Category Archives: Indonesia

Another trip down (travel) memory lane…

12 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in Down memory lane, Indonesia, Musings, Photography, Travel

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Despite it being a Sunday I’ve had a busy time in the office scanning old slides as I continue my efforts to wade through the archive and get everything on to my Zenfolio picture website.

Eschewing the recent series of rail pictures I picked out some old travel slides that I’d placed with the old ‘Lonely Planet’ picture library back in the 2000s before they were sold to the BBC and then on to Getty. The world of travel pictures was very different then and it was rather a nice income stream. Those days are long gone. I had the original images returned by Getty a few years ago when they joined the rest of the archive awaiting scanning. This morning I scanned a selection from Indonesia taken on my travels in 1992 and 1998. Here’s a look at a few of them.

This is an image taken at Lake Maninjau in West Sumatra back in June 1992. I spent several weeks on the island which was a fantastic place to travel. In those days you could enter the island by ferry from Georgetown on Penang Island Malaysia. A hydrofoil would carry you across the Straits of Malacca to Belawan in Northern Sumatra which was the port for the main city of Medan. In those days backpackers like myself would travel overland and the next stop for most (including me) was the volcanic Lake Toba. But, I’d been tipped off by other travellers I’d met heading in the opposite direction to me that there was an even more amazing and magnificent volcanic lake – Maninjau – in West Sumatra. They were right. As much as I enjoyed Toba and the Batak culture, Maninjau and the local Minangkabau people were even more interesting. Ever visited a matrilineal Muslim community before? No, neither had I! The lake itself is 16 km long, 7km wide and averages a depth of 105m. It sits at the bottom of a volcanic caldera and it’s an amazing place to arrive at when you reach the lip of the crater then drop down a road with 44 hairpin bends before you reach the main village on the edge of the lake. The picture as taken from the back deck of the little homestay I was residing in. You could bask in the sun, have a swim and then watch the weather change like this, as a rainstorm crept in from the West and boiled in over the crater edge. You knew you still had 20-30 minutes before it reached you. It was a beautiful place to stay, kick back and relax and enjoy activities like walking or cycling around the lake – or just sit and read a book before heading out for some delicious Padang food. I’d love to go back as I was last there in 1998.

This picture was taken on the same trip. I left West Sumatra by ferry from Padang and headed to Java, making my way slowly Eastwards across the island by rail and bus until I arrived here at Mt Bromo.

It’s the most incredible landscape as it really doesn’t look like it belongs on this planet. This is the view from the edge of the original volcanic crater which was taken one sunrise in June 1992. Three smaller volcanos sit in the ‘sea of sands’ inside the original crater. It’ll take you 45 minutes to walk across to them. The volcanoes are still active and have erupted several time in the past 20 years the last time being 2015. Indonesia is famous for its volcanoes, many of which remain active. I visited several but Mt Bromo has to be the most spectacular.

Here’s something a bit different from another trip Lynn and I did across Indonesia back in 1998. This shot was taken at a big cremation ceremony in Ubud, Bali back in October 1998. I’ve long admired the way the Balinese have managed to hang on to their distinctive culture despite mass tourism and being part of an overwhelmingly Muslim country. You might not see much of it if you stay in the tourist traps of Kuta and Sanur on the islands most Southern tip, but get into the hills and it’s very different. The reason I took this shot is because of the juxtaposition of the traditional and modern. Here’s an important and wealthy man in traditional Balinese dress who’s helping run the whole ceremony and he’s on his mobile phone. This is 1998 remember. In those days only 1 in 5 people in the UK had one. Lynn and I were still communicating with most people via ‘snail mail’ and poste restante letter drops as the few places you could find internet access in Indonesia were Post Offices where you used slow, expensive and unreliable dial-up internet. How things have changed in 20 odd years!

If you want to view the rest of the pictures from Indonesia, click on this link.

Friday memories…

06 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, India, Indonesia, Photography, Travel

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Today’s been yet another wet and windy day in the Calder valley and one I’ve been glad that I’ve not had to venture afar in. Most of it has been spent working at home, apart from an afternoon ‘constitutional’ stroll along the canal and a trip up to my local pub, the ‘Big 6’ to meet up with friends and take part in the Friday quiz which is read out my Mel, in her broad Lancashire accent. Guessing what she’s saying is almost as challenging as getting the answers right (sorry Mel!). To give you an idea, heard of the film Ben Hur? In a Lancashire accent Hur is ‘hair’!

