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| My lovely Melbourne ladies, Luisa, Soumya and Alessia |
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| Balcony birthday cake |
It seems like forever ago that I was standing in my Melbourne kitchen, staring out the window to the setting sun and simply embracing life, my life. It was one of my last days in that lovely bright apartment in Malvern and I was happy. After spending a considerable time in Australia – almost two months! – I had finally come to fully enjoy the Victorian city and its little surprises. Getting lost in small hidden inner-city lanes with heaps (yeah, the Australian influence :) of eccentric cafes and people, checking out the op-shops on Chapel Street (fancy second hand charity stores), swinging to Jackson and Jackson somewhere in Brunswick Street, sleeping in the park at Federation Square after missing the last train home, dancing in the Latino bar with Luisa, discovering an amazing chocolate café with Soumya, biking downhill to Balaclava to have a latté with Alessia, or simply the sight of yet another possum. An approaching summer brought people back to the streets and the power of the sun translated into smiles upon Melbourne faces and I was no exception. Emotions are a funny thing, because this fresh happiness caused tears when I had to leave the town and my friends behind to head off to the Northern Territory and Indonesia. I turned a page, but my bike and my pink suitcase, full of stuff that I wasn’t going to need in Asia, are still waiting for my return.
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| The waterhole in Richard's country |
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| Wadeye sunset with Julie and Richard |
Darwin welcomed me with a warm breeze and a confusing GMT+9:30. I strolled around town for a while, had a swim at the bay and then took a mini plane to Port Keats/Wadeye, the second biggest Aboriginal community in Australia. Tony the bee man, whom I met in Czech Republic four years ago, picked me up from Wadeye ‘airport’ and then introduced me to his life in this remote Aboriginal town. Tony works for the Rangers, an Australian government initiative for local development and environmental sustainability in Aboriginal communities. Through him and his local contacts I have been able to meet interesting people and see beautiful parts of ancient nature, for example this beautiful waterhole that the indigenous Richard showed us in his 'country'. There was so much to see and feel and ask and question and I was never going to understand it all, which is why I am not going to try to capture this experience in one sentence. All I can say is that spending a week up there makes me want to know much more about these people, their close connection to Earth, their language & history. Especially the
dreaming makes me curious, the Aboriginal spirituality which is to be found in countless local and universal totems, such as the sun, the ku wak (crow), the ku man man (butterfly), and the carpet snake. And of course the alcohol ban in some Aboriginal areas, which made me a smuggler when I brought a bottle of rum with me on the way in.
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| A monkey sat on my head |
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| A dog called Tank |
I easily could have stayed a little longer, but I had a plane to catch. So after coming back to Darwin where I could stay in the house of some Kiwi musicians and their dog called Tank, I arrived to Bali. In Kuta I got a haircut and an Indonesian number (+62 821 47918034). The beach was a lovely introduction to Indonesia, but I was advised to leave this party town as soon as I could. So the next morning I was picked up early for an educational cycling tour through central Bali. Of course, I was amazed by the stunning views of evergreen rice fields and mountains, villages and villagers, and roosters in bamboo baskets… Bali and the Balinese are beautiful! The end of the tour brought me to the artistic center of the island, Ubud. Here, I was fascinated by the many different kinds and colours of ants – sometimes so tiny that you wonder how they can itch so badly, and sometimes so huge that it’s almost scary. A monkey sat on my head in the Monkey Forest and I had my first avocado-juice with chocolate sauce. Ubud is lovely and in the gardens of my home stay I saw a white bunny and some squirrels, but it wasn’t until arrival in Tirta Gangga that I had my first conversation in Indonesian! YES! Maybe I am not exactly fluent yet, and it takes me forever to form a sentence with a number in it (or any sentence for that matter) but I love it! Two nights ago I climbed Gunung Agung, Bali’s highest and most spiritually important volcano, and it made my muscles hurt. Only hours later I was feeling much better after a full body massage that I was given by the local massage man Pak Putu – price negotiated all by myself in Indonesian! Although I must still look funny getting up from a chair; my Dutch muscles are just not used to 3142 meter high volcanoes.
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| Tirta Gangga with Gunung Agung on the background ... |
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| ... and the next day I made it to the top of Bali |
Today, on the drive from Tirta Gangga to Padang Bai, the driver didn’t stop talking to me in Indonesian. We discussed the difference between jalan-jalan (walking) and lancong-lancong (travelling), and we also practiced the pronunciation of small, smell and smile. After mastering these words, my driver told me that my smile is beautiful. Of course I know that it wasn’t very personal, and I was really NOT going jalan-jalan with him in his village, but I decided to believe him and put the words into practice (: I am quite sure that is not going to be a problem any time soon – tomorrow morning I’ll take the boat to Gili Air, where I’ll stay until leaving to Yogyakarta on Thursday. I will have the weekend to install in my new house right in the center of Yogya and to consider whether I want to rent a motor bike to get around, and on Monday I’ll start my Indonesian classes.
The sun is setting here in Indonesia, it's on its way to Europe. Embrace! ♥
