Back to Jakarta, 06/27/08-07/03/08

After posting my blog for Kuta, Bali, I realized that I forgot to use my "I got bombed in Bali" joke--a joke as tasteful as Kuta itself. Oh, well. There is probably someone there selling T-shirts with that written on it.

I flew from Bali back to Jakarta. I just planned to hang out there with friends for a few days, maybe see a few sites that I did not see the first time. That's pretty much what I did. I managed to get on TV, much to my embarrassment. At least, I assume that it made it onto TV. I was fortunate enough not to see it. Hopefully, no one who knew me saw it either.

Hotels

Before I arrived in Jakarta I decided that I would book a decent hotel before arriving instead of staying in a flophouse. The Ibis hotel was nice enough, but it was inconveniently located (in a neighborhood called Slipi) and required a taxi to do anything. Not worth the extra money (a little over US$35 a night after discounts). I ended up leaving it for a crappier but better situated and somewhat cheaper (but still overpriced--around US$30 a night) hotel a few days later. For lodging, Jakarta seems to be really bad value compared to other Asian cities.

I Wish I Could Sleep That Soundly

One night I was at my hotel (the more expensive one) and I told my friend that I needed to get some bottled water (since you cannot drink tap water). We went outside the hotel gate to a little portable shop on the sidewalk just outside. (Think of a newspaper stand.) The guy was sleeping in front of his shop. My friend talked to him to try to wake him up. No response. Louder talking. No response. A light touch. No response. A light shake. No response. A firm shake. There we go. He finally woke up. My friend and I were both laughing at this point at how hard this guy was to wake up. It seems like a little thing, but as it was happening, I was thinking, "This is the stuff that makes travel interesting."

The Jakarta Fair, the Shore, and Colonial Jakarta

On this visit to Jakarta I went with my friend Angga to the Jakarta Fair, which was just some big shopping expo in the convention center. Nothing too exciting. The next day we went to the shore on the north side of town. It is OK, with bunches of people and food shops and kind of a carnival atmosphere. Then we went to the colonial part of town which was close by. It was nice, but nothing overly exciting. We had lunch on the square there at Batavia Cafe--a grand old restaurant. We sat at a window on the second floor and looked out over the square where there was some function involving speakers and the like. Plenty of people in different regional garb.

Taman Mini Park and My 15 Minutes of Fame

The next day, Angga and I went to Taman Mini Park, which was kind of cool. It is a huge park filled with buildings built in the styles of each of the states of Indonesia. It also has an Imax theater in a giant gold snail shell where we watched a movie about sardines. It was in Bahasa Indonesia, so I didn't understand a word of it.

To get to the park, we took the busway, which seemed to take forever and was extremely hot. The last part of the trip was in this little minivan that acts as sort of a cross between a public bus and a shuttle. We decided that we would take a taxi when we left.

We walked around the buildings in the park, and in front of one, there were a young man and woman in front of a small camera crew. On TV in southeast Asia, I have seen several shows where there are these energetic MTV-like personalities going around to places of interest talking to people. It looked like that kind of thing. Angga was several steps ahead of me and walked past behind them. As I walked past, I saw one of the crew point back at me. Crap. I knew I was in trouble then. I kept walking, hoping nothing would happen. Angga looked back and saw the "Oh, no!" expression on my face. Then as I walked up the steps to the next building the crew came running up to me. The two people in front of the camera stood on either side of me.

"Do you speak Bahasa Indonesia?" the young man asked.

"No," I said, surely looking a bit aprehensive, but smiling.

They each introduced themselves (I forgot their names even as they said them) but did not ask me my name.

"Where are you from?" the man asked.

"San Francisco, California, America," I said.

"America!" he exclaimed. "Do you like xxxxx music?" he asked. I do not remember what kind of music he said.

"I have never heard of it," I replied.

"Ok," he said. "You have to choose one of these two song. 'Xxxxxxx' or 'Sylvia'." "Xxxxxx" was some Indonesian sounding name. I chose it.

"Aaaaaahhhh! You choose 'Xxxxxx'!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," I said.

He started swivelling his hips and said, "Can you do this?"

I said, "No, I draw the line there," smiling through all of this, but probably not seeming that into it.

Then he said, "Ok. Can you say, 'XXxxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx' for our audience?"

I asked him to repeat it, tried to say it, and before I got to the end, I needed more help.

Then he and the woman said some phrase while sweeping their arms from left to right. The guy asked, "Can you do this with us?"

They repeated it, and I did it with them, repeating the phrase as well (although I may have messed up a syllable or two.)

Then they thanked me, we shook hands, I said it was nice to meet them, and I walked to Angga who was a safe distance away.

"That was SO weird!" I said to him. Then he asked if I had a TV in my room and started talking about wanting to see me on TV. I told him that I hoped we didn't. And even more so, I hoped that no one I knew saw me either. Of course, this had to happen on laundry day when I was walking around in the worst clothes that I own. (I have this blue pair of pants that makes me look like a gas station attendant and a synthetic T-shirt that is a little worse for wear.)

And the Rest

I didn't reconnect with everyone in Jakarta. In my previous Jakarta blog entry, I forgot to mention a brother and sister that I met a couple of times named Punch and Judy. They did not understand why I found it amusing that there are a brother and a sister with those names.

While in Jakarta, I also spent time with Jojo, sampling food and doing more karaoke. I didn't see Pavis--the guy with whom I went clubbing the last time I was in Jakarta--but he did give me a call. He told me that someone was chatting with him online who, upon finding out that Pavis lived in America, asked Pavis if he knew me. My total time in Jakarta has only been a few days, and I managed to come up in conversation between strangers chatting online. Very weird. For a city with almost 9 million people, it seems to be a very small world.

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia 06/25/08-06/27/08

In many ways, Ubud, Bali is the opposite of Kuta, Bali. Instead of stall after stall of crappy souvenirs and obscene T-shirts, you have art galleries. Instead of people wandering the streets selling drugs or women, people wandering the streets are selling paintings. Instead of Hard Rock Cafe and drunken night clubs, there are quiet restaurants and moss covered temples. Sandy beaches are replaced with rice fields and green hills. Although there are plenty of tourists, there are no hordes. Raucous is replaced with relaxed.

Ubud might be too low-key for some, but I liked it. The town was pleasant enough, and walking through the greenery beyond was better. The moisture seemed to make everything green. All of the concrete had at least some tinge of green to it from moss and the like. So many of the buildings looked ancient, with courtyards and gated walls and shrines instead of just being concrete boxes. Even my US$7 a night hotel struck me as impressive. (The room, not so much.)

