Kia Ora!

18 DEC 08 - Thomas' Hotel, Christchurch, New Zealand

We made it into Christchurch last Monday after a strange and annoying commute from Indonesia. Leaving Bali, we thought we were giving ourselves plenty of time to take it easy through check-in, security and the always probable 'unknown.' But we were incorrect. 3 hours was not enough time as it turned out.

What happened was, I almost didn't get to come to NZ at all. How this almost happened was because the airline company, JetStar, really didn't want to let me get onto the plane. Specifically, 3 individuals working on 1 computer were very concerned about me not having a return ticket back to the US. They said that it was suspicious that I'd be traveling to NZ if I didn't either have a work visa or a return ticket. Every person who enters New Zealand for Holiday has an automatic 90 day holiday visa- this does not allow you to work, just to be here for 3 months. I would have this visa and have 90 days to figure out my next move.  I really couldn't understand why they felt like it was their problem, but they really wanted me to be aware that it was. It wasn't like these were Customs or Immigration people; these were half-wit employees who were literally running behind the counter to a dozen other employees gossiping about whether or not it was ok for me to get on the plane or not. What the heck was I gonna do if I couldn't get on the plane!? We asked what options we had, they did not provide us with any suggestion except blank stares and finger pointing towards the exit door.

After Heather showed them her working visa, they gave her both of her boarding passes and looked at me like I needed to figure something else out. So the only way to get on the plane, it appeared, was to purchase a departing ticket from New Zealand. But for some reason it was impossible for me to buy one from them. This again was more confusing because how can one not purchase an airline ticket from the airline company at the airport? All the employees could offer were big unhelpful smiles.

In the most panicked moment of my life, I sprinted down to the nearest Internet cafe that was hopefully open and hopefully had a printer to buy a really expensive ticket. It was totally rediculous because the outcome could have been super crappy all over one stupid piece of paper. Why was it their problem? But in the end, we both made it on the plane with a one way ticket to LAX in hand that will never be used, and arrived glossy-eyed and delerious in Christchurch at about 3:45.

It took us about 1.5 hours to get through customs and security. I was really nervous about getting my tent through. I've been dragging it around this entire time because I want to go camping a lot while we're here but don't want to spend so much money on a new one so the prospect of having it confiscated made me anxious. NZ has strict Bio rules and absolutely will not allow any plant or food items into the country. Any camping gear must be inspected. The last time I came, I lied to the agent but got away with it. This time, I figured there was too much at stake to be jerking custom agents around so I was all charm and smiles on my way through... if you can believe that!

Heather was really nervous too because the claims card clearly stated that if you coming here for a working permit, you needed to have your printed visa, bank statement and some other forms that we didn't have on us. This came no suprise to us because we've been trying our best to miss flights, get held up and/or just not being prepared at all on our way into new countries. (We don't recomend going about it this way.) Seperatly, we think we are each fairly intellegent and functioning adults but together we make the most mentally challenged travelering pair ever.

But our angst was all for not. The immigration guy swiped our passports through and all of our visa information came right up on his monitor and that was that. Stamp, stamp, stamp and we were good to go!

The health care recruiter that has been working with Heather for the last year met us at the airport and drove us to the hostel. Since then we have been busy getting all of our ducks in a row and are now situated. We signed our housing lease today are movng in this afternoon!

Our address is

6/53 Gloucester Street

Christchurch Center, Canterbury

New Zealand

if you go to maps.google.co.nz and punch in our address, you can totally see our apartment building. You can also pan around and see the street from all angles. We live right across the street from the Art Gallery and down the way from the city library. One of the worlds largest botanical garden /urban parks is two blocks to our west. The hospital Heather is working at is a softball's throw away too!

Up on Sugarloaf Scenic reserve looking down onto Christchurch!

They say that for every one person in NZ, there used to be 17 sheep! That's like almost 100 million sheep!!! These two gentlemen were snacking on some grass when we out on a drive.

11 DEC 08 - Kedins Resort, Kuta, Bali

We're back in Kuta Bali! We are staying at a different accommodation this time around however. This place is a little down the ally from where we stayed a couple weeks ago. And it's easily the best value we have had on our entire trip. There's a big pool, air con, a big bathroom and free breakfast; all for about $10 a night. The only thing the room doesn't have is hot water, but that's the thing with budget places, you have to give and take the comforts things.

