The Beginning of the End

Tbilisi, Georgia (map)

In this blog: some flights, a return to Europe, an ancient monastery and a roller coaster 

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The ultra modern new Doha airport

Flying over Doha city, Qatar

Georgia isn't an obvious tourist destination I must admit, and it came about on a bit of a whim. It was a total change from my original plan of Korea and Canada, but I've always said the plan for this trip was very flexible. The change came about from two things. Firstly that I was starting to get a bit tired and jaded of life on the road - the constant moving, the lack of stability, the being careful with money, the planning, the lack of friends and family around, the lack of normality. Imagine eating your favourite meal in your favourite restaurant, then imagine doing it every night for a year - you get the picture? On top of this there was a lot happening at home in August - a ball, a birthday, a wedding and a few other things. My travel insurance was also about to run out and was too complicated to extend, and I plan to work abroad for a while after this trip which will require more than a rucksack full of souvenirs and ripped t-shirts. 

I thought about this decision for weeks before and no matter how much I thought about just continuing travelling, the mental magnet always pulled in the homewards direction. I'd always planned to go right round the world on this trip but decided it was frivolous just doing it just for the sake of it, not to mention expensive, so looked for a final stop on the more direct route between Indonesia and England. Realising a stop in Dubai was fairly inevitable, after a lot of searching for cheap flights from there Georgia came up as one of the options and at that moment I thought back a few weeks to the Swiss couple I met on Mt Semeru who spoke highly of Georgia, saying how beautiful and interesting it was. I looked into it and it seemed they were right on both counts, as well as being somewhere a little different to visit. Within two days that was it, a flight was booked.

I left Dubai after a fun couple of days, on an Air Qatar flight bound for Doha, Qatar; another city in the oil rich U.A.E., and taking off got to clearly see the almost surreal sight of Dubai from the air before an hour later we landed in Doha. Doha airport was almost brand new and brilliant piece of contemporary architecture, a pleasant place to spend an hour or two. Taking off on the next flight soon revealed a lot of desert, some beautiful blue sea, and lots of shiny new skyscrapers and infrastructure projects partly in the name of the 2022 World Cup, the former pretty pointless when you consider how much space they have but hey, to be a new big glamorous city I guess it's top of the checklist. After some time over the sea we hit land again and flew over Iran for the next hour or so, a country that contrary to popular opinion isn't actually particularly dangerous to visit, the fears are mostly at high governmental level. We passed over stony deserts, mountains, valleys, small towns, the odd oasis and some patches of arable land. It all seemed quite mysterious. A short flight over the Caspian see later and we landed briefly in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan where I stayed in my seat whilst people came and went and like a bus, we soon headed on again. I love the feeling of take off, the feeling of acceleration pushing your back into the seat even if it is terribly bad for the environment, and three take-offs in one day was pretty greedy on both counts. The scenery started to green-up and some mountains emerged, and an hour or so later we finally started descended into Georgia.

Walking out of the airport felt like I'd returned from a mission to another planet and was finally back on the earth I knew, for after eight months I was back in Europe. Geographically, Georgia is technically outside of Europe but culturally it is most definitely inside, and the latter is the definition most people consider. Outside the airport caucasian faces surrounded me, the cars were European made. I headed into town on the rickety bus and inhaled a lungful of first impressions. Every man seemed to be big and tough looking (not suprising after Asia), no-one smiled, everyone seemed to drive a Mercedes, and soviet-style tower blocks lined the road. Signs and adverts were not in roman script (our alphabet) but in Georgian - a set of characters about as recognisable to me as Chinese. 

Tblisi

I took a rough guess where to get off the bus in town and spent a few minutes trying to orientate myself on the map by the roadside, before searching for a hostel in the narrow old streets of the old town area. I found a decent place and relaxed on the balcony feeling not exactly jetlagged, as I'd only moved through three hours of time zones, but certainly a bit disorientated after the three flights that day. It was the night of the World Cup final between Germany and Argentina, and having barely watched any of the competition so far I headed to a local bar to watch the only one that counts. It was run surprisingly by an Irish lady, and full of a lot of Germans who brought a buzzing atmosphere. I sat on my own but a guy next to me soon started chatting who turned out to be the deputy Greek ambassador to Georgia! He was a middle aged guy with an American accent who puffed constantly on cigars whilst talking loudly and brashly to friends, and enquired at length about my trip whilst telling me about his previous diplomatic posts and life in the embassy, an interesting guy. When Germany won the game there were huge cheers, and I was glad I made the effort to see it.

