the last leg

The cost of our hotel room includes breakfast. 

They fry up the eggs and leave them on the table for the flies to investigate.

Even if I ate eggs, I would have to pass up these cold, fried, rubbery numbers. 

Our days of hauling gear onto the ferry in a stance again exorbitant porter fees are over.  For years we refused to pay the sharks and would negotiate the narrow gang plank with boxes, boards and packs, fighting against the crowd and getting duly frustrated in the process.  This time we swallowed the price and watched from the shade as our gear was loaded into the belly of the ferry. 

 

After a smooth hour crossing the Straits of Death we step onto the dock and start about haggling a price for our gear to be unloaded.  Each trip we swear we will travel light next time, but in hindsight  having ten kilos of dates, five kilos of rolled oats and the luxury of lentils is worth the portage.  Two more hours and we are home.  What will be awaiting us after the wettest season in years?

paris of the east

The capital of East Nusa Tengarra is not even remotely like Paris, unless perhaps you are on acid and imagining Europe during the bombing raids.  It is a noisy, grotty, weathered city, and unavoidable on our journey home.  The irony of the enforced overnight stay is that it goes a way toward keeping our island home that little bit further from the world of Bintang singlets.

The taxi driver is not impressed with the extra stop at cargo to pick up our blinds, but another folded blue note lifts his spirits.  Waiting for the Garuda flight to arrive, we have a lunch of rice, green beans and iced tea.  In four hours I've gone from a soy latte and sourdough toast at Sea Circus, to a warung in a tin shed surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Mine is nothing less than a life of contrasts.

There is the odd expat male that likes the city, and I'll be frank here, it does have cheap women, cold beer and fresh seafood.  I dread arriving and anticipate leaving, spending most of the time in a slightly detached state of being, trying not to analyze too much, look too closely, or dream of Paris.  Cracked tiled walls, sheetless beds with rugs that have a questionable washing history, and mustard polyester curtains do little for a fragile female libido, and in ten years, the hit rate of success in a Kupang hotel is zero.  

The city's main redeeming feature and a must-do on every visit, is dinner at the night markets.  They are the heart any south-east Asian experience, where you pull up a plastic stool under a cold fluorescent light and devour a plate of gado-gado, or grilled tempeh with rice and firey chilli for less than $1.

The shopping strip hits fever pitch on sundown, and music thumps from the bemos as they lap the streets competing for coolest wagon on the beat. This is a mostly Christian city, and it is ironic that it is the Muslim women peddling underwear on the footpath. While Tom fancied the Superman jocks, we passed by in search of a battery charger and part for the blender.

goat hotel

I don't remember signing a lease with every goat in the village to take up residence in our house over the wet season.  While we love our four legged compost tumblers, I would rather they hadn't been able to spend months in the living room, depositing their excrement on the whitewashed furniture.  

The initial relief of arriving home was quickly replaced by an overwhelming desire to get the bulldozer in and start again. The rate of decay over a wet season is astounding, and having readjusted to the clean, well sealed houses of Australia, our humble shack was more rustic, rough and simple that we had remembered.

The parts of the tank stand that weren't replaced last year are riddled with white ants, animals had chewed through the power line from the generator and the water pump was seized.  Hinges had rusted off and wooden doors were swollen shut from moisture.  In the first 24 hours of shock we sketched multiple plans that involved knocking down the back half and building a separate kitchen and bathroom pod.  We couldn't agree on a design, and with the bags unpacked, the water and power reconnected, and a swim and a sleep restoring our sanity, everything seemed quite ok.  We were amazed that the lights all worked, the gas cooker lit first try and the fridge rumbled into life despite being left open to the elements. 

I will be forever grateful to our friend Chi for cleaning the house before we arrived.  I left her a list on our departure, but was not attached to it actually occurring. Had I been faced with the state of the house  as she found it, I would have most likely cried and booked myself into the hotel for a week. She said she didn't know where to start : should I shovel the shit out of the lounge room or cut a pathway clear through the vines to find the toilet?

