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Bulletin - 19 February 2002 |
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The pictures for this bulletin
did not arrive with the text. We hope to be able to add them later when we receive them.- Ed |
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| Indonesia: After leaving Ashmore Reef, our last port of call in Australia, we were very lucky and had enough to wind to sail, gently, all the way to Bali, except for the last few hours. We arrived off the neighbouring island of Lombok just as darkness fell, and with the charts stating that any or all of the navigation lights and markers could be missing in the entrance to Benoa harbour, it was clearly wise to wait till dawn. The current runs very strongly – and mostly southerly - through the Lombok Strait which separates the two islands, and we had decided to cross it at 90 degrees to minimise the effect of the curent. We did this in the early evening and then sheltered from the worst of it behind a small island for the rest of the night. The full moon obscured the stars, but the low lights of planes taking off from the airport caused one or two moments of anxiety, as they appeared to be fast moving boats! As you will know, Indonesia is a huge country, made up of thousands of islands and many differing peoples – 200 million in total. We had decided to make straight for Bali and then head on for Singapore. Bali, unlike the rest of Indonesia, is not predominantly Islamic, and has its own hybrid variety of Hinduism, which is very apparent everywhere you go. We spent a few days in the rather basic marina in Benoa, re-victualling and getting the boat ready to move on. On our first day, which was a religious festival and a holiday, as we made our way to the nearest ATM, we noticed large numbers of formally dressed people clutching baskets riding around on motor scooters. Our taxi driver explained that they were going to the temple to celebrate Kuningan, one of the main festivals of the Balinese year. He suggested that we should go along later in the evening, that we would be welcome, so we did. This time our taxi driver was less clued up and we drove round and round through thousands of parked cars, past hordes of people on scooters and walking, all carrying baskets and trays, as we tried to find the entrance to the temple, which is on an island, in the dark. The crowds were not only good humoured, they were very calm and placid, and when we finally found the entrance we followed them into the temple, where people were leaving their offerings, some stopping to pray, and apparently coming away again. It was a curious atmosphere – so many people, but remarkably quiet and totally controlled – no jostling or raised voices anywhere, just low, murmured prayers being said in the temple itself. We noticed as we walked around both the marina and the town that everywhere were little trays made from pieces of banana leaf, generally containing some rice and flowers, and almost always on the ground near the entrance to buildings – living dangerously! These small offerings, as with the larger ones we saw going to the temple, are made to appease the spirits and the gods and thus bring prosperity and health to the family or business and are replenished at least every morning. Most houses and businesses had a shrine on the premises, decorated with bright yellow silk umbrellas and often draped with cloth. Even huge statues alongside main roads had their draping of cloth. Bali to us (admittedly very spoilt after the Pacific) was not quite the exotic island of its reputation, having seen many years of concentrated development, especially in the south. However, the hinterland was beautiful and interesting, as we found when we hired a car and spent several days in the northern half of the island. Here entire villages were lined with bamboo poles decorated with curls, flowers and other shapes made from bamboo, and the houses were difficult to tell from the temples, until we realised that the people live in walled communities with many shrines apparent alongside the houses. We saw our first rice paddies as we tried to take a cross country route to the “artistic centre” of Bali at Ubud. We became hopelessly lost as the terrain is quite mountainous, with steep valleys radiating out from the several large volcanos in the north in folds and creases, along which the roads mainly run, with few crossing roads. The paddies are dual cropped in some places, and we saw the ducks in the photo twice as we completed a full circle! There was a huge flock of them, complete with herd, enjoying themselves in the paddies. Just after we managed to find the right road, a downpour began and we took shelter in a restaurant near Ubud for lunch. As a result of the rain, Ubud was fairly empty when we arrived, but we passed swiftly though, finding it rather full of tourist shops. In many of the villages we drove through, there were workshops producing carvings and wooden artefacts of all sorts, though many not at all to local designs, and everywhere we noticed signs offering “Antiques made to order”! A number of places were wholesale/retail and one could see that buyers from western stores would be calling. But the carving itself was intricate and the local designs attractive, particularly these screens which are built into lintels over doorways. We had decided to head for the east coast, and as we were driving through quite heavy traffic in one town, John spotted a number of large and elaborate arrangements of fruit at the entrance to a building and many people clustering around them. We left the car on the main road, put on our sarongs just in case (needed for entering temples here) and went to investigate. About 100 formally dressed ladies were sitting chatting around the offerings, which were beautifully arranged and included