Yesterday was a hellascious voyage back from Lombok. The distance by sea that separates the island of Bali and the island of Lombok is about 35 kilometers (a little more than 21 miles). The nasty ferry we took went about 5 mph which made it a very long and exhausting trip. By US standards, there is absolutely nothing I can even compare the conditions on this ferry to. And I'm even imagining what it'd be like to sneak onto a box car carrying dead rotting animal carcases, deficate and piss in the corner when releaving needed to be done, biting into a living rat for a snack and discovering the vagabond sharing your space with likes to snuggle on long trips.

I am telling you, there is nothing like a trip on this ferry that will turn you into the kind of adult you used to scoff at when you were a teenager. I'm refering the kind of finicky person that absolutely requires a/c in ther resort rooms, needs all the vacation comforts easily accessible at the 5 star resort they are staying at and will only eat foods they are fimilar to from home. It's gotten almost to this point for me. I think Heather gave way a long time ago... Yes, I believe it was a month ago when she scooted the bed across the room so that when she had to visit the bathroom for the hundreth time during the night, all she would need to do is hedgehog roll her deathly nauscious body off the bed directly to the toilet. I think that was probably when.

What's so frustrating about this russian roulette game of consuming food is that once you get it, it seems to never go away. You begin to wonder if maybe their is something systemically wrong with your body. You begin to peruse the internet for treatments for symptoms you are having. When one thing doesn't work, you try another. And having a nurse for a wife is only so beneficial. Don't get me wrong, if there was an all-star team for nurses, Heather would consistantly be on that team. I am very proud of her sucess as a nurse and I know she is one of, if not the best, best nurses in her units at any given time. But one of her recent diagnosis brought me to a place in my life that I'd never thought I'd be. I'll save you the particulars but the end resulted with a first time encounter with a sapository and me walking like Steve Urkel for a couple days!

This is a view looking down into a ravine at one of two waterfalls at the base Mt. Rinjani. The mountain is the second highest in all of Indonesia. We had to hire a local guide to take us down but it wasn't because it was dangerous and difficult to find but because it's another way for locals to generate revenue.

Easily the best time I have had on our trip was visiting Monkey Forrest. All along the road that cuts across the NW base of Mt. Rinjani are thousands of little monkey tribes. Nobody knows how many monkeys there are but they hang out in definite groups of 12-20. As we were feeding one group bananas, a half dozen other tribes were squeaking and hollering all around off in the distance. These monkeys are amazing. I would hold out a banana chunk and each monkey would come up to me, politely take a chunk, show me their teeth and take a couple steps back to meticulously peel and scarf it down. Some of the younger monkeys were a little more skiddish and they would be more grabby. One guy was tugging on my shorts from behind to get my attention. The best part about the monkey groups is the Chief monkey. Each group has one and he is the biggest. Of the two spots we visited, the chief monkey was always the first to approach us and both chiefs were very polite. (Polite in the sense of being calm, appreciative and very nonchalant.)

I think this monkey is a pregnant monkey.

I saw this mama monkey with her two young-ans. When I aimed my camera from about 20 feet away, she saw me and stepped in between me and the babies. She wrapped them up and starred at me until we left.

Now, we are living up the last two full days in Indonesia before we fly to NZ on Monday!!!

Jannah's Utopic Eden

6DEC08 - Gili Trawagan, Lombok, Indonesia


Did you know that Indonesia is a nation of over 17,000 islands? Most of these islands are totally undeveloped and the ones that are, are basically tribal and completely untouched by the exploitative hand of tourism?

The island we are on now, Gili Trawagan (Trawagan Island), is in between this description and it's antithesis. I imagine this place is what Thailand was like 30 years ago. The island is small; takes about 90 minutes to walk around. There are absolutely no motor vehicles or scooters, which is a nice change from anywhere else in Southeast Asia because everywhere else there is no such thing as pedestrian friendly! The primary modes of transpo are donkey carriages and bicycles.

There is only one 'resort' hotel on the north end of the island which goes for $90 USD a night! (Which is about 5 times more expensive than anywhere else we've stayed.) The rest of the places are small, family run bungalows. The food is relatively cheap and today we finally found a cafe that actually serves real coffee. I haven't had this kind of caffeine buzz since I first discovered white chocolate mochas my freshman year in college!

Yesterday we went on snorkeling trip around this island and it's two smaller siblings. The world of the ocean is a crazy place! We saw a giant turtle, a big clam and thousands of neon glowing fishes.

