Indonesia: Beautiful, Chaotic, and Diverse — HaffsWay Around The World

What follows is my attempt to summarize 14 days in one of the most diverse countries in the world. Read: this shit about to be long (sorry for the swear grandma. It was necessary.)

We landed in Bali, Indonesia at about 1am, and after an hour and a half of customs and immigration and waiting for bags, we wearily walked out to a wall of at least one hundred taxi drivers and hospitality workers with one hundred small hand-written signs shouting one hundred names. It was hot and even in the airport almost every surface was brightly decorated in some way. Instant culture shock.

After a few minutes of numbly milling around and stupidly staring at taxi drivers (who all wanted to give us a ride for “cheap! Cheap!”- sometimes aggressively so) we found our man: Nyoman. Nyoman our Air BnB host had insisted on staying up late to personally drive us the hour back to our abode that evening. At 3am he showed us to our retreat of sorts in Ubud on his family’s jungle compound, and insisted he'd be back with “welcome drinks” shortly. He was back shortly. They were delicious. At 3am. I think we giggled for 8 minutes straight and promptly passed out in our cabana style bed.

This first interaction with Indonesia was really quite representative of our 14 days in this wonderfully chaotic and colorful country. For the first time in a long, long time, we felt totally out of our element. Different language, different cultures, different customs, different ways of doing just about everything. But while we fumbled along with all the newness and strangeness, there was surprise kindnesses every step of the way. And of course the Hustle (with a capital H), you gotta respect the hustle of the Indonesian people. They have MAD hustle. Their hustle is how they feed their families, and I respect it. More on that later.

Our jungle retreat at Nyoman's family compound.

We were very spoiled. Hospitality here means going above and beyond.

New Zealand is a tiny country with a tiny population of people in comparison to Indonesia, which boasts the fourth largest population in the world. If you spent one day only on each of its “known” islands, you would spend 32 years in the attempt. There are 1300 different language spoken in Indonesia, and 251 different religions practiced. It's the most diverse and interesting place I think I've ever been, but the dissonance between Indonesian and Kiwi culture was definitely jarring at first. I was struck so many times at the sheer number of human beings all in one space, trying to get to where they were going, make their livings, and live their lives.

Typical traffic in Ubud. The rules are: be assertive, take your opportunities to move, and don't get in everyone else's way.

Our new favorite mode of transportation!

--Bali--

We spent our first four days in central Bali: Ubud. Our days there were spent mostly scootering around trying not to hit anyone, eating, visiting streetside shops, learning as much as we could, and generally trying not to look like idiot “Bules” (pronounced boo-lay, meaning white people or tourists). Hot tip: if you mess something up, apologizing and calling yourself a bule always gets a hearty laugh and a pass at your ineptitude. The Balinese predominantly practice Hinduism (and some Buddhism), and decorate pretty much every surface possible with intricate designs.

Women are often seen making small offerings to different deities along the streets and in front of neighborhood temples. It is a lush and warm place, with many smiling faces. And there are so many interesting creatures to see: tiny lizards, packs of street dogs, colorful birds, and lots of monkeys that I'm very afraid of. Will thinks it's pretty hilarious how afraid of them I am. They are cheeky, and not shy at all, and if one of them touches you, you have to travel to a major hospital within 48 hours to get rabies shots. What's not to love?

This lady hustler dressed us up, chatted us up, and took a million pictures of us for only a small fee. She knows what's up and told us through hand gestures to have babies as soon as possible, I think. — This lady hustler dressed us up, chatted us up, and took a million pictures of us for only a small fee. She knows what's up and told us through hand gestures to have babies as soon as possible, I think.

DO YOU BLAME ME THIS IS JUMANJI FOR REAL.

Lunch at a fancy wine bar. Wine is extremely expensive here due to taxes and import charges.

One day we did a kind of weird "sound healing" thing in these pyramids. It was a very interesting experience.

Next we had a brief stop in Kuta, Bali, the highlight of which was drinking beers (radlers!) on the beach with the sole female beach entrepreneur. The beach hustle is to set up plastic chairs and sell ice cold beers out of your cooler. It's straight up genius. As you walk down the beach, you are approached about every two minutes by a man who'd like to share a beer with you. We chose the only lady out there, she was called Niko was absolutely lovely. Her laugh and good-nature was contagious.

