Bule, bule!!

Solo in Solo

I’m sitting in a large spacious antique coffee house, decked out with old wooden and cane furniture, black and white framed historic pics on the walls, loads of ceiling fans spinning furiously, keeping the place airy and cool, and keeping the spider webs on the ceiling moving. The floor tiles under my feet are completely loose, and they rattle as I tap my feet to the piped slow rock that’s playing from one lonely speaker high up on the wall.

I love it here. It reminds me of old grand colonial buildings in India or Sri Lanka, the grandness of the buildings somehow surviving the inevitable architectural decay that set in when the colonists were finally pushed out all those years ago.

Enterprising locals have now reinvigorated some of these spaces with a bit of cheap renovating, creating cool but rustic eating places or cafes.

Hip young locals are hanging out in here, chatting in groups, and a couple are even working on their laptops - not a common sight in the places I’ve been hanging out in Indonesia so far. Except for Westerners in Ubud that is.

There’s not many headscarves in sight, which is a strong contrast to the street below, where 9 out of 10 women are wearing them.

And yeah, I had a coffee, iced coffee actually, strong, with condensed milk, just how I like it.

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

Indonesia has definitely become more socially and religiously conservative since I first came here over 30 years ago. In those days, only about 5% of Muslim women wore headscarves, on average. Now, 75% wear them, and in some places (here for example), way more.

There’s many reasons for the change.

The main factor is the deliberate spread of Salafism and Wahhabism, morally conservative interpretations of Islam, by Saudi Arabia, which they’ve funded with bottomless pockets packed with petrodollars (which we’ve given them).

This Saudi exercise, also supported by some other Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, has been described as the greatest worldwide propoganda campaign in history. They’ve spent around USD 100 billion doing it, over the past 50 years.

It’s a simple strategy. They’ve built thousands of quality schools around the world, offered free schooling for kids who would never get the chance to get a proper education, and then indoctrinated the kids while they were at it.

They’ve built hundreds of other Islamic learning centres, offering good incentives for people of all ages to study Islam, and then dished out their own conservative version of it.

They’ve printed hundreds of millions of Korans, and distributed them free around the world. But, of course, they come with their own socially conservative interpretations of the text.

Each Saudi embassy around the world has a religious attaché, whose job it is to get mosques and learning centres built in the country. The Saudis also hugely fund international Muslim organisations that spread their conservative brand of Islam.

There’s no doubt that the strategy has worked. Conservative Islam has taken hold all around the world, and many governments in Muslim or partly Muslim countries now need to negotiate with these conservatives in order to stay in power. Or conservative Muslim political parties have taken power in their own right.

72% of Indonesian Muslims now believe sharia law should be introduced nationally, and that it should apply to all Muslims. Aceh Province in northern Sumatra has already implemented sharia law.

You’ve probably heard of the bonk ban. Recently the Indonesian parliament passed a law making sex outside marriage illegal. It’s actually true. The law comes into effect in three years, but only a spouse, parent or son/daughter can report offenders to the police. The law also includes a ban on the promotion of contraception, and bans on public criticism of political leaders, state institutions and national ideology.

This new law has come about after pressure from socially conservative politicians.

So, I actually think I made a mistake before, when I titled this section.

It should’ve been

No Steps Forward, Three Hundred Steps Back.

Pasar Gede

This is such a cool market, the main one in Solo (Surakarta). The inside is made up of two large two-storey buildings, with a maze of stalls on the ground floor, selling everything you could imagine, and even more that you couldn’t. And of course then there’s all the stalls outside on the streets.

It’s all locals in here.

Actually, I haven’t seen one single foreigner in this whole city. Nowhere. Well, when I say foreigner, I mean a Westerner, a bule (Caucasian). Maybe there’s a few Malaysian tourists around, I can’t tell the difference.

Salak (snake fruit) on the right, manggis (mangosteens) next to them, and the yellowish longans at the back.

