Indonesia, Illness and Indecision

Excuse the backwards timeline of this blog entry.

I left Indonesia at 1:30am en route to Seoul.   Upon arrival I was directed to immigration so I could get back to the ticket counter to check in for the half dozen other flights required to get me home.  I have walked through the body temperature sensors several times in several different countries and often wondered exactly what happened to you if you did have a temperature.   The answer is this:

After walking under the thermal scanner archway way I heard a loud beeping noise.  5 seconds later I am grabbed by a small uniformed Korean man and ushered into a small room  where he puts a hospital mask on the both of us.  “You have a fever of 40.5  are you sick?”.  “ Um…. No, I’m not sick…. I just have a (long pause as I struggle to think of something that would give me a fever yet clearly not be contagious) AN EAR INFECTION … just an ear infection”  (in reality I’m fighting off a small cold).  Two  more uniformed Korean men come into the room (all donning hospital masks and latex gloves) and the three of them pour through my passport whispering in Korean and then asking me random questions  “When did you go to Nicaragua?  Why were you in Indonesia? What did you eat in the Philippines?  How long have you been sick?”  By now I have translated 40.5 cellulous into 105 degrees Fahrenheit.  There is no way I have a 105 fever.     I beg them to feel my forehead--- as their fancy thermometers are wrong.   One of the men reaches over and pokes my forehead with this index finger without taking off the latex gloves…(really?) and they go back to speaking in Korean.   I have exactly one hour to get checked in and catch my flight.  I explain this.  I explain this again more adamantly...and then i start to cry... *There isn’t a man on earth who isn’t  afraid of a crying woman that’s gone a little mad*  I made the flight with 5 minutes to spare.

Indonesia was interesting.  We landed onto the island of Java last Thursday.   Indonesia is the 4^th most populous country in the world (China, India, America….).  With over 17,500 islands.  Another very poor country.   Having come in 4^th place in the competition in the Manilla.    (the first time in the 2 years we’ve participated in Great Escape that we’ve not been in last place) we decided to be more chill re scavenges in Indonesia.  We walked around in the rain---visited some a temple and some markets but  mainly just took advantage of the nice hotel we were at.  Saturday morning we flew to Bali for the second leg of the Country.

Bali was way bigger than I imagined.  The first two nights we stayed in the UBud which is a town in the center of the island in the jungle.  Bill, the event director did a fantastic job with the hotel- as it was one of the coolest I’ve ever stayed in.  It overlooked a huge rice paddy a jungle behind it.  Each room had a large balcony and you could sit listening to the river from your room.  The hotel supplied Balinese night gowns and bedtime stories.  It was by far my favorite place of the trip.

Where Indonesia is a 90% muslim country, Bali is mostly Hindu.  Hindu is a beautiful religion.  Every morning the people leave small offerings of flowers and incense all over the city to the gods.  Nightly dancing rituals. Bright statues everywhere.  We spent most of our time in Ubud just wandering around.   Monkeys everywhere. 

Our last nights we moved closer to the airport and into a section of Bali called Jimbaran--- right on the ocean--- good surf waves, beautiful oceans.  We rented paddle boards and tried it in the surf for the first time.  Trav and I are great at beaching it up so…. 

I feel like I’m not giving enough detail/credit to Indonesia… it was fantastic--- beautiful and different – I’m tired. I'm going to get Trav to write this better as he's staying longer and exploring more.. 

If I weren’t so desperate to see my sweet child I would be sad that this trip is over but as a probably shaken Korean officer can attest to…. I’m so desperate to see my child.  Brace yourself little baby for a ridiculous amount of smothering..

Manila (all the other titles I could come up with involved some awful cliché so…)

We landed into Manila Tuesday morning.  It was 40 degrees when we left South Korea so landing into a 90 degree tropical environment was sweet.  I commented to the event director that I feel at home in tropical 3^rd world countries.  He thought I was joking.  

On the bus ride to the hotel we passed a fire so large that we could feel the heat on the bus as we drove by.  It turns out that a squatters apartment caught fire putting 2700 families  into the street. Manila is  a big, crowded,  dirty,  traffic filled, extremely poor city.  BUT.  It’s lively and the people are very kind.  Trav and I debated whether, if forced to live in either Seoul or Manila,  which we would chose.   Seoul was clean and safe but sort of soul-less (pun not intended).   Manila is full of life and close to the ocean…seediness aside.. I would chose there.

Day 1  of scavenges in Manila  seemed straight out of a Maxim issue.   First on our agenda was to find a gun range and shoot M-16s.  Probably smartly enough they wouldn’t let US shoot assault rifles so we shot some sort of little gun.  Trav’s a shockingly good gun shooter considering he doesn’t do it so much --- the reward of 20 + years of video game playing I suppose.

