Monday, November 17, 2014

How Frodo Made me a Local Tourist



This is how Frodo Baggins and company taught me to be a tourist.


As you may have surmised from last entry, I’m in New Zealand.  Most recently Wellington. I can’t imagine how it’s been the last 15 years, but the whole of the country is Tolkien mad.  They really have taken the whole “middle earth” thing to the extreme.  

The Wellington airport has a life size, animatronic Smaug head greeting you at the ticket counter. There is a vastly larger-than-life Golum in the departure lounge.  I mean it.  His head must be 25 feet across.   He’s there all googly eye scooping at the 15 foot trout swimming across the ceiling.  


There were two giant eagles from the film also suspended from the ceiling maybe bringing messages of your flight delay from Gandalf himself.  Recently one of them fell, so now there’s just a hole.   You get the idea.  They are middle earth mad.  


S.A.M used to life in Wellington some 16 odd years ago.  We were poor back then, but we still managed to see most of the country and more than many kiwis have seen. We met countless people who’d never been to the South Island, though you could see it from their front porch.  We saw the all the giant fruit sculptures, the giant sheep and giant trout that make this country great.   


I had thought we had seen most of the big local sites in Wellington, too until I took the recent Lord of the Rings location tour.


A friend and I got our inner geek on by signing up for a tour by www.FlatEarth.Co.Nz.  If you get a chance I highly recommend.  It was just he and I so it was our private tour.  We had Emma, who’d been giving tours for a couple of years.  


She displayed a bit of derisive amusement when I asked her if she’d please narrate the entire tour in elvish.  30 minutes into the tour, though, she admitted that she spoke Orc and actually was an Orc extra in one of the films.  Yeah.  They’re that kind of people.  


Anyway.  This is what I learned.  


I learned that the road to Brickleberry Ferry scene was shot just steps from downtown Wellington.  I learned that several of the river scenes were shot just minutes from our former home. Same thing for the scenes from Helm’s deep and Minas Tirith.  They were shot in a nearby quarry.  The film company actually paid the quarry what they would make in a year and they reserved the whole place for a year.


Sauroman’s garden and wood were also shot near by.  Rivendell and Elron's castle was just 45 minutes from my home.  Nearly all the shots took place in public parks and hiking trails.  And the parks were quite nice and I had no idea they were there. Hikes over rivers with swing bridges and native plants and trees and birds. I guess I sort of knew, but I never set foot in any of them and I could have.  I felt like I missed so much.




I’m sure I missed many such sites back home.  There are a number of local parks that I drove by every day, but never set foot in and I can’t help but think of what I’ve missed, opting to sit at home and watch TV instead.


So, it was this week that I decided to start living like a tourist when I’m staying close to home.


I’m going to try and find all the hidden walks and places to see in Jakarta.  I know I said there was no place to walk, but there must be some hidden away and magical spots to see even if it is in a fancy mall restroom.  I know the 4th floor Pacific Place Mall men’s room is particularly cool. It’s like you’re surfing inside a wave while you relieve yourself.  There must be more places like that at the very least.    


After all, we’ve got less than two years to see as much as we can.




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Also here are some interesting things that I’ve learned that I thought I’d pass on here. I don’t have any other place to put these factoids.


I learned that if you order a shot double shot of liquor, you will get less than a single inthe UK or the US.  That is just the way it is.  The got glasses here are smaller.  Beer glasses, though seem bigger to me.


I also learned that if you’re flying through the Singapore Airport, you’re not allowed to sleep in the terminal, because they have a hotel connected to the airport and you’re supposed to sleep there.  The police can be quite strict about this and will roam the terminal late at night and roust people who are sleeping.


If people are gruff or belligerent, as some people can be when you wake them after a 30 hour flight from somewhere, the police will consider this rude and inappropriate and will take them to the local psychiatric hospital claiming the person is behaving irrationally.  This is apparently not an infrequent occurrence.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Homecoming

What is that smell?  Could it be fresh air?  This week I’m in Wellington, New Zealand.  Returning here after an 11 year absence.  Despite the fact that NZ and Indonesia are in the same quadrant of the globe, today’s trip proves just how remote this country is.  15 hours from Jakarta to Wellington and that is without any real delays.  Just enough time for a coffee break and a phone call in between flights.  

A quick walk-about after arrival reveals a cleaner city than 11 years ago.  A lot less litter.  Electric Prius taxis are more available.  Natural gas buses, too. In general, just a sparklier place.  Lots of new restaurants and refurbished buildings around, just in the small area I saw late this afternoon.  

One great addition I saw was the adding of a motor home park right in downtown Wellington.  This is a great disadvantage to RV travel, that you can’t really park your mobile home in a city and get anywhere.  At least in the US.  Here, they’ve carved out a parking lot right by the dock, the buses and the train station.  They have power connections and a toilet/shower set up. No trees or picnic area, but definitely a place to spend the night. Mind you, NZ RVs are much smaller than those in the US.  More the size of a van, but the lot could probably fit 20 or 30 vehicles.  I think it’s an awesome idea.

Also, passed, curious though it may be, a build-your-own-sex-aide store. What? Was this Build-A-Bear gone bad?  I was confused and thought myself addled by jet-lag. I googled it and sure enough, that is exactly what it is.  A store where you can customize your sexual devices. Which got me wondering several things. What's the actual demand for this in a country of 4 million? How does one test one's designs? How does the conversation even begin?

