Krakatau
His violent, self-destructive father died before he was born. Anak Krakatau was forced to grow up fast and was under intense pressure all his life. Will he follow the same path as his father?
It sounds like the synopsis of a cheesy daytime drama, but the story of Anak Krakatau, or Son of Krakatoa, is pulled from a geology textbook. Krakatau was a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait until 1883, when it erupted – exploded, really – with such force that it was heard 3,000 miles away, and the pressure wave was measured to circle the earth seven times. The resulting tsunami killed 36,000 people, and 21 cubic kilometers of debris were thrown into the air. My attention was originally drawn to this mind-boggling event by the children’s novel The 21 Balloons, about a schoolteacher balloonist who discovers Krakatau and then escapes moments before its massive explosion. Ever since then Krakatau has been stuck firmly in my imagination. So when I realized that from Jakarta we would be within striking distance of its former location, I decided we had to go. We took a slow bus from Jakarta to Labuhan, then an angkot (minibus that takes casual passengers) to Carita, from where we departed by boat the next day.
Krakatau itself was all but annihilated in the explosion, but in 1927 Anak Krakatau broke water near its former location and has been growing at a rate of thirteen centimeters per week. Since March 24th of this year, Krakatau has been especially active, and it shows – eruptions happened just about every five minutes. During the day this was heard as a massive boom and a cloud of smoke – white, grey, or sometimes black.
We landed on Baby Krakatau itself to see the booming up close and hike about 100m up the 300m cone. This is the epitome of black sand beach, beautiful little shiny bits of volcano everywhere. Littered along the path were fallen lava bombs. Our guide pointed out a big one, about the size of a collie, lying next to a tree branch it broke off when it fell, about a month ago. From a distance we had seen these black rocks fly up out of the caldera, going probably 60 meters high before falling back.
The highlight of the trip, though, was camping on Rakata Island. This is the only remnant of the original Krakatau island, a chain of three volcanoes. Rakata itself was blown in half and still has a clear half-cone shape. We landed on a small beach on the north side of the island, which would have been inside the volcano before it exploded. We watched Baby Krakatau erupt three kilometers away as it slowly got dark and our guides brought us hot tea and mie goreng. In the dark the little mountain really showed its temper. Those rocks that looked black in daylight are still hot enough to glow bright red in the dark, and the eruptions started to look properly fiery and wrathful. The atmosphere were perfectly mild, and we lay about on mats under the trees, watching the geology and talking desultorily. Behind our sliver of beach, the island rose into a sheer wall of jungle, and in it we saw, of all things, dozens of fireflies! Green lights behind, red lights ahead, it was just beautiful.
In the morning several monitor lizards, up to about three feet long, came snooping around our camp for scraps and fish bones. We packed up – or rather, our local guides did, about seven of them for thirteen tourists in our group – and motored around to the other side of Rakata, where we snorkelled at a nice little coral reef before lunch and returning to Carita, the town from which we started.
No trip report would be complete without some snarking, so here it is. There was garbage everywhere! Krakatau is located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, two very long islands. This means strong northerly currents sweep past it, including those that drain the rivers of Jakarta. And Indonesians everywhere throw their trash in the street, or in the river, or in big heaps where it can blow away, because there is no decent trash disposal infrastructure. So all of this, especially empty water bottles and plastic bags, floats past Carita in a kilometers-wide strip, and to a slightly lesser extent out by Anak Krakatau. During the two hours out to the islands we had to stop repeatedly while a couple of the guides cleared the engine of plastic debris.
Out on the islands, the styrofoam mingles with white pumice that looks nearly identical, and the visual effect is multiplicative. Add that to all the other debris on the beaches (strangest: several intact light bulbs. But then, if they weren’t intact, they wouldn’t have washed up), and the effect is quite sad. This is a national park after all.
I asked the leader of our tour company about this when we were back on land. Obviously they can’t do anything about the currents of garbage, but what about on the island? He said they had organized a big social outing with a lot of students and nature lovers, and cleaned the beaches pretty well. They stayed clean about six months, which was much better than I expected. Given that the tour company does advertise eco tours, I think they should schedule an hour or two of beach cleanup into each trip, which would probably be sufficient to keep things in decent shape.
To end on a high note, there were four really pleasant Indonesian women on our trip with us. I assumed they were all family, but it turns out they had just met that morning. They’re members of a nine thousand-strong mailing list called Indo Backpackers, for Indonesians who like to travel and sightsee on the cheap. One of them has been to nearly every major island of Indonesia, a distinct rarity in a country where most people never leave their home island. Another, a young woman, blew apart some stereotypes I had about women who wear the hijab that I hadn’t consciously recognized. Though she always covered her hair, and her arms were covered to the wrists, she was extremely adventurous, outgoing and well-travelled. She studied in Indiana, spent three months in Hawaii, and has visited Japan and probably a number of other places we never talked about. She even brought with her a burqini, a full-body swim suit including head cover, so she could take part in the snorkelling. We swapped emails and will hopefully keep in touch – she even said she was planning a Thailand trip and might meet us there.
