Remote Pacific

Sagada

2010-06-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

After a two-day drive North from Manila we arrived in the mountain province of the Philippines. The mountains should be called cliffs because that's what they all were. The road was dug into the cliffs with a rise of a thousand feet on one side and a drop of a thousand feet on the other. The narrow road was washed away and under repair in at least 40 places from the landslides a year ago.

I saw one truck that recently went off the side. It landed hundreds of feet below the road, upside down, and half buried. The salvage crew arrived and started to retrieve the cargo with cables and a winch. When we passed by again on our return trip, the salvage crew was still pulling up large, perhaps 500 gallon, round sealed containers. The containers were, understandably, dented on every side but surprisingly still intact. They already retrieved perhaps 20 of these containers and lined them alongside the already narrow road. Unfortunately, I was not able to see what was in the containers. Our guide said that not only trucks go over the side but buses as well. That was sad because there had to be over 40 passengers on each bus.

Our goal for this trip was to visit the last area in the Philippines where the very unique and traditional natives to the islands lived. They are of a different race from the Filipinos who migrated there from elsewhere.

Our guide and the driver of the jeepney I rented for the trip had been there before and told me the history of the native village. The ancestors of this village originally lived on the coast. Four hundred, or so, years ago the Spanish arrived to the island and tried to convert and civilize all natives they could find, as they did on nearly all islands in the Pacific. The Spaniard's mission was to convert all they can and kill all they can't convert. This particular tribe wanted to keep their traditional culture so were forced to retreat deep into the mountains where they lived, culture intact, for the past 400 years.

I was becoming more anxious to get there with every word as I glanced out the window at the thousand-foot drop. Racing on the edge seemed to become less fearful as the hours passed. I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter if it was a 30 foot drop or a 3,000 foot drop although the 3,000 foot drop offered much better views.

Our guide continued his stories about the unique and beautiful people that we were about to meet. "They eat monkeys", said the guide. Not all his stories about the natives were pleasant. The guide continued, "The monkeys sound like they are crying when they are cooked." I then made plans to make myself scarce during meal times. Even still, I couldn't wait to get there.

I thought this was finally going to be worth the extreme risk to all our lives and the countless hours of pain from riding in the back of a jeepney, which I can only compare to a paint mixer at a hardware store.

Finally we arrived in the 400-year-old village of Sagada, the location of last tribe of pure and traditional natives of the Philippines. This turned out to be the biggest disappointment and the saddest. We arrived too late. Sometime after our driver and our guide's last visit to the village and our arrival, the Manila Urbanization Monster attacked. It destroyed the traditional village, the culture, and even the natives and turned the area into what looked like another suburb of Manila. All the Filipinos walking the paved street were texting on their cell phones.

A few years ago the Discovery Channel did a documentary on this unique and traditional tribe. Word must have got out and Filipinos migrated to the tribe by the thousands to capitalize on what the outside world found to be very interesting and special. In doing so they destroyed the last traditional culture of the Philippines. Today only statues of the villagers could be seen in the restaurants, hotels, and stores.

Besides the modern statues and the old rice terraces, there was no surviving evidence that the village or natives ever existed, above ground anyway. The next day I was ready to hightail it out of the mountain province when a 10 year-old Filipino boy offered to guide us to some burial caves that the traditional natives used.

Now that was interesting. All the caves we looked in were full of coffins. Some coffins were slightly old but most were very old, perhaps 400 years old. The old coffins were made from a full hollowed out tree trunk. The body was placed inside and the carved out hole was covered with a flat wood lid with carvings of large lizards. One large cave must have had a hundred of coffins carefully stacked 20 high. Another cave had some coffins suspended off the ground. One of those suspended coffins shifted over the centuries and the skeleton slid out and still lays where it fell on the ground below the coffin. The not-as-strong lid on many other coffins had decayed or just fell apart exposing the skeleton inside.

I was excited to explore these caves and imagined the history behind what I was seeing. Then I saw a sign. The sign was in English and quickly brought me from my imaginations of 400 years ago back to the present day. The sign said, "NOTICE. Please do not get anything inside. Don't open the coffins". The thought of people today doing that and destroying the last artifacts and even the human remains of this last native tribe was more than I could handle.

The coffin on the bottom right says "PUTI" which means "WHITE". A 10-year-old boy there told us that it was an Italian missionary who fell from the high cliff overlooking these coffins last year, so they buried him on the wall with the others that he was watching when he fell.

.

.

.
Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Bicol

2010-06-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

From Manila to Bicol on a hair-raising, near death every 15 seconds, drive. Actually "drive" is not the appropriate term. A better word would be "passing" because that's what it is really all about. The rule of the road seemed to be: pass everyone as often and as many times as possible. We pass the car in front of us, the two cars behind pass us, we pass the three cars in front of us... and this all happens at the top speed that the car is capable of driving. If something prevents your car from driving at its maximum speed then it must be passed.

To make the situation worse, the roads are very narrow and only one lane each way. People sit on the white line on either side of the road and children play inches away from the reckless traffic. Flimsy bamboo huts are lined side-by-side just feet beyond the white line. Life seemed to have no importance. The people sitting on the white line were not concerned, the children playing and their parents were not concerned, and especially the reckless drivers were not concerned for anyone's safety. All vehicles raced by at top speeds, passing through residential areas, which stretched continuously along the roads throughout the island of Luzon. I estimated that I could see, on average, three different people every second for the 13 hour drive. By that estimate, I must have seen 140,000 of Luzon's population, all within a few feet of our car.

Our vehicle was the style of a jeepney with a long bench on each side stretching from front to rear. I was told that a jeepney could hold 50 plus passengers; 11 on each bench, 3 or 4 in the front seat, more than 20 on the roof, and 5 standing on the rear bumper.

Between the benches was an isle but it could not be used for walking as it was packed with boxes, coolers, and luggage. It seemed to be too much as we planned to be gone for only two days.

Our driver was one of my wife's brothers. He was an expert driver, just like all other drivers in the Philippines although they would all serve time if they tried those driving habits in the States. The passengers consisted of myself, my wife, nine of her extended family, and two people I have never seen before. The two strangers never said a word to me and their butt space on the bench and their three large boxes in the isle sure took up a lot of much needed space. After 10 hours we stopped and those two passengers and their boxes got out.

Once we reached the Bicol province the corpses of crashed vehicles were common along the side of the road. Even the cabs of semi trucks were reduced to a ball of twisted metal. All appeared to be fatal accidents, not just for the driver and passengers but the people sitting on the white line, the children playing, and anyone in the bamboo huts that did little to slow down the tumbling vehicles. I had difficulty imagining how they were going to remove some of those crashes and I guessed that's why they were still there.

Our mission for this trip was to visit the place of my wife's childhood. Her family moved away from the area after she completed elementary school to escape the rebels who were hiding out there. At that time, the rebels were formed with the idea of overthrowing the corrupt Marcos government. It didn't take long though, for the villagers to realize that the rebels were more corrupt than the dictator that they planned to overthrow. Even on this trip we went through several armed military checkpoints in search of remaining rebels. I was told that the recent texting on cell phones was what put an end to the rebels. The villagers would text the rebel's every move to the Philippine military.

After 13 hours we reached the city of Lagaspi. This city looked like another suburb of Manila, just like every other town and city we raced through. The only noticeable difference was that this city was at the base of the active and still smoking Mayon Volcano, the most perfect cone in the world.

The last eruption was months earlier and the city was still digging out and repairing roads from that lava flow. The first floor of two-story cement houses was completely buried. All non-cement buildings simply disappeared. To add to the devastation, this was the same area that was heavily hit by the floods from typhoons a year ago. Entire subdivisions washed away and thousands died.

The next day we made the 45-minute drive from Lagaspi to my wife's birthplace of Taladong. That town was simply a few houses alongside the road so it didn't take long to see everything and meet everyone.

We then went back through Lagapi and ventured as far up the perfect cone that the surviving road could take us. Guides were then to take us on foot from the end of the road up the side of the volcano. On our arrival we learned that it had been seven months since the guides made the trip. The trail was buried in lava and was still hot.

Neither my wife nor I wanted to get back in the Jeepney for the 13-hour return trip. We said goodbye to the family and the Jeepney and decided to stay a couple more days then fly home.

The next day one of my wife's fourth-cousins and her husband took us to a nearby province in their new pickup truck. The "drive" turned out to be four hours as we raced through so many more villages identical to the countless villages before.

The roads were narrow, winding, and loaded with heavy pedestrian traffic. Other vehicles on the road were trucks, jeepneys, tricycles, and motorcycles, all of which would stop in the middle of the lane whenever they see a potential passenger.

In addition, every so often the villagers would spread their recent harvest of rice or nuts or cracked coconuts over one lane of the road to dry, sometimes the left lane, sometimes the right lane. This added additional obstacles for our Indy 500 race.

When flying through one village I realized that I had never traveled that fast in a car before. I peaked over the front seat at the speedometer and estimated our speed in miles per hour. It could only be an estimate as the speedometer was in kilometers per hour and only went to 180 KPH and the needle was bouncing off the far right side of the gauge. I estimated our speed through that village to be 120 MPH. The seatbelt didn't work so I tightened my double handed death grip on the little handle above my door and looked out my window to my left. As if I wasn't terrified enough, what I saw absolutely shocked me. A red colored vehicle was passing us. I released one hand and reached for my camera strapped to my belt and took the below picture.

We stopped for lunch at a "resort". I guess I am spoiled after living so many years on Saipan because that building, in no possible way, resembled anything close to what I would consider a resort. The sign at the gate showed that the term "vacation" was still evolving on the island of Luzon but at least it was a start.

The activities at this resort were extremely limited.

We started our day trip to that province late and stayed longer than we had planned so our return trip was at night. That didn't slow down the driver any but did add an additional danger. Every village had 2 or 3 religious precessions where they, mostly children, carried a large cross and the others carried candles. They took up the entire lane forcing both directions of traffic into the same lane. I counted 15 of these precessions on our return trip, each one required reducing our speed from somewhere near 180 KPH down to zero as quickly as possible so we wouldn't wipe out the town.

