I returned Saturday from a week over on Flores and will trickle out stories, still and moving images over the next few posts. All said, I wish I had more time (and money) going over there. I dropped 5.1 million rupiah with the flight from Bali and only made it half as far as I wanted to before having to return. I still have unused vacation days, but they will be used elsewhere in my remaining three months. I guess what I’m saying is: should I return to Indonesia, I’ll go back to Flores some day. I even found myself pondering working the Catholic angle (I was raised Catholic, though it means little to me now – the belief system I mean, apart from some cultural identity), willing to put a little Jesus in the English mix should I be employed by some church means, as long as I wasn’t required to attend Mass and could maintain my usual lifestyle: alcohol, rocking out to Devil music, excessive masturbation, condoms use when I do get to fuck, etc etc.

Labuanbajo

When the shuttle at the Denpasar airport pulled up to the plane I was bit nervous. There were propellers. Going to Java was one thing: walking up the rolling stairway took me back to the 70′s, as this was how we often boarded aircraft when I was a kid. But this was technically not a jet aircraft… It was modern as far as I could tell, and not exactly “small”, just not as big as I had been picturing. I’m a nervous flier. I do it. I don’t freakout excessively, but I’m very “aware” when I fly. At times a bit sweaty palmed. I don’t like turbulence. Who does? But I really don’t, and you feel it in smaller planes. We took off, I had a few minutes to appreciate how beautiful Bali was from the air, and we flew directly into a storm. It is the rainy season after all. Clouds gather, rain or not, over mountains like the one on neighboring Lombok. Lightning flashed. We entered a dark gray bank. The plane naturally dipped and my stomached flipped. Soon we were past the worst and I got to look down at beautiful islands for the remaining hour.

The airport, such as it was, struck me as hilarious. There are three flights a day. A plane lands, they take luggage off, which is pulled over to the rolling door where folks can see everything on the cart. Then the plane is reloaded and takes off again. I imagine very little luggage is lost. I heard tales that a plane hit a small cow that wandered onto the runway a few weeks ago, and I believe them. Everyone onboard was OK. The cow didn’t make it.

I took a bemo 2KM into town and checked into an absurdly cheap room. It, as well as the town, were pretty much a dump. But during the ride I was quoted a few prices by a local. Renting a motorbike, as I wanted to do to head East, was expensive. Getting out to Komodo and Rinca islands to see the dragons, was expensive. So a 30k room made sense, at least that first night. That’s less than $4 – Ko San Road, Bangkok bargain basement prices. It was of course a closet with a bed and fan, shared bath and no shower. But a German guy, Tobias, was also staying there as he worked as a dive master in town. Komodo National park is well known on the dive circuit. I found some reasonably priced beers and we talked, though he hadn’t really been anywhere on the island, only under the sea looking at the sides of it from various depths and angles, but mostly of course at corals and fish.
I’d met a guy in town, Evan, who offered a decent price on a motorbike rental, coming down from 110k to 70k a day for five days. I would need a standard transmission, pedal clutch, as an automatic, like I ride on Bali, couldn’t handle the mountain climbing. So 350k for five days, while I only pay 500k on Bali for a month. Spendy, but unavoidable. Evan and I talked about my planed route which entailed getting all the way to Moni, possibly via Irung in the North and the 17 island area. This plan was ambitious. Overly so.