After months of having my own room in cheap guesthouses throughout Asia, it was back to sharing rooms in dormitories since I was now on the edge of Europe. The following morning in the hostel I chatted to a Swedish couple in the dorm room and they invited me for breakfast with them at a cafe nearby, after which I ended up spending the whole day hanging out with them. With with David and Malin, a bridge engineer, and secondary school language teacher respectively, I went on the short funicular railway up the nearby hill to what we thought was a viewpoint but turned out to be a small theme park which had been recently renovated; a pleasant but unexpected surprise. The big wheel gave great views over the city which is set within a few valleys, then the water flume didn't just splash us but soaked us completely. Good job it was a warm sunny day. To my surprise there was even a smallish roller coaster and since it didn't seem too wild I thought I'd video the experience, which with a loop the loop and corkscrew was surprisingly fun. When the solemn young attendant saw the camera in my hand at the other end however he was not at all amused, and stood there for a few moments shaking his head at me in disgust like a disappointed schoolteacher. We exited quickly and laughed it off in an outdoor cafe, where we spend a couple of hours talking away and drinking strange lemonade.

On a rollercoaster with Swedish David and Malin in Tbilisi

Tbilisi Sameba Cathedral

Back down in the town we wandered about for a while, seeing the heavily armed parliament building, some big busy boulevards which were difficult to cross, and the recently built cathedral built on top of another hill. It was a magnificent looking building with it's many tiered roofs, but the proportions all seemed a little weird, being all height and no floor. Georgians are a very religious nation, with 82% of the population being Orthodox Christians, and the cathedral was decorated with a huge amount of paintings of biblical scenes that were more intense than any I'd seen before. Just down the road we walked past the fairly swank and new presidential palace, complete with huge hoardings behind so the president can't see the swathes of crumbling old buildings that stand just behind. It was interesting to see how many contemporary buildings in the town below had been built recently, I guess to reflect Georgia's growth and aim to be seen as a modern country, even if the crumbling backstreets and countryside show that it's still pretty poor. 

On a narrow old street we passed Tblisi's very own crazy cat lady, an old woman who slept rough in a tent and herded about twenty small kittens around on the pavement with a stick whilst talking to herself, which was amusing if a little sad. A nearby restaurant served us up some tasty khinkali - a staple Georgian dish of dumplings made from pasta sheets stuffed with meat of vegetables, and we tried their homemade red wine which was a bit on the rough side. Later that evening we all went out again along with Steve, an English computer game programmer who was more interesting than he sounds, and shared a couple of bottles of decent wine whilst watching a live jazz band. Not my normal territory, but after eight months in Asia where life is quite different, it was a clear and quite pleasant reminder I was back in Europe.

Arriving in Georgia was a return to the world I knew, and over the next few days I realised how nice it was to be back to:

Potatos

Cheese

Wine

Bread

No cockerels and noise at night

Bathrooms with hot water, soap, hand dryers, toilet rolls, bins and western toilets (often missing in Asia)

European cars

Being able to drink water from taps

Long days

Stone buildings and craftsmanship

Not getting bitten by mosquitos 

Eating with a knife (it's been just fork and spoon)

Not sweating at night

The Swedes left the following morning, and after a lazy morning I explored another part of the old city, passing lovely leafy avenues, cafés, wine shops, churches with painted frescos inside, and a big meandering river. I saw a small waterfall in a gorge, wandered up to a nice old fort on the hill, saw the huge 'goddess of Georgia' statue and slowly wandered back down on a long walk across town, along more huge tree lined streets built originally by the Soviets during USSR times. In opposition to this niceness I saw a sadder side though. Behind the well presented main streets, the many nice old buildings on the back streets were often in a poor state and often crumbling away, and many cars were bashed up and missing bumpers. A few times I encountered beggars, peculiar for they were often tidily dressed and wandering the streets, sometimes as families where the parents left the kids to do the talking, and often of gypsie appearance. 

David Gareja monastery complex

In the dorm room that night I got chatting to Emilie, a fascinating French-American girl, and we decided to take a bus trip out the next day to the ancient UNESCO-listed David Gareja monastery complex, named after it's founding monk and a couple of hours bus ride from Tblisi. Chatting with Emilie was so fascinating that for once I barely noticed the scenery pass by on the way. After studying and quitting both medicine then science at universities in France, she moved to Utah at 17 and started studying linguistics, and is now coming to the end of a PHD in Arabic studies. She's lived in Austin, Texas since then and speaks perfect English, as well as six other languages fluently. She comes from a Mormon family, is a vegan, has been a missionary in Cyprus, has lived in Syria and Turkey, is married to a Mexican singer-songwriter, and turned down a place at the prestigious Georgetown university. She's also a bit of a reptile fanatic, who used to make money at tourist attractions letting people hold her snakes and lizards, and needless to say chatting to her was enthralling, one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

We arrived at the 9th century monastery around lunchtime, and wandered up a stony path into a narrow valley containing ancient cave houses carved into the rock, and a variety of other churches, chapels and living areas, some buildings still used by a few monks - an impressive sight. A short walk up a hill behind it we reached many older cave buildings carved into the cliff, facing out onto the plains of Azerbaijan below, in fact, we were literally on the border between the two countries and straddling the small steel fence with a foot each side, I can now theoretically claim I've visited Azerbaijan. Actually, I hate it when people make such tedious claims so I take that back! At the highest point on the ridgeline was a small church, and we were amused to see two Georgian border guards lying in the shadow sleeping away, missing out on my brief illegal border crossing. Back in the car park a Georgian girl was cutting up a huge melon and kindly gave us a piece, and I chatted for a few minutes to a nice young English couple who had travelled from England in their transit van, en-route to their final destination of Outer Mongolia (!) where they'll give it away. The trip out to the monestary was interesting and worth the effort, even if I wasn't blown away by the experience. The journey back was equally interesting, passing first fairly desolate steppe then slightly more productive arable fields, a dried out salt lake, rusty abandoned vehicles, and a number of very run down concrete-box villages; my first insight into rural Georgia. 

