it's lump it's lump it's Kuala Lumpur

I sneaked this photo off the internet because my photos arent available, but this is Kuala Lumpur. S, J, and I spent three taking in the sights.

Things about KL that are sweet: The architecture, especially this at night. Also the hawker centers where you are carried by the crowd past countless stalls selling countless tasties for a pittance.

Things about KL that are strange: Everything in the city center is geared towards shopping. Even these Petronas Towers have a 5 story mall at their base. I've never seen multiple Luis Vuitton boutiques within walking distance of each other. As Minnesota is the birthplace of malls, my friends asked me to comment. My thoughts: there is a reason malls were invented by folks living with the temps we have. Why these ideas have taken off in the tropics? I have no idea.

Yesterday I bid my good friends S and J farewell. Its hard to say goodbye because even though it has been 10 months, this trip was always in the plans. Now there is no set date. I hope one turns us up soon. After a night of watching soccer in a bus station food stall and two flights, I have arrived in Kunming, beginning book two of the Shawdyssey. We're located at 25 degrees North here putting me out of the tropics. Its about 60 out and I'm wearing all my clothes. Having been here for 24 hours all I have noticed is that Chinese aren't affraid to budge in line. Dispicable.

The southern hemisphere

I am writing you all from the Southern Hemisphere, more specifically the town of Sumenep on the island of Madura just north of Java. For all you who haven't been, this hemisphere is not that much different than the real one. Only three hamburgers have tried to eat me.

The Southern Hemisphere does have a surprising amount of Oberlin graduates though. The day after arriving in the SH I was joined by 7 other Oberlin grads on the slopes of Mount Bromo. I think this would be a good band photo.

After four of this reunion departed for Yogyakarta, Sarah Jesse Emily and I decided to give volcanos a rest and hit the beach. Volcanos are cool and all, I really love them, but I don't love to smell them. You miss this in postcards and textbooks. Thus, we headed to the little traveled island of Madura instead of the Ijen plateau. Lonely Planet calls the towns well kept and the beaches passable, and as a result we are the first foreigners to stay at our hotel since 2005. And the beaches? Well:

They're so happy to see us that someone in the office of tourism is inviting us to dinner in his home tonight. This is why the Lonely Planet doesn't have all the answers.

Discussion question: How does one acknowledge all the problems in the world without living their lives in eternal stress. Just because I acknowledge the state of the world doesn't mean I should have an unhappy life. I think many liberals have this problem. How do you deal?

Bye Bye Banda

By this time tomorrow, I will be in Kuala Lumpur waiting with Jesse and Sarah for a flight to Surabaya. For the next 10 days we will be vacationing (for me a vacation vacation) in Eastern Java and possibly attending the biggest Oberlin reunion in Indonesia ever. Purportedly, this reunion will include: Moi, Jesse, Sarah, Maya Walton, Nancy Dye, Guy Brown, Ben from Ben and Jerry's, Adrian Fenty, Jake Brody, Ben Wolak, Emily Clark and Ellis Ballard.

As to Banda Aceh, I've had a wonderful time here, even if it severely wasn't what I expected. I saw myself becoming an experienced maritime carpenter while I was here, and that definitely didn't happen. The closest I came was mending the beam of my bed that Sarah and I cracked and drinking supersweet tea with some sailors down by t'river.

I beat myself up because I never satisfied any of my save-the-world urge here, but I did chill a good deal with many Acehnese and thats invaluable. How many of you have heard of Aceh before? Well there are 400,000 people here who will never leave my completely leave my thoughts.

I also learned how to play basketball here; another invaluable skill. When I played basketball in Germany 5 years ago, my friends looked terrified--the tragedy of my skillz was no laughing matter. Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty bad, but two days ago I sunk 4 or 5 layups and a few pull-up jumpers. I doubt that this sport will ever supersede endurance sports (I was best at running back to defend the basket), but it will be that much more exciting to watch March Madness.

Then there are Sarah and Jesse. How nice is it to see old friends again? All the way nice. This time will be written into the diaries and stories that I hope will continue for the rest of our lives. I can't wait to move into Kendal with them. Well I can wait, but it will be nice.

