Birthday.

Title courtesy of Nick Holschuh

My 24th birthday (Wookie reminded me I'm sooo much close to a quarter of a century now, thanks for that one, pal!) was at the end of January. I celebrated by:

Going to Bromo!! 

Wow! 

Mt. Semeru at sunrise

The conquer pose

This failed jump shot never ceases to crack me up. Well done, 24 years, well done. 

Steaming away

Allegedly this maze of sand dunes is new since about 2011 when Bromo last erupted...I didn't know that it was an active volcano and had recently erupted until I was safely back home...

Into the crater!

Brian at Selecta, a swimming pool by our training villages.


. . .

My neighbors also celebrated with me!

Umroh cooking pancakes on a front porch, why not!?

I think these women though that the water balloon looked like...well, you know...

Toss, toss, toss! 

Zaiky is fully experiencing the stress of trying to win Limbo!

Yikes! Anggra gets low...

Makan kerupuk! Basically bobbing for apples, but with kerupuk on a string!

I got some great gifts, including chocolate (from fellow PCV Tammy), 2 necklaces (from my friend Ophie) laundry detergent, guitar earrings, and three notebooks (from my neighbor girls. 

Result: 24 was a fabulous birthday. Siiiiiiiiiip!

Singapore: The Refuge of SE Asia

Singapore is a "Fine City!" 

Now, to clarify right away, Singapore is not a refuge because the rest of SE Asia is somehow bad. Singapore is simply extra great for an American who has been deprived of and misses super cleanliness, English-speaking, Christmas-celebrating (snowmen and songs about snow included, odd…), Western-food eating, legitimate museum-possessing countries!!!! Thus, Singapore could have not been a more perfect choice for my first Christmas away from home. Not to mention I got to see Debbie Wong and Paro Sen for the first time in a long time (Carleton friends)!!!  : )

I arrived on Christmas Eve and knew the trip was gonna be good when the immigration lady spoke in English and offered me a mint. What a great touch! Then I settled in at Debbie’s beautiful house, met her family (loved her pops, super chatty!) and then attended a Christmas Eve dinner with 70+ Wongs (that’s Debbie’s last name!) That’s a lot of Wongs, and they were awesome! We sang Christmas carols, I ate more meat than I’ve seen in 10 months, and I even received a present (an umbrella, okay!)

Singapore has 4 national languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. The latter three are representative of each of the major ethnic groups, and English is the common language everyone shares. 

Then next day, church. As a Catholic,  I usually seek out Catholic churches to attend in other countries simply for the ease with which I can follow the mass. Thus, attending Debbie’s English-speaking  Methodist church was great, because for the first time I got to see the Methodist church’s universality in action, too. It was crazy, like something out of a movie. Singing the Christmas carols I knew, everyone dressed in their Christmas best…but 100% surrounded by Chinese Singaporeans and sweating in the tropical heat. Rarely do I (read: never have I ever!) attended a Methodist church that was anything but 100% white Midwesterners!

Touring with Debbie included:

Debbie's a great tour guide, got the poses down and everything!

Beef Hor Fun, amazing

One of the few traces of Islam I saw here; I also walked past one mosque in the Arab Quarter. Quite a change from East Java, Indonesia!

Wayang Kulit. Interesting to learn a little about Malay culture here , as it is the sister language and culture to Indonesia!

New Year's wishes

Writing New Year's wishes. These beach balls will be put into the harbor and lit up at night!

The hotel with the ship on top! And the science museum (looks like a big, white open palm)

      

By Night

Debbie is fabulously photogenic!

Odd to see traces of Christmas in tropical Singapore, especially snowmen, snowflakes, and some (wax) ice skating in the mall!

Tourist!

At the botanical gardens in the orchid garden

Fancy lunch with so much cheese! Some of the first good, real cheese in 10 months!

"Peranakan' Museum. 'Peranakan' is a Malay word that refers to an ethnically/racially mixed person; in Singapore, this  generally means Chinese and Malay.

Reunited!

 We ate soooooo much good food. I would go broke in Singapore eating that food every day. Because I would eat so much. The only thing it lacked was an affordable Dominos, Sam!

After a few days with Debbie, I met up with Paro, and got a taste of the Indian lifestyle living in Singapore. By that, I mean that Paro’s family eats freshly cooked Indian food at home and speaks Bengali (technically, they are from India, but one of her parents is culturally Bengali). Correct me if I’m wrong, Paro!!

Touring with Paro included:

Fresh flowers in Little India

Hindu Temple entrance

Various depictions of god

Entrance to a shrine in the temple

Saris at the market in Little India

Not something you'd see in my part of Indonesia! 

New Year's Eve proved great and basically free thanks to Paro's generous friend!

Singapore, the nation of technology and wonders! This was an image projected onto a fountain of water in Marina Bay...WHAT?!? So cool!

After a most fantastic week and a half in Singapore, I was reluctant to leave. But I will certainly be back, and if Paromita Sen has any say in the matter, I will be moving there in June 2014.