Davit Monastery, some buildings built, some carved

Georgia under my right foot, Azerbaijan under my left

Chapel at Davit monestary

Back at the hostel, a group of guys staying there that I'd not previously met were asking round if anyone wanted to go to the nearby natural thermal baths. It was something I'd considered before and sounded fun so I went for it, meeting up with some of their other friends along the way. Going down some steps into this traditional basement spa, the six of us headed into a private room where I alternated between sulphuric pool - relaxing if not as hot as the one I went to in India, a cold water plunge pool, and a sauna. In the sauna, an American girl came in with a bucket of cold water and tipped half of it on the hot coals without warning seemingly for fun. The now-boiling water immediately spat all over us and we sprinted out before we got burnt, jumping straight into the cold plunge pool, stupid girl! Switching between the hot and cold for an hour sent my mind a little crazy, and by the end of it I felt like I floated out the door, like some drug-fueled trip. 

It was an enjoyable few days to mark my return to Europe, and I was really impressed with Tblisi as a city. But whilst pleasant to experience, after the crazy stories from Asia over the past few months maybe a little less interesting to read about I suspect. As uncomfortable as travelling around Asia could be at times, it was infinitely fascinating and interesting, but I couldn't live with it forever, and Georgia was proving to be a good re-acclimatisation to the world I know.

New concert hall, presidential palace and roof of cathedral

Tbilisi riverside

Curved roofs of sulphurous baths

View over Tblisi

Every other car seems to be missing a front bumper, and every third car is a Mercesdes

Central Tbilisi

Do You Buy?

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (map)

In this blog: some flights, Couchsurfing, the tallest building in the world, and melting in the sun.

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Dubai Marina skyline

With my fantastic couchsurfing host Shweta Madan
(note my nearly recovered but dodgy left eye!)

I'll start with the end - I didn't like Dubai. It's too hot, it's very wasteful, it's fake, and in my humble opinion it really shouldn't exist. That was my impression before visiting and even though I tried to go in with an open mind, the reality just reaffirmed it. It might therefore seem odd to you that I bothered going there at all, but since I had to pass through the airport on my journey homewards it seemed daft not to stop and have a look. Yet despite not likening the place itself, I actually quite enjoyed the experience of going there, largely thanks to a very kind host.

I set off from Jakarta in Indonesia, the end point of a fantastic two months in the country where I said goodbye to Rene, my Canadian travel buddy over the past three months. There was a little confusion and stress during check in when then staff asked if I had a visa for Dubai (which I knew I didn't need) and for my departure slip (in my luggage heading along the conveyor, which I just caught in time) but it all ended up fine. As the plane took off I looked down over the paddy fields below and actually felt a little sad to be leaving. For the next couple of hours we flew up the coast of Sumatra, the most northern island of Indonesia which was mostly covered in jungle and looked very wild and rugged. We landed for a two hour stopover at Kuala Lumpur since I was flying with Malaysia Airways, and the airport was very modern and impressive and even had a small jungle in the centre where people can take a relaxing stroll between flights. No danger of leeches though I guess.

A couple of hours into the next flight we flew over the central part of India, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see anything. I spent a lot of the flight catching up on writing whilst almost everyone else slept, and time passed surprisingly quickly; in fact because we passed through three time zones I'm really not sure how many hours we were in the air! 'Are you fasting sir?' asked the hostess, since it was still the Muslim festival of Ramadan, and funnily enough I wasn't so they served up a surprisingly good couple of meals. As we hit land over the United Arab Emirates the skies were clear and a vast golden desert lay below, intersected only by a huge motorway and the odd remote house. Getting off the plane the heat hit me like a cricket ball to the head; even at 6pm it was roasting hot, and a sign of things to come. Annoyingly I had issues withdrawing money from the ATM's for a while, had difficulties changing the huge bills into smaller notes, got my currency conversion confused so everything seemed twice as expensive, then encountered a fair bit of confusion with using the bus. A bad start, but it soon got better.

I knew beforehand there was pretty much no budget accommodation in Dubai so had already organised a stay with a local (of sorts) through the Couchsurfing organisation - something I've meant to do for a while, but haven't since my last experience in Delhi seven months ago. My host was Shweta Medan, a very friendly 31 year old Indian girl from Mumbai who's lived and worked in Dubai since 2007 as a marketing research consultant for PepsiCo. She's well travelled herself - an opportunity Dubai pay has given her that Indian pay wouldn't, and has a lot of experience with Couchsurfing, unbeknownst to her parents back home where life is more conservative for women. Like many Indians she speaks multiple languages, in her case Hindi, Marati, and English fluently as well as fairly good Spanish. A lady of many talents.