The one thing that did get old were the constant calls of "Transport?" from all of the people with motorbikes on the roadside.

From Kuta, Bali I took the Perama shuttle to Ubud. It was supposed to take and hour but ended up taking two becuase, due to a mistake, once we got through town, we had to go back again to pick more people up. You can imagine that some people were not too happy about that.

After settling in to my hotel, I walked around Ubud and had lunch. I walked out of town to the ridge walk, which was very pleasant. The trail started at a Hindu temple along a stream and went up from there. There were several young couples there pitching woo.

After the ridge trail, I tried to find the trail along the river. I walked along roads, some tiny, up stairs guarded by statues of gods and lions, and on tiny dirt footpaths through rice fields. It was all very cool.

I got to another major road and was clearly lost. Someone offered directions and I inadvertantly acquired a guide. I don't generally like having guides, so this was more irritating than helpful. It was the wrong trail anyway. I would have enjoyed it much better without him. The river view was fine, with the terraced rice fields. I got a bit muddy.

The next day, I decided where my next destination would be. Surprisingly, it was back to Jakarta and then to Malaysia. I was going to skip the rest of Indonesia. I know that I had only scratched the surface of Indonesia, but it felt like it was time to go. I cannot see everything everywhere, and I need to guard against burnout. At that moment, I needed a city. A place where I was anonymous and not a tourist to be focused on. I wanted to be in a place where if tourism dried up, the town would not blow away.

I had lunch at Warung Ibu Oka which is famous for its babi guleng (roasted pig). In fact, that seemed to be pretty much all that they served. The babi guleng was very greasy but very tasty. It even had something on it that seemed an awful lot like crumbled blood sausage, which I haven't had for decades.

After lunch, I walked to the Monkey Forest. There were certainly tons of monkeys. The park managers did not seem to disuade people from feeding the monkeys. It was a nice forest. There was a temple up top, and lower, by the stream, there were some lizard statues, a stone bridge, and a few other structures. The trees overhead had vines hanging down from them.

While going down the stairs to the stream, there was a woman whose hand was being held by a monkey. He would not let her go. When she tried to slowly pull away, he bit at her, even breaking the skin a little. She had no food to give him. Eventually, he let her go. It made me even more wary of them than I was. There were a lot of people in that park that seemed to forget that these were wild animals.

The next morning, I took a shuttle to the airport and flew back to Jakarta. On the flight, I saw Gunung Bromo and surroundings from the plane. It was really cool. There was a break in the clouds just so that I could see that. Then the clouds closed in again.

Kuta, Bali, Indonesia 06/21/08-06/25/08

Is your motto "Party 'til you puke"? Do you think Hard Rock Cafe is just the coolest thing? Have I got the place for you--Kuta, Bali. For the most part, the only locals you will see are the ones serving you or trying to sell you things.

Did you ever find yourself on a jungle beach thinking, "If only there were somewhere I could buy a T-shirt that was both obscene and insulting. Or maybe a penis carved out of wood." Well, you will never find yourself lacking those things here. Crap stalls o'plenty. As with most beach destinations you can find your T-shirts, souvenirs, sunglasses and beachwear, and being a developing country, you also have your bootleg CDs and DVDs. Massage is popular here. Presumably, some of it is legit. I expect that the women who ride around on motorbikes after midnight asking if you want a massage are not.

Here is a transcript of a typical walk down the street for me in Kuta: "Massage?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Taxi?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Drugs?", "No", "Women?", "No", "'Shrooms?", "No". I left out the "Mistuuuuuuh" that often preceded the questions.

Oh, yeah. 'Shrooms. The area is known for magic mushrooms.

The heart of Kuta is, of course, the beach. Along the beach is a tree-lined walkway, then a road, and on the other side of the road is commerce. Fast food, hotels, bars, hawker centers, food carts, convenience stores, etc. Beyond this is a warren of alleys lined with kiosks and shops, massage places, hotels, bars, restaurants, travel agencies, internet cafes, etc. Beyond that is the next major street which is the club and bar zone. A bit to the side of that is the fru-fru shopping zone.

When I arrived at the bus station in Denpasar at 10pm, I shared a taxi with a young Finnish couple that were on the bus with me. I had to haggle a bit. (Funny, I seem to be better at that when there are other people involved.) We also went to check out a hotel together. It was down a long, winding alley between the beach and the party zone. Although I was not impressed by Kuta, I do like the hotel selection there. The place I stayed was a nice big brick building with a great pool area, a lush courtyard, an open dining area leading to the open lobby, and even a Hindu shrine. My room was immaculate and modern with air-con, cable TV, a good balcony, and cost about US$20. It was far enough from the mayhem to be very quiet.

Having been on the bus all day, I was starving. It was after midnight, so I asked the friendly hotel clerk if he could suggest a place to go that would still be open and was not American fast food. He pointed me in the direction of the club zone. This little foray would be my introduction to Kuta.

I made my way down the alleys to the club street. From the first glimpse, I saw that Kuta was everything that I feared it would be but hoped it wouldn't be. The street was packed with drunken white people stumbling in and out of clubs and bars. If you took a picture of that street, you would not be able to tell it from any other party strip in the world. While walking down the street looking for a restuarant, I was offered pot, mushrooms, and hookers. That first few minutes there set the town for the rest of my visit.

I was having a pizza craving, so eventually, I settled in an open air restaurant with pizza on the menu. I was the only person there. Before I even ordered, this guy sat at my table without so much as looking at me and started looking at a menu. There were 20 empty tables in the restaurant. The waitress came back and he ordered, still not acknowledging that I was there. I was really curious to see what this guy was up to. This was not normal behavior. Eventually, he started talking. I was polite, but not warm, waiting for the sales pitch or the angle. We just ended up talking. The conversation was fine, if a bit odd. He told me that he was originally from Nigeria. His family fled to LA several years ago and he is now living in Jakarta. He has a girlfriend in LA who was visiting. She was asleep back at the hotel. He decided to go out and do some clubbing while she was asleep. We talked through the whole meal--politics, relationships--but it never felt quite natural. I was still waiting for the surprise. None came. We paid our bills parted company.

The next day, I took a walk along the beach. It was OK--very long, very wide. It had a lot of families as well as 20-somethings. There were definitely a lot of young, attractive people. It wasn't great for swimming though--the waves were better for surfing than swimming. Even though the beach looked just fine, for some reason I found it all depressing. Maybe it was just because I knew what was on the other side of the street from the beach. Thankfully, that stuff did not encroach on the beach--no bars blasting music or any of that stuff. A few drinks sellers and surf-board renters and not much else.