To Banda Aceh! I drink a Passion fruit in your honor.

Voici le leeches.

Climbing Gunung Sulawah

For any of you who were tuning in to find an adventure on an Acehnese fishing boat on the strait of Malacca, you will be disappointed. After hanging around the docks for a few hours, the word got out that the waves were too big and we would have to wait until the weekend (nobody thinks about water on Friday, the Islamic sabbath). This might be the last nail in the coffin of helping out the fishing industry in Banda Aceh, which was my excuse for coming here in the first place. Ah well...

I did, however, climb a volcano this weekend. Gunung Sulawah is extinct as the dodo compared to most Indonesian volcanos, but that is not saying much. It rises a vertical mile above the strait of Malacca and is covered by what can only be described as trackless jungle. We took along some hippie guides who are studying Arabic at the Islamic University in Banda Aceh. It takes all Muslims...

The jungle that we began in was loud and active. The insects and bird calls made us have to shout. I was initiall put off by spiders that were spinning webs large enough to catch birds, but we soon pushed those out of our mind in order to deal with the constant onslaught of leeches.
These tropical leeches are much different than their Great Lakes brethren. They are much smaller, and they can move about like an inchworm in the dirt. They actually seemed to come from the dirt which was thick and slippery everywhere. Fortunately, you could pull them off with your fingers once they attached, but that mean that you bled from the spot which attracted more of the buggers. One of our guides said that of all the creatures in the jungle (which does contain tigers), the leeches were her kryptonite.

We began the trip a little late to accommodate Jesse, so we ended up climbing the last (and steepest) part completely in the twilight. The ground was slippery and sloping at 30 degrees or more so the only thing that kept me upright was gripping trunks and vines. It occurred to me that my hands are the way they are in order to grip trees just like these. I had turned into a bona fide oranghutan (in Indonesian, orang = person, hutan = forest). We spent the next morning on the chilly (60 degree) peak even though there wasn't much of a view (jungle, again). The guides were content to just sit back and cook noodles, and relax in the woods. When we asked about the possibility of running into the likes of the man eating tigers I'd seen at the Aceh nature conservancy, we were told not to worry, because even though they were on the mountain, they would never use the same trail that we did. It was a great experience.

Just 5 more days in Aceh before I'm on the road again.

Also check out these girls; they run the show.

Livin' in an Imam's Paradise

I live within 200 meters of the biggest Mosque of the biggest city of [not the biggest] province of the nation with the largest Islamic population in the world. As someone solely raised on Western art and pop music, I began my stay in Aceh by trying to zone out the Imam's call, which happens five times daily. Lately, I've begun to hear it as a pretty darn awesome thing.

The call starts out quietly. You have to be listening to pick it up. It takes a couple minutes to go from a conversational pace to the full voiced call. I used to think the call sounded like random vocalizing, but I just wasn't listening. The guy remains on the 12 tone scale the whole time, this is amazing given the huge jumps and slides he takes. The dynamics are off the charts too. His loud notes peel off across the city and mask the quite tones directly afterward. The other thing that I have realized that the tone of his voice is full of emotion and devotion. Timbres that I've never heard in such a formal or public setting before.

When my uber-imam finishes his set, every other mosque in town (there are many) have taken up the call and there is this fallout of rising and falling tone that slowly and imperceptibly dies away. Playing basketball, the sun going down in [another] fiery sunset and these sounds are an experience. One of the coolest I've had so far.

Today and tomorrow: fishing
saturday and sunday: climbing a volcano.

Aceh is not hipster

I find it interesting how and what American music trickles down to other parts of the world. A twentysomething friend of mine spent most of the morning singing John Denver to me to show me his cred. Was John Denver ever cool? Sorry Mountain Mama, but I can love you without the song. Another strange thing: from what I can tell, Linkin Park could probably claim themselves the most popular band on earth given their following here and elsewhere. Linkin Park is not fly. Sorry Melike. Granted, Banda Aceh does not have a particularly good connection to the hip music scene. I can't really see people being really pretentious about electronic chirps or flannel shirted skinny guys here. Things are different in Java, though. I hear that Jakarta is lousy with hipsters that would make Oberlin's feel fat, wholesome and joyful.

