Sent: Friday, June 26, 2002 00:59 AM
I bet you had given up on getting any more of these? Well, there'e this one and one more ready to go. Not sure what's happening after that, but let's cross that bridge when we get to it. Meanwhile, welcome to some new additions to the list, Karen and Sonic; kind hosts in Sydney, John, Blair, Hadley; long lost rellies in New Zealand and Sarah Teacher the finest (not to say the hungriest!!!) young woman we've met in a long time....
A reminder that if you are a sucker for punishment there are back copies of all the stories and LOTS OF NEW PHOTOS at:
www.planet-sausage.com
Meanwhile it's late February in Singapore.
Johor Bahru is the most Southerly city in Malaysia and its' gateway to Singapore
where we plan to pass 48 hours on our way to Bali. Half an hour after arriving
at the airport we are sat on a bus cruising over the causeway joining Malaysia
to the island of Singapore and heading toward the chewing gum free, compulsory
toilet flushing island state of Singapore. Entry to the island is via the
Woodlands Terminal, a distinctly unwoody agglomeration of steel and glass
whose brooding presence conceals a shiny, well oiled, fast moving Immigration
process.
Singapore offers up its' first surprise as we journey toward the city, there is lots of green space on the island rather than the wall to wall skyscraper crammed city-scape I had expected.
It is only a short walk from the bus station to the Ah Chew Hotel (Bless You!) where a clean, windowless, air-conditioned cell sets us back 26 Singapore$ (S$) or £10.40 rented to us by a high velocity ageing Chinaman whose rat-a-tat-tat machine gun delivery renders his limited english almost completely incomprehensible, but still immeasurably better than my command of Chinese.
There can be no greater traveling cliche than to comment on the cleanliness of Singapore, but it is impossible not to do so. As we go for our first walk it becomes something of a challenge to try and find a piece of litter, a challenge to which we fail to rise, despite our best efforts. But the cleanliness is only a part of the social order for which the island is both renowned and criticized, and we find ourselves joining the crowds milling on each street corner waiting for the little green man to authorise our communal passage across each intersection. I had expected to see lots of Police, traffic wardens, litter inspectors etc etc. But big brother is nowhere to be seen, evidently this is a nation that has accepted, or at least come to tolerate these and other social controls in the light of the considerable prosperity that accompanies them.
The city is both identifiably Asian, in a scrubbed, dressed in Sunday best kind of way, and also the closest facsimile of an American city we have come across. The place doesn't just smell prosperous, it positively stinks. 35 years ago it was a tiny island, with no natural resources and few prospects. In the first 15 years of their economic miracle per capita income increased three fold Now it is one of the world's premier financial centres and the crowds that throng the shopping malls, swanning past Chanel and Prada, TAG Heuer and Gucci are a sharply dressed mixture of local business people and ex-pats from everywhere, some of the ex-pats readily distinguishable by the overly pink faces sitting atop business suits designed for warmer climes.
We revel in the Western style luxury that is on offer having a fantastic burger and chips at Bobby Rubinos before retiring damply to our air-conditioned refuge from the terrifying humidity. On our second day we rise early, very groggy from a night spent listening to the extremely creaky bed of our next door neighbour whose every toss and turn caused his bed to creak and the paper thin partition separating us to wobble noisily.
We head off to find some airline offices along and across more broad city streets, hiding in the shade waiting for the green man to summon us and trying not to walk into lamp posts or other pedestrians while staring upwards at the skyscrapers.
Having sorted out a bevy of forthcoming flights we are halfway out of our seats to leave the Singapore Airlines office when I decide to just reconfirm our flight from Bali to Sydney. When I offer our printed confirmation of a flight on 25/02/02 baffled looks abound and it turns out there is no flight on the 25th and we are in fact booked on a flight on the 24th!
We go in search of some electrical bits and pieces in preparation for Australia, which we find easily. But the general feeling is that we are wandering around a sweetshop despite having no pocket money to spend. Singapore is probably the most archly consumerist place we have so far visited and not only are we not in a position financially to consume what it offers, nor are we in a state of mind to want to shop 'til we drop. Oh, and if you are tempted to include it as a stopover on your way somewhere, be warned, the shopping is not cheap, very nearly London prices prevail.
