top of a six foot wave look like a walk in the park. I wish I could do that. Maybe learning to surf is like learning to snowboard that way – it’s not reasonable to expect to have perfect balance and to be perfectly comfortable if you’ve only been four or five times. I’ve been snowboarding for eight seasons and it’s not possible that I could have done some of the stuff I do now on my fifth time snowboarding or even on my tenth or fifteenth time. I probably shouldn’t expect to be an accomplished surfer after only five times either, but it sure would be nice if I could be.

Later tonight I found a small shop near the hotel that sells DVDs for only 10,000 rupiah each – less than one dollar! When I was in Southeast Asia in 2006 I loaded up on DVDs in Bangkok and Saigon, but my collection has since become dated and stale to me. Eddie, the Indonesian shopkeeper, cheered me on as I picked out nearly 120 new DVDs. For only a dollar each I can’t go wrong, and I literally only picked the ones I really would want to watch – there were thousands more available. Back at Kuta Puri I treated myself to an hour-long aromatherapy massage, then had fried calamari rings and a banana shake for dinner.

I feel a little hedonistic and obscene just spoiling myself like this and not doing anything of cultural or intellectual value today, but right now I’m tired and I need a rest. Today did the trick. There actually are quite few fascinating cultural activities and natural wonders on Bali. The next four days will be a perfect time for me to experience all that.

Kurima

Today was pretty low-key. Mickey and I took a rickety minivan filled with about 25 people from Wamena to a town called Sogokmo, where we began hiking through the South end of the valley. Hiking today reminded me a little bit of the two-week hike I did through the foothills of the Himalayas last year, except Papua is much warmer and the mountains here are a fraction of the height they are in Nepal. Still, we hiked up and down narrow trails traversing across the mountains, occasionally passing through tiny villages made of grass huts and crude stick fences. We hiked from Sogokmo to a town called Polimo, then followed something resembling an old road to a town called Kurima.

Nearly everyone I saw in the villages today was dressed in western clothes – usually a t-shirt and some cheap shorts. I wondered if the same villages used to be filled with people who dressed in the traditional outfits that indigenous people wear around here. Perhaps even the same people who live in the villages today used to dress that way, but have in recent years decided to dress according to western customs. Before coming to the Baliem Valley I imagined that it would be filled with people who still dress in traditional outfits and are more or less isolated from the outside world. Those people are still around, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that most people don’t dress that way. Besides that, who am I to say how these people should dress? To me it’s just a novelty – something to keep me entertained for a few days while visiting the area as a tourist. To these people it’s their lifestyle. Of course they should be welcome to dress however they want – and why wouldn’t they want to change with the times?

I’m happy with my visit to the Baliem Valley despite the apparent westernization of the culture. I’ve seen a handful of the indigenous people, which is what I came for, and I’ve had a few days to explore different parts of the valley. In retrospect it would have been better to have planned less time here; or even to have planned a week-long jaunt to a different location (I could have gone to Thailand or Australia, for example). With that said, there was no way for me to know what this place would really be like without actually visiting, and it’s exciting to be in such a different part of the world where so few people go.

Tomorrow will be my last day in the Baleim Valley, then on Sunday I’ll fly to Bali. I’m way excited for Bali. I can’t wait to just sit back and unwind for a week, enjoying the world-class beaches and surfing every day. Until then I’ll enjoy the valley – with one more day here I might even have some wild adventure that I didn’t see coming.

Culture Shock in the Valley

I don’t know what the Baleim Valley was like when the writers for the Lonely Planet book did their research, but I suspect that it’s much different now and that it’s changing fast.

Mickey met me at my hotel at 8:30 this morning and we set off in a rickety public bus to explore a few villages in the northern part of the valley. I showed Mickey a picture in my guide book of Dani tribesmen who had large bones through their noses and said that I’d like to see that today. Shortly after getting off the bus on the main road from Wamena we met an indigenous man who looked amazingly similar to the men in the photo in my book – except this man looked shrunken and malnourished and, sadly, there was no bone through his nose. Mickey had a short conversation with him (in Indonesian, I assume – although it may have been a tribal language) and Mickey, myself, and the naked tribal man walked slowly down the road through the sun-covered valley. Once the tribal man split off from us to head down a dirt path I asked Mickey what the valley was like twenty years from now. I had a hard time deciphering his English, but he said something to the effect that it was much different, and that it’s always changing. The only detail I could gather from the conversation was that the road we were walking on didn’t exist back then.

