Caution: Contents In Packet May Be Hotter Than They Appear

Had an interesting meal on Air Garuda Indonesia on the way over here. Well, the meal itself was not overly interesting, just an eastern hemisphere take on a hard to screw up easy to heat microwaveable all the stuff in cellophane and little plastic covered cups on a tray meal. The condiment packet, however, was something else. Foil squeeze packets in the U.S. are what, mayo, mustard, ketchup, right? Foil packets here are soy and something called sambal, with which many of you are doubtlessly familiar in context of the Vietnamese sauce that comes in the clear plastic squeeze bottle with the green top and the rooster on the front next to a bunch of indecipherable script. That is the general form that came in this packet. Another type of sambal is the relish made of fresh chopped chilies and garlic, a heavenly combination akin to molten catnip for me, but let’s focus on the packet. You just can’t get dangerous condiments in the U.S. unless you are actively searching. Stuff labeled hot, for the most part, isn’t. I guess someone’s worried about a taste bud damage lawsuit from an unwitting plaintiff. You can go on line and find hot condiments at places like www.burntheskinofftheroofofyourmouth.com (don’t bother trying this link). You can order extra spicy at most ethnic restaurants and you still won’t get hurt, unless you are at a Thai, Indian, or Vietnamese restaurant, in which case you could be in trouble. Point being, you have to go out of your way to immolate your taste buds in public in the U.S.
Thus imagine my surprise when I bit open the foil packet, identical to the one distributed freely to every man, woman, and child on the plane, squirted it on my rice, and went to take a bite, only sensing as I was closing my mouth around said bite that I might be in trouble when I detected a flaming tingle on my lips in the exact spot where I’d bitten into the packet. Too late, and curious now in a masochistic, I can handle hot way, I went through with it. It took me the rest of the plane flight to stop feeling sorry for my mistake. Yikes. After stripping off my fleece and sweating through the shirt underneath, taking the whole water bottle away from the startled attendant when she passed, mouth breathing like I was in my fifth hour of labor, and, I’m not afraid to say, shedding a tear or two, I finally managed to lapse into a semblance of sleep/unconsciousness that may have been my brain knocking me out from the pain or the endorphins clobbering me into a stupor, my dreams visions of pitchforks and eternal flame.
Last scene of the G.I. Joe cartoon moral of the story wrap up here, folks: Things are different outside the U.S. Not better or worse, just different, and it is these differences that make sitting on a planes and in airports for days at a time worthwhile.

Call to Prayer

I’m all about religious tolerance. People should be able to worship whatever form of the invisible man makes the big black yawning unknown more palatable to them. If it makes you sleep better at night, I say go for it. There are very real limitations to my tolerance, though. I feel about religion as I do about sexuality. Whatever you want to do behind closed doors or in the congregation of like-minded others, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, go for it. It’s the part where folks shake their beliefs or practices in my face that I get indignant.
The varied and ancient religions of the South Pacific islands have, for the most part, been eliminated by generations of Christian missionaries. Now that the damage is done, I feel that many far-flung missions do good by providing medical care, food, and support to impoverished populations, even if it is in the name of a god the populations never wanted. The predecessors to these modern missionaries bug me. They traveled the world to foist their own beliefs on people with traditions and mythologies every bit as old and oftentimes older than the ones the missionaries were pushing. It isn’t cool to bedazzle and frighten people with technological superiority, then use that fascination or fear to tell the islanders their ancient religions were wrong and had to be abandoned in the name of Jesus, Sunday worship, and, the biggest insult in an equatorial climate, clothing. Not just any clothing these days, but polyester. We’re talking button downs and ties here, hideously patterned full rayon dresses with slips. Slips! When was the last time you felt the need to don a slip in 85 degree 85 percent humidity? Shipping in bundles of sweets and salty snacks, the modern day equivalent of glass beads or iron nails, is another popular tactic. Turns out Pacific Islanders love salty snacks and will bust up a whole altarful of idolatrous images to get at a bag of Doritos.
Nice thing about that virulently aggressive strain of rabid Christianity rampant in the U.S. is that you can ignore most of it. You never have to pick up a Coulter book. Mega church, mega money T.V. and radio stations can be bypassed with a finger twitch so quick as to be compared with the CNS bypassing reflex of touching a hot stove, an impulse so fast it never even reaches the brain. Doors can be politely shut in the faces of earnest youngsters fervently darkening the porch with fliers on a weekend morning. One can, with a bit of creative sequestering, pretend that half our country is not rabidly, blindly Christian to the point of refusing to even entertain the idea that anything but a literal, world is mere thousands something years old dinosaur fossils were put on Earth by God to give humans something to ponder on interpretation of the good book is fatally wrong to a degree that justifies holier than though persecution.
I’m in a Muslim country right now. Haven’t been here long, but the people have so far been beautiful, kind, outgoing, friendly, open, and accepting in the same way that many Christians who practice the best parts of religions preaching tolerance and gentleness can be. Sure it’s tough getting a decent plate of pork. Yes it is boring that many of the women are swathed from head to foot, even when they swim. It was indeed odd getting used to prayer rooms instead of smoking lounges in the airport. All that stuff is fine by me, except maybe the dearth of pig products.
Even heartland churches which erect massive crosses and billboards threatening the unclean with eternal purgatory don’t hold a candle, though, to a town full of mosques sporting loudspeakers mounted to the minarets. Timex needs to come out with a Muslim timepiece that chimes for prayer five times a day and has a Mecca seeking bezel, because this cat in agony wailing piped through roof mounted speakers is incredibly grating. First round starts before sunrise and last session isn’t until after dark. It’s worse because my hotel is in the crossfire of multiple mosques playing different versions of Mohamed’s “Torturing the Family Pet Concerto in the key of C”, the wailing strains vilely dissonating off one another like a children’s hands-on science museum harmonics demonstration where the kiddies can vary the tonal modulation on two speakers to create jarring, discordant patterns of sound. If I have to listen to this stuff five times a day, I’ll soon be ready to wield a Kalashnikov myself. Okay, it isn’t fair to participate in the current irrational American hysteria implying every Muslim is part of a violent cell just waiting for the phone to ring so he can grab a dead man switch and a vest of C4 and ball bearings. But listening to Muslim call to prayer five times a day will soon have me hankering for a bullhorn and a collection of Billy Graham sermons so I can cruise the streets at dawn. Keep your religions to yourself, people, and let a fellow sleep.