At night the drivers would drive with their low beams on. That is until a car approaches from the opposite direction. Seconds before impact, both cars would turn on the high beams as the vehicles blindly hurled past each other at great speeds. The vehicles switch back to low beams once they safely pass. Twenty-five years ago I asked my driver in Borneo why they did that. He said something to the effect of: It is necessary to light up the road so the other driver can see you.

Once again in the Philippines, I was surprised when we completed the drive alive. Even the thousands of people we passed sitting on the white line survived our trip. Still I felt that this trip, as well as every other trip I took in the PI, was not worth the hours of pain to my butt and back from the jeepney and the extreme risk of human life.

My wife and I caught the plane from Lagaspi back to Manila. That same night we heard that the Mayon Volcano erupted again after we left. At the time I wasn't sure if I should be relieved to be alive or disappointed that I missed it. It turned out to be a minor eruption so I was disappointed as I sure would have gotten some great pictures, especially if I was on the cone at the time.

Yap

2010-01-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

Yap is a large, beautiful, laid back island with few people. This is the entrance for the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). I use to consider Yap as a home base when visiting the outer islands. When going from one outer island to the next I often had to return to Yap first. While in Yap I would replenish my supplies and gifts, eat a hamburger and soft drink, and visit the small hospital to treat any infected cuts and once to remove a fish bone from my throat.

Yap is worth a visit all by itself. It is rich in culture and history. You can walk on the thousand-year-old stone pathways leading to villages and stone money banks. The banks are simply many large stone money "coins" lined along the pathway. These "coins" can be quite large and all have a hole in the center. To transport the money, a long pole is placed through the hole and several people on each side of the coin lift. The money is not often moved and theft was never a problem since everyone knew who owned each coin. Even when the owner of the coin changed, the location of the coin did not. The value of the coin had nothing to do with its size but the story behind each coin. The harder it was to quarry, and to transport the coin, especially if someone died in the process, the more it was worth.

Yap is pleasantly slow-paced and the people are never in a hurry. There was one stop sign on the island. My driver/guide would stop and look very carefully in both directions. There was never another car that we had to wait for. Once he was sure the coast was clear he would spend the next five minutes at the stop sign preparing his next betel nut. Even the car behind us didn't mind the extra five minute wait at the only stop sign on the island. I guess he too was preparing his next betel nut.

March 1, Yap Day, the only event during the year. I have been to a few of those but, unfortunately, it was held on the other side of the island than the only town and transportation was always a problem. It was an all day event and well worth the trip to the other side of the island if you can find a ride. A couple times I had to listen to Yap Day on the radio with all the locals who also couldn't find a ride. It's not the same as being there especially since I didn't speak the language.
.

.

.

.
Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Bali

2009-07-18T22:21:00.001-07:00

I made numerous trips to Bali from 1991 through 1993. On my first trip I was on a non-stop flight from Jakarta to Bali. The plane landed and I got out to explore this exotic, strange new island. Something didn't seem right. My Indonesian language skills were not good at that time so I wasn't able to read the signs or even ask for help. I can't remember how, but after some time I realized that the direct flight actually does make stops and I was able to board the plane again before it continued on to Bali.

Bali was quite a change from Jakarta. I took several tours around the island that first year. The island was beautiful with its numerous 1,000 year-old Hindu temples as well as 1,000 year-old rice terraces as far as you could see. While driving around the island it became obvious that the women of Bali were experts at carrying large, heavy loads on top of their heads. My guide said that's why the Balinese are so short.

One place in Bali that I enjoyed and visited a few different times was the Monkey Forest. Monkeys were numerous in Bali and seem to act like the unofficial guards at all the Hindu temples. The Monkey Forest was a good place for tourists to interact with the monkeys. My first time there I noticed the guides trying to coax a monkey onto a tourist's shoulder with a piece of food so they could take a picture.

Apparently the monkeys learned fast because on my next trip to Monkey Forest the monkeys needed no coaxing. People had to be careful not to stand still too long in the forest because a monkey would run up their backs and sit on their shoulders. The ladies let out a panicked scream and dropped to the ground when this happened. I enjoyed waiting for the next bus of unsuspecting tourists to arrive.

Traditional Balinese Dance.

Some of Bali's beautiful scenery in 1992: Hindu temples, active volcano, rice terraces.

Part 2: Hindu temples, Mokey Forest, tree bats.

See more of My Adventures at the top right of this page.

Mog Mog

2008-10-30T01:57:00.001-07:00

I always wanted to travel the remote islands of Micronesia and after my adventures around the islands of Indonesia came to an end in 1993, the time was right. My first trip to Mog Mog was carefully planned as I did for all my trips. A good plan is better than no plan but none of my adventures went entirely as planned and had to be improvised at some point. Mog Mog was no exception.

After days of visiting government offices around Yap to obtain all the permits and signatures required for an outsider to visit the outer islands, I boarded the small missionary plane bound for Flalap, Ulithi for the first time. As we flew over the large Ulithi lagoon I saw many small atolls that make up the island chain. “Which one was Mog Mog?” I wondered. As the plane got lower I noticed several people on one atoll run to a motorized canoe and took off as fast as the little boat could go. They appeared to be following the plane. “That must be Mog Mog”, I thought. All the paperwork, signatures, permits, and approvals from Yap are going to pay off and they are sending a boat to meet me at the airport. At least that was the plan.

The plane circled around Flalap before lining up for final approach. This was to warn everyone on the island to stay off the runway for the next several minutes. I was in the copilot's seat and pulled out my camera for an aerial picture of Flalap.

"Did you get a good picture?" Asked the pilot over the headphones. "I can circle around again if you want another picture."

"No, no, it's good," I answered in total surprise from the pilot's offer.

Once exiting the plane I noticed the small, one room, open-walled building that was the terminal. A roof on four posts is what it really was. In the room, as well as every other shady area around the runway, sat people who came to watch the plane land. I walked over to the room and noticed an older gentleman who appeared to be very sad.

We started talking and became instant friends. His name was Servan Gieor and was from Mog Mog. He came to Flalap with his daughter who entered the plane that I just exited on her way to a far off island for high school.

Servan offered to take me to Mog Mog. Meeting Servan was a lucky coincidence because no one was waiting for my arrival. In fact, no one knew I was coming. “What were all the permits for?” I wondered.

The small, motorized boat heading for Mog Mog had six passengers including myself. The captain ran the little engine to its max. The waves were large even though we never left the Ulithi lagoon. When the boat was on the crest of a wave I could see the distant atolls that I flew over earlier that day. Smack. The motorized rowboat flops to the trough of a wave and all that could be seen in every direction were walls of water. Over and over again the boat drops off the crest and smacks the bottom of the wave with such force that each time I was surprised the boat held together. I have no love for small boats so this trip seemed to take forever.

The missionary plane flew over the boat on its way back to Yap. I watched the plane and could imagine Servan's daughter looking down at us from the plane just as I watched them earlier. Mog Mog must have been getting close because, with a nonverbal cue, everyone took off his or her shirts. Mog Mog is a very traditional atoll and non-traditional clothes were not allowed.

Upon arrival we went to the men's hut. It is tradition to give a verbal report in the men's hut every time a boat returns from a trip. The report still has to be given even if there is no one in the men's hut to listen. This time the men's hut was full and I wondered if it was because of me. Servan told me that the Chief must give his permission for me to stay and this would be after the men discussed the issue. “What were all the special permits and signatures in Yap for? Nothing.” I finally answered my question. The discussion, entirely in the local language which was foreign to me, ended and I was told that they decided I would stay with Servan.

Servan had another daughter and two sons, all younger than the daughter who just left. The older of the two sons was named Kelly and spoke very good English. His teacher was the only American Peace Corps worker to teach on Mog Mog.

Kelly became ‘my little partner’ as I called him and he was happy to have the title. As the days went on, Kelly showed me the island and introduced me to everyone. He was my history and culture teacher and translator.

An interesting note here: For my other adventures to remote places if anyone spoke English it was the children and they would be my translators when talking to the adults. In Mog Mog all the adults spoke good English and always surprised me with their use of formal words to describe simple issues; and the children of Mog Mog, with the exception of Kelly's few classmates, could not speak English.

Every time Kelly and I walked around, a dozen more kids quickly joined us. I always brought pieces of candy to hand out and a snack for all to share. One walk I brought a bag of peanuts. The children were eager to try this strange snack. I noticed the kids were chewing the shell as well and realized that they were not familiar with peanuts. They were familiar with peanut butter, however, and they noticed that there was a picture of a jar of peanut butter on the peanut bag and commented that there is a picture of a peanut on the jar of peanut butter.

One day the children came to me very anxious to take me to the beach. On the beach were three large sea turtles lying on their backs. They were still alive but not for much longer. Mog Mog was the traditional chief island of the Ulithi island chain. One of the traditions involved the catching and eating of sea turtles. If a sea turtle was caught on any of the Ulithi atolls then it must be brought to Mog Mog to be slaughtered. The head chief would do the honors and give a portion of the meat back to the people who caught the turtle to bring back to their island. The remaining meat was distributed to the people of Mog Mog. The elders told me that, when they were young, the sea turtles were caught a hundred at a time. Now three was considered a good catch.

Another traditional food for Mog Mog was coconut crab. The crabs were a foot to a foot and a half long. Their claws were tied shut and the crabs were hanging from the roof over the picnic table, which was used as their dinning table. They were kept alive for days until we were ready to eat them. Then they were tossed into the campfire to be cooked. It was the best food I ever had.

The next day a hunting trip was formed to take us to a nearby, uninhabited island to catch more coconut crabs. The women showed me their method to find the coconut crabs. It went something like this, "See that branch in the tree. The rain would run off that branch, land on the ground right here. We need to go this way two feet, turn left one foot and dig right at this spot." I didn't understand the method but they dug in that spot and found a large coconut crab. They quickly dug up five or six more using the same method.

