Visiting Islamic High Schools (August 31)

Islamic School Cultural Experience (August 31)

Today I was planning on going to Gili Trawangan (Gili T) for a night or two and meeting the 7 Indonesians I met from the beach before. Gili T is famous for it’s beaches and nightlife, but since I can’t move that well and can’t swim in the ocean for about a week I decide to just stay at Iwan’s place in Lombok. I need to rest and relax. Staying in Lombok had an extra bonus. I was going to go with one of Iwan’s friends, who is a high school teacher at different Islamic High schools in Lombok. In Indonesia, a teacher will normally not work at just one school. Instead, they will go to different schools in a day to teach one or two classes at each school.

I woke up at 8 am pretty sore and try my best to get ready with my new injury slowing me down.  Iwan’s friend picks me up and takes me to the first Islamic high school. As we walk into the open plan school students start staring through all the windows to get a look at me. I am one of the first foreigners to enter this school ever. Boys and girls go to class and learn together, but they sit on different benches. Everyone is wearing a uniform, which includes a hijab for the girls. I stand in front of all the students and give a speech about my background, what I am doing in their country, and I was told to include something about the importance of learning English. Afterwards, I let them ask any questions they wanted about me, or the USA. Surprisingly, the girls were the boldest ones and would ask the most questions. While, the boys focused more on American music and movies such as, “Did I liked Eminem?” or “What is my favorite Marvel movie?” the girls wanted to know if I had a girlfriend or if I would be facebook friends with them. They were all very engaging and had dreams to travel the world. They especially wanted to travel to the USA and all seemed to love President Obama. We did this at two different high schools and we would leave after taking pictures with the classes. It was a really great experience and the students and me really enjoyed ourselves.

Bike Crash (August 30)

Bike Crash - August 30^th

I woke up and came and chatted with Iwan all morning. Iwan is such a great guy. This is a person that has invited me into his home and allowed me to have amazing interactions with his family and friends. I have my own bedroom and his wife always has delicious food ready for me to eat. This morning we really had deep conversations about our lives, culture, and worldviews. It was a conversation that was uncensored and no issue was out of bounds. Even though we have some differences, Iwan really is a very tolerant person and believes that all people should be treated with respect.

After a good morning, I decided to bike to Gili Nanggu, an island off the coast of Lombok. It is extremely famous for its wildlife. There is a fishing ban around the island so there is an abundance of wildlife and coral reef there. I would bike there then negotiate a price for a boat to take me to the island. To get a boat out there maybe would cost 9 dollars. On the way, I passed a girl from Switzerland who was always touring Bali and Lombok by bicycle. It was nice to see a fellow cyclist exploring Indonesia in the same way. I was about 2 km from where I would hire a boat when my first accident of the trip occurs.

I come up to a sharp turn going left. As I head left, a car is coming diagonally across my lane and I have to veer left very sharply (Indonesians drive on the other side of the road, like in the UK) and my bike slips and I fly across the air and slide hard on my left side and lower shoulder. I am not going to sugarcoat it. It was extremely painful. I couldn’t breathe. Luckily, I didn’t break any bones, but I have serious road rash on my left side. The people in the car came out and gave me some water and tried to clean it for me and kept saying they are sorry. A family by the crash, who ironically sell boat trips to Gili Nanggu, came up to me and said I can relax there. They got a chair for me and started trying to clean it for me. My left side is pretty messed up and I have holes in 4 of me toes on my left foot. I relax there for about an hour and I eventually get back on the bike and head back to Mataram in search of a hospital. I can’t find it, and while I’m looking for it some guy comes up to me and says can I help you? I told him I was looking for a hospital. He tells me to follow him and he takes me to this clinic. The nurse was very nice there. She tells me to take my shirt off and proceeds to cleanse my wounds with alcohol and put this stuff that helps the wound heal on. It wasn’t the most fun experience to have the road rubbed out of my wound, but eventually it was clean. I was cleaned, given medicine, and received care within 1 minute of arriving for the price of 2 dollars. It was hard to believe how cheap it was. I stay there a while and then head back to Iwan’s house. I take it easy and reflect on the fact that although I am in some deep pain, I didn’t break any bones, and more importantly I am alive. A few days of rest and I’ll be back on the bike. Family please don't worry I'm really in good hands here at Iwans. 

Lombok (August 28-29)

Lombok Background information

Lombok is quite different from Bali when it comes to religion. Bali is 90 per Hindu, whereas Lombok is majority Muslim. This religious difference causes Lombok to have a more conservative culture compared to Bali. However, in my opinion the natural beauty of Lombok is even more amazing than Bali. The other big difference is that Lombok only gets about 10 percent of the number of tourists that Bali receives, so you are able to enjoy the incredible landscapes and beaches with fewer people. 