Mickey led me off the road onto a dirt path and for two hours we hiked through narrow trails, over treacherous bridges spanning small streams, and through tiny villages made of grass huts. Several times during the hike I spotted beautiful giant pink flowers in small ponds along the trail. I asked Mickey what they’re called and he said something that sounded like ‘Oumika’. I’ve never heard of Oumika flowers before and that may not even be the real name for them, but they were pretty incredible looking and I took several pictures. Other sightings during the day included countless villagers tending their fields (dressed in western clothing, not the traditional variety), a panoramic vista of the valley from the top of a large cluster of rocks, and several wild pigs – one of which was itching itself ferociously against a tree.

Mickey told me that one village along the path featured a mummy that we could see – albeit for a small fee. Towards the end of the hike we reached the village; conveniently located only a few hundred yards from the main road and clearly marked by a large painted concrete sign that read, ‘MUMI’. Even though I had a decent mummy experience yesterday, I figured one more couldn’t hurt; but unfortunately the village was completely deserted. Mickey pushed open a small door that entered into the courtyard of the village and the entire place was covered in overgrown grass and looked as if nobody had lived there for years. Several large round huts were there as well as a long rectangular hut, and the layout of the village was nearly identical to the tribal village we visited yesterday, but perhaps with the main road so close by and Wamena only a 20-minute bus ride away the locals found better lives for themselves in the city.

As we waited by the edge of the road I tried to fit all the pieces together in my head to figure out exactly what’s happening in the Baleim Valley. For one thing there are practically zero tourists here. At first I thought it was because this place is just so isolated, but maybe it’s because the diverse cultures in the valley are only a shell of what they once were. Perhaps nobody is interested in the valley anymore. Then there’s the deserted village. How many more villages like that are there? Probably hundreds. Any half-rational man living in one of these tribes would have to say to himself, ‘hey, wait a minute, everyone with a decent lifestyle in this valley is making it for themselves in Wamena’. Finally, how could I forget the old decrepit Dani tribesman that we met this morning? The men in the picture in my guidebook looked healthy and strong; wearing their decorative outfits and nose-bones as proudly as ever. Mickey said that picture must have been taken ten years ago. The hunched-over, malnourished old tribesman with no nose-bone is a symbol of what has happened to the tribal cultures in the Baleim Valley. At some point a man in one of these tribes must decide he looks completely foolish wearing a dried gourd on his penis and that’s when he pulls on a pair of shorts and takes the first bus to Wamena.

With every cargo plane that touches down at the Wamena airport the whole valley becomes a little more modernized and loses a bit of its culture forever. The wild tribal cultures that existed here for thousands of years are clearly harder to find these days than they used to be, but remnants of them are still around. Ten years from now there may be nothing at all to indicate that the Baleim Valley was once a place rich in indigenous cultures. Ten years from now Wamena may be just another Indonesian city, with nothing of interest to offer outsiders except, perhaps, a museum showcasing the tribal cultures that once existed here. I have to be honest and say that the valley is not quite what I hoped it would be; but with that said, I’m glad I saw it now while there’s still something to see around here.

Baliem Valley

I’m surprised at how normal it feels to have wildly exotic sightings in Wamena. This morning I took a rickshaw to Wamena’s tiny airport to buy a plane ticket, and while I was there I spotted a Dani tribesman for the first time. The man was dark-skinned with a negro look to him, and he must have been only five feet tall. The Dani men traditionally are completely naked with only a thin dried gourd covering their ‘privates’, for lack of a better word. I was amazed at how similar he looked to the picture in my guide book that inspired me to come here several months ago. It still blows me away that all it takes to get somewhere so far away and exotic is booking a few plane tickets.

