Crash #2 (and 3 if you're picky): Danau Toba

So it would appear that I left a fairly interesting detail out of yesterday's blog post: Elias and I are now staying in a (sadly, unauthentic) batak house!  Someone checked out of it yesterday right after we checked in, so we never heard it was available until later that day when we bumped into the guy as he was leaving. Man, this hotel is a steal: Rp50,000/night.  So basically, Elias and I will both be paying about $2.50/night to stay in this giant traditional Indonesian house.  HOW AWESOME IS THAT??

It's a bit sparce inside, a queen bed, three shelf sets, two chairs and a coffee table, but it's extremely roomy; I think the ceiling must go up about twenty feet.  The door is hilariously tiny, though, and I think it was built by the Lollipop Guild of Munchkin Land.  I've hit my head on it twice already and can't wait to see how high that number will get over the next few days!  It's all made of very dark wood and there are only two small windows, so while it's fun to look at it kind of encourages you to get out and about because it's also a bit dreary.  And the exterior, while fascinating to look at, doesn't make the mood much more cheery; it's more dark wood with red highlights and there are some seriously creepy faces carved on the outside of this hut. 

But all is forgotten the moment I step out the door this morning because the sunrise is at the perfect point to create a road of light straight from the door of our house to the hills on the other side of the lake. The only interruption is the slow, graceful bobbing of a fishermen’s canoe as the occupant casts his old green net with one hand and gently strokes a paddle with the other. After a while he swaps the net for an old porcelain bowl that he uses alternately as a left oar and to bail water out of his shallow canoe. As I watch him, swaddled in winter clothing against the chill of the water, I wonder if he even notices the sunrise after all the years he’s done this work. I hope that he does.

Beautiful or not, there isn't a lot of time to just sit around today because we've got to go get our motorbikes! The shop that did my laundry and that I bought a nice red and green sarong from is letting us rent two of their nice, new scooters and we're going to leave Tuk Tuk and check out the rest of the island that the peninsula is part of. I'm really excited about this because the road runs along the water for the entire circumference of the island. I think it's going to be an easy, pleasant ride with lots of little stops thrown in to look at hot springs, batak houses, maybe head up a hill...oh, yeah, this is going to be nice.

And the first half of the ride is perfectly lovely; I could have kept going for days. Sunshine, riding along the beach, green fields, colorful monuments, children waving and shouting 'Hello lady!', large batak houses with their ridiculously steep roofs... And we certainly didn't have to worry about becoming lost because there's only bridge across the lake and if you follow the beach around the edge of the island you're bound to come to it. We had hoped to find a beach to swim on at some point, but it seems like the only access points down to the water are lanes that run past houses. It would definitely be a bit awkward to ride up to someone's backyard, strip down to my bikini with a guy who is not my husband or even my boyfriend (this area may not have many Muslims but Christians are a bit touchy about nudity, too), then splash around in front of some strange family, so Elias and I stick to the road.

Only a dozen kilometers or so after we leave the peninsula and hit the main part of the island, we come across a village built hundreds of years ago that they've restored and preserved as an outdoor museum. Some of the batak houses are decorated with the furnishings their original owners would have used, such as dishes, pots and pans, a loom, a low bed, and, on the upper level, some musical instruments like drums and a gamelan (a small hybrid between a marimba and a vibraphone and played with a hammer). It's not overly cool in the house, but it's still cooler than being outside in the sun and I suppose when there's a breeze it feels better, but I hope they do their cooking outside because that fire would raise the temperature in here several degrees. Outside there are stone chairs in the shade of a large tree, still set in the circle that the village elders met in to make decisions. And of course there are the freaky, nearly life-size puppet men outside one of the houses, stone faces making funny expressions lining a narrow, walled-in path to another part of the village, and a large memorial decorated with ornaments that bare a very strong resemblance to boobs. I wonder how that slipped past the Catholics.

Apparently there was supposed to be a traditional dance featuring the local girls, but I guess it's not a huge surprise that it's been unexpectedly canceled for today; that seems to happen a lot in these little villages. So instead, we ride our bikes down to a concrete dock where two women are happily washing their laundry in the lake, chatting away like the gossip queens they no doubt are, and clearly unphased by our presence they don't even cast a second look as we set up our cameras and take a few shots of them and ourselves. And yes, Elias got the pink scooter because it just made me hate that color more when the shopowner said he got a pink one 'just for you girls'. Screw you and your stereotypes, old man. Damn I really hate pink.

