Cycling & Dancing

"Wow, I'm impressed. Nine hours cycling and dancing until 5:30 in the morning!"

These were the words of Bianca just before we decided to call it a night and head back to Nordenham after some clubbing (if you can call it that here...) down in Oldenburg. I was impressed too! In fact, this last week-and-a-half since starting my trip back I've had more late nights after a full day's cycling than I ever would at home, hence why I've been too preoccupied to update everyone.

So I'll just quickly run through a couple of things while I've got a spare few minutes. The trip's been going pretty well cycling-wise so far. I'm happy with the bike and my legs seen to be coping well. After stretching for at least ten minutes and starting off, the first hour or so is always the toughest but after that you get into the rhythm of things and just enjoy the ride. With the clothes I'm wearing my bum hasn't been hurting at all (that's a relief!) and I've been feeling nice and cool even when the sun was shining strongly last week. However, that does mean I have the most horrendous tan line ever seen (seriously, it looks rediculous!) and my main past-time has now gone from reading and composing to pealing off my skin :) I'm not exactly sure how much distance I've covered but what with getting lots a couple of times (a mixture of signs and maps sometimes not matching up and there being no landmarks around to orientate yourself with) it's been longer than I was anticipating. I'd guess it must be around about 400 miles (just over 600km), but that's just a guess.

Ostfriesland (East Fresia) was the area I was cycling around to begin with, which was much like I imagined Holland would be: flat as a pancake, lots of windmills, some towns and villages and lots of cows in the empty spaces. It's definitely dairy country, although disappointingly they don't have a local cheese... Then, when you get to the coast, things start to change. The dykes crop up and you finally see some sheep, as only they can handle the slopes. It makes a welcome change to see the sea rather than miles and miles of flat country, even if the strong crosswinds makes cycling much more difficult. I found Ostfrieslandians in general very friendly, greeting you with "Moin" when you cycle by or enter a shop. They're also quite obsessed with fish, their nickname apparently being fischköpfe (fish heads)! The Netherlands itself hasn't quite been what I'd imagined though. There's very little countryside here, just town after town, much fewer windmills and so far I haven't seen a single field full of tulips or a window with pretty wooden shutters and an outdoor windowsill full of flowers. Maybe this is just a cliche that doesn't really exist, but it would be nice to see them all the same.

A few times so far I've found myself in the right place at the right time. On my way down to Bremen from Nordenham I stopped at a town festival where they were erecting some sort of flower-covered pole with flower-covered bells thingy with a band dressed up in their traditional costumes and then when I went to visit Bremen itself I found myself in the middle of the party celebrating Werder Bremen's victory in the German equivalent to the FA cup. Literally 70% or so of everyone in the city was dressed up in the green and white kit and we were all standing outside the radhaus (town hall) dancing to the music coming from the loudspeakers, singing the Werder Bremen songs and trying to grap a flag, scarf or football that the officials were handing out for free or throwing from the radhaus balcony. Then, after a couple of hours' wait, the team arrived in their coach, went up to the balcony and lifted the cup amit raptuous cheering. Not that I've ever seen them play a single match or anything, but I'd definitely call myself a Werder Bremen fan from now on! In Papenburg I again happened to arrive at the right time. They were celebrating the biggest day in their town's calendar so there were stalls and music stages all along either side of the canal running through the main street. And in Emmen I was looking around the main square and saw a poster for a fado concert in the church starting in an hour, which I of course went to!

As always, it's been great to see and stay with ACers along the way and also to meet their friends and families. I arrived at Jacob's University in Bremen on Tariq's birthday, which was fun, although he'd more-or-less celebrated it the night before. Then in happenning Esens (!) I stayed with My and her family, eating authentic and delicious SE Asian food and watching Jane Austin films... One day I went for a trip to Langeoog, one of the Fresian Islands, which was pretty if rather touristy. I'm staying with Sam in Utrecht University College at the moment, although after a late night in their power-cut-prone Sosh last night he's decided to stay in the college to sleep (or watch Gossip Girl?!) while I've come to Amsterdam for the day.

So far Couchsurfing has been a big success. The four people I've stayed with have all been very friendly and accommodating and we've had a lot of fun each night - clubbing in Oldenburg with Bianca and her friends, a late nights and a good breakfast with Johannes in Wilhelmshaven, clubbing in Papenburg with Yvonne and her friends and then (because I needed an early night after all this!) a good chat and a good film call 'Brick' with William in Zwolle. Their own Couchsurfing experiences have only ever been positive too. William said that, actually, he considers it more safe than staying in a hostel because you only have one person to keep an eye on instead of everyone else in your dorm! Yvonne had the lovely idea of taking a poleroid picture of everyone she hosts and to have a guestbook for us to sign. I'll send everyone I've stayed with a postcard soon just to say thanks.

That's all for now folks. I'll leave it to some of the pictures to tell you more about what I've seen and been up to. Now I'm about to leave the amazing bibliotheek here in Amsterdam to have a taste of what its infamous nightlife has to offer ;) Tomorrow it's a daytrip to The Hague (really want to see the International Court of Justice there as I wanted to work there once upon a time!) then to stay with Dieteke in Amersfoort before heading south through the rest of this flat and waterlogged country.

Hedd in Europe. Eh?! Yup, that's right, and he's on a bike!

Yo yo!!!!

So I thought I might as well blog about my latest trip a) to let you all know what cycling through Western Europe is like, b) 'cos I can use is as my own personal journal, and c) to stop pointless worrying by female relatives.

After a long but comfortable train ride, mum & I finally arrived in her & Ffion's hotel room placed half-way between the world's largest cylindrical aquarium and East Berlin's most famous church. I'd decided to stay in a hostel a 12 minute walk away - more familiar territory. I made a bet with mum to see which one of us could make more new acquaintances, the one staying in a huge hotel but isolated from everyone else or the one sharing a room with four strangers. I won, of course, but only by 2-0 (by the time I'd get back to the hostel most people were asleep anyway and I felt like joining them too!), meeting an Iranian-Canadian who was in Berlin for a topography and word-graphics conference (he'd ran out of business cards on the second evening so was up in the middle of the night trying in vain to do some make-shift new ones) and a Brayillian Guz (sorry, that's these silly German keyboards, but I'm sure you can work it out!) who was half-way through his 8 months of motor biking around virtually all of Europe. The only people they had a chance of being acquainted with in the hotel was a morbidly obese couple Ffion & I saw stark-naked in the hotel sauna!!

