Archive for July, 2009
Toilet Humor
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
a sign on a western style toilet in a wealthy private home on Java, Indonesia
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
“Mainland” Indonesia
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Our celebrity status didn’t go away even when we reached “mainland” – Java. Indonesia doesn’t really have mainland per se – it’s an enormous collection of grand, tiny, and every size in between, islands, but Java is home to the capital and people here are much more used to white faces. Nevertheless, wherever we went, we were the main attraction even if there was plenty of other stuff truly deserving the attention like intricate orchids or leaf monkeys giving an acrobatic show in the trees.
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
Pulau Dua
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
snake eating a crab
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
I brush the maggots off my shirt and stretch. My eyes refuse to open up. My back aches as if for the past thirty plus hours I’ve been island hopping on an eighteen-wheeler jam packed with enormous bags of some sort of Asian beans. Oh wait… I have!
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
Elephant Wash
Monday, July 20th, 2009
After a hard day of work on the river I got a call from my family. “So… What have you been doing today?” I could hear my mom typing as she spoke. “Washed elephants, chased hornbills.” She wasn’t surprised at all. When I told her about a week ago, I was sitting only a few hundred meters away from an erupting volcano, she didn’t even flinch. It must have been hard for her to accept the lifestyle we so suddenly and irreversibly fell into, that we will never be normal, but at least now she accepts my day to day adventures as simply my regular life. She then gave the phone to my fourteen year old sister who informed me of Michal Jackson’s untimely death. “You really didn’t know! What planet are you on?!” Apparently not the same one she is on…
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
This might be the last photo I ever take. I’m shooting Anak Krakatau volcano, but it’s more like it is shooting me. I hide behind my camera and chase away thoughts that any moment now a half molten lava rock, catapulted from the depths of the majestic and deadly crater, will pulverize me and I’ll die a foolish yet romantic death. Sharp pumice stone – old broken magma, digs into my backside, and now I’m on to scrutinizing my attire – white shorts are hardly an appropriate wardrobe choice for staking out a volcano. I think about the charcoal black beach surrounding the island when the red glow I do not dare take my eyes off intensifies and finally a spray of sparks and then a fountain of flaming boulders spews into the sky, makes an impressive arch, and hurls red hot fireballs right at me. My heart skips a beat as I watch them fall and roll down the slope.
We spend two hours after sunset sitting on the edge of Krakatau, the old crater, watching its child (Anak = child) grow with every eruption like a termite mound, and came back before sunrise to ooh and aah at it some more. Sunrise turned out to be the best time to truly witness Krakatau in all its raging glory. During the day the acidic thick gray smoke is an impressive sight on its own, and during the night angry red jets of fire are a striking spectacle like no other, but during that time in between there is just enough light to see both the smoke and the eruption itself.
This is not my first volcano and I hope it’s not my last. I’ve seen the red fury with which our earth boils and smelled its vinegary breath. I’ve come close enough to be swallowed and walked away just in time to be back again. It’s worth it.
Posted in Places»Asia»Indonesia | No Comments »