Floating

I had a rootbeer float yesterday at an A&W stand. Not an unusual occurrence, right, save for the fact that A) I was in an airport halfway around the world from where A&W was founded and B) it’s the first time I have had ice cream in 2009. Both remarkable, the first from a globalization perspective and the second not because I’m abstaining so much as deprived. You know I like my ice cream, but we don’t get much of it in Truk, at least nothing that hasn’t been un-and refrozen repeatedly on container ships. So, here I sit, blissfully spooning soft serve and pondering an Indonesian chili dog-tater tot combo meal.

Lombok

If I’d learnt one thing from travelling (sic), it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens. From The Beach by Alex Garland

I am in the unique position of being halfway around the world from home. I work nine months of the year and have three months off, to be taken as I see fit. Staying around Truk for vacation is really not an option. Onshore accommodations are shockingly expensive and sub-par, as is everything else around here. Besides, change of scenery is a priority after three months of solid work in one area. So, get on a plane and go somewhere. When spending that kind of money on a plane ticket, I want to be gone for a while, so I have settled on month long chunks of vacation time. Where to go? Home? I’ve been home all my life. Part of the reason I came out here was to have access to the Pacific and the Far East. There are over ten thousand islands out here, and I only have so much time, so I figure I need to get started seeing as many of them as possible.
By what criteria does one choose a destination for a month long stay? Internet, word of mouth, magazine and book research would be the most intelligent and prudent methods. Never having the good sense to count prudence as a virtue, I have developed my own vacation planning method. I choose a place whose name is bewitchingly exotic, check to make sure airfares and living expenses aren’t disproportionately outrageous, and take Alex Garland’s advice: book a ticket, pack a bag, and it just happens. So far this method has found me in Bali. I liked Bali, as you can tell from past entries. So I’m going next door to Lombok, the next major island over. Lombok. Sounds equally exotic, no? They have a group of small islands called the Gilis off the coast, supposed to have good diving. I’m going there. Hopefully with better communication results than my last trip, which marked an unfortunate dip off the blog radar.
This whole choice of travel destination according to how exotic the name sounds could be a good thing. Mozambique, Tunisia, Madagascar, Stalingrad, Tanzania, Umbria, New Caledonia, Knossos, Gstaad, (I can’t even spell it, it must be exotic), Munich, Bolivia, Tasmania; they all have a certain ring to them. If anyone has advice on any of these locales or maybe wants to check them out, or has a bizarrely spelled, funky sounding travel proposal, by all means, let’s hear it. Beyond that, thanks for tuning in and Happy Easter.