Berlin was fun, as usual (!) but hot for a change. We went on a river cruise, randomly found a huge party by the Brandenburg Gate celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Bundesepublik and sped through the Jewish Museum. Oh yes, and we also went to see Andrea Bocelli live in concert, but I thought that's not really worth mentioning... actually, he's the whole reason we were there in the first place, as was the case with what seemed like most people who attended the concert; none of the people I spoke to after it were from Germany. To be honest, I was more impressed with the South African bass than with Andrea - he's obviously accustomed to relying on a microphone (!) - but judging by the queue to say a few words to Andrea and get his autograph after it had finished I was obviously in the minority. Luckily for mum he stayed right until he'd seen everyone who could be bothered to wait which must have meant about 300 signatures and 300 times having his hand plonked in the right place on the programme by his fiancée.

I left mum & Ffion after breakfast on the Monday morning and headed to Prenzlauer Allee where Rahel lives. She'd given me a couple of tips as to where to find a bicycle and I was going to see if I could visit her family there after I'd found something. Unfortunately, after a good three hours of searching, I was still empty-handed, although I had a good idea of what I was looking for and the sort of price it would cost. There was no answer at her house when I called either so I got myself some Greek tidbits (which seem to be very popular here in Germany) and had a picnic lunch in the sun outside the planetarium before getting the bus to Hamburg.

I met Björn and his dad when I arrived in Hamburg and went to their home in a pretty suburb on the edge of the city from where you have the ideal spot to play ‘guess what airline is taking off from the airport’ and still be wrong. I found it very amusing how everyone in the house had such different English accents: Björn’s is still German but also quite British, his older brother’s is very American, his younger sister’s is Australian and then his parents’ are strongly German! After a chat with the family, a much-needed shower, some tasty lasagna, a catch-up with Björn and some strawberries with ice-cream, we were upstairs watching his Year DVD which brought back a lot of old memories. In one way it was nice to see my firsties in the video and remember the good times from last year but in another I couldn’t help thinking about leaving this time last year and about how now I don’t really have any connections at all still in the college – and once Brian leaves next year I really won’t have any at all!! Haven't really seen the yearbook yet (although what I have seen i.e. the cover is very good!) but I know I'll feel the same when I do. So to everyone who’s just left, I’m thinking about you and hoping you’re having a good time and keeping yourself busy – that’s the best cure. Oh, and I hope the poster I sent helped lift your spirits during the IB! Aqeela said she’d take a photo of it, but knowing her… :P

After buying supplies for Björn’s Vietnam Project in the funkiest outdoor adventure shop ever, we heading to the city centre where, after being given the infamous and apparently predictable ‘Björn’s Tour of Hamburg City Centre’ (I liked it anyway!) we met up with Tariq for lunch. I thought I’d ordered squid, and I had, but in true German style it was squid stuffed with pork and bacon!! Lovely all the same, if rather filling. We had your average prolonged AC dinner conversation: gossip, European elections, gossip, pros & cons of nationalising the education system over having a market-driven one, gossip… We walked about for a bit, sat by a lake watching the boats capsize and staring at the joggers going past, walked a bit more and then went to watch ‘Angels & Dæmons,' which was better than I was expecting! A lot of unnecessary explanations about the Catholic church and dubious quantum physics at the beginning and some totally unrealistic action scenes towards the end but enjoyable all the same with a few very funny laugh-out-loud moments. I want to see the new X-men film next if only to finally see on screen the best X-man of them all: Gambit!

I left on the S-bahn from Hamburg for a town called Stade, just the other side of the river Elbe, from where it would be easier to start my cycling tour and also where I hoped to finally buy a bike. It's quite an interesting town, a bit like a small Shrewsbury or Durham where the main old town is surrounded by a river/canal (haven't quite worked out which it is yet, it has locks but is definitely flowing!), full of old buildings that were obviously built before the spirit measure was invented. But the streets in this old town are deceiving: they look straight but they must all have invisible kinks and bends in them because it's impossible not to go round in circles! I've tried to navigate my way through at least eight times now and not once have I come out the other end where I was aiming for. I hadn't been able to find anyone to stay with in Stade so I checked into the youth hostel when I got here (well, after I'd gotten lost going round in circles a few times first actually) and was told that there was room in the cheapest dorm (€16.90 including a decent-sized buffet breakfast - a lot compared to £3.50 in the Cameron Highlands or Jen's £5 in Guanajuato, but there we go) as long as I didn't mind sharing with a load of 16 & 17 year olds. "It might be a bit loud," said the receptionist. I went for it anyway but it turned out that I would only be sharing the corridor with them whereas I had the whole six-bed dorm all to myself. Great in one way 'cos I could spread all my stuff about and get a good night's sleep but it meant I didn't get to meet any of my neighbours apart from in front of the telly watching the UEFA final, where our attention was concentrated more on the football than on each other. Oh well, there's always tonight instead.

This morning after my buffet breakfast and reading about why sea water is salty in 'Straeon ac Arwyr Gwerin Norwy' (Norwegian folk stories in Welsh - any Norwegians know the one about the rich farmer, his lazy brother and the hand mill that makes what ever you want it to?) I started my second hunt for a bicycle. It turned out that there's only one place that sells them in the centre here but luckily they had a pretty good selection of the type I was looking for. I found one that I really liked but then the shop was shutting for lunch so I left to think it over. I went to this huge music shop just by the train station to buy some manuscript paper (typical, I only get inspiration when I'm travelling alone and have things on my mind but that's the most inconvenient time of all the actually write a composition down!!), spend some time plucking mandolins and balalaikas for fun and playing some salsa on the electric pianos, then walked slowly back to the bike shop. I was thinking "hmm, should I really go for it? I mean, it's a good bike but brand new so a little pricey. Perhaps I should save the money and spend it on some cheap Air Asia tickets for a fortnight in sunny Malaysia in August instead!" But I went ahead and bought it anyway, went back to the hostel to change into my cycling gear and took it for a test-spin about ten miles in the direction I'll be travelling tomorrow and back again. And while speeding down the straights and overtaking everyone on the hills with ease I realised I'd made the right choice! Malaysia will have to wait until next Christmas or Spring instead!