Banda Aceh's NGO scene is also not hipster at all. When you get paid $25 an hour and can live for $10 a day, you can go shopping in Singapore and buy a mansion. Say goodbye to PBR and hello to designer vodkas. That said, they can however throw a kickin dance party. A couple from Portland were moving back to the states and had a going away party that consisted of 4 hours of bangin disco. Its hard to dance for that long. My back hurt in the morning. Jesse (pictured) claimed the prize of best individual dancer and took home the light globe proudly. I must say I was gunning for the same title, but I don't begrudge it to him. After all, the dude practices everyday, everywhere. You can't dispute the effort.

Peterpan and Nidji in Banda Aceh

Jesse likened this to Pearl Jam and Madonna playing in a Kansas City community center. These are two of the biggest bands from Jakarta and they were playing an outdoor gig in a town with less than 400,000 people. I wish I had brought my camera. Everybody under 30 in the city was there. The basketball rebels, the university good-kids, the NGO peeps, everybody. To get in, the men and the women had to pass through separate gates and into separate areas in front of the stage. Except that was the end of it. Everybody and their mother was hopping the fence. I've never seen a 5 foot fence be more useless [insert Shakespearian Wall quote here]. You get the idea that Sharia Law isn't like real law in the way its observed. Jesse also says that it is much less strict these days than even a few months ago. Anyone who comes here expecting strict and authoritarian rule of unhappy people will be disappointed, or at least look for different things than I am.

The concert was like all other outdoor shows, which is to say very reassuring about humanity. All the hand waving jumping and dancing by everybody included the jaobob'd girls was so heartening. It also ended with the sunset breaking through the clouds (the show needed to be done by 7pm) to make a double rainbow during the last song. I wish I had my camera. Banda Aceh doesn't get many big acts, and everybody said afterwards that kids more chances like this to express themselves.

I can't get to everything I have done here- you'll have to seek me out later for that- but I will say that I played a little show on my new guitar (!) at a community center yesterday (after teaching them how to make pancakes, don't ask). It was officially the first stop of my world tour.

Gecko

These cute little buggers are everywhere (this one outside our bungalow on Pulah Weh, just off the NW tip of sumatra). They aren't as freaky as cockroaches or rats, because they don't skitter over your feet or anything. However, these little beasts make the loudest sound imaginable. They sound like Clara is pissed about something and is saying MRONK! right at the top of her screech. Every night, one or two of these guys pipe up just as I turn out the lights and screech for about 5 minutes, growing more irritated as they progress.

I saw a larger gecko like creature about 2 feet long crawling on the screen outside our kitchen this morning. Different ecosystems here.

pics and running

Yes. Here I am at Pamu'uk. It doesn't get much better than this. If you could see inside my hands, You would find a sand composed of shells as well as qtz. The waves sifted these two media in very exciting ways.

In other news: I finally got in a run! Yes, I woke up at 7:30 am(!) this morning and walked to the park near Jesse's house. Now, I am an experienced travel-runner, having run in 8 countries to date, but something about Aceh had kept me from running for almost two weeks. Jesse has been very careful to show me how not to aggravate Sharia law, so maybe that has kept me timid. We wear long sleeved shirts on the way to the courts, a quatermile away. I wore my basketball shorts and a t-shirt for this particular run which is about 6 times as much material I usually use when its 85 degrees. As I got to it, I felt all my insecurities slipping away. Here I was, running. Here I was, it was normal. Even they sheets of laughter from the uniformed and covered hs students on their way to school were normal. The one thing that wasn't normal, was that I didn't go very long. I cut the run at 20 minutes because I had to fart, and farts these days are usually diarhea. My runs have lead to many public poops, from Madrid's Casa del Campo, the Berliner Lustgarden, and every supergreen tuft of grass in Roseville. I also hate to admit it, but I felt pretty out of shape. I must have looked like a basketball player who is trying to run but has no idea how to which, at the moment, is exactly what I am. Is this the beginning of a sub15 min 5k next spring? Perhaps. Perhaps.