As is usually the case when I travel, I ate some things in Jakarta.

I regret not taking photographs of the kamping satay and the utterly bizarre but curiously awesome garlic bread, chocolate, and cheese satay the friendly owner pushed on me later in the evening. Nor did I photograph the rather tasty sushi rolls I consumed at one of Jakarta’s multifarious Hip Little Japanese restaurants (blooming like mushrooms after a hard rain), or a Bento box, or even the aggressively cool coffee shop with tasty Sulawesi brews and a menu made out of a very well-chosen typeface.

Moving on. We all have our regrets in life.

This is a hefty portion of Mie Aceh, a spicy noodle dish hailing from the northernmost tip of Sumatra. My former colleague Christi suggested I check this Mee Aceh joint out in the Benhil district of Jakarta, and I’m glad I did.

One of the spiciest dishes I’ve tried in Indonesia, these beef noodles have a potent chili kick and are offset with pickled shallot, cucumber, and the omnipresent emping crackers  — I would have liked some lime. It’s filling, oily, and unsubtle: I can see this being an excellent and odiferous hangover addiction.

There’s two kinds of Mie Aceh by the by: Mie Aceh Goreng (fried and dry, like the dish above) and Mie Aceh Kuah, which is a spicy curry soup. I want to try the second variety next time.

Try it here: Meutia Rumah Makan – Jl. Bendungan Hilir Raya No. 60, Jakarta.

The Natrabu chain of restaurants specializes in Minang style food, hailing from the highlands of western Sumatra and typically served in a curious sort of personal buffet: you sit down and waiters bring small plates of around 8 to 15 different specialities, all served in a dining room that’s an amusing hybrid of golden and red Minang finery and the latest in early 1970s decor.

You pay only for what you eat, which is eyeballed by waitstaff after you finish. It’s a cunning ploy, as it’s hard to resist nibbling at something tasty that’s been placed directly in front of your nose. Thankfully, the food is quite good and covers a wide gamut of the usual good, spicy, oily Minang eats: beef rendang, squid cooked in coconut milk, tiny fried fish with sambal, a surprisingly tasty slab of fried beef jerky with sambal, chicken with chili and soy sauce and water spinach cooked in coconut milk, among other stalwarts.

This spicy, gloriously unrefined joyride of a cuisine will never in any rational universe be mistaken for health food, but a meal at this chain — which has been plugging along since 1967 — is a rather amusing look at Jakarta Business Lunch Culture, as people hobnob and devour copious amounts of beef over warm glasses of tea, the local stand-in for a 12:00 noon martini.

The staff seemed rather excited to have an American in the house (at the branch nearish the National Museum), and as I ate, I was presented with a small American flag on a bamboo tray for my table. This was, I feel I don’t need to add, absolutely charming. They also were quite eager to pose for a mugshot or two.

Yes, this is real.

The food selection actually looks good — heavy on the burgers — and they have some sort of mysterious drinking game neither myself or my friend could figure out on the back on the menu.

Maybe they think this is still a thing in America, and cool people like Justin Bieber and Barack Obama are wandering about saying it all the time, sometimes quietly to themselves when no one is around them, even. Because YOLO is that cool.

 Someone maybe should tell them.

I just read an article in Tempo, Indonesia’s major English-language political magazine, about the neglect most museums in the archipelago suffer from.

This is perhaps true, but I was more impressed than I expected to be with Jakarta’s National Museum, a considerably more polished affair than the mothballed and distinctly chloroform-scented halls of other Asian museums I’ve visited.

It’s not exactly the Smithsonian Natural History Museum — although that old US stalwart is also showing signs of age and wear — but what with the remains of Java Man, many and sundry monumental structures culled from all over the nation, and an interesting ethnography section, it’s worth a few hours wander. Another plus: there’s air conditioning.

Statue that appears to be culled from a Buddhist temple.

I’m in the beginning stages of familiarizing myself with Indonesian history and culture, but I’m enjoying tracking the influence of Hindu and Buddhist art styles and schools of thought here — similar in some interesting ways to the Khmer and Thai art I’m more accustomed to thanks to my time in Phnom Penh, and wandering around Angkor Wat on a fairly regular basis. Borabodur is next on the agenda.