Scavenge 2—cock fighting.  Obviously we would never go to such an event as that would upset daughters/nieces and other animal loving friends (wink wink) but had we… this is what we would have seen:   The cock fighting arena in Manila was one of the nicest buildings in the city (I expected a small outside cage thing in a back street).  Extremely organized- armed security, bleachers- concession stands. The place was packed out with 1000 or so men--- one woman.     The actual fighting is held in a WWF size ring--- Two men stand in the middle with huge roosters while two other guys bring out little chickens and hold them  while sort of poking at the roosters that are going to fight to get them riled up (a cock tease in its most literal sense).  The birds that are actually going to fight each have a  2-3 inch blade taped onto their foot.   3 minutes on the clock and the arena goes crazy--  reminiscent of the ny stock exchange--- men signaling and screaming bets at each other—arms in air- money crumpled up and being tossed overhead.  At the end of 3 minutes they let the cocks go—the actual fight takes less than a minute and the winner is decided by which of the two is still alive.

Scavenge 3- “Foxy Boxing” (did I mention that we had a testosterone filled first day in manila?).  Foxy boxing = tiny top heavy Filipino women in bikinis.  The undercard fights?  Midgets. I’m serious.  The actual fights didn’t start til 10pm so we didn’t stick around..   Natasha and David, one of the other teams, did however and I’m told that the midgets gave shoulder massages to the patrons when they weren’t boxing. Ha.  (I feel bad even typing the word midget but that’s what the sign said so…)

I knew going in that Manila was a big sex trafficking place.   Of all the American men I saw there it appears that only Travis and Rainey had American girlfriends.  What I did not know is that it had such a problem with child sex trafficking.  We sat at a café having some coffee and people watching--- dozens of teenage Filipino girls with old white men walking by---  after being unable to explain away or accept  the 11 year old sitting at the table next to us with a 60 year old man and a cocktail  We abandoned our peoplewatching for the hotel.

That was two days ago and I can’t get the scene out of my head.  I hear debates about the legalization of prostitution  all the time. Until now I’ve always seen both sides of it.  This was horrific  -- and the American government should do more to punish people that go on vacation to have sex with children.  Manila is proof that it happens more than I ever imagined.

We decided to get out of the city for day 2  for a  “bonus scavenge” that took us to the river Apocalypse  Now was filmed on. Up the rapids in a canoe = impressive boatman skills.  It was incredible and my favorite thing yet.  We swam behind a waterfall, watched the locals spearfish.  We saw Rainey and Zoe and Rainey’s two daughters, who are two of the other teams on this event there.  Rainey’s daughters are 25 and 20—when I started working for Rainey they were 11 and 6.    It’s weird that they are no longer kids and more my peers.  I can’t decide if it makes me feel old or young.  It’s awesome that they are on this though as they are super cool and haven’t seen the world as much as a lot of the other teams---  It’s interesting to see things a bit from their eyes too.

We are now on a plane to Indonesia.  I’m stoked. Trav will be once we get off the plane (read: bad seat).

I miss Lyric.  It’s funny how being away for even just a little time gives you a new perspective on things.  When I put her down for bedtime at night and kiss her good night she likes to demand I come back and lay down with her “Mommy bed. Mommy bed” and if I don’t she will get of the bed and follow me “Mommy bed! Mommy bed”.  It usually frustrates me but sitting her now I can’t think of any reason why it ever would and why I don’t just lay down with her until she falls asleep.  Excuse my introspective rambling… it’s some sort of hormonal miss my baby thing I suppose (feel free to leave comments on how she’s perfectly happy and entertained spending the week at my parents and how she’s probably 100% safer there then she would be with me right now). 

LA to Korea

LA was fun- “Great Escape”  officially started Friday afternoon with a dinner event which included eating fried grasshoppers and maggots .  That will be will be what I think about for years anytime I need to throw up.  At dinner it was revealed our first destination would be Seoul South Korea and that we had an hour to pack and get to the airport.

ha there was a slight issue at LAX security where Trav was… um, inappropriately touched by  the screeners… I hear about this all the time and think it’s the public overacting but I witnessed this… and it was uncalled for and  absurd (although already starting to be funny, to me at least). Ha, at the time I went into straight mommy mode  and stood 2 feet from him smiling and waving—pulling candy from my purse….  while normally pretty even tempered, Trav was starting to lose his cool and I thought he was going to hit the guy.  He didn’t… and we were onto a  flight to Seoul Korea.

You know you’re madly in love with someone when a 13 hour redeye flight is fun

The thing I love the most about this competition is that it takes you to places you would probably never think about going on your own. til today my knowledge of Korea was made up of the M.A.S.H. reruns George and I used to stay up late watching as kids and a vague recollection of the musical video montages from the Olympics.   We landed wondering if there would be running water in the airport bathrooms or just the holes in the ground like there are in most of China… as it turns out—South Korea is very much first world and futher along with technology than we are in the states (3d TVs everywhere, everything seems to be touch screen activated).  

I had a lot to write when I started this but I’m crazy jetlag and starting to crash… soooo…. Accept this as my first official lame blog of the competition…. i’ll do better tomorrow.

xo