:  )

Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra

 We arrived at Bukit Lawang after a full day in the car (with the craziest sick stomach symptoms ever, thanks Lake Toba mountains...). We had been in contact with 2 tour guides and had to pick one for the hike the next day. That was dramatic in itself, involving one of the guides telling us karma was gonna get us since we ended up deciding to go with someone other than him. One of the guides was at the place the car dropped us off, ready to walk us to our hotel. Introduced as Eddy, we later met Eddy #2. This was the second time a person'd introduced themselves as the person we were planning to meet, only to find out later that that person was just the friend of the real person. Why people do this is beyond me, as in the US this would be deception. They meant no harm, so why not just introduce yourself as Eddy's friend???

 That night we hit the hay hard! We were very satisfied with our little treetop bungalow, complete with a view of the river!

After a power breakfast of eggs and "pancakes," (SE Asia backpacking places are known as the Banana Pancake Trail because they all serve an assortment of fruity pancakes...really crepes, but still delicious!), we met our guides Eddy and Antone, and our two new friends, a German and Belgian guy solo travelling through SE Asia...whew, brave men!

Antone

Jungle Eddy
jungle_edie@hotmail.com
+6281397125596
fb = jungle edie 

Into the jungle! Our hike began with what is dubbed the "Jungle Breakfast," a straight 15-minute hike up the hill into the jungle. I think it was about 5 minutes into this that I was sweating through my shirt and Britteney was questioning the wisdom of this "fun vacation" choice! 

A typical path on the way up

The guides work together, one in front giving in information and one in back wandering off the trail looking for animals. We have to say, they were quite impressed that we random tourists spoke Bahasa Indonesia. Though they speak English really well, using Bahasa Indonesia really allowed us to have more conversation and joke around. 

  

Thomas Monkey, "Funky Monkey," has a distinctive mohawk!

The real attraction is the wild (rehabilitated) orangutans!! We saw 5, a couple, a mom and baby, and a male. They stayed way high up in the trees, so it was hard to see them, mostly just an orang blur!!

Orangutans are only native to Sumatra and Kalimantan, and we saw many of the Sumatran orangutans. Fun fact: orang means person and (h)utan means forest, so their name literally means "person of the forest."

Sometimes Eddy had to cut a trail through the brush with his knife...yikes!

WATCH OUT for the rattan!

Prepping lunch in the jungle!

While Britteney is a little blurry here, this is the one and one picture
 in which I do not look disgustingly sweaty, so there you have it!

The river we crossed and followed to our campsite

Then we bathed under this lovely waterfall, not unlike a cheesy romantic/jungle-setting movie! 

The resident monitor lizard (not quite a Komodo, that's another part of Indonesia!) at the campsite. 

This was the most intense camping ever, no air mattress, Mom! 

     Note to future travelers, this is just as rock-hard as it looks. And despite being in Indonesia where I always assume it is perpetually hot, it was chilly! I was not awake enough when the guides were asking us if we wanted blankets, so I slept without one until 3 AM, when one of the jungle men saw me "sleeping like a shrimp" and gave me his blanket!! Thanks, Ahmad!

The next morning we got up and trekked back up for about 2 hours. I was truly only sore from the sleeping, and just a hit in my calves. Otherwise, this is a very doable hike!

Our new German friend (above) and Belgian friend (below) modeling the way down the bluff!

Britteney, focused on getting out of the jungle! 

At the end, dirty but very happy! Ready for rafting back down the quickly flowing river! 

Upon our return, anyone else would have crashed, but Britteney and I set out to cleaning our stinkiest clothes ever. Again, anyone else may have found a laundry cleaning service, but we are self-sufficient PCVs, so I grabbed the laundry detergent packets I'd brought, and we set out to bringing my famous laundry parade to Bukit Lawang!

We decided to stay for one more night and catch the early bus back to the airport. I read by the water, bought a jillion souvenirs for all those who minta-ed oleh-oleh, and went to the orangutan feeding platform.

This also meant we could go to the discotheque Saturday night! Unfortunately for me, that meant very late and I am usually ready to sleep at 11 PM.  We really left at about 9 PM for a dinner hunt, up and down the hill time #16 and #17 (man I was sick of that path!). 11 PM was when we left for the discotheque...resulting in a vastly new record, out until 3:30 AM, home at 4 AM, packing until 4:30 AM, and leaving for the bus at 5:15 AM. A record 45 minutes of sleep! (The record for "least amount of sleep I've ever had" prior to this was about 5 hours of sleep...) The discotheque was definitely worth it! While maybe not the best music, it was refreshing to let loose after 6 months stuck in a village with no dancing!!

Looking human again! Getting ready for the discotheque! 

 Overall, Bukit Lawang was such a success! A perfect balance of relaxing, trekking and sweating, and adventure! Thanks for a fantastic trip, Britteney!!!!