Morning on the boat was beautiful. The clouds came in low covering the tops of the mountains, but it was quite peaceful. The water was like glass. At breakfast, they announced the sighting of penguins. I LOVE penguins. I looked and saw them, but all I saw was a black thing in the water way off in the distance. You couldn’t tell that it was an animal, much less that it was a penguin with a yellow tuft of feathers over its eye.
Then off to Queenstown. Queenstown is known as the Adventure capital of New Zealand. They are famous for skydiving and bungee jumping. We have three nights in Queenstown. How great to stay in one place for three nights! First they took us to Peter Pans Tours to book any activities we wanted to do. This was the most disorganized tour company. The lady helping us would ask a question and then completely ignore the answer. They were obviously only interested in getting our money and getting us out of there as quickly as possible. Six of us signed up for Canyoning and they couldn’t even tell us which company we were booked with, what day, or what time. We would get an email later that would tell us. Later that night, we still didn’t have the email and the shop was closed. Our tour guide got a hold of the guy from the shop and he agreed to meet us at a local bar and bring us the information. He was, of course, an hour late. But we finally got the information. We spent way too much time in a backpacker bar. I am so not a backpacker. We finally went to a bar with live music which I enjoyed much more, but a few in our group couldn’t wait to go back to the backpacker bar so they could have cheaper beer and Jagger bombs. I stayed up long enough for midnight to celebrate the beginning of my birthday and then off to bed.
The canyoning tour was fun. We put on thick wetsuits and harnesses and walked through a tight canyon. We rappelled or slid down waterfalls along the way. It was only for an hour or two, but just the perfect amount of time. Four of us went out for a nice Italian dinner and drinks at a rum bar – no Jagger bombs in sight. Then to another place with live music. It was a wonderful adult evening.
The last day in Queenstown, I spent wandering around the town. A few of us went to do the Luge which is similar to an Alpine Slide, but instead of a concrete luge track that only one cart can go down, it’s more like a go cart track. We went to Ferg Burger which is supposed to be the best burger place in the world. I don’t know how you get that reputation. There was always a line out the door and down the block. The line was shorter when we went and it didn’t take too long to get our burgers. It was a normal burger with a huge bun and a lot of goop on it. It was good, but I don’t get all the hype. However, I don’t get all the hype about burgers anyway.
I didn’t know what to do today so I went to a nearby hotel where I was told you could pay to use the pool. The hotel was the one I wanted to stay at, but couldn’t because I didn’t book it in time. The pool was beautiful.
My flight was late leaving Labuan Bajo, but I figured that was ok. I’d just work on my blog. I was wrong. There are no outlets in the airport so I couldn’t charge my computer. I got to the airport in Bali and had to recheck my luggage because I was going from a domestic flight to an international flight and changing airlines. It took me over a half hour to walk to the international terminal. It took forever to find the Jetstar counter because no where did the counter or any of the signs say Jetstar. I went to check in and pay for my excess baggage. The guy first said I couldn’t take the extra bag. What? Then he decided I could, but told me that because I was going to Australia, it was very expensive and I couldn’t afford it. It would be $500. I just stared at him like he was nuts. Then, he decided he would only write down that I had 20 extra kilos. Somehow that brought the price down to $250. But, I had to pay in cash. This makes no sense, but he now has my bags and my passport. I go to the atm to try to pull that much money out and of course, I can’t. He then takes me to another counter as I’m trying to explain that I can’t get that much money. So, he decides I now only have 15 extra kilos which will cost me $185. I wait forever as the couple ahead of me had two tickets and Jetstar randomly changed one of their flights and canceled the other. I’m crying now as I’m pretty sure something illegal is happening and crying seems to be what I do a lot of lately when things get stressful. I finally get to the counter and explain that because I had to pay in cash, that my credit card is now frozen and I won’t be able to buy food or get a taxi when I get to Sydney because they required cash. Oh, you can pay by credit card. Why did you tell me I had to pay cash? So, I try to pay the fee with my other credit card. My card was declined – now the only two cards I have are frozen. The hysterical crying gets me down to $148 which is still ridiculous and I’m pretty sure still illegal, but my bags have already been put on the belt and are gone and they have my passport and boarding card. Maybe I could cry my way into less money, but I have no energy left.
I did manage to call both credit cards and get them reinstated. But, where’s the line between fraud prevention and you fucked me and now I’m stuck in the airport unable to get my baggage or get on a flight or eat? So, this is a bigger airport and still there are no electrical outlets. How is this possible? Right now I hate Indonesia. I get a bottle of water for the plane and some dinner. I’m waiting at the gate and all of a sudden, a SWAT team descends on the gate. Everyone is roughly rounded up, they section off the gate area and make everyone line up to get their bags searched. Everything is allowed on the plane except bottles of water. How is this a security issue? It’s a 5 hour flight and I’m not allowed to have water. I get on the plane and it has the personal movie screens for each seat. You have to pay to watch a movie or tv or play a game. Jetstar is officially the worst airline – Ever.