It was another hour or so before we got to Pangururan, the small city that sits on one side of the bridge. We stopped and, after a bit of gesturing and pointing, ordered a lunch of fried rice with pork that came out in huge, delicious, steaming portions that could have fed four people. Mmmmm. If this is how good it tastes when we don't speak Bahasa, I can only imagine what kind of stuff we could get if we knew more than 'terima kasi' (thank you)! At our table, we made a plan of attack for the rest of the day. I would have been more than happy to stick to the road along the beach, but Elias wanted to go up into the mountains in the middle of the island for the view and to see what all was up there. Anticipating driving conditions similar to what we'd seen the first half of the day, I said that was fine with me and off we went.

Clearly, I never learn.

Let me summarize by saying that I got really, really, really, really pissed off the longer we rode. I was getting so flustered that I fell over when I got stuck in a rut and then again when I came up behind Elias too quickly. Now there were some beautiful views, I'll give him that, and you could compare the landscape to something from the foothills of the Alps (he said it looked like his home in Germany). But the road...so bad...me...so angry...this is going to have to wait until tomorrow or I'm going to reach over and hit Elias right now. I'm surprised I didn't hit him then!

So once we were finally out of the mountains and headed back towards home I took out a little bit of aggression on the roads and, admittedly, drove poorly enough that I probably would have been arrested back in the states! But Elias was showing off and I was pissed off and wanted to both show I could keep up with him and work out some aggression. So we got going as fast as we could, and considering there were turns to take and people to pass and helmets to try not to lose, I'm impressed we made it up to about 100km/h. And it did go a long way towards helping me cool down after the ridiculously terrible conditions we had just spent 3 hours riding through, so by the time we returned the bikes (thankfully they didn't notice that one of the mirrors would spin around at the slightest touch) I at least wasn't totally ignoring Elias.

At the end of it all we take care of some “chores” online and have another meal at Romlan. The smell of flowers goes a long way towards mellowing me out and brings me back to reality, which is that I’m on vacation on a beautiful tropical island, eating dinner with a cute boy, and recovering from having spent the day riding a motorcycle. I have really got to work on keeping my perspective so that I don’t let my tendency towards impatience get in the way of enjoying my travels.

Just a quick note: I want to say Happy 50th Birthday to my dad! I’ve been thinking about you all day long, dad, and hoping you’re enjoying celebrating this milestone. I wish I could be there! I love you very much and can’t wait until I can tell you about my trip in person!

Leia Mais…

"The little things give you away"

Elias touches me from time to time, just gentle gestures that anyone might do with a friend, like putting his hand on my knee when he walks past me or on my arm when we’re crossing the road and a car is coming or on my elbow on the many occasions that I’ve slipped and almost fallen (I’m getting clumsier as I age, I swear). So nothing suggestive, just casual moments of contact, but each time it happens I get a jolt. As I’ve thought about why I'm reacting this way, I’ve realized it effects me so strongly because it’s been years since I’ve been touched like this, just regular physical contact in small ways that are how someone shows you they care about you. Now don’t read into this, I know it’s not like that with Elias; he’s such a nice guy that it’s just normal behavior for him to show affection. But it’s still another reminder that I’ve gone years without contact like this. I’ve had some romantic encounters, but what I’m talking about is different than that; it’s the regular, predictable, little things people do to show you that you’re loved. Oh, how I miss that! If someone tried to hold my hand I would probably go into cardiac arrest. It’s not a pleasant feeling to be hyper-aware of even the most innocent of touches from someone of the opposite sex because it’s really just desperation underneath it all and no one likes someone who’s desperate.

On a related note, it's getting pretty damn annoying seeing signs advertising for 'makin oke' every fifty feet.  Whatever food it is, I doubt I'm going to try it.  That would be weird, right?


Okay. Enough. On to more uplifting topics. How can I be so fixated on this when I just spent another day in paradise? Danau Toba is beautiful and about every half-hour or so I look around in absolute bliss. Walking around today it seems as though all of the shops are open and there are people staffing them, but Elias and I could count the number of tourists on one hand. Despite this, there seems to be no desperation to win our business, and more often than not people walk out to the street and call out a hello to you just to be jovial. It’s the total opposite of what I had come to expect in India, where every seemingly-innocent conversation somehow got turned into a sales pitch. 