We’ve got four weeks left in Indonesia, but I’m already feeling strapped for time, there’s still so much we want to do. Next up (after we return to Jakarta) is going to Manado to get certified for diving.
Bali second impressions: Ubud
To get to Uluwatu, we hired a driver through a “tour agency” consisting of an elderly couple with a rolodex in a tiny office along an alley. These agencies are quite common, as they require very little overhead. On the way back that evening we arranged with the driver to get picked up by a shuttle bus and taken to Ubud. We gave him a 50,000 rupiah deposit, and he told us the car would show up at 11 the next morning.
Roxane and I both remarked how odd this was, to give money to a stranger and get only verbal assurances that something would happen. But the bus showed up right on time, and he deducted our deposit from the price of transit. In general we have found that although overcharging for tourists is common here, generally people are quite honest and reliable. There are also interesting differences in how prices work in different sectors. While buying a physical product, you might be expected to pay double the fair price if you don’t bargain. But transportation generally seems to be offered near the fair price, without too much room for bargaining. This likely refects the fixed costs, primarily fuel (which is subsidised and costs about 5,000 rupiah, or 50 cents, per liter).
So we got on the “shuttle bus,” really a minivan with two other passengers, and rode to Ubud. If Kuta is the south end of Bali’s tourist magnet, Ubud is the north. Everything is inverted in this cool interior town. Though there are plenty of men offering transport by taksi, or becak (bike taxi, pronounced beh-chak), they hawk their services in a subdued way, many of them simply holding up a sign saying “do you need transport?” as you walk by. The hotels are better value for the money, the tourists are older and more civilized, and the air is less polluted.
The big attraction in town is the Sacred Monkey Forest and the three small temples inside it. We walked there soon after arriving in town. I bought a handful of bananas, but at Roxane’s insistence I did not hide them in my backpack for later, but carried them in my hand. Immediately on entering the gate we had to pass through a gauntlet of monkeys and one of them snatched some bananas right out of my hand. Soon a few of his friends were begging, and I had to throw them the bananas or find a monkey climbing my leg.
I had procured croakies for Roxane and me, but they weren’t needed. Other than the banana incident, these monkeys were not aggressive like the ones at Uluwati and don’t seem to steal glasses and such. Not aggressive towards humans, that is. We did get to witness a turf war when a monkey from the wrong family was caught on someone else’s turf. A primate Romeo and Juliet story, no doubt. And speaking of Romeo and Juliet, we were also witness to a bit of “monkey business” between a pair that went from grooming each other to something entirely different, and then abruptly back to grooming. Down in the water temple another group of monkeys was having playtime, with pairs and triads everywhere mock fighting with each other. Altogether I found these monkeys much more interesting and agreeable than the Uluwatu ones. Roxane and I struggled to figure out why. The most likely answer is that the number of tourists at Uluwatu stress those monkeys. A secondary one is that I saw the Uluwatu monkeys eating all kinds of junk food, including a stolen bag of Doritos. Here I saw them only eating bananas and some root vegetable provided by the temple keepers. Bad diet can cause behaviour problems in humans, and I have no doubt it does the same in monkeys.
On our second day in Ubud I went on a bicycle tour of the countryside. We were driven to the top of Bali’s central volcano and ate a delicious breakfast at a restaurant on the crater rim, overlooking the lake that irrigates most of Bali’s rice fields.
Our first stop was at a coffee plantation where we watched traditional hand preparation of coffee beans in a kettle and then a roasting pan. They had a couple of civet cats here, also known as luwak or catfox. These nocturnal beasties eat coffee beans and poop improved coffee beans. Somehow improved by being digested, these beans are turned into what is called the rarest coffee in the world, sold in London for forty pounds sterling as “kopi luwak,” evidently a favorite of coffee connoseiurs.
All my life I have despised the smell of coffee so strongly that, as far as I can remember, I have never tried it. I’ve had mocha ice cream and espresso chocolate, even a coffee porter, but not, in memory, a simple steaming joe. But this plantation had a tasting room where the famous kopi luwak could be had for $3, so I figured I might as well start with the best. It was bitter and somewhat unpleasant, exactly as expected, but I managed to finish most of the cup. I also tried a cup of plain Balinese coffe, unadulterated by any civet, and I couldn’t really tell the difference. Both were prepared Turkish-style, with a heap of grounds stewing constantly at the bottom, so perhaps the divine experience would be more accessible in filter coffee or espresso. But for now I’m chalking up the kopi luwak craze to novelty-seeking. I will say one thing for coffee – I really enjoyed the caffeine buzz I got off it, more so than I usually enjoy tea. I guess this is how a coffee addiction begins.