Before I came to Wamena I expected that at least a handful of tourists would show up at the airport every day – and I expected that a hoard of guides would be waiting outside scrambling to compete for their business. I was clearly wrong on that. There are no tourists in Wamena – I’m the only one I’ve seen so far. And there also were no guides waiting outside the airport terminal. It feels exciting to be somewhere so isolated, but at the same time I don’t want it to be so challenging to travel here that I can’t enjoy it. I asked some local police officers where I could find a guide and after twenty minutes or so they introduced me to a man named Malvin Ogoya. Malvin seemed vaguely competent and knowledgeable about the area, but he wanted to charge me 5,000,000 rupiah for four days of his services. I realized that I needed a cheaper guide. Enter ‘Mickey Mouse’.

I walked across the street to the nearby ‘Nayak Hotel’ and a man of indigenous descent said he could be my guide. He introduced himself as ‘Mickey Mouse’. Mickey Mouse offered me essentially the same services as Malvin, but for only 2,500,000 rupiah. Unfortunately Mickey is obviously less competent than the barely-competent Malvin and he really only speaks a handful of words in English. I decided it would have to do and Mickey hurried off excitedly to find me a taxi for the day. While I was waiting the Dani man from the airport followed me into Nayak Hotel. He sat down on the chair in front of me and tried to communicate, but I finally just gave him my guide book and showed him a few pictures. When Mickey Mouse came back I got him to take a picture of me with the Dani man. I was surprised how talented Mickey was with the camera – and my guide book conveniently covered the tribal man’s offensive parts in the picture.

The first stop of the day was ‘Jiwika’ a village famous throughout the Baleim Valley for its prized mummy. A naked Dani man brought the mummy out of a crude hut and put it on a tree stump for me to see. I was blown away by how quickly and casually it all happened. I remember seeing a mummy once before at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but that was in a museum… and it was behind a protective sheet of glass. This mummy, which the villagers claim is 368 years old, was right out in the open – and so close that I could have reached out my arm and touched it. I turned around and a crowd of bare-breasted tribal women had emerged from a straw hut to meet the villages’ new visitor. I was a little shocked because I don’t remember ever seeing bare-breasted women in front of me before, but this was definitely a wild cultural experience and nothing that could ever be attractive to me. I took a handful of pictures that bear serious resemblance to Grandpa Calder’s photos from Ethiopia. I decided it would be best to leave those pictures off the blog, but someday maybe my grandkids will see them at a family slideshow and get a few good laughs from them.

Mickey recommended that I see a nearby limestone cave and we were off in the taxi for another random adventure. There wasn’t a whole lot to the cave; it was really just a giant opening in a cliff with a few stalagtites hanging down, but it was fun because it was just something to do in the Baliem Valley. Later we drove across the valley to the other side, where I enjoyed a panoramic view of the entire valley from the top of a small hill.

I have to admit that I’m a little apprehensive about traveling in the Baliem Valley. I’ve never been in a place before where I was literally the only tourist around. I’m sure that plenty others have come here as well and that they’re always perfectly safe, but there’s just no infrastructure to support tourism. There apparently are so few tourists that it doesn’t make financial sense for people to cater to them. After arriving back at my hotel I paid 730,000 rupiah to settle the bill for the day. Mickey tried to convince me that I owed him 1,000,000 rupiah, even though we both agreed on 730,000 originally and I confirmed it with him several times and even wrote it on a piece of paper so he could see the amount. This morning I had planned on spending three days and two nights hiking through the jungle and visiting obscure Dani villages in the valley, but I thought twice about it. Here I was half-way around the world, the only tourist in an isolated valley in Papua, and I was about to go on a three day hike through the wilderness with a clearly incompetent man who not only tried to cheat me, but was also named Mickey Mouse.

After evaluating my options I decided to spend my nights here at a hotel in Wamena, and I’ll hike nearby trails during the day with Mickey. It’s one thing to spend an afternoon with a guy where the worst case scenario would be to have to find my way back to Wamena on my own (obviously I’ll pay close attention to the trails we follow so I can do that if I have to). It would be quite another thing to be thirty miles from the nearest semblance of civilization and find out that Mickey Mouse is either completely lost, or has no intention of taking me back unless I pay him some exorbitant amount of money. I won’t let that happen. Taking the conservative road has its drawbacks, of course; I won’t get to see the truly exotic far-off villages that I otherwise would see if I put my trust in Mickey. With that said, the reason I came here was to see wild tribal people and it turns out that I can see them fairly easily. I’m happy just to spend the next few days doing day hikes – I still should have plenty more experiences that only could happen in the remotest corners of the earth.