One man showed me his method to find sea turtle eggs. We walked on the beach until we came to a spot. To me, the spot looked the same as every other spot. He said, "The turtle came out of the water here... and walked over here... and... There. I'll dig there." He dug with his bare hands and sure enough, several feet down he found sea turtle eggs. While sitting in the hole he just made, he tilted his head back, crushed an egg in his hand over his mouth and drank what came out. I watched him drink twenty or more eggs before I decided to go see what else was happening.

I found another man from our hunting party constructing a snare with string. Sometime in the past someone released chickens on that uninhabited island and the chicken's descendants were still there, but now they were very hard to catch. He waited patiently with his snare set up thirty or more feet away. When a chicken steps in the snare he would have to pull the string. Chickens were walking all around the snare but I didn't have the patience to wait for the capture.

Others were getting the cooking fire ready for the feast. We had a great meal later that day. I limited my food to only bananas and coconut crab but the meal also included wild vegetables, turtle eggs, and even a wild chicken.

Every night Servan and I drank tuba. I guess that tuba could also be called coconut tree wine. At first the taste is terrible but after the second glass it tastes great. I went with Servan numerous times to prepare the tuba and he taught me the process.

First you need to find a coconut tree with a new branch where coconuts would soon grow. The branch is wrapped tight with sting. Three times a day he would visit his trees and cut a thin slice off the end of the branch and tie a coconut cup under the fresh cut branch. The sap would drip from the branch into the cup. The inside of the cup must never be scrapped clean because that is how the tuba ferments. By the end of the day all the sap is collected and had already had enough time to ferment. All the collected tuba must be consumed that night because if it is left for the next day then it would too powerful to drink.

Every time I passed the men’s hut I noticed one old man sitting and diligently working on something. My curiosity finally got to me and I asked what he was making. I then got a crash course on the traditional art of coconut rope making. Coconuts are placed in a pond for months and then dried. The little strands of fiber are then pealed from the coconut husk. Months are then spent rolling the strands together between the hand and upper leg. Every once in a while he added another few strands and continued rolling the rope on his leg. It took a very long time. His legs were smooth, all the hair had been pulled out and probably mixed into the rope he made in the past.

Each time I visited Mog Mog I would give my camera to Kelly and he would take all the pictures. When I returned the next time I would bring back a copy of all the pictures Kelly took on my previous trip. The island was very excited when I did this. Three of the times that I returned with pictures I discovered that one of pictures was of someone who had died since my last visit and I had the only picture ever taken of that person. The family was grateful to have a picture of their loved one.

Over the next decade I probably made 20 trips to Mog Mog. I was considered part of Servan’s family and everyone on island knew my name. One elder told me, “There have been other outsiders to come to Mog Mog but you are the only one to return a second time.” This must have helped strengthen my relationship with the people.

I met Servan because he was sending his daughter to a far off island for high school. I didn’t know it at the time but that island turned out to be the same island that I decided to call home years later. His daughter became my student at the college and she kept me up to date on the people of Mog Mog. It has now been years since my last visit and Servan has past away.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Servan

My little partner, Kelly A whale washed onto the reef.One of my trips to Mog Mog I recognized the face on the cover of the airplane magazine, so I brought her a copy.Sea Turtles.Santa came to Mogmog, but in Mogmog he comes on New Year's Day, flying over in an old WWII bomber, and drops the presents out with a parachute.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Jakarta

2008-09-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

I spent two years living and working in Jakarta from 1991 to 1993. I taught math at the only English speaking university in Jakarta at the time. Once leaving the front doors of the university, however, very few people spoke English. I bought a translation dictionary and started memorizing words. Up to that time I thought it would be easier for me to teach everyone else English compared to me learning another language, but I surprised myself.

We had lots of holidays at the university. I would ask my students what was the holiday coming up this week. They replied that it was a red number holiday. The next week we had a couple more days off. "What holiday is this?" I asked my students. They replied, "A red number holiday". Again I didn't think twice about their answer. A week later we had an entire week off from school. "What holiday is this?" I asked. "A red number holiday," was the response. "Wait a minute," I thought twice, "Didn't we celebrate that holiday last week?"

It wasn't until a year later when I finally figured out that holiday. I was studying an Indonesian calendar and noticed it had lots of holidays listed from many countries around the world. The number on the calendar for that country's holiday was red where all other numbers were black. It turned out that if any country around the world had a day or week off, then so would we. I didn't mind. That gave me lots of time to travel around exploring the country.

A couple other Americans were hired to teach at the university while I was there but they ran back to America after a couple of days. Jakarta was definitely an unusual place for an American and took lots of tolerance and patience to survive. Not only did they drive on the other side of the road, everything seemed backwards from what we were use to. Stores in America had signs, "We buy and sell..." In Indonesia it was, "Sell and buy." We flip a light switch up to turn on the light, in Jakarta it was down. We count heads, for example, heads of cattle. Indonesia counts tails. The word pronounced like 'air' means 'water', the letter 'i' is pronounced 'e' and 'e' is 'a'. Teaching math was interesting as well. Their custom was to put a comma where the decimal point should be and a decimal point where the comma should be. It took some getting use to and it was great fun as well.

I use to walk to most places I went in Jakarta. The taxi drivers could never understand that. As I walked on the sidewalk a taxi would follow me at walking speed and kept honking his horn. "You're supposed to be in a taxi!" I waved for him to keep moving. When the taxi finally got tired of waiting for me to decide that I really wanted a taxi, he would leave but then another quickly took his place.

I liked to walk because I could meet the people that way. Even the poor beggars sitting on the pedestrian bridges over the highways had a smile when they saw me coming. That was not what they were supposed to do. They should always look sad so they could get more donations but they knew local customs did not apply when dealing with me. I would always stop to say hi and they returned my greetings. Me talking to them and they talking to me was strictly against Jakarta's caste system. I would then give them the equivalent of a quarter and say good-bye

I was scolded by a couple of my friends on different occasions for talking to them and for giving too much. They told me that I must not give more than the equivalent of a nickel. That didn't stop me. I felt that the man with no feet or the mother with five babies dressed in rags could use the extra change.

Some months later I learned that all the beggars in Jakarta had pimps. The pimps traveled to rural villages to find the most pitiful looking people and promised them jobs in Jakarta. He took them away from their families who were taking care of them and put them on the footbridges over the highways. Every night the pimp would take the beggars earnings and give them a little to eat.

This explained something that I always thought was strange. On rainy days, when I had to take a taxi to and from school, we would drive on a road that always had a poor fellow sitting in the street. Next to him was a wheelchair that had a broken wheel and the wheel was placed in the seat of the chair to make it more visible to passersby. The poor in Jakarta did not have wheelchairs and even if he did, he wouldn't have wheeled himself down that busy highway.

One walk that I never liked was cashing my paycheck. The only bank that could cash the check was directly across the highway from the school. It required a walk through the train station and over the footbridge. A taxi ride would require 30 minutes to get to the other side of the highway if you happened to find an honest taxi driver.

Each teller at the bank had their own small enclosed room. I found out why. The largest bill Indonesia had was the equivalent to less than $10. I gave the teller my paycheck and she handed over all these stacks of wrapped bills straight from the mint. I put one stack in each of my front pant pockets, another in each sock. I then stuffed my back pockets then my shirt pocket and the stacks kept coming. After my clothes were stuffed I had to make the walk back to school past all the beggars, literally bulging from the seams with money.

I had groups of friends around my neighborhood. One group always sat in the same place on one side of the neighborhood, another group sat on the other side, and a third group of my friends could always be found sitting on the curb on another side of the neighborhood. None of them ever seemed to walk the five minutes to get to the other side. I guess they had no reason to go there. Each group called me by a different pronunciation of my name so, even if I didn't recognize someone, I knew which group he belonged to.

As I sat on the curb with one group of friends, my landlord drove by. She stopped and told me to get in, which I did. She drove me for a minute that it took to get back to my house and expressed how shocked she was that I talked to the lower class. The next day the sister of the owner of the university called me into her office. The owner was the most successful business women in Indonesia and it was her sister who ran the university. They had a powerful family. Their father and brothers and uncles were high members of president Suharto's cabinet. The sister went to college in America so she was understanding of American ways, although, she too said that I must not talk to the lower class.

That didn't stop me either. In fact, one day the university had a major celebration, the best money could buy. Later that night I went to my friend's birthday party in the shack where he lived and I couldn't decide which party was better.

Walking around Jakarta almost got me into a different type of trouble. The walk to and from school required me to go through a train station to get from the elevated highway back to ground level. A young man jumped up from the bench where he was sitting and stopped me. This was not unusual and happened to me all the time in Jakarta. He asked the usual questions that every stranger asked me. The other men who were sitting on the bench started to circle around behind me. I was starting to get nervous and thrust my hands into my pockets. I don't know why I happened to do that but immediately the men behind me ran away. The man who was distracting me started to back up, showed the palms of his hands and said, "Ok, ok, no problem," and then he too ran away.

I realized that the only thing the average person of Jakarta knew about Americans was what they saw in the violent movies imported from America, and that was, American men could always reach in their pockets and pull out a machine gun or hand grenades. I remembered this little trick and had to use it once again in my two years of traveling around Indonesia.

One thing that I found interesting about Jakarta was the vast variety of insects that I never saw while growing up in the mountains of Colorado. It seemed that every day of my first year in Indonesia I discovered a species new to me and they were all in my house. I also can't remember ever seeing a lizard on the wall before going to Indonesia and my house was full of them. At first they didn't bother me. They were quiet when the lights were off and ate the insects when the lights were on. I quickly changed my attitude towards them when I was sitting at my table and lizard poo fell on my head.

One night while sitting on the curb with friends, a kaki lima walked by. The literal translation of 'kaki lima' is 'feet five'. That was a man pushing a three-legged cart around from one neighborhood to another looking for someone who was hungry. Each kaki lima sold one type of meal depending on the sound they made. The ones selling fried rice made a tapping on metal sound. The ones selling noodles with water buffalo meat made a hideous yell.

My friend introduced me to the street food by stopping one of the kaki limas. I had the noodles with round shaped water buffalo meat. My friend told me that some of the kaki limas used chicken instead of water buffalo. The kaki lima waited until we were done eating then he washed his plates that we used. He then made that hideous yell as he pushed his cart away to look for another hungry person.