In the evening, I met my friend James. James was the reason I planned to be in Kuta at that time. He was nearby with his coworkers on some kind of "team building" trip. James and I met in 2002 in California when he was doing an internship in San Jose. The last time I had seen him was in 2003 when I visited him at his place in Victoria, Canada. Since then, he has moved back to Taiwan, which is where I had been planning to meet him before he told me about his Bali trip.

James and I went to a couple of bars in Seminyak--a town neighboring Kuta. Seminyak does not seem nearly as crass as Kuta, but unfortunately, is quite a bit more expensive in terms of lodging. We talked all night. There was no awkwardness at not having seen each other for over 5 years. At one point I was vehemently accused of being anal retentive because I don't do drugs or one-night stands. We had a really good time, even though it was a Sunday night and there were very few people out and about. We ended up looking for a karaoke bar, but instead got directed to a place that had the little private karaoke rooms. Oh, well. We did karaoke for an hour until the place closed at 3am.

The next night, we repeated it all over again, except the night ended a bit earlier with a woodfired pizza in a relaxed restaurant rather than in a karaoke lounge. We parted with the plan that I would visit him in Taiwan within the next few months. He flew back to Taipei the next day.

I spent the next day relaxing and preparing for my departure from Kuta the following day.

Gunung Bromo, Indonesia 06/19/08-06/21/08

From Yogyakarta, I took a shuttle bus to Cemoro Lewang near the volcano Gunung Bromo. It was a pleasant enough ride with some nice scenery, but by the time we got to Cemoro Lewang, it was already dark. It was a cold night and there was a sulfur fog all around town. I was worried that all of my clothes would end up being permeated with that smell, but that was not a problem. By morning, the fog was gone.

When I arrived, the guy with the shuttle company tried to convince me to go on the jeep ride to the lookout point for the sunrise volcano viewing. Apparently, that is what most people do. I had no interest in getting up at 3am for that. I asked if there were jeeps going up to the viewpoint at any other time of day, but was told that I basically would need to hire a whole jeep just for me.

The next morning, I hiked to the volcano. The town of Cemoro Lewang is built on the edge of the crater. Walk to the end of town and you go down into the crater. In the crater, you see a huge expanse of parched earth with the crater wall around it. In the center is the smoking stump of Gunung Bromo and next to it the inactive mound of Batok. Near the two is a big Hindu temple, which looks a little eerie in the midsts of all of that desolation.

Walking down towards the crater floor and across the crater to the volcano, several men on horseback asked me if I wanted to hire a horse. I didn't.

There are 253 steps up the side of Bromo. At the top, I could look over the edge into the smoking heart of the volcano. How much I could see depended on the wind. When the wind died down, the smoke built up and you could not see much inside other than smoke. I took a few photos with my phone intending to send them to people with some message to instill jealousy, but was unable to send multimedia messages due to the lack of 3G technology there.

I went back to my hotel and had lunch. Cemoro Lewang is tiny--a few hotels and their restaurants, a few shops, and not much else.

I asked the girl at the hotel if there were any more hiking trails around with good viewpoints. She pointed me to one that went up the side of one of the mountains on the edge of the crater. I went there after lunch.

To get to the start of the hiking trail, I walked along a little blacktop road out of town. Along this road were little fields of onions and cabbages among other things. There were tiny, rustic, but fairly well-kept houses and buildings. It was not the rundown cobbled-together tin-roofed landscape of the towns and cities. All this with the mountains in the background was really beautiful. I was so happy that I was taking this hike, and I hadn't even reached the trail yet.

A few locals waved and chatted on the road to the trail. One woman in a field full of workers struck up a short conversation. When she went to go back to the field, I asked if I could take a picture of her and the others in the field. She seemed a little dubious and was shaking her head. Then said, "Ok, 5,000 rupiah" which is about 50 cents US. I think she may have been joking because she seemed a bit shocked when I said "OK". Given that these people probably only make a few bucks a day, it was, in retrospect, a bit overpriced. FYI, it is not uncommon for locals near tourist areas to ask for money for photos. This is the first time that I ever actually paid such a fee. (Of course, I usually don't take pictures of people.)

I went on a little further and ran into three toothless old women in colorful garb carrying bundles of sticks on there backs down the road. We all said "Hello" (seems everyone knows that word). They stopped and one of them started talking to me, but not in English. I did not understand a word she said, and she did not understand a word I said. They seemed to be quite amused, though, and cackled with laughter at a few points.

I was really enjoying this walk. The road ended and I got to the trail. I went up the side of the hill--quite steep at some points, not always the most well-marked. The whole time I was out on the trail I did not see anyone else except for a pair of young Indonesians out hunting. We exchanged the few English words that they knew.

The views from the trail were stunning. I could see across the caldera--a much wider view than I got from town or from inside. I could see down the sheer wall of the caldera and the mountainside, which sort of run together. I could see over the fields and the town. Parts of the path were surrounded by little white wildflowers.

It was clear that this path did not see that many visitors. It was a little overgrown in spots. (I ended up stopping my climb because it was becoming a bit too overgrown.) I eventually had to walk while waving a stick in front of me to knock down strands of spider web before I ran into them.

The whole time I was walking, I kept thinking, "People take a jeep ride to some lookout point in the middle of the night and miss all of this." What a crying shame.

The fog was rolling in by the time I started heading back down. It got pretty thick pretty fast. It was cool to watch it boiling over the top of the mountain and down the slope of the side. I stopped to take a short video with my camera.

I wanted to use the internet when I got back down, but there is no internet in Cemoro Lewang.

The next day I left Cemoro Lewang to head to Bali. This involved taking a shuttle to the town of Probolingo and catching a long-distance bus to Denpasar, Bali. It was a 9am shuttle--the guy pushing it said it left at that time because the bus to Denpasar came at 11am. He had also said that all of the companies in town used the same bus to Denpasar, and hence they all left Cemoro Lewang at the same time. I believe they all use the same bus to Denpasar. I do not know if they all leave Cemoro Lewang at the same time. I ended up sitting in Probolinggo for 2 1/2 hours before the bus to Denpasar came. I was not alone. When I got to where everyone else was waiting, there were several other people. Lo and behold, one of them was my "girlfriend" from Yogyakarta--the Dutch girl with whom I had looked for hotels and gone to the market.

The bus ride to Denpasar involved driving across the easternmost part of the island of Java, getting off the bus on the ferry across to the island of Bali, getting back on the bus before leaving the ferry, and then driving to Denpasar.