I found my way to her nice flat where I was greeted with a welcoming smile, and after an hour of chatting she offered to take me straight out for a drive to see some nearby sights. First of all though I needed to find a pharmacy - after being ill the week before somehow I'd now picked up an eye infection and my left eye was red, swollen and pussy; not a good look when you've just arrived new in town. Thankfully the gel they gave me to put in my eye sack cleared it up in a day or so. Shweta's flat was well located in the city and it didn't take long to get to the coast where now dark, we had a look at the Burj Al Arab from outside - the world's only seven star hotel which is shaped like a sail, followd by a stroll through the only-slightly less swanky Jumeriah Beach Hotel, the building shaped like a wave. Nearby we looked around the Madinat; a complex of shops, restaurants and bars built in a traditional Arabic style which whilst very smart was also very fake, and even at 11pm the aircon was a great relief from the heat. I'd barely slept on the train the night before and along with the three time zones I'd travelled through, I was pretty dead and soon passed out on the sofa bed I'd been given.

Desert congestion?

Burj Al Arab, the 7* most luxurious hotel in the world

So a bit on Dubai itself. It's not a country, but instead both a city and an emirate - basically a state, within the United Arab Emirates. Thanks to an influx of oil money and the fear of what might happen when both of those run out, the city was developed in the 2000's from a small Arab desert city to a world class business and entertainment hub. It's carbon footprint must be similar to a large shoe factory thanks to being in a roasting hot location that needs a lot of energy to be cooled, and cause of it's lack of natural resources meaning everything needs to be imported. Only about one in ten residents are Arab, the rest being mostly made up of Indians and Filipinos to do the cheap dirty work, and Europeans, mostly English and French to earn huge bucks in the nicer jobs, and all tax free. In fact, I was staggered to read that 100,000 British residents live in Dubai. 

The next day was a Friday, the equivalent of Sunday in the Muslim world and therefore a day off work for Dubaites (if that's what you call 'em). I headed out to explore at around 10am and was drenched in sweat in about 0.2 seconds. Shweta lived by the rather huge Mall of the Emirates, part of which houses one of Dubai's most bizarre attractions - an indoor ski slope. In the desert! The fact that such a  building exists summed up everything that is wrong with Dubai to me. Inside, I walked passed alpine-named restaurants and signs offering encounters with penguins, before having a look through the window at people in ski jackets and wooly hats carving through the snow, quite a contrast to the 45° or so heat outside! Even though I hate malls, it was a lot more pleasant wasting time there than being outside whilst waiting for the Metro system to open, which when it did was ultra modern and very efficient. I headed eastwards, and it was exciting to see the skyline of the main downtown area for the first time before I got off at the high rise business district to go for a walk and explore. I was pretty much the only person outside in the sun bar the odd Indian or Filipino, and everyone must have thought I was completely mad, as Shweta kindly pointed out that evening, but I wanted to properly experience the real Dubai, and the real Dubai is a red-hot frying pan.

I walked between the skyscrapers and sandy building sites of the business district and soon came close to something I'd taken great interest in over the years; the stunning sight of the world's tallest building - the Burj Kalifa. Having seen it in so many photos it was strange to see it in the flesh, it's tapering structure almost an optical illusion as in some ways it looked infinitely tall, and others like a tiny toy. It's bottom floors are taken up by the ultra-luxurious Armani hotel, and walking past the entrance the doorman ushered me inside saying 'it's too hot to be out there'. I wandered around inside for a few minutes in mild astonishment at it's opulence before facing the heat again. I couldn't stick it for long and after looking at a nearby Aston Martin dealership, found my way into the coolness of the Dubai Mall; the biggest mall in the world which houses an amazing aquarium with the largest acrylic panel in the world - Dubai sure does have a lot of '-ests'. After being amazed by this impressive tank full of sharks and stingrays, a huge indoor waterfall, and a very large actual dinosaur skeleton discovered in the USA in 2006, I decided I'd seen enough fakeness for the day and headed home, passing a pasty shop on the way. An actual pasty shop! It was sadly closed for Ramadam though. An half mile long ride on a travelator through an air-con passageway took me back to the metro. There's no need to walk when you're in 'heaven'. 

That evening Shweta suggested we go to an Egyptian restaurant near her flat, the first such place I've been in. I had a traditional dish which surprisingly loosely resembled spaghetti bolognais and was very tasty. We met with some of her friends afterwards - two Indians and a South African, and drove right across town to the traditional fish market - not exactly what I expected to be doing on a Friday night in Dubai! This was a place well off the normal tourist map and just getting going for the night. It was quite exciting to look around for half an hour or so whilst the guys shopped for some seafood, and you could buy almost everything including fresh caviar and dead sharks! We all went for a drink in the nearby original old part of a Dubai afterwards, but unfortunately even these original buildings looked fake, since the authorities had over-restored them removing their very soul and authenticity. The sun had sucked every ounce of energy out of me that day and I soon fell asleep at the table, Shweta then driving me home like an exhausted five-year-old after his friend's party.

