haley+gabe

First of all, I am back with my best husband in the universe and that is extremely awesome.   Don’t plan on pulling that ridiculousness again anytime soon.  Second, we are living it up with our amazing friend Kumiko at her fat pad in Tokyo in the Shibuya district which is also awesome.  And thirdly, Japan is awesome.  (Yes, Gabe, that is three “awesomes” in as many sentences.)

ballin’

finally cold again

We both arrived late on Sunday night from opposite directions, exhausted but happy and ready to hit Tokyo hard…..and that plan backfired.  With my jetlag and not having slept the previous night, and with both of us having gone to bed at 2am after traveling for many, many hours to get here, our first full day basically got as far a dinner and a quick peek at the Harajuku girls on Cat Street.  But by Tuesday we were ready to rock.  Kumiko went off for a 48-hour work jaunt to Seoul, Korea, and we started pounding the pavement seeing everything there is to see in Tokyo.  This place makes Singapore look like it was built in the 17th century as far as futuristic goes.  Some observations after our first week here:

1. The Japanese clearly loathe inefficiency, unworkability, and mediocrity.  Their weapon of choice for the battle against these three arch enemies is staggering, and seemingly insurmountable, complexity.

so…just get on the ginza line and then transfer to the JR line and then maigo.

2.  As far as personal presentation, the Japanese almost universally do not “do” overweight (Sumo wrestlers aside, of course).  What they also don’t do is frumpy – unless it is an express, stylistic choice.  They are the most put together group of people I have ever seen.  Even in their running clothes they make the French look sloppy.  And lest you think that dude that just walked by just rolled out of bed and put the crumpled clothes from the floor on, I am willing to wager my hat, ass, and overcoat that the hair is a result of some extremely pricey hair products and not an insignificant amount of time in front of the mirror, and the outfit was put together carefully from a collection of pieces that have been selected from some of the trendiest and priciest boutiques in town.

artificial rainbow

now who’s the local?

cool wood bench in glass building

3.  There is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less English going on here than one might expect.  The least amount we have seen so far in over 6 months in Asia.  Even when confronted with no English menus and no English speakers in other places in Asia, we were always able to sort out a meal.  When confronted with the same circumstances here, however, we starved.  No ability to read Kanji = going to bed with no dinner.  The maps in all of the transportation stations are also extremely unuseful for the Kanji-illiterate.

the menu: I’ll take the sunagimo

4.   There is no better way to find out Obama won than sitting at a sushi bar in Japan downing delicious platters of sashimi and cracking up at the ridiculous animated pictures of Obama and Romney.  From this American’s perspective, the Japanese TV coverage took the most important day in American politics in four years and reduced it to a video game .  It was a super entertaining lunch.

“obama wins, look at his big ears haha”

5.  The Japanese people are way taller than I was expecting.  Completely un-relatedly, the cats here are HUGE.  Like seriously.  I would say they average twice the size of your average American housecat.

nya

6.  Going to a Yakitori dinner with Kumiko and letting her order for you in Japanese is highly recommended.  So much fun to hear her speak Japanese like a local and treat us to a truly authentic experience.

“oh my god, chicken gizzard’s the best”

7.  Tokyo territory covered so far includes the Meiji Shrine at dusk shrouded in fog; people-watching on Cat Street and Takeshita-Dori in Harajuku (NOT to be missed if you come to Tokyo); Asakusa, Ueno Park and around exploration; wandering the mazes of ancient houses, shops and hidden Shrine gardens in the Yanese neighborhood; boating down the river at sunset on the water bus gazing up at the buildings and marveling at how  the Japanese even keep the UNDERSIDE of all the bridges perfectly maintained and painted; fall colors in the Imperial Palace gardens including a nap in the perfect-temperatured sunshine of Japan in November; Electric City (Akihabara) geek-gawking; general mall wandering (and, for the first time in Asia, no A/C needed!); lots of weird food tasting.

monks in the mist

haley soaking up the sun at a shrine

8.  Everything is beautiful here.  It’s clean, manicured, well-designed, aesthetically pleasing in every way.

haley in the imperial palace gardens in the sun

itty bitty tokyo restaurant

supersized bonsai garden

fancy hotel hallway

causing trouble

Today we are taking it easy until Kumiko gets back from a half day of work before we get her all to ourselves until Monday night.  The three of us are heading off to Nikko tomorrow to get some outdoorsy time in (hiking and hot springs) and a little more traditional Japanese culture.  Then it’s back to Tokyo for one night before we say goodbye to Kumiko and head to Kyoto for the end of our Japan trip and the very last international stop on this 14-month epic journey.  We might be the luckiest people around.  Looking forward to seeing everybody very soon!

Love,

Haley and Gabe

Other notes:

As is her duty when joining us during our travels this year, expect a blog post from Kumiko very soon.  Just because she is technically “home” does not get her out of her obligations.

They have cat cafes here where you can drink coffee and hang out with cats, supposedly as a way to de-stress.  You have to use a handi-wipe to clean your hands before you are permitted to touch these (germ phobic?) cats.  They also have maid cafes here where you can get served by girls in over-the-top pre-adolescent maid costumes (we gave those a miss).

maids serving lunch for nerds

Tokyo is way less intense than I was expecting.