Although the sculptures are not labeled — a serious omission — the experience of wandering around looking at them is something of an art history textbook made flesh, which does have a certain appeal. They get damp when it rains and collect moisture, which may not be good for the artwork but has a certain aesthetic appeal.

I like Papuan art because it is savage — yes, I used that adjective — and has a bizarre, irreverent feeling, that doubtless scandalized legions of Texan missionaries and likely still continues to do so in some remote pockets. Papuan art merrily portrays gigantic elongated penises, breasts, and violence, and is also quite content to incorporate the remains of venerated ancestors into powerful sculptures.

The statue is meant to serve as a mediator between the earth-bound family of the deceased and the spirit world, and can bring rain and good fishing if treated nicely, among other boons. You can’t see them in this photo, but the statue has carved wooden arms and legs, the skull meant to symbolize the head.

I have threatened to do this to my family. They all seem curiously fine with the idea, which makes me think I could start a new millenial trend for disposing of one’s venerated ancestors. I guess I could pray to them for more Twitter followers.

A lovely Papuan urn meant to resemble the head of a cassowary, those enormous and occasionally homocidal birds that still stalk bits of Papua and Papua New Guinea. I am absolutely terrified of them.

I recall this is Balinese, but can’t find any information on the Internet about it, which indicates I should do a better job of photographing labels. In any case, I think she’s excellently weird.

Here’s another Papuan ancestor statue, which is impressionistic and something I can see perched on the mantelpiece of a sensitive oligarch. Maybe I should do this for my ancestors instead of the skull thing.

Ladies taking measurements of things. The museum was distinctly quiet on a Saturday afternoon, but there were some scattered tourists. Perhaps more people need to come.

Sukarno’s Last Erection.

Jakarta must have one of the more loathsome reputations in Asia. When I mentioned I was thinking of going to Jakarta, most of my Asia-veteran friends reacted as if I’d cheerily informed them I was thinking of nipping over to Hades for a bit of sightseeing.

“Why would you want to go there?” was the general consensus  “It’s the worst place in Asia. There’s traffic, smog, nothing to see, and also a lot of traffic. People have actually starved to death in their cars in the traffic there. And then the smog gave them cancer.” (I may be exaggerating slightly).

This was not exactly a great sales-point, but I also knew that if I had the slightest desire to work in journalism in Indonesia someday, I’d likely have to reconcile myself to the seemingly nightmarish prospect of living in Jakarta for a stretch. And so I bought a cheap Lion Air ticket over from Denpasar and gave it a whirl.

A former Cambodia Daily colleague of mine has been living in Jakarta for two years now and suggested a nice bed and breakfast to me, which definitely helped. I believe that my virulent hatred of Kuala Lumpur derives at least in part from the fact that I was unable to find anywhere to stay there that wasn’t a shit hole, thanks to the cruel machinations of delusional or paid-off TripAdvisor reviewers.

Apparently there is NEVER this little traffic. But it was also Sunday.

Meanwhile in Jakarta, I had a nice man meet me at the airport sent by the hotel, holding a sign with my name scrawled on it — who thought he was waiting for three people, one named Faine, one named Elizabeth, and one named Greenwood, and appeared surprised  to instead get a single slightly undersized American instead. “Are you sure it’s just you?” he said.

“Sure,” I replied. And then we immediately got into our car and encountered the Dreaded Traffic, which was indeed extensive, but not really that bad at 9:00 PM, and it did give me a chance to take a sedate look at the city — note North Jakarta’s slums strung up with pretty lights along the river, many and sundry mega-malls, and a lot of extremely expensive lighting blotting out the stars for miles in every direction, as is standard for aspirant Asian metropolises. All this was fine.