It was a pleasant interlude and nice to spend time having a laugh with friends as my other half is down in London this weekend with the ‘girls’. Right now I’m having a quiet night in and trying to sort through more old pictures. Looking through them makes me very conscious of how time’s flying by. Recently I’ve been adding hundreds of old rail pictures to my Zenfolio website. What I’ve neglected is the 1000s of travel pictures in my collection. Tonight I came across one of my old portfolios which I used to tout around the national newspapers and travel magazines when I first turned professional and lived in London. The internet was in its infancy then so you used to ring up newspapers and magazines to try and get appointments with their picture editors to show off your pictures. Sometimes it would go well, other times not. The worst were some of the travel magazines where Mummy or Daddy had got someone a job through their connections. I’m naming no names, but I remember turning up at one (well known brand) where the bright young thing didn’t even have access to a loupe or a lightbox, so held up a sheet of slides to one of the overhead fluorescent tubes and said “oh, these are pretty colours”…

Here’s a couple of the pictures from those old portfolios and the story behind them. This is a mother Orangutan and her baby trying to pinch some of the bunch of bananas from her mouth which was taken in the Bukit Lawang sanctuary in Sumatra, Indonesia back in July 1998. We were very privileged to see such amazing creatures in the wild.

Lynn (my ex-wife) and I were travelling around the world for 18 months at the time and spent several months in Sumatra. Then, SE Asia was in the doldrums of their ‘Economic Crisis’ which was terrible for them, but good for us as the value of the pound was amazing. I’d been there a few years before when £1 would get you 3,500 Rupiah. When we were there it would buy you 22,000 Rupiah! I look back on those times and realise just how lucky we were to be travelling then, because so much has changed since. Here’s the next picture, which has a very different tale to tell.

This picture was taken as a wedding in Bhavnagar, which is in the Gujarat state in Western India. It was taken on the 19th February 2000. One of the reasons I like it is the way one young girl was distracted and looked away, but that’s not the full story. Bhavnager isn’t on the tourist trail (far from it).

Lynn and I had been out on holiday in South India but I stayed on to explore the railways as the Gujarat was the last place steam locomotives operated. Sadly, I missed them by a couple of weeks, but that’s another story. Bhavnagar is also where Gandhi went to college, so I was interested in it to get travel pictures too.

Whilst I was there I was invited by this family to attend a wedding. It’s not an uncommon experience and Indian weddings are a delight for photographers like me and also a great way to get to meet local people. But there’s yet another layer to this tale…

On my way home I lost some of my notes, including the family’s address, so I was never able to send them the pictures, or keep in contact. Almost a year later, on the 26th January 2001 an earthquake struck the Gujarat. Measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale and lasting about 110 seconds, it was the most powerful earthquake to strike India in half a century. 20,000 people died and when I see this picture I often wonder what the fate of these young girls was.

I wish I had more time to scan these old slides. There’s so many stories they can tell, and so many memories…

Bali reflections

09 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Bali, Indonesia, Religion, Travel

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I’m on my penultimate day in Bali before moving on to Java and beginning my trek all the way back up to Bangkok. This is the first time I’ve been back to the island in 5 years. A sobering thought is that I first came here as a solo overland backpacker way back in 1992, 25 years ago! Part of me wished that I’d brought my old diaries with me, but as they’re not digitised, they’re too valuable to risk. This trip has made me resolve to remedy that – as well as concentrate getting the hundreds of slides from the trip scanned. I left the UK in October 1991 and didn’t return until a year later. I spent five months in Indonesia, island-hopping from Sumatra to East Timor via local buses and ferries. In these days of cheap flights (and more onerous visa restrictions) it’s a feat no-one attempts anymore. I came back & repeated the trip as far as Flores with my late partner, Lynn in 1998 but we also came to Bali a couple of times on holidays. Those experiences have given me the perspective to see how much Bali has changed in a quarter of a century.

Admittedly, this isn’t the same island-ranging trip as before as my primary reason for visiting was to come and see Alison, an old Australian friend whom Lynn and I first met in India in 1998 and who now lives here. Alison accompanied the pair of us on chunks of our 18 month trip around the world onwards from that point, sharing many of our adventures. So, most of my time here has been spent in the Ubud area where Alison has a home and business, Mingle Cafe. To say the place has changed since 1992 is an understatement. It’s grown hugely as money, tourists and expats have flooded in. Traffic is a bit of a nightmare too. Roads that used to be reasonably quiet have become sclerotic with parked cars & scooters. Suicidal tourists on scooters don’t help. Some of them insist on driving down one-way streets or weave in and out of traffic as if it really matters that they get somewhere a couple of minutes quicker (this is Bali, for God’s sake, they taught the Spanish the meaning of ‘Manyana’!)

Some of the places I had fond memories of have gone, others remain. Sadly one of my favourite restaurants serving authentic Balinese veggie dishes has disappeared since 2012, There’s a few new eyesores in Ubud (especially on Monkey Forest road, where there’s some monstrous but half abandoned buildings), but there’s also some attractive additions as traditional buildings have been expanded in a tasteful and respectful manner. That said, there does seem to have been a bit of a ‘building boom’ that’s outstripped demand. I passed quite a few shops & showrooms that have been built speculatively, without any thought to location or commercial need. Most (but not all) of the building is ribbon development. It’s filled up the spaces along the roads but the rice paddies behind largely remain intact as I saw for myself when I flew in from Thailand.