So that's about it so far. I'm cycling to a town called Nordenham tomorrow, just the other side of the huge port of Bremerhaven, where I'll have my first couchsurfing experience with a woman who's first loves under her 'Personal Description' are music and smelly cheese, so I'm sure we'll get along well! Then it's down to Jacob's to celebrate Tariq's birthday and onwards and Westwards over the next four weeks ^_^

Speak soon. It's been a while!
Hedd.

P.S. Thought of changing the blog name to something like 'Berlin and Back' or 'Hamburg2Home' but can't think of anything catchy starting with 'Stade'... Any suggestions, or can we just pretend I'm in Asia like mum does with Italy?

One last night in Asia...

So here I am back in Jakarta after a 29-hour coach ride from Denpasar in Bali. The coach ride wasn't as bad as it could have been: there were some empty seats at the back that the man sitting next to me moved to after finishing a couple of bottles of his Balinese spirit (half a bottle is enough to get anyone wasted but I guess he knew that two bottles would make the ride much quicker!) so that gave me ample leg-room; the food (included in the ticket) at the service station buffets was very tasty and filling; I chatted to two Canadian girls on their way to Sumatra, laughing at yet admiring the locals trying to converse with us in very broken Bahasa Inggris; and I was even given an old Balinese coin and a strange-looking ring from my drunken friend. Arriving in Jakarta wasn't even that bad as the Canadians, a very shy Frenchman (you could tell he was French a mile off!) and myself got a pretty cheap taxi to Jalan Jaksa – the backpacker's street – and I booked back into the same hostel I stayed at when I arrived seven weeks ago. Into the exact same room, in fact, and the owners were thrilled to see their "Thomas" back, almost as if they couldn't believe anyone would want to return there having stayed once.

Kuta was fun. I had my day in the pool of the Hard Rock Cafe followed by an all-you-can-eat buffet in their restaurant (I certainly got my money's worth!) followed by a couple of hours in their bar with the resident band and dancers, who can only be described as "diddorol-gwahanol." The sunsets on the beach were lovely and karaoke-ing the night away with a load of Aussies and Chinese in the clubs was definitely an experience – they especially liked my “Summer of ‘69” and “Green Grass of Home,” which I thought was especially apt.

And so I find myself with only 15 hours left in Asia. What do you do in that time? Well, I’ve already gone to the local record store and bought myself another five CDs to add to the five or six I already have (not only do I like Indonesian court music but its pop, folk and rock music is also very good) and tomorrow morning I’ll go and find some Indonesian fruit and sweets at the market to bring home – that’s if I don’t eat them on the plane first! After this I’ll head to the bar next door to the hostel where there’s a Rolling Stones tribute band performing, and just before leaving for the airport I think I’ll have a mini gorge on Javanese food – I’m thinking bubur (a type of porridge) to start, then soto (noodles and rice in a lemongrass soup), then sate (you should know that, it’s the one in a peanut sauce) and a whole load of gorengan (friend stuff) to finish. That should keep me going for a few hours at least!

On the coach I looked at my passport and totted up the days I’ve been away in different places. My passport now has 22 stamps, 2 visas and a sticker (That’s Japan trying to be hi-tech!). It tells me I spent a total of 23 days in PR China, 15 days in Japan, 5 days in Hong Kong, 69 days in Malaysia, 3 days in Singapore, 3 days in Brunei, 51 days in Indonesia, 4 days on a boat and (after tomorrow) 2 days in the air, making a grand total of 174 days. Wow! It’s gone fast, too, especially since arriving in Indonesia.

Whenever I tell people I’m about to go home after almost 6 months away they always ask the same question: “So, are you ready to go home?” I suppose it’s inevitable that a part of me doesn’t want to leave. I’ve learned a lot out here about the lives and cultures of the people around me and I’ve changed my mind on some important things such as politics and religion in the process; on the whole (taxi and becak drivers and prostitutes being the exception) I’ve been met with genuinely friendly faces who are always willing to try to have a chat even with their often virtually non-existent English language skills; through that I’ve learned how to understand what people are saying without words and can even just about understand the dodgy (which is putting it nicely) English subtitles on their DVDs; I’ve eaten delicious food every day (although I must say that I prefer Malaysian food to Indonesian food, there’s just more variety – there you go Shu Haur, you win after all!) and at a price you won’t find anywhere else in the world, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to taste anything at home anymore having added plenty of chili sambal to already spicy food for the last 19 weeks; and everywhere you go there’s enough familiarity to feel comfortable yet enough differences to always make the time interesting.

But I have a lot to look forward to for when I come home: having the whole family together and seeing friends in the village again; gorging on mum and dad’s delicious Christmas food (if I won’t be able to taste that then there must be something seriously wrong with my taste buds!); doing all the Christmas traditions we’ve always done – a chat and a sherry at Maldwyn’s followed by carol singing outside the village shop and hotel, plygains, sledging (if we’re lucky with the snow), playing countless board games (we should get a shield this year and start recording the winners of the tournament), watching a good film with a hot chocolate in front of the roaring fire and all the general coziness that comes with Chrsitmas; seeing my extended family and being smothered by my aunties (wait, that last one’s something I’m not looking forward to); then New Year’s in Prague and some serious catching up with ACers over a few pivos; celebrating My Dang’s birthday in Esens; a couple of days in London; then finally the Mari Lwyd in Dinas Mawddwy and a weekend in AC before I need to find myself a well-paid full time job (if you know of anything, let me know) and organise the summer project. Wait, I almost forgot the most important things of all – cheese, fresh bread with real butter, cwrw gaeaf and being able to flick through the radio or my collection of CDs and finding exactly what I want to listen to – I have my ten CDs from here, a load of Songlines and Introducing CDs waiting for me at home and a few on my Christmas wish list too, so I’ve got a lot of listening to look forward to.

So as you can see, I have a lot to look forward to. I think if I was coming home at the beginning of a miserable and boring February I would probably want to stay here at least until the summer months when things get fun at home. But as it is the bitterness of the bitter-sweet pill of leaving is going to be very much outweighed by the sweetness of being home for Christmas and seeing friends for New Year’s.