I've noticed this in almost every city here I've been to: the Indonesian people seem to prioritize being pleasant (when they aren't driving buses) and getting to know you better over making a lucrative business deal.  And I have to say I really appreciate that, but there's a catch: you usually don't get a chance to just sit quietly and get some peace.  It seems that sitting and reading or writing or just enjoying the scenery is an open invitation for people to come up and ask you all sorts of personal questions.  Poor Elias, he's been traveling for years and he's said he gets tired of explaining "German, single, nope no girlfriend, 25, traveling the world, backpacking, no good reason, just adventure, etc.".  I'm getting annoyed after only a week, mainly because it just feels awkward to be asked everyday where my husband/kids/boyfriend/father is and stuff like that (and they just don't understand single women past 18, let alone single women past 18 traveling). 

We had plenty of chances today to introduce ourselves to the village because we spent the morning walking, exploring, window shopping, taking pictures, and swimming!  Oh, it was lovely, if a bit freaky because the waves were fairly large and I'm still afraid of deep water.  It didn't help that my swimsuit is a few years old and has lost its elasticity so I was basically holding everything up as I got out of the water.  Oh, and then I accidentally lost one of the hotel's towels because I pulled Elias in while he was wrapped up and HE LET GO OF IT IN THE LAKE.  Come on, everyone knows you hold onto the towel in the water!  So there goes 25,000 rupiah. Oh, well, that's only about $2.50 and overall the morning was incredibly relaxing and went by at a nice, slow pace.

And the afternoon was just as good!  We attended a cooking class led by Haddy, a woman who has lived in Tuk Tuk all her life and whose cookbook is apparently highly coveted because she makes such incredible food.  Definitely one of my bigger purchases so far at 210,000 rupiah, it was still a lot of fun and I think it was worth it in the end.  She welcomed us with a big plate of fruit then brought us over to start chopping, peeling, smashing, sauteeing, boiling, cleaning (a fish--I gave that honor to Elias), and grating coconuts over what seemed like kind of an iron comb.  We had lodeh (veggies and tempeh in a kind of gravy), fish with tomato and chilli sauce, chicken curry, and banana fritters with coconut for dessert.  By the way, Elias is definitely the best coconut grater/scraper out of the two of us; Haddy was very impressed.  Show off.

And just to enjoy our food a little bit more, Haddy leads us, laden with our creations, out the back door of the restaurant and up a flight of stone stairs to a picnic table with one of the best views I've seen yet.  It's incredible, and yes, I do think it made the food better.  On a funny note, the neighborhood cats know that when someone comes up here they're bringing food with them; about ten of them surrounded us and began a chorus of meows that weren't really that adorable until I had eaten a little and wasn't quite so hungry myself.  Elias was nicer than I was, he saw one eyeing the fish carcass and purposely set the plate where the cat could get up to it and, sure enough, that fish was on the ground being eaten bones and all in about 3 minutes.  Oh, but the food was so good!  Not too spicy, a lot of coconut, fresh tempeh, fresh fish from the lake...all just so so good.  And I can make it at home because she gave us a copy of her cookbook!  So if anyone wants some delicious Indonesian food come visit me (once I figure out what country I'm going to live in next year, that is).

Elias and I decide to end the evening the way most of our native counterparts here do: at the local pool hall drinking Cokes and watching every local guy under 30 competing for bragging rights. I order a Bintang and Elias and I start flashing through the pictures on my camera as we wait for the pool table to become free. Despite hearing from them that every other shot is “easy”, I play miserably and am happy to watch most of the time. Nixon, a guy who works at our hotel and who brought both of us on the back of his motorbike tonight, is exceptionally good, but then again what else is there to do most nights of the week other than television? When we get back, Elias and I watch “Deconstructing Harry” in bed then finally succumb to exhaustion. What a wonderful, wonderful day!

Leia Mais…

This is not how I wanted to feel on this trip

Okay, one last thing before bed.  This is really, really annoying: I've been in some kind of a funk for the last couple of weeks. I have zero energy. I want to sleep all of the time and I'm just not excited to get out and see everything like I was in India. Unfortunately, this is having a negative effect on other things. Reading over my blog posts they seem really boring and colorless. Also, it looks like a 10 year-old has been taking all of my photos. They aren't framed properly, I'm missing angles, I'm not zoomed in well enough, and there's about a hundred shots that I should have taken but just didn't.

Have I lost my passion for traveling or am I just exhausted from school? Maybe I needed more of an actual break where I did nothing before I started traveling again. This isn't exactly the most restful way to spend my holiday, so maybe I'm just burning myself out faster by not just spending a week in Bali. It's hard to say.

All I can say is that I'm sorry that the annals of my most recent trips have been so lame. I'm off to go take a bucket shower with freezing cold water to see if I can wake myself back up and shock myself into. Just don't think about how clean this water may or may not be, Lauren...

Leia Mais…