take what you need....

getting from Bali to the islands off Lombok turns out to be really easy.  they have a good shuttle system for tourists so i get a 9AM pick up at the home stay, a 30 minute ride in a van then they drop you at the boat out to the islands. it's really well organized and they even tag the tourists with tags..... my bag and i are both tagged yellow for a drop on Gili Air.  as soon as the boat departs there is an exodus from the cabin to get a place on the upper deck. 

soon the upper deck is packed like a boat filled with african refugees fleeing to europe but the mood is quite different. the crew brings out  the beer and it transforms into a party. i love being on the water.  the salt, the sun, the wind - it all feels fantastic.  the channel crossing here is notoriously bad because the boats they use aren't really designed for any bad weather.  there is an obnoxious group of french tourists  on the deck and my worst fear is being stuck with them in a lifeboat.  i think i'd rather face the sharks.  i take the morning option and get across before the storms come up. the drop on the island is a wet one.  you just jump over the side and wade to the beach.

the island is really tiny.  it only takes 5 minutes to walk to the place i picked out online. it's not even noon so i drop my bag and head out to explore the island.  the first stop is the yoga place next door.








on the board at the yoga centre i found a note someone had posted.  when i walked past at the end of the week almost all the tabs were gone.  it really seems that simple on the island... take what you need.  

a day around Bali

one of the men at the homestay set up a guide for a few of us to do a tour of some temples, volcanos and some other tourist stuff.  it was $40 for a car/driver for the day.

the volcano was spectacular but it didn't take long for me to get annoyed at the first temple we went to.  i hate when they charge you for access to a religious place.  then they charge you for a sarong which i felt was unnecessary because i was covered from my elbows to below my knees.  it's like selling tickets to get into St. Peters in the Vatican.  yeah, it was just a few dollars but i vowed it's the last time i'd pay for access to a religious site. 


the temple was on the crater rim and so made for a breathtaking view and we did have a good discussion with the driver/guide on the religious practices of the Balanese people.  every day, all day, you can see women carrying offerings to the temples.  they feel this provides balance between what they get from the gods and what they give. the Balanese seem happy and content and interested in welcoming visitors.

down inside the volcano are some hot springs so i let my annoyance at the temple melt away with the steam and enjoy how beautiful the moment was in a natural rock hot spring in Bali.  did i mention i'm the luckiest girl in the world?

they organize hikes up the volcano side for sunrise and had i'd known how spectacular it was i'd have tried to arrange that.  it's just a seven hour hike and they run trips out of Ubud but i didn't have the proper footwear and i have been nursing a sprained ankle for a few days.  something to do on my next trip to Bali.  inside the crater are old lava flows and multiple new cones but this volcano is considered dormant.



next up on the tour is the rice terraces.  for whatever reason UNESCO has given the terraces some kind of recognition as being culturally important.  so on the side of the hill opposite the rice terraces is a half kilometer of shops and restaurants.  it feels like a manufactured tourist site... like those 'factories' you get stuck going to on an organized tour.  i say it's okay to skip this site.  it made me think of what a lost opportunity there is in the mid west.  if only UNESCO would call a corn field important, we could set up some bars and shops in the middle of a field and make a lot of money letting tourists watch the corn grow.  you could probably even charge extra to let them harvest some of the corn.

anyway, we ate lunch on a lovely platform in the middle of the rice fields and this huge toad hopped up for a visit.  i think this is the largest toad i've ever seen in my life.  bigger than both my fists put together.