A few times while traveling, service people will ask, "Do you have any coins from your country?" It is generally presented as coin collecting. I suspect that it is usually converted back into the local currency. My shuttle driver in the morning asked that question after everyone else was gone. I was reminded of it when I got on the ferry and a guy was trying to find someone willing to give rupia in exchange for euros.

It was around 10pm when the bus finally reached Denpasar--much later than anticipated and still not at my final destination.

Yogyakarta, Borobudur, and Prambanan 06/17/08-06/19/08

I left Jakarta and headed east across the island of Java. I had to meet a friend in Bali on the weekend, so my time on Java was limited. My first stop after Jakarta was Yogyakarta.

Yogyakarta is a sizable city and is well liked among Indonesians and travelers. I was only there for two nights, and most of the intervening day was spent outside of town, but from what I saw of the city, it did seem like a pleasant place.

Some of the attractions of Yogyakarta are its batik, leather goods, silversmiths, shadow puppet theater, and the walled royal enclave (the kraton). I saw none of these things (well, you cannot avoid the batik) because my days were spent outside of town.

Within an hour of Yogyakarta are several temple ruins. The very famous Buddhist temple Borobudur and the Hindu temple complex Prambanan are the most well-known. There is also the very active volcano Gunung Merapi.

The train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta was quite pleasant. Views of rice fields and distant volcanoes.

While waiting on the train platform in Jakarta, I met a Dutch girl who was waiting for the same train. We talked a little and then ran into each other again when we arrived in Yogyakarta. We decided to look for hotels together. That rarest of beasts, a helpful tout, actually helped us find rooms (since our first choice was full.) We had a hard time explaining to desk clerks that although we walked in together, we wanted separate rooms and might not even stay in the same hotel.

She and I ended up in the same hotel right across the hall from each other--the Merapi Hotel in the backpacker ghetto near the train station and the main shopping area. I liked the hotel, but alas, there was just no escaping the pre-dawn blasts from the loudspeakers on the nearby mosque.

After settling in, she and I decided to go take a little walk around the area. It was around dusk. We walked through the markets and ended up doing a little shopping. Once again, everyone thought we were a couple. In the end, we just stopped fighting it. She would walk up to me with something she was thinking of buying and say something like, "Honey, what do you think of this?" With my woefully bad haggling skills, I bought a couple of pairs of earrings. I didn't feel too bad--the more expensive pair was only about a buck and a half US. We both ended up buying some really tasty fruit. Neither of us knew what it was. After stopping at the tourist information booth, I walked her back to the hotel. That was the last I saw of her in Jogjakarta.

After that, I went to meet someone that I had chatted with online. He and I ate at a nice, open-air Thai restaurant a motorbike ride away and then ended up at a mall having coffee because, well, a mall was the only place where we knew to go. Being a good muslim, he doesn't do bars. Like I said before, life seems very mall-centric in Indonesia.

The next day, I took a tour (not really a tour--just transport) to Borobudur, Gunung Merapi, and Prambanan. Aside from me, there were 3 young Indonesians and a bunch of French people.

Borobudur is an impressively restored--and just impressive--old Buddhist temple. It is just one large building with a few little museums around it. There were tons of people there. Nonetheless, it was easy to find places to be alone, since they all seemed to just run up the main stairways and hang out at the top instead of exploring the walkways on the sides at the different levels.

It was cool and all, but I was done after about 45 minutes. The bus was scheduled to stop there for 2 hours. I guess if you went around and studied all of the intricate bas reliefs you could fill up 2 hours.

While on Borobudur, people kept coming up to me and asking if they could take a picture with me. The guidebook told me that this might happen. Whenever anyone wanted a picture, I obliged. First, it was this trio of giggly teenage girls. Then a school teacher. And his co-worker. And the entire primary-school class. This continued at Pramabanan with a middle-aged woman, another middle-aged woman, her husband, and my two tour guides. It was bizarre. I cannot imaging that white people are that rare there. I asked someone else from the bus if they got the same treatment and he said yes.

As I was walking around, three boys dressed in slacks and dress shirts, probably between 12 and 14, came up to me and asked if they could practice English with me. In many countries, this is often a ploy in the hopes that money will eventually change hands. As such, I declined and went on around the structure. A while later, they came back up to me and started talking to me. They showed me their badges which was supposed to convince me that they were legit. I had nothing else to do to kill the next hour, so I kept talking to them.

While talking to them, I discovered that they really were just wanting to practice English. Apparently, their teacher brings the kids on field trips to tourist places like this and sends them out to have conversations with English speakers. I later found out that their teacher was occassionally wandering by to make sure that they were doing their assignment.

I had fun talking with these kids. The conversation ran the gamut. It started with the usual, "Where are you from?", "What do you do?", etc. Then it was questions about school and life in America. They told me about their schooling--I was amazed to learn that they had only been studying English for a year and a half. They told me that they hoped to someday go to college in America. Some of the questions were very broad, like "What is life like in America?" I laughed out loud when one of them asked "What about sex in America?" He insisted that if he was ever going to live in America that he would need to know these things. "Is it true that people can have sex before they get married in America?" What a conundrum.

The kids asked if I wanted to see any of the museums. I had heard that they weren't very interesting. They seemed to like one museum in particular, so we went there. They referred to it as something like the "unique" museum. When I went to pay for my ticket, the woman at the booth saw that I was with students and just waved me in. The museum was devoted to items in the category of "the something-est something". It had (supposedly) the world's largest dress and the biggest book in Indonesia, but mostly it consisted of panels that looked like photos out of the Guiness Book of World Records. No wonder it was popular with the kids.

We walked through a couple of other buildings that had chunks from Borobudur and photos of the reconstruction. Then, it was time for me to get back to my bus, so we bid each other farewell and parted company. It was an interesting way to kill an hour.

I hopped back on the bus and we were on our way to Gunung Merapi. Bascially, that stop was just a photo op at the base of Merapi. That was fine--I just got the tour for transport to the temples.

From there we had lunch and went to Prambanan. I don't usually like guided tours. I prefer, instead, to wander around on my own. Yes, I don't get all of the history and information, I overlook details, but I also don't get bored and antsy about keeping with the herd.

After a few minutes in Prambanan, a pair of young ladies in head scarves with badges around their necks came up to me. They said that they were tour guides in training and asked if I would mind allowing them to give me a free tour as practice. I really didn't want a guide, but I agreed anyway. They later told me that they have to do this for 3 weeks before they can start getting paid for giving tours. Their presentation had some definite flaws and I had to review them after the tour was done.

Prambanan is a complex of several temples. They are pretty impressive, but unfortunately, they were damaged in an earthquake a few years ago and now visitors cannot walk up to the main buildings due to fear of injury.

