Banda Aceh: Nature's Least Favorite

I could never understand why over a quarter million people died in the Boxing Day Tsunami in Sumatra. I was on a small island off the west coast of Thailand when it happened, and the destruction was pretty amazing, but the death toll never reached the proportions that it did in Indonesia. And now I know why.

Banda Aceh sits in the middle of a wide, flat plane that is surrounded by an arc of dormant volcanos, effectively forming a half-ring along the coast, in the center of which sits Banda Aceh. The arc of mountains is aligned so that the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunami happened to be directly in front of the ring. The power of the waves that flattened the city must have been phenomenal, while the enclosing mountains ensured that the water level continued to rise as subsequent waves crashed to shore.

Banda is an interesting town today, if only for playing "spot the aid organization logos", which are everywhere, labeling everything. It is pretty much all cleaned up, but there is still a lot of construction to be done. The surprising thing was how empty it felt. Indonesia is a fairly crowded country, but Banda felt positively deserted by local standards. I couldn't figure out if that was because Banda Aceh sits at the very tip of the most western part of Indonesia, or if 250,000 people were missing from daily life.

Mama Donut

Food on Palau Wey was, uhhhh, sort of fail. I don't really expect that much when you are on a tiny beach, on the backside of an island, in the middle of nowhere, at the tip end of a gigantic country. So Mama Donut was a blessing. I don't actually have a picture of her, as she was very shy and/or hates my blog, but imagine the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle lady, but wearing a head scarf unstead of whatever the bottle wears, and holding donuts, not selling syrup like a cheap hussy.

Mama Donut would just appear mid-morning, I guessing from the next village over, but for all I know she could be camping in the jungle and have a big bonfire over which she does her frying. In the afternoon, after I had personally eaten all of the donuts on the island, she would just sort of melt away. She did a very nice sugared donut, as well as fried bananas, egg rolls, spicy vegetable fritters, and the holy grail of the beach: fresh coconut filled beignet. I can taste them now.

Egg rolls from Mama Donut save me from eating fried noodles. AGAIN. No seriously, I love me some fried noodles. But I love Mama Donut more.

Palau Wey

We are in Palau Wey right now (NOTE: well, when I wrote this we were), a long way from the rest of the world. Or so it seems, anyway. Blue water from the Indian Ocean curls around my feet as I stand looking out to sea, the next land mass either India to the north or Africa to the west. The Indian Ocean hisses gently at night; tropical showers sometimes start falling, dripping softly off the thatched roof of our hut.

The food? Not so much. Backpacker melange, I call it. Banana pancakes, strange “spaghetti”, odd imitations of Thai food. But I don't care. There's nothing here but the ocean to swim in and the easy camaraderie of displaced people. I've already swam three times today, out past the mouth of the bay, into the deeper, indigo water, watching my toes sparkle below the crystal surface of the gentle water, washing away the grime of the last ten days.

Technical Difficulties No Match for Mad Skillz

With an internet connection the speed of frozen sloths, my thumb drive, and more patience than I can normally muster, the computer is back. I have the text, but there were some losses of photos. So if you are reading something that seems like it should have pictures but doesn't, shake your fist at the sky and swear until you feel better.

I've back-posted in more or less chronological order. I think. Remembering is hard.

Out of Order Miscellanea #1

This krazy kute kancil (Malaysian Mousedeer) was housed in this amazing park that surrounds the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. I like things that replace C with K. These are terrible pictures, but they really do prance like deer, but are the size of guinea pigs.

Which make me think they would be excellent roasted.

Mie Aceh

I'm going to level with you: Indonesian food has been underwhelming. Less than impressive. Lacking.

Until I found Mie Aceh. Mie means noodles in Malay (a dirty secret: Indonesians and Malaysians speak the same language. Don't say that to their faces, but the difference is about the same between American and British English. They're a touch tetchy about the subject.) Aceh is the northern part of Sumatra.

Again, apologies for no picture here (earlier technical difficulties were resolved, but there were losses. We have to move on people. Don't loose faith.) Mie Aceh reminds me of Pad Thai- noodles fried with garlic, peppers, and ginger, but in place of fish sauce and lime, they use soy sauce and bitter kalamansi lime juice. Brilliant, delicious, and I ate two servings.

Chicken Satay, Redux

Sorry about the truly terrible photo. I was starving and you are thousands of miles away, so guess what was my first priority? Not you.

