[Check out the March 11 post for the photos that accompany this one…]
Hmmm. Where to start? It's been a busy few weeks. Maybe I should start at the very beginning. As an irritatingly chirpy young lady once remarked, it's a very good place to start…
So, three weeks ago we decided to treat ourselves to a weekend away at PPLH, a sort of eco-resort/organic farm/educational type place nestled in the jungle-covered hills in the shade of a classically proportioned volcano. We packed our bags, girded our loins and, in the tradition of the great tropical explorers, called ourselves a cab.
We knew PPLH lay somewhere between Surabaya and Malang, and after a twenty-minute, four-way conversation between me, the driver, the base operator, and someone who spoke English that the base operator managed to find somewhere, we were assured that the driver knew exactly where to go.
In retrospect, we probably should have armed ourselves with slightly more information regarding our destination than a pencil-scrawled 'PPLH' on the back of a supermarket receipt and a vague, half-formed idea that it could be found on the Malang road (it can't) and that there would be nice little bungalows there for us to stay in (there were).
[Ed: Fergal should probably confess at this point that despite his liberal use of the word 'we' in the last two paragraphs, it should read more along the lines of 'I only had the scrawled initials 'PPLH' on the back of a crumpled receipt—at best a hollow mockery of an address. I forgot to get a copy of PPLH's phone number after Nia had very kindly tracked the place down and booked us a room.' Possibly even 'I was foolish enough to believe the base operator's friend when she told me that the very confused looking driver knew where to go.']
[F: Thanks for clearing that up Tash!]
We had a lovely drive through the countryside, and through some not-so-lovely abandoned strips of shops and houses next to the huge, earthen dyke that's keeping the mud flow at bay south of Surabaya. It was quite eerie, seeing all these shops and restaurants that had obviously been thriving until relatively recently starting their slide into decay. The town had its ghosts, too. We'd see the occasional flicker of a homeless kid with a guitar disappearing through a doorway, or a man wearing nothing but a plastic bag on his head and a piece of string around his waist leaning against a wall and counting his fingers; reminders of the relative security and stability of our own lives.
We soldiered on, and once we hit Singosari we figured we couldn't be too far off PPLH, because if we went much further we'd get to Malang and would have gone much too far.
Then we arrived in Malang.
Since we had no idea where PPLH was supposed to be, we thought maybe, just maybe, we had to go through Malang to reach it. We were reassured when the driver stopped to check directions with a local taxi driver, and was all smiles and a big thumbs-up when he got back in the car.
A hundred metres or so down the road he stopped for directions again, and was equally beamy and happy when he got back in.
Then he stopped again.
And again.
And again.
Our faith in our fearless leader was rapidly eroding, and we were discussing our options sotto voce in the back, when we turned into one of the big universities. The driver's relief was palpable, which was disturbing, because our travel plans didn't include any tours of major educational institutions. We were clutching at straws by now in our attempts to reassure ourselves that we would eventually get where we wanted to go, and tried to persuade ourselves that driving through the uni was a convenient shortcut rather than an alternative destination.
After the driver had stopped to ask directions another four or five times, I finally clicked that he was looking for a government department with broadly similar initials (I think it was 'LLP' or something like that). Why he thought we were going for a weekend away at a government department, and why he thought that said government department could be found at the university, are just two more of life's little mysteries destined to go forever unsolved. I spat the proverbial dummy and stalked off to find someone who spoke English (we really, really need to jack up our language studies. The whole day would have been so much less stressful if we spoke Indonesian).
I found some very helpful students, none of whom had ever heard of PPLH. They even called a few friends, but to no avail. Eventually one of the girls insisted on jumping in with us, followed by her boyfriend on his bike, and guiding us to the Malang tourist information centre.
The (very helpful) chap behind the counter there managed to find somewhere called PPLH, and showed us where it was on the map. Initially we were a bit sketchy on this, because the spot he showed us wasn't really anywhere near where we had been over the preceding three or four hours.