We cleansed our palates with a fruit tasting – snakeskin fruit, sour passionfruit, sweet passionfruit, rambutan, mango, and another whose name I forget. Then there was the obligatory shop to stop at, the idea being that if you give tourists enough time in front of a shop, inevitably they will buy something.
Finally we were put on mountain bikes – maintained to the slim edge of acceptability – and started our long roll downhill. The Balinese countryside is quite beautiful and surprisingly dense, with only a few kilometers of rice paddies separating each village. As we passed, children would run out of shops or family compounds and shout “Hello! Hello!” or reach out for high-fives. One of them must have been an especially enthusiastic student in English class. He shouted out “Hello! My name is!” Many of the kids made a gesture I did not recognize with index finger, pinky and thumb. I asked Winia, our guide, what this meant and he told me “it means ‘metal,’ sometimes surfers stop here and teach this to the children.” I didn’t recognize it because they all held their hand backwards!
We stopped at a family compound known to Winia, and he explained more about the Balinese style of living than I could possibly absorb. In a nutshell, an extended family will live in one of these walled compounds, with individual houses built inside. Each compound has a family temple in the northeast corner, and because this temple is so vital to the family’s spirituality, compounds are never sold, only inherited. The houses of different family members are positioned in certain places according to status, and each immediate family has its own kitchen. All the cooking is done in the morning, so breakfast is the only hot meal, and food is eaten when it is convenient, not together at fixed mealtimes. An offering with rice is placed in front of the door to the compound afterwards, and in this way one can tell when a household has finished its cooking for the day.
Our next stop was at a rice field being harvested by a group of women. After speaking with them Winia said we could come over and try our hand at threshing – beating the grain off the cut stalks against a wooden platform. Nearby a woman was winnowing the rice grains by pouring them out of a basket held at head level, so the wind would carry away the chaff. Behind us a group of old woman chopped up the empty rice stalks. The volcanic soils here (and in Java) are very fertile and farmers can get three crops of rice per year with wet-field techniques. The fields are flooded while the rice grows, then gradually drained until harvest time, when the field is dry. All this is accomplished with the help of a pervasive and complex irrigation system, often running in deep ditches alongside the country roads.
Towards the end of the tour there was an optional forty-five minute uphill section. Naturally I chose to do it, as did most of the group. A couple of people changed their minds halfway through, though, and flagged down the sag wagon for a ride.
We all arrived thoroughly marinated at the lunch spot, an elegant pavillion overlooking a rice field immediately adjacent. We were treated to a fantastic buffet lunch and watched a farmer drive a flock of ducks into a dormant but flooded rice field. The ducks swim around, dig in the mud for scraps of fallen rice from the harvest, and poop, helping prepare the field for the next harvest.
After lunch we met the owner of the tour company, an Australian who married a Balinese and spends half his time here and half his time in Oz. I was a little surprised – for some reason I had assumed the operation was locally owned. Anyhow he described how he started operating eco tours because he was worried about the direction of tourism in Bali, and had been doing it for about ten years. Evidently Bali Eco Tours has spawned imitators who copy their itineraries and even their ad copy, but they don’t yet have their own web site! The problem, explained the Australian, is that the hotels and tourist centers which currently help promote his tours would be upset because tourists could bypass them and they wouldn’t get a commission.
And in fact it was through our hotel that Roxane and I first heard about this tour, although walking down the main drag of Ubud, we saw many little stores advertising the same tour. In Indonesia, anyone with a telephone and a pad of paper can be a booking agent. When I booked the tour yesterday it was in one of these small shops, and Roxane & I bargained them down nearly 25% off the initial asking price. For this reason, after lunch Winia pulled me discreetly aside and told me I received a very special price, and asked me not to mention it to the other people on the tour, and would I like to pay now? It seemed that everyone paid separately though, and I wondered how many “special prices” there were. The basline price of 360k rupiahs was common across all the agents, but it’s entirely possible everyone on the tour paid a slightly different price depending on their bargaining abilities.
Bali first impressions: Kuta
Kuta we had planned as only a stopover before moving on to less crazy, less frequented places. But we found there were several miscellaneous items we needed to buy, so today was for errands.
Our first purchase in Bali was a bottle of water. Right away we discovered the difficulty of breaking “large” bills. All we had from the moneychangers at the airport were 50,000 rupiah bills, worth about $5 each. But after we bought our water, worth about fifty cents, it turned out the vendor didn’t have enough change. So she told us we could come back later once we had it. We’ve since found that it’s often hard to break “large” bills here – people will always try to get small change if possible, and frequently don’t even have the bills to break a big one.
