Indonesia: Part II

Sorry for the delay, work has been picking up lately since my colleague was deported back to Finland. They must be worried about overpopulation ...

Anyway, after a night in the nice hotel, we met Taylor at his village. It was slightly difficult to find him, because we didn't know exactly where to tell the drive to take us, but we stopped and asked villagers to take us to the "bule" (foreigner), and considering Taylor was the only "bule" around everyone knew who we were talking about. We arrived at Taylor's school and found the principal's office. Upon entering I forgot I was in a Muslim country and a Muslim school and received a friendly rebuke for not removing my shoes. Taylor wasn't there, so one of his students, Ulfi, offered to guide us to his house. He gave us the choice of taking a car or walking. Now we're not stupid -- we asked how far the house was, so when we were informed that it was only 400 meters, we, being the hardened Australians who walk everywhere, scoffed in the face of such short a distance and said we'd walk. Too bad, since I'm beginning to think that the "400 meters" may have refered to the elevation change, and the distance was more like a mile. So after walking seemingly straight uphill in 95 degree heat, we found Taylor's house. On a side note, Ulfi spoke perfect English, so Taylor must be doing his job well.

The walk back to the school (thankfully downhill!)

Taylor showed us around the village and everyone asked us "where are you going?" which is the usual greeting, but it was kind of confusing since we weren't really going anywhere, but "jelan, jelan" which literally means "walking walking" and can be translated as "walking around" seemed to be a good enough answer to satisfy everyone's curiosities. We had quite the entourage of interested children as Taylor showed us around the rice fields. The scenery in and around the village was absolutely beautiful.

Our entourage of children in front of Taylor's house

A villager cutting bamboo

"Where are you going?" "Jelan jelan!"

Some of the beautiful scenery

A photo to commemorate our tour

On our way back to the school we stopped at a "warung" which is the center of Indonesian entertainment. They are mainly huts on the side of the road where you can hang out and eat. We had traditional Javanese coffee and spicy corn fritters all for about 15 cents. Both were delicious.

Drinking coffee at the warung

As we came down the hill toward the school we passed by some of the students doing scout training, which turned into more of a photo op both for us and them. I think Will and I are in at least 20 camera phones.

Scout training/photo op

After hanging out at the school for a while a driver from the hotel came to take us to the airport to catch our flight to Lombok.