Indonesia!

Indonesia is like nowhere I have ever been before. Ever since arriving, I have been experiencing a constant stream of new, sensory impressions. In Bali, which is mostly Hindu, there were fascinating ritualistic traditions to observe, vibrant colors of shiny, bright fabrics that flashed out from the shop windows, and delicate, lovely flower offerings that littered the streets. In the evenings, although I loved it, it was almost hard to sleep from the loud sounds of cicadas, crickets and frogs all humming their nighttime melodies. In West Java there was the constant buzz of hundreds of motorbikes, incessant crowing of roosters, mixed with mega-phoned Muslim prayer that began at 4:00 in the morning and continued 5 times throughout the day.


It’s funny. Back in Costa Rica I wrote about wanting to be someplace that didn’t bend over backwards to make you feel like you do when you are at home, but now that I am somewhere that feels so radically different from what I am used to, I am so grateful for those things. For one, God Bless Western toilets! Especially when your stomach is reeling from the super tasty, but potentially risky, food choices here. I admit, a bit ashamedly, that I even felt nostalgia when walking by a Starbucks. I didn’t go in, but I felt my heart do little jumps at the sight of it – just because of its familiarity.
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I really didn’t know anything about Indonesia before coming here. I didn’t realize, for example, that it is the 4th most populated country in the world, with nearly 240 million people living here, nor did I know that it is mostly Muslim. This is my first time in a Muslim country, and since I was naïve to this fact before coming here, I wasn’t really appropriately prepared.

It’s hard packing for a 6-month trip, especially when you are not entirely sure of where exactly you will find yourself. It’s hard to have the right clothes for all the climates and occasions that I find myself in. For example, I have a lot of clothes for hot and humid weather, but really only one outfit for cooler weather. That means that in almost all of New Zealand and half of Australia I was wearing the same, tired outfit daily. Now that I am in a hot and humid climate though, I still find that I have nothing to wear. I have clothes that are suitable for the weather, but I do not have clothes that are suitable for this kind of weather in a Muslim country.

I don’t think that I have ever felt quite so self-conscious about the clothes that I have on (or in this case perhaps, the clothes that I do not have on), as I do here, and my clothes are not extreme by any means. Thank goodness the shorts that I have are long. Even though they go past my knees, I still feel scandalous in comparison to the women who live here. I have on T-shirts that cover my shoulders, but I find myself worrying because they are form fitting, instead of loose, and as a result, I often put on my, way-too-hot-for-nearly-100-degree-weather, fleece zippie.

Many of the women here are virtually covered from head to toe. They wear long, loose pants, loose-fitting long shirts, as well as scarves that cover their head and neck. Even when Dennis and I went to the beach we didn’t see a single person in a swimsuit, not even those who were swimming in the ocean. I certainly understand and respect modesty, but I worry about the potential message of my own clothes in a place where “modesty” is defined so differently from what I am used to. It makes me wonder.... women who argue about why they like to wear a headscarf say that it protects them from unwanted attention, that they want to be seen for their minds, and not their bodies. In doing so though, I wonder if it then creates an assumption that women who do not wear a headscarf, want that kind of attention. And if so, does it then create an assumption that it is somehow the woman’s responsibility to protect herself in this way, and that if she doesn’t, she is somehow fair game?

This was something that I was contemplating over breakfast yesterday morning at the hotel that I am staying at. To my surprise, I was the only fair-skinned blonde in the room, and in fact, I was the only Westerner in the room. (To be fair, I later realized that this was because I was up at 6:00, and eating breakfast when all the business guests were up and getting ready to go out for work. Today, when I went to breakfast at around 8:00, there were more Western tourists.) I was the only woman eating alone in the room, and I was also the only woman not wearing a scarf around my head. From what I could tell, I was also the only woman approached by a fellow hotel guest, an Indonesian man, and asked, “Ah, so where are you from? Oh, USA? I’m in room 308, what hotel room are you staying in?” Hmmm… Shaking my head no, he politely left me alone. Maybe he was just trying to make some friendly conversation with someone who was obviously an outsider, or perhaps it was an invitation for something else, but in either case, it was definitely attention that I wasn’t that interested in.

I have reached the point on this trip where I am finally feeling homesick. It might be because I know that the trip is coming to an end soon, and that I will likely be back in California in less than a month’s time, but I can almost taste the things of home.

Oh San Francisco! How I look forward to being with you again. ☺



Today I fly to Ho Chi Minh City to meet up with Dennis. I was supposed to be there Sunday, but I screwed up on applying for the visa in time, so I got stuck waiting here in Jakarta for a few days.

p.s. I plan to post something about Australia soon too. I loved that country the most, and for some reason have struggled to write about it, but I do really want to share some things, so I hope to get something up about it in the next week.