Sunrise at Borobudur

There’s something about visiting a place early in the morning that makes it even more spectacular than it normally is. When Jonny and I were in Europe in 2005 our train happened to arrive in Venice at 5:30 AM, giving us a perfect opportunity to see the classic city without the crowds. Last summer at Petra I showed up early on my second day and literally got to see the place without any other tourists there. In Yogyakarta I noticed several travel agencies offering discount transportation to Borobudur at 5:00 in the morning, so it made sense to schedule that for today.

There will always be at least a few people at Borobudur no matter what time of day it is, but I felt really lucky to see it a second time early in the morning. With the sun just rising on the horizon the light was perfect for photographs, and the pictures I got today were much better than the ones I got on Saturday. I spent most of the time at the top of the temple snapping pictures of stone Buddha statues with dense fog-covered jungle in the distance. The views of Merapi Volcano were also incredible, and the combination of the ancient temple, thick green jungle, and volcanoes in the distance made the place feel like a completely different world.

I rode to and from Borobudur with four other travelers; a Dutch man named Coon, an Estonian named Tom, and two Swiss sisters named Bridget and Andrea. I talked for most of the time with Tom and was fascinated to hear about his experience living in Estonia when it was part of the Soviet Union. He said that despite the government propaganda and the biased education system, everyone was still very much aware of how life behind the iron curtain compared to life in the outside world. Everyone was forced to wear plain grey uniforms, which seriously inhibited individual expression. Tom, who has worked as an accountant for Deloitte for the past eight years, told me more about life in Estonia during the Soviet occupation and how it was much, much different than life there is now. It still amazes me that such terrible circumstances existed only twenty years ago. Then again, twenty years from now people may look back in disbelief on the situations in North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Zimbabwe as they exist today.

I finished off my time in Yogyakarta with a visit to the Kraton; a giant compound that has housed the sultan of Yogyakarta since 1755. I toured the palace grounds with an Indonesian guide and was surprised to learn that Yogyakarta still has a sultan, determined by birth into the royal family, who is very much in control of political decisions in the state. Previous sultans often had many wives, and one had 82 children. The current sultan appears to be more conventional; having only one wife and five daughters. The Kraton was an interesting insight in to Yogyakarta culture and politics, but to be honest I was surprised at how third-world the palace felt. During the tour we were shown a few nice possessions of the sultan; including several sets of china and lavish antique furniture, but overall the place felt very run-down and grungy. Most decent hotels in Yogyakarta must be nicer than the sultan’s palace.

Tomorrow I fly to the island of Papua, where I’ll visit tiny villages in the jungle that are home to wild Indonesian tribesmen. I don’t know quite what to expect, but it’ll be an adventure regardless. I’m excited to visit a place that is so unusual and isolated from the outside world, but it will definitely be a challenge traveling off the beaten path a bit. As long as I come back with a few good stories to tell and no terminal illnesses than I’m happy. I’ll cross my fingers and hope it turns out that way.

Merapi Volcano

I knew that today would stretch the limits of what is physically possible… at least for me. I woke up at 3:30 AM yesterday to catch a flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, spent the entire day rushing to see as much as I could in the area, caught two hours of sleep in a van on the way to Merapi Volcano, hiked for four hours through the night up the said volcano, then hiked another three hours back down. I didn’t get a real night’s rest until collapsing on my bed at the hotel at 7:00 tonight.