Tofu and dove eggs. Yum.

Herb stall. All the packets at the back are herbal teas.

Coconut shell ware

Sirsak (known in some places as soursop, or sugar apple), basically tastes like a custard apple

These women are slicing edible bamboo

The hanging balls are the really common toy all the kids play with here

Masjid Jaya Sheikh Zayed

I first saw this incredible mosque on the train to Yogya when I arrived there a week ago or so. I was so dumbfounded by its size and beauty, I had to come back and see it up close.

The mosque is a gift from one seriously rich dude, the current Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan. It cost tens of millions of dollars to build (I couldn’t find the final sum), all paid for in petrodollars, again. He built one in Abu Dhabi as well, that cost a meagre USD545 million. Peanuts.

Although it was officially inaugurated at the recent G20 summit in Indonesia, the mosque in Solo is actually not open yet, so I couldn’t go inside (bummer). They’re still touching it up.

Rising from the dystopian ashes

You just can’t fit it all in one pic. It’s too massive.

A magnificent architectural wonder

On The Streets

This city is so interesting. Both Yogya and Solo are regarded as sister cities, as both have a special independent status in the Indonesian Federation.  They are both regarded as the centres of Javanese culture.

Yogya is a sultanate, still ruled by a monarch, the Sultan, and his wife, the Sultana.

Solo, on the other hand, is known as a sunanate, and is also ruled by a monarch, the Sun Dried Tomato, along with his wife, Olive.

Oh, oops, sorry, it’s the Sunan, and his wife is the Sunana, otherwise known as the Sun Dried Banana.

I mean no disrespect to the royal family of course, I’m sure they’re all super nice.

So anyway, Solo street life is really interesting, just as it is in Yogya. There’s so much going on.

I took a train here today, it’s about an hour on a flash commuter train (aircon set by a polar bear), and then wandered around without too much of a program.

Cycle rickshaws are still used all over Yogya and Solo. It must be a helluva job, transporting heavy people and things around on a super heavy bike.

I sorta know the feeling.

But my bike has 27 gears.

Young coconut drink stop for me. Kelapa muda. I skipped on the added water and ice and bee infested syrup option, and just had mine on the rocks. Well, on a burnt plastic chair.

Birds for sale

Buskers. They were good.

Nice moves

Javanese Groucho Marx

Beautiful tree. Trippy dudes.

Yogya and Solo are separated into little kampungs, like little villages,

and many of them have a beautiful entrance, like this one.

Inside the kampung there’s actually a real sense of community, with people always helping each other out. This really helped them when Covid hit, as many people lost their livelihoods overnight. According to a local I was chatting to, everyone looked after each other during that time, and no one went hungry.

That was not the case in other parts of Indonesia.

An estimated 70 million people lost their income due to the pandemic restrictions, either by directly losing their jobs, or by being unable to operate their own small businesses, food stalls, etc. The government provided some economic relief, but it was way below what was needed, many people didn’t qualify for assistance, and the compensation schemes themselves were mired in corruption.

Ah, don’t ya love it. When people are the most desperate, just snatch rupiahs right out of their hands.

Or, even better, put the cash in your pocket before it even reaches their hands, and then go on tv to say how much you’re doing for the poor.

Cute park

Uncute sculpture in the middle of the cute park

Old school playground. I used to play in ones like these. In those days we were allowed to hone our reflexes and build up our resilience to stumbles and falls. And we could break as many bones as we wanted.

Christian church. Not a common sight around here.

Nor is this Tesla

Creative Copying. CFC stands for California Fried Chicken, which has outlets all over the …. country of Indonesia. Yep, it’s solely an Indo brand.

Lucky I rolled this rice ball over before gutsing into it. These green chillies are hot, and even hotter than most red chillies around here.

But they’re not as hot as the red ‘ghost pepper’ from Kalimantan, which is ten times hotter again. Some foreigners have nearly died eating it, or have been made temporarily deaf.