Driving in New Zealand

I’ve been in New Zealand for over a month now, and although after leaving Costa Rica I vowed that I would try and write more, I haven’t felt that I had much of anything to say.

In a lot of ways, New Zealand is just as I expected: amazing landscapes, rolling mossy hills with pastures full of sheep, winding roads, majestic mountains, aqua-blue lakes, rushing rivers, endless opportunities for adventure and friendly kiwis with their puzzling, but admirable, accents. Yawn, right? (Just kidding.)



Also as expected, it’s quite easy to travel here. English is the main language, the roads are well-paved and fairly easy to navigate, accommodations in various price ranges are typically clean and comfortable, and there are considerately placed public bathrooms, clearly visible, in the center of any township, as well as in regular intervals along the highways, so that one never has to feel too in want of a rest stop or sheepishly ask the local café to lend them their services.


When things are this easy-going however, it’s not great inspiration for writing any sort of revelatory material. That said, there is one thing about visiting New Zealand that continues to prove itself interesting, and that is driving. This includes the highways, the billboards, the road signs, the road kill, and especially, driving on the left.

Driving on the left side of the road is not really that hard. The first few days feel a bit scary, but after that it’s not so bad. However, after being trained in the art of right-sided driving for 16 years, I am amazed at how unnatural and unintuitive the simplest of tasks feel, when they have been switched to the opposite side. Take for example, walking to your car, turning on the blinker, making a right or left turn, or even, when not in the car, just crossing the street.

When crossing the street I am accustomed to looking left first, then right. Here, out of habit, I still look left first, and then right, and continue to waggle my head left and right as I cross, because even if I think about it slowly I never feel confident that I’m looking the right way in order to avoid oncoming traffic. Dennis assessed, and I believe rightly, that this must be one of the greatest reasons for pedestrian accidents – foolish foreigners not knowing which way to look as they cross the street.

When I reach for the blinker, I consistently switch on the windshield wipers instead, since the handles for each are on opposite sides of what I’m used to. When walking towards the car, I frequently mistake the driver’s side for the passenger side, and vice versa. Once, there was a brief awkward moment when I was getting a lift from a local kiwi lady, as I stood for several seconds by the driver’s side of the car, thinking I was at the passenger’s side, and waiting for her to let me in the vehicle. She didn’t say anything to me (I think she was just standing behind me not sure what to do), but when I went, ”Oh!” and walked to the other side, and explained that I was confused since the car seats were reversed, she laughed in relief. How odd it must have seemed to offer a lift to a relative stranger, and then have them stand at the driver’s side, as if they were going to drive your car for you.

I’ve never been great at remembering which way is left, and which is right - I mean, I know which is which, but it’s something that I can easily mix up accidentally (something I blame on being left-handed in a right-handed world). Here however, all is completely lost. I realize now that I have been associating left turns with turns that require crossing traffic, and right turns with not having to cross traffic, as I consistently make the mistake here of mixing them up. The fact that I have to cross traffic to make a right turn here makes it feel instinctually to me like a left, so when Dennis instructs me to turn right, or left, I frequently and unintentionally do the opposite. This makes for a lot of unnecessary U-turns. I can’t imagine what driving a stick shift would be like, and mercifully, they have not switched around the gas and brake pedals.

The highways here are quite different from the US. At home we have massive freeways with 4 to 6 lanes going in each direction. I can imagine now how daunting this must seem to someone who has never seen this before. In New Zealand the highways are just one lane in each direction – unless of course there is a bridge, and then there is only one lane for both directions. What I find difficult however, is keeping up with their standard speed limit for highways of 100 km/hr. This is fine on the long straight stretches, but most of the highways twist and turn around tight mountain corners, and sometimes this just makes the speed limit seem totally absurd (see photo below). I’m not a horribly slow driver, but even though I am driving at my maximum comfort level, there are always many drivers eager to pass me.

There are billboards erected along the highways that seem supportive of my desire to drive slower. They frequently have messages such as, “100 km/hr is not a target!” which are often posted right next to the speed limit sign. Or, “Don’t get a speeding ticket” together with a morbid picture of someone’s toe sticking out from beneath a sheet with an ID tag tied around it. They are constant reminders that driving fast here can be lethal, but the message seems to be mixed. Why allow for such speeds in the first place, if you don’t really want people to be driving that fast?