All that’s left for me to say is thanks for reading this and following me on my travels through E and SE Asia. Well done Japan for being the country you most want to visit (28%), and well done Hedd, Hedd, Hedd, Hedd and Hedd for being placed 1st to 5th respectively in the Poke-Stephen-in-the-Eye Game. This may be the last ever post on this blog – but maybe not, as I think “heddinasia” is an apt name for any blog of mine. After all, there’s always going to be a part of Hedd in Asia, wherever he is.

Quick update for Java and Bali

I have one thing on my mind at the moment - I'm thinking what it must feel like to be smothered by a sweaty Adam Jones after 80 minutes of running... it would be an experience, that's for sure! I'm thinking that because I've just uploaded his picture and finished writing the last blog post, even though I started it two weeks ago. I was meant to talk about other things I've been up to too but I've been so busy sorting out lots of other stuff and procrastinating from writing on my blog that I kept putting it off. Anyway, I only have one more short week left after 24 weeks of being out here so I can't afford to put it off any longer. So here's a very quick update on what I've been up to.

The day after Prambanan (my birthday) I got up at about 5:30 am to catch the first bus to Borobudur, and ancient Buddhist monument not too far from Yogyakarta. In fact it's the largest Buddhist monument in the world and the largest monument of any kind in the Southern Hemisphere (that's right, I'm below the equator now). As you can imagine, it was pretty massive and impressive with lots and lots and lots of reliefs telling fables and the stories of the Buddha at different reincarnations. Ffion says that her prof at uni says that they're one of the best preserved reliefs in the world. It was a good job I came early to avoid the crowds as this is Indonesia's #1 tourist destination and I managed to go around all the levels in peace until I got to the sputa at the top, by which point all the school trips had arrived and all the annoying children wanted to have their photo taken with me.

Also on the grounds was a museum about Indonesia's nautical history which had inside it the boat someone build based on the boats on Borobudur's reliefs. He and a team used it to sail from Bali all the way round to Ghana to show that transportation, trade and contact was available between the two continents all those thousands of years ago, although in reality they never sailed further than Madagascar, whose people and language are actually decended from the Indonesian archepeligo and surrounding islands. Apparently, again according to Ffion's prof, the boats were only meant to go one way (from East to West), which proves that bananas originated in Asia and were introduced to Africa rather than the other way around. Later that day I arrived in Solo (or Surakarta, as it's properly called), another royal city in Central Java, and after dumping my stuff in my room went downstairs to play some gamelan after all this time.

The hostel itself used to be a batik factory, and not only did they have a whole gamelan orchestra but also their own small swimming pool and lots of interesting furnishings. One of the people I met there was an old Dutch man who used to live in Indonesia when he was a child, his farther being the owner of the country's second largest sugar factory. He's been back to Indonesia a few times but today was the first time he'd gone back to visit the concentration camp he and his family were sent to by the Japanese during their occupation in WWII. His father and elder brother were worked and starved to death there and he was almost about to die too until he was saved by the Japanese surrender, after which he and the other Dutch had to flee back to Europe. Over a million people - Indonesian and Dutch alike - were being worked and starved to death in the Javanese concentration camps at the time of the surrender. "The bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible," he said, "they took many lives. But many, many, many lives were saved. Many lives."

I got to know a few Brits in Solo, some students studying gamelan in the arts institute there. It was good to be able to speak English for once without having to slow things down to a snail's pace and to have conversations that went beyond trying to explain where Wales is. Incidently, I've had enough of saying "it's next to England," so I now say "it's close to Scotland and Ireland" instead. Hopefully they'll know who Ryan Giggs is though, then it needs no explaination. I met these people at the various gamelan latihans (practices) and wayang kulit shows we went to, which included two all-night performances from 7 pm 'till 4 am. One of them had a very useful simultanious English translation, about which Rachel Hand, one of the Brits studying at the institute that I got to know and who's a SOAS alumn, whose an article for the Jakarta Post, quoting me in it! You can read it online - http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/03/039wayang039-with-english-a-first-surakarta.html

David McKenny, another SOAS music alumn studying at the institute, is another guy I got to know and it was good to get lots of inside information about SOAS, the music course and staff and other nit-bits to put some of my concerns away. Now that I've finally finished the UCAS applications I'm only waiting for a descision from the universities - four out of five of which are in London - but after talking with David and Rachel I'll accept SOAS straight away if they want me. I spent quite a bit of time with David and Joe Lunar, my original contact for Solo that Nikhil Dally, the gamelan teacher from AC, put me in contact with and who's played at one of the gamelan concerts in the Glass Room there.

If you're reading this and haven't got a clue what gamelan or wayang kulit is, I suggest you search them on Youtube and have a listen and a look! They're both a pivotal part of Indonesian culture, especially so in Central Java and Bali, but their styles are very different. Another important aspect of Central Javanese culture is batik - literally "many dots," refering to the technique of putting lots and lots of wax dots on cotton or silk to make a design and then dying the material so that the colour doesn't dye the area that the wax is. It's all very simple in concept but the art and application itself is very difficult, as I found out myself when I took a day course in it. In Jogja, it was very tourist-orientated, with modern wall hangings being the thing to buy, but in Solo it was much more traditional with the small team of batik makers where I was doing the course behind a clothes shop were spending the whole day just covering certain areas of sarongs with bees wax. My attempts were miserable and I was getting drips everywhere, but I had fun and managed to make a couple of Christmas prezzies along the way.

After twelve days in Solo I headed for Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. There wasn't much to do here though - the only reason I wanted to go was because this is where Alice grew up - but it did have an excellent zoo by Asian standards and some enormous shopping centres by anyone's standards, which meant I was able to top up on a few essentials like tissues for toilet paper and shampoo. I also watched an interesting film called 'Twilight', a kinda teen vampire film that really doesn't make much sense but it was either that or Disney.