Malaysian Chicken Satay 0, Indonesian Chicken Satay 1. Hands down, this Indonesian satay wins by multiple goals. Lightly acidic while still being rich and a touch sweet, it had notes of kafir lime and lemon grass in the sauce, with just enough ground peanut to give it that distinctive taste. The fact that I ate it at this random restaurant in Danau Toba only added to it's appeal.

More like this please, Indonesia.

Danau Toba

Here are some pictures of a volcanic lake we went to in North-central Sumatra. It was formed by the largest volcanic explosion that ever happened.

The second largest volcanic explosion that ever happened in Sumatra happened the evening that we arrived, when the effects of Medan's local water caught up with me. There were thousands of casualties; may we never speak of it again.

Seksparti

Medan is kind of shock after coming from more mainland Southeast Asia. It's the third largest city in Indonesia, and is the epitome of what people don't like about Asian cities: full of traffic, smog, too many people, no sidewalks, and of course, blindingly hot and sweaty. It's also a Muslim country.

As Muslim countries go, it wears it's religion pretty lightly. It's very comfortable to be in Indonesia, even though they don't have a huge minority population, as really, they don't seem to be into some of the harder-line policies that the Gulf States love. You can usually find beer, if you want, and everyone is pretty tolerant of foreigners not being good at passing as Muslims.

Which is why it was blind siding to be propositioned for a sex party. By two separate men. In a crappy, dirty, broken down hotel, directly behind a mosque. Indonesia doesn't seem to mind having beer around or foreign ladies swimming on their beaches in bikinis, but it's not exactly Amsterdam.

Uncomfortable? Just a little bit. Imagine the scene: two white boys, trying hard not to culturally offend, having a broken conversation in Indonesian, slowly realizing that the guy they are talking to is propositioning a three-way. TWICE IN A ROW, WITH TWO SEPARATE INDONESIANS. Jesus wept.

Dear Lonely Planet: the Raja Hotel, on Jalan Raja in Medan, is now a gay cruising hotel. You might want to update it's listing.

Technical Difficulties

Stay tuned. My computer, which has never once had any sort of problem, decided it was tired of SE Asia and would like to no longer function. Do not worry: beatings will continue until it works correctly. Food is still being eaten and stories written... just going to take a bit to figure out the other part.

Uhhhh, this is food?

Food FAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL.

If you are ever in a hawker center in Kuala Lumpur and you look up and as sign that says “Economy Rice. Cooked Meat Vegetable” turn around and run away. I haven't a picture of the bowl of noodles, which I decided to call “Used Chicken Soup”, but it was this: one shred of chicken meat, a meager fist full of noodles, a broth with the full rich flavor of salty water. The owner of the stall was eating something that looked totally delicious, some sort of huge dumpling, almost like a Chinese perogie. I pointed to it and tried to order two, and he swatted my hand away and said “MY FOOD!”

Indeed.

So we got what was not his food, a bowl of nothing served with noodles. His cooking skills are almost as good as his English skills.

Nasi Lemak

Breakfast is really where a people show their true colors. Do they want a sweetened fried bun? Do the like toast spread with jam? Do they like rice spread with sweetened fish paste, chili sauce, peanuts, and coconut milk? I thought that I would be two of those three types of people. I mean really, donuts and marmalade are pretty easy to get behind. But fish paste?

I was wrong. Spicy, salty, crunchy, and satisfyingly rice-centric, it goes great with a cup of iced coffee as the sun starts to come up.

Melacca, Malaysia

Melacca was kind of ridden hard and put away wet by the colonial powers: founded by the Portuguese, it later became part of Dutch East India before finally bedding down with the British. All that confusion has left a mix of Malays, Straits Chinese, and Tamils, and decades later, a quiet port town filled with the smell of frying chiles and noodles.

Hindus Make the Best Alarm Clocks

Malaysia, and South East Asia, in general, is not a land of sleeping in. When the temperature can reach 95 F/35 C or more by noon, it makes sense that you would get the heavy lifting done before lunch. I, however, am not normally one of those people who rises early. I'm not one of those people who can sleep till 2pm, either, but rousing me from bed before nine am is normally a re-creation of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

Not so in Malaysia, thanks to organized religion.

