Indo Limbo

[ayun]

Too many things were too much up in the air for me to have a real itinerary this trip. I knew I'd start in Jogjakarta and head east from there, roughly, but that was about it. So now my trip is a bit more than half over, and I've just arrived in Kuta, Bali, which is sort of delightfully tacky and an easy place to serve as a temporary home base for

Comments

[cris]

I was talking to a friend of a friend the other day who's about to embark on her own extended walkabout through Southeast Asia and South America (two years planned! good god for the possibilities!). The conversation sparked me into re-reading the Rolf Potts vagabonding book and there's a lot of talk in there about deliberate and freeform travel; but he comes at the 'hunkered down' approach from a mirrored version of your dilemma. If you don't have to be anywhere then why not just stick to where you are now and enjoy the present?

but, yeah, getting into the logistical meat of the Patagonia travel planning now and booking things like flight and bus tickets now is totally getting into the opportunity costs of afternoon versus morning flights or squeezing as much travel as possible into one day versus breaking it up with overnight stays. It's surprisingly stressful!

[ayun]

Holy shit, two years? I'd probably just go for broke and try to hit every country.

I'm thinking right now that if Lufthansa cooperates, I might break my return ticket and jump over to Singapore for a couple of days - I've got a connection there Saturday night. Big 'if' though.

[cris]

If you want, I can drop a line to Meng and see if he's willing to play tour guide. He's usually up for such adventures, though I don't know if he's got the bandwidth to do it on short notice.

[ayun]

That would be fantastic! I'm still vacillating (and have at least a couple more nights here) but it's the most likely possibility other than sticking around here until next Saturday.

[spitcurl]

I seem to be mildly over-focused on tree houses lately -- there's a number of them around the globe, all in nooks & crannies of the wilderness, far from civilization, with varied levels of bare-bones or posh amenities. There's one in British Columbia! And another in New Zealand! No, TWO in New Zealand! And Costa Rica, Australia, Puerto Rico, and isn't there that one in an island off Turkey? Ha ha -- what if we just planned a "let's see how many tree houses we can visit in one trip" trip? Would that be irritating or awesome? I don't know!

Anyway -- I am glad you are having a good time, and super happy you got to hang out with mutual friends. Its like I get to hug you all by proxy. :)

[ayun]

Yep, the Turkey ones are on the mainland, near Olympos:
http://www.bayrams.com/

I really want to go back to Turkey, and getting to Bayram's is one of the big reasons why - I missed it last time.

[dfan]

One suggestion: Ubud is about 20 miles north of Kuta and is pretty much the arts center of Bali. The two things you have to do there are:
- walk through the Monkey Forest
- eat Babi Guling (roast suckling pig) at Ibu Oka. Since I was there, Anthony Bourdain proclaimed it the best pork in the world, so maybe it's become a tourist trap by now, but DAMN was it good.

[cris]

not that ayun digs on the swine, but Anthony Bourdain went to the Philippines after Bali and revised his judgement about who had the best pork in the world ... though that shouldn't take away from Ibu Oka's pig.

[ayun]

Eh, I eat whatever's interesting when I travel and don't sweat it. Tons of pork in Vietnam. If I ever start eating meat again regularly, some pork product will be to blame, I'm sure.

[ayun]

I was in Ubud last week, actually, and Jogjakarta (which is to Java what Ubud is to Bali) before that. The Monkey Forest was definitely a highlight, and if you're curious about tourist trap status, there are t-shirts for sale allowing a person to proclaim his love of that particular pig, for what it's worth.

I didn't make it to Naughty Nuri's, where they apparently sell shirts styled like the book cover that read "Eat, Pay, Leave."

Overall I'm finding Indonesian food to be relatively disappointing, especially so soon after Vietnam - it's more expensive, less diverse and the only real 'discovery' I've made is which brand of grocery store sambal tastes best on scrambled eggs.

[pksander]

It sort of hurts the head to have opened an Opera at the Majestic Theater at Emerson and then to wake up to a post from you about Ubud, Trees full of Monkeys and the like, when the Opera is about Ubud, Trees full of Monkeys and the like.......

The universe does some funny accounting sometimes.......

[ayun]

Wow, the world is pretty funny like that. I'm sorry to have missed you in Boston. I'd repeat here that I owe you & yours a visit, but I think I said that already, 'cause I got a cute baby picture in response.

[ayun]

I think I read about the horse/drowning story in Guns, Germs and Steel, and we all know how that one ended.