After Surabaya I headed to the Bromo region. Gunung Bromo is an active volcano surrounded by a few other sleeping volcanoes in a large crater which is in turn surrounded by volcanoes - well, they do call this the 'Ring of Fire'! Actually, as impressive as Gunung Bromo itself was - which is the main thing people come to see and has about 240 steps leading up to the top - I prefered to jalan jalan (wander about) along the crator rims of the other volcanos. At least they didn't stink of sulphur! I woke up at about 3 am both days I was in the region, the first time to climb a mountain on the edge of the large crator that Bromo and the others were lying in (known as the Sea of Sand, for obvious reasons) in time for sunrise and the second in time to climb Gunung Bromo itself in time for sunrise. Walking along the ridges from an active volcano to a sleeping one gives a very strange scenery: it's as if you were walking through Russia at the transition of winter and spring, that is to say that one moment everything around you is barren and dead, a wasteland of sand and black rock, then suddenly you turn the corner and you're in the middle of a lush green landscape with a thick forest below. The morning mist, which fortunately didn't rise above the ground for the whole time I was walking, added a lot to the mood, and I got lots and lots of good photos. But now I want to visit the Caucasus instead to see if it really does look like how I imagine it. How about a family holiday in Georgia and Armenia this summer, eh?

What with two very early mornings and then a sleepless nightbus to Bali, I had a rather confused body clock by the time I rached Ubud, a town in central Bali that's been known as a very artsy place ever since the German artist Walter Spies moved there in the 1920s, with many foreign artists following suit ever since. So after finding a very friendly homestay and eating some honey on toast and fruit for breakfast, I slept for the rest of the day. And because it was raining I slept most of the next day too! But don't worry, by the next day I was out and about again, jalan jalan-ing through some of Bali's signature terraced rice fields and popping in a few galleries along the way. I stayed in Ubud for a week all together, trying to get as much Balinese 'culture' in me as I could before heading to the beach. So I went to a lot of museums and galleries, temples (one of which houses the world's largest kettledrum, cast in the 2nd century BC) and shows and dances. On Sunday night there was an all-you-could-eat traditional Balinese buffet at my homestay, which was really tasty and finally brought some people to the place, as it had been dead all week. All you could eat and only for 30,000 rupiah, which sounds like a lot, and for a meal that it a lot, but it converts to just under 2 pounds!

One of the best things I saw was actually in this temple with the kettledrum: the temple is a bit out of the way so I rented a push bike for the day, and when I arrived there was a ceremony about to begin. I'm not allowed to enter one but the wall was just low enough (or, rather, I was just tall enough, as I'm sure the wall is a perfectly adequate size for the Balinese!) to peek over and watch. There were girls and ladies carrying tiers of fruit on their head and putting them on the alters as offerings to intice the gods to join them in their festival, priests flicking holy water everywhere, all to the sound of the gamelan. It was just so colourful. The Balinese are an incredibly spiritual and superstitious people, and their unique take on Hinduism affects every part of their lives. When I arrived back in Ubud there was yet another ceremony in place, this time on the streets surrounding the main temple, with all the men dressed in white and all the women in colourful tops and sarongs. After being in Muslim areas for the last 15 weeks it was odd to see women praying without covering their hair at all, whereas it's the men who must partially cover their hair with a while wrap.

And that bring you up to date. I arrived in Kuta this afternoon, the most popular place in Bali, packed with Aussies and surfers. It's also the place of the October 2002 bombings that killed over 200 people. There have been warning not to travel to Bali at this time because the masterminds behind the bombings were executed by firing squad just a few weeks ago, so the authorities are a little nervous that there'll be trouble. But so far so good, which is helped by the very tolerant nature of the Balinese people. I thought I'd come to Kuta to finish though as there's still a lot of fun to be had, what with an 18km stretch of beach and the hottest place in town just down the road from my homestay - the Hard Rock Hotel! It has a swimming pool inside that's more like a lagoon with slides and a wave machine, although there is a proper waterpark not far away. Choices, choices! So I'm going to enjoy myself for these next few days before I have a 24-hour coach ride up to Jakarta on Friday and a 22-hour flight home on Sunday. I'll try to post something small for y'all on Saturday night. In the meantime, maybe you can head down to your local waterpark and see how much fun you have during wintertime!

Prambanan

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in the city of Solo, about an hour by train Northeast of Jogja. Fortunately it has a very fast internet connection and a good headset so I've been able to Skype Auntie Jan to wish her happy birthday and I'm now I'm listening to the Wales Vs Australia match using the BBC iPlayer. I'm usually not very good at multitasking: if I was listening to it on Radio Wales I wouldn't be able to simultaneously type at all so I'm listening to Radio Cymru instead. It's a little strange hearing Welsh again after all this time but luckily I'm still able to understand everything they're saying, even with their Hwntw accents! Shane's just scored a try to put us 5-0 up so it sounds like it's gonna be a good match.

The last week-and-a-half has been a very full and busy time compared to much of the last twenty-two weeks, so I'll just tell you about some of the things I've been up to. Grr, Australia's just scored a try :( And from 70 metres out, too. And I thought it was the All Blacks who were the counter-attack masters, looks like the Wallabies are good at it too.


Prambanan, 18th-19th November

I rented a push bike from someone on the little path I was staying on in Yogyakarta and made my way to Prambanan, a plain with lots of 8th and 9th century Hindu and Buddhist temples. I could have taken the 18km fume-choked duel-carriageway that goes straight there but seeing as I had a few hours of sunlight left I decided to take the longer but quieter route along a canal. The scenery was typically Javanese - rice fields in the foreground, volcanos in the background - and really once you've seen one piece of Javanese countryside you've seen it all. Just before turning back onto the duel-carriageway I reached a small village and stopped for a while to watch a primary school football tournament, much to their delight. At Prambanan I checked myself into a simple losmen (homestay), had some nasi goreng (fried rice) and a sprite for tea and made my way to a theatre at the back of the main temple complex where there was going to be a classical Javanese ballet performance of the Ramayama. The Ramayama - one of the great Hindu epics - is a very long and complicated story about life, the universe and everything, so I wasn't convinced that they would be able to tell the whole story in only a two-hour long ballet. Indeed, it was only really the skeleton of the story that they told but the overall performance was excellent: fluid dancing, colourful costumes and great gamelan accompaniment. In the summer months they do a longer four-night outdoor performance over the weekend of the full moon with the main temple luring over behind the stage but now that it's the rainy season they take it indoors which means you're a lot closer to the action.