The Muslims tried their best. They start their call to prayer around 5:45 am this time of year. Yesterday's morning guy was considerably better than today's, the call to prayer starting slow and sweet, but he got some vibrato into it towards the end. Today's guy was either very ill, or maybe had lost his vocal cords in a freak washing machine accident. It sounded like he did the chanting thorough one of those electronic voice boxes. But for either of them, it was simply too short. What, three minutes of amplified warbling is going to wake me up pre-six am? Come on Mohammed.

Yesterday being Sunday, the Catholics tried their best, chiming in with some serious bell work at 6 am, probably just to remind their flock that if they didn't get out of the house while the Muslims were chanting then they were going to be late. But it was pretty weak.

But the Hindus: well now, that was something spectacular. Yesterday they started with some chanting around six thirty, and then about five minutes later a bell joined in. It doesn't sound like much yet, but this 'chanting' could be described as 'yelling', and the 'bell' would be better called a 'gong'. After five more minutes of that, we started in with the drumming. This was not one guy with a bongo- it sounded like the entire drum corps of a NCAA Championship Football Team- back beat, syncopation, a cymbal. This is actually when I woke up the first day. And I blamed it on the Catholics, assuming that because it was a Sunday, they had decided to assemble an actual marching band as a piece de resistance to show the other denominations in town what was the what.

At about the twenty minute mark, this little wake up call has the force of a jet engine and the excitement of a snake charmer, and this is when the horn comes in. The horn doesn't really play a tune, it justs sort of chimes in to underscore that sleeping is over. Hindu scholars might argue that the horn represents Vishnu, or maybe Amber, the destroyer, but for all intents and purposes, Horn says Get On With Your Day.

And that's how I woke up yesterday, and this morning. And because I got up so early, I got to eat this, Masala Thosai (also spelled Masala Dosa in some places). It's like a crispy crepe filled with curried potatoes and served with three separate and delicious sauces. So, in the new world order, the Hindus of South India are invited to be in charge of waking and breakfasting.

Yet another picture of me looking rather odd in a public eating place. Note to self: quitting looking weird on film. PS, to All the Stick People (prior travelling partners extrodinaire), it breaks my heart to be eating this without you. Get your shoes on and meet me here.

One of us! One of us!

Know what is not fun? Being labled as diseased. I can see why lepers hate that so much, what with the jeering and the name calling and all. It's a nasty business.

J and I just crossed the Straits of Johor, between Singapore and Malaysia, over the new Tuas Causeway on a bus. You leave downtown Singapore and then traverse through this strange part of city in the West, full of shops that sell tranmissions for oil dereks, gigantic flywheels, transformers, and other industrial errata that doesn't really fit in with the trim-ladies-walking-around-shopping-for-Hermes-bags part of the city we had been staying in. Ending a sentance with a preposition? Love to. For those of us who grace the Potomac with our presence, it's Singapore's PG County: used cars and grumpy men until the sun sets. I digress.

We got stamped out of Singapore with adrimable efficiency and then drove acorss the Straits, duly presenting perfectly filled out paperwork to a Malaysian official. Now, I've travelled a fair bit, and, as much as I do not like carrying a US passport (too much explaining about how you are not a huge asshole intent on killing your hosts' top officials and then taking their natural resources), the great advantage is that normally just waving it around in the air gets you thorough immigration. Holding that thin blue folio usually allows you to skip the visas, skip proving you have enough money to not die in a ditch in this new country, skip providing finger prints and police reports and dental records or whatever else is asked of people who have less privledged passports. Even paperwork has a pecking order.

But this time, all the immigration officials could see were invisible Swine Flu viruses crawling around on the pages. Because clearly Americans use their passports to clean their noses when ill. Love that paper cut feeling from the stiff card stock. We were shunted off into a separate line, everyone eyeing us, just waiting for one of us to drop dead or explode, spreading the disease all around Malaysia. This must be what the Chinese feel like, as it seems like everywhere they go people are looking at them suspiciously, as if thinking “I know you sleep with a chicken under your pillow- what fresh death are you bringing today?”. Actually, we were the only non-Chinese in the health inspection line.

But luckily, due to the diligance of the Malaysian Immigration service, we were deemed “NOT WALKING DEATH” by having a fourteen year old take our temperature with a peice of tape and a coat hanger. Maybe incubation period doesn't translate well, but still, it's nice that someone is paying attention. I'm glad to know that my temperature is a healthy 38.6 C.