After a better nights sleep, our neighbour having either departed or severely anaethetised himself, we strap our lives on our backs, trudge slowly, sweatily past the Raffles Hotel and climb on the super clean, super prompt airport bus. The airport is big, shiny, comfortable and packed with free stuff to keep you amused. So we send free email postcards that no-one gets, watch sport and news that fails to register in our brains, tragically miss the world's first airport game show (I kid you not!) and play that fun family game 'How many sweets can we buy with our Singaporean small change?' All of which passes the time adequately before we jet off to Bali.
Airports, they are never in the middle of town, half the time they are your point of arrival in a country and they offer a one off opportunity to abuse the ignorant newcomer. The abuse at Denpasar airport in Bali has been organised and placed behind a counter underneath a sign that says 'Pre-Paid Taxis' a phrase that translates from most languages into English as 'Vastly over priced rides for new arrivals with no other way of getting into town.' Having paid a fare that will turn out to be exorbitant and unavoidable our driver sits in sullen silence apart from half hearted attempts to takes us to his mate's hotel in Ubud, our first port of call.
Ubud is, or rather, was a small village on the lower reaches of the Balinese hills, where an artists colony grew after the arrival of several European painters in the early part of the last century. Nowadays it is the centre of 'cultural tourism' on Bali. But before the culture vultures can start to circle I take several faltering steps along the road marked 'Redemption from picking appalling accommodation in the past' by finding the Sayong Guest House. It is, of course, the last place I look at, the nearest to my starting point AND the one that Sausage had suggested, but I'll not allow any of this to detract from the fact that nominally I found it, with it's lovely first floor room, big, spacious, not dank in the soggy monsoon air, with a lovely bathroom and a beautiful breakfast and use of their swimming pool, all for 80,000 Indonesian Rupiah a night (£5.52) Road to redemption? Been there, covered most of that!
Ubud is every bit as much a tourist town as Benidorm, Blackpool or Las Vegas, but it serves a different clientele and dances to a different drum. Here the shops rotate ad-nauseum between art gallery, jewellery shop, clothes shop, crafts shop, restaurant, music shop, but in a quiet, laidback way that lacks intrusion and consequently feels quite relaxing.
The one exception to the rule of peace and quiet is the many, many men (they're always men) hanging around trying to get you to use their 'transport.' As you approach both you, and they, know what is coming, but they still need to make sure they have your attention and then ask 'Transport?' with the vital additional clarification of the steering wheel mime. It is as tiresome for us as it is fruitless for them.
Ubud seeps slowly and gently into our consciousness and is, 'Transport?' aside, a wonderfully relaxing place. Families live in compounds, walled enclosures behind whose gates are scattered lots of small separate buildings which if added together equal a house, but when spread out, like lego blocks awaiting assembly, add up to a thought provokingly different way to arrange family life.
Religion is the warp to the weft of daily life for most people and the women of each family spend an inordinate amount of time preparing offerings to the gods and making their daily rounds to distribute them. Every day a small offering appears on the staircase to our room, sticky rice, petals, coloured powders, all on a small square of palm leaf and similar, and larger offerings appear at any other propitious points always including the entrances to the compound and the family shrine.
The family compounds lend themselves to adaptation into Guest Houses like the one we are staying in, generally by filling every available nook and cranny with brick built, large airy rooms and the standards of accommodation and hospitality give the best value of anywhere we have been so far.
The 'cultural tourism' tag involves two main aspects, the work of local painters and the presentation of traditional dances. We walk out of town to the Naid Art Museum which chronicles the history of local painters from their first meetings with Western artists to the current day. All of which makes for an unexciting, derivative ninety minutes. The gallery is on quite a large scale, but I am always likely to struggle in an exhibition space where an entire room is dedicated to paintings of (not by, ...of...) the proprietor.
The dances are an entirely different proposition. A 'Local Cultural Experience!!' has, in my package holiday past, been something I regarded as a threat rather than something interesting. All too often it has caused words like 'Flamenco' and 'All you can drink' to collide with tragic consequences involving bored performers, annihilated traditions and damaged livers. The sheer number of shows on offer in Ubud is enough to raise concerns over quality. Four venues operating seven nights a week plus two venues operating on certain nights each week. All of which acts as a counterweight to my yearning to hear some live gamelan playing. It was at a WOMAD festival in the early '80's that I first heard the percussive treat that is a gamelan orchestra and I've wanted to hear more ever since. Now, 20 years later, I will finally hear it again.
