This that shizz that begin again.
Damn straight.
There are worse places to be for four hours...
Also this, in which Thalia Zedek liked my Facebook post! Eeeeeeeeeeeep!
This bizarre government pronouncement.
Yo, this how I'm rolling, y'all.
View from my window in Jakarta. Word of warning: when I travel to hot, sweaty countries, I usually pack some talcum powder. Customs in Indonesia were particularly interested in my gigantic tub of white powder.
Still, I'M IN INDONESIA!
These were just outside my room. I imagine they're for spying.
No. 27. Why I'm glad I'm a vegetarian.
All the comforts of home.
Breakfast buffet in Indo. Not a patch on the Europeans but it'll do in a pinch.
J-town, see you later.
Neo-colonialist iconography.
Jakarta to Bandung looks like this.
Prettiest train.
Modes of travel, fade to white.
Good point wall!
Street art.
Waterfront views.
The oldest cinema in Indonesia, built in 1905(?), and still going.
Why? What's he ever done?
The inside of the hotel was totally Art Deco, though.
An hour and a half of traditional West Javanese stuff: singing, dancing, music, etc. This was ace!
Re-post of The Savoy, which I posted sideways. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford stayed here when they performed here back in the day. The guy said that the architecture was Art Deco, but the stuff on the left totally looks like Bahaus architecture to me.
My hotel in Pangandaran. It took a four hour train trip and a two hour bus ride to get here.
View from my balcony in Pangandaran I.
View from my balcony in Pangandaran II. No, really, this shit is idyllic.
Proper idyllic.
This is the view from the restaurant I am in. Seriously, Indonesia, you can go and get fucked.
Just in case anyone thought this trip was gonna change me.
Hike cancelled due to inclement weather. THUNDEROUS SIGH
Harrison Ford in Force 10 from Navarone.
Tell us what you really think, scooter with a trailer.
This cheeky fucker.
THIS cheeky fucker.
Black sheep of the family.
Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.
Blue eggs.
Bags of pee, I assume...?
Soya bean Jenga.
We went on a boat ride up the Green Valley. Butterflies are wont to frolic here.
View from where the Green Valley tour ended. There was a tiny rapid/waterfall here.
Had to try a cigarette as they have cloves in them so they taste super sweet. Don't tell my moms.
Saw this cutie. She was definitely pregnant, possibly rabid. For @killthesuperheroes
I think this sign and others like it sprung up post the tsunami. THUNDEROUS SIGH
A Musholla, which is a small prayer room for if you can't make it to a mosque when the call to prayer sounds.
Last meal in Pangandaran. Seafood hot pot. So fucking good.
Like Jenga for Chocolate.
Anarchy in Yogja.
Fucking sing it!
Back just in time to catch the delightful @firazzle in the Killer Elite. Also, hey, Hollywood, that Jason Statham has gone back to Australia and is now fucking the woman he knew as a CHILD is just creepy.
Candi - pronounced "Chuhn-di" - is just Indonesian for temple. This was not, in fact, a temple made out of candy.
This scratching marks one of the eleven stupas that were rigged with explosives by terrorists. Nine were destroyed but have been since repaired.
My attempt at the world's largest Buddhist complex in the world.
View from the top of the temple. That's rain rolling in there.
This is the temple at Borobudur, the largest Buddhist complex in the world.
This thing was crazy huge.
The guide kept on referring to the animal on the bottom as the otter, but the animal on the table is CLEARLY the otter. Also, OTTERS!
This lion is happy because it is a vegetarian. That is what the guide said.
I still went in.
This shit looks spectral.
One of the best preserved carvings of - oh, god, I can't remember!
This temple housed the vehicle of whichever god it was sat in front of.
Temple complex at Prambanan, one of the largest Hindu complexes in the South East.
The Shiva temple from underneath it. Somewhere along the line our guide lost the quartz stone that was the eye of his ring. He said it didn't matter but as we walked on I could see him scanning the ground looking for it. He had Buckley's of finding it as the complex was huge, but I imagine it is that recalcitrant hope that drives human beings to build these things in the first place.
Ghost ride, as the think the filming technique is called, through the streets of Yogyakarta.
Vodka and soda in the best pub in the world. Happy hour lasts five hours.
I'm gonna miss you, Yogyakarta, you were a fucking delight.
Fucking sing it!
They call me MISTER Pancake. Huh? Anyone? Anyone at all? In the Heat of the Night. Sydney Poitier. 1967. No? No.
Best believe.
The main difference between Indonesian shopping centres and our own.
Good fucking god.
For @killthesuperheroes
This is a shot looking into my bathroom.
In Seloliman Nature Reserve, which is totally eco and mostly self-sufficient. The toilet and shower is in an outside covered area. This is what I can see from my toilet seat. Don't worry, I wasn't playing Turds with Friends.
These are some of the garden beds where food is grown. There are trees from all over the world brought by people, which usually go unidentified until a botanist makes a pilgrimage to this place. Trees are signposted with their medicinal properties. For @muddywaterblues.
The path that led to the cottages.
My cabin in the woods. There's a little stone carving of a rabbit on my roof, which distinguished my house from the rest, which had their own totems.
The view from where I got liquored up for the night.