After a hot sweaty day of temples, I went home and booked a bus out of Yogyakarta for the next day, rested a bit, and had dinner with a friend. I would have liked to have stayed in Yogyakarta another day or two, but I still had to get to Bali by the weekend.

Jakarta, Indonesia--06/12/08-06/15/08

For a while, I had been wondering if my travel bug had died. In Central America, I just wasn't feeling the love of travel. In Thailand, I wasn't having a good time, and there was a moment when I just wanted to hop back on the plane and head home. But then I went to Indonesia. Once I got there, I discovered that my travel bug was alive and well. I was psyched about going places and seeing things. It was a good feeling.

People struck me as being very friendly in Indonesia. I certainly made several acquaintances who wanted to spend time together. In the street and at tourist sites, people would actually talk to me just to talk or to be helpful. This was disconcerting because I am so used to no one talking to me unprovoked unless they want something. It makes things harder when you are in a place where people will talk to you for other reasons. You have to decide which kind of person they are, which can be really hard.

Not only did people want to talk, but in a few places, strangers would come up to me wanting to have their picture taken with the white guy. Several people of all different ages. If my experiences are anything to judge by, they REALLY seem to like white people in Indonesia, and not just for the reasons that they do in every other developing country--i.e., as suckers with cash.

Indonesia was my first experience with a predominantly Islamic country. I can't say that it was a whole lot different. Here are some of the more noticeable differences:

• Lots of women wearing head scarves.
  
• Loudspeakers blasting the call to prayer from the mosques at the prescribed times--one of which is in the wee hours of the morning. (This is problematic for budget hotels with very little sound-proofing.)
  
• Very few places with pork on the menu.
  
• Prayer rooms next to the toilets at rest stops.
  

I never once felt self-conscious about being a white, non-Muslim, American while traveling through Indonesia.

I did on one or two occasions hear grumbles (from Muslims) about the ultraconservative Muslims who are trying to force laws to get everyone to abide by their moral codes. Before I left for Asia, I had read in the news about some of the recently proposed "decency" laws.

On the issue of terrorism, there were plenty of metal detectors and guards at entrances to malls and other public places. (I noticed that train stations and malls in Bangkok had also begun taking such measures since its recent troubles.) In addition to the high-profile bombings in Bali and Jakarta of a few years ago, there are ongoing acts of violence regularly occurring in certain parts of Indonesia. I did not visit any of these places.

Indonesian food was not quite what I expected. I somehow had the impression that Indonesian cuisine was very spicy, which it is not. The ubiquitous dishes were fried rice, fried noodles, fried chicken, and satay.

My point of entry into Indonesia was the Jakarta airport. I had a slight problem there. The immigration guy didn't want to let me in. Many countries have a policy that before entering you must show either an onward ticket or proof of funds. I always have ATM and credit cards, so it is never an issue, but no one has ever asked me for proof. This guy asked me if I had an onward ticket. I told him that I had a ticket to San Francisco, but it leaves from Bangkok. This was a problem. I told him that I had plenty of funds, but he informed me that for a visa on arrival (which was what I got) Indonesia requires an onward ticket leaving from an Indonesian airport. You cannot leave by water or land. I got a bit of attitude for not knowing this.

Trust me, this visa requirement is not obvious. I wanted to make sure that I could get a visa on arrival in Indonesia, so before I went, I looked at their web page. It was less than user-friendly, and I do not recall seeing the bit about needing an onward ticket to use the visa on arrival. I also looked in Lonely Planet. It was not like I hadn't done my homework--I am always worried about getting visas at border crossings. The immigration guy said that there was a sign where I got my visa on arrival stating the requirement. I read the signs there. I do not recall seeing anything other than a list of nationalities that could get the visa and the price.

So, what to do. I was told that I needed to buy a ticket out of Indonesia. The problem was, the ticketing counters were on the other side of immigration. I could call them or use the web and buy a ticket, but there were no internet cafes on my side of immigration and I had no local currency or phone card to use a pay phone (if there were any). I was about to turn back and try to find some way of making a call or getting someone from an AirAsia desk to help me out, when another guy came up. (By this time, everyone else had already left the immigration area--it was just me and the immigration guy.) The new guy said that the ticket desks were closed already. (It was not especially late yet.) He took me aside and said quietly that maybe I should offer the guy behind the desk some money. Ah. I see. That's how this works. I'm supposed to bribe this guy. I was not too happy, but what choice did I have? So, I went back to the desk, told the guy, "Ok, I understand from your friend that I can pay a 'fine' to take care of this. So how much is this 'fine'?" He seemed a bit confused. I told him that I had only US $25 on me (actually, I had more in my money belt) so hopefully it was not more than that. He figured out what was going on and told me that he did not want money, he just wanted me to get a ticket out. Now I was confused and relayed what the other guy had said--whom I thought was another guy working for immigration. The guy behind the desk told me that the other guy was from AirAsia--they had no connection. He had just called the AirAsia guy over to see if I could get a ticket. Oops. Wasn't I embarrassed (and potentially felonious.) I think he was embarrassed too and just processed my paperwork to get me through. I was impressed that he didn't accept the bribe. How embarrassing.

Once I got through immigration, the fun continued. I had to find my bag because I had spent so long in immigration that they had taken it off the belt. Then, once I found it, I wanted to make sure that I had no problems with customs. Indonesia is very strict about importing "immoral" items--such as uncensored movies that might depict nudity or other racy or otherwise sensitive material. I remembered that as I was packing, my friend in Thailand had given me two DVDs to watch on my computer. I had never heard of these movies before and knew nothing about them. Each of them had won some film festival award or other. However, one of them was named "Circuit" and was about circuit parties. I could very easily see it having objectionable material--there were probably sex scenes as well as rampant drug use. Did I mention that drug trafficking carries the death penalty in Indonesia? I dug them out of my bag and threw them in the trash before going through customs. I did not want any more trouble, especially since I was the only person who was going through customs at the time. I zipped right through.

Finally, I was free to go about my business. But wait, there's more. The first thing I wanted to do after visiting the ATM was get a local SIM card for my phone. I asked the information desk if there was a place in the airport that sold them, and the guy told me where I could get one. Because of my delay in immigration, I was one of very few arriving passengers still in the arrivals terminal. I might as well have had a bulls-eye painted on me. Several guys approached.

"Taxi?"

"No, thanks." (Don't EVER go with a taxi driver that accosts you in the arrivals terminal.)

Then one tried to show me to the place where I could get a SIM card.

"I know where it is, I don't need any help, thanks."