The next morning we headed to our next stop: Gili Meno. We took a shuttle, a flight, a two hour taxi, and a public boat in order to get there, pretty much all of which were opportunities for haggling and hustling and sometimes straight up scamming (“No, no, the public boat is gone, you must take my boat, come my friends I will show you the way.”) We were forewarned about this by Nyoman and Niko, and so were mostly prepared to be smart Bules about it all.

Will is a little wary as we set out on a rickety boat to Gili Meno.

An important pause...

I want to pause here for a moment to comment on white privilege in a majority non-white country. Because it's constantly on my mind here. In this place my skin says I have money. My skin says I lack local knowledge, and I can be persuaded to pay more than I should. My skin says I have wealth and status and the aim is to get as much out of me as possible. It's the hustle, and I respect it.

Meanwhile another black man's murder back home goes unpunished, and I find myself shocked that I'm still shocked. These quiet messages that have such loud implications are sent constantly back home as well. This is 100%, unfiltered, absolute privilege that my white skin says "Money and “Naive,” and not "Bad" or "Criminal" or "DANGEROUS." My skin paints a big “$” on my forehead, and his painted a target. My biggest hassle related to my skin tone is locals yelling at me in the street for me to buy their wares, get a ride, or have an experience. Some follow me and continue to ask and aggressively persuade. Philando Castile's skin, and the things that officer’s implicit bias thought it meant, cost him his life. His life. Mine costs me an extra $13 on a taxi ride.

I dare someone to tell me white privilege and bias doesn't exist. I benefit from implicit bias every single day, even when I’m the minority. That is privileged, and I did nothing to earn it besides being born in white skin. And it manifests in every one of our systems that directly affect our daily lives. The next step is to figure out what to do with that privilege to try and tip the scales back towards justice. So I will continue to smile, and tell a joke, and say no politely over and over and over again. It’s literally the least I can do. Because each time I get hassled I am reminded to be thankful but energized to do something about all this imbalance of privilege. I don't have all the answers, or even most of them, but I do know that they way things are is not okay.

I don't have a good segue back to our worldwide whirlwind adventure. I would just challenge everyone back home to do the same.

Listen. Think. Collaborate. Act… unpause.

--Lombok--

Gili Meno is one of three small islands off the coast of Lombok. It is nicknamed “Honeymoon Island” by the locals since it's the quiet one visited mostly by couples. It was quite serene, with no motorized vehicles and lots of beautiful beaches and snorkeling. And that's just what we did while there. Lombok in general is majority Muslim, and during our time there they were celebrating the end of ramadan and the end of their month long fasting. These folks are seriously impressive with their fasting. The sounds of the singing from the mosque five times a day wafted over us frequently, and was at a strange disconnect with all the bikini-clad Europeans sunning themselves on the beach. But here, and in most places in Indonesia we experienced, the different cultures do not clash, but rather dance around each other peacefully. They notice each other as they pass one another, and nod, and continue on their way.

Boats balancing on the beach at low tide.

Photo Jun 24, 1 19 33 PM.jpg — Indulgent Beach Selfie... And equally indulgent plug to follow us on instagram @haffswayaroundtheworld for real time updates on our journey!

We challenged ourselves next to tackle the overwhelming logistics of getting ourselves to the crater rim of the largest volcano in Indonesia: Rinjani. This involved a difficult day of getting ourselves to the remote village at the base of the mountain, all the way from remote Gili Meno. Part of this day included walking to a police station in order to report a stolen GoPro for insurance purposes (sad day), while being inundated with taxi offers that varied in their creative pitches. The best being a very persistent young man tracking us down the road who said, “My friend is a police officer, I will take you there!” Of course we thought to ourselves, yeahhhh right. After our odd and funny visit with the police, (they seemed to be having a end-of-Ramadan party and let me write my own police report) however, they took us in their squad car to “an honest friend who will give you a ride.” Guess who they brought us to? Mr. Persistent himself. We could only laugh as he exclaimed, “I told you my friend is the police officer!”

Most people will try and tell you a guide is mandatory to trek Rinajni, but fellow backpackers had let us know this is not strictly true. If you bring all your own gear and let the gate keepers know you have experience, they'll “probably” let you through. So we rented some gear, paid our fee, and set off up the mountain. It was a lot more difficult logistically to not go with a pre-purchased guide package, but we enjoyed the freedom of finding our own campsite, going our own pace, and saving $250 USD. It was a tough trail, and the torrential rain on the way up made it a difficult trek, but the views at the top made all the hassle to get there absolutely, 100% worth it. I'll let the pictures do the talking on this one.