The Bangka Bed and Breakfast turned out to be in a fairly sedate South Jakarta neighborhood, and I was shown to a windowless but comfortable room in a house that I pretty much had to myself, which included a lot of nerdy books the journalist owner had accumulated. There was even a nice lawn and a sitting area outside if one wished to brave the supposedly carcinogenic Death Air, which was a far cry from the deeply distressing and thin-walled place I’d booked myself into by accident in Kuala Lumpur. So far. So good.

More on the museum and some noodles I ate tomorrow. Gripping stuff, I know.

I was inspired to ruminate on Mantis shrimp because I’m learning how to scuba dive in Indonesia, and these crustaceans are some of the most beloved denizens of Asian tropical reefs.

Also, I’ve loved them for a long time, and the realization that SOON I WILL BE ABLE TO GLIDE AMONG THEM AS A MEMBER OF THEIR KIN is sort of intoxicating. (Not because of the Oatmeal. Really).

Anyway, here are some Mantis shrimp videos.

I don’t have any pictures of Mantis shrimp because 1. I do not actually know how to scuba dive yet, or at least I’m not certified and 2. Purchasing a casing for my trusty Canon DSLR will cost as much as the annual GDP of Albania, or at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe. So don’t go expecting that any time soon. Someday.

This makes me wish I was a Mantis shrimp. Consider: the life of a Mantis shrimp consists of: burrowing quietly in warm dens, then leaping out to grab and messily devour crabs and shrimp.

These are all things I like doing: lurking in warm places, eating seafood, and startling people. And being a jerk.

I would be a great Mantis shrimp.

As I’m not going to become a Mantis shrimp anytime soon, I propose a chain of novelty seafood restaurants, where waiters will dangle hamburgers and chicken legs from fishing lines over a series of holes cut into the ground. Patrons will be encouraged to leap out of them and seize their food, then bring it back into their temporary lair for messy consumption. Also their will be fountain beverages.

Yeah, I know, I’d better make sure I get that licensed immediately.

I had no idea that a long-standing deathly enmity between octopi and Mantis shrimp exist, but apparently it does, and even a blue ring octopus isn’t able to withstand punches-to-the-face that are delivered with the force and authority of a 22. caliber pistol. I should also add that this is among the most beautiful death matches I’ve ever witnessed.

I would totally watch more MMA if it was this pretty — although WWE wrestling does have a certain amount of remarkable, staged natural camouflage and pageantry as compared to its more austere and violent cousin.

There’s a really obscure masters thesis in there somewhere.

At 4:14 and onwards, I feel the translated Mimic Octopus dialogue would sound something like this:

OH SHIT OH SHIT A MANTIS SHRIMP

OH SHIT IT SAW ME WHAT IS EVEN YOUR DEAL

GOD MAN WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM – LOOK, OK I’M A ROCK

A FRIENDLY AQUATIC ROCK THAT IS SWIMMING AWAY FROM YOU

some fucking people, man

The beverage of romance.

I have a certain amount of self-interest at stake when it comes to People Dating People Who Travel. I travel an awful lot and would like to date attractive men (or at least men who smell OK and like to talk about subjects other than football): ipso facto, I logically hope that attractive men find my stories about Komodo dragons, Cambodia, and oddly-advised drinking choices in India are alluring, or at least amusing.

However, I just read this piece, entitled “Date a Boy Who Travels.” And now I’m worried. Worried that I am the earnest, boring-story telling, pain-in-the-butt who wears Angkor beer t-shirts in perfectly respectable US bars.

Am I the horrendous female equivalent of this supposedly sexy manchild the piece describes in prose lifted from a compilation of Chicken Soup for the Travelers Soul? Is this me? I hate that guy!

“Buy him a beer, maybe the same brand that he wears on the singlet under his plaid shirt, unable to truly let go.”

Specifically, I hate this guy.

I became worried about my own welfare when I read this paragraph:

“He’ll squeak like an excited toddler when his latest issue of National Geographic arrives in the mail. Then he’ll grow quiet, engrossed, until he finishes his analysis of every photo, every adventure. In his mind, he’ll insert himself in these pictures. He’ll pass the issue on to you and grill you about your dreams and competitively ask about the craziest thing you’ve ever done. Tell him. And know that he’ll probably win. And if by chance you win, know that his next lot in life will be to out do you. But then he’ll say, “Maybe we can do it together.”

