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Malaysian Weddings

Trip to Kuching

Our days in Indonesia are coming to an end. It is time to head to
Kuching and we are hoping to do it in an adventurous way. We only have
24 hours to get from Yogya to Kunching. Our day began early catching a
plane from Yogya to Pontianak. Arrived at Pontianak around 10 am...
Nobody speaks English. We took cab to the bus station since we are
aware of the daily buses from Pontianak to Kuching...the bus leaves at
9 pm but we want to fit in some river adventure, we ask if we can
travel river up half of the way an meet the bus in Sosok, a town near
the border. They say it's possible and they direct us towards the
place to catch a boat. We start walking, the road becomes a board walk
with enough space for one person, few boards missing but for the most
part steady. People look at us and giggle, some kids greet us with a
loud "hello mister" and they jump in the water. We don't really know
where we are suppose to be going. We see a Polisi station and hope to
get some information, we try to ask "mana kapal Tayan", literally,
where boat Tayan, they don't understand, neither do we, they laugh, we
laugh, look at the dictionary and try again.. finally we think they
understood and they write and address in a paper. We rush back to a
road signal to a micro bus, show the adress and get on. The guy drops
us off, but we find out we are still 10 km away from the address we
were given. We get on a second minibus, this time one pretty crowded,
people keep getting in and out, our back packs occupy most of the bus
floor.

We are dropped off and we can see some type of house-boat on the
distance, we belive that must be our transport. We try to talk to
guy... We say our 3 Indonesian words one more time, he speaks non-
stop, we don't understand but we think he is saying no boat to Tayan,
we was obviously saying a lot more. We keep walking, see an office,
ask for a phone and voilà a nice lady speaks English! We called a
guide named Alex, he tells us to meet him at a department store and
he'll put us on a public boat.
We are sent back to the same place we started, this time the ride is
free.
We meet Alex and he puts us on speedboat, this how they call there
public boats. Now we are on the boat with about ten more people
looking at the dense jungle on the sides and the colorful semi ready-
to-sink boat houses. There are logs of wood logs drying on the side
of the river and the landscape starts turning orange us the sun goes
down. We spend about 3 ours or so and now it seems we've arrived. Got
to go we are in Tayan

Borobudur

Mt. Rinjani

Arriving late (as usual - thanks Sinan) to the Mataram aiport we are picked up by our tour guide... or rather, his driver and taken to sengiggi - the center of Rinjani trekking. We agree to a price, $200 hoping we would get to summit the mountain, and head to a hotel for the night.

Next day up at 5am for the long car ride to the edge of the mountain. We arrive, and the trek "manager" organizes several groups, sending us off full of banana pancakes and his youngest nephew (izzy) who will be our guide.

Turns out Izzy is smoking too much, so we quickly pass him on the trail and begin up on our own. The mountain begins through a cloud forest with lots of humid, wet trees and bugs buzzing around. Half way up we stop for lunch, the porters (carrying far more than their own shares) cook some soup, boil some eggs, and throw some rice on top. The food is delicious, and certianly not clean (not western clean, that is). The mountain got significantly steeper as we got close to the crater rim, this was expected, but not welcomed.

With dust covering our bodies, we take the last few steps to the rim edge and are welcomed to a beauty few have seen. Here, a perfect cone volcanoe grows out from the middle of an old, much larger volcanoes crater. And, they are still active. The small volcanoe, as night fell, revealed its red glow as lava spewed out constantly. Even through the night, camped just over the hill, we were remined of mother earths power as the volcanoe sent thunderous echoes throughout the region.

The next day, waking for sunrise over the ridge, we head back down the mountain - probably much faster than we should have as our legs still cry everytime we sit down... oh well, that's vacation.

Tropical Singapore Photo

Tropical Singapore

So, we arrived tired last night at midnight. Woke early today and walked the city from Little India, through Chinatown, and on Orchard Road (a shopaholics fantansy). This image is from the quite exquisite orhid garden in the national botanical gardens.

We're off to Jakarta! See you in two weeks Singapore.