whole cooked chickens with dark shiny skins. As we arrived, they all started to get up, at a signal we hadn’t perceived, and each swiftly lifted an arrangement onto her head. They formed up into a procession, two by two, the traffic was stopped and they headed off down the road, each steadying her load only with one hand. We have tried to convey the scale of the procession in this picture, but couldn’t get them all in! You can just see the beginnings of the band coming down the road on the opposite side to join them, and they turned right in front of us to bring up the rear. Reluctantly we decided we couldn’t follow them, having left the car parked on the main road, which was already subject to quite a hold up from the procession. Driving through towns and villages, we saw large upside down openwork baskets by the sides of the roads, and then noticed groups of men in the villages with cocks. After a while we realised that they were training the young cocks to fight, and that the mature cocks were just grazing from their baskets. We read that, by way of offering to appease the gods, men may conduct a blood sacrifice through a cock fight. After a brief hold up by a corrupt policeman, we spent the night in a grand hotel which had seen better days and the following morning went on to Tenganan, an attractive old village quite different in style to the rest of Bali, and famous in particular for its double ikat weaving. We arrived early and were enjoying the peace and wide spacious streets (no cars permitted, just the occasional scooter) when an elderly man stopped us and pressed us to come into his house. Full of misgivings, we joined him (many Balinese are very importunate in trying to sell you things), only to find that he wanted to show us his trade, which was the painstaking writing of scripts on strips of palm, bound by a central string, and stored in an elaborate wooden box – the traditional Balinese book. He was a charming old man, and while he clearly takes orders, he thankfully seemed to have plenty to keep him going! We went on to watch the double ikat weaving. This is where both the warp and the weft are dyed before weaving, so that the pattern takes shape as the weaver works. You can just distinguish the unwoven line in the picture, where the pattern goes fuzzy, but you can also see how detailed a pattern can be achieved, requiring accurate tensioning in the weft and a lot of working the weave to tighten it up every few passes of the shuttle, to make sure that the pattern comes good. The looms seemed very basic to us, and you can just see that it is strapped round the weaver’s middle and she has a bar at her feet to complete the tensioning of the warp. This is also a centre for basket weaving from a fern, known as ata. It produces a fine round “cane” which is woven into shape and then smoked over a slow burning fire of green coconuts (much as the mat we saw in Niuatoputapu) to give it a rich colour and sheen and a distinctive smell. We were told that other places copy the effect with chemicals! From Tenganan we managed to follow the cross country route to Besakih, which is considered to be one of the most important temples in Bali. It is built about a third of the way up the volcano Mount Agung, which is 3142 metres high, but sadly the cloud base was low, so the views were not quite what they might have been. The temple however is imposing and approached by a long and steep climb from the car park, which perhaps increases its effect! One is not allowed into the most sacred inner courtyard here, but we found a side courtyard which seemed to contain the seats of the gods which are the key shrines in the temples. The seats are provided for the gods who are believed to descend to the temple for ceremonies. They are highly decorated as you can see and raised some way above ground level. Driving ourselves was interesting – the locals all seemed delighted when they discovered we were driving ourselves (well John was), which was a bit worrying! We were getting low on petrol when we realised that we hadn’t seen a petrol station for ages. Then John said he thought he had spotted a petrol sign near our hotel on the first night. It was easy to miss, but when we found it, it transpired that the petrol station consisted of an oil drum (complete with its offering - rice and flowers in a banana leaf tray sitting on the drum) from which petrol had been siphoned into 5 litre water bottles! These were swiftly poured into the tank, and after that we were easily able to spot a petrol station by its row of bottles. In some of the narrow lanes we passed heavily laden motorcycles, by which we mean that they were sometimes loaded to twice their width and height – though when as large as that the goods were generally lightweight – and we realised that these were travelling salesmen coming to sell stock to the village stores. All along the roads we met women carrying heavy loads on their heads, with no hands to support them. Many carried large baskets with slightly shaped bottoms which sat on pads of cloth on the head, but we came across some with sacks of rice or vegetables which must have been very hard to keep still enough to balance. We saw one or two also balancing a long length of wood as well as the regular load! These women were often miles from the nearest village. Bali’s lowland climate must mean that rice can be planted at most times of the year. We saw many beautiful green curved paddy fields, terraced into the hills, and often individually tiny. Here the double cropping is with beans growing up the outer edge. We also saw fields being cut and the rice threshed - all by hand - there were few if any fields large enough to take any machinery. Higher up, the climate is noticeably cooler. We were shrouded in low clouds while we were there and we saw fields of blue hydrangeas being grown for