This is the first country on our entire trip where the drivers do not appear to have homicidal feelings towards pedestrians.  It is quite a breath of fresh air.

If you ask a Japanese person for directions, more often than not they will walk you there.  Even if that means leaving their jewelry store utterly unattended (!!!) for 5 minutes while doing so.

We know six words in Japanese:  Konnichiwa (Hello), Sayonara (Goodbye), Arigato (Thank You), Hai (Yes), Ii-e (No), and Kumiko (Kumiko).  As I mentioned, we also don’t read Kanji.  This makes grocery shopping a challenge.  “Hai” is my favorite Japanese word.

When anyone enters or leaves a restaurant, all the chefs and wait staff yell a loud enthusiastic welcome or goodbye/thank you.  It is so fun.  You feel like you are their favorite person ever and they didn’t even know it until you just happened to walk into their restaurant.

Kumiko’s apartment is not typically Japanese (at all).  She has a king-sized bed (which she says is “amazeballs” – and yes, she still says “amazeballs”) which we are all sharing extremely comfortably.  Not exactly the visitor experience she was probably expecting but whatev’.  And the bed has a really hard mattress, which IS typically Japanese.

Gabe had to teach the Japanese chick how to use her rice maker.

When we got here…

this dock is great, because the water is deep at the end and you can jump off. plus there is shade and turtles everywhere.

we were really disappointed.  Can’t say we didn’t warn you about how spoiled we are.  We weren’t kidding.  The disappointment lasted about 24 hours – we even considered just doing a day of diving and then leaving.  Turns out Pulau Derawan IS all that, and worth the three days and cost to get here….except for some trash and some seriously lacking respect for the environment which is what bothered us the most when we first arrived.  After we got over ourselves and I stopped wishing the entire human race (myself included) extinct, we stayed longer than planned and had an amazing time.  In fact, we were quite out of money and might have stayed longer than the 9 nights we stayed if the closest ATM wasn’t a full day’s travel away and our emergency stash of American dollars didn’t have too many creases for the one guy on the whole island we could find willing to give us a horrible rate to exchange it for Rupiah.

no ATMs on Main St. Derawan, just the Pelangi crew.

guilty.

roof jumping at Pelangi on a nice day

look at that water. and then jump into it.

everybody now

As you can see from the photos, the water here is ridiculous, the weather has been virtually perfect, and the diving has been some of our best (more on that shortly).  We have been lucky enough to share much of our stay with some exceptionally lovely people – the nicest family in the universe, a crew of 6 from Australia (Neil, Yvette, Will (12), Charlie (10), Chessie (8), and Gerogie (6)), and dive master Debbie and her sweet friend Alex from Switzerland.  They really have enhanced our time here sharing card games, sand-castle building, snorkeling, karaoke-ing, sandbar-walking, swimming, jetty-jumping/flipping competitions, and even firecracker booby trapping (obviously Gabe hasn’t changed that much this year).

Coolest family on Derawan

As far as wildlife, we have been overwhelmed.  Huge turtles swim everywhere you look – off our bungalow deck, off the boat, in the shallows of the islands – you can hardly go 3 minutes without seeing a turtlehead or four pop up.  And, while we thought it would be hard to compete with the Perhentian whale shark, we found some stiff competition on Kakaban and Sangalaki Islands, just an hour’s boat ride from Derawan.  We spent our second day here on a trip out to both islands where we did a “wall dive” at a really cool drop-off off the coat of Kakaban Island. We saw turtles and beautiful coral and lots of fish, and diving alongside the wall was so cool.  I felt like I was flying.  The middle of Kakaban Island happens to also have a gigantic lake in the middle of it filled with millions (literally – we talked it over and we both agree that’s no exaggeration) of jellyfish.  And because this particular group of jellyfish have had no predators for however many thousands of years, they either never had or have lost their stingers.  So you can snorkel to your heart’s content surrounded by jellyfish….and get no stings.  So that was awesome.

see all the other ones behind this one?

180 degrees of perfection from Kakaban island

us on kakaban dock after dive and jellyfish and before mantas

Then we went to Sangalaki Island to test our luck diving at Manta Point for Giant Mantas. Luck was seriously on our side. During our dive we saw 6 mantas swimming through the deep, all about 3 or so meters across. So amazing to watch them fly slowly by with their huge mouths open filtering the water for plankton. We were awestruck, amazed, dumbfounded – you name it. It was so good that we went back again and spent another whole day at Sangalaki. The island is picturesque and we laid on the beach, ate lunch, and walked the perimeter of the entire island. The sand was cratered by hundreds of old turtle nests and practically the only “trash” to be found was the turtle shells from all the hatchlings. AND, we got lucky again and saw even more Mantas on our dives. But the absolute best was snorkeling with them on the surface. There were at least a dozen in the morning, and while I was diving in the afternoon, Gabe saw probably another 2 dozen more. We weren’t sure but it seemed like they were playing with us – they would swim toward us with their mouths wide open and then at the last moment turn hard and swim the other way only to swing back around 15 seconds later and do the same thing. They would swim around you, under you, over you. It was such a thrill, we could have stayed all day. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Sangalaki island as seen from Manta Point..AKA paradise.