Downtown skyline

The Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world at 830m

Shweta had the Saturday off work so, so after a lazy morning yarning away on everything and anything, she offered to drive me to a couple of sights I'd talked about that were difficult to reach by public transport. Cruising along on the 12-lane motorway in her Renault, we split off and headed onto the Palm Juremia - a set of artificial islands shaped like a palm tree when seen from above which truly have to be seen to be believed. I'd looked at satellite images of it before in wonder, but to see it in reality was something else, it was way bigger and grander than I could imagine and a tremendous feat of engineering. Blocks of apartments lined the main road whilst gated communities of luxury houses filled the side roads, and at the far end we visited the luxurious Atlantis hotel. Inside we saw a water-park, a vending machine that dispensed gold, posh shops, and yet another amazing aquarium complete with an underwater recreation of the least city of Atlantis. We drove around the outside of the island, passing a Rolls Royce cruising along and yet more amazing looking hotels, to see a good view of the Manhattan-esq skyline of the Marina Bay area. This was truly another world. Whilst taking a photo, a family asked me to take their picture for them and I asked where they were from. 'Syria' they replied, and for the first time the conflict there had a face which I could associate with. They seemed happy, which I guess anyone on holiday from such troubles would.

Shweta dropped me at the metro station and handed me her expensive SLR camera to use for the day since my battery was dead. Amazing kindness and trust I thought. I headed right to the other end of town on the Metro to the original part of the city around Dubai creek and stepped out into the blazing sun. It was lunchtime and I was hungry, but it was Ramadan. In Indonesia, eating during daylight hours during the festival is frowned upon and hidden away, but in Dubai things are stricter and accordion to the signs I saw - 'during the holy month of Ramadan the consumption of food and drink during daylight hours is prohibited by LAW'. Now as much as I try and respect local customs this was a step too far for me, even if it was a law that is apparently enforced. With sandwich in hand, like a heroin junkie I hid behind a bus on a quiet street and scoffed my face then necked some water. This, after eating a take-away curry whilst hiding in some shrubs the day before! It was truly a truly ridiculous scene as you can imagine, but thankfully my illegal actions both went unnoticed and didn't offend anyone. Ramadan is not a good time to visit Dubai as a non-Muslim.

I wandered along the waterside for a while, then took an old ferry across the creek to the souks (markets) of the old part of Dubai. For the first time I saw a city that wasn't shiny and perfect; where poor Indians unloaded cargo from boats, where the odd bit of paint peeled off a wall, and where pushy salesmen tried to sell you spices in the winding lanes of the spice souk. The gold souk nearby was filled with nothing but jewellery shops, but once-drained again by the sun their only appeal to me was their air conditioning. Arriving back at Shweta's flat, she introduced me to a couple of her friends who had popped around - an extremely camp but quite funny Argentinian gay guy - an air hostess (as he called himself) and his Indian boyfriend. The four of us took a taxi to Marina Bay nearby (in a Lexus no less) and met up with some other friends of Shweta's from Poland, Holland and India for a couple of beers. They were all living the high life in the city working for huge corporations such as Nestle, and chatting to them was a real insight behind both the facade of Dubai as well as what it's like to work inside the soulless corporate world. They were all really nice people but what I learnt reaffirmed my understanding that both Dubai and corporate life was big, fake, money-driven and somewhat lacking in care or compassion. Still, it was a fun night and interesting to hear their tales.

So that was it, Dubai in two days. Some would argue that my short time there is not enough to reveal much about the place, but to me the facts are too obvious to miss. It's the middle-eastern Las Vegas without the vice. It's the hottest place I've ever been, and it's not a suitable place to build a huge new city. Interesting to see, but I wouldn't want to live there. It was time to leave, and on her way to start a new week at work on this Sunday morning, Shweta dropped me at a metro station so I could head to the airport, where I said goodbye and thank you. Her kindness and generosity was heartwarming and a reminder for me to do the same, and she was so interesting and fun to hang out with. Dubai is hell with air-conditioning, but a hell I enjoyed seeing.

Indoor ski slope in a desert?!?!? It's just not right

Yet another mall

The Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world at 830m

10 million litre amazing indoor aquarium, held in by the worlds largest acrylic panel,
in the world's biggest mall

Heading to the Palm Jumeria, an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree

Outside the Atlantis 5* hotel 

Out in Marina bay district with Shweta and friends

Goodbye Indonesia

Final Thoughts:

My time in Indonesia was fantastic and it now goes down as one of my favourite countries that I've visited. The people were some of the friendliest I've ever come across, and Rene and I received generosity beyond expectation - the guy we hitchhiked with who bought us lunch, the various people who rescued us from being lost and drove us to where we were heading, Ubay and friends who showed us around Balikpapan and paid for everything, Gustin who spent five days showing us around her local area. Everywhere we went on Borneo and Sulawesi island we were met with the sound of 'hello mister' accompanied by a warm smile; for some of them a rare or first sight of a 'white person'.

