Volcanotastic!

In which I visit the peak of Bali's largest volcano - Gunung Agung - and then head to Java.

Well after a couple of days of reading by the pool, contemplating the cosmos (thanks a lot Anathem!), checking out the local waruns and hitting the town with my new Ubud friends - surfer Lindsay and his Finnish workmate Anina - while waiting for a second person to join me on the Gunung Agung hike I finally cracked. I called up a random guide from Lonely Planet and paid for both me and an imaginary friend.

The guide picked me up from Ubud and I stayed with him in his tiny village of Muncan. Here, I went to bed at 7pm after reading a section of Anathem in which one of the main characters is bizarrely killed by a pyroclastic flow - then the guide told me over dinner that some of his village friends had died in a pyroclastic flow from Gunung Agung when he was young - I'm getting pyroclastic flows coming out of my ears!

Luckily this didn't happen on our climb (and nor from any other orifice), which we started at the confusing time of 11 o'clock... PM. This was like the Melbourne Uni Mountaineering Club tradition of Midnight Ascent, but with double the vertical elevation (rising to 3000m) and having to head back down the same day (but minus the formal dinner and keg scolling).

Annoyingly, after about an hour of climbing we came across a different group - he was an Austrian called Franz and he had his own guide too. Neither of us needed to exchange words for us both to know what we were each thinking: rather than both of us having to invent imaginary friends to climb the mountain with us why couldn't we have both imagined each other and bootstrapped our way up automatically? This feeling was compounded by the fact that the path was so easy to follow it was set inside a rut that was at times a metre deep. Plus my guide was so slow he kept on getting puffed out and demanding rest stops (I'm the fittest Westerner he's ever met, he reckons, which sounds like it can't be many).

Just before reaching the top at about 4am, my guide told me we were two hours ahead of schedule and that we'd need to have a break before summitting - it's chilly at the top! But this involved lying on my back on a cold granite slab angled towards a steep gully and I certainly didn't get much sleep out of it - plus I was keen to see my first sight of the Andromeda Galaxy that I figured was just on the other side of the peak.

The summit was pretty awesome - we saw the sun rise over the slightly more impressive Rinjani in Lombok, and the volcano managed not to erupt while we were standing on it. The way down and the rest of the day got pretty blurry though. I ended up staying in Lindsay's spare room in Ubud, the rent for which I paid in beer.

In the next couple of days I worked my way around Bali to Java, stopping briefly in Lovina to seek out the place where I have a vivid memory from when I was two of being chased by geese. I'll never know what revenge I would have exacted on them or their descendants because they evaded detection... for now.

After the ferry ride over to Java my environment changed pretty drastically. For one thing people stopped speaking English and all the Westerners scooted off. Also, people suddenly got very serious about religion with the Call To Alms being frequently loudspeakered over all the towns I passed through. I actually think it's an eerily beautiful sound... except for when they let the local kids in the village sing it one by one out of tune and all the adults tilt their heads and go "Awww, isn't that cute" and I try not to throw up.

Getting to my next destination from Lovina took a bus, a ferry, a train and another bus. I spend most of my time traveling like this lost in the depths of my own brain, often resurrecting old conversations, song lyrics and poems I'd assumed were lost to the ages (it's amazing how much junk there is lying around in there). But every now and then I suddenly stop and think "Hold on - where am I? What's going on? How did I get on this bus?", to which a small voice in my head would reply, "Relax Felix, I prepared a dossier of memories linking you to this moment. Just sit back and let me take care of everything", and I would then return to my own thoughts.

Next up, another couple of volcanoes - I climb Mount Bromo and then make a poorly planned and ultimately failed trek to another one. Stay tuned.

Airport Dramas

So rather than sending out all this info to everyone in email format, I thought I'd start up a blog so people can read it if they're interested and get on with their lives if they're looking forward to hearing it over a few beers when I get back (although I will have forgotten everything by then). After all, this is what blogs are supposed to be for aren't they?

Anyway, in this episode I get to the airport only to discover that I do not satisfy my own visa requirements and spend the remaining hour before my flight departs shuttling between the check-in desks and an internet cafe buying a new onward ticket and having it printed for me by the officials upstairs. Luckily I make it on the plane in time with whole minutes to spare.

Okay, so my folks give me a hug and two manly handshakes at the airport to bid me farewell (but quick ones because they were stopped at the 2 minute drop-off area) and I waltzed nonchalantly into the check-in queue for Pacific Blue's Denpasar-bound flight.

Soon I reached the counter and handed over my passport and ticket print-out - but the check-in chick (who I learned later was called Erin) still insisted I present her with my 'itinerary'. Apparently I needed a print-out of my onward flight in order to enter the fine nation of Indonesia to prove that I had plans to leave - despite me already being in possession of a two month visa.

As it happened, I had arranged a $25 flight between Medan and Penang (in Malaysia) for the day before my visa was due to expire on the 20th of December as that was the only way the Indonesian consulate would allow me to get a visa. I just had to print it out.