small giant manta.. maybe 4 ft across

Other highlights have been snorkeling with the turtles in front of our hotel, hanging on and jumping off the various jetties on the island, and “land” snorkeling from above the water. It’s also been fun walking down the “main” road saying hello to the really friendly locals (there is a group of 10 or so year old girls who have a total crush on Gabe), eating lots of Gado Gado and tempeh, and general gazing with our jaws dropped at the beautiful water and scenery. And, there is a serious population of cats on Derawan which of course means….KITTENS.

haley enjoying herself on the sandbar on a less sunny day

flying turtle

haley torturing

less torture, more patting

haley fitting in

perfect form

going for distance

one of the better sunsets from our hotel deck

talking to turtles from our balcony

Last night as we were gathering our stuff, we couldn’t find Gabe’s sunglasses anywhere – the pair he bought only 2 weeks ago to replace the pair he left on the dive boat in Perhentian.  We looked all over the place and they had just basically disappeared even though we had not left the deck the whole afternoon.  We went back through our pictures from the day to see if we could figure out when they went missing but no luck.  Gabe got up early today before our boat out to snorkel through the water out front to see if he had jumped in with them on (which he said he would “never” have done).  Still no luck.  About 20 minutes before our boat was due to pick us up we were exchanging pictures with the Aussie family and Gabe found photographic evidence in their shots that he did in fact jump in the water with them on – and exactly where.  Back out with the mask he went and barely 2 minutes later he came back up with a huge grin on his face and glasses in hand.  It was a sweet way to end a great 9 days.

evidence

further evidence

and they’re off

and on their way down to the sandy bottom

winning!

We left Derawan at 8am this morning with only a general direction – Sumatra – in mind as we were not able to look at flights or destinations on the internet.  After 15 minutes browsing flights (and not even checking email or facebook – can you even imagine the will power?!) at an internet café, we bolted to the “airport” in Berau where we caught an extremely shady looking airplane to Balikpapan.  That is where we are now.  From here we fly to Jakarta and figure out what we want to do on Sumatra for the next week before we head to Earl and Sam’s place on Asu.  We might be sleeping in the Jakarta airport tonight.

Thanks Derawan, for an epic stay.  We’ll respond to all of your emails and FB messages soon.

Love,

Haley and Gabe

p.s. most of this blog was written on our last day on Derawan and finished during our travels to Jakarta

cash only? really?

very secure

just in case we needed in-flight repairs?

Other notes:

You can walk the entire perimeter of Derawan in about 30 minutes.  But some people still have motorbikes.  Really a bicycle is hardly even justifiable.

No internet here. None.  Longest connectivity drought on our whole trip.  Hope nothing important happened while we were here.

Some guy who spoke no English found out we were from America and said ‘Oh, the international terrorists’.  Nice.  We were wondering whether the anti-Islam film was going to cause problems for us in Indonesia but as there were no warnings from the U.S. Embassy at the time we were booking our tickets, we came anyway.  We thought there’d be not much knowledge of it, if any, on Derawan given the lack of internet but we were wrong.  From now on we’re Canadian.

Many people here call Gabe ‘ewe com su pai!’ And we still have not figured out what it means despite asking about five people. Maybe a combination of stupid, handsome, and wild man/savage.

Indonesians really like to have their picture taken with us.

Gabe typed up a guide on how to get from Kota Kinabalu to here that took 45 minutes.

Local girls don’t like Justin Bieber, he’s ‘ayam’ (‘chicken’); but they do like lady gaga, she’s ‘bagus’ (‘good’).

Gabe got his flip-flop fixed here for $1.50. Good thing as there is not exactly a mall here.

I may or may not have dropped the (new) camera. On concrete. Again. There are some battle wounds but it is basically still working really well.

Drivers in Indonesian Borneo like to hang all sorts of decorations and stuffed animals in their windshields to block their view of the road as much as possible. And they avoid having seatbelts whenever possible. They also drive like maniacs.

It took us precisely 57 hours to get here from Kuching. The first day of the route was a taxi, a plane, and then two local buses, all in order to spend the better part of a day of back and forth at the Indonesian consulate in Kota Kinabalu (where upon entry you would have been certain you would not be able to speak to a person in this lifetime, much less get any sort of visa – but we it was actually cake to get around the mayhem and we had visas 5 hours (and $120) later). Then we took another local bus, to an overnight bus, to a minivan, to another flight, to another taxi, to a boat, to a car-share (a harrowing 3.5 hour roller-coaster through the jungle with a shared seatbelt) to a small city called Berau where we had to spend the night. That was followed by another (2.5 hour and harrowing) car-share (no seatbelts, but plenty of windshield blocking kitsch) to a speedboat that finally dropped us on the dock of our hotel on Derawan. It was worth it.

cute kids make long hot boat rides much better

There are no mosquitos on this island. Good thing we’re taking this malaria medicine.