There is also a surprising amount of road kill on the highways. Once, I counted nearly 20 in an hour. I thought that even though Dennis and I hadn’t seen a lot of wildlife in New Zealand (alive anyway), the numbers of dead bodies on the road were a sure testament to their abundant existence. At first I couldn’t recognize what these squished fuzzy creatures on the road were, but soon learned that they were mostly all possums. They don’t look like the possums in California however. The ones here almost resemble cats with their pointy triangular ears.

At first I felt really bad for them, and I still sort-of do, but I’ve come to learn that these non-native possums (from Australia) are quite rapidly destroying New Zealand. There are between 60 and 70 million possums in New Zealand now, and they are eating/killing 20,000 tons of vegetation each night! The large numbers of these animals is also jeopardizing the national mascot the Kiwi, which used to exist happily in similar numbers as the possum does today, before the introduction of non-native predators to the island. Now however, the number has dwindled to around 700,000 – and that is split between 5 different species of Kiwi.

While on an observation tour of the Kiwi in Queenstown, a caretaker was saying that no other country has had conservation dilemmas like the ones that New Zealanders are facing today. Finding out these facts helped bring into light a T-shirt that I had previously seen and judged as a bit crude which said, “Possums – New Zealand’s little speed bumps.”

A local told me that even the most passive, non-violent, vegan New Zealander can become maniacally aggressive when having spotted a crossing possum on the road, and will swerve purposefully in attempts to squash it. Most of the tourist shops here as well have a section where they sell possum-fur gloves, scarves and hats.

As I said before, I still feel a bit sorry for them. They certainly don’t know any better, and it wasn’t their fault that they ended up here. The possums must feel about New Zealand, perhaps even more so, as do the millions of tourist visitors who come here each year, “Wow! This place is incredible! So beautiful! So green! So safe! I could stay here forever!”

That thought though, didn’t stop me from buying a pair of the super-soft and warm possum gloves for myself to stay warm. ☺

Cheers from down under! Tomorrow we head to Sydney Australia.

reflections on the last day...

3-16-2010

Apparently I’m horrible at blogging. I figured that I would manage, at the least, one entry per week, but as I sit here reflecting on my stay in Costa Rica - I realize that I have been here a whole month, and only written once.

It is my last day here in Costa Rica, and as I sit on the veranda of a San Jose hotel, and listen to the noise of honking cars, and rumbling trucks go by, I wonder, how would I sum up my stay here?

To that I say, Costa Rica is not for me, at least not in any potentially permanent way. Let me explain…

I’ve always had this fantasy of myself as a very worldly type, but the reality is that when I look at my life, I have spent almost the entirety of it inside the bay area. I was raised in the south bay, went to college in Santa Cruz, and have lived the last eight years in San Francisco. There isn’t anything wrong with this really, but whenever I find myself recounting these specific details about myself to someone, I feel a little pang of shame, because it doesn’t really match the adventurer image I have of myself. I’ve flirted many times in my mind with the idea of living abroad, and romanticized becoming an expat of sorts, so part of this trip for me has definitely been about clarifying whether or not I would, in fact, someday want to leave the safety net of California to experience a new way of living, as well as where that place might be.



I love California. It holds many things that are dear to me, and as I grow older, I realize how much it has shaped who I am, and how I view things. In fact, I am such an unoriginal Californian that once while traveling in Rome, a guy, just by talking with me for a minute, placed the exact city I was from. I thought to myself, “Wow. Am I that obvious?” I guess so…

But back to Costa Rica...



It is, no doubt, stunningly beautiful here, and the temperature of the water is luxuriously like bathwater. All in all, it has been an incredible playground. I came here to surf, to see wildlife, to explore natural beauty, and on all these fronts, Costa Rica has definitely delivered. For this, I feel privileged and truly grateful. However, I also came here to get a sense of who Costa Ricans are, and sadly, I am no more the wiser after being here for a month.



It is entirely possible, very easy in fact, to come to this country, and visit all of its best sites, even being able to speak Spanish, and not have a single authentic interaction with a native Costa Rican citizen that isn’t summed up by the phrase, “Estamos aqui para servirle” – We are here to serve you.

It’s true that I was mostly on the tourist circuit, and that if I tried harder, eventually I might be able to break through, at least on some level, but I’m not comfortable with how much the culture of expats here seems to have diluted the experience of what may have been, in much earlier years, more authentically Costa Rican. It’s strange to me that when we were in the surf town Dominical, the three main places to eat served burgers, pizza and vegan dishes. Nor am I comfortable with the fact that although tourism brings in a lot of money to the country, many of the businesses are owned by foreigners, who, at least in a few of our experiences, didn’t seem to have legal work permits, who were presumably here on tourist visas, since they left the country every 3 months for 72 hours, and only accepted payment in cash – US dollars please.