Maybe it was just that I was dog-tired trudging up the mountain in the middle of the night, but Merapi Volcano was a much tougher hike than I thought it would be. For the first few hours I cranked up the music on my iPod and zoned out as I followed the guy ahead of me up the mountain, but as we got higher the trail got narrower and more rugged. I imagined the hike would be something like Timpanogas back home, but Merapi was just as long and about twice as hard. I hiked with two Japanese guys from Yokohama, a couple from Singapore, and an Indonesian guide who looked to be about fifty. Near the top of the mountain the trail turned to lava rock that shifted precariously as we walked on it. As we got closer to the top I smelled a foul odor that got stronger as I kept walking. At first I thought the guys in front of me just smelled bad, but my Indonesian guide pointed to vapor escaping through cracks in the lava rock and said, ‘sulfur’. The entire peak of the mountain was covered with hot sulfur vapor escaping through vents in the rock. It was tempting to warm my hands near one of the cracks venting the stuff, but I thought of the smell and decided against it.

I reached the peak at a little after 5:00 and had just a few minutes before the sun rose above the horizon. The landscape at the top looked like the surface of the moon might look, and the sulfur vapor floated east with a light breeze and obscured the horizon. Merapi has erupted several times in recent history, and the most recent eruption in 1994 killed 60 people. I thought for a minute how it’s a little ridiculous that an active volcano is also an active tourist attraction – in the United States the same mountain would be closed off and forbidden to everyone. With that said, the climb was an adventure and if the thing only erupts once every 15 years or so, then hanging around for just an hour or two at the top really isn’t that risky.

As sliver of sunlight peeked above the horizon the rays cast bright pink and yellow light across the clouds. The sulfur vapor made the view eerie and mysterious and I felt like I was suddenly on a completely different planet. I snapped photos for about an hour; mostly of the horizon in front of me and of the landscape surrounding Merapi below. Before I reached the top I somehow thought that I’d be able to get shots of endless jungles of palm trees and red-tiled roofs poking out through the growth, but from 9000 feet up everything below me just looked flat and green. Either way, the view was incredible and well worth the hike; especially now that I’m through with it and can enjoy my pictures without thinking too much about the climb.

I slept for about an hour during the van ride back to Yogyakarta, but oddly enough I didn’t feel like sleeping when I got back to my hotel. I heard from the Singapore couple about a bird market in downtown Yogyakarta that was a fascinating sight, so I caught a rickshaw and headed down for a look myself.

An Indonesian bird market is about like a giant, chaotic outdoor yard sale… but with animals instead of old junk. Most of the items for sale at the market are roosters, pigeons, and other various birds, but a few things that were particularly exotic caught my attention. Several of the vendors had giant live bats for sale. I became captivated by the bats and stared into the cages of several of them, glaring at their 14-inch-long bodies and wings wrapped tightly around them as they slept hanging from the tops of the cages. I can only imagine what their wingspans must be like. Who buys bats anyway!? I can’t imagine who would need such a creature or what they would do with it, but someone in Yogyakarta must have a pretty good use for live bats. While wandering through the market I also spotted a few live owls for sale, mongooses, ferrets, and a four-foot-long iguana.

I finished the day off with a visit to ‘Griya Shiatsu’, a place in town specializing in shiatsu massage. Massages are so affordable in Asia that it’s hard to justify not getting several of them. When I was in Southeast Asia in 2006 I must have averaged a massage every two or three days. At $5 for an hour-long Thai massage it was hard to go wrong. At Griya Shiatsu 100,000 rupiah (10 US dollars) bought me a two-hour massage including a foot massage. Some parts of the massage were so painful that I instinctively pulled away and had to consciously force myself to stay still, but at other times it was so relaxing that I drifted off to sleep for a few minutes at a time. Afterwards I headed back to my hotel and laid down on the bed for a few minutes rest. I intended to get up, do some writing, and update the blog… but a few minutes quickly turned into the whole night.

Borobudur

Borobudur is the reason I came to Indonesia. Granted there’s a lot more I want to see while I’m here, but until this trip the ancient Buddhist stone temple was the last must-see sight for me in Asia that I hadn’t seen yet. Borobudur sparked my interest in Indonesia, and while planning a trip to Indonesia it suddenly made sense to stop in Japan and Korea as well. But Borobudur is the reason the whole trip happened and for the last few days I’ve been ecstatic to finally see it.