The noodles with water buffalo meat was terrific. The next night I wanted to eat it again. I sat in my house waiting for the hideous yell to go buy. When I heard it I ran out and stopped him. I paid the equivalent of 35 cents for the meal and took it to my house. I took a bite and immediately my nose started running and my throat swelled up. After a trip to the bathroom I looked closer at the noodles. There was no round shaped water buffalo meat so I thought it must have been the kaki lima who used chicken. I couldn't tell the difference between some of the kaki lima's hideous yells. That meat was not chicken either; it had fur and little toes. I happened to stop the kaki lima who used rat meat.

The Indonesian 'presidential election' was quite an experience. There were three political parties, Suharto who was the current 'president', Sukarno who was the 'president' but was killed 20 years earlier when Suharto took power, and the Muslim party. Each party had a color associated with it and they alternated the days which they campaigned.

The campaign consisted of 20 men in the back of a pickup truck driving around trying to find someone who was wearing the wrong color for that day. One of them yelled threats at me as I walked to school because I was wearing blue that day. "Hey," I yelled back, "Aren't you the same person who yelled at me yesterday because I wasn't wearing blue?"

All that didn't matter anyway. In the end it was the large business owners who cast the vote for all of their employees and Suharto always had a 100% victory.

Two years passed quickly and the mood of the people changed drastically. While sitting on the curb they would tell me their feelings. I was shocked. If they told the same thing to the wrong person they would 'disappear'. The people were ready for a political change, and in Indonesia that change could not happen easy.

News reports from the Indonesian Burrow of Censorship mentioned something about the island East Timor, which did not help the attitude the people had towards foreigners. Foreigners who were big business executives started dieing in mysterious ways. It wasn't until I left the country that I found out what really happened in East Timor.

I thought it was time for me to leave. In fact, just before I left the American ambassador to Indonesia left vowing never to return. From the safety of 10,000 miles I watched the uncensored news regarding Indonesia in disbelief. The American stock market was pumping millions of dollars into that country. "Don't they know where their money is going?" I asked myself.

It was no surprise to me when the Indonesian stock market crashed. The rupia that was 1,600 to the dollar when I arrived in Jakarta and 2,000 to the dollar when I left, suddenly jumped to over 15,000 to the dollar. The revolt began and Suharto was overthrown. Almost twenty years have past and I often dream of returning to the curb in Jakarta to see if any of my friends are still sitting there.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Alaska Panhandle

2008-09-20T17:26:00.001-07:00

In 1979 my father and I rented two rustic cabins in the panhandle of Alaska from the forest service for $5 a week each. The catch was that the cabins were 100 miles from the nearest road.

A floatplane flew us to a remote lake, landed on the lake and taxied to the shore. We unloaded our supplies and piled it on the beach. The pilot said that our cabin was 'that way', pointing to the forest. He started up the plane and yelled, "See you in a week," as we watched him pick up speed and take off from the lake.

After finding the cabin and settling in, we were ready to explore the new wilderness. We followed a trail leading from the cabin to the outlet river of the lake. Crossing the trail were numerous one or two-foot wide streams that we had to jump over. I got tired of jumping and didn't mind if I got my shoes went, so I stepped in one of the streams. I disappeared up to my chin before catching the sides with my elbows. I never touched the bottom and I never let jumping over the streams bother me again.

At the river was a wide, calm, deep hole with lots of large salmon. Catching salmon was much different than the trout that we were use to. Spawning salmon don't eat so bait was useless. Large hooks were needed to snag the salmon and we bought our share of those hooks before getting on the plane.

The salmon in the river hole had large cuts in their backs. I guessed that it was caused by the people who rented the cabin before us, trying to snag the salmon. We started to prepare our big hooks to snag one for ourselves when we heard splashing upriver. The splashing sounds were close.

"Who is that?" we asked each other. There wasn't supposed to be anyone within a hundred miles of us. I was shocked with reality. The cuts in the backs of the salmon were not from people trying to snag one but by a grizzly bear and it sounded like the grizzly was heading to his favorite fishing hole.

We quickly put away our big hooks and unpacked our guns and whistles. My father had a 44-mag rifle and I had a 44-mag pistol with what seemed to be a 12-inch barrel. We blew the whistles all the way back to the cabin. We were told that the whistles would scare away the bears so that we wouldn't happen to cross paths while walking down the trail. Thankfully the whistles worked because I had doubts about the 44's stopping a charging grizzly.

The next morning we noticed fresh paw prints all around the outside of the cabin. The tracks were large. I had a size 12 shoe and it fit inside one of the paw prints. I guess the grizzly came to retrieve any of his fish that we took out of his river. Unfortunately, or would it be fortunately, we did not catch any fish the day before.

That day we decided to explore the other side of the lake. We used the rowboat that came with the cabin but the lake was large and there was a constant headwind. One of us rowed as the other rested, then we would switch places. Progress was slow and we grew tired. Eventually we gave up and let the wind blow us back to the cabin.

As the days went on we found that the fishing was terrific. The trout were large and we even got the hang of snagging salmon. It didn't take long to catch enough fish for us to eat each day.

One calm day we were in the rowboat near the outlet river of the lake. That part of the lake was only 20 feet wide when I caught something. I started to reel him in as I did numerous fish before. When the fish got close to the boat, he took off. This too was not unusual except this time the fish went straight down. I watched in disbelief as my reel hummed from the line coming out and still the line went straight down into the water. "How deep is this lake?" I wondered. After that I felt safer fishing from the shore.

After a week at the lake we heard the plane flying overhead. We quickly packed what was left of our supplies and carried it to the beach. By that time I had already forgot what the pilot looked like so I was pleased that he remembered which lake he dropped us off at. We loaded the plane and he flew us a hundred miles to our next cabin on a lake. "See you in a week."

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Saipan

2008-09-18T02:43:00.001-07:00

People often asked me, "What brought you to Saipan?"

I guess my trip to Saipan was a decade in the making. Since 1984 I made numerous trips to explore the remote Pacific islands and this was not easy with my home base being Colorado. Some islands took a week to get to from Colorado and that was as long as all the flights flew as scheduled. Some islands I visited took seven plane flights and two boat rides.

I had to spend a couple days in Yap each time I went from one outer island of Micronesia to another while waiting for the next missionary plane. This gave me enough time between islands to eat a hamburger, treat my wounds, and get a beer at the bar and grill.

This is where I met Barry in 1996. We had a long talk one evening comparing our travel stories. Barry was a public school teacher in Saipan. "Ever hear of it?" he asked.

"I think so." I vaguely remembered hearing about Saipan in my WWII studies. He gave me the location and description of the lifestyle of Saipan and asked if I wanted to teach there. I thought seriously about it since living there would cut down on my travel time considerably.

We parted ways after our two-hour conversation. I thought that was going to be the first and last time I saw Barry. He was heading back to Saipan the next morning and I continued my adventures around the Pacific. I had no idea that the chance encounter with Barry was going to drastically change the course of my life.

I had to return to Colorado to make enough money to fund my next trip to the remote Pacific. Shortly after my arrival I got a phone call from the Saipan recruiter.

"Do you want to work in Saipan?"

"Ahh..... ahh..... ok."

"Can you fly to California tomorrow for an interview?"

"No way," was my quick reply after just returning from a month of plane flights.

"Never mind the interview, you're hired."

I once again packed my duffle bag that I got in Marine Corps boot camp in 1983. This duffle bag accompanied me on every adventure since. Once again, back to the airport. The tickets that the recruiter sent were from Colorado to California to Hawaii to Guam to Saipan. It wasn't going to be as long of a trip as I was use to but still it would take 24 hours to get there. At each airport the passengers had to wait in line to get their seat assignment. Some of the faces started to look familiar. "Didn't I see you in California?"

"Yes and I saw that guy over there as well," was the reply. By the time we were on the plane from Guam to Saipan everyone looked familiar. We learned that all 23 of us on that plane were new teachers hired by the Saipan recruiter. We were the first and smallest of three waves of new teachers to come to Saipan that year to replace all the foreign teachers recently fired.

There was a bus waiting at the Saipan airport to take us all to a hotel. It was night by that time and I couldn't see any of what was going to be my new home. Most of us were passed out on the bus after 24 hours of airports and planes. I must have been one of them because I can't remember what happened.

The next morning I walked down the street from the hotel. I was afraid to venture too far from the hotel since I didn't even know the name of my hotel and couldn't read many of the signs on the stores. They were written in Japanese or Chinese or Korean. At the time I couldn't tell the difference.

I returned to the hotel and called the number Barry gave me in Yap. He quickly came to pick up my duffel bag and me. "You need to know how to get around Saipan," said Barry as he took a paper napkin at a fast food restaurant where we had lunch. He drew a line down one side of the napkin. The road next to the beach is called Beach Road." He drew another line down the other side of the napkin. "The road going cross the island is called Cross Island Road." He drew a line down the middle of the napkin. "The road in the middle is called Middle Road."

All those roads on one island was more than I was use to but I caught on quick. I stayed in Barry's apartment until I bought a car and found my own apartment.

Half of the classes at the high school were on the second floor of a two story concrete building. The new teachers got the second floor classrooms. There was no air conditioning and the steel louvers on the windows could not open. It was hot. Around half of the new teachers that arrived on the same plane I did caught the next plane back as soon as they saw the school. To me, Saipan was modern compared to the other islands of the Pacific so I fit right in.

I was best man at Barry's wedding. He introduced me to a friend of his wife's friend who I married a year later. Barry was no longer in Saipan at that time. Like so many other Westerners, Barry left island and was not heard from again.

I saw Saipan as a good place to settle down and raise my kids and that's what I have been doing since 1996. I still made some trips to the remote islands from Saipan but the time between trips grew longer each time. Now I consider the 30-minute plane flight to Guam as a trip in itself.

Out of the 23 new teachers on the plane in 1996, only two others and myself are still here. The adventurer in me continues today but now I explore Saipan. See my: http://saipanpictures.blogspot.com/

.

.

.