What hasn’t changed is the Balinese people. They’re still as friendly and welcoming as ever, and their unique culture survives, seemingly unscathed. I’ve always thought the Balinese were object lessons in how to hang on to your culture despite mass tourism – even with the latest human waves to hit the island (first the Russians, now the Chinese). Religious ceremonies and practices that have endured for centuries are still part of daily life here – even if some have been updated to reflect the modern age. I took part in one example shortly after arriving. Tumpak Landep is the day to pay homage to metal heirlooms (such as old daggers handed down through the generations). Nowadays its expanded to include blessing everyday items such as cars and scooters! Nonetheless, it’s taken seriously, families don their traditional clothing as always for such occasions and the blessings are performed. I can’t help but admire the Balinese for this. Their religion still has such a big part to play in their everyday lives that we in the West can’t really imagine it unless we experience it.  Here’s a selection of pictures from Tumpak Landep;

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Blessing and sprinkling holy water on offerings and family heirlooms.

 

DG264162. Girl placing blessings on a scooter during . Tumpak Lendep. Ubud. Bali. Indonesia. 4.2.17.JPG

A young girl places offerings that have been blessed and sprinkled with holy water onto one of the family’s scooters.

I’ll be sad to leave as I’ve always loved Bali. Plus, it’s been a joy to catch up with Alison and it’s been an interesting time being part of an expatriate community intertwined with the local Balinese music scene (something I rarely experience on my travels). I’m determined that won’t be another five years before I return.

Next, I move on to Java, somewhere I’ve not been back to since 1998. I’m starting the trip in a city I’ve never experienced before – Surabaya, so that should be fun…

A morning at the market

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Bali, Food, Indonesia, Travel

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I love old-fashioned markets. Whilst they’re on the decline across the UK as more folk shop in supermarkets, they’re still very part and parcel of everyday life here in Bali. They’re a photographers’ delight due to the shadows and light, riot of colours and variety of people and produce. Yesterday morning I popped down to one near where I’m staying.

Pejeng market is typical of the type. It’s a ramshackle rectangular area just off the main road, tucked in behind a row of shops. There’s a multitude of small stalls selling a dazzling array of fresh fruit and veg, some of which I recognise – others not. There was the distinctive salak (snakeskin fruit), huge papayas, bananas of all shapes, sizes and curvatures (Brexit voters beware), oranges, passion fruits, apples, soursop, dragonfruit and more – making up every colour of the rainbow. Some of the vegetables were even more mysterious. It’s easy to identify potatoes, lettuces, green beans and tomatoes as they’re universal, but Bali grows some root vegetables I’ve never been able to put a name to. It’s not just fruit and veg you get in these places either, they’re just like a supermarket (OK, admittedly they don’t have the same hygiene standards, but they’re not as boring either!). At Pejeng you can also buy clothes, toiletries, flowers, ready made offerings to the Gods – and even get breakfast. Every morning, local woman will arrive carrying their makeshift stalls on their heads before setting up shop to sell delicious home cooked food to passers by. Others use scooters with a large metal & glass cabinet bolted to the back to sell skewers of chicken or pork cooked on the charcoal burners. The melange of smells from the stalls is fabulous. Many Westerners look askance at the standards of hygiene so baulk at trying the food – which is a great shame as they’re often missing out on unique dishes they’ll never see on a restaurant menu.

I love spending a few hours people-watching at these markets. The vast majority of the stalls are run by women and they make up the majority of the shoppers too so the places are always full of laughter and chatter. No-one’s upset at the sight of a Westerner with a camera, exactly the opposite. I ended up getting into several conversations as I looked at what was on sale or asked about what stuff I didn’t recognise. At one shop, a woman asked me to get a picture of her with her grandson, then send her a copy. Of course, I was more than happy to oblige. Here’s a few shots from that morning. If you want to see the full selection, head to this page on my website.

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One of the butchers stalls. The hygiene standards, lack of refrigeration and the ever-present flies would make most Westerners blanche, but everyone else takes it in their stride.

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Most of the fruit and veg in the market would never make it into a European supermarket as it isn’t perfectly shaped, it has blemished skin or it isn’t uniform in size. But it has something far more important: Taste!

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A young woman buys Salak fruit (Salacca zalacca) from a stallholder. These distinctive fruits are only found in Indonesia and Malaysia.

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A woman prepares a breakfast package for a customer. Each morning this lady will carry her makeshift stall with all the prepared food on her head. It’s a common sight right across Indonesia. I often buy food from ladies like this as it’s home-made, often unique, but always delicious!