After spending most of the day yesterday flying from Tokyo to Jakarta, then spending the night in a $12 dive near the airport in Jakarta, I finally arrived in Yogyakarta, Indonesia at 7:00 this morning. By 10:00 I had found a hotel and showered up, had breakfast, booked activities for the next two days through a local travel agency, and was on my was to Borobudur on the back of an Indonesian man’s motorbike.

Built sometime between 750 and 850 AD, Borobudur is an enormous Buddhist temple made of two million stone blocks. The temple is a Buddhist interpretation of the cosmos and a walk through its terraced pathways takes visitors through a three mile journey representing life, which culminates in ‘nirvana’ – a series of circular terraces at the top of the structure populated by perpetually meditating stone Buddha statues. From a distance Borobudur is impressive because of the sheer size of the thing, but a closer look reveals intricate stonework and architecture that is equally amazing. I started my observation of Borobudur by beginning at the lowest terrace and working my way upwards – exactly as Buddhist worshipers would have done 1300 years ago. When I started I had no idea that the paths through Borobudur total three miles in length, but time passed quickly as I wandered through the thing – before I knew it I was at the top of the temple, passing by serene Buddha statues enclosed in stone latticework that is an unmistakable icon of Borobudur.

Altogether I was pleased with the experience. In my opinion the greatest ancient wonders of Southeast Asia are Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bagan in Myanmar. Borobudur is a close third as far as I’m concerned; meaning that it is in very good company. One of the things I liked most about Angkor Wat and Bagan was that at both of those places it’s possible to wander off and find distant ancient temples where nobody else is around. The only real drawback of Borobudur is that it’s just one giant temple, so it’s impossible to get away from the crowds. Even with the crowds, though, it was pretty outstanding, and with three miles of walkways through intricately carved stone terraces, there were plenty of times when for just a few minutes I felt like I had the place to myself.

It made sense to combine a visit to Borobudur with one to Prambanan; a complex of towering ancient Hindu temples, the largest of which is 150 feet tall. I spent another hour on the back of the motorbike, blasting my iPod the whole way along and watching ricefields fly by with gigantic volcanos as pale blue backdrops in the distance. Prambanan is impressive, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Borobudur. Like me, most visitors to Yogyakarta come because of Borobudur and make a side-trip to Prambanan while they’re here. To me Prambanan was exciting because it was different. In all there are remains of 244 temples dating back to the 9th century AD in the area, but eight major temples in a central courtyard are the main attraction. I spent about an hour circling the perimeter of the courtyard and exploring the temples inside. Hindu temples always come with colorful stories of dignified or vengeful Hindu gods. Prambanan’s temples contain carvings representing Hanuman the monkey god, Ganesh the elephant-headed god, and a four-armed Shiva the Destroyer.

After heading back to Yogyakarta to shower up, a van picked me up at my hotel to take me to a performance of the epic Hindu play ‘Ramayana’. I got lucky and happened to be in Yogyakarta on a night when the Ramayana was playing at an outdoor theatre at Prambanan. A VIP seat only cost $20, and just admiring the stage before the show was pretty impressive. For a country that is clearly third-world, the stage and facilities at Prambanan were excellent. The temples were lit up perfectly behind the stage, and the nighttime backdrop gave the place a distinctive ancient Hindu feel. At least a hundred actors and musicians contributed to a first-class performance. Hindu heroes and monkey armies battled each other during the first act. One actor shot his bow-and-arrow with incredible precision, and the climax of came when two giant straw huts were raised behind the stage, then ignited and burned with flames that must have been twenty feet high.

I would loved to have stayed and watched the entire two-hour Ramayana performance, but unfortunately I had to leave after the first act. While flying into Yogyakarta this morning I was captivated by the huge volcanoes that seemed to surround the airplane on all sides. When I read in my guide book that many visitors to the area hike a nearby volcano I decided I couldn’t miss out on such an experience. I booked a hike through a local travel agency that leaves for Merapi Volcano at 10:00 tonight. I’ll start hiking at 1:00 AM, then summit at 5:00; just in time to watch the sunrise over Java. I’ve been up since 3:30 AM and won’t be back at my hotel until noon tomorrow, so the lack of sleep means it’ll be more of a challenge… but as far as I’m concerned, more of a challenge means more of an adventure.