Friday, August 28

I woke up to Iwan knocking on the door around 8:30 am. We had a big day planned. Iwan, my third Couchsurfing host of my trip, is a high school teacher at a school in Matarm, the capital of Lombok. In Indonesia, they have high schools where you prepare for university, but they also have vocational high schools that prepare students for the workforce upon graduation. Iwan is a teacher in a vocational high school that focuses on tourism. So I really was in luck to stay with him because he knows pretty much everything there is to know about Lombok and wants to show it off. Before we left we had a traditional Indonesian breakfast of fried noodles and then headed to Iwan’s school. Iwan showed me around, and I met some of his coworkers as well as a newly arrived American, Abby, who will be working at his school for the next 10 months because of Fullbright. Abby, Iwan, and I met up with 2 other of his coworkers and started the grand tour of the island. Iwan first took us down south to Kuta beach, which was amazing. Lombok is much less developed compared to Bali and has much more beautiful landscapes. Kuta is surrounded by cliffs with white sandy beaches and virtually no people. There may have been 30 people on this massive beach. I could not understand how it was possible. I went swimming for a while and just sat there reflecting on how lucky I was to see such a beautiful place. We later went further along the south and east to Bangungaan Beach. It was absolutely breathtaking. Even less people and there were cliffs you could climb up on to have a great view of the bay. This one has great surfing although you have to paddle pretty far out. After the beaches we went to see a place that makes traditional pottery and then a traditional village. They are the Sasak people and they have lived in this village for 15 generations. There are about 700 people that still live there today. Our guide told us that it is cheaper to buy a bride from inside this village, but if a man were to buy a bride from outside this village it would cost 2 goats. Then we headed back to Iwan’s house where his wife prepared delicious dinner for us and I met Iwan’s daughters. After we had some coffee and compared Lombok and Indonesian culture versus the United States. After almost falling asleep on the couch Iwan says to me do I want to go play cards with some of his neighbors. Iwan really seems to know everyone in his town. I say sure. We walk down the road to this small sitting area that is covered in front of a small convenience type store. There are 5 men playing Lombok style Rummy there. I watch for a few games as Iwan explains the rules. It is similar to Gin Rummy, but with a few more cards and a slight variation to the rules. I just had flashbacks to playing Rummy with my grandma and all her friends when I would visit her in Boca, Florida. However, this was different, since we were all men out at midnight with the freedom to do what we want. Women are a lot less likely to be able to do this. Women normally should get permission to do basic things outside the house. We play for a while and I meet some of the neighbors. Many are teachers and one is a professor at the Islamic University. I am invited to speak at a high school in the coming days to share any wisdom I have at an Islamic high school. I like this game because if you are losing after each round there is some punishment you have to wear a tiny bottle with string around your ears depending on what place are you in. These guys were really welcoming and I appreciated their hospitality!

Saturday, August 29

I woke up and hung out on the couch for the morning. It was nice to relax and not do anything for a bit.  After a leisurely morning, I took the motorbike that Iwan lended to me and traveled back down south to Kuta. You can rent surfboards down there for the entire day for 50,000 Rupiah or $3.50. After enjoying the surf for a few hours with almost no other people fighting to ride the waves, I rode my motorbike to other beaches along the sound and found a new one that I hadn’t been to yet. I climbed some rock and I’m standing about 200 feet up and could fall pretty easily, but the view made it very worth it. At a different beach, I met a group of 7 Indonesians from Jakarta on vacation. One of whom was a guy who works for the United Nations dealing with refugees. I learned that the most refugees that come to Indonesia are from Afghanistan trying to make their way to Australia. After a great day in the south, I headed back towards Mataram, the capital of Lombok, because Abby invited me to meet another Fulbright person that was working in Indonesia in Lombok. He works at a Muslim boarding school and a person who works there prepared dinner for all of us. We spent many hours talking about the uniqueness of Indonesia and sharing traveling stories. I eventually made  my way back to Iwan’s house and we talked for a while, but I fell asleep very fast on the chair.

Safety

“Aren’t you worried about being safe?”

This must be the most common question I have been asked when I told my family and friends that I will be riding my bicycle across Indonesia. I don’t want to lie and say I always feel completely safe, but if I use common sense and good judgment I feel extremely safe. In fact, so far I have felt safer here than in some places I have lived in the USA.

The most dangerous thing about riding a bicycle are the cars that drive next to you. This is dangerous at home, in the United States, as well as in Indonesia. I can’t control what other drivers do, but I can only do my best to react and try to avoid a collision. This is something that I just accept and don’t think about.

But, usually people are not thinking about bicycle safety when they ask me this question. They will mention in a somewhat mysterious way, "Indonesia is a Muslim country." Then they always remind me that there was a terrorist attack in Bali that killed hundreds of people in the past. This is true. In 2002, there was a suicide bombing and car bombing in Bali that killed 202 people near popular nightclubs in Kuta, an area of Bali that is very popular for westerners. A violent Islamic group was responsible for this terrible tragedy. I don’t have a perfect answer for this question.