At 8 the next morning Evan and Ali, his partner had coffee waiting for me. I’d somehow lost my sunglasses, I think walking off with them still in basket at the first metal detector in the Bali airport, so I’d also bought some imitation Oakleys, not just for sun, but to shield my eyes from dust, pebbles, bugs and various other road shit. We chatted a bit, and I set out. The speedometer didn’t work, but that didn’t really matter. I was more concerned that the odometer was static. How many miles were actually on the bike? I left my passport back on Bali and the boys only had my work permit number as a deposit. I’d made a verbal agreement to pay for damages, should they occur. I gassed up at the edge of town, knowing there wouldn’t be as many Pertamina stations as there are on Bali, dropped my morning dump, and hit the open road. Flores is beautiful and rural. Literally every single kid I saw for the next five days yelled “Hello Mister!” as I passed, perhaps two hundred times. Of course it got old, but was nonetheless charming.
I climbed some hills successfully but shorted out within an hour. Ok, it seemed only first gear would do on these monsters. I struggled to get the bike out of the road before a truck came up around the blind corner and squashed me. The bike started right up again and I continued to climb. The road so far was reasonably paved, but only wide enough for two lanes, should the lines have happened to have been painted, which they usually weren’t. Most of the myriad corners were blind. There are no semis here, but the big trucks are big enough.
After three hours, I pulled to the side of the road, as it was starting to sprinkle, for my raincoat and to have some snacks at a roadside shack. Everywhere in Indonesia, people sell gas out of Absolute bottles, or in the case of Flores, just plastic water bottles. 10k for a large, 5k for a small. I usually avoid this in Bali unless an emergency, as you are obviously paying more, but I went ahead and got a large one here. I wasn’t exactly sure how much further it was to Ruteng and also felt bad abut breaking a larger bill in the rural setting. A bunch of locals had gathered. They didn’t see buleh like me every day. What was I gonna pull out of my huge pack? Oh, it’s some sort of raincoat. What now? Oh, a bottle of water to wash down the peanuts. I got a shot of them and rode on.

After his Pusher trilogy (…well at least the first one), Vallhala Rising, Bronson and now Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn is becoming one of my favorite directors. Gosling does the tough guy well. Only Albret Brooks bugged me here and it wasn’t so bad. Definitely more psycho than cutsie-poo. Bryan Cranston and Ron Pearlman fill out the cast. Some seasons with Pearlman in a tux might take you back to on of his earlier roles in Chronos. The female lead is rather understated. At first I thought it was again Gosling’s co-star from Blue Valentine, but was in fact Brit Carey Muligan, of the recent Never Let Me Go. It isn’t entirely plausible why he would fall for her, but it’s a bit like a western: he’s the protagonist, and she’s the girl -so he falls for her, without their being much carnality between them.

Excellent use of Eno’s Apollo soundtrack (ed 12-14: I see now from Wikipedia it isn’t credited! Well it is under Apollo soundtrack, but not the Drive entry. It’s also unclear exactly what Angelo Badalamenti did on the film. His name is clearly seen in the opening film credits, and A.B. wikipedia has Drive listed with his name, but he’s not mentioned in Drive wikipedia.) Other music is techno and seems an odd choice, but it works. It’s an early 80′s techno sound.
It isn’t huge “blow you away” sort of film. More of a subtle classic.

I joined a gym about 1.5 months ago and had just turned up for the day’s workout. This was about 3 hours ago. In the locker room things started to shake. My thought process went quake-seems strong-wow-oh yeah we’re on the third floor-maybe I should get out of here. Heading for the door, people, especially Indonesian women, where in full panic, shrieking as if their fingernails were being pulled out. It wasn’t crowded going down the stairs, but people were worked up enough I could see pushing might have erupted. Soon we were out in a field by the gym, the ground still shaking but it only went on for about a minute. Nervous smiles all around, some making fun of the panicked. One meathead trainer never even came downstairs and mocked us all from above. Many left, but I went on and had my workout. For all the excitement, only one florescent light had opened and broke on the locker room floor. One other small crack, and I could see a watertower had severed it’s line on a building across the way and was spraying water. Numbers I’m hearing so far are 6.8, centered in Nusa Dua just south of here.
The weirdest part is: there is no sound. It seems like there should be a rumbling sound to match the shaking. I’m having personal aftershocks, my balance will be off for a nano-second, walking down stairs or turning a corner and I think “it’s happening again”.

Billy and Xuan changed course again and left for Hawaii. It was a move that made the most sense due to visa issues and the ability to work. But before he left, I got some shots from his underwater camera, all taken by him. None truely capture the variety you might see all at once down there, but they are an impression I’ve wanted to share ever since I started snorkeling here.