We wandered through the narrow alleyways of Kuta, made even narrower by the scooters zipping past every ten seconds. There is a main street, Jalan Legian, and a beach street, Jalan Pantal Kuta. But as best I can tell, most of the town is contained in the confusion of back streets. Here are the vendors hawking cheaply made Chinese sandals, one of my purchases for the day. Here also are manicures, pedicures, wooden penis keychains, cell phones, beef rendang, nasi goreng, obscene bumper stickers in English, and surf wear. The vendors of each were very insistent that we come into their stalls, and we found ourselves saying “no thank you” or “tidak, terima kasih” repeatedly. Soon we will kick this habit and simply ignore them, but years of habit in Western-style politeness are hard to suppress.
We had a nice breakfast of nasi goreng (fried rice) and had an opportunity to practice following some of the local norms mentioned in our guide book. In particular, using one’s left hand for anything, but especially eating or passing food, is considered rude. Like many cultures the left hand “is reserved for toilet purposes” and is considered unclean. We’ve also been trying to get in the habit of taking off our shoes at doorways, not putting our feet up on anything, and not pointing at things. Instead of pointing, locals will gesture with an open hand or a thumb.
In the evening we hired a driver to take us south to Uluwatu, a beautiful Hindu temple gripping the top of a sheer cliff face. It’s very popular at sunset, and as the time approached, we saw tourists lining up along a walkway with a good view.
Uluwatu also boasts a population of aggressive monkeys that like to snatch things from tourists. Signs at the entrance warn visitors to remove glasses, hair pins, etc. Unfortunately at minus five diopters, my vision is too poor to walk around without my glasses, so I simply resolved to keep a finger on my bridge at all times. But as we watched the monkeys from a safe distance and none seemed inclined to jump on my head to steal my glasses, I grew complacent and stopped. Later, distracted and watching the sunset near a wall, a monkey ran up behind me, skillfully snatched my glasses by the temple, and ran off to a safe distance. Luckily there are many monkey tamers who hang around the temple, and three of them rushed to trade the monkey food for spectacles. The monkey, obviously used to this transaction, dropped my glasses and scurried to grab the food. I was then obliged to pay the monkey tamer the equivalent of $5 for my glasses.
Beginning
At ten PM I woke up to the souds of our plane prepping for landing. Next to me Roxane stirred but did not fully wake. Twenty-four hours ago we were in Wellington, and Roxane was just finishing her last shift working at Rosemere Backpackers hostel. Our departing flight was scheduled for six in the morning, so rather than pay for another night in a room, we had contrived to spend the night celebrating with all our friends from the hostel.
After five hours, many farewells, the better part of a spirits bottle and countless bleary games of Bananagrams, we wobbled our way into a waiting cab and were whisked off to Wellington International. We paid our unpleasant driver as much as we could in coins, half because we needed to get rid of them and half because he was unpleasant.
Shivering from the early winter chill, we waited for the airport to open its doors for the morning. We had arrived exactly two hours and three minutes in advance of our flight, and three minutes too early to enter the airport. Soon the doors opened, and we waited in a series of empty queues until the necessary workers arrived to fill each post.
Our first leg was to Syndey, where we had a ten-hour layover. We paid the entry tax and filtered through immigration and customs to meet Frances for a whirlwind tour of Sydney’s sights. Frances is a good friend of Roxane’s mother, and treated us an absolutely wonderful time, showing us a lot of things I never saw on my previous Sydney visit. We also stopped by the Westin and picked up a package – an entertaining story for another time.
Now we were finally arriving in Bali, after thirty-eight hours without proper sleep. At the arrival gate a man with a sign waited to take us to our accomodation in Kuta.
My first impression on the way out of the airport was of stonework. There were intricately carved sculptures and gates everywhere, even in the airport parking lot. I wondered who commissioned all these works, and how many stoneworkers there must be in Bali to produce them all. Later, we would find that most of them are made from volcanic tuff ground up, mixed with cement, and carved when still wet for a much easier medium than stone.
Kuta has a reputation as a rowdy resort for hot young things. As we rolled through the main street, this was confirmed by the many bars and nightclubs, but few people were out and about on Sunday night. Our driver turned down one alleyway, and then another, navigating a maze to Suji Bungalows, whose address is listed only as “off Poppies Lane.” We never could have found this place on our own.
Our room was the top floor of a small cottage. The wooden door was beautifully carved, and the lock was a simple expedient – a padlock looped through the two metal rings that were the door handles. The room was simple and a bit dingy, but we had our own bathroom and an air conditioning unit. We high-fived each other and fell immediately asleep.