The deafness is because the mucus buildup is so intense when you eat them that it blocks up the Eustachian tube, which connects your throat to your ears, so you can’t normalise your inner ear pressure, and therefore can’t hear a thing.

You’d think it’d also make you unable to breathe and speak, and yeah, after eating one you'd definitely know if your arse was on fire.

I know that from bitter experience. I once bit into some chillies in Nepal that were so hot I totally freaked out. My body rejected them instantaneously through my back door, to protect my intestines.

It felt like sitting on a campfire for ten minutes.

Btw, the rice ball dish was the weirdest thing. Sort of salty tempe with some sort of sweet sauce, and sweet sticky rice with coconut. And chillies. It’s not my most recommended combination of all time.

How about sticky rice with cold mango and coconut milk instead?

I might have to wait till Thailand for that one.

The Biggish Smoke

I’ve spent about a week in and around the city of Yogya this trip, and explored a lot of new spots, walking, taking local transport, and riding. I really love it, it’s diverse, interesting, and it still surprises me.

Both Solo and Yogya aren’t big cities, around half a million each, it’s actually a really good size, there’s heaps to see, but they don’t go on forever. The air quality is so much better here too, compared to lung-destroying Jakarta.

It also helps that it’s the rainy season, so the rain washes those deadly petroleum particulates and other nasty chemicals out of the air, and carries them into the drains that lead into the canals and rivers and eventually to the ocean, so all the fish can eat them, and then all the locals eat the fish and everyone’s happy because they all got some.

But it does keep the air quite clean.

The first hotel I stayed in was about a 15 minute walk from the central railway station, and was situated in a fairly poor area, Tukangan.

The entrance to my little home for a few nights. It was a little building with only two small guest rooms in it, and a shared bathroom and kitchen. Not surprisingly, I didn’t use the kitchen. There’s always too much to eat outside.

Kitsch decorations

Full disclosure. It’s back to small, grungy guest house rooms for me. At least temporarily. I was too busy to tidy up. Normally I keep my rooms way nicer than this, I promise.

A cycle rickshaw driver lives in the laneway across from my place. He took this out every day.

Lempuyangan market is close by, it’s a medium-sized market full of local friendly women, and all sorts of interesting things to buy.

The broad leafed green is a local kale, kangkung.

Feather dusters. With real feathers.

Old school garbage collection

The Malioboro district is right in the centre of town, and is the main tourist and shopping district. It’s an interesting area, full of great eating places, buskers, and interesting shops. There’s wide pedestrian malls too, which is a real luxury in this country of non-walkers. Over New Years Malioboro was crazy busy.

Happy lassies

Great name for a chicken takeaway

At last, someone nails the reality of the commercialisation of our individualistic society

My first Christmas tree in Indonesia. It was well after Christmas.

Not sure what these guys were up to

Veiled threads

New Year hordes

My dinner spot. Buskers actually come into the eating places regularly, and pretty much everyone gives a little bit. It works, the buskers entertain, and make a modest living in return. People seem to be way more generous here than in Australia, I’m sorry to say.

What a spicy feast. The drink is a hot ginger with condensed milk. Yum.

Hitting a bar with Steve and Manu, and a coupla others.

Part of the unusual looking Sultan’s palace wall.

Back street art

After New Years, and after New Years Recovery, I moved to a different hotel, because

(a) there were better and cheaper rooms once all the tourists left, and

(b) I wanted to explore a new area.

The area I moved to is called Prawirotaman, it’s actually where I spent New Years Eve, and it’s definitely way more upmarket than Tukangan. When I say upmarket, don’t think Australia. I mean it in Indonesian.

Old traditional mosque

And another one

And a third

The garden inside my new hotel

100 Rupiah view from my room.

After a  dump. Of rain.

Cute bridge

Shadow puppet photobomb

Ah the colours, the flavours.