For entertainment in the evenings, there a couple watering holes that offer western/jamaican music and cheap cocktails. Another place has live bongo-drum and didgeridoo music and offers rice alcohol laced with psilocybin. Apparently there is no form of law enforcement outside of tribal command which allows this for kind of local novelty. If only I were 8 years younger would I dare to try to go down this path but now that the perceived invincibility of youth has worn off, I am sure the incredible angst of adulthood would get the best of me. Who knows what dark corner of this island I would end up huddled in!!!

So we stick with White Russians and 30 cent movie rentals of pirated hollywood hits. If you've never seen a pirated version of a movie, it's very entertaining. The audio sucks but inevitably you can totally tell the version you are watching was recorded from the inside of some dudes jacket. You will miss pivotal moments in the movie because the screen goes black from the outlines of giant fingers hiding the lens from theatre ushers. It's classic.

Looking out from a cafe on Gili T is the island of Lombok... this island truly is paradise!

Looking south at a surf break.

The most developed section on Gili T. This newly constructed street was approximately 150 meters long in front of a string of beachfront bungalows just outside of the main hub.

A table for two at sunset anyone?



The turtle conservation tank.

The path that encircles the island. We took a 20 min donkey carriage ride around to explore.


Ok ok, enough with the "My Giant" jokes, I have heard it all from Mike already...ha ha. I swear this guy was standing back from the carriage just far enough only to look very tiny. Also, I really felt the cart was quite spacious and comfy enough for 2 people despite looking like I will burst through the roof and sides of it. I do think I look pretty proud of myself for being so big... maybe Ill be drafted to the WNBA when this gets out!!

So this is what happens when you drop your dirty laundry off at the reception desk... they tell you it will be done by this evening only to come home from a very relaxing and beautiful walk along the beach to find your undies hung just outside your bungalow for the world to see... Mike thought it was pretty funny anyway.

Mt. Rinjani, Indonesia's 2nd tallest Mountain, peeks up through the clouds at sunset. Just an incredible site to see!





Sunset.

Good for You and Good for Me

2 DEC 2008 - Linas Hotel, Sengiggi, Lombok, Indonesia

89, overcast and muggy from this Island place. It's not quite paradise but it's certainly a place far from home.

THE SICKNESS

There is this brilliant moment in one of my favorite movies, Donnie Darko, where Donnie suggests that the greatest invention of all time is soap. At the time I saw it, I couldn't say I totally agreed but now, after we've been sick multiple times for reasons we are positive derive from eating food that has been prepared from people not washing their hands, I absolutely agree.

Today, Heather woke up with a headache again. Her body ached too. We thought it had something to do with the fact that we slept for 18 straight hours after another cumbersome and needlessly long trip from the island of Bali to the island of Lombok. (This travel, too, was booked via a travel company... more on that to come.) But when she didn't want breakfast, we knew the bug was back.

I'm telling you, we've been taking turns with this son of a bitch and it's getting annoying. The only possible thing that's benefiting from these shenanigans is our livers because we seriously have had not one night in the last 3 weeks where we've felt vigorous enough to get on the booze and let our hair down. The one night, two nights ago, when we felt like we could possibly go out, we didn't because we had to wake up at 5 am the next morning to make our 6am pick up to come out to Lombok. The 6 am pick up turned out to be totally unnecessary!

GOOD FOR YOU, GOOD FOR ME

There is an expression in Indonesia when it comes to tourism and it is: "Good for you, good for me."

This expression is supposed to mean that locals get an opportunity to earn money that is otherwise scarce in an impoverished nation by providing quick and easy services for tourists. In return, the tourist's experience is made more comfortable by utilizing these services.

What this expression really means is that you are a white tourist and I'm going to exploit the shit out of you by leveraging your ignorance to local costs, capacity to be polite and willingness to not get in any sort of trouble with the local police against your wallet!

Point in case: Around just after 7 am the van that picked us up at 545, not 6, dropped us off at a cafe in a harbor town. A man walked out to us from inside the cafe across the street and told us that our ferry leaves at 930 and we were more than welcomed to have breakfast at his cafe.

"How very convenient for you," Mike thought.

We were hungry and we did expect this kind of situation to present itself along this sort of trip...

(You should be aware, should you ever choose to travel to a developing country, that there is a very developed scheme involved with travel packages arranged through tour companies.)