Ulu Watu Steps

Every journey begins with a single step. Actually, if you want to get to the beach between Padang Padang and Ulu Watu from my room, it’s one hundred thirty-seven steps. Steep, uneven, moss-covered concrete ones that snake back and forth down a cliff face to a beautiful deserted stretch of beach hemmed in on both sides at high tide by house sized ironshore boulders. There’s a nice right that starts at the edge of the cove and peels about half way down the thousand yard stretch of sand before it breaks up in a shallow patch that extends to the other side of the cove. Good bouldering at the junction of land and ocean, the danger tickle of clinging to a higher than head high perch only partially mitigated by the fact that there is water underneath, as that water may or may not be deep enough to cushion a fall. Save for the lonely, orphaned shoes and plastic detritus washed up on shore, this beach could have looked just the same ten thousand years ago and had about as many people on it: zero.
How did I find such a place? Skill, research, extensive quizzing of the locals in their native tongue, careful examination of topographical maps and satellite imagery? Rather, like many of the best travel finds, blind luck. I knew the general area I wanted to go, had the name of some accommodations from a guide book, hired a driver, and headed out. My first choice of places was no longer there. Well, it was there, but the sign and several of the bungalows had been leveled, the pool was half full of liquid that looked like it had been siphoned from a high school science project, and there was one guy hanging out at the deserted, cleaned out bar/restaurant. He assured me that though the place was closed for renovations, he could put me up for more money than some of the fully functional resorts in the area were asking. The view was nice, but, figuring I could find a place that was actually in business, I pointed out that the term renovation is usually reserved for a site at which work is actually occurring, a place where workers are present and doing something with the piles of bricks that used to be buildings. Moved on with my intrepid and harrowingly patient driver.
A few more missteps. A wander down a dirt road to find that the encouraging signs at the main road junction led to what was basically someone’s living room for rent, including access to the side yard combination chicken run/ laundry drying facility. A stop at a nice looking place with a great pool whose only, and, in my opinion, glaring shortcoming was the lack of access to food. Everywhere I stayed in Bali, from nice hotels to tiny apartments, included breakfast. This place not only did not include breakfast but had no facility for making it. Guests suffering the unexpected and inconvenient affliction hunger could feed themselves by hoofing to the nearest restaurant, by no means near on this sparsely populated peninsula I was exploring. As this army runs on its stomach, I moved on. A drive past a shuttered building owned by a fraternity brother. Seriously. Half way around the world and there is my buddy’s surf retreat. What are the odds? A brief stop at a four room spot that was nice enough save for its next door to a rooster pen deal breaking location, reminding me of my adventures apartment hunting in Kona: “Hi, I’m here about the apartment. Do you hear roosters here? Yes? Okay, nevermind.” Call me a city slicker, but being awakened by roosters sends me into a poultricidal rage. Who came up with the quaint idiocy that roosters crow…squawk? doodle? at dawn? Sure they doodle at dawn, but not because it is dawn, not because they are greeting the day, but because they doodle incessantly throughout their stupid chicken lifetimes and every three thousandth time in a twenty four hour period that they announce their presence the sun happens to be coming up. I did not stay at the place next to the roosters.
Then I saw a sign. Nothing fancy or biblical, just a faded old sign. “Thomas Homestay.” My driver, as opposed to showing his exasperation at each stuttered misstep on the adventure to house me, appeared to grow more enthusiastic at each stop. By the time we bumped our way down the dirt road towards the coast, he was desperately ecstatic. “Maybe you like this one, yes?” he bubbled. “Maybe,” I said doubtfully as I tried to keep from bashing my head against the ceiling of the cab as we bounced down the rutted track, feeling guilty for dragging him all over the Bukit Peninsula.
Thomas Homestay was unimpressive from the back. A collection of three buildings joined by a continuous roof. Chicken coops. Laundry hanging out on lines. An elderly crone sweeping at the dirt gestured deeper into the compound when I inquired about a room. I walked through a breezeway and onto a porch cantilevered over the above described view, and when the owner approached me and asked if I wanted to stay, I just said, “Yes.”
Only briefly did I reconsider my decision after being shown the living space I would be renting: small, tired room, hard, lumpy mattress with questionable linen and a pillow I wrapped in one of my own t-shirts for sanitary purposes, a shared bathroom complete with non-flush squat toilet, a noisy, beat-up fan mounted to the wall, and not much else besides two windows. Fourteen bucks a night, and the room not even worth that despite the fact that they included breakfast.
Ah, but take two steps outside the room to the balcony railing and no amount of money could pay for the view of the ocean and a deserted beach only one hundred thirty seven steps away.

A picture...

is worth-well, you know the rest.

Short n Sweet

We have a guest on the boat this week who is a former Odyssey employee. He was relating a story concerning another former employee, a man who hiked the Appalachian trail and blogged about the experience. The guest commented that the blog was daunting in the tedious length and detail of its entries, and that he did not even bother to so much as skim them after the first one. Really hit home. I keep banging away at what turn out to be long, convoluted passages that don’t find their way onto this site on a timely basis, so I will try for some brief passages for the MTV short attention span generation. Interesting how we of the MTV generation used to be the youngsters, the up-and-comers. Anybody gotten a look at VJ Kurt Loder lately? Remember him? He looks like a fossil. Guess we aren’t young anymore. Damn.