Pimply faced salesperson/Tech:  (Hastily closing laptop) “Can I help you?”

Customer: “Um, yeah. I’ve got this, um, itch that I just can’t scratch.”

P.F.S.T.: Smiles “Don’t we all?”

Customer:  “Yeah, well, I’ve got some ideas that I’ve sketched out on this napkin.  Can you help me out?”

P.F.S.T.:  “Let’s see what we can come up with.”  (Turns on 3-D printer, grabs a 9V battery, #8 fencing wire and opens drawer full of Radio Shack motors)

Ah, Wellington, it’s good to be back in your freshening air, your streets that roll up at exactly 5:30, your lack of traffic, your population that would fit in a Jakarta city block, your crazy ingenuity. I’ve missed you.

Monday, November 10, 2014

The Temples

Took a brief weekend trip to the Jogjakarta and nearby Borobudur.  This area is on the south east of the island of Java.  


Remember when you were growing up and the Scooby Doo cartoons and others had the main characters wandering through the forest and they’d come upon a lost temple?  This has to be where that theme entered our collective conscience, for the place is littered with beautiful piles of rock that back in the early 19th century, people were tripping over. 


This area was a hot bed for Hinduism and Buddhism and there was competition for followers.  The competition, though was healthy.  Instead of forcing others to comply, they had what seems to be a temple building contest.   About 1200 years ago both branches started and built temples.  The Buddhists build Borobudur, the Hindus, Prabanam temple.


Both are wildly ornate and grandiose displays of stone laying and stone carving.  Borobudur rises 10 stories from the top of a hill.  A full ten levels, with hundreds of friezes depicting the life and times of their man, Siddhartha. At the base of the temple are a bunch of friezes about human condition.  They built that part and decorated it, then they buried it.   There are hundreds of Buddha statues and dozens of bell-shaped stupas.  2,000,000 hand cut stones.  It must have been amazing to see. The detail of the panels. The consistency of each buddha.  The walkway is an intricate random tetris-like pattern designed to be as difficult as possible to lay out.


Back before there were frequent flier miles and economy class seating, pilgrims came from China and India to walk and meditate around these temples, stopping at a few other temples along the way. 


Prabanam temple, too, is a massive complex of temples large and small. Each temple housing a
Hindu god or goddess.  What is lacks in imposing height and a hill it makes up for in sheer size. 12 hectares of temples, most of which have not been excavated.


For many years, these temples were under construction, then for 150 years or so, they kept them operating.  Pilgrims came, pilgrims went. Then there was a volcanic eruption and then the Muslims came in and forced out the other relgions and so the temples fell into a state of disrepair and were swallowed up by the jungle.


The British and the Dutch came by in the early 1800’s and like those Scooby Doo kids, “discovered” these temples lying under ash and trees and vines. Rather funny that word, “discovered.”  The locals knew full well there was something there.  They were using the stones as foundations for their houses.  At any rate, discovered they were,  and the process of restorations began and continue to this day. This despite further volcanos and other religions trying to blow up the temples and the difficulties with corruption that siphon off the money for restoration.


Today, they are UNESCO world heritage sites, which means that millions of tourists bus in to see them and thousands of hawkers try and sell them little replicas and t-shirts and glassware etc.  All the sites have a gauntlet at the exit many times worse than any museum gift shop.  Any interest shown toward some shiny bauble is seen as a sign of weakness and the haggling begins with the vendor following you ¼ mile back to your hotel.  How many times can I say no?  How many t-shirts are you going to give me for $8.00?  


We got there before dawn trying to see the sunrise. But, the clouds and mist kept it hidden. But, we were fortunate enough to miss the crowds and most of the hawkers, so it was worth the extra admit fee.

And sitting there in the dawn had me wondering how the world would turn out if if we didn’t proselytize, didn’t convert, didn’t kill in the name of our god.  Wondering what would happen if we channeled our resources toward a massive design and build contest  To each religion’s glory as they saw fit.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Second Thoughts on Papua New Guinea

I was thinking about my last post from PNG and the crime and the violence that was reported and all the feeling of being cooped up inside.

On my way out of town, I caught a ride with a driver from the Highlands.  I think he heard my frustration when he asked what I thought about Port Moresby and I told him I thought the Crowne Plaza was a nice.  

He started pointing out sights on our way to the airport.  The seaport that was in the process of being moved down the beach a ways to make room for some waterfront development.  A new stadium being built for the South Pacific games coming next year.  He mentioned that there is actually an economic boom going on in PNG right now.  Lots a lots of people coming in and scooping up the resources and land, etc.  So, some people are getting pretty rich, but thus far it’s not really trickled down.  

My driver was from the Eastern Highlands and confirmed there aren’t any roads.  He said that most of the education opportunities are for people on the coast.  The people of the hills are at an educational disadvantage.  He said the ground and climate in the hills is perfect for growing things and there is a surplus of fruits and vegetables.  But, with no roads, products really can’t get down to where most of the people are, so it rots up there.  

It got me thinking that may there is such a grab for pigs and women, because that is all there is.  I wonder if the highland people would be so angry if they could just sell their broccoli?  I wonder if the coastal people would be less angry if they ate more vegetables?  I wonder if everyone would be more content if they realized some of the benefits from their resource rich country.

At the airport, I met some lovely shopkeepers who didn’t hack at me with knives or rob me.  They were inquisitive and helpful and happy to sell me an overpriced Coca-Cola.  When I go back I’m going back with an open mind.