What happens is, you think you are purchasing a ticket to a place and to that place alone, but you are not. When you buy a ticket to Sengiggi, Lombok from Kuta, Bali, for example, you are not simply purchasing the trip with all of the connections, you are buying a chance for several hands to get into your pockets. You do eventually get your desired destination, but it's not until you've been subjected to countless exploitations. Let me explain this scheme in the actual itinerary versus the advertised itinerary that we purchased:

What you think you're getting:

6:00 am - pick up from Hotel in Kuta, Bali
4:00 pm - arrive in Sengiggi, Lombok

What you actually get:

5:45 am - pick up from Hotel in Kuta, Bali

5:45 - 6:15 am - pick up other travelers at other hotels in Kuta to be crammed into the van

6:15 - 7:15 am - arrive at a cafe near the ferry connection. This cafe is just far enough away where you aren't sure that you are close to your next connection, but you are definitely far enough away that you could be wrong.

7:15 - 9:10 - Have the 'option' to eat breakfast at the overpriced cafe or try to walk to a cheaper place to eat but you find only nothing. You discover that that cafe is apparently the only cafe in a half hour walking distance. And the guy at the cafe just happens to be the person holding your connection ticket to get onto the ferry. So you walk back to the cafe just in time to eat toast.

9:10 - 9:25 - Feeling defeated already with your crappy dry toast, out of nowhere a half dozen dudes materialize from thin air and grab your backpacks and start fast-walking down the street. The guy at the cafe slams your connection ticket down on the table and says, "thank you, have a good ferry ride!" You grab a hold of your spinning head and wonder to yourself, "what the heck!" This is just in time to realize that all of your worldly possessions are walking away from you down the street. So you gather yourself and jog up ahead, but it doesn't matter how fast you move because the two guys who have your bags seems to only get farther down the street. You follow them onto the ferry to the way back of the ship where buses and trucks are already parked so tight you can barely squeeze your body through between them and this is when you lose your freaking mind. Because at this point, the two guys are holding out their hands saying, "Pay the porter!"
And from a dark, deep place that is normally unfamiliar, except when I am drunk, you say, "Go fuck yourself!!!"
You also say, "Heather, grab your shit and lets go!"
But at this point, you recognize your wife has gone into damage control mode and she is trying to negotiate. So now it's a matter of grabbing all of both your bags and trying to get away from these thieves. But you cannot. They follow you all the way up to the third deck of the ferry. Finally, you stack your bags up into a pile and you sit on them. All-the-while, this guy is in your face and he is saying things like, "I've carried your bag for you!" and "It's good for you and good for me!" But this is not good for us! It is especially not good when you finally, after looking into your tearing wife's eyes, agree to pay something. So you, defeatedly, ask how much... (this is when you go beyond losing your mind) They say, "100,000 rupiahs!"
This is so far from ridiculous that you fetch a smaller 10,000 bill from your wallet and hand it to the guy and say flatly, "This is it. We are not moving. Go get the police if you have a problem with this." But the guy will continue to argue with you saying that 10,000 is only for his boss and that he will not get paid.
It is only after you realize these guys are full of shit and you will not get into trouble since his buddy has fled that you will finally sit calmly on all of your bags while you stare blankly off into the distance and the guy will still try to talk to you for another 5 minutes until the ferry's horn blows and he runs off too, you will find rage in knowing you just got scammed. All the while, all of the other tourists who witnessed the whole thing knew that those guys where scammers but did not say anything during the incident. So once the ferry gets moving and you are far out to sea to feel comfortable, you look around to wonder why no one else said shit. Don't worry, this is natural and the name of the game.

9:25 - 13:30 - 4 hour ferry ride. Not much BS here except that for 1 1/2 hours of the voyage is spent bobbing totally still in the middle of the ocean for absolutely no reason.

13:30 - 14:15 - Arrive at the port to get onto a bus that has no doors. Of course, the only seat available is the one next to the open hole that used to be an operable door. So you need to find a way to enjoy clinging for your life next for the next 45 minutes down a bumpy road.

14:15 - 15:00 - Arrive at yet another cafe in the middle of nowhere to either eat overpriced food or go hungry...

good for you, good for me

15:00 - 15:15 - Have to urinate so bad that you rationalize a good spot underneath a nearby staircase and hope that nobody notices. Transfer from one small bus to a dirty van.

15:15 - 16:00 - It's another long ride but you do finally arrive at your chosen destination only after the driver takes you to 3 other hotels to see if, "maybe you like this better."

But, this is the way it is and this is the way to get somewhere! So, we are staying here for two days and then we are off to the Gili Islands for probably 7-9 days. After that, we will be getting ready to fly to New Zealand!!! We finally found some relatively affordable tickets and we hope to be into our new home by Christmas!

M&H