Nighttime burnoff

The ominous active volcano Mt Merapi peering through the cloud and smog. It’s the most active volcano in Indonesia, and you can’t get close to it, it’s too dangerous. It’s erupted many times over the years, the most recent being last year, and has killed thousands of people over the decades. It generally erupts more mildly every year or two, and then every 10-15 years it really has a blast.

Peak hour in Malioboro. Not a place for horses (or pedestrians).

Health Department approved kitchen. I ate here, the food was delicious. I even had one of those dodgy brown eggs. Incredibly, it tasted like an egg. I also had gudeg, which is a famous central Javanese jackfruit curry. They sell it everywhere. It was amazingly good, on a par with Iain’s (which is unheard of).

Same spotless kitchen

The Donald! He’s saying “please, stop by!” in Javanese.

Kampung Ketandan is the main Chinese kampung in Yogya, and is basically their Chinatown. It’s super small. Basically the best thing about it is the entrance.

This upmarket cool little place was the best vegetarian restaurant I’ve been to in Indonesia. It was 10 minutes from my second hotel in Yogya, so of course I had something there every day. It was a super treat, and cheap of course (because everything is cheap pretty much, except beer, in relative terms).

Downtown Malioboro

Impeccable, even the shoes. Well, don’t look at the belts.

All that fuss for a bit of coloured ink, and Mr Frisky’s rather elaborate autograph.

To The South Coast

So I rode across town to pick up my passport with a brand new visa, rode back to my hotel, checked out, and then headed south to the coast.

It was wet.

Dodging the heavy showers

Cycle touring Indo style

Rainy season. One of many many rivers I crossed.

Did they run out of concrete for the pillars? Can anyone shed any light on what this is all about? I can’t, for the life of me, work it out.

This is how many people transport rice. Sometimes they also have these tiny putt-putt utes that they stuff it into.

Drying rice grains in the sun. A hazardous task, given the showers.

Flat lush farmland

Human, beans

So I arrived at Glagah in the late afternoon, just in time to get some food and take a few pics before it got dark. It’s a tiny village, with one unlikely guest house just out of the way, looking like it fell out of the sky.

I’m happy it did, it was great.

This was the view from the front of the guest house.

The funny thing is, there was no one staying there but me. Not only that, but the guys running the place left at dusk. So I was basically there alone all night, which sorta felt a bit weird.

Masakan Padang, or Padang food, is really common all over Indonesia. That’s because it’s so good. The food comes from Padang (surprise surprise), a city on  the west coast of Sumatra.

If you’re dining in, you just grab a plate, grab some plain rice out of the rice cooker, then help yourself to whatever you want. It’s super spicy, and there’s always vegies, greens, jackfruit, fried tempe, tofu and omelettes. Which makes it a really good option for vegetarians or vegans. There’s also loads of meat dishes, chicken, fish, duck, and all sorts of other dead animal bits, if you’re into that sort of thing.

After you’ve finished you tell the person what you ate, and they basically charge you nothing for the whole lot.

I paid the equivalent of about AUD1.40 for this lot, including an ice tea.

Grabbing some takeaway

The good, the bad

And the ugly

West to Suwuk

So it’s really rural in these parts. Rice paddies, cassava, corn, vegetable plots, fruit trees. Today, on my journey to a tiny village called Suwuk, I didn’t pass through any towns whatsoever, just little settlements.

That means that accommodation is hard to come by. Theoretically I could camp, I’ve got a tent, but it’s so wet, and the idea of camping in these storms doesn’t sound that appealing right now.

So I did find a hotel in Suwuk, the only place like it for miles around, and booked myself a room there online. The only trouble is, it’s 70km from Glagah.

Even superheroes need challenges sometimes.

It was a seriously tough ride. It was pretty flat, but there was a blistering head wind all day. That’s what made it tough. When I finally made it to Suwuk and showered, my face was completely gritty, from bits of soil and sand and whatever else had been blown into my face during the ride.