We got hold of Nia (big-up thanks to Nia, by the way—she's saved our bacon on several occasions now) on the phone, and she talked to the driver and the tourist information dude. Turned out PPLH was exactly where the info guy had shown us on the map. This was a little depressing, as it meant backtracking most of the way to Surabaya, then turning off the toll road and heading up towards Tretes.
The bit where my jaw really hit the floor, though, was when it was revealed to us that the driver had known where it was the whole time—but he didn't think there was any accommodation there, so had taken it upon himself to find the most alliterative alternative for us.
To cut a long drive short, we eventually found ourselves driving through some very pretty hills, and turning into a gateway that I recognised from John's photos of PPLH. Hurrah!
Once we were there, it was all worth it. The place was beautiful. Forested hills against a volcanic backdrop, verdant rice paddies, sugar cane waving in the breeze—all the accessories needed to feel like you're living in a picture postcard. We stayed in a lovely little bungalow with an outdoor bathroom in a lush courtyard.
It was raining and nearly dark by the time we got there, so we settled in before heading down for dinner. The food was fantastic. They grow their own organic vegies, and breed fish in a series of ponds around the main compound. We discovered a dish we hadn't tried before—urap-urap (vegies and sprouts mixed with grated coconut and chili)—which has since become a staple of our diet.
The next morning we fuelled up on pancakes and kopi susu before going for a bit of a wander. We circled around through the sugar-cane and came out on the road up the hill from PPLH. We walked back past a couple of small farms, where we took some photos of Javanese goat houses for mum and dad to compare to Ugandan styles!
Back at PPLH, we walked down the hill to meet their goats, cows, chooks etc, and took a few more photos. We're starting to get quite a collection of goat house photos together now. By that time it was starting to rain, so we were forced to spend the rest of the afternoon in our lush little bungalow, playing with Iola and catching up on some reading. It's a hard life sometimes…
Iola was most impressed with the main bed. It had a foot-wide shelf running along one side of it about eighteen inches or so above the mattress—the perfect height for her to stand at and smash her blocks around for a couple of hours. Her favourite game of the day was 'demolition': Papa builds a block tower, then she smashes it down and laughs like a loon. Fun times.
When it wasn't raining, Iola also made lots of new friends among the big group of school kids that was at PPLH for the day. Sadly she was still a bit little to join her new buddies on the flying fox or the rope swing over the creek, but she was just as happy watching them.
After a walk through the jungle on Sunday morning and a leisurely lunch, it was time to head back to Surabaya to meet Sue (an old friend of Tash's parents) at the airport. There was a bit of a hiccough when the transport I had arranged early that morning (while our taxi driver buddy had offered to pick us up again on Sunday, we had politely declined, being not at all confident that he could find his way back!) had been mysteriously downgraded from a nice, comfortable, air-conditioned car to a brace of 110cc motorbikes. There was no way we were taking Iola on the back of a bike, but luckily we managed to find another car and driver in time to get us to the airport.
We met Sue, who was stoked to see Tash and Iola, and got her settled at the Hotel Equator before heading down to one of the local restaurants for dinner. In the midst of this, I kind of got a little bit grumpy with the taxi driver from the airport. We'd paid a flat fee of 65000 rupiah to get from the airport to Kris Kencanasari. We live in Kencanasari Timur, off to the left, and the Hotel Equator is in Kencanasari Barat, off to the right. We made a quick stop to dump our bags at our place, then continued to the hotel. When we got there I tipped the driver an extra 5000 for making the second stop (to put this in perspective, the Equator is so close to our place that on the meter it would have added 500 rupiah to the fare--10 % of what I actually gave him). While Sue was checking in, the driver came to reception demanding another 15000 rupiah for the extra drive (to put this in perspective, 15000 would normally get you halfway across Surabaya!). I know this is only two dollars, but I think I'd hit breaking point with dodgy drivers trying to scam me, and I may have been a bit less polite than Miss Manners would recommend…
Ah well. We live and learn…
We had a lovely dinner with Sue, although after we'd ordered it suddenly occurred to me that while I thought I'd ordered a pork/noodle stir fry type thing, it was possible that 'kaki' could be translated as 'feet' rather than 'leg'. Sure enough, when my dinner came it was a small bowl of plain noodles accompanied by a great big bowl of glistening, quivering pig feet. As I ate it, I could almost hear the faint 'tick, tick' of my arteries hardening.