The first two days of diving were great. On the first day we did two dives and then went to Rincon, a nearby island to see the Komodo Dragons. The dragons were just lounging around under the park ranger’s buildings. They don’t move much in the heat of the day. That was nice from a safety point of view, but not as quite as nice from the cool viewing or photo point of view. We also saw a nest. They bury their eggs under the ground. The females are quite a bit smaller. We only saw one female sitting next to her nest. I learned quite a bit about dragons, but only three facts stuck with me – 1. If one bites you, you will die within 3 days to 3 weeks if you don’t get medical help; 2. They often eat their babies after they hatch; and 3. The males have two penises. The National Park also has deer, monkeys and buffalo. The dragon trek/tour was not quite what I expected, but it was still neat to see them. As we sat waiting for the boat to come back to pick us up, another small boat got stuck in the mangroves as it was trying to back up. All the park rangers and dive guides got up from where we were sitting to watch the boat struggle. They laughed and heckled the boat driver. It was fun to watch them interact. It was almost as interesting as the dragons themselves. People here are so much less uptight than in Thailand, more relaxed and down to earth.
The staff at the dive shop was great. The coral health and the amount of fish life was nice to see, especially after diving in Thailand. I saw all kinds of wonderful things including a lot of manta rays. This area of islands has a lot of currents. They are constantly moving and changing. In the morning they are moving one direction and in the afternoon they go the other way. They create other currents around the islands including swirly currents. The boat captains have to be pretty good at spotting them and driving through them. Ironically, most of our dives had very little current. I took Scott’s ashes on one of the dives and let him go swim with a very large puffer fish. I was going to take him to be with the Komodo Dragons, but tossing him out under ranger housing seemed unglorified. The other divers on the boat for the first two days were fun to hang out with. I met two guys that were travelling around the world for 6 months – their companies just gave them the time off. Sure beat’s America’s 2 weeks off, but then how does anything get done with 6 months off? There were a lot of Dutch people, two newlyweds from America, and some Canadians. I mostly hung out with Johan and Alex, the other two people travelling alone. I met Johan at dinner at my hotel. He said hi, but didn’t speak after that. The whole first day on the boat he barely spoke. Then the next day he started talking. Turns out he was sick before and was just trying to make it through the day. Alex became my dinner buddy and we tried most of the restraunts in this little town. I use the word “town” lightly. I keep secretly (somewhat secretly) hoping I will meet my next boyfriend while traveling. Oh well, not yet. It was nice to have a couple of other people to pal around with though. Saturday night we went to the local bar. It was packed with locals, backpackers and divers. The big pressing question of the day: is every island town in the world full of nothing but man buns and dreadlocks? Is it the island life or the backpacker life or both that makes men not want to cut their hair?
I took two days off from diving to plan my trip to Australia. One day I did little planning and mostly wandered around trying to find reliable wifi. One place, I could connect, but nothing happened. Another I couldn’t even connect. Another was fine until the electricity went out. It kind of went on like that for most of the day. I spent a lot of time researching tours in Tasmania only to discover that none of the ones I liked left on dates I could go. Finally, after hours of research I decided that trying to go to three places in Australia in 2 weeks was too much. I still can’t do everything even though I keep trying. So now I’m going to Sydney and Cairns. I was able to book all my hotels and flights, but am now brain fried and will have to decided what to do and see in Sydney and Cairns at the last minute.
My third day of diving was nice and relaxing, but of course, the people chemistry on the boat was vastly different. There weren’t as many people. Two older men who didn’t want to talk to anyone and two younger men who were a little friendlier. I still had Alex to talk to and the dive guides I had been diving with before. It was a long day due to boat engine problems. But it was better than sitting in a coffee shop wondering if the wifi would go out. The dives were beautiful. The local bar was not packed on week nights. It has a lovely overlook out to the boats in the bay. There was live music a couple nights and I remember getting this feeling of “home” more than “vacation”. I think the live music and looking over the water reminds me of when I lived in Florida. After growing up in Florida, the beach bar kind of place has never felt like vacation to me. It just feels like weekend.