That’s me, I’ve realized, and as I now admit to the public. I’ve done that before. The National Geographic thing. The craziest-things-you’ve-ever-done thing by way of an icebreaker. Competing with random strangers for WHO’S THE MOST EXTREME, lubricated by a few…wait for it…exotic Angkor beers. I am this person. Well, perhaps more cynical. I am the World Traveling Cynic.

But still, I am this person.

WHOO KUTA BEACH

I think I even own some version of the outfits those douchey tanned European girls in the picture attached to the article are wearing.

To wantonly paraphrase Nietzsche, I have stared into the Lonely Planet abyss….and it is staring back at me. To an extent.

Perhaps if applied to me, the article title should be amended. It should be “Date A Girl Who Travels But Is Really Cynical About It, Because She’ll Never Ask You To Do Yoga And You Won’t Have To Talk About How Sunsets Make You “
”Feel.”’

Or “Date A Journalist Girl Who Travels So You Can Both Sit At Bars And Sneer At Backpackers Approximately Your Own Age, While You Both Read Difficult And Horrifyingly Dry Political Science Books.” 

Even: “Date A Girl Who Travel-Writes So You Can Expense Account Stir-Fried Ants And Complain A Lot For Pay.” 

Gentlemen?

Don’t rush all at once.

Awesome bone carving in Ubud.

I am quite fond of these tigers at Tirtha Empul, a sacred Balinese spring.

Curious wood carving of Garuda at the Balinese art museum.

A family takes the sacred waters at Tirtha Empul.

The King’s “tombs” at Gunung Kawi – the ashes were actually tossed in the sea, but these stupas-like carvings remain.

Gunung Kawi: lush and gorgeous.

I have always wished I could do this.

The somewhat Angkor-esque temple at Pura Taman Ayun.

Sacred water at Tirtha Empul.

Where the sacred spring originates.

Flower pedals and fish.

Here’s a smattering of photos from my second trip to Ubud, heading up with my friend Nyoman in a very, very large Jeep. The Balinese, I’ve found, do a fine temple.

And something I’ve observed of late.

Kuta Beach on a quiet day.

Bali is relaxing.

Sure, it’s annoyingly hard to get around sometimes as ojeks aren’t lurking quietly on every street corner like they are in Flores or in Cambodia, and you’re forced to resort to those Blue Bird Taxis, which are actually almost always OK and feature cab drivers who like to have chats. Mostly the thing to do in Southern Bali is wander around on beaches until you get tired, then sit down. Sometimes you sport in the waves and the surf, at least until the waves turn into horrifying two-story monsters (to my eyes) and you decided it may be better to sit on the sand and work on your increasingly formidable sun burn. 

My distrust has been carefully honed in Phnom Penh and in Washington DC and in other places with a highly-developed and artistic rip-off culture. Fault poverty and worry for these things, and not exactly the people themselves (most of them) — but still, you don’t walk at night and you keep your bag close to you and you wear an ugly backpack and you assume a friendly person on the street is trying to game you for something.

This is largely not true in Bali (with some exceptions in heavily touristy areas) and is very not true in Flores.

My defenses are impressive but I am OK with having them taken down a notch. A few days ago, I was at Kuta Beach and I bought an early morning Bintang and I wanted to swim, and so in what for me was a shocking moment of trust, I asked the drinks guy to keep an eye on my camera and my purse. He did. No problem.

Sanur Beach.

Then I chatted with a nice bar girl about my age and she wanted to go swimming with me, and my mind went in the place that people who read too much TripAdvisor does, which is  “They are convincing me to go swimming so they can rifle through my bag! And maybe drown me! But I must go anyway! To be nice!”

So I told my carefully honed watchful psyche to shut the fuck up, and I went and bodysurfed with this girl and her friend from Jakarta, and we had a lovely time, and I came back and sure enough my bag was untouched. And I felt guilty.