He was undeterred and walked along ahead of me and tried to show me to a place which did not even sell them. While he was dealing with that, I ignored him and went across the hall to where I knew they did sell them. I got my SIM card, but the guys were still waiting. I informed them over and over that I was not going with them. One just would not leave. While I was trying to call a hotel in town using my new SIM card, I finally got fed up with the guy and with no attempts at politeness or hiding my irritation I informed him that there was no way in hell I was taking his taxi and to just leave me alone. I did everything short of telling him to fuck off. I still had to get up and walk to another part of the terminal to ditch the guy.

Finally, I went out to the official taxi stand and got a cab into town. I had a pleasant enough chat with the taxi driver who, although he did not speak much English, wanted to chat. When he found out that I was single and traveling alone, he asked if I was looking for women. Here we go again. I made it abundantly clear that I was not in Indonesia for that. When I got to the hotel, the bellboy showing me to my room asked if I wanted to find some women. I have to wonder, does every single white guy visiting Asia get this treatment or is there something about me in particular that makes everyone think I am a sex tourist? When I went into the street to get some dinner (it was around midnight) I had to dodge a hooker or two. (They weren't extremely obvious.)

I stayed on Jalan Jaksa--the street which is the backpacker ghetto in Jakarta. Whenever I met people in Jakarta and was asked where I was staying, I always said "Jalan Jaksa" with a bit of embarrassment. The reaction was usually pretty negative. I asked a friend in Jakarta "Why does everyone know Jalan Jaksa? Why do people go there?" The response was basically, "People go there because that is where people go." Accommodation in Jakarta is pretty expensive for what you get--which is not much. I could have gotten a much better hotel for half the price in Bangkok or any other of the big cities that I have been to in Southeast Asia (except for Singapore.)

The night I arrived in Jakarta, I started communicating with some of the people there that I had met online. By the next day, I was hanging out with them. I ended up meeting several people very quickly. By the end of the weekend, I had people that I didn't remember meeting walking up to me in places and addressing me by name. I ended up doing an unusual amount of clubbing that weekend. Indonesia's club scene is quite developed, apparently. I met some of the people I hung out with in clubs. That is not usually a way that I like to meet people, but it was actually OK.

My first day in Jakarta, a Friday, I hung around with Jojo. We went to a mall so that I could get a replacement charger for my new phone. (The charger that came with the phone worked exactly once.) We used the busway system in Jakarta. This system uses special buses that run in lanes reserved specifically for these buses. It is very much like a light rail except that it uses buses instead of trains. Traffic in Jakarta is a nightmare, so anything that moves people through it is a godsend.

Jakarta has some massive malls. And some pretty upscale ones, too. Prada, Louis Vitton, Bruno Mali as far as the eye can see. I came to discover that Indonesia is very mall-centric. Social life revolves largely around malls. I had never been to a place where nightclubs were located inside of malls.

Jojo, being a good Muslim, did not drink or go to bars. Pavis, on the other
hand, was a Bangkok native who is going to school in Washington, D.C. and in
Jakarta for several months on an internship. He had just arrived within a week before I did. He was out clubbing that Friday and invited me to join him. We went to Red Square where he was out with a friend of his visiting from D.C. and some of her friends. I did not like that bar at all--it was packed with people too dressed up for my comfort zone and acting kinda mindless. They seemed to be having fun, though. It was so packed that I couldn't see a bar anywhere and the waiters didn't bother to bring me my drink order. I was not happy there. Eventually, Pavis told me where the bar was, I shelled out US$10 for a drink, after which I was suddenly much more able to enjoy the place. I still didn't like the place, but I went with the flow. Among other people, some very strange girl from Tennessee started talking to me. I have no idea what she was on. That was the weirdest, most awkward conversation that I had had in a long time.

I was getting ready to go home because I had not gotten much sleep the in the past couple of days and it was already after 2am. I found Pavis to say good-bye and he suggested that I go with him and some of his acquaintances to another club--Stadium. I had heard of Stadium. It had a reputation. I was curious. I figured that I would not go there on my own, so I would fight off sleep a little longer and go with them. Once I saw the place, I would just take a taxi home.

On the drive there, I discovered that Pavis did not know as much about Stadium as I did. What I knew, I got from the description of it in Lonely Planet. Stadium is a huge club--it has four floors and can hold 4,000 people. It opens on Thursday night and closes on Monday morning. And alcohol is not the drug of choice. That last fact was one that Pavis did not know and was not happy to discover. (As far as the opening hours, I discovered that that bit was not quite true anymore. I was told that it closes for several hours on Saturday morning. When asked why that was so, the person did not know. I asked someone else later and was told that they need to close the place to check for dead bodies, presumably from overdoses.)

Stadium was actually quite a nice building. It looked very new and trendy. I wondered how a club that catered to people who did not buy drinks stayed in business. I soon found out. When walking down the hall on certain floors, it looks like the hallway in a hotel, with numbered rooms along the hall. Our group (who got there in separate cars) was meeting in one of the rooms. Stadium rents out these private rooms. That is apparently how they make their money--renting out little private drug dens.

When we got to the room, it had a couch, some chairs, a TV with a karaoke setup, an attached bathroom--and was almost completely dark. There were other people already there, apparently for quite some time. Judging by the near-total lack of light and the fact that some of them were still wearing sunglasses, it was clear that what they were doing in there was not karaoke.

Interesting side note, in spite of the fact that Indonesia has severe drug laws (trafficking is punishable by death), it is the ecstacy capital of the world.

Pavis clearly hated Stadium and wanted to be somewhere else. I found it repulsive, but it was actually not nearly as bad as I expected, so I was OK. I asked Pavis if he wanted to leave, but he was determined to stay with his acquaintances and go with them when they left. Once everyone showed up, we went to one of the dance floors. After being there for about half an hour, I had decided that I had seen enough and it was time to go home. I asked Pavis again if he wanted to get a taxi out of there with me, but he was going to stay. He apologized profusely later for taking me to Stadium, which was unnecessary, since I knew what I was getting into.

It had started raining while we were in the club, and there was a huge crowd of people waiting for taxis. It was after 4 am. I had made a mental note of how to (safely) get to the main road when we entered the club, so I made my way there. A little boy with an umbrella followed me and shielded me from the rain for a tip. He also helped me spot a Bluebird taxi--the reputable taxi company in Jakarta. And so ended my first day in Indonesia.

The rest of my stay in Jakarta was more mild--going to more tame clubs, meeting people for lunch, dinner, and karaoke (which I have been doing a lot in Asia this time), and such.

On the Monday after I arrived in Jakarta, I bought a train ticket to Yogyakarta for the next day, took in the view from the top of the national monument (a big obelisk), and got together with some friends one last time. Jakarta may not be the prettiest or most interesting city in the world, but those 4 days there were a bit of a whirlwind.