The first performance we attend takes place outdoors in the courtyard in front of one of Ubud's Palaces. In front of the palace's ornate gate, guarded on each side by stone lions ceremonially wrapped in black and white check cloths, a selection of instruments are laid out around a rectangular dancefloor. The gamelan orchestra consists of 18 members, all but 2 playing something percussive, most playing xylophones or gongs. The music is a multi-layered rhythmic, clanging, chiming, sonorous wonder that changes gear and mood effortlessly But the music exists only as the soundtrack to beautiful dancing where lavishly costumed young men and women act out episodes from ancient texts in a highly stylised dance where precision of movement and expression is paramount. Although they are not apparent to us there have been changes to the music and dance to make them more accessible to Westerners. Uncut the dances last for hours, so we only get the highlights. But it is clear from all we read and hear that this is an art form that is vibrantly alive rather than an ossified parody of the olden days. Taken as a whole it is spellbinding and we find ourselves stood on the pavement two hours later the poorer by £1.72 each and substantially richer in our hearts and minds.
Two days later we take ourselves off to a small village outside Ubud for their performance of the Kecak dance. 70% of the village's families supply a cast member. There are no instruments, instead 70 men enter slowly, all topless, all wearing similar black and white check sarongs. They sit cross legged in 3 concentric circles chanting variations on the word 'kecak' while swaying, clapping and banging their chests. In the middle of the circles dancers act out more legendary tales. The cast is over 80 strong, the audience numbers no more than 30. The setting and the performance are mesmerising. Something further from the dreaded 'All you can drink Morrocan Night' is hard to imagine.
Aside from the 'Transport?' brigade and their close affiliates the 'Marijuana?' Brigade (accompanied by the 'smoking a fag' mime) the Balinese are some of the friendliest, most helpful people we have met. Sausage has two unfortunate health and beauty experiences, one involving a very painful, prolonged and ultimately patchy half leg wax and the other a spa visit for a treatment that makes specific mention of a neck and shoulder massage (which is the only reason she books it) but turns out to include no such thing. I'm luckier. My spa treatment, which involves having hot oil slowly dripped onto my forehead, is delivered as described and, also as described, is very relaxing indeed. Don't try it with the chip fat though, it's a bit more technical than that.
On day three we hire a motorbike and I at last get to make use of my International Driving Permit (IDP). Before we left the UK we both obtained IDP from the RAC and so far we have hired all sorts of vehicles in all sorts of places without ever having to prove I could drive (whether I can actually drive is a matter of hot debate among some of our less charitable friends). In Bali they will happily rent you a bike without an IDP but the probability of getting stopped by the Police seems to run somewhere close to 95% from what we hear and if you don't have an IDP or a local license then a fine will surely go straight into the underpaid Policeman's back pocket. So we set off, dodging the monsoon storms and have been underway for no more than 45 minutes when we are pulled over by the Police. Throughout South East Asia the Police and military have all appeared in uniforms so tight that they must surely have been painted on. This guy is no different, so great effort is required to offer up the deferential respect he expects as of right when presented with a paunchy middle aged man trussed up tighter than a cling-filmed turkey. The best moment comes when the corners of his coiffed moustache wilt almost imperceptibly when he sees the IDP. We are quickly sent on our way. 20 minutes later, same guy, 20km down the road, has his arm out to stop us again until we enter his focal range when he waves us on. With their pay so poor tourists are a vital source of income to these guys, but the message to tourists is clear, don't get on a bike or in a car in Indonesia without an IDP or having undergone the 3 hours of local administration to obtain a locally acceptable alternative.
After 5 very relaxing days in Ubud we decide on a change of scene. In different circumstances we would set off to see more of the island, but the damp weather has dampened our spirits and our get up and go has got up and gone into hiding, saving our energies for the long anticipated, nearly upon us, treat that is Sydney, Mardi Gras and friends, all wrapped up in one very exciting parcel. Loathe though we are to admit it, we're killing time. So we head of to Nusa Lembongan, a small island off the South East coast of Bali.
The boat trip over is spiced up by the three generations of a French family that are making a day trip to the island. I'll be delighted if I'm still wading out in knee deep water, clambering aboard swaying small boats all the time laughing at my mobility problems whilst determinedly overcoming them like the two seventy year old women who sit down panting and laughing next to a very relieved looking son and grand daughter.