I have in Indonesia Trusted People to: give me a ride home in the dark on the back of their scooter because they were the brother of a restaurant owner I knew, trusted an Australian miner guy to give me a ride to Kuta on his scooter because he was going the same direction and why not, and various examples of getting people to watch my stuff for the price of a cold Bintang and a few friendly remarks about how lovely Bali was.

Also have trusted a small and noisy man who lives in the jungle and owns a huge machete to lead me down a forested slope to his off-the-grid home village, and a girl I’d just met to take me on my Very First Ever Scuba Dive And Oh Shit The Bends And Sharks, and various drivers of various stripes who are keen on reggae music and telling me about their fondness for local rice whiskey while driving.

All of this I have accepted with much less of the usual strum-und-drang and Xanax fueled anxiety that accompanies some of my other endeavors in rougher places: mostly I have decided to cede power to the universe, and make my peace with the eventualities of Dengue fever, crocodile attack, or being suddenly sold into the multiculti harem of the Sultan of Brunei.

None of this has happened yet. And if it will, I suspect I will greet it with better-than-usual fortitude. Or at least, that’s what I hope.

I must face facts: I came to Bali as an avowed cynic about this arsehole of Australia, this blot on the face of tourism, and am now definitely converted. I am reminded of this song, which is insufferably cheesy, sung by Peggy Lee, and thus resonates with me on a somewhat embarrassing level. As a youngster I was in love with Tiki bars and the curious tourism fantasies of Paradise (half believing them) – as an adult of sorts, it appears nothing has changed.

If you fail to take an artsy photo like this in Ubud, they kick you out of the city.

So, I did my due diligence and paid a visit to Ubud.

Ubud was made famous by “Eat Pray Love,” the widely popular and critically scorned Elizabeth Gilbert tome that launched a thousand female midlife crises. This small Balinese town is set among the rice paddies of the island’s Gianyar Regency, and it’s really only a brief drive from South Bali — although the grinding, construction-driven traffic of the island during the midday can make it something of a longer haul. I reached it easily from Sanur by way of the aged but trusty Perama shuttle bus, for the princely sum of $5. (50,000 IDR).

Bali’s cultural capital, Western artists and culture vultures arrived on the scene in Ubud in the early 20th century, working with local Balinese talent to open up interesting museums, fund artist training, and attract more tourists to the region. Thanks to what is often referred to as That Goddamn Book, in certain snobbish Asian expat circles (shout-out to my homies!), Ubud has recently become a magnet for upscale and spiritually ferklumpt tourists who categorically scorn the frivolity of Kuta and the quiet beachiness of Sanur.

Temples of Ubud.

They don’t want to lounge on a sun-kissed beach or dance to House music until they pass out in an alley somewhere from an overdose of E: no, they want to find themselves. And preferably a dark and handsome Brazilian stranger with access to a trust fund as well, if he’s there to be found.

So I was amused to discover that all those pleasingly bitchy stories about an onslaught of hopeful looking women in yoga pants in Ubud were true.

There they were, padding down Ubud’s streets in their Om Shanti Om tank-tops and Ganesha print pants, carrying shopping bags packed chock full of sensible organic fibers and locally produced lemongrass soap. There they sat, in a Westernized cafe offering broccoli quiche and frozen sugary coffee drinks, trying to look wistful and mysterious just in case an Exotic Brazilian Stranger caught their eye from across the room. They had stepped from the pages of Gilbert’s book: I wondered if they felt satisfied by the reality of the place, which is both green and full of temples but remains un-sanitized Indonesia.

Largely missing from the scene were visiting men, who seemed to wash up in Ubud in the company of their blissful looking wives or girlfriends, trailing a few steps behind and looking sheepish about the whole thing.  A few rather nerdy looking young male tourists clomped around in cargo pants and t-shirts, their oversized cameras thumping against their hips: perhaps they should stay a while and see if they can recast themselves as suitably exotic for the spiritually-seeking older lady crowd.