The Most Important Travel Tool That I Own

I had a few electronics failures while in Bangkok. The charger for my quad-band phone that I use while traveling stopped working. I bought a new one. Then the phone stopped receiving text messages, which are important when I travel in Asia. On top of that, my PDA died.

The need for a new phone and a new PDA convinced me to finally get a smart phone. I would have gotten an iPhone except that Apple handcuffs you to AT&T, and if you have the phone unlocked, Apple completely disowns it. A phone that only works with AT&T is less than useless when traveling in Asia, and I did not want to pay $500 for an unlocked I-phone (readily available in Bangkok) that would not be updatable and would have no warranty if it broke the next day. In the end, I bought the Nokia E51. The phone has wi-fi, a camera, an SD memory slot, and the usual goodies like bluetooth, speakerphone, etc. It is a smart phone, so it replaces my PDA, with the added benefit that it is with me at all times without taking up extra pocket space.

Why am I writing a blog entry about a new phone? Because it has become an immensely important travel accessory. Here are the handy things I can do with the phone:

My phone is a quad-band, unlocked GSM phone. As such, for any country that has a GSM mobile phone network, I can go to a store, buy a SIM card, use a prepaid plan, and voila! I have a local phone number. Every airport in Asia that I have been to on this trip has had a shop where I could get a SIM card. It is so nice to have a local number as soon as I land. Having a local phone account makes it much easier to connect with people in that country, as well as make hotel and travel reservations. It also lets me exchange text messages with people in other countries at a reasonable rate. Since most such phone plans have free incoming calls, anyone back home can talk to me, provided that they are will to pay for an international call. (I still use Skype for my international calls.)

The phone plays mp3s. Since getting it, I have pretty much stopped using my iPod and my other mp3 player. Because the phone has a slot for a 2G SD memory card, I can put songs, language lessons, etc. on the card and listen to them on the phone, either via headphones or the speaker on the phone. When exercising, it is nice to not have to have to use headphones like I do with the iPod.

I am a light sleeper. Noise wakes me up. The best way to combat this is by having some kind of white noise generator in the room, such as a fan or a loud air conditioner. When these are not available, I can play an mp3 recording of a vacuum cleaner through my phone's speaker. It does a respectable job of blocking out unwanted noise.

The wi-fi capability of the phone allows me to connect to the internet. I can download podcasts which I can then listen to on my phone, either via headphones or the speaker on the phone. I can check e-mail on the phone as well. I can also surf the web, but this can be a slow, tedious process. Wireless access points are not always easy to find, but since the Starbucks empire has infiltrated a whole lot of places, there is usually one around somewhere in larger shopping centers in cities. Some hotels, restaurants, and other coffee shops also have them.

Nokia smart phones have the Nokia Maps program which is turning out to be immensely useful. When connected to the internet via wi-fi, I point the application to whatever city I want to navigate and it downloads the map for it. (There is a separate PC application that can download maps, but I have not tried it.) I can zoom in to street level or out to a view from space. I really wish I had a phone with GPS--the combination of GPS and Nokia maps would be so handy. Unfortnately, Nokia maps do not cover all cities. So far, it has done great with Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta, but other cities like Denpasar in Bali do not show up at all. I have found that Nokia Maps works better than Google Maps in that it is not as tethered to the internet. I could, of course, use Google Maps with a 3G connection to the internet, but that would be crazy expensive.

My old PDA was very useful as a time-waster when I was on buses, planes, trains, and the like. I would read books on it or play games. I have downloaded a book reader and some books for my phone, which works perfectly well, although the screen is a bit smaller. (Books are heavy, take up a lot of space, and are expensive. Reading public domain books on a handheld device works great.) I have also downloaded several games, but the lack of a touch-screen on the phone makes playing games a lot less fun. The phone has a Java interpreter, so I can play games written in Java. (Non-geeks can ignore that last sentence.)

The phone has a 2 megapixel camera, which means that I always have a camera with me. The camera is not nearly as good as my Canon, so When I go to tourist spots, I still take the Canon. Still, there are a lot of shots that I would not have gotten without the camera phone.

The phone has a photo viewer. I use this to view maps that I download from the internet, such as transit maps or city maps.

I have other applications on the phone that are useful while traveling: an alarm clock, a world clock, a currency converter, a program to download podcasts, an appointment calendar, and an application for writing notes to myself.

There are some things that my phone does not have that I wish it did:

• GPS
  
• a touch screen
  
• a flash for the camera
  
• the ability to charge the phone using the USB cable (My phone charger died the day after I bought the phone and I had to buy a new one, since I was no longer in the country where I bought it--Thailand.)
  

Eventually, I intend to install one or more language dictionaries and phrasebooks--hopefully, talking ones.

I would also like to get a bluetooth keyboard so I can type up my journals and blog entries on my phone.

I Hit the Road Again--and It Hit Back (Thailand, 5/15/08-6/12/08)

As most of you know, I am back on the road again after taking a break for a couple of months in California. I came back from Costa Rica on Feb. 22 and left for Thailand on May 15. Yes, I am SERIOUSLY behind on my blogs. I still have pretty much all of Central America and lots of Mexico to write up yet.

In May, prior to leaving for Thailand, I went back to Illinois to visit family and friends, since I will probably not be back for Christmas again this year. While there, my family threw me a surprise 40th birthday party. I was definitely surprised--my birthday was not for 3 more months. They knew I would not be in the country for my birthday and figured that that was the only shot they would get.

Some of you may know that I had planned to go to South America after my break, followed by Asia later. I decided to go to Asia first for a few reasons:

1. The thought of going back to Latin America filled me with dread rather than excitement.
   
2. The thought of going back to Asia, in contrast, sounded like a lot of fun.
   
3. It would be winter in South America.
   
4. A friend of mine in Bangkok was about to move to Europe, and by going to Asia first, I could visit him before he left.
   

Because of that last reason, I started my Asia trip in Bangkok--a place that
I became very familiar with in previous trips to Asia.

Sadly, my trip to Thailand was largely miserable. I tend to regret very little--mistakes tend to make valuable learning experiences--but I regret going back to Thailand when I did. I had gone there to visit my friend, of whom I had many happy memories. Those happy memories have now been replaced with some very unhappy ones. I would have preferred to have just left things as they were when I last visited.