We walked Sue back to her hotel, and got home at about ten-thirty or so feeling refreshed and rested after our relaxing weekend, and stayed up until one getting all our paperwork and kit together ready to head off on a daytrip to Singapore early the next morning. Very early the next morning. It was lucky Tash heard my alarm go off at four-thirty and stayed awake, because I had one of those vaguely alarm related dreams and slapped the evil thing off without actually waking up!
We had a pretty cruisy flight, getting in to Singapore at about ten o'clock local time. I like Garuda. They let the people with kids on first (which made one old Chinese lady who was barging to the front very grumpy), and they give you a little baby package with two bottles of Heinz's very best pure fruit puree, a nappy, a rubber ducky, some baby wipes, and assorted other goodies. On the other hand, they hit us up more than US$100 for Iola to sit on our laps, so I guess a couple of rubber duckies and disposable nappies aren't going to break the bank for them.
First stop in Singapore was a Mc Donald's on Orchard Rd where we were meeting our trusty visa agent, Mr Wahad. I thought this was hilarious. I suppose it makes sense. Why burden yourself with all the overheads of an office when rent is sky-high if all you really need is a mobile phone, a table to fill out forms on, and a steady supply of fries and caramel sundaes? Anyway, we surrendered our passports, visa photos and a large wad of Singapore dollars, and went off to have a bit of a wander around Singapore.
We'd originally had some fairly ambitious plans involving the zoo, Chinatown, old India etc etc, but in the end we only had a few hours before we had to meet the agent to get our passports back then jump straight in a cab back to the airport, so we settled for window shopping along Orchard Road and finding something nice for lunch.
I was blown away by the prices of everything. I'd got used to everything in Indonesia being so cheap, so having to pay four dollars for a cup of coffee had all my Scots ancestors rolling frantically in their graves. Thank god for expense accounts, eh? We did find a great source of free food for an entrée, though. We were in a Japanese supermarket with a deli/seafood section when we realised that they had about thirty sample dishes out of everything from crispy squid to sashimi, and were more than keen for us to try them all!
We got lost in Borders for an hour or so, with Tash under strict instructions to keep our credit cards away from me so I couldn't blow a year's wages on books, then checked out some of the more up-market boutiques. Tash found some fantastic dolls, which we hadn't realised were being made again. Unfortunately they were about $250 each! I found my new pen. It was the Graf von Faber-Castell pen of the year. Gold nib (of course), and an ebony barrel inlaid with scrimshawed ivory from woolly mammoth tusks!! How cool is that? I didn't even ask how much that one was.
Ten to four found us back at Mickey D's waiting for the agent man. This was even funnier than the first meeting. By four o'clock McD's was crawling with anxious looking Europeans, none of them actually eating anything, although several were nervously chain-smoking. By four-fifteen I was getting a little angsty too. We had to be back at the airport to check in for a six-thirty flight, and we were starting to cut it a bit fine. We passed the time playing 'where's the visa man?' with Iola.
Eventually Mr Wahad strode in with a garbage bag full of passports which he tipped out on a table as every European in the place raced over. I wish I'd been able to get some photos of this scene, but we were in a bit of a hurry and ours was one of the first names called ("Fleming! Three!), so we grabbed our booty, quickly checked the visa numbers, and ran for a cab.
We made it to the airport with whole minutes to spare, and got back to Surabaya in time to have a take-away dinner from Depot Sari with Sue. It was a loooong day, but it was a relief to be able to get Tash and Iola onto Kitas visas rather than spending the next twelve months stuffing around with tourist visas or Sosial Bodayas.
Whoosh. So that was our long weekend! And now I'm only three weeks behind on the blog! More to follow…
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