The road was good, not too busy, but it was a long ride into that wall of wind.

My first tunnel

Meloncholy Mood

Tsunami evacuation track, put in place after the devastating 2004 tsunami, which killed around 225,000 people around the Indian Ocean, 200,000 of whom were in Indonesia. The tsunami was caused by the biggest underwater earthquake ever recorded, it lasted over 8 minutes, and was off the coast of Sumatra. It generated tsunami waves which travelled around the globe for 8 hours, even killing people in East Africa, which is a helluva long way away. The event was a major global tragedy, and it's taken decades for some places to rebuild.

Sugar cane. Could be the back blocks of Murbah

Brekky.

So many jambu (guava) stalls

Indonesian headwind

Makeshift building materials

Friday prayers

Flood debris washing to the ocean, which you can see at the back

Cute new little mosque, right next to another of my sugary drink stops.

Skinny road kill. Glad it wasn’t me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had to cross these hills the next day. I’m glad I didn’t know it at the time.

Drying rice everywhere

And corn

The inside of my hotel

The cutest hotel manchester ever. Except that there was no cotton or linen in sight. It was new school, 100% plastic and microfibre

Late arvo stroll.

The vast expanse of the Javanese south coast

Flood debris at front

Next Level

Well, I’m pretty sure that today was the hardest and most gruelling day of cycling I’ve ever had the craziness to partake in, in my whole cycling career.

It was so great.

I was so absolutely completely totally exhausted that when I finally got to my hotel room here in Cilacap, I showered (because I was so wet and filthy with sweat that I couldn’t possibly lie on the bed) and then after that I died.

But at least I died on a bed.

I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get up again.

But luckily I got hungry.

So what happened was that this morning, on a whim, I decided to leave the main road. It went right, and I went left. I knew I’d have to climb a few hills if I went in that direction, but I was up for that.

A few hills?!!?@#$&!!!

For the next four hours I cycled and pushed my ridiculously heavy bike up the steepest gradients known to women, it was really nuts. At one point I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna make it, and was contemplating exactly how I would get myself out of that situation, given that there was very little traffic, and pretty much no vehicles that could’ve transported me to the top.

And the thing is, it wasn’t just all up. It was ridiculous up, and then ridiculous down, but I couldn’t really enjoy the down even, because the road was so potholed that I had to dodge and weave just to stay on the bike. It really was hard hard work.

And then it was up again. And then down. And up, and down. Ad nauseum. Add mausoleum.

I rested a helluva lot. I basically had no choice, or I would’ve died of heart failure and regret.

The thing is, the countryside was so magnificently beautiful. Forest. Tiny villages filled with the sweetest people known to womenkind, calling out "bule, bule!!!" or "hello Misterrrr!!" as I crawled past.

I stopped for lots of sugary drinks, people were so beautifully curious about what the hell I was doing, they’d give me free drinks, or press homemade banana leaf rice sweets in my hand as I left their little shady spot. One guy even helped me push my bike up a hill. They were the sweetest people, it made the whole ridiculously stupid exercise completely worthwhile.

Not that I’d do it again with a loaded bike though.

So after that four hour stint in gradient hell, I got down to the other side, and then had another 50km on a relatively flat road to get to my destination, but again, against a blustery headwind. And the road was potholed for the first half of that stint.

It was hot, and it was bloody tough.

And now I’m in Cilacap. I made it. I’ll give you a free sweet sugary bun in plastic packaging if you’ve heard of this city before.

I saw a lot of these stunning mosques today, through my sweat covered sunnies.

Strange shaped hills, formed by volcanic activity

Ibu suggesting I hitchhike instead

The view from the very last hill. You have no idea how happy I was to finally make it to here. I pretended my tears of relief were just more sweat.

One of countless rivers I’ve crossed in the last few days, draining rainy season waters from the mountains to the sea.