Ubud

from Echo Beach i move up to Ubud, in the central part of the island.  i plan to spend about a week in Ubud and every minute is packed.  i check my bag at a hotel and head over to the Yoga Barn which is best sumarized as yoga for the masses.  i took a couple of classes which all had great instructors.  they all have legit yogi names like Bex, Bantu, Gypsy, etc. the one thing they do really really good is that all the classes i took had a consistent style which is rare at any yoga studio.  the part that i didn't like was they cram the classes full.  so the better part of me says, hey, it's good that so many people want to do yoga today.  the other part says, 6cm is way to close for yoga mats.  so ultimately, i find another much smaller studio which is fantastic.  i get a pass that allows me to try lots of different types of yoga practices and every day i can feel my core and arms getting stronger.  interestingly, in Ubud, 50% of the classes were men.  at the barn they even offerred a man class.

garden view from my room

clean laundry $1.40US

Indonesian style homes are unique.  it allows multigenerational families to coexist in the same space.  there is a courtyard and a separate cooking area that is shared but the parents and married siblings each have separate living quarters.  after a disappointing first night in a hotel [why do i continue to book these when they are always overpriced and not at all what i want? - convenince i suppose] i found a homestay with a local family.  it's a typical home stay with a private room and bath.  and breakfast. $14/night. the patriarch in this family was wielding a paint brush on a canvas - in the form of nude women which he tried to sell off as 'a painting of you' .  he was harmless enough but not blessed with natural talent.  there is always a dog or two and kids playing in the courtyard.  flying kites or banging on drums or some other kid stuff.  most importantly, they embrace you as if you are one of the family and for my stay i enjoyed seeing the friendly faces every day.

even better, was the string of vegetarian and vegan restaurants on the street i was staying.  one spot had such good gluten free cake that when people arrive at the restaurant they pick out which dessert they want so it can be held for them.

random pink chick on street

reality check

over the last week i've been talking to a lot of westerners and i say things that aren't normal.  like, isn't it magic when hot water comes out of the shower? do you think the bottled water is safe to drink?  do they make bread here?  can i get chopsticks because i can't remember how to use a fork?

saying these things out loud is not good.  usually the reaction i get is a variation of 'why yes, it's magic!' or 'why would you say that?'

every day it seems like it's something different.  the other day it was when i walked into the grocery store to purchase fruit.  i passed the dairy section something caught my eye and turned to look .... there was a whole case full of cheese.  not just one kind or one brand, but at least 10 kinds of cheese.  i stood there trying to look normal but my head was exploding.  

i feel like i need to make a list of things not to say to regular people.  i also noticed that although most locals in Bali speak and comprehend English extremely well and are willing to chat i'm not used to engaging the locals on the street.  in Myanmar the locals mostly just ignore westerners.  the kids still stare at us but they are scared too.  the people and kids on my street and the security guards all talk to me but once i'm out of my street it's different.

the frightening thing is i've been in Myanmar less than 6 months.  i can't imagine what it does to the psyche of people who have been living under the military power for 60 years.

not a secret

i was walking with a fellow american after a yoga class.  we were talking about nothing and she started asking me questions about Myanmar.  just the usual stuff, then she asked how big the country was and i said about a 2 hour plane ride from border to border.  next she asked how many people and i said, 'the government census last year said there were 50 million but they don't count the people in the concentration camps.'  she thought that i was kidding.  it was just another one of thosse moments when i realize how crazy the country is and how little people know about it.

WAKE UP WORLD - there are concentration camps in Myanmar and it is not a secret.  in fact it's been quite widely reported.  and yes, someone should tell Obama.  he didn't mention it when he visited last November.

even Aung San Su Kyi doesn't talk about it and she's the poster child for human rights violations in the country.  i pray that behind the scenes people are working on this issue because it's not getting the attention it deserves.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/16/opinion/nicholas-kristof-myanmar-documentary.html?_r=0

http://time.com/2888864/rohingya-myanmar-burma-camps-sittwe/

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116241/burma-2014-countryside-concentration-camps

Echo Beach

i flew in and spent a couple of days in the southern part of Bali because i wanted  to shop before i moved into more rural parts or the islands.  i'd been told not to linger in Kuta/Seminyak and that was good advice.  it's unimpressive and in some areas the touts are more than just annoying -  i don't care that they are selling viagra on the beach but some of them are obnoxious. 

