LongTime No Blog

Hey everyone,
We've been lax, we've been mum, we've been negligent. But we've still been taking photos. I'll give y'all a rundown, and let the thousand word rectangles do the rest of the talking.

Departing from our beloved adopted home of New Zealand was wistful, but the time was right, and never have we had smoother airport business in our lives - although it seems there is some sort of zero-sum principle involved because we had perhaps the most majestically insane and sufferable time trying to get out of Australia - but that is for later in the tale.

We spent some time in Sydney with Conor's cousin Thomas who is a naturopathic doctor. We toured the city (top-notch public transport, yo) and saw the sights (Opera House, Museums, Bondi Beach, Sydney Harbor - which is actually a gigantic estuary) and more or less took it easy (lots of gelato).

This is the smallest boat ever to sail around the world -
by an Italian guy, solo, in the late 80's. Impressive.

Brisbane at Sunset from Byron Bay

From Tom's hospitable flat we hopped another plane up to Brisbane to see Josh Dankoff (Wesleyan '02) and his fiancee Mneesha who are both in Master's programs at the University of Queensland - and were welcomed with magnificent generosity, delicious food, delightful and insightful conversation, more information than a world-class tourist agency, and maps, maps, maps, everywhere! Our favorite :)

Old Brisbane

Thank you both again so much for opening your lovely home and lives with us, and for sharing everything you have been thinking and studying - note to blog readers: if you need the lowdown on development theory and practice / conflict resolution / and anything in between or in the margins, these two can be your aces. Very reasonable rates, too.

Brisbane from the River

After some great hiking, jamming, noshing and positing, we bade a reluctant good bye and hopped it up to Cairns to see the Reef. The Great Barrier Reef, is very big, very worthy of all the hype, but very hard to see too much of without mucho dinero and tiempo. But we did a great snorkeling trip and bobbed pleasantly in the cool water with the whole cast of National Geographic's Tropical Fish Almanac.
Plus we ate Mexican food and more gelato.

Michaelmas Cay and surrounding reef

Fish - Big, colorful, endearing

And then of course, the time came to leave behind the delights, temptations and comforts of the Anglo world and give our bank accounts a break in Indonesia.

Easier said than done.

Conveniently, Conor forgot to print out the e-ticket of our ongoing flight from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur, and supposedly the Indonesian Government is not super keen to issue anyone a visa who doesn't have proof that they are flying out of the country. This of course was brought to our attention by the staff at the Qantas check-in counter in Sydney, who then refused to check us into our flight to Bali without a printout of the ticket.
Sadly, there is no where within miles of the airport where you can print something off the internet (not even in the offices of the airlines, so they say). With creeping unease we permitted her to check us through to Melbourne where we had a layover of a cushy 60 minutes in which to somehow print this ticket (from what would certainly be non-existent printing facilities) retrieve our luggage from the domestic terminal, cross to the international terminal, and check in an hour before our flight was scheduled to leave. Any of you good at math? Also the airline we were flying out of Bali on doesn't have offices anywhere in Australia, although if they did, I'm sure they would have not had a printer either :)

Anyway, after jointly seducing the entire flight crew on our connection to Melbourne, we dashed off the plane ahead of everyone else, split up, and hoped for a miracle. The miracle turned out to be a remaining-anonymous Qantas employee (and the security guard who pulled this ridiculous idea out of his hat) who allowed me to email her the ticket from a kiosk at the other end of the terminal, and then printed it from her printer behind the desk. Thank you again, you are an angel. Ticket in hand, Conor sprinted to the check-in counter, the rendez-vous point for Tricie with the luggage. But no tricie, no luggage. How long until check in closes, I asked the attendant. Mmmm, let's see.... you've got about 4 minutes.

After all of that, somehow pulling off the impossible, ticket in hand, and we were about to be denied. Tragedy. And then all of a sudden next to me: Tricie. Carrying all of our very heavy bags. (Angel #2).
So she let us check in. Whew. Time to sprint to the Gate. Made it (Huff, Puff). Ladies and Gentlemen, this flight has been delayed for one hour.
So we drank cokes and waited.

At long last, we boarded, we flew, we landed, we went through immigration - no one was asked to a show an ongoing flight, incidentally, and frankly I doubt the gov't has a deal where Qantas is responsible for that sort of thing. Thanks, Qantas, for all of your voodoo.
But, we are like samurai swords. Within 8 hours of landing we were drinking papaya shakes on the beach and reading trashy novels.

And then, to our delight, we began to meet Bali.

By motorbike, we toured the island for a week, Ubud, the centre of art and dance and music in Bali, Amed, Tulamben, Padang Bai, sleepy and not-so-sleepy towns and fishing villages along the south and east coasts, Singarajah and Lovina on the beautiful and mellow northern shores, and Bedugul, high on the volcanoes of the interior, with the beautiful Lake Bratan nestled in an old caldera. We ate, we drank, we shared music and questions and answers with the people we met in each little town. A most soothing and lovely character blesses the people who live on this island and we have been delighted and honored to share time and space with them.

Here are a few pixels of where we have been:

Goa Gajah (Elephant Caves) - an old Buddhist hermitage from the 10th century

Ubud, Bali.

At Tempaksiring - an ancient 11th century Hindu Temple complex in central Bali

Sunset - Amed, a small fishing village in far eastern Bali.


Gunung Agung - Stratovolcano, "dormant", Amed, Bali.


Morning Market - Singarajah, north coast of Bali



All gods lie within


Botantical Gardens - Bedugul, central highlands, Bali.


Lake Bratan, central volcanic highlands


Traditional Balinese Dance with Women's Gamelan Orchestra, Ubud, Bali


Sunset at Kuta Beach

We are leaving tomorrow for Java, an altogether different place from Bali, and we are doing our best to prepare our calluses, so to speak. But we are thrilled of course, to see Jogjakarta, Solo, the capitals of ancient Javanese empires, and the Buddhist and Hindu ruins of Borobudur and Prambanan. We'll probably move mostly by rail, and spend a while in Jogja before we head to Malaysia. We'll try not to be strangers too :) Hopefully another little blog will pop up in a couple of weeks.

Sunset, moonrise, Kuta Beach