The fishing fleet

Mosque minaret top shop

It takes a lot of rice to feed 275 million people

Smaller, but just as stunning as many European churches. At least on the outside.

My hotel shower mat

And the lobby

Dinner time warung wall decoration. I love the seagull’s?? eyes

Ominous Cilacap sunset clouds

The latest women’s special occasion fashion

And girls. Rather long train I must say

Come on guys, I think the skin’s the wrong colour, considering there’s no bule within hundreds of miles of here. Well, that may not be true, but I haven’t seen one for the last 4 days. Not one.

Nor have I spoken a word of English in all that time either. It’s been great for my Indonesian.

Sidareja

So today I left Cilacap, and headed for the hills again. There’s major wetlands and vast river mouths and floodplains along the coast west from Cilacap, and no road access whatsoever.

So it was a chance for me to feel gravity again.

But it was like a walk in the park compared to yesterday’s trauma.

The hills weren’t huge, the road was in much better nick, and it was full of ups and downs with reasonable gradients.

And I passed through the most beautiful forest in the middle of the day, shading me from the hot sun. It was delicious.

Then it flattened out, and, as I approached this large-ish town, the main road became lined with businesses, food stalls, shops, motorbike repair garages, homes, everything. It went on and on, which seems to be the way here.

Whenever you get within 10 or even 15 kilometres from a more major hub, even if the centre of the hub isn’t huge, the approach roads become packed with development. It appears to me that, because of the rice paddies/farmland etc, building can’t happen radially from many of the smaller town centres, so they just build along the main approach roads. It’s not a good look.

I dream of places like Germany, or somewhere, where the villages and towns have their strict boundaries, and there’s clear green separation between them. Here it’s super ad hoc.

But it’s not just like that here of course, but in most places in the world.

Breakfast stop.

She whipped up a storm

See the little chidling?

Beautiful forest. I especially really love the power line.

Resting place for life contemplation. Or for vacantly guzzling shitloads of water.

It’s a sign. I’ve been sort of heading for Pangandaran for days now, and now I know I’m getting close.

Another architectural wonder

Roadside wedding

And associated paraphernalia

The Leaning Tower of Bantarsari

The open door is my hotel room, on the first floor of this unfinished hotel, where I’m sitting right now, writing this. I really hope I don’t sleepwalk outside tonight and turn right.

The hotel was dodgy, my first experience like this in Indonesia. I'd booked a room online, but when I arrived they told me they were full. There were no other accomodation options in the small town, and they knew it.

Eventually they said they could find a room for me, but I'd have to pay basically double the booking price. Cheeky buggers. I mean the original price for the room was, crazily, about AUD7. The shonk def wasn't gonna break my budget, but it didn't feel very nice.

I had a great conversation with these two hipsters in town. The girl told me she’s been to Pangandaran loads of times with her boyfriend (not the guy in the photo), and there’s lots of bule there. She even showed me a cute video of her on the beach, being all model-ly.

The guy made me a martabak, which is that massive fat pancake thingy you can see, made of rice flour, and topped with the most delicious and sweet (but not too sweet) toppings available to woman. You can get a savoury version too, but I haven’t been through all the sweet flavours yet.

Once it’s finished he cuts it in half, and puts one side on top of the other, slices it, and boxes it up. By the time I finally sat down to eat it, I had to change my T-shirt due to dribble.

What It’s Like

Someone from Oz asked me the other day what it’s actually like cycling in this country, out on the open road, and travelling the way I do. And what I think about on all those long journeys, and whether I find myself reflecting on life etc as I pedal along.

Well, the thing is, yeah I do, but only sometimes. Because there’s normally so much going on out there, there’s so much to see, there’s so many things that catch my attention, and I’ve gotta keep my wits about me pretty much all the time on most of these roads.