After the success in Ubud I confirm the direction in which I'm traveling (along the road to redemption which ends in the town called My Wife Can Trust Me To Find a Room) by finding yet another reasonable room which lacks all sorts of amenities, stench, damp, bed lice and noisy neighbours chief amongst them and possesses a double bed so big I'm convinced it has been converted from a boxing ring.
Bali is a major draw for surfers, whose influence was negligible in Ubud, but noticeably present in the seas through which we had passed as our boat neared the island. First seen as tiny blobs in the water they hove into focus stacked like planes above Heathrow each waiting sat astride, or lying on, their boards, their eyes scanning the incoming waves searching for the big wave with the right shape and waiting their turn to pick a wave to ride on the reef break 250m out from the island's shore.
Nusa Lembongan is a story of Matt and Anna, Mark and Shirley. Further down the beach from our accommodation is a modern looking, pastel coloured guest house and dive school run by Mark and Shirley, two Brits who caught the diving bug while travelling and managed to translate a hobby into a business via the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (it's a long story!). When we turn up and ask about snorkelling we meet Matt and Anna who are halfway through their PADI diver training. Sausage keeps stealing sneaky peeks at Matt whom she is sure she recognises, something that proves more than likely as it turns out that the two of them share a fair bit of clubbing history in common.
Matt, stocky, blond and stoically quiet lives in the eye of the storm that is highly strung Anna whose electric blue eyes and initial blustering confidence poorly conceal a central nervous system that runs as noisily and fruitlessly as a car engine being highly revved in neutral.
During our first evening together we learn how they are 3 months into what was a year trip when they set out. But they have spent two-thirds of their large budget already and are already talking about cutting their trip short rather than rein in their spending. The next day we see first hand how the money slips through their fingers. We go out on the dive boat with them, us to snorkel, them to complete their PADI qualification. In early afternoon they clamber back onto the boat after their second dive excited to have completed the course, but, as I had been, utterly exhausted. Then, as the boat starts chugging back along the coastline Anna turns to Matt and says 'Hey! Let's do our Advanced Diver course straightaway!' Matt's expression and body language both scream 'No!' but he takes the path of least resistance and another £400 disappears out of their already depleted piggy bank. For the next two days we watch them struggle through the course trying to learn more despite their tiredness. There is of course no right or wrong way to spend your budget when traveling. But one of the things that Sausage and I feel lucky about is that, by and large, we want to spend our money on the same things, at the same rate, so we are both pulling on a rope in the same direction rather than in a tug of war.
The snorkeling is good and we eventually do two days off the dive boat with a day spent snorkeling off the beach sandwiched in between. On three of the 6 trips the visibility is crystal clear and Sausage is very excited to see her first spotted ray, maybe a foot across, the palest of greens in colour with vivid blue spots.
Our second day on the dive boat, our fifth on the island becomes our last as two massive storms sweep across the sea and over the island, one in the morning and one in the evening. It is strangely beautiful to sit on the dive boat and see a solid wall of cloud and rain advancing toward you, obliterating from view all it encompasses, boats, headlands, waves. In the final approach a silence falls, the winds and waves die away and then the high pitched sound of water sheeting down onto water precedes the pouring rain.
What Mark and Shirley have achieved, the tropical island idyll with income enough to support the lifestyle, is food for thought and we depart for the mainland with a glint in our eye and lots of unanswered questions.
Our last stop in Bali is Kuta. Young Australia goes on holiday to Kuta, a sprawling mish mash of big hotels, guest houses and bungalow operations interspersed with everything you would expect to find on a high street in Ibiza. Which probably paints an unnecessarily gloomy picture of the place. We quite enjoy ourselves. We need the buzz, the shops, the bars to distract us from the countdown clock tick, tick, ticking TOO DAMN SLOWLY, counting down the seconds until we go to Sydney.
Kuta is not very busy, something which suits us perfectly, the small numbers of loud Aussie youth we meet are a scary reminder of what the place must be like when filled to bursting with surfie testosterone and oestrogen. There are so many surfware shops, the big names, the local names, the crappy copies, that it takes us days to make our way round them all, a task that is ultimately fruitless as Sausage falls in love with a top of the range, not remotely discounted pair of Quiksilver board shorts that are £40 here in Kuta, where most stuff is at least 50% less than UK prices.