The vine that was growing an inch a day in November, had four months of rain and free range, and has grown over the roof, through the roof and down to the floor.  Part Angkor Wat, part bat cave.  It exudes a sticky sap when cut, which turns black and stains.  Chi had cut the tendrils to head high so they looked like thin stalactites; certainly a literal interpretation of bringing nature inside.  As unique as it was, I swung from the rafters and relived my gymnastic youth to cut them free.  I'm slowly pruning the back yard with scissors, threatening the endangered species that could be lurking in the jungle.

Even paradise has cockroaches, and I can say with conviction that cleaning up their shit is not one of my favourite Sunday morning activities. My husband calls me his princess and my name is derived from the Hebrew word for princess, but I think someone is bluffing, because I am positive Kate and Mary do not have to wipe up gecko poo or scrub mold off the toilet floor. The shop sells an industrial strength blue cream cleanser that contains ingredients probably illegal in Australia, and any surface is eligible. Black mold in white silky underwear is not a language of love. 

bali transit

For most visitors, Bali is the destination they have been counting down for; annual leave, school holidays, honeymoon, girls pamper trip or post-season footy debauchery.  We are in the unusual situation were Bali is a transit zone or a weekender.  Like a trip to the city from down south, when lounging in cafes and browsing through boutiques melds with food shopping and errands in the light industrial area.  We are neither tourist nor expat, although we wander in both shoes. 

We had three nights in Bali enroute to our end of the archipelago. First on our list was to hire a scooter and head straight to Bintang supermarket for a banana binge.  Floods and cyclones have pushed bananas in Australia to a luxury level and we were dearly missing our staple food.  The whole kilo was devoured before we left the carpark.

There was still room in the tummy for more tropical fruit and a soy latte at Grocer and Grind while planning our list for the day. (Note : G & G have a new branch on Jalan Uluwatu in Jimbaran, which is a welcome addition to this espresso starved area).

You might imagine my list to be populated with a massage, pedicure, bikini wax and hair treatment; in between high tea and a beach walk. I thought that as well, until the reality of picking up new bamboo blinds, shipping air cargo and getting fingerprinted at immigration bunted the spa activities aside.  However, we did both get to the haridresser; for Tom's pre-season hair cut and my damage control treatment.

"Oh dear madam, you're hair feels like sand."

The blinds are to replace those destroyed in the wet season storms, thanks to the failure of our assigned worker to close down the house.  The domestic air cargo is not on any tourist itineraries that I'm aware of, and so should it remain.  Unless Gen Y and younger would like to see what a typewriter looks like.  Look mum, no cords!

countdown to season 2011

The temperature has dropped below 28 degrees, the morning air is crisp and the sun is setting earlier every day. Wattle flowers perfume the air, fallen leaves are crunchy under foot and the stone fruit have been replaced by apples.  All of these indicators point to one thing - the time has come to pack up and return to the tropics. A few evenings in slippers is cuddly, however the thought of a few months is horrifying. Even when they are gorgeous red numbers knitted by my mumma.

We leave Australia at the end of the month and will have a few days in Bali on the way through to our island home to buy a few supplies and go out for a dinner that we can actually afford.  

Things are a bit rough in the Sugar Shack.  We asked a local builder to sand our living room floor and then close off the house with sheets of tin as protection against the wet season onslaught.  Yet the second we left the island we were out of mind; the work didn't get done and so the house was left open to the elements; four months of onshore winds, cyclones and sideways rain.  The bamboo blinds are totally shredded, resembling palm fronds dangling in the breeze, and the furniture we had left out so he could have clear access to the floor has taken on a new level of shabby chic.  The constant rain has fed the rampant vine in the backyard so it has grown over the roof and is dangling down the front of the house.  Perhaps we could plait them as replacement blinds? We will need to cut our way through to the back door and there are reported sightings of Sumatran tigers in the  undergrowth. The goats are no doubt planning a great invasion for the feast of the year.

The wind is yet to swing offshore consistently and it is still wet so we haven't missed much surf and weather wise.  I look forward to bringing you words and pictures from our village life through until the end of the year. Subscribe now so the posts go directly to your email and you don't miss a minute of the action.   I may come up with a new recipe for bok choi and Tom could find a secret spot.