Sometimes what I see sparks new thoughts about how we live as humans, what we value, how diverse our cultures are, how unequal the world is, how incredible and varied the natural world is.

What strikes me is that the more I travel, the more alike people become. People are the same the world over. Sure, there’s different languages, religions, lifestyles, yeah all of that. But what binds us is deeper, and that’s how we connect with each other.

This morning I was chatting to a few people who’d gathered at a roadside stall to gaze and maybe even chat with the bule (me). I’d already had quite a chat with the woman who cooked for me, who was so nice, before the others turned up. I told her what I was up to on this trip, about my life back in Oz etc. She did the same.

Eventually I said to the group that I’ve been blown away by the friendliness and niceness of the Indonesian people I’d met on my trip so far. So many times people have helped me, and gone out of their way to do extra things for me. I was really sincere in my gratitude for that.

After I finished saying all that the woman started crying.

And for me, that’s it in a nutshell.

Even though these connections are so brief sometimes, they’re really beautiful. That woman and I shared an understanding about life and work and family that we both felt and wanted to acknowledge.

We’re not different at all, deep inside.

Just Do It

If you’re contemplating riding a bike in another country, or even cycle touring in Oz for that matter, my strong advice to you is to just do it.

It’s a beautiful free and healthy way to travel, and you’d be surprised at how easy it is (excluding too-steep hills).

Obviously the leg muscles need to adjust, and you need to learn how to pack a bike and keep it upright.

But that doesn’t take long.

You can start your trip completely unfit, take it easy at the beginning, build it up, and you’ll be totally cycle fit within a few weeks.

And it’s so cheap. At least in places like this.

If you wanna do a longer solo trip in some exotic location there’s a couple of things that  really help.

Firstly, it helps if you love spending time alone.

There’s been periods of a few days at a time on this trip where I haven’t seen or met any Westerners at all, and I’m totally great with that. So basically all of my daily conversations are with locals, strangers, in broken Indonesian.

Of course, there’s WhatsApp. I’ve been chatting online with people in English, and that makes a difference.

But I’m physically alone, riding alone, eating alone (well, there’s sometimes curious visitors), spending nights in my guest house rooms alone.

But I’m far from lonely.

And if I want Westerner company I just go where they go and stay in the travellers’ guest houses.

Secondly, you need to be pretty flexible, to happily accept whatever conditions you find yourself in. Standards vary considerably in places like this, and the nice rooms sometimes don’t exist at all in the place you end up.

The thing about cycling is that you can only go so far in one day, so you might end up in between places that have established accommodation or food places.

But generally speaking, the accommodation has been pretty comfortable almost everywhere for me on this trip. Bali’s an exception, because the accommodation there was exceptional. I’ve stayed in a few dodgy rooms here in Java, but I could count them on one hand.

You gotta be flexible about the weather, and be ok with the heat, and with the cold. I grew up in Adelaide, so I don’t mind hot weather. I’m also used to humidity from long periods of travel, and from all those years of living in the subtropics. I haven’t cycle toured in really cold places, but I have camped and travelled in those places. You just have to have good gear.

Thirdly, it really helps if you’re not too fearful, or at least, if you can push through some of that fear. That then allows you to choose travel options that may be completely unknown, or full of uncertainties, or potential challenges that you’re not exactly sure how to overcome. When you take those journeys you realise that, oh actually, yeah, I can do that, and then next time you’re more relaxed about taking unknown or more adventurous options.

For me, almost everything ends up being easier than I first imagined.

But if it’s too hard, I just try to stay flexible, and change my plans.

For example, I sorta had a rough plan to cycle from the east coast of Java to Yogya, but the visa thing made that impossible, because I was too busy enjoying myself in Bali, and stayed longer than I thought. So here I am cycling in West Java instead, to places I’ve never heard of, researched, or even seen one measly photograph of.

And of course it’s amazing.

Well doggone!

Where are all the dogs in Java? I mean, I’m not complaining, I’m just really wondering.