I had an interesting conversation with Yohan about Europeans and Americans. I had some similar conversations with Alex about this too. Americans are quick to be friendly, talk to strangers, introduce themselves, etc. Most Europeans are not. There was one Dutch guy that wouldn’t talk to me and when he left the bar, he said goodbye to everyone but me. The next night he sat at the bar and talked to me as if the previous night had never happened. Americans find it rude when others are unfriendly or standoffish. And of course, all Americans are not friendly, but those that tend to travel tend to be quick to connect and talk with other travelers. Johan’s response was, “He’s Dutch”. We talked about how the forwardness of Americans is about as uncomfortable to some Europeans as their lack of forwardness is to us. I think this may be part of why we have the reputation of being loud and obnoxious, although most Americans are so loud. So, on the surface, it appears that Americans value connection and Europeans do not. But, I don’t think this is the case. I wonder if Europeans avoid connection until it’s “safe” until they know someone a little better. I wonder if Americans are doing the same exact thing by being overly friendly. Are they avoiding real connection by being too quick to connect shallowly with everyone? Of course this is just generalized and the observation of the moment. I reserve the right to change my opinion later. It is interesting the way we will avoid real contact. You go into any restaurant or bar and the first thing everyone does is get the wifi password so they can “connect” with the world out there, completely withdrawing from the actual world in front of them. I’m guilty of it too. I tried to make quite a conscious effort this week to put the phone away.
My last night here I ate by myself at a taco restaurant. Both Johan and Alex left before me. The food was not great, but I ate there more out of curiosity than the thought that they would get Mexican food right. The bonus was that they had seating on the third floor overlooking the docks. The sunset was wonderful – every shade of hot pink you can think of. Today I went to a higher end hotel where you can pay to use the pool. This is one of the hotels that was booked up when I went to look at hotels. If it had not been booked up, I would have stayed there although it was quite a bit more expensive than the one I did stay at. It was worlds nicer. As much as I didn’t like my hotel, the people were nice, the food was good and they took me to the airport for free.
I took a bus from Tak to Chiang Mai on Wednesday. The people in the Tak bus station were rude again. I’m glad this will be my last Tak bus station experience. While sitting at the bus station, I could see the news on tv. There was coverage of the Loi Krathong cleanup. I’m not sure where the cleanup was happening, but it was heavy equipment pulling buckets and buckets of krathongs out of the water and putting them in trash trucks. Even though the materials are all biodegradable, they aren’t going to degrade for a long time and they are still a massive amount of trash in the water.
I got to Chiang Mai and checked into my hotel then went to By Hand Pizza for my last dinner in Thailand. I had friends that were in Chiang Mai for the festival and they suggested meeting for the parade. Chiang Mai canceled the festival, but it sure didn’t look like it. There were a ton of people lining the road. I found a place near one of the floats and texted my friends where I was. Then the parade started and I discovered I was standing next to a float that wasn’t moving and the parade was happening on the other side of the float. All I could see was the tops of white glittery floats. All the floats were ornate white glittery things with the picture of the King on them. I couldn’t see anything that was happening in between the floats, but I’ll guess it was people dressed all in black. I looked around me and it was 90% tourists, not many Thais at all. This didn’t surprise me, but it just felt wrong. They played the King’s song and no one seemed to notice – how would they – they were all tourists like me. I started crying. This isn’t a Thai festival. It’s a tourist show. This isn’t how I want to spend my last night in Thailand. I couldn’t find my friends and standing in a crowd of people crying and watching a parade I can’t see makes no sense. So, I left to get a massage. I found my friends later. We wandered for a while and then went to a roof top bar. It was a fun bar, but hot and smoky. I didn’t stay long because of the smoke.
Thursday morning, I went and got a healthy breakfast with fresh squeezed juice and a bowl full of healthy granola fruit and other superfood stuff. I tried to find a hotel in Indonesia. The lady at the dive shop had said I shouldn’t book ahead, I could just do it when I got there and it would be cheaper. But that makes me uncomfortable so I thought I would at least look at the options. I wrote down the names of the places I liked.
In the afternoon, I went to the airport. Now I’m traveling with two suitcases. I know I will have to pay extra for the extra suitcase and I’m not looking forward to dragging two through airports, but I don’t see much way around it. It cost me $175 for the extra suitcase. Oh my god I feel violated. It was very confusing that I had to go through the international terminal for a domestic flight to Bangkok. I’m still at the check in desk when my flight should be boarding. The lady said I had plenty of time. I go through immigration and get to the gate and no one is there and there is nothing written on the gate sign. There are a bunch of other confused people on the same flights so I figure I’m in the right place and somehow it will work out. Thailand magic, it does. The flight was delayed so I wasn’t late to the gate. They put stickers on our shirts, put us on a shuttle bus and shuttled us to the domestic flight. Now, I will have less than an hour to make my connection in Bangkok with only a sticker on my shirt to claim I’ve already been through immigration. This would never work in America. I get off the plane and there is a lady holding a sign with the same logo as my sticker. The sign also has two flights written on it with the gate number. One is mine to Jakarta. The sticker gets me easily into the international terminal and I’m at my gate 5 minutes before it boards. Thailand magic.