.
Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Tinian

2008-09-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

My first trip to Tinian was in the late 1990's. A new million-dollar hotel/casino was recently built and, even though I was not much of a gambler, it was worth checking out. Tinian could be reached by small plane or boat from the nearby Saipan island. We tried the boat. The two islands are only two miles apart at the closest points but the boat ride still took over an hour.

The hotel was nice but don't plop down on the bed too fast. The beds were as hard as rocks. I looked under the blanket to see if there was a slab of concrete under there. I guessed that the Japanese tourists must like rock beds. The beds could be pushed out of the way because the floor was much softer for sleeping.

The large swimming pool was still under construction and, at that time, was just a hole in the ground. There wasn't much of a chance that it would be finished in time for an evening dip. The only thing left to do at the hotel was gambling. The machines were hungry and really enjoyed the quarters I fed them. My wife found a machine that must have been sick because it kept spitting the quarters back out. She couldn't win them as fast as I could loose them so that was it for gambling.

The only thing left on our to-do list was site seeing. We rented a car at the hotel and set out. I studied the map of Tinain that the hotel gave us so we wouldn't get lost. The map showed the road leading from the hotel, circled the island, and then ended back at the hotel.

The first stop was a beautiful large deserted beach. A quick look around and back to the car. We've seen lots of beautiful large deserted beaches.

The next stop was the Tinian blowholes. Ocean waves travel through underground tubes and shoots the water straight up. Interesting...back to the car.

We then found ourselves driving on one of the American WWII runways. Now Tinian got my attention. This was the largest airport in the world in 1945 with a B-29 taking off every 30 seconds. Now it was as deserted as the beach. The jungle was closing in on the runway. The runways use to be 200 feet wide but now, at places, the trees and bushes were scratching both sides of the rental car as we drove.

We went in circles on the numerous taxiways between the runways but eventually found the atomic bomb pits. I know we found them because there was a sign at each pit, "Atomic Bomb Pit #1" and "Atomic Bomb Pit #2". An interesting note here: years after that and 50 some years after WWII, they discovered that they had the signs reversed. Number 1 should have been number 2 and vise versa, so, they switched the signs.

We stopped and explored many large bombed out buildings and Japanese bunkers. This led us to the Tinian invasion beach. This was an unbelievable American military success. The Japanese sparsely fortified this beach since it was impossible to mount an invasion from such a small beach, so they thought. Never before or since did the American military land so many battalions on such a small landing site and at great speed.

At this point of our adventure we already drove around the north side of the island and were on our way back to the hotel. We stopped at a prewar Japanese shrine and Tinian's Suicide Cliff. Tinian's Suicide Cliff got its name the same way Saipan's Suicide Cliff did. Japanese soldiers and civilians jumped rather than surrendered.

There was one small town in Tinian and it was next to the hotel. We know the town was very old because there is a latte stone site in the center. It is believed that the ancient inhabitants built their huts on top of these stones. Next to the site is an ancient water well.

That concluded our Tinian adventure. We saw everything there was to see and still had time left over at the end of the day. I've made several trips to Tinian since then and the rental car company never noticed all the scratches each time I returned the cars.

The Road

Large Beutiful Deserted BeachBlowhole

American WWII RunwayAnother American WWII Runway

Atomic Bomb PitTinian's Invasion Beach

View of Invasion Beach from inside a Japanese pillboxJapanese writing in the pillbox

Pre-war Japanese ShrineTinian's Suicide Cliff

Latte Stones
Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Ulithi

2008-09-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

Falalap, Ulithi is the main island in the Ulithi atoll chain. Falalap is also the name of the main island in the Woleai atoll chain but that doesn't seem to confuse anyone. The old Japanese WWII runway is still used by the missionary plane to fly passengers and supplies to and from Yap. Falalap, Ulithi is the most modernized island in the chain with electricity and cinder block houses. A large freezer building was being built while I was there to freeze fish for the Outer Island High School students, and, I heard they recently got internet.

I used Falalap mainly to land and wait for a small motorboat to arrive to take me to the outer islands in the chain, however, Falalap does have special events that warrant a visit. On March 2, the day after Yap celebrates Yap Day, Falalap celebrates Culture Day. I went to the first two annual Culture Day celebrations and I'm not sure if the event still continues today.

A second missionary plane was needed to fly me and perhaps ten other visitors to Falalap for the first Culture Day. For the second Culture Day I happened to be in the outer island Mogmog and then small motorboats brought me and some locals from Mogmog to the celebration.

Celebration was the best word to describe the event. There were numerous cultural dances that filled the morning. For lunch we had a feast fit for King Henry, no silverware. Besides the usual dishes of rice, taro, fish, and bananas, each guest had their own large coconut crab with some other meat that was most likely sea turtle. It took my second annual Culture Day feast to finally learn to always carry a pair of pliers with me just in case I had a coconut crab meal in the future. In the outer islands of Ulithi we had access to a rock to break open the shell. I looked under the table but I couldn't find a rock anywhere in the high school cafeteria. I gathered my coconut crab and the coconut crabs from other Westerners who also didn't remember to bring their pliers, and took them outside to give to my friends from Mogmog.

After lunch there were demonstrations of traditional activities. One was a fishing demonstration. A sailing canoe was carried to the high school courtyard and a man went through the fishing routine. This was extremely popular with the local onlookers. They laughed hysterically through the whole demonstration. I watched every move but didn't catch the funny parts.

The Outer Island High School graduation was another great Falalap event. This was the only high school in the area so the students came from all surrounding islands. Two or three U.S. Navy captains and the Yap governor flew in to participate every year.

The activities mirrored the Culture Day celebrations but included the graduation ceremony. The graduates all dressed in their traditional island dress, lava lava for the women and a thu for the men. They marched two by two, all the women first then all the men. They had beautiful flower leis around their necks and murmurs on their heads.

After the speeches the graduates lined up in a long row. All the people on Ulithi, which included many from other islands as well, walked past the graduates, shaking hands and giving their close relative graduates another lei. By the end, some graduates had so many leis that they looked like a big flower with two eyes in the middle.

Valedictorian speech

Culture Day 1996

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Irian Jaya

2008-09-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

“No planes, no planes,” was the reply as I stood at the airport in Jayapura in 1992. I was headed for the Baliem Valley in the highlands of Irian Jaya and the only way was by plane. The weather in the highlands often cancelled scheduled plane flights and this day was not unusual.

“Try the Air Force plane, they fly in bad weather," I heard from many different people as I waited for the next weather report.

This idea intrigued me. I never would have guessed that the Air Force would fly passengers to the interior of New Guinea, but in Indonesia, anything is possible. I got directions to the Air Force. Luckily it was at the same airport. Even though it was a small airport I had to keep getting directions. I couldn’t see the Air Force planes anywhere. “Where is the Air Force?” Everyone kept pointing at the small building by the runway which had a sign that clearly read, “Air Fast”. It was a cargo transportation business.

I guess I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to fly an F-16 to the Irian Jaya interior, but a cargo plane would do.

All of the seats were removed from the plane except for the last row. In their place were perhaps fifty 50-gallon drums full of gasoline. The drums were on their sides and tied to the floor. The smell of gasoline made me dizzy and I still hadn’t reached my seat at the back of the plane. I knew it was going to be an interesting flight.

The passengers included myself and three Indonesian men. Typically, all Indonesian men would light their cigarettes as soon as the no smoking light was turned off. This plane had no light and I hoped they had enough common sense to keep us alive. When the plane started its take-off a wave of gasoline an inch high washed to the back of the plane and drenched our shoes.

From my window seat I got my first glimpse of the highlands. There were steep mountains right up to within fifty feet of a very think blanket of dark clouds. The plane turned parallel to the mountains and continued. After a while the plane turned around and started following the mountains the other direction. It occurred to me that the distance between the peaks and the cloud cover was not safe enough to fly between and the pilot was looking for a valley. He found one so we turned and flew up the valley with mountains towering over both sides of the plane.

We landed in a different world, or at least a different millennium. The indigenous women wore only grass skirts and the men only a penis gourd. The gourd had an upward curve and some were very high with a string tying it around their waist. Don't ask any of the men to make change for your larger bills because, with no clothes, you can guess where they kept their money.

There were many Indonesians, perhaps from Jakarta, living there as well. They owned all the businesses. One of the businesses was a hotel. I checked in immediately so that I could store my duffle bag and get back to exploring this small town.

There was a very busy market selling mostly vegetables and farm animals. The sellers and their products were scattered around on the ground. There were so many that the customers would have step over the goods just to keep the line moving.

There were also lots of old, big shell necklaces for sale. These were not made to sell to the tourists. I was the only tourist in town. Those shell necklaces were once owned by a powerful person, perhaps a chief, because shells were money. The highlands were so far from the ocean and so hard to get to that they had no idea what a shell was or where it came from. Tribes near the ocean traded those shells with the next tribe inland, who traded with the next tribe, and so forth until the shell eventually made it to the highlands. This made it valuable. I wouldn't be surprised if those shells were hundreds of years old.

Another surprising sales item were very old Dutch coins. These coins would have made it to the highlands the same way the shells did. I learned that many of the people at this market walked for days from their village in the mountains just to sell their chicken or shell necklace or antique coin. They would then buy something else and return to their village.

The hotel was the kind you would expect for a third-world country but that was much better than I was expecting for such a remote area in a third-world country. There were many hotel employees and I was the only guest so we had lots of time to talk. One offered his services as a walking tour guide to visit some very remote villages.

"And what shall I do with my duffle bag?"

That question was quickly answered by another hotel employee, "I'll carry it."

The price they offered for their services left no room for negotiation. For the multi-day hike through the mountains, the guide wanted $15. And the poor guy who was going to carry my 100-pound duffle bag everywhere we went, wanted $5. The tour was going to cost less than if I was to spend another night in the hotel. We left at sunrise.

The scenery was unlike anything I've seen before and changed around every pass. At one point we came to a wide, raging river with a suspension footbridge high above. The bridge looked like it was originally made in a safe condition but now was old. Perhaps half of the floorboards were missing. I feared to think how many people plunged to their deaths when the boards first broke off. There were signs of years of repairs with sticks tied to the cables of the bridge to replace the floor. Would this be the end of our trek?