Usually, I respond by saying I don’t want to live in fear. If we live in fear then I believe our life becomes a shell of what is possible. If we live in fear we would never visit New York City after September 11^th, we would avoid Charleston, South Carolina because of the recent church shooting, we would not travel to Boston because of the Boston Marathon bombing, or we wouldn’t dare go to Paris, France because of the Charlie Hedbo shootings.  I could list a thousand more examples, but I hope you can see what I mean. Most of us think of course we will go to New York, Paris, and Boston and not think much about it. I have this same view here in Indonesia. However, this is just my opinion and view. I have chosen to see and experience the world. I have chosen to live my life without fear, while at the same time being smart about it and using common sense. The world is huge and I want to see it all. So I am.

So far I have only met good people, with big hearts, who are just as curious about Western and American culture as I am about their Indonesian and local island culture and life. Are there bad people here? I'm sure there are, just as there are everywhere around the world. However, most people I have met so far think very similarly as we do in the USA. They are worried about their work or education, they want to earn more money for their families, they want their children to have a better life than they do, and they are just trying to find happiness with their life.

We might speak a different language, have a different religion, but once you get past these obvious differences, I believe people in the world are very similar. 

The Journey to Lombok

Getting to Lombok

Thursday, August 27, 2015

I left Syen’s place in Bali and rode about 40 miles to the ferry terminal in Padang Bai, Bali. It was a pretty easy ride. Once I get on the main coastal road it was just a straight shot on a very recently paved road. The traffic was very manageable once I left the Kuta area and I didn’t have any close encounters with cars or motorbikes. I still can’t get over how friendly everyone was. I am riding around and everyone is smiling and all the kids are waving at me. I think there must be some respect that you get from riding a bicycle around a country. I biked the 40 miles in about 2 and half hours and made it in time to catch the 4:30 pm ferry to Lembar, Lombok. The price for the ferry was 65,000 Rupiah ($4.50) for the bike and me. Security for me was nonexistent. The police were checking all the motorbikes and cars, but they didn’t care about the bags on the back of my bike or me. They just waved me past the line and I rode my bike onto the ferry. When I got on the ferry, I met a really nice security guard. He says all the workers on the boat work 24 hours shifts. They work 24 hours then get a 24-hour break. There is a ferry between these two islands hourly 24 hours a day. He told me that he will watch my bike and if there is any problem he will contact me on Whatsapp.

On the ferry, I start taking some pictures and videos with the go pro. I witness an incredible sunset with Bali in the background.  This is when a guy sees me and says hello. His name was Rozi and he was heading back to his home on Lombok. His English was quite good although he said he hadn’t spoken English in over a year. We talk about everything and it was a good way to get an insiders point of view about Lombok. Lombok is a predominantly Muslim island, with a small Hindu minority. Rozi goes into detail with me about Islam, which will become a common experience while I am in Lombok. The 5-hour ferry ride seemed very short as we discussed religion, culture, history, and the differences between America and Lombok while sharing his delicious, local Bali alcohol.

I get off the ferry at about 10 pm and I am trying to make my way to my third Couchsurfing host, Iwan, who lives about 15 miles from the ferry. It is extremely dark outside and there are not many lights on the road. However, I have quite a few lights on my bicycle, and make sure to get some good music going. I take off and I make pretty good time. The road feels like it was recently paved. There was no traffic and the people give me lots of space when they pass me. I get close to Iwan's house, but I get a little bit lost at the end because Google maps does not seem to work on some of these back roads in Indonesia. Suddenly, I see a massive mosque in front of me lit up in the dark, like an oasis in the desert. I stop there and called Iwan. He said to wait there and he will meet me in 10 minutes. So I’m just hanging out in front of a giant mosque at 11 pm in the middle of nowhere when 10 teenagers and 5 adults surround me. They wonder what I’m doing at a mosque late at night on a bicycle with a bunch of stuff. I don’t think they have ever seen something like that before in their life. At first, it made me a bit apprehensive, but it quickly turned really fun. They all asked if I was lost, do I need help, do I want to eat some food with them. When I said I was waiting for a friend to come they started asking me really random stuff like: Do I like to play soccer? Do you like Terminator? Who is your favorite singer? Do you know Eminem? At the same time, people driving by would stop their cars or motorbike and ask if I needed help. It must have been quite a site to see this American on a bike with a bunch of bags on the back in front of a giant mosque at night in the middle of the countryside.

Eventually, Iwan arrived and he seemed to know everyone in this neighborhood. I followed him to his house and met his wife. We talk for a while and then they made me some food. It was buffalo meat, fish, and some chicken that is indigenous to Lombok. It was a feast of meat and I devoured it.

Before falling asleep, I counted my money and realized I had spent only 1,400,000 Rupiah ($99) in Bali and getting to Lombok. I have been in Indonesia for 5 days and have traveled up the coast of Bali and on a ferry across to Lombok, partied in a nice club, surfed, ate and drank whatever I wanted and have spent less than $100. I have done this without even thinking about money. I spend whenever I go anywhere and do whatever I want. Couchsurfing and riding a bicycle really can make a trip inexpensive.