Echo Beach is far enough up the coast to discourage the touts and it's a popular surf spot so lots of everything that goes along with that culture.  it's still strange for me to see so many westerners.  some days in Myanmar i go all day without speaking to a westerner.  then you show up at an expat event and there will be 150 and everyone is like 'where did all these westerners come from?'.  yeah, i know it's crazy.

the surf is very strong here and i am interested to take a lesson which i have never done but a couple of times when i went in to swim i was just tossed around like a rag doll so i need to start someplace much easier. in an amazing mixture of past centuries and present the beach is lined with graphiti fences amid the old temples.

Tanah Lot is one of the more spectacular shrines and it just north of Echo Beach so a few of us from yoga go for sunset one evening.  the days here are busy, wake up, yoga, eat, beach, massage, nap, pool, cocktails, sunset.  i'll be moving up to Ubud next which is in the middle of the island.  

my first trip to Bali

after all the time i have spent in SE Asia it seems a bit strange that i never made it to Bali.  the transit section of the KL aiport is especially boring.  wouldn't want to get trapped there for too long.  there wasn't even a major airline club room which seemed odd. so i arrived in Bali tired and hungry.  i'd been up for an early flight from Yangon, connecting in KL and getting to Bali took a little longer than expected.  i was immediately struck by how clean everything was and how nice the taxi drivers were.  the roads were good and traffic wasn't bad.  the hotel staff at Akmani were pleasant and helpful.  there were so many westerners everywhere. 

when i woke up on my first day i knew i needed to sort out my plans and i did, kind of, i knew i wanted to sit on the beach for a few days then head inland to Ubud and then out to Lombok.  i booked a hotel on Echo Beach just north of Seminyak.  it should be less touristy and the beaches cleaner. then i headed to the rooftop pool for a swim.  i met an Australian and we walked down to the beach for what turned out to be a spectacular sunset.  it felt so good to walk in the sand and i discovered something called Smirnoff Ice. 

it's an amazing feeling to see so many places where it's safe to eat and they have good fresh food.  in Myanmar a jaunt to a clean restaurant where the food is fresh and prepared without an excess of oil requires a 30+ minute taxi ride which i've already described. 

just running errands around town

before i'm off for the trip to Bali i have a bunch of errands that have piled up and there is no putting them off.  i've mapped out the trip around town and leave early in the morning to get as much as possible done before it gets really, really hot.  

i haven't driven anything except the scooter i had in Chiang Mai since i left the US and it's such a luxury for me to be driven everywhere.  westerners think that Asians drive really badly because we are so used to different road rules.  of course when they are in a western country they need to adapt to our rules but i don't think there is a higher accident rate in Asia than in western countries.  

in most of the SE Asian countries where i've been walking across the road is a bit like that game frogger but walking in Yangon is a totally different scenario.  those 'buddhists' will run your ass over in a heartbeat.  about once a month i will be in a taxi that hits a pedestrian. it's horrific.  one time it was a child about 6 years old and he hit him hard.  after the brother/friend picked up the boy the driver just kept going until he got to a traffic jam and then he got out and checked for what?  a dent? blood? 

the roads are packed with taxis because it's just in the last few years that the government has allowed the masses to buy cars - leading to the obvious problems like parking and traffic jams.  it's just a few dollars for a taxi ride but it can take 30 minutes to go 2 miles in some parts of Yangon.  motorbikes are forbidden in the city and there are very few bicycles because there are incomprehensible rules around that as well.  on some streets you are forbidden to ride bicycles and the police will confiscate the bike.  the problem is there's no way to know which roads are forbidden.  there are cyclos [we call them pedicabs] but they mostly operate off the main roads and again the rules seem to be murky.