We went to tropical islands, on a river trip to the centre of Borneo, and to a crocodile farm. We danced at a funeral, saw a buffalo sacrifice, went to a one-in-five year tribal festival, visited some cities, and hiked up three active volcanoes through the night amongst so many other things. The country was surprisingly westernised and a lot more modern and developed than I expected even if it has a long way to go in places, and whilst being wild enough at times to be interesting, pleasingly lacked the chaos I encountered throughout India. The roads were sometimes pretty crap though, the transport hit and miss, and almost everything left late but we got there in the end.

We spent most of the two months off the tourist trail, coming across only the occasional other foreign  traveller and as anti-social as it sounds, that really made the trip feel special since we got to see the real country, people unaffected by tourism, and many sights that other travellers don't.

With so many islands to visit though we only saw a small chunk of this vast country, no doubt I'll return one day in the far future to explore further.

Indo Insights:

A few little quirky things stuck out in my mind that seemed to be common throughout the country and gave it character:

• Street food - so common throughout the country, sold either from pushkarts moved into place every evening, from the back of specially adapted motorbikes, or from over the shoulder kitchens whereby a long pole holds a small cabinet on each end full of cooking gear.
• Clocks - often wrong - no wonder nothing is on time!
• Population - Indonesia is the world's fourth most populated country with 240 million people, but unlike India which always felt busy, with the exception of Java you couldn't generally tell 
• Pedal fairgrounds - you sometimes see these clever bits of kit ridden to location in more rural areas, then with a pull of lever the bike pedals power a little fairground ride complete with music, which young kids seemed to absolutely love. Enviro-friendly fun.
• Freelance traffic policeman - I was staggered when I first saw this - enterprising locals will stand at busy road junctions with an illuminated baton held out and help direct traffic. In return, the drivers they help will stick their arm out the window and hand them some small change for their efforts. Clever and sometimes essential.
• Islam - Indonesia is a majority Muslim country, which is very obvious from the head scarves women wear and the call to prayer blared out over speakers from mosques each day, but it doesn't seem to dominate life as much as in the middle-east. You see prayer rooms everywhere, including every petrol station which was a first for me.
• Selling stuff in traffic - I've seen this before, but in Indonesia it's very prevalent - newspapers, flowers, and even buskers
• Men's nails - it's quite common for men to leave their thumbnails long whilst having their other short. I still can't work out why though!
• Bathrooms - I've mentioned this previously, but bathrooms in Indonesia are so different to elsewhere; generally clean, with huge trough-fulls of water often used for washing with a small bucket rather than a shower, toilets often of the squat variety, and sinks commonly absent. Soap and a towel are almost never seen.

Typical expenses per day:

£4.50 - bed in a twin room (£9 total) inc simple breakfast

£0.50 - surfboard hire

£0.70 - egg fried rice meal for lunch

£2.50 - two hour bus ride

£1.80 - eight hour overnight economy train ride

£0.75 - nasi pecel street food meal

£12.40 TOTAL

Photos

And to finish, here's the final set of photos from Java, Indonesia - here

Surf's Up

Pangandaran, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: a pleasant and fairly uneventful end to a fantastic couple of months in Indonesia 

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All aboard! Heading to Pandangaran

Despite being a country of many islands and therefore lots of beaches, somehow we'd only been on the sand once in Indonesia. So with just two remaining days to be used wisely, a trip to the coast seemed like a perfect ending to our time in this wonderful country. 

We left our previous destination of Yogyakarta nice and early on the train, and the four hour journey passed quickly and uneventfully. We arrived at the small town of Sidareja ready to catch a connecting bus which was said to be straightforward, but ran straight into problems. The first bus driver said he was going to our destination of Pandangaran, but in fact just dropped us at the depot a mile later. We were then told the next bus would come an hour later at 1pm which was annoying, so passed the time by eating at the only crappy little cafe around where the main dish on offer was curried intestines. Errrr just chicken and veg for me thanks! We went back to the station to be told the 1pm bus had already left at 12.30 and a local told us to wait until 2pm. This was getting annoying, especially as Sideraja was the biggest, smelliest, and most unpleasant hell hole I might ever have been. Another shopkeeper soon came along and told us there were no more buses and we despaired. A few minutes later again someone else told us it would arrive at 3.00 which wasn't a lot better either. It was total chaos and confusion, all hearsay and guesswork by the locals and Rene and I were pretty peeved. Eventually at 2.30pm against all advice a rotten and battered old tin can showed up and we were finally on our way. Better than nothing.

We arrived at Pandangaran, and immediately got the impression this was a nice coastal town. Brushing off the persistent local cycle rickshaw mafia at the bus station, we walked past Tsunami evacuation signs, a sad reminder of the 2006 disaster there that killed over 300 people. We found a nice hotel, and with the tiny bit left of the day went for a wander on the beach. After a spot of illness over the previous week I was nearly back in working order again, and the huge crashing waves seemed to knock the last out the bugs out when I swam in the sea. Just what the doctor ordered I reckon.