We decided to cross, but very slowly and tightly holding hands. The theory was that if one of us fell through the other could hold on and pull him back up. The height was scary enough but seeing the raging river through the missing floor planks made the crossing ridiculous. We could hear some of the remaining floorboards cracking as we crossed. It took some time but we got to the other side.

We sat on the edge of the cliff watching the bridge that we just conquered. At that point I wasn't sure if we were brave or just stupid. As we sat, another person came along to cross the bridge. He was moving rather quickly over the bridge, apparently having crossed many times before. Half way across there was a gust of wind that made the bridge sway. The man stumbled and fell to the floorboards but quickly got back to his feet and continued. After he safely reached the other side we looked at each other and laughed. A different route was planned for our return trip to the hotel.

We stopped at several remote villages along the way. For a couple of dollars the village fed us and gave us a hut to spend the night. The people were very friendly and tried hard to please us. They had a difficult but peaceful life. They spent all day at their farms and gathering firewood for that night. Even though we were close to the equator, it still got cold at night. The round huts had a fire pit in the center but no chimney to let the smoke out. The smoke would seep out through the grass roof which made it difficult to breath while sleeping.

The next day the villagers wanted us to see their ancestors who died a hundred years earlier. We waited at the center of the village as they brought out the bodies. They put their ancestors on stumps of trees that they used for chairs. The bodies were in a sitting position. The skin was wrinkled but looked good for having been dead for a hundred years. I was told that they keep the fire burning in the ancestor's hut and the bodies were smoke dried.

As we returned to the hotel in Wamena, I'm not sure how many days later, we saw the hotel employees running out of the hotel. They each were carrying something from the hotel. One carried a chair, another a lamp, the men had a mattress, bed, stove, etc. I don't know where they went with the furniture but they quickly returned for more. The guide told me that the employees haven't been paid for a long time and this looked like the end of the only hotel in town.

I paid my guide and porter and thanked them for a wonderful adventure. I wanted to talk more but they were in a hurry to get their fair share of the furniture.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Guam

2008-09-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

I use to consider Guam as just a place to change planes on the way to other islands. Now I consider Guam as the big city of the Pacific. The island is geared toward the Japanese tourists. It offers a closer, faster, and cheaper alternative to Hawaii.

My wife and I go there every year or two with a long shopping list each time. In addition to shopping, Guam has some resorts that are the best I've seen. The resorts are lining a large clean beach. The island in general is very clean.

You can rent a car and drive around the island in a day. The views around Guam are not as good as other islands in the area but it was worth the trip, one time anyway. Most of the tourist attractions are within a short bus ride from the hotels.

The not so popular Gate 13 at the Guam Airport.

This video was taken at Two Lover's Leap.

.
Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Woleai

2008-09-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

The missionary plane was scheduled to land in Woleai once every two weeks, drop off passengers and supplies, pick up passengers and return to Yap. Woleai is a low chain of atolls in the outer islands of Yap and the old WWII Japanese runway was often underwater if it rained hard. When this happened it was a month or more before the missionary plane could return.

Peter was the pilot. He had a strong accent but I never asked where he was from. What was important was that he was a great small plane pilot. Peter and I became friends with my numerous flights to the outer islands from 1992-2002. "I will try to return in two weeks to pick you up,'" Peter said as he closed the plane's door.

The whole island would come to the runway when they hear the plane. Everyone was interested to see who and what the plane brought. This time it brought me.

The chief let me stay in one of his concrete huts near the runway. He had a government job as well which entitled him to the use of one of the two vehicles on the island, and he used his pickup often. An interesting note, the small atoll only had two vehicles but they were constantly colliding with each other. Neither vehicle had brakes. He was pretty good at judging when he needed to let off the gas in order to stop where he wanted, and everyone knew to get out of his way when they heard him coming.

Other than the two pickups and a few concrete huts, the culture of Woleai was just as it always had been. The women still wear only a lava lava and the men a thu. Also, women were not allowed to walk past a sitting man who is a close relative of theirs. Everyone on island was related but they had some way of remembering who was closely related to who. If a woman needed to pass a sitting man she would have to walk out of her way to make a wide circle around the man. This cultural trait was sure confusing with the introduction of the pickup. The man was sitting in the truck but driving past the walking women. When this happened, I notice the women related to the chief frantically ran into the jungle and sat down, and that wasn't only because the truck had no brakes.

Their traditional sailing canoes have also survived the onslaught of modernization with two exceptions. One was the modern sail. The traditional sail was extremely time consuming to make and didn't last long. The other exception was the use of the other pickup on island to pull the large sailing canoe over the beach and into the canoe hut.

The men were excellent sailors and navigators. In fact, it was their ancestors who sailed a thousand miles to Saipan 300 years ago. They also gave Saipan its name. Sai means fleet and Pan means empty place. This trip is still occasionally made today.

Every morning, long before sunrise, the men set sail to go fishing. They had long sticks with the same length fishing line tied to the end. As the canoe sailed they let their line drag behind. When the fish bites they simply pointed the stick straight up and the fish lands in the canoe.

No one on island was allowed to eat anything until the canoes returned. Sometimes this was late in the day and I was starving. One day they were particularly late returning. The whole island was waiting at the beach for them. Finally one person pointed to sea and said, "Here they come". I strained my eyes as much as I could but it was still another 10 minutes before I could see them. The sailors gave some signal that the catch was good and everyone on the beach was celebrating.

The canoes finally anchored and the men started carrying their catch to the beach. They threw the large tuna in a pile on the sandy beach. Back and forth they went and the pile of fish on the beach grew. I was amazed how many large fish they caught, the pile must have been five feet high. I was also amazed how many flies were on that pile.

I was starving but seeing all those flies on the fish started to make me loose my appetite. Finally the all clear sign was given and all were allowed to eat. Everyone ran to the pile of fish, picked up one fish and bit into it. I waited until dinner before I ate that day.

Exploring Woleai was exciting. The island was fortified by the Japanese during WWII but the Americans never attacked. Instead, the American Navy formed a blockade around the circle of Woleai atolls and starved the Japanese to death. The local population were chased off to the remote Woleai atolls by the Japanese long before and had no problem surviving the blockade.

The Japanese fortifications were intact and undisturbed since WWII. Bottles were still on shelves in bunkers right where the Japanese soldier put it before he died. Rounds were still in anti-aircraft guns waiting for the American attack that never came. Small cannons on wheels were just inside bunker openings so they could be rolled out and used in a hurry. Bombs were near the runway waiting to be loaded on Japanese airplanes that never returned. In one of the villages there is a modern monument built by the Japanese in memory of the "tens of thousands" of Japanese soldiers that died on the Woleai atoll.

The principal of the elementary school found out that I was a math instructor. One day he asked me to teach a math class. I jumped at the suggestion without any time to review, prepare my notes and handouts, review what they already learned and what they were going to learn, etc. I always taught adults in the past and never elementary school. It turned out none of that mattered. I started to teach. At first the principal was standing in the back of the room watching my every move. I thought he was there to make sure I didn't mess-up. A few minutes later another teacher joined the principal in the back of the room, then another, then another and another. By the end of class I realized that school was cancelled so that all the teachers could attend my class.

I spent most of the two weeks hungry. Other than that, time passed quickly and Peter returned to pick me up. Before each flight, everything is weighed separately, every bag, box, even each person. Then all is arranged in just the right order to keep the small plane balanced. I was weighed before I got on the plane two weeks earlier, and then again before I left Woleai. Either one of their scales was off or I actually did loose 20 pounds in two weeks.

After everything and everyone was weighed, Peter personally loaded each bag into the plane's storage area. "We are overloaded," he said to me. He took everything back off the plane. He then asked for two volunteers to wait another two weeks before going to Yap. With only 10 or so passengers I was surprised that he quickly found two volunteers to stay behind. It could have been as simple as: who is the heaviest.

Once all the boxes and bags and my duffle bag and the live chicken was loaded, it was time to load the passengers. I was first. He put me in the co-pilot's seat. Even though I was scared to sit there, afraid that I may accidentally touch something, I still thought that was a good choice on Peter's part. Then one-by-one the heavy men were put in alternating sides of the plane. After all the seats were full it was time for Peter to bring the women on board, one-by-one. They had to sit on the floor. The first couple of women went fine but there was a big commotion when Peter asked the third women to sit. She refused. It turned out that one of the sitting men near the spot where she was asked to sit was a close relative.

"Everyone back off the plane," Said Peter. He turned to me and laughed, "Now I need to find out who is related to who."

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Kalimantan

2008-09-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

In 1984 I was visiting the Jakarta zoo with my father. One section of the zoo had some traditional long houses from Kalimantan (Borneo). I was explaining to my father how I always wanted to travel to the interior of Kalimantan and live with the Dayaks when one of the zoo employees interrupted.

“I can take you there,” he said.

“What, who, where?” I stammered.

“I am a Dayak,” he said. “I can take you to my village”.

Things happened rather quickly from that point. A foreigner must first spend a month or more applying for a travel visa from the Indonesian government, and NO visas are ever given to foreigners to visit Kalimantan. It’s a good thing I didn’t know that because the next morning we bought our tickets and we were on our way.

The first leg of the trip was by plane from Jakarta to Balikpapan. After a day of negotiating, my guide obtained a car and driver for the all night trip to Samarinda. Vehicles should drive on the left side of the road in Indonesia but everyone seemed to prefer the right side of the road. Also, there was apparently a cultural problem with using headlights at night so the driver blindly raced the car on the winding, narrow road at speeds that would have won him first place if there was anyone else in the race. The headlight problem didn’t apply when a car was racing in the opposite direction. Then both cars would turn on the headlights and, just before impact, switch to high beams, swerve back to the left side of the road, and blow the horns. It wasn’t just our driver that did that, it was standard practice.

I felt like I cheated death when we arrived safely in Samarinda. I was feeling rather tired after being too terrified during the car ride to sleep. My guide didn’t seem bothered by the trip so he left me passed out on the grass as he searched for our next transportation.

“A what?” I asked when he woke me.

“A banana boat,” he replied again.