I realize that even as I say these things, I was no doubt a beneficiary of the very things of which I complain, and that it definitely made things easier and more comfortable for me. It was certainly an expat who owned the bakery in Malpais that I loved so much, with their freshly juiced lemonade with ground up mint, but even so, it doesn’t feel quite right.

When I spoke earlier of romanticizing the expat experience, I was not thinking of going to a place where everything is familiar, and people are bending over backwards to make me feel just the way that I do when I am at home. I was thinking more about the challenge one goes through in order to get to know someplace new, while allowing a different culture to seep in a bit, transforming the way one views the world, and helping to gain an alternative perspective. I realize that I'm oversimplifying things, and that the rumored statistic (that 70% of expats who try to move to Costa Rica end up moving back home) would not exist if it were truly easy. I don't want to discredit the people who have a dream of living here, and work hard to make it happen, but I'm suprised when I walk into a restaurant that doesn't even have the menu in Spanish.

During our stay here in Costa Rica we were frequently asked the question, "How is life in paradise?" To that I say, "Amazing, but something seems amiss..."

adjusting to the hard life...

Costa Rica
Thursday, 2/25/2010

So… this is my first blog.

Seeing as Dennis and I are traveling for six months, this seemed like a good way to share with everyone what we are up to, and a nice way to reflect on our/my experiences.

We have been in Costa Rica now for about a week. I had to really think about that. It’s very easy to lose track of time, as we don’t have any real obligations, or anywhere that we have to be. It’s quite nice. Aside from the week that we spent at Dennis’ parents house over Christmas, I haven’t had this feeling of being able to let go and totally relax for a long time. It still hasn’t totally sunk in yet… I occasionally have this sense of urgency, that there is something that I should be doing, something that I should be worrying about, but there isn’t really. When I wake up in the morning and think about the plan for my day, it’s just a matter of organizing a series of these activities: surfing, walking around and taking photographs, eating, laying on the beach, swimming, reading, or researching things on the internet. Sometimes we have a plan to go surfing in the morning, but then a band of monkeys comes frolicking through the trees in front of the house where we are staying, so we decide to stay and watch them instead and head for the beach break later.



Hard life, right? This is a popular phrase among folks around here.

We are in a small surf town called Malpais. It means “badland”. I read that it got its name because during the dry season all the rivers dry up, and the soil turns to dust, making it impossible to grow anything. The name seems ironic now since the value of the land is apparently worth millions, and is supposedly some of the most expensive property in Costa Rica.

It doesn’t look or feel like an expensive place, as much of the development around here is quite rustic, but the natural beauty around here is really impressive. Although I expected to see wildlife, I assumed it would be reserved for occasions when Dennis and I trekked through national parks or specific wildlife areas. However, we’ve been blessed with seeing all manner of creatures right from the front porch where we are staying: capuchin and howler monkeys, bats, iguanas, geckos, a scorpion, a variety of colorful birds that I don’t know how to identify (a Costa Rican bird book would be really handy), a tarantula? (if not, it was an equally large and thick-legged spider), squirrels the size of possums, 3-inch long grasshoppers and palm sized beetles. The howler monkeys are crazy. They are not that big, but the ‘howl’ they make sounds like a gorilla roar. For several days Dennis and I had no idea what was making such a beastly noise. The Austrian guy, Franz, who is renting the house to us, helped us figure it out…


















We have been in Malpais since Saturday, not quite a week, and plan to stay here for at least another week and half before moving on to check out the rest of the country. Malpais itself is pretty quiet. There are “resorts”, but nothing like what usually comes to my mind when I hear the word. For example, most the signs that advertise hotels are hand painted. It’s considered a family area, and is maybe 3 kilometers long. It borders a town called Santa Teresa, and that is where any shops, restaurants, banks and stores are. We are just over a mile from the border of Malpais and Santa Teresa, so to get there we have rented these fixed-gear land cruiser bikes. A mile sounds like nothing, but it’s nearly 100 degrees, and the roads that they have here are brutal. Unpaved, dusty, rocky, and pitted – I feel like a champ if I make the trip ‘into town’ twice in one day, and am a mop of a sweaty mess when I do.

If you would like to see more photos, copy/paste this link into a new window:
http://picasaweb.google.com/106492817349966784988/TripPhotosForFriends?authkey=Gv1sRgCLDtsO7_quXJRA#