their flowers, which we saw on sale in the market, and there were pine woods and what appeared to be a type of elderflower growing wild. The following day, driving down a winding road, we saw these very long ladders (a step on each side fixed to one central pole) and stopped to investigate. They were tied to the tops of tall pyramid shaped clove trees and the cloves were being picked by hand. When fresh they are a pinkish green colour, and they are laid out to dry along the roadsides, gradually turning the dark brown we know. We had read that a particular village was famous for its music and instruments, and finding the Balinese orchestras very appealing, decided to explore it. In fact, there was little sign of instruments, but we did find a centre which performed wedding ceremonies, where there was an orchestra waiting for a ceremony to begin which obligingly struck up for us. The instruments are mainly percussion, with banks of gongs of different notes, drums and gamelans, xylophones made from bamboo, and in some cases with metal keys. They make a wonderfully soft chiming sound, which seems to be reflected in some of the place names in Bali – Klungkung, Blimbing, Lembung, Pangkungkarung among them - try saying them in a slightly singsong voice! We decided to go and see some Balinese dancing and the most convenient time was the one staged by one of the first big hotels in southern Bali. Although clearly specially staged for a tourist audience, one could form a realistic impression of what the original dances must have been like, as the dancers mimed their way through traditional Balinese stories, using particularly expressive hand and head movements. It was very impressively staged against the backdrop of a classical Balinese temple, with the support of a large gamelan orchestra to each side. One incident illustrated the overall friendliness of the Balinese. In our search for the Balinese speciality of roast suckling pig, we found ourselves in a very small restaurant, newly opened by someone who had previously worked at the marina. Having served our meal (a very spicy version of suckling pig!) he spent some time talking to us and then took Helen off on the back of his scooter to an internet café, and altogether made us feel we understood a little more about the Balinese. As we left Bali, we saw yet another side: keeping very close in to the shore to avoid the strong contrary current, we saw beaches packed with hundreds of small sailing proas drawn up – with literally no space for more - at the top of beach after beach after beach. At about 4 o’clock, these boats set sail, presumably to fish after a day’s work, or for a night’s fishing. Off each beach, the sea was absolutely full of these tiny boats with brightly coloured sails sailing across our track. They headed straight out to sea, and we realised that since our course took us close along the shore during the night, they would probably all be coming back past us after dark. We suspected that none would be lit, so made sure we were very well lit, and low down too, to be easily visible to them, and, as far as we are aware had no near misses! You can just see from the photos that the bows are shaped like a fish’s mouth wide open. Our last view of Bali was of the volcano Mount Agung at sunrise, for once not shrouded in cloud, though its lower neighbour was – a lovely final view. Our aim now was to sail straight towards Singapore, stopping on the way mainly just for relief from what we (rightly) expected would be a lot of motoring. Our course took us north west through the Raas Strait to the north east of Java, and we managed to sail slowly for more than 2 of the 3 day passage. We saw many fishing boats, but suffered none of the close encounters with unlit boats reported by some yachtsmen in these waters, and met a number of very polite ships who always gave way to us well in advance, even in the (not all that narrow) strait. This is one of the most lightning prone areas in the world and we saw lightning every night, fortunately in the distance, though often all round us. We stopped overnight at the island of Bawean, before carrying on towards the Karimata Strait, which runs to the west of Borneo (Kalimantan). We had a number of rain squalls during this short passage bringing welcome but all too short bursts of about 25 knots of wind, and then leaving behind a disturbed sea and no wind. We encountered extraordinary fishing boats with several huge arms out from each side covered in very bright light bulbs, using the light to attract their catch. They were visible for miles, but on the occasion that one came close, the light was so bright that it ruined our night vision and made it hard to see the less bright lights of approaching ships! One entry in the log for 21st October reads “another normal night approaching the Strait of Karimata: lightning to port over Java, lightning to starboard over Kalimantan, ships passing either side travelling in both directions, and a line of light-fishing vessels stretching from port to starboard ahead – oh and a very starry night with no moon”. We talked to one of the ships one afternoon – BP’s British Argosy on its way to Singapore for engine work, and at the end of the conversation, they warned us to mind out for pirates! We didn’t say that our information is that in these waters at least, big ships are very much more at risk than yachts. The rain squalls went by, sometimes missing us, sometimes falling on us and allowing us to replenish our water tank. After 3 and a half days we felt our way into an anchorage off the island of Serutu – a nature reserve – in the dark. Despite using the radar and a powerful search light, the rocky beach seemed to come towards us suddenly out of nowhere, and we anchored in quite deep water – 8 fathoms. We had had to motor for 53 hours – our highest proportionally so far