Seloliman was just amazing. People bitched because there were bugs and the place was a little basic. People can go to hell.
Guesthouse + moat.
The inside of the guesthouse. This was a two floor building.
Managed to get this close to the frog before it hopped into the 'moat' that surrounds the guesthouse.
The mosque in the local village. The call to prayer is sounded with the aid of that drum on the left.
A hidden peanut stash.
Punk rock goat.
Last night's hotel, a few hours North of Seloliman and up into the mountains.
The view for which we woke up at 3 AM and went hiking to see. Reminds me of the cover of the Apocalypse record by Bill Callahan.
Sunrise peeking through the mist.
The view from the top of the mountain.
I think this was the mountain we were on. This was on the way to Mount Bromo, an active volcano.
The climb to Mount Bromo was bullshit. Those white specks in the top third of the frame was where we parked the jeeps. There were people offering horse rides to near the top but some of the horses were drooling green and shivering.
Mordor.
Just off to the left of my room.
My new cabin. This place is next to a shitty, shitty railway crossing so we weren't too sure what to expect.
Just off to the right. LABYRINTHINE
Saw the fruit bat in the cage and got in nice and close to take a photo. That was when I realised that there was one sitting just outside. The little bag of rabies scared the shit out of me.
'Plantation' is always gonna have negative connotations, especially with the row of luxury cars there. Still, dairy farm!
MOO COWS
BABY MOO COWS
I will! Thanks, thing!
Rubber trees, originally from Brazil.
Bags of rabies.
OK, so this is what chocolate looks like before it's been processed. Processed cocoa here gets shipped to Switzerland. The one on the right makes milk chocolate and the one on the left is for dark chocolate.
The first stage of cocoa drying.
A mountain of cocoa beans drying over giant ovens.
Not too sure what to make of this water feature, but the Dutch built it, so...
Brak!
Coffee as pooped out by a civet. I've yet to try this.
The coffee here is sorted out by hand because it is cheaper that having machines do it. Consider that next time you have a cup of coffee.
Clean is healthy.
Rubber packed into 120kg bales. This was the worst quality rubber and would most likely stay in the nation. The good stuff, costing about five dollars a kilo, went overseas to be made into car tires, and with it goes the wealth of a nation. Yeah, I went there.
Damn straight, boat!
Bali, this way!
Statues with sarong = protected by the government unless it's in a temple, in which case it's protected by the community.
My kind of beach, no fucking sand.
Tanah Lot, by the pool.
The temple just down the street. It can only be visited by holy people.
The views really are stunning.
Sunset at the temple. No idea what that eerie glow on the bottom right is.
New kicks.
Um, Bali, we need to have a chat.
This is just reception in the place I'm staying in.
The table I'm sat at in Ubud is made up of old sewing machine parts. This is pretty ace.
Last night's dinner. Tuna steak burger with wasabi mayonnaise. New best meal of the trip. For @realfoodprojects.
We should go here for breakfast @arfydog and @claredbear. Parisian cafe in Ubud.
French press coffee.
This place is fucking amazing! Again, for @realfoodprojects. The place is all organic and the bread is artisan
NAWWW! Actually, that looks painful for mum. This is in the Monkey Forrest.
Oh, man! Meta-monkey.
Man, these things is cute.
OH, MAN!
Yeah, I know, monkey! I know! But we've all been there and in any case the shame will go away soon enough.
How to groom a monkey...
Big fuck off statues of Komodo dragons.
One of the temples in the Monkey Forrest.
PUNKEY. See, what I've done there is taken two words, in this case "monkey" and "punk" and fused them together in an amusing pun. I did this because the MONKEY looks like a PUNK because it has a little mohawk.
It's about time White history was commemorated in Indonesia.
Don't know if you can see this dance but hopefully you can hear it. The music is made by close to a hundred people vocalising. This is a Kecak dance.
Prepping the fire for the fire dance.
Kecak fire dance.
I found this poignant piece of street art created by a person who clearly just wants to be treated like a human being on the same day I heard an Anglo-Australian with a Waratah tattoo say that she didn't like Chinese people because, "hello, they're annoying!" I... I'm still not sure where I stand on this whole thing...
Best breakfast view in the world!
This spiky motherfucker is where snake fruit grows. Snake. Fruit.
First cafe I've been to where tobacco was freely available along with rolling papers.
I'm tired of all these bullshit, manufactured and completely false binaries. Destroy patriarchy!
This here fucker is gonna brew me a Luwak coffee. Science coffee!
The beans that made this coffee were pooped out of the butt of a cat-thing. It was a bit nutty.
Fuck, yeah, Indonesian television! Alfred Hitchcock Presents! For @liahologram
What's that Dick Diver lyric, "I turn my lemons into slices & I put them in my beer"?
Camouflage!
Dinner tonight. For @killthesuperheroes and @sarahjire. The tuna burger fell through.
This piece of street art.
THUNDEROUS SIGH
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Breakfast spread this morning. Oh, man...
HELLOOOOOOO LADIES!
That's it. I'm done. Thank you, Indonesia, you were a fucking delight. This is your correspondent, Guy Hamilton, signing off from Indonesia.
Published on Friday, 22 November 2013
I hope that what I have written will be of some assistance.