the staff arranges a car/driver when i have meetings during the day but evenings and weekends i am on my own.  that involves standing on the road, trying not to get hit and flagging down a car.  then you have to negotiate a fair price [westerners get charged more of course] and depending on how hot it is - if they will turn on the ac for you. sometimes it's better to not have ac.  closing the windows and turning on the ac flushes out the mosquitoes [never figured out how there can be so many mosquitoes living in a car] and being paranoid about dengue, well...  also, the cars have tiny engines so the ac only works if the car is actually moving. 80% of the taxis are grimy and disgustingly dirty so it's a good day when you find a clean one.

i remember one day, there was a student protest moving into the city so traffic was especially bad.  i was in a taxi, it was hot and traffic was at a standstill for over 10 minutes.  i had a sinus infection so i felt miserable and the gas fumes from a bus in the next lane were overwhelming.  i looked up in annoyance at the bus and realized, on my worst day, i still had it so much better than most of the people of Myanmar.  imagine whatever horrible bus you've ever been on or seen a picture of it - i promise you it's much worse.

few westerners ever ride the city buses.  i only met one westerner who had done it.  it's a bizarre system where the bus drivers lease the bus by the day.  they are paid based on the number of riders they have so they compete with other buses to get to the stops quickly.  it takes a team of three people to man a bus  - the driver; the fare collector and the door guy whose job is to push people on/off the bus and to shout out the bus route/next stop. it's really chaotic and sometimes i stand on the street watching a busy stop for a few minutes.

but on this day i seem to get all the good taxis with ac and reward myself at the end of the day with a stop at my favorite foot massage place on Nawaday Road.  60 minutes $6US.

Thingyan - the Water Festival

the burmese new year called Thingyan falls in April.  it's a four day holiday that somehow gets stretched out to two weeks.  it's the hotest month before the rainy season begins and so not much gets done in April in Myanmar.  kind of like August in Europe or the US.  during the holiday, the tradition of sprinkling of water to cleanse the sins of the last year has transitioned into buckets and hoses of water drenching anyone in the street.

this of course is fun for the first five minutes but carrying around your mobile phone in a ziplock to make sure it doesn't get drenched gets old really quickly. 

so, everything shuts down.  in anticipation of the profits to be made during the festival they pull all the western products off the shelves so whie the warehouses are full the shelves remain empty.  Because of the sanctions and internal laws about foreign ownership there are not a lot of western brands in Myanmar anyway.  the expats further contribute to the problem by hoarding product [there just was a tonic shortage] when it's available.  every shopping trip is different because there you absolutely don't know what will be on the shelves.

during the there's a lot of drinking by the locals, roads are closed and some of the expats have been moved closer to housing closer to their offices.  i've decided it would be a good time to combine a visa run with a few weeks in Bali.

some things seem so crazy it's hard to explain well, here's an article from the paper that explain how the police intend to decrease sexual violence during the holiday.

http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/14036-birth-control-pulled-from-shelves-on-police-orders.html

education & critical thinking

my first month on the project here i was working very independently as i put together the market analysis and strategic sales and marketing plan.  in that time i heard a lot of frustration from expats about the local staff they worked with.  an assistant had been hired for me before i even started but she quit after one day because the HR guy introduced her around as an assistant instead of a deputy.  then as i started building staff to implement the project i began to understand what the other expats were talking about. 

all the nationals have bunches of certificates and 'degrees' which seems like it would be impressive.  but the certifications for the most part are worthless.  i met with the HR Director of a multinational oil and gas company and he said he can't justify hiring nationals with engineering degrees because they can't do the same work as engineers trained outside the country.  i had a westerner tell me he wouldn't hire anyone under the age of 30.

under the British rule [pre 1950] the education system was quite good.  so it is very common to meet 60 year old men who speak perfect english and can debate philosophy.  the staff i have is not like that.  they are not stupid but they have no critical thinking skills or any practical business skills at all.  most American teenagers have better computer skills than the 20ish college graduates here.    it's going to be a problem for the country for at least another generation.

teachers are one of the most highly respected professions but even at the university level some are paid only $90 month.  

this card says it all.  here's a woman with a bunch of degrees including one on Intellectual Property.  she misspelled Intellectual as Intelletual.