I had no idea what to expect but it had to be better than another car ride. We boarded a long, wide boat with a roof but no walls. I was surprised that the boat started up the Mahakum River with so few passengers. Being Indonesia, I thought the captain would wait until there were so many passengers that the boat couldn’t float. I didn’t know why it was called a banana boat until the return trip back down the river when we had to sit on 100,000 pounds of bananas.

The banana boat trip was great that day. I watched small villages pass by with kids playing in the water and so many animals in the treetops that I never saw in the wild before. Sometimes I would sit on the roof for a better view. The captain kept a roster tied up there. The roster was the alarm clock. He looked awful after spending all day in the hot sun. He kept trying to stand on a piece of plywood instead of the hot tin roof but the string tied to his foot was too short. He didn’t survive the day and the captain threw the dead roster into the river.

There was a long wooden 2x12 plank extending from the back of the boat and suspended over the water. At the end of the plank was an open-top wooden box tied to the plank. The box was about one foot high and there was a hole in the bottom. I guess that was the poop deck and I did all I could not to think about having to go. If my weight didn’t snap the plank then I’m sure the rocking boat would have tossed me off. Those worries were combined with the thought of me trying to hide below the one-foot high wall. Either way, I sure would have put on a good show for the passengers.

The boat stopped at the next village to buy another roster. I took that as a sign to go find a bathroom. In 1984 I knew very little Bahasa Indonesia but I did know how to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” I memorized that sentence before getting on the boat. The village had a wooden sidewalk connecting wood shack stores perched over the river. I went in one store and said my best Indonesian sentence. It worked. The store owner understood what I asked and pointed at a door at the back of the store. I said my other Indonesian sentence, “Thank you”. I went through the door at the back of the store and found myself outside the back of the store. I went back to the front and tried a different store. I asked the same question and was pointed to another door in the back of that store. I tried it anyway but once again found myself behind the store.

Back to the boat. The boat continued very slowly up river. The captain was sure earning his pay at that point because the river level was dropping, exposing large rocks that would sink the boat. As the sun started setting the heavens opened up and I never experienced so much rain. In one minute the rainfall must have equaled one year’s worth in Colorado where I grew up. I curled up inside my rain poncho and tried to sleep. I calculated that we must be passing over the equator at that point. Sometime during the night the captain gave up the navigation attempts and stopped the boat at another unknown village. I asked my guide if there was a hotel in this village. I meant it as a joke but his reply was, “Let’s find out”.

We got off the boat in the torrential downpour and literally clawed our way up a muddy hill to the village. After we passed a couple huts the guide said, “There’s one”.

“There’s what?” I asked in disbelief. “A hotel?”

It wasn’t a hotel that you could book on Travelocity but it looked great to me, four walls, two beds, a roof, and an outhouse. I was finally able to sleep. The next morning we paid the dollar and a half for the room and we went back to the river. The boat was gone. I guess the new roster was an earlier riser than we were. We waited and waited as there was nothing else we could do. The guide said that the boat will return. I thought that was just wishful thinking on his part but, sure enough, it returned. The boat went up a side river to pick up a few passengers and back down to the main river to pick us up.

We continued up the Mahakum. Another day passed on the river when the boat stopped again. Last night's rain was not enough so the river was too shallow for the boat to go any further. “This is where we get off,” said the guide. We watched from shore as the boat disappeared down the river.

I didn’t know the details, for example, will the boat ever come back to get us. That wasn’t important to me at that time. I was now in the interior of Kalimantan with a Dayak. It took a plane, car, boat, and now we were on foot and I was more anxious than ever to continue. It was sure a different world than the Jakarta zoo a week earlier.

It wasn’t a long walk before we came upon a Dayak long house. One Dayak man came out to meet us. Other than him, the village seemed empty. The guide talked with him for awhile in a Dayak dialect. The man returned to the village and the guide told us that we have to go back to the river to wait until nightfall.

When the sun started to set we returned to the village. I then saw why we had to wait. The entire village was there, lined up, dressed in their traditional clothing, waiting to greet the visitors as is their custom. Others were quickly preparing food. We went through the greeting ceremony in the traditional manner, except for one. A chicken’s head was cut off and placed on the trail in front of us. The guide said that we must step on the head before we can enter the village. I stepped on the chicken head as the chicken’s body ran around to our side. Later I was told by the guide that they used a chicken’s head instead of the customary human head. I approved of that change in custom.

Not long before this time, the Dayaks were headhunters. I’ve always known this but I thought it was long before my time. The guide explained that just recently the Indonesian government passed a law stating that the only heads the Dayaks can hunt are Communist heads. Looking at the Dayaks around me, I really doubted that any of them had any idea what a Communist was, or, for that matter, what the Indonesian government was. The old man chief standing in front of me, who was also the one who cut the head off the chicken, most likely did the same with human heads in the past.

The party that followed was the party of a lifetime. Lots of food and traditional dancing. They even pulled us out to dance the traditional dance. I thought I was pretty good but I’m glad no one filmed me to prove me wrong. Then, all of a sudden, it ended. There must have been a signal that I didn’t notice because everyone quickly left. We were given a room in the long house where, once again, we had a good sleep.

“Where is the bathroom?” was my first question the next morning. The guide explained that the river is the bathroom. Just go for a swim, do your duty, then get out. I remembered the stores down river. Each time I asked that question I found myself behind the store, facing the river. I gave it a try. As I stood waist deep in the brown river, obviously the toilet for all the villages upriver as well, Dayak women from the village came to the stream to wash dishes. I pretended that I wasn’t doing anything but they knew what I was doing and didn’t care.

I spent the rest of the day with the children of the village. I don’t know if they were assigned to entertain us while the adults were away in the farms, but they did a good job anyway. One very old Dayak women also came to us for medical advice.

As the adults returned to the village I was brought to see what the men caught. I grew up in the mountains of Colorado so I’m no expert on this. All I can say is that it was an extremely long snake, maybe 15 feet. They cut the skin off and fastened it to a long log and set it in line with the skins of previously caught snakes. They seemed very proud. All I could come up with to say was “Good job”. All the men were pleased with themselves and I never ventured away from the village alone again.

I don’t know how many days were spent in this village. Time seemed to have stopped once we got there. One morning the guide said that it is time to go. We packed our bags, said good buy to our loyal followers, the children, and went to the river. At the river we waited and waited as there was nothing else we could do. No banana boat. Finally it was decided that it didn’t rain the previous night so the banana boat could not return to pick us up. Dayaks jumped into long canoes to save the day. They were to chase us down the river to catch the banana boat.

I was told to get in one canoe. The rower was already aboard. Once I got in, my weight, at that age I was probably 170 pounds, started to sink the canoe. That was the equivalent of two more men by their standards. I saw water quickly seeping in from all the joints of the primitive canoe. The rower was bailing out the water as fast as he could. I knew that there was no way he could bail water and row us at a fast enough pace to keep us afloat, so I jumped out. They brought another canoe that seemed to hold out the water a little longer.

We caught up to the banana boat, which was full of bananas by that time. The captain had a full cargo and didn’t think twice about leaving us behind. I’m sure he would have checked on us on the next trip up river if the river conditions were favorable. He pulled over and we boarded the banana boat.

The trip downstream was much faster than the trip upstream and we had all the free bananas we could eat.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Sumba

2008-09-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

This is a true story about one of my adventures over a decade ago. I have taken great care to record things as they actually happened.

In college I would often roam around the old book archives in the basement of the library. One day I found an old book on remote societies. A picture in the book caught my eye. It had a small caption stating that the picture had been taken in Sumba but with no other information. At the time, I had no idea where Sumba was, but I was convinced that, one day, I would travel to that place. Further research revealed that Sumba was an island in Indonesia. Of course, I didn't know then how much of an impact that picture would have on my life.

Several years after college I was teaching at a university in Jakarta, Indonesia. As my Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) skills improved, I would venture to more and more of the remote islands of Indonesia. I still remembered that little picture that I saw nearly a decade earlier. Finally I decided that I was ready to travel to that distant island.

From my research I knew that the only airline that flew to Sumba was Sempati. I went to the Sempati main office in Jakarta and asked for a ticket to Sumba. Immediately the employee corrected me and said in Bahasa Indonesia, "You mean Sumbawa". I knew where Sumbawa was and that wasn't where I wanted to go. More employees gathered around to try to help. The conversation seemed to be in rerun mode. Each time I asked for a ticket to Sumba, they all said "Sumbawa". Finally I asked them to bring me a Sempati map showing all the places they flew to. I pointed to the island and all heads leaned down to get a closer look. Then, in unison, they said, "oh, Sumba". At last, I was then able to convince them to sell me a ticket to Sumba and away I went.

The plane was to fly from Jakarta to Bali where I would change planes and continue on to Sumba. I waited in the small dirty airport in Bali. The departure time passed. Still I was not concerned since such delays were to be expected. But another hour went by, then another and another and another.

I watched countless people come and go. A few of the faces seemed to be waiting as long as I was and they noticed the same about me. We were all waiting to go to Sumba. They explained that the flight to Sumba is usually delayed and then canceled by nightfall. They then made a somewhat panicked plea with the officials to get the plane off the ground since there was an American waiting. It worked and we quickly entered the plane.

I never saw a plane in such poor condition before. It was small, perhaps 12 seats, and we filled only half of those. As I took a seat the tray fell down. I messed with it for a while trying to get it to stay up. I looked around and noticed that some of the trays were missing and others were screwed permanently closed. The side panels of the plane were either missing or falling off. The seats were dirty and ripped. Big patches of the carpet were worn out. I frantically tried to fasten my seat belt, but found that there wasn't a buckle for the two ends to fasten together. Looking around I saw that most seats were missing one strap while the other seats didn't have any strap at all. I wondered if there was a life vest under my seat as I tried to tie the two seat belt ends together. I felt a little more at ease when I saw the stewardess enter the plane. I waited for the safety instructions which seemed more important to me then than ever before. The instructions never came.