Having learnt a bit of Indonesian over my time in the country, about fifty words in fact, I ordered dinner that night in the native tongue, translating the English menu into Indonesian. The waiter was impressed and soon I was munching into a beautiful plateful of fresh prawns. However when I got the bill something serious was up; my food cost three times as much as it should. I politely complained and some confusion followed, only to discover that I'd mixed up the words for shrimp and prawns and ordered a much more expensive dish. I noted to myself not to get too cocky with languages!

We had two full days left, but for once I have little to say about them. On the first, after some chores Rene and I went to explore the town, situated on a small peninsula jutting from the coast. The black sand beach was a bit rubbish strewn but nice enough and we stopped outside a small national park. The Indonesian government in it's wisdom has recently set up a two tier system for national parks so instead of everyone paying the equivalent of £1 entry, the locals still pay that whilst foreigners now pay £11, which is both ridiculous and a little insulting. It barely seemed worth a quid from what we knew, so we protested with our feet and left. Yeah! That showed them! 

Except it probably didn't. 

With monkeys on the road outside and three fairly tame kijang deer eating out of bins nearby we had half the experience anyway, and soon found more entertainment on another nearby beach, watching locals fishing by throwing out fishing nets and bringing in nothing but a catch full of rubbish. It was pretty funny. Nearby were huge groups of locals stood on the road by the sea, pulling in huge trawler nets like a tug of war team, which each yielded about two bucketful's of fish and yet more trash, and a frenzy then followed as they fought to divide the catch between themselves. A bit further along the coast we found the local fish market which because of Ramadan (Muslim festival involving fasting) was pretty quiet. We still managed to find an open cafe behind a fish shop which cooked up a lovely fresh batch of tiger prawns in sauce - the king sized black and green version of your normal prawn and very delicious. We walked back past some young kids playing with home-made bangers which they filled with some sort of fuel and ignited, letting out a shotgun-like bang which almost pierced our ears. The kids absolutely loved it, though are probably completely deaf by now.

That night we found a cafe-bar popular with foreigners and realised how few such places we'd managed to frequent in Indonesia thanks to our route; a nice change. It was our last night in the country and indeed our last night travelling together since Rene was heading for India whilst I was moving towards home. So whilst watching the Germany v Brazil World Cup highlights (the first of the World Cup I'd got round to watching), we mulled over our time travelling in all the out-the-way places in Indonesia, and indeed the past three months we'd travelled together since meeting in Malaysia, picking out the highlights, the tough times and the bizarre situations we'd encountered.

Travelling with Rene had been fantastic and to be truthful I don't think I could have found anyone much better to travel with. He impressed me with general knowledge which belies his 24 years, by always being very laid back, good at problem solving and and by willing to do pretty much whatever I suggested. He amused me with his constant catnapping in every place possible, by walking a mile ahead all the time in his own little world, by staying up 'til all hours on his computer and often falling asleep in front of it, by often sleeping with his rucksack and possessions laid out on his bed, and some of his nerdy habits like hacking into a computer router to reset it instead of just turning it off and on again. And finally he confused me by somehow travelling without what I consider the essentials of suncream, a guide book, anti-malarial pills, mosquito spray, a mobile phone, hat, or an alarm clock (what did he have?!) - yet somehow got away with it. In over three months we didn't have a single argument, and whilst I occasionally stressed or got annoyed about the odd situation, he never got wound up once. So here's a toast to Rene!

On the final day woke up with a half day left before our train to the airport, and since Indonesia is known for it's surfing and the waves in Pandangaran were pretty big, a bodyboarding session seemed like the perfect final activity. Paying the 50p fee to borrow a board for an hour, I headed out into the waves and caught a few, and I mean just a few waves. They were a bit crashy at times and it was hard to get back out to the break but a lot of fun anyway. Pandangaran had been surprisingly quiet for the time of year and our time there brief, but it left a good taste of Indonesia in my mouth.

It was time to leave both the town and the country. A cycle rickshaw journey followed by a couple of hours on a bus led us to Banjar train station, and in the waiting room I briefly chatted with a young solo German guy who'd just left hospital nearby after a bed-ridden week alone recovering from dengue fever, a particularly nasty mosquito-borne illness - the whole experience sounded awful. Our night train journey that followed was also pretty awful, relatively speaking anyway, since only economy seats were available and we spent the night sat bolt upright, face-to-face and knee-to-knee with other passengers. It was far from comfortable and I barely slept. 