The whole place reminded me very much of Sedona, that aggressively New Age town in the red-rocked and ravishingly gorgeous Arizona desert, where a full 50 percent of local businesses will attempt to sell you magic crystals and spiritual healing vision quests conducted by an Actual Goddamn Native American Human Being. I can’t say that I find all this unpleasant or even particularly offensive from an ethical tourism example —  for example, I felt none of the fantastic repulsion a wander down Kuta or even some bits of Siem Reap may evoke.

Ubud is in a different sort of mass tourism business than the belly-shirt and grossly offensive bumper sticker hawkers of Kao San Road and Kuta. It caters to the upmarket and educated, people who wish to stroll in leafy gardens full of aesthetically worm-eaten antiques, thinking great thoughts about the turning of the universe, waiting for their Angels and Dharmas to whisper sweet nothings in their ear about Brazilian lovers and drum-circles.

I also find this erudite seeking incredibly annoying, but on the bright side, no one in Ubud was likely to attempt to hump my leg after the inky and inexorable march of nightfall, either. They might just try to sell me on the magikal health benefits of cupping treatments. I can live with that.

As I quickly determined, there is not a heck of a lot to do in Ubud other than shop for aforementioned pleasingly worm-eaten antiques (real and simulated — where do they get the worms?), sit wistfully in cafes, and take somewhat spendy yoga and mindful Reiki breathing courses.

I can perhaps see why the twenty-somethings — a group which I tend to conveniently forget I belong to — avoid the place, which lacks Bintang beer, delightfully slutty tanned young things from New Zealand, and three-story tall body paint bubble parties, or whatever the kids do these days.

No, Ubud is for sitting in rice paddies and having deep thoughts — mind the Dengue fever, of course, and watch out for the mosquitoes with the stripey legs.

Even prematurely crotchety me wished for something to happen that would break the considerable earnestness of the place — when really the only excitement I witnessed was two barely-dressed young Australian men discussing travel guides at a high-end bookstore, as if everyone just casually discusses the merits of Lonely Planet in nice bookstores while minimally dressed here in Indonesia.

Noting that the typically quite conservative Indonesian dress code is the exact opposite of what most tourists wear in Ubud might horrify those seeking total cultural integration. I did not do this.

So I wandered through the Bali palace and took some photos of the lovely Hindu architecture, and I wandered through art museums and admired Balinese art (which is worth a considerably more sincere blog post), and mostly I watched other tourists, because I derive any powers I may possess from ill-humored commentary on the foibles of other humans. (It is all that I know). Here is what I saw:

Beatific looking couples in clingy yoga gear wandered through the local Balinese palaces, while others tooled down the streets on scooters, driving entirely too fast for the local custom. Grinning young guys handed out brochures for Spiritual Tours and Bird-watching Trips, while others held up laminated signs advertising Taxi Services.

A few female beggars holding irritated looking children hung out and half-heartedly hustled on the main tourist strip — a far cry from the hardened and swift-handed professionals I’ve grown accustomed to in Phnom Penh and in Saigon. April is off-season in Ubud, and the tourist industry types were succumbing to the humidity, not exactly bringing their A-game. I felt for them.

I enjoyed a delicious lunch of roasted suckling pig and local vegetables (shredded papaya leaves, cabbage, and green beans) near the Ubud Palace, joined largely by merrily carnivorous Asian tourists happily able to reconcile spiritual awakening with devouring the luscious flesh of an intelligent baby mammal.

I did not feel any burning desire to alleviate my guilt with a bit of tempeh and a carbon buyback afterwards. Mostly I just wanted a nap. For dessert, I had pork rinds.

It began to rain later in the day,  and I wandered in the mist across a lovely suspension bridge to a high-end cafe, which played soothing meditation music and overlooked a beautiful jungle canyon, replete with creeping vines and immense and limpid Technicolor butterflies.

The menu offered wine flights, cheese plates, and vegetarian options, but I opted for the cheaper quotidian pleasures of a chilly Bintang, which was served in a smart and expensive looking glass, and poured for me with an elegant head of foam by the waitress. The staff all spoke in low soothing tones, and everyone was wearing some variant on organically pressed white linen.