of the entire trip, which entailed very regular engine checks and maintenance. The following day we had a visit from the police from a neighbouring island, who checked our papers, finding all in order, and then rather tentatively in English we found hard to understand, asked for various possible gifts, all of which we were unaccountably short of. They finally left us still in reasonable humour and we went ashore to investigate landing, as we had anchored several bays away from the only village, and our bay had no obvious landing point. We found a suitable place and ventured a few hundred yards before deciding to return the following day better clad for the dense undergrowth and mosquitos. The jungle grows thickly down the fairly steep slope to the shore and we decided to aim for a conspicuous tree with red leaves, though once we were in the jungle, of course we couldn’t easily tell where we were headed! It was really interesting going, as we could find no tracks to follow, so had to make our own, without the aid of a large knife carried by “everyone” since French Polynesia. There were many creepers which gave useful handholds, but a number of really thorny palms, which tore at our clothes and left deep splinters. One had to be careful holding onto a tree trunk for too long, as one’s hand was quickly covered in ants. There were trees with the most wonderful buttresses and the canopy was high above us. Although the jungle seems to be evergreen, the trees clearly lose their leaves a few at a time, so that the floor was covered with fallen leaves which were lovely but slippery! We finally found what we took to be our tree and set off back down the hill again, by a different route, this time finding much more rock. There were a few more or less vertical rocky outcrops, with hand and footholds and the occasional creeper to hang on to, and often also with water trickling down them, but we managed to find our way down them, feeling rather Tarzan-like! We saw practically no wildlife, except for this huge millipede, though we had the suspicion that we may have been shadowed by a monkey high up in the trees, as we thought we could hear him, though we never managed to spot him. It took days to remove the splinters from our hands, soaking them out with magnesium sulphate – we hadn’t thought to bring gardening gloves with us! On the way back to the boat in the dinghy, we met this obstacle, which could do Flame a lot of damage if hit at any speed – luckily we didn’t meet any at sea. After a couple of days in this peaceful anchorage, we set sail again, bound across the equator for the southern end of the Riau Strait which leads to Singapore. Again we had a combination of sailing slowly and motoring, at one stage having to round what appeared to be an anchored ship in the middle of the channel! The sea was often quite glassy and we started to see a lot of large sea snakes gliding along. Occasionally one would lift its head as if to look at us and then swim away rapidly. We managed to sail across the equator, albeit very slowly as you can see! We were soon motoring again. A huge jelly fish, ivory coloured with a purple cap top? and about 2 feet across and 3 feet deep passed close by, clear in the flat water. Thus we passed through the very bottom of the South China Sea. We had a rather dramatic end to this passage, firstly being shot into the southern end of the Riau Strait by a 30 knot squall with heavy rain, and then as it cleared, managing to anchor so that we put Flame hard aground onto a patch of hard coral. We anchored in 24 feet (she draws just over 6), and as we swung to the anchor, the depth dropped rapidly to 12 and then we hit. Motoring back and forth just bumped us more – (thankfully the sea was flat in the lee of an island, despite the recent squall), so Helen was sent over the side with a mask to investigate. The water was not at all clear, one could just see the hazy shape of the coral from the boat once we were aground on it, but from in the water it was apparent that we had somehow managed to wedge ourselves between two coral heads, and the only way off would be sideways. We were between two ports for which we had tidal information, and it was possible that it was already high water, or soon after. We rapidly pumped up the dinghy and put the outboard on, and John used it as a tug and just pushed us sideways a little (too far and we would have hit the next coral head) so that Helen was able to motor forwards and off! What a relief! Once we were anchored further off, a quick swim under the keel confirmed that the only damage was to the paintwork, not the GRP, so we were very lucky. After that we had a quiet night at anchor, and moved on up to another anchorage within sight of Singapore, just past a rather attractive stilt village, and finally choosing a recommended marina just 10 miles away from the city on the northern Indonesian island of Batam. The rubbish in the water round here was incredible, with huge floating islands of bottles, shoes, etc mingled with leaves and branches. The marina, at Nongsa Point, is part of a development of houses and apartments round a golf course, and marina facilities include the use of a swimming pool with towels provided – a rare luxury! We motored into the marina and were asked to moor alongside another British yacht, Perdika, who turn out to be on much the same route and timescale as ourselves back to the Mediterranean. We subsequently discovered that we have a mutual friend at ICL who had passed on their email address just before we started, (though we hadn’t used it!) – an astonishing coincidence! There is a fast ferry to Singapore from Nongsa, and it was our intention to use that, in between boat chores, rather than to take Flame across. But plans change, as you will see in the next update. |
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