The next day I had my requested 5 am knock on the door and started on my way to explore some of the smaller temples around the plain that hardly anyone goes to, partly because you can only really get to them by bike and partly because most people just come for the main Candi Prambanan. But, being me, I wanted to see these out-of-the-way candis. The first one I got to, Candi Sajiwan, was a Buddhist temple decorated with reliefs concerning education and the base and staircase were decorated with animal fables. It was, however, covered in wooden scaffolding. But being Indonesia and not caring about Health and Safety signs there was nothing to tell me not to climb it, so I climbed it for a good look down at the ruined mini-temples all around. Every candi had these mini-temples surrounding them and they were all in ruins but it was sometimes difficult to tell whether that was a cause of time or because of the devistating earthquake that hit the area in May 2006, killing 5,782 people. Then I went to a couple more candis, passing plenty of early morning workers in the rice paddies along the way and with the constant view of the smoking Mt. Merapi in the distance - although it was a lot closer than it looked. Mt. Merapi is Indonesia's most active volcano and the fourth most active in the world. I may go and climb it next week but what with the paths being slippery at this time of year and infested with poisonous snakes and spiders I might decide to give it a miss.

It was time for some breakfast... but there wasn't much choice. In fact, at the little roadside shop I'd stopped at to buy some water there wasn't any choice. So I settled for the only thing they had to eat: peanuts fried in batter! Now, Indonesian cuisine is very grease-heavy by anyone's standards but this really did take the biscuit. Actually, it was quite a lot like a biscuit. Oh, but it have a few strips of seaweed for flavour, so maybe that makes it a little more healthy... Anyway, I was going to need the energy because I had a steep hill in front of me to climb to get to the next candi. After about 50m I realised it was going to be impossible to cycle up so I pushed the bike the whole way and was looking forward to racing back down the other way! It was worth the effort though because this temple - Candi Ijo - had something special about it. I'm not sure what, it was just the atmosphere. There was one main candi and three medium-sized candis with ruined mini-candis beyond. Obviously I was the only visitor there but there were plenty of others around - a few gardeners weeding the lawn, a few stone masons repairing the stone wall surrounding the complex and someone sweeping away the dust they created. And here, just like on all the other temples, there were intricate carvings all over the walls and even a very cute statue of a cow in one of the smaller candis.

After some time I went back to the losmen for lunch and then to the main temple complex just across the road. After passing the hordes of people trying to sell me souvenirs for something I hadn't seen yet at a ridiculous price I was inside the grounds. The first thing you see is a board showing 'before and after' pictures from the time of the 2006 earthquake: the 'before' ones show the complex in all its majesty, while the 'after's show collapsed walls, fallen spires, disjointed blocks of stone and rubble lying all around. Given the magnitude of the quake it's fortunate that it didn't completely collaps, but it did unfortunately mean that only two of the candis were open to walk into (here they did care a little about Health and Safefy!) and one of the largest ones in the centre was covered in ugly red scaffolding. The boards also told of how they were going to repair the damage, which is going to take a long long time.

It's going to be hard to explain everything about Prambanan so I'll just go over it quickly and then if you're interested you can look it up on wiki! Basically there were six main temples in the centre square. The big ones at the back are dedicated to Brahma the Creator, Shiva the Destroyer (the biggest one) and Vishnu the keeper. The smaller ones in front are dedicated to their vehicles, or vahana - the bull Nandi for Shiva, the gander Angsa for Brahma, and Vishnu's Eagle Garuda. Garuda is also the national symbol for Indonesia, like the Red Dragon in Wales so you see it everywhere. Around this central square of large temples - the main one, Shiva's, is 47 metres tall - was a wall and beyond that there were 224 mini candis, by now all rubble. These mini temples form square rings around the centre square, the different rings symbolising the different stages of the Hinds and 'Trees of World Harmony' surrounded by birds and all sorts of other animals.u cosmos, with the main candi's, specifically Shiva, being at the centre, highest level of the universe. As is always the case, the temples were covered in intricate relief carvings on their walls. The carvings on the Shiva and Brahma temples illustrate the Ramayama story while the one on the Vishnu temple tells the story of Lord Krishna. There were lots of other reliefs and stone carvings dotted around - dogs and mythical creatures to protect the enterance

After walking around this Prambanan complex I wondered off to the museum on the grounds which had some interesting items they'd excavated and also a film about the candi's history, which was more about bashing the 'unharmonious' modern world than anything else! Then I made my way about 1km North to the final temple for the day - Candi Sewu. This Buddhist temple, along with the others on the plain, actually predates Candi Prambanan; It was build in the 8th century but the Buddhist kingdom was defeated by a Hindu king who built the Hindu temples in the 9th century. But he left the Buddhist temples intact as a mark of respect. Again, its 200 mini temples are now all in ruin and the Buddhas who used to sit in them are now all headless at the very least. The most impressive thing about this temple though is the two giant guardian statues on either side of the enterance, both fat, fierce and weilding a club. You see mini reproductions of these all over Indonesia - at the enterance of large houses and restaurants, etc. By this time it was starting to get late and drizzle so I quickly went back to where I'd left the bike and made my way back to Yogyakarta, this time along the highway so as to get there before dark. And then I went to bed early because I was going to have another pre-6 am morning on my birthday the following day!

Hurray, we won the game! Cymru 21 - 18 Awstralia. Tense few moments at the end there, mind. Well done, hogie.

The last month and a bit

Hello hello again!

It's 7:15 pm on a Saturday night. Right now I'm sitting in an interesting little cafe just outside the visitor's enterence to the Kraton (Sultan's Palace) in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. To be honest I don't know as much about the history of Indonesia as I should, only that they were colonised by the Dutch for a long time and proclaimed their independence shortly after the Japanese Occupation, so I'm still unsure as to why the official title is 'The Republic of Indonesia' when there are still plenty of Sultans around. Presumably they're just ceremonial figures now who get money from the government but who have no actual powers. Anyway, here I am in the cafe, looking at a window with water running down from tiny fountains on top making it look like it's raining outside, waiting for a Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppet) show to being in the museum at the end of the street.

The last month and a bit has seen my passport stamped I don't know how many times, being in Sarawak, Brunei, Sarawak again, Sabah, Peninsular Malaysia and finally Java, Indonesia. I don't have pictures any more for most of it because I stupidly left my memory stick in the computer the other day and when I remembered I'd left it there it had already gone :( Luckily most of my pictures are already up of Facebook but not my ones from Borneo, but oh well. It just gives me yet another reason to go back there! I actually have a few posters from Sarawak though, free for tourists from the tourist information centre, so at least I have something 'visual' to remind me of it, and you won't believe how difficult it was for me to find a poster-tube to carry them in. They don't seem to exist in this part of the world so I settled for a 'drawing tube' (whatever that is, presumably something to keeps drawings in...) I found in a massive stationary shop in Miri.