In Bali, stray dogs are everywhere. There’s an estimated 500,000 of them. It’s not fun to cycle (or walk) really late at night, because the whole place becomes dog territory. It’s alright if you’re on a motorbike (scooter) of course, you can get away from them. On a bicycle you can too, sometimes, but not if you’re going up a hill. I was almost bitten a couple of times, it’s not fun being chased by those worked-up drooling rabid nasty guys.

But in Java they just don’t seem to exist. I’ve literally only seen a few so far. I was already pretty amazed by their absence in Probolinggo, but it was the same in Yogya and Solo, and pretty much everywhere I’ve been since. No dogs.

The reasons are mixed.

Firstly, dogs are haram in Islam, meaning they are regarded as forbidden, or ritually impure. In conservative Islam, it is belIeved by some that even the sight of a dog could nullify pure and pious thoughts and intentions.

Secondly, despite the fact that it is haram, Central Java is a big consumer of dog meat, and apparently Solo is the city with the highest dog consumption in the country. Maybe all the dogs get eaten here, before they can grow up to harass tourists like me, and make everyone impure.

One million dogs get eaten every year in the country. I never would’ve known. There’s a soup called sengsu here, it’s basically dog meat soup, and it’s pretty popular apparently.

Years ago when cycling in Laos I had a bowl of soup at a little roadside stall in a tiny village. It wasn’t great, but there was nothing else to eat. There were bits of chewy grey meat in there, which I tried, they tasted pretty bad, so bad that I didn’t eat most of them. When I asked the old lady what was in the soup, she pointed at a stray dog.

Nice one.

To Pangandaran

Well, I made it!

After a physically tough five days of cycling, I’ve finally arrived here in Pangandaran, on the south coast of West Java.

The beach!

My legs are pretty tired, they’ve def had a major workout. Today was flat for awhile, and then, of course, there were more hills to climb. It was a long slow upward ride, longer than I expected, but the gradient was doable, I didn’t have to get off my bike once. And the road was relatively smooth, I could really cruise and pick up speed on the downward runs. I love that.

Of course the road went through small villages again, forested hills, farmland and rice paddies, and then I finally made it to the coast.

Roadside drink stop. Note the bluebird eggs.

Can't get enough

Enthusiastic millworkers

It feels good.

I’ve had a siesta.

I’ve had 2 showers already, and am about to have my third.

I’m gonna completely chill for a few days, eat loads of great food and get some flesh on my bones for a change.

Ha, that’ll be the day.

Well, the eating loads bit is fine, but putting on weight? It just never seems to happen. No matter what I do.

Once when I was on holidays with Carmen and her parents in Hungary, her mum was really concerned about my skinniness, so they decided to put me on a mesten diet, which is the diet they feed to animals and birds in Germany to fatten them up before slaughter.

So they fed me everything you could imagine, loads of fatty greasy foods, yummy Hungarian langosz, a bread dripping with oil and garlic, cakes, chips, greasy rich vegetable dishes, you name it.

And guess what happened?

Nothing.

I put on zero weight. They weighed me. Not a gram.

Actually it’s not completely true that nothing happened. What actually happened was that I shat a lot more than usual.

So there ya go. I just can’t put on weight. It’s a fact.

I guess some of you may be insanely jealous of that, if you’re into that kinda thing. But I’m insanely unjealous of it.

The grass is always leaner, I guess.

The Unfamished Road

So what lies ahead?

I'm planning on hanging here in Pangandaran for a few days, and then heading northwest away from the coast.

Ahead lies Bandung, the fourth largest city in Indonesia.

And beyond that is Jakarta, that indescribably huge and chaotic polluted megalopolis of 34 million people.

If you include the urban areas that make it up, Jakarta is the largest city in Southeast Asia, and, after Tokyo, is the second largest city in the world.

Bet ya didn't know that.

Neither did I. ❤️