The plane began its take-off, shaking and rattling so violently that I was sure it would never get off the ground. The trays that weren't permanently screwed shut as well as the overhead compartments all flopped opened. I think if there had been any oxygen masks they too would have popped out. I was once told that Australia used planes until they no longer met the Australian standards. They then sold them to Garuda Airlines in Indonesia who used the planes until they no longer met Indonesian standards. Garuda then sold the planes to Sempati who used the planes until they fell out of the sky. I was praying that this wasn't going to be the last flight to Sumba.

After the plane was safely in the sky and we all started to breathe normally again, the other five passengers gathered around me with lots of questions. "Why is an American going to Sumba?" I tried to answer all their questions. One of the passengers in particular was being especially nice to me. He said that he was the son of the owner of the only hotel on that island. From my research I knew that there was only one hotel on the island and that the hotel was on the other side of the island. It was an eight hour drive from the airport with no public transportation. That had me worried since I had no plan to cover that part of the trip.

The son of the hotel owner made lots of promises to me while we were on the plane. He said that there would be a car waiting for him at the airport and that he would take me to the other side of the island. He also promised to give me a discount on a hotel room, a jeep and driver once we got there and ride back to the airport when I was ready to leave. I thought this was too good to be true, but it was the only thing I had going for me. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but it turned out that he actually did keep every one of his promises.
We safely landed at the airport in Sumba. The passengers were taken to a crowded one-room building which served as the terminal. The walls were cinder blocks with little open slats to let the wind blow in. Looking through those slats, I noticed that it was just as busy outside as it was inside. There were military police officers everywhere. I suppose this was normal. When the plane arrived, everyone came to watch.

A pickup truck brought our luggage from the plane. My new friend set his duffel bag next to mine and asked me to watch it so he could look for his driver. Several minutes later he called to me through the slats in the wall. "I found my driver, grab my bag and come." he yelled in Bahasa Indonesia. I picked up my bag and his and walked past the numerous military police officers.

I sat in the back seat of his car with his duffel bag by my side and we began our eight hour journey. It was dark by that time and I was exhausted. The duffel bag made a good support pillow for me as I slipped in and out of consciousness. The narrow road followed a path that resembled the sine curve and the driver navigated it as fast as the car could possibly go with the horn blowing the whole way. It was amazing that we didn't crash with all those blind curves, in the dark, and on a road only wide enough for one car. We did, however, hit three dogs, a dozen or so chickens, and burned out one horn.

The hotel had a friendly atmosphere. It consisted of several one-room, somewhat modernized, huts. It was such a relief to get there that any hotel would have seemed great and, since it was the only hotel, it was perfect.

The next morning my jeep and driver were waiting. I had the most recent and probably the only map made of Sumba. That side of the island had many blank spots on the map.

"Is there anything in these blank spots?" I asked my driver in Bahasa Indonesia.
"Yes."
"What?"
"Don't Know." he said.
"Lets find out."

That's how it went every day. In the morning we studied the map and picked another blank spot to explore. The driver seemed to be enjoying our adventures as much as I did. He pointed to another spot on the map and said that he had noticed a new road in that area and away we went.

We drove a couple of hours on that new road when we saw several large rocks lying in a straight line across the road. We got out of the jeep to get a closer look. The driver had no idea what it meant. We talked about the rocks and what we should do. After a while we agreed that we had traveled too far to turn back now so we rolled the boulders off the road. Several miles later we again encountered more large rocks neatly placed in a line across the road. The driver and I had a much shorter discussion this time and rolled them off the road. A few more miles down the road we found sticks stuck in a straight line across road. The sticks were about one foot apart with sharpened ends pointing at an angle in the direction that we were coming from. Without a word the driver and I jumped out, pulled the sticks out of the road, and continued on our way.

Soon after that we saw some children playing, the first people we had encountered on that new road. When the children saw us they ran away screaming. The driver said that was because they had never seen a car before.

We arrived in the first village we had seen that day and were stopped by a man wearing a military camouflage hat. Other men started to gather around our jeep, all wearing various articles of military clothing mixed with their civilian clothes. One had the hat, another wore the military boots, another the military shirt. Between them there was perhaps one full uniform. They didn't worry me much, but I did see three M16's stacked in tripod fashion a short distance away.

They brought me to an open walled hut while my driver was taken somewhere else. I waited for what seemed like a long time. I talked to friendly kids all around me so I wasn't too nervous though I was a bit worried about my driver.

Finally one of the men that had stopped us came to ask for my passport. I had learned long before never to take my passport with me when traveling around Indonesia. A US passport was worth too much on their black market and if I gave it to someone, such as the man who stood in front of me, I would probably never get it back. I told the man that I left it in Jakarta and he went away. A minute or two later he returned and asked for some other type of ID. "I left my wallet in the hotel" I replied in Indonesian. He left again but quickly returned. "We need some ID!" he demanded.

Suddenly reality hit me. No one in the world knew I was there. I was in a country which most Americans couldn't find on a map, on an island that most Indonesians didn't know existed, in a blank spot on the map, completely ID less, and being held by some self-appointed police officers. I searched for something, anything with my name on it. All I had were my Marine Corps. dog tags. I had worn them for ten years, rarely taking them off. I handed those to him and away he went one more time.

He returned a few times to see what I would give him to get the dog tags back. I acted like the tags meant nothing to me although it sure felt strange without them. Feeling that he was getting nowhere with me, he brought me to see the boss. Inside a room sat a real military police officer in his best dress uniform. I was shocked. That was the first time that I had seen such a dress uniform and here it was the middle of Sumba. Perhaps that explained my long wait, he had been changing into it for my benefit.

He handed my dog tags back and said that I was free to go anywhere I wanted. I thanked him and went out to the jeep. The driver was waiting but there was a slight problem. Two of the men who had originally stopped us were holding our jeep hostage. I explained that I had no money and reached into my pockets to show them. My pockets were stuffed with small individually wrapped pieces of candy. That was my usual practice. Whenever I traveled in Indonesia I would first stuff my pockets with these candies. Then I would hand them out to the children as I walked from village to village. When the adults saw how happy the children were with me, they would invite me into their village. I pulled several pieces of candy out of my pocket. The two men got very excited when they saw it so I handed each of them two pieces. They accepted and gladly released our jeep, shook our hands, and waved us a cheerful good bye as we drove away. Later my driver told me that they had never had candy before.

A short distance further up the road we entered a traditional village where a large funeral was going on. I've seen many of those in Sumba. They are more like a party rather than a funeral. The family of the deceased would have to save for years after the death of their loved one before being able to afford a great funeral. The driver and I joined in on the festival. They traditionally slaughtered five pigs that day. The pigs feet were tied together and a long stick was placed between the feet. Two men held the ends of the stick. The religious guru chanted in the local dialect for a long time, apparently blessing the pigs some how. He then pushed a sharp stick into the pig's heart. After he finished with all the pigs they were placed on the ground and lit on fire. Once the hair was burned off they started to scrape the skin off. The party, and thus the deceased, would be remembered for a long time.

An old man sitting on the porch of a nearby hut called me over. He wanted to talk. He spoke in the local language which my driver translated into Bahasa Indonesia, and which I in turn translated into English. Back and forth we talked. What an amazing conversation we had.

It turned out that he was the father of the deceased. Questions and answers flowed fast. He explained that it was his 12 year-old daughter for whom the funeral party was being held.

"How did she die?" I asked.

"She was shot in the back by a military police officer."

My heart stopped for a moment thinking of the tripod of M16's and the military police just down the road. "Was it them?"

"No. She died in Bali."

I relaxed a little. "How long ago did she die?"

"Five years."

"Why did you wait so long before having the funeral?"

"We just received the body on the plane from Bali." was his reply.

"I was on that plane and watched the baggage being unloaded. There was no coffin aboard." I insisted.

"The son of the hotel owner put her in his duffel bag." he said.

"The duffel bag! The duffel bag?" I gasped. "No chance. That bag was too small for a 12-year-old girl."

"He had to chop up the bones first," the old man explained.

What had I done? Had I smuggled the body past the police officers at the airport? Had I used it as a pillow for the eight hour drive? Had I done something wrong? I thought for a moment. I noticed how happy the father and the whole village was. Then I too was happy with what I had unknowingly done.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.

Fedraey

2008-09-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

I have joined numerous drinking circles which generally take place in the men's huts and campfires around Ulithi, one of the outer islands of Yap. I've listened to many of the countless World War II stories that are still being told today. I suspect many of these stories have changed a bit over the past 50 years, but one, in particular, stands out in my memory as especially vivid and authentic. I heard it on the outer island of Ulithi called Fedraey.

Tuba was and still is their only alcoholic drink. To make tuba one needs to climb a coconut tree three times a day to cut a thin slice off the end of a tightly wrapped young branch.

An old man told me his World War II story over a cup of tuba. The US 7th Fleet was heading to Ulithi which was, at that time, occupied by the Japanese. Several days before the fleet arrived the Japanese abandoned the islands rather than try to fight such an armada. Those aboard the U.S. ships didn't know that the Japanese had already left. They realized that some of the islands had indigenous populations and did not want to harm them. So, the ships fired shells just over the islands making sure that the shells landed in the lagoon. However, the shells were close enough to the land to knock over all the tall coconut trees except for one which was the oldest and tallest on the island.

The old man enjoyed his tuba as much then as he did now. He decided to climb the tall coconut tree to cut his tuba in spite of all the ongoing violence. He explained that by the time he got to the top he was too tired to cut the tuba and hold on to the tree at the same time. So he carried a small tree trunk up and lashed it like a crossbeam near the top of the tree. His plan was to sit on it once he got to the top so that he could rest while he cut the tuba.

Lookouts of the 7th Fleet spotted the unusual coconut tree and assumed that someone had made a cross. Knowing that the Japanese would not make a cross, the fleet stopped the shelling and sent a shore party to investigate. They found the man who had made the cross and brought him back to their ship for a debriefing.

The old man proudly pointed out a picture in a history book that he kept. It showed an admiral talking to a young island man on a ship. The young man in the picture was clearly the old man that I was talking to. It was he who claimed the honor of ending the war in Ulithi. What the Americans didn't know was that the battle stopped because this man wanted to drink that night.

Read more of "My Adventures" on the top right of this page.