"There are no printers at any of the internet cafes in the airport" I was told by Erin. "But we still have time for you to email your itinerary to me and I can print it out on my computer upstairs", she offered.

Racing over to the computers I inserted my last Australian dollar and frantically searched for and forwarded on my itinerary from AirAsia in the 10 minute interval allotted to me for my money.

With only an hour by now until my flight I was getting nervous as it took 20 minutes for Erin to return with the print-out (the computers had crashed).

But wait! What's this on your visa?! What is this date 30/11/09 in the corner, far away from the emboldened "Visa valid for 60 days from arrival"? Why is your flight booked for the 20th of December???

Well I hadn't seen that date buried in amongst the small script numbers and Indonesian words at the edges of the visa, and nor was I expecting to find it as I had filled out the form for my visa over a month ago very clearly specifying that I was staying until the 20th of December and even including the mandatory print-out of my flight out on that date - and even called the consulate to confirm that such a visa would be provided.

But no - if I was to enter the country in any capacity other than indefinitely detained illegal immigrant (sorry, Irregular Arrival) then I must have a printed flight itinerary for before the 30th of November... and the plane was due to leave in 40 minutes.

By now tensions were rising and I could feel my cheeks reddening with frustration and the possibility of having to make the call to my folks asking them to pick me up from the airport and let me stay for a few more weeks. We discussed the possibility of buying a $2000 fully refundable Pacific Blue ticket home so I could get in the country and then get the money back. In the end I decided to go back to the internet cafe and try to change my AirAsia flight date.

'Borrowing' $1 from a kind check-in staff member I went online again for another 10 minutes to change the flight - but friggin' oath, I could not remember the password I had invented months ago for that website and I locked myself out of it trying.

Restarting the browser did the trick, but then I had to create a whole new account which I kept stuffing up due to wobbly fingers. Then I had to select a new flight - the 29th of November - and pay for it. Unfortunately, half way through entering my credit card details, a sign popped up informing me that I had 60 seconds left on the terminal.

Typing furiously I finally got the end of payment - but it was still processing as the counter ticked down to 7 seconds left... and I still had to get into my Gmail account and email the itinerary back to Erin... and since I only had 25 minutes until my flight, this was pretty much my only chance!

In desperation and 5 seconds to go I turned to the guy sitting next to me, "Do you have $1? It's pretty urgent", I asked. Amazingly he produced the dollar instantly allowing me to insert it in the slot about three quarters of my way through the final second on the machine before it wiped everything. I waited a couple of minutes for the itinerary to appear in my inbox and then forwarded it onto Erin.

Much quicker this time she appeared from upstairs with the printout, while I was checked in in parallel with another check-in chick (after she had signed the form saying I was legally allowed in the country while hovering around me at the internet cafe in the final minutes). I plonked my luggage not on the conveyor belt as there was not enough time for it to reach the plane but on the trolley with the pilot's luggage (meaning I could have got away with more than 20 kgs if I'd known about this in advance). I was then very briskly escorted past all the queues of customs and metal detection through the secret 'flight attendant route' and straight onto the plane where we took off right on time.

So I guess that's why they say we're supposed to get to the airport 90 minutes before our flight departure.

Anyway, the reason my visa said I had to be out by the 30th of November rather than the 20th of December as I had specified was probably because I later re-read the term, "Visa must be used within 90 days of issue". I had interpreted that as meaning I had 90 days from the 30th August to get into Indonesia ("use" the visa), but no, I had 90 days to use the visa... and then finish using it - ie. the 30 of November. You'd think they'd alert me to this when I was applying for it. And there I was thinking I was being organised by getting it early, when really every day I might have delayed in applying for the visa would mean an extra day in the country.

It kind of reminds me of the time I was installing the Ubuntu operating system and it asked me if I wanted to use "The whole disc". "Of course I want to be able to use the whole disc!", I'd exclaimed. "Why would I want to limit my access to only some of the disc?!" But, inevitably, Ubuntu then went on to wipe my entire 350GB hard drive forcing me to spend the next year slowly accumulating all the movies, music, photos and documents I had lost in the purge. Maybe I need language lessons in English.

Anyway, this whole saga means I miss out on 3 weeks of travel in Indonesia, which rules out my planned trip to Lombok to climb Mt Rinjani, and means I'll have to be pretty swift in my travels through Java and Sumatra, rather than taking it easy as I would have hoped. There's no way of extending my visa.

So yeah, pretty long description - they won't all by like this. And a post pretty soon after I arrived. I just wanted to share this tale with you while it was still fresh in my mind.

I'm staying in Kuta, Bali now. I've got a nice room and the hotel has a pool. Things are pretty normal here really, I don't feel overwhelmed, freaked out or even that things are other than they should be and always have been. I guess Bali is not really the place for culture shock or the realisation of being on my own. I'll let you know how I go in Java.

Not sure what I'll do today. Might just wander around for a bit and read a book.