Anyways, I'm deviating a bit here. So yeah, the last month and a bit. Well, I'll just quickly jot down what I've been up to, saying what snippets of memory come to mind first from each place and then later do another 'A Day in the Life of Hedd in Asia' sorta entries. OK, well, I went to the Niah Caves, which were very very big and very interesting. After my first few steps into the cave I slipped on some bad poo and cut my hand, which wasn't good because I'd left my mini first aid kit in the lodge thinking "what harm could come to you in a cave?" Luckily with a bit of spit to wash it out it didn't get infected. Inside the cave there was even more bat and bird poo and, as you might have guessed, quite a lot of bats and birds too. A little further in I saw a lone bird's nest harvester right at the very very top corner of the cave. Well, actually all I could see was the light from a candle but from that you know there must be a man up there too. Wait a second, I'll look on Google for some pics to give you an idea... there we go. So I went through a whole network of caves which were all inhabited in prehistoric times and at the very end I saw the famous 'death boat' painting, prehistoric paintings of their funeral rituals. Pretty interesting stuff. Then I waited for dusk for the 'changing of the guard', which is where all the swifts fly back into the cave to sleep and at the same time all the bats fly out to hunt for the night.

I got to Miri by bus the next day and guess who drove past the bus stop while I was standing there... the two guys from Chester I'd met in the Orangutan centre in Kuching! So they stopped and gave me a lift to their place for some tea and biscuits. They were heading off to Bario in the next couple of days and were in Miri patching up their Land Rover and meeting some old church friends. They were staying with a Chinese couple from their church, the husband of which used to work for Shell. That isn't surprising though - most people in Miri seemed to work for Shell as that's where the company was founded. A long time ago there was a guy who made a living buying fuel from abroad and selling shells in exchange. Then one day he hit an oil well on the hill behind Miri and created the company there and then. There's not much to do in Miri itself though, it's basically just an oil city with lots of big shops (although none of them, however big, sold poster-tubes) and garages to patch up Land Rovers. I stayed in a hostel run by an indigenous woman who's married to the man who used to fly the planes into Bario from Miri so the guys from Chester knew where to drop me off after the tea and biscuits because he used to fly the plane when John, the old doctor, worked there. Not that you'd need to know that... like I said, I'm just jotting down random memories that come to mind.

I went to Brunei for the weekend, which consisted of no less than four different buses and a boat ride. But it was definitely worth it. As soon as you cross over the border you know you're in 'oil capital' with the entire sea up to the horizon covered in oil rigs and on land there's nodding donkeys on every bit of free space between the roads and buildings. It's no wonder the country's so rich. They say money doesn't make you happy, but after being in Brunei I'm not too sure because the people there all seemed very happy and are without a doubt the most genuinely friendly strangers I've come across yet. I stayed in this strange Youth Centre place which was, well, strange but comfortable. Doing a bit of 'Jalan Jalan' (wandering around aimlessly) in BSB (the capital, which is where I stayed) is easy and all the 'sites' are within walking distance, although there really isn't much to see. There's this huge and very impressive white marble mosque with a golden dome, a water kampung (village) where most of the residents live, which is basically a huge crowded bunch of stilted wooden houses build on the river all crammed together. It's funny, because most of the houses in the country were huge (sorry to use the word so many times, but it's the best word to describe things in Brunei, apart from the country itself!) except for these ones in the kampung but it's not because the people living there are poor (it doesn't seem like there's any poverty in the country at all, unless you count the house servants, but then they're given everything they need by their employers) but because they just like the life there so carry on living in run-down houses but making a fortune at the same time. And what do you do if you're rich and live in a run-down house on a river? Play about in powerboats all day!

The country is completely dry (Islamic law) so there's no night-life at all. The Ex-pats who live there usually go to Miri for the weekend if they want a drink or to go clubbing, so in Brunei the only things that are open until relatively late (1 am latest) are the cinemas. I watched a film in this (sorry!) huge shopping centre. It was called Butterfly Lovers, and it was basically the story of Mulan for the first third and Romeo & Juliet for the rest. It was a good laugh though, one of those 'new-style' Chinese films with a mixture of soppy love, jokes, kung-fu and pretty scenery. There was a lot of hype about it there though because the main actor was from Brunei (on the right in the picture), the first from the country to appear on the big screen. In fact, the premiere of the film was in that very cinema only a few days before. After it had finished I needed to make my way back to where I was staying. It was a few miles away and I'd gotten the bus there so was a little stuck as to how to get back. So I asked a guy sitting outside a cafe how to get there and he offered to give me a ride, free of charge, which I gladly accepted. It's things like that that doesn't happen anywhere else I've been to, they'd usually always want to squeeze some money out of you but in Brunei they don't seem to care about that. Oh, I haven't talked about the palace! Well, I didn't see much of it as it's mostly hidden behind a load of trees but it's - you guessed it - HUGE! I mean, this really is huge, I think it's actually the biggest palace in the world or something. And all around the fence were these posh lamp posts all covered in gold leaf. So to sum up Brunei: small country, big buildings, lots of money, happy people. It kinda reminded me of St. Petersburg... well, the building at least, all big and covered in gold leaf. But Russia's a big country... and the people didn't seem awfully happy either...