I remember 10 plus years ago I was sitting in an airport in Taiwan waiting for my connecting flight to somewhere. I had a 6 hour layover and couldn’t leave the airport because I didn’t have a visa. I watched movies and listened to all the flight announcements. I distinctly remembering that I heard flights to Jakarta being announced often. I remember thinking that Jakarta seemed like such a worldly and exotic place, like people more well-traveled than me would go there. It felt like, you haven’t really travelled until you’ve been to Jakarta. I knew nothing about Jakarta. I still know very little about Jakarta. But, I’m going there and even though I will never leave the airport, I feel much more worldly now.
I watched a movie and two Discovery shows on the plane. The Discovery shows were great. Both were about subjects I am naturally interested in and I felt like they were reminders to me of what I need to be doing. One was called “Predict My Future”. It was about an on-going study called the Dunedin Study. They have followed a group of 1,000 people since childhood and kept extensive medical, psychological and sociological records on them over the years. The study group is in their 40s now. A lot of what they discussed is how our childhood shaped our adulthood. It didn’t go into the spiritual side of things, but I bet there is data on that as well. They barely scratched the surface on the amount of data collected, research done and learning gained from this study. As I watch it, all I can think of is ATP. It’s time to make the transition into doing ATP for a living. I have no idea what that looks like, though. By the end of it, I’m crying. The other documentary was about how horrible sugar is. Duh, don’t need to convince me. But, I liked the way it presented the information simply. It’s also time to get back to eating healthy. That documentary was called “Is Sugar the New Fat?”.
Jakarta had the fastest immigration ever. There were no lines and I was through in under 3 minutes. I found the airport hotel pretty easily. The staff was very nice. The rooms are above the terminal so I heard ding ding ding for hours as announcements were being made below me. The lady at the dive shop that I’ve been emailing told me hotels were easy to find and cheaper in person so I didn’t need to book one ahead of time. I thought I’d try this because I was pressed for time and because why not wing it and see what happens. I looked at some of the hotels on line a couple nights ago and found a couple that looked ok. By the time I got to Jakarta I was not ok with winging it. I don’t have a place to stay, I don’t have a plan and I’m not happy about it. My whole body is tight, not that it wasn’t already, but this has definitely added to it. I stayed up late looking at hotels. The two I liked were already booked. Literally every other one on line either had horrible reviews or was over $150 per night. I contacted two, one through their own website and another through airb&b, gave up and went to bed. Thank god the ding ding ding had finished for the evening.
I got up early and looked at my emails. I guess when I had hit the button that said “make booking inquiry” I had really made a booking through airb&b. I was just trying to ask some questions and was going to book one of the two places this morning. So, I guess I inadvertently made a decision. There were several emails back and forth as I was getting packed up. Some didn’t quite make sense, but I figured I’d work it out when I got there. I figured I just had to go downstairs to check in, but left extra time for dealing with the possibility of extra suitcase drama. Wow – so glad I left extra time. I was in Terminal 2 and my flight was leaving from Terminal 3. The hotel had a free shuttle and everyone was very helpful. Terminal 3 is really far away. It took over 15 minutes of drive time. Terminal 3 is a big bright shiny new terminal – very worldly indeed. I only had to pay $25 for the extra bag this time. That’s more reasonable. Right before I got on the plane I figured out why the hotel emails were weird. I was emailing both hotels thinking it was only one. I almost had booked two hotels. The guy at the other hotel was not too happy about my mixup. I got to Labuan Bajo just fine. The guy picking me up from the airport was late so I had to deal with pushy taxi drivers for a while. No matter how many times I told them someone was picking me up, they kept wanting to know where I was going, who I was waiting for, what’s my name. If you were the person picking me up, you would know that. I finally told one where I was staying and that someone was picking me up. He actually called the hotel and put me on the phone. The hotel is asking why I called. I didn’t call you, the taxi driver thinks I’m stupid and that he’s going to harass me into his taxi. My ride finally came. Labuan Bajo is not worldly. It makes rural Thailand look worldly. It reminds me of the rural parts of Bali where there is one tiny broke down road in town. The road is lined with small hotels and scuba shops with 8 or 9 restaurants and some shops. I can see why all the hotels had such bad reviews. Nothing in this town is up to western standards. My room is ok. It is real basic. It has wifi that doesn’t really work, air conditioning that doesn’t really work, hot water for 1.5 minutes, a lot of stairs, a decent restaurant and a very loud water pump behind my room that squeals every few seconds. It’s costing me $41 per night and is probably worth $8. But judging from some of the other places I walked by, I’m doing good. Every hotel review I read complained about the 4:30am wake up call from the nearby mosque. I already heard the evening call to prayer and it is insanely loud so there will be no escaping 4:30am.
Rraine Drops 