Pre-Rinjani hike to a Waterfall, with some entrepreneurs who know about location-location-location.

Since we were guide-less, we sat with the porters and guides for lunch. They were having a great time, and we politely declined their offer of homemade moonshine called "Arak."

Making progress. Finally above the cloud line.

Our first views of the crater and volcano within. And a "friend."

--Flores--

Once down the mountain, we cleaned up and took a hilarious three-hour ride with a man named Hardy (Although he first introduced himself as “Michael Caine” in his best English accent) and his entire extended family to our hotel by the airport (because they were headed that way anyway). This of course at one point required we change vehicles so his random friend could take us the rest of the way to our destination. Asia: expect the unexpected.

We flew to the port town of Labuan Bajo (which literally means “boat parking”) and were picked up by a wonderful man named Fuss (pron. Foose) who would be our guide for our biggest splurge of the entire trip: a three day, private long-boat trip through the islands off of Flores included the famed Komodo Island. We typically don't opt for guided tour type activities, as evidenced by our Rinjani excursion, but boy was it nice to have everything taken care of for us. After some more logistics involving three different ATMs and about eight different snorkeling gear shops, we loaded onto our boat home and set sail. We met our captain, also called Will, and first mate, “Bob.” They were both less chatty than Fuss, but had many quiet kindnesses for us over the three days.

Getting very comfortable with boat life.

For those of you who do not know, I am extremely prone to motion sickness. Like… seasick in a canoe, throw up on planes, pop a Dramamine anytime I'm a passenger on any sort of bumpy or curvy journey prone to motion sickness. The teacups at Disney World have absolutely no appeal to me. You may then be asking, “But Laura… you signed up for a three day boat trip…?” Will also asked me this as we stepped aboard our rather modest-looking vessel. I asked myself this about three hours later when I started vomiting non-stop, despite my BFF Dramamine.

Turns out I was in the beginning stages of food poisoning. I had tried so hard, honestly, to avoid this fate that so many travelers experience, but alas I got full-on food poisoning in a small boat in the middle of the Flores sea. The only toilet was in a tiny “bathroom” that was always wet and smelled weird, and the only way to flush it was to pour water from a big bucket into it. On a moving, tiny boat. It was less than ideal.

But we still experienced so much, and our crew was very kind to me. That first night, after snorkeling in a few spots, we watched as thousands of fruit bats took to the skies at dusk in the hunt for food. The next day we hiked up a huge hill for a spectacular view, took a walk with a guide to see the famous Komodo Dragons, and snorkeled some more. The next day, after keeping down my first real food, we searched for and found a manta ray (they're so fast!) and swam with giant sea turtles. So cool!

That's not a flock of birds, it's thousands of bats!

Beautiful. Not pictured: me curled up in the fetal position.

No big deal. That's a giant lizard that can kill you with it's mouth bacteria.

Get behind the lizard they said. Look less weird and scared they said.

This is the small mountain I almost summitted while experiencing a mass exodus of fluids from my body. BE IMPRESSED.

Triumphant. Even though I did have to stop here and sit under a tree and think about my life choices while Will headed to the summit.

Captain Will scouting for Manta Rays. I managed to jump in the water just as one swam past and caught an underwater glimpse of it.

It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life, full-stop. Fuss, and his broken English, was an attentive and kind guide. He explained he was from the mountain region of Flores, which is majority Catholic. The Portuguese colonized much of the island way back when, and Catholicism is their main legacy still left today (beside the name of the island), but more recently the coasts have become majority Muslim. “The two peoples do not fight,” Fuss stated as he lined his hands up alongside each other. “We live like this.” We could learn something about that I think.

We spent 14 days in Indonesia, and only got a glimpse of it. You could spend a year here I think and still feel like you have barely scratched the surface. I think this will likely be our experience in most places we see, but the insane amount of diversity in this one country is astounding. I honestly learned how to just go with the flow a lot more while being here, and to expect the unexpected. It was chaotic and confusing and beautiful and hilarious and difficult, and I hope to go back one day to this lush land, full of people whose smiles always seem to reach their eyes.