We arrived in the capital city of Jakarta at 3am and departed the train when to my surprise an Indonesian guy in his forties showed up and greeted Rene. It turned out to be someone he'd met when he popped to Jakarta a couple of weeks ago to get a visa - an extremely helpful and pleasant, if slightly strange chap who he claimed he couldn't sleep so decided to come and say hello to us. At 3am! Very bizarre. Since the station was quiet and I had a couple of hours to burn 'til the airport buses started running, I slept on some benches for an hour. Mr Helpful however decided we'd be better off going across town to another station where I could catch an earlier airport bus. I protested since I was quite happy sleeping like a tramp on my bench, getting what little sleep I could, and was a bit of an angry bear when stirred but he was insistent so I reluctantly I went with them on a commuter train across town. This guy was supposed to know everything about Jakarta, yet we ended up going half an hour further away from the airport, where I said bye to Rene at a station and caught the bus straight back past where we'd come from originally, totally pointless. I was not amused, even if I knew the guy probably meant well. It was however not enough to ruin my fantastic impression of Indonesia. Little could. 

Pandangaran beach

Pulling in drag nets by hand on the coast

They happen

Tasty tiger prawns at a cafe at the fish market

Kids playing with home-made bangers

Bye Rene!

As Active As They Come

Mt Merapi, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: hiking Indonesia's most active volcano

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Sunrise on top of Mt Merapi

Mt Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia - no mean feat in a country which has 127 of them - and has erupted many times over the years, including 2010 when it killed over 300 people, and again briefly last October. 

We both did a load of research for a few hours to work out the safety and logistics of hiking it independently, and it was said to be safe and stable at the moment so all seemed fine. After the early morning at Borobudor temple and still feeling a little ropey from illness, late that afternoon we packed a light day bag and headed off taking a local bus across the congested city, then a regional bus to a transit point called Blabak an hour or two away. At Blabak though, the wheels fell off our plan somewhat when we found the minibuses we'd read about were no longer running. We had something to eat whilst chatting it over in a little cafe, which also doubled as a well stocked fireworks shop! It was now dark, and reluctantly we decided to take a motorcycle taxi to get there, the only option. After agreeing a price I made the guy let me use his helmet, hoping it might slow him down a bit - it did. In fact the drivers were both sensible and when Rene's driver and mine went side to side uphill, it was barely a five mph crawl! From roughly sea level originally, we climbed and climbed and climbed, and a very uncomfortable hour later eventually reached the tiny village of Selo at about 2,000m altitude, easily finding a homestay for the night and got to bed early,

Dawn climb

Like Mt Semeru which I hiked a week or so before, Mt Merapi required a walk through the night to get you there for dawn when the skies are clearer and the gases less toxic, and so the alarm went off at a fairly ridiculous 1am for a 1.30 start. 

I didn't feel great again, in fact I felt terrible to be honest, and on reflection yes, I should have rested and gone another day but determination can take you a long way and determined I was. The first couple of miles were on road, getting progressively steeper until turning into a narrower track. I hauled myself along slowly and steadily, and for a few miles we climbed a rocky, rooty path through woods by torchlight until around 4am, when we left the treeline and were on the volcano proper. It had been very hard going in the state I was in but I wasn't getting any worse, and poor old Rene had had to listen to a whole lot of moaning along the way. 

We could just make out the silhouette of the volcano as well as the long string of lights from the other hikers ahead of us, and it was a truly intimidating sight, looking almost too steep to be possible. We went for it, accidentally losing the path for a little while and clambering on very loose scree, before finding our way again. The surface was still steep, loose and very slow going. Small rocks sometimes rolled down from the person in front, but 5am brought first light which helped things a little. Strangely I seemed to have flushed any remaining illness out of my system by this point, and in a complete role reversal Rene couldn't keep up with me. Finally, to our delight at around 5.45am we made it and along with maybe fifty other people were on the summit, 2,930m above the sea.

It was an eerie place. We could see into the huge crater below, where gases were coming out of a number of vents and forming dirty clouds above. I looked up at the true summit slightly above, too dangerous to reach, and noted that until an eruption last October it was 40m higher again. The sun was rising in the east, and we were way above the clouds which glowed orange below us. Small vents leaked gases all around us, but not in dangerous quantities. It was quite some place to be, and whilst fairly cold we stayed an hour and a half admiring it all.

The descent went well, and it was great to see the views we'd missed in the dark. By the time we were back in the village though I was done for. The homestay staff bought a breakfast to the room (is it still breakfast when you've been up for ten hours?) and I passed out straight after for a couple of hours. 

If getting to Selu in the first place had been difficult, getting back was harder. We were told that being a Sunday the local buses weren't running, and with no other hikers now leaving we were a little stuck. There was only one thing for it, hitchhiking. For twenty minutes all we seemed to see whilst waiting were motorbikes and the odd lorry, and some locals lazed across the road looking a little bemused by us. Eventually though a guy stopped in a Toyota saloon and seemed like a decent chap so we hopped in for an hour of no talking, but lots of loud power ballads. An hour later we were back in Blabak waving down a bus, then another hour again back in Yogyakarta, shattered but happy and ready for the final stop in Indonesia.

We hiked through the night to see this, and it was worth it

Mt Merapi summit - used to be 40m higher until an explosion a couple of years ago

Mt Merbabu, neighbouring volcano

Mt Merapi summit

Drying tobacco grown on the mountain