As I sat and drank, I leafed though a local tourist magazine that  featured insights into Tarot card readings (including the brilliant card-reader inference that a woman’s job working as a bush pilot in Papua New Guinea might be “dangerous”), an article on a sanctuary for orphaned little kitty cats, and a piece of terrible poetry about Living in Harmony With Nature.

I looked out into the jungle canyon, and looked down at the magazine, and I listened as the music in the restaurant shifted from the sounds of the gamelan to the chanting of Tibetan monks. An attractive woman in her 50s was looking through a series of photographs of Balinese antiques on her Macbook Air, and a group of French women were animatedly drinking wine and chain-smoking a corner over. The air was humid and fresh, and birds sang from the rainforest outside.

And in that moment, I realize where I was.

I had stumbled upon the Middle Aged Lady Promised Land.

Quite literally your friendly neighborhood fruit bat, since that’s the kind of thing that happen in Bali. This gent is named Rasta, and he lives in a tree at the Art Cafe Warung and Spa in Sanur, near the Mercure Beach Resort. He ended up here after his wing was broken, and now he seems to subsist pretty happily on handfed fruit. Fruit bats may look offputting but are among some of Southeast Asia’s most charming wildlife. Although they don’t exactly smell pleasant, they’re quite harmless, and Rasta is especially amiable when it comes to tourists snapping incessant pictures of him. He can easily be cajoled out of his tree with pineapple or watermelon, and watching a fruit bat climb during the daytime is a uniquely alien experience. He also has a charming and extremely long pink tongue.

The staff at the cafe have sort of trained him to extend his wings when they clap. Using food rewards to train a fruit bat is an achievement in and of itself.

The ride up to the Kelimutu crater lakes of Flores winds through green chasms and tropical jungles, so incredibly beautiful that it’d be some sort of violently curated five star national park in most other countries, with an image on every billboard and brochure. Here, in enormous and shockingly ecologically wealthy Indonesia, these incredible gorges are just a place where people live — white waterfalls tumbling down cliffs, huge stands of bamboo, tree-clinging banyan trees, and rice paddies tumbling down to a rocky wild river. Ho, hum. Just Flores.

Bad people go to this lake when they die.

People who sell gasoline out of plastic bottles and potato-chip specialists live in wooden homes with access to views that would cost billions in most other places. I feel this is probably as it should be.

My driver takes me to the gate of Kelimutu and I pay about $5 total for an entry and a camera fee — I’m definitely the only car to come through, and none of the green clad guards understand my (less than excellent) Bahasa pronunciation of “Where is a bathroom?”, although they all feel rather apologetic about it. Well, not their fault.

We drive through cloud forest and than arrive at a optimistically large and totally empty parking lot, other than a few motorbikes. An ikat-clad woman waves me over and convinces me to buy some biscuits and water from her: the three people manning the Kelimutu parking lot businesses on this day seem mostly glad for the company.

Useful information!

The driver and I begin the brief walk to the lip of the Kelimutu crater: the verdant jungle gives way extremely suddenly to a barren moonscape. I walk up a series of stairs and there’s the first crater, the brown one where the spirits of the old and wise go — rusty water glinting in the early sunlight, divided from the turquoise lake by an almost comically slender spit of rock.

The wind rattles over the rocks, and some clouds are blowing in from the left, but the sun is out and sparkling. The smell of sulphur hangs in the air, the tell-tale sign of the presence of hydrogen sulfide, and the volcanic activity that comes with it, here in the midst of the Ring of Fire. It is no mystery why the people here have certain mystical beliefs surrounding this place: it appears largely impossible.

It goes without saying that it is stunning. And I have it to myself.

An old man who’s been sitting up there since dawn offers me ginger coffee, although he sounds less than hopeful: I buy two, one for me and one for my guide. I unfold the spidery legs of my new Manfrotto tripod, and I conclude that it was worth the (rather reasonable) $130 I paid for it. My country for image stabilization.

Some tourists tried to hike down to the caldera and perished somewhere between there and here. I keep meaning to look for a paper on the chemical composition of the water, but even I want to retain the odd mysticism of the place for a few more days.