7-Eleven is Awesome.

Do not argue with me on this. I love it so much. While I would rather get shot than wander into a McDonald's overseas, I love 7-Eleven. It's such a snap shot of what is important in the country that it is in. According to 7-Eleven, Singapore cares about Hello Kitty, Fashion Magazines, Maps, Mints but not Chewing Gum, and Mobile Telephones. They do not care about, for example, Hot Dogs, like the Thais seem to, or Tequila, like the Mexicans do.

Bestow upon me your air conditioned goodness, a newspaper, a cup of coffee, and a reminder that all is right in the world.

Dim Sum: What God Serves for Breakfast

Yeah, so Hawker Stalls continue to be awesome. So awesome, I cannot type awesomeness of this nature: I need something bigger than ALL CAPS, like maybe those flashing fonts in various contrasting colors that used to be all the rage on the early internet. But with lazers. And a smoke machine.

Dim Sum from Jalan Besar Hawker Center.

J and I are fast eaters. Get out of the way.

Buddah of the Forest Crystal Dumpling: AKA the Reason to Keep Living

If you were on a ledge threatening to end it all, I'd bring you this dumpling with some red chili sauce and a bottle of beer. And if you didn't like it, I would push you.

Buddha of the Forest Crystal Dumpling.

It's amazing. I don't yet know exactally how this "crystal dumpling" is made. I have heard tell of an ancient chinese-woman magic that involves pouring boiling water into starch and then adding lard. Sounds logical. The dumpling had shrimp, green vegetables and a nice balance of ginger/garlic flavors. Or I think it did. I ate the tray so fast that several people plummeted to their deaths. I have no idea where the name comes from- get on this people. Google is alot harder to access when everything you own has to fit in a backpack.

Also, I don't know what forest Buddha frequented, but the forests of my times have no shrimp.

Still. So. Good.

Food, Glorious Food

It's not a secret that I like to eat. And drink. Never forget that when buying me presents and trying to get me into bed. I'll do almost anything for barbequed brisket. And a cold beer on a hot afternoon- let's not talk about something we are all going to regret.

But Singapore. Oh my god. It had me at the first bite. Also, when it decided to be tropical and hot but also have an amazing public transit system. I have weird needs. Singapore also served up something called the Hawker Center, which is more delicious than it sounds. A while back, Singapore had great street food, but people kept getting hit by busses while eating noodles (or the noodle stands were blocking the sidewalk- I wasn't paying that much attention to the explination). The government decided that street food was here-by banned, but the hawkers would be moved to purpose built centers, which ended up looking like a mall food court somehow became detached from a Sears and washed up on the corner.

The architecture of vendors surrounding a central area of dining tables is where the comparison to a mall food court ends. In place of Sbarro's and Taco Bell are tiny stands serving Dim Sum, Laksa, Roast Pork, Pad Mie Goring, Steamed Buns, Fried Noodles, Lamb Murtabak, Roti, and also the occasional hotdog stand. There is usally a few stands suppling juice and beer and dessert, and a lot of fans, as none of them are air conditioned and Singapore is actually located on the surface of the Sun and it gets a touch steamy at times.

Your correspondant, looking creepy, like a cult member, if you will, waiting for people to bring him food.

Also, I ended up eating six meals a day in Singapore. There's one hidden after breakfast, lunch is two parts, and there is a third that I call “Afternoon Breakfast”. Be sure to schedule more time at the gym.

Singapore, 6:15am

A woman in a headscarf walks by, trailed by two girls in Islamic school uniform, like black and white ducks following their more colorful mother. A kid in a square cap comes next, and a old, old, old Chinese man, who should be smoking an opium pipe, but isn't, and is smoking a cigarette instead. I'm wearing shorts and flip-flops. It's already almost 85°F/30°C, and the humidity hangs from the low sky in invisible curtains. I can't sleep any more, even though it's just six fifteen in the morning. We arrived last night, greasy and butt-sore, twelve hours off our schedule, twenty-six hours later. Numbers are confusing. That's why I am drinking a cup of too-sweet Nescafe and watching Singapore wake up, happy to already be sweating into my pants, happy to be wearing sandals and feel the heat, happy to smell that smell of rotting and spicy food frying and damp air. Happy to be here.