A couple of days into our stay in Kuta we amble down to breakfast and fall into conversation with the couple at the next table who turn out to be Steve and Wendy. The initial topic of conversation is hair, or rather the lack of it, as Wendy has hair nearly as short as ours which looks really good given her salt (predominantly) and pepper hair colouring and deeply tanned skin. What a pair. He late 40's and originally from Bristol, she early 40's and from London prior to emigrating to Canada many years ago.
Steve had spent a number of years working at a very high level internationally for Xerox, she the loyal company wife. After a couple of years as a consultant working from home in Canada Steve accepted a contract with an unspecified company in the middle of the Indonesian jungle. I'd guess that this run to the sun was the warm up exercise for the full scale mid-life crisis into which they had plunged just a few weeks before we met them, initiated by the early termination of the consulting contract. (Run to the sun? Mid-life crisis? Quick change the subject we may be getting to close to the bone here?!)
So it is that we meet two very tanned, very toned people who have moved happily and comfortably through the rarified air that flows around the very rich for many years, but have now decided to take advantage of the contract termination to go 'travelling'. Their language is full of consulting speak (Steve) and vaguely new age therapy speak (Wendy) as they try and reconcile their initial budget traveling experiences, most of which take the form of 'Ohmigod they are ALL trying to rob me or rip me off', to their expectations of a meandering, unplanned journey that is as much into their own consciousness and conscience as it is a journey to anywhere. The funniest moment comes when Wendy describes the lavish pool parties she used to host back in Canada, reaches for a tone that is ashamed of her sordidly rich past but attains only a tone that is ambivilent about it, still partly proud, only partly embarrassed by the splendours she describes. Not surprisingly they fell upon us as manna from heaven, the voices of experience and the 'bunny rabbit in the headlights' look in their eyes is very reminiscent of us two on arrival in Delhi back in September.
By the time we part they swear they have learnt some lessons and can articulate what they will do differently, but my money is on their not reconciling their aspirations for budget travel with the reality and a fairly hasty Business Class retreat to Canada.
For a couple of weeks Sausage has been humming and hawing about whether to risk getting her hair bleached before we get to Sydney. Time on our hands in Kuta gives her time to talk to a couple of salons and decide to take the plunge. As she disappears off to the hairdressers I start to potter round the hotel room thinking that I've got probably a couple of hours to kill, it takes at least that long when she communes with Finchley's Greek Ladies-Who-Lunch at Estelle's House of Hair and Beauty back at home. So imagine my surprise when 40 minutes later the door flies open and Sausage is stood before me, bleached and quivering with anger. She had gone into the hairdressers to find 3 people working there, only one of whom had a little English. Sausage had interrogated them to make sure they could turn her hair white, NOT YELLOW, white. Yes, she is assured. Bleach is slapped on and, having had to go to great lengths to persuade them to make sure the bleach is evenly distributed, Sausage sits back expecting to wait 40-45 minutes like she would at home. After 5 minutes efforts are made to start to remove the bleach. Sausage has to fight to have it left on. After 10 minutes her hair is washed. She waits for the toner to be applied, the key to her hair looking white instead of yellow. No toner appears and as her temper starts to rise it is made clear to Sausage that no toner will appear. As far as the salon is concerned the job is done. At which point Sausage looks in the mirror and sees not the proverbial red, though that will follow momentarily, but YELLOW. The plot is lost, the red mist descends and Sausage starts shouting at all and sundry before chucking at them less than a third of the agreed price and storming out of the salon and nearly taking the door off its' hinges. It is no more than two minutes after her grand exit that she bursts into our hotel room sobbing about how they have ruined her hair for Mardi Gras. But the twist in the tale is that as the days go by and my view remains unchanged Sausage slowly has to come to accept that the colour is actually absolutely fine! As this realisation sinks in so we start to slope by the salon rather than walking by glaring as we had done immediately after the Sausage Hair Debacle.
The last days before departure are a bit of a blur, the detail of how little we did smeared into obscurity by the rising tide of excitement. Bali is yet another place which has charmed us and to which we would happily return knowing that in our two weeks we have seen only a tiny part of what it has to offer.
When planning our trip
Sydney, Mardi Gras, friends, was the fulcrum around which the whole trip pivoted.
Now, after 6 months travel through Asia the day is finally here. BRING IT
ON!!
Big Kiss The Travelling
Sausages
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