Five years ago when I was in Thailand, after meeting in Bangkok, my friend and I took a trip to Ko Samui which was filled with a lot of things that still made us laugh recalling them. Two years ago we took a nice, low-key trip to Cha Am. On that trip, I was happy to see that my friend's life had changed for the better, and he seemed much happier than I remembered him years before. But just as I was very happy to see these changes in him two years ago, I was very unhappy to see some of the changes that took place between then and now. I am not at liberty to say what those changes were--I promised I wouldn't--but the resulting behavior put a big strain on our friendship. So much of a strain that I don't even know if I would still call us friends. Time will tell. On the bright side, I think the source of most of the problems will go away when he leaves the country--away from some bad influences and into the presence of someone who will not put up with what was going on.

I arrived in Thailand at midnight after a 24-hour plane trip. A day before I left California, my friend invited me to take a trip with him and some friends to Ko Samet--a place that I had considered visiting last time I was in Thailand. A bit hesitantly, I agreed to go. I wish I had not. A lot of bad shit went down there, and the rest of my visit to Thailand never recovered from that. Don't get me wrong--I was never in any danger and the bad things that happened did not happen to me, but what happened there disturbed me so much that it had me lying in bed awake for many nights. Again, I cannot go into details because I promised that I wouldn't.

I should say that the things that were wrong with that trip to Ko Samet had nothing to do with Ko Samet itself. In fact, I would recommend Ko Samet. It has beautiful beaches with rustic beachside restaurants that do not spoil the scene by pumping out loud music and creating that whole "party 'til you puke" vibe. (At least, this is true of the part of the island where I stayed.) You can find all the relaxation you want there or you can dance all night if you prefer. Ko Samet seems to have found a nice balance, and I enjoyed both sides of it.

In spite of the aforementioned disturbing incidents, I did have some genuinely good times on Ko Samet. I went dancing on several nights with my friend and his friends and had a lot of fun. (I found out weeks later that someone else who knew me from Bangkok saw me dancing on Ko Samet but was not sure it was me, since he did not know I was back.) After one such night out, we stopped by a booth to play that carnival game where you throw darts at balloons to win a prize. Someone won a Piglet stuffed toy, which was given to me and now shows up in photos of the places I visit.

Also, on Ko Samet, I had a very good conversation with my friend, where he showed me photos from the past few years and told me about his days as a monk last year. In Thailand, it is not uncommon for men and boys to spend a little time--a few weeks or months--as Bhuddist monks. (I know another friend--Siam--who has done this as well.) It is often done to honor their families. The last time I visited my friend, he told me that he had planned to someday be a monk for a while to honor his mother. I had a hard time picturing him as a monk then. When he showed me the photos and told me about the experience, I saw a side of him that I had not seen before. His plan was to be a monk for two weeks. Once he started, he decided to continue for five months. He tried to describe the feeling that made him stay, but had difficulty. In the end, he just said something to the effect that he stayed because he felt so strongly in his heart. I found it incredibly touching.

On Ko Samet and afterwards, the friendship pretty much crumbled, leading to some hurt feelings, but still, some pretty good times in Bangkok. The last few days before I left Thailand did a lot to mend things between us, but I suspect that it was too little too late. Time will tell. When I go back to Bangkok, he will not be there, and I find that to be a relief, which in itself is sad. I would like to think that our friendship will recover, but I do not have a lot of hope. Sigh.

My arrival in Thailand was met with the worst case of insomnia that I have ever had. My second worst case was the last time I arrived in Thailand. I blame this mostly on the flight there. (I took the same flight both times.) Usually, I combat jet lag after an all night flight by staying up until at least 8 pm and then sleeping until morning. Using this trick, I have almost never had jet lag. Unfortunately, my 24-hour flight to Bangkok landed at around midnight. There was no way I could stay up another 20 hours before sleeping. (I did, however, stay up until around 4am talking with my friend.) I hardly got any sleep for the next week. I was amazed that I could go so long with so little sleep. I was awake for 24-hours straight more than once. When I did sleep, it was generally for an hour or two. (It was not all jet lag--nights out, rock-hard beds, and troubling incidents contributed to the insomnia.) Usually, after two or more nights without much sleep, I tend to get sick--colds and the like. I was feeling amazingly fit after my week of sleeplessness.

Once I got back to Bangkok, I reconnected with several other old friends. I visited with Siam--the first friend I ever made in Thailand. We caught up and he showed me his brand new condo. It is tiny, but it is in a very nice building. (So nice, that the previously mentioned friend used to dream of living there when viewing it from the balcony of his apartment a few blocks away.)

I also visited Dew, who is now the proud proprietor of a new guesthouse in Bangkok. The building is owned by his family, but he was in charge of renovating it and turning it into a guesthouse. It is pretty much his baby. He gave me the grand tour. When I left Thailand, it had not yet opened. Dew and I met and hung out several times when I was in Bangkok five years ago. He visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, at which time I showed him around and introduced him to Halloween in the Castro with some friends.

I also met a few new friends in Bangkok to replace the ones that have left the city or lost touch since I first started going there.

I have always loved Bangkok, inexplicably, from the first time I went there. I have to say, however, that each time I go back, some of the luster wears off. There was a time that I would have loved to live in Bangkok. Now, I'm not so sure. I still like it, partially because of its status as my home-away-from-home, but now it is more of a "yeah, I guess I like it" rather than "oh, my God, I love it". But as long as I have friends there, I expect that I will like it. And it is any easy place to make friends, which is something that has always made me like it.

I stayed in a different hotel during this visit to Bangkok--The Blooms Residence. It was suggested to me because I was staying for a while and they have cheap monthly rates--about $225 a month. The room was tiny, but fully functional, and best of all, quiet. It was a 15 minute walk to the nearest train station (more than I would have liked), but other than that, fairly well located. When I checked the rates for the hotel, they had three rates: daily, monthly, and hourly. Yep. Hourly. The place really did not exude the no-tell motel ambiance, and there were plenty of families staying there, but anyone who knew of the place knew of it as a haven for sex tourists. After I checked in, I happened upon a little tidbit on the web. It turns out that the wacko that claimed that he killed JonBenet Ramsey (remember her?) was living there when he "confessed". (For those who do not commit details of media frenzies to memory, it was concluded that this guy could not possibly have killed her and was just nuts.)

Another new thing added on this trip to Bangkok was my use of motorcycle taxis. There was always a bunch of them waiting outside my hotel. During high traffic times, they are a lot faster than regular taxis because they can just go around the cars in a traffic jam. And, I was surprised to discover, they have fixed rates, so you do not have to negotiate a price like you do with tuk-tuks. Of course, you always run the risk of getting your head splattered on the pavement. They usually have an extra helmet to help prevent this.

When my one month visa expired, I left Thailand. I had an old friend to meet in Bali.