Four buses, a boat ride, a swim in a public pool and a flight later I was in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, Malaysia. Here, I met Felicia, a friend of Elaine from college, whom I would be staying with for the next two weeks in her kampung in the jungle. I learned Kadazan-Dusun karaoke songs, rubber-tapped, made rice wine, went to a Christening, cleared an undergrowth-covered hill-side with a machete to later plant fruit trees there instead, had my hair cut by the native chief's son, swam in the river, chilled with youths at a Christian camp, sang 'Y Sguthan,' 'Gaseg Ddu' (the old version) and 'Ar Gyfer Heddiw Bore' to everyone's delight, watched Malay and HKese DVDs, cooked ayam sambal, went to the village's Catholic Mass (don't tell Auntie Jan!), drew with the neighbour's kids, tried to teach some girls to Salsa, ate dog (and very tasty it was too), chatted with the village sergeant and the visiting pig-seller... lots of things I wouldn't normally do basically! Everyone was very friendly and accommodating and, in true Asian style, offered you food (too much to mention) and drink (either 2nd grade rice wine, 1st grade rice wine, distilled rice wine or beer...) when you went to visited which, along with me being polite enough to finish everything put in front of me, meant my relatively flat stomach I had when I arrived what with all the walking I'd done in Sarawak and Brunei was, by the end of the two weeks, very much visibly fatter. And it wasn't unhealthy i.e. fried like most food out here, it's just because of the sheer volume of food and drink and the fact that, besides what I mentioned above, we mainly just relaxed on the veranda to take shade from the sun all day. Some of the food was absolutely stunning and I felt quite privileged to eat some of it. For example, one night when we went to the neighbour's house I was given, as always, a whole array of little treats. One of them I remember in particular though. It was a stew with only four ingredients: a jungle deer you catch using a bamboo trap so as to keep it fresh; a fruit you have to climb the highest tree to pluck; and a type of chestnut and mushroom only found deep deep in the jungle. And that's it, it was all boiled together and it tasted delicious. Apparently it's only allowed to be eaten by men to make them strong but it just goes to show how much effort they put into making their food and how they can totally depend on their surroundings.

I flew from Kota Kinabalu with the very comfortable budget Air Aisa back to where I was nine weeks previously: Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I got the SkyBus to the KL Sentral then a local train up north to Petaling Jaya, one of the districts of KL I'd gotten to know quite well after staying with Shu Haur. I went to a sate restaurant, ordered a lycee juice and waited for somebody I'd never met but had heard a lot about - Alina, my mum's dorm mate from when she was in AC. Lots of you might not know that my mum, my sister and I all went to AC... that's right, we're an 'AC legacy' family (!) but I tried not to spread it about in AC. Well, now you know. Anyway, my mum went to AC from '75-'77 and lived in the castle. Back then the dorm mates were all co-years. I'd met one of her other dorm mates a couple of times before, Marit from Norway, but not Alina. It was going to be interesting to get to know her, and who knows, maybe I might be able to dig up a few secrets from my mum's past at the same time! It turned out that Alina was very cool (I asked my mum if she was 'cool' in AC, she said she supposed she was but they didn't use that word back then!) but very worrisome! She was constantly afraid something bad would happen to me but I tried to explain that after being out here for about 18 weeks I knew what I was doing. I was staying in her auntie's house with lots of her family members who were all typically accommodating (i.e. in a very good way) and they all insisted I persuade my mum to come and visit one day soon. Well, I said, when Air Asia starts flying direct from Europe to KL, which they plan to start doing this next year, then it might be a real possibility. Alina was working the next day so I spent it with two of her sisters and their families around the sleepy Malay district of Shah Alam. With the first sister and her step-granddaughter we did what Malays to best: shopping! We went to the biggest shopping centre in the whole of Malaysia and it was very, very... you know what the next word will be! But not being the best shopper in the world (or, if you want to save money, then you could actually call me the best shopper in the world!) I only bought a Christmas present for my dad. Later, with Alina's older sister, I had a good ol' chat about SE Asian politics with her and her husband (they're convinced I'm an under-cover policeman hunting down political opposition members because!) and later visited the - OK, I'll use a different word this time - enormous blue Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque, Shah Alam's landmark. With my sarong and kufi and a little lying to the guard that I was thinking of converting (again, don't tell Auntie Jan!) I was able to go right inside to the prayer hall, and very impressive it was too. She remembered mum from when she came to visit Alina in AC and, again, insisted she came to visit Malaysia. The next day we drove to the airport and, after reminiscing about the old AC - James Mendelssohn, rubbish food... things never change - I was on yet another plane, this one bound for Jakarta.

I was appalled to find out lots of people don't know where Jakarta is - yes, you know who you are! If you're reading this and you don't know where it is then shame on you! What's the capital of the most populated country in the world? Beijing. The second most populated country? New Delhi. The third? Washington D.C. And the fourth? Well, that'll be Jakarta. Indonesia, the 4th most populated country in the world and the 16th largest country in the world has a population of 235 million, and Java, one of it's 17,508 islands where Jakarta and its other major cities and where I'll be spending about four weeks traveling from West to East, is the most populated island in the world. And you can feel it, too. It lives up to its reputation: fume-choked cities and beautiful volcano-laden countryside. Jakarta, formally the Dutch centre of it's East Indies colonies, is chock-a-block with building, cars, motorbike, buses and people. I came to Indonesia hoping for some culture - music, dance, puppet shows. There were a few good museums in Jakarta but not much else, which gave me much needed time to catch up with people after three weeks of being without communication and to finally sort out my university business. Oh, and I watched the new James Bond there too, which I thought was OK but some of the scenes were virtually exactly the same as the last one only with a different girl and in a different country. And I also went to the Indonesian National Mosque which was - yep, you know already. But this really was, as you can see from the picture of inside the prayer hall. The guards were more than welcoming to visitors here and although I didn't really want to take a picture while they were praying mine almost forced me to! I've kinda taken a shine to mosques after being here, it's just such an important part of life here. You hear the call for prayer four times a day (and once at night if you're unlucky!) so you know you're always close to one and they're normally very impressive both outside and inside and the guards are usually very friendly and welcoming to visitors. There are some things I'm definitely going to miss after coming home, not least the food and the weather, but the mosques are also up there, as are other temples. I mean, after you've seen twenty Chinese temples, Hindu Candis and Muslim mosques in one week you're kinda fed up of them but I can see myself after a couple of months at home wanting to go to the mosque in Birmingham or something just to see one again!

After Jakarta I went to Bandung, the 'Paris of the East', which was another business city but it did have a certain charm about it and a very good geological museum. Then it was on an eight-hour train ride off to Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Java, where I could finally hear some gamelan and watch some wayang kulit, which I've already done and can't wait for this next installment. But more on that later, I'm sure you've all had enough of reading for now! Next time I'll tell you about Prambanan, which I'll go to in a few days, and Borobudur which I'm saving for my birthday before heading to Solo, another cultural capital where I'll, at last, have a chance to play some gamelan myself after all these months.

'Till then,
Enjoy.