Home Sweet Home

The revised itinerary (click to view larger image)

102 days after we left, we arrived home again. This is the longest time we’ve ever been away and it feels great to be back where everything is familiar and you can have things exactly the way you like it. It’s been a privilege to be able to travel spontaneously, to adjust our itinerary whenever we felt like it, to stay longer or shorter at any location depending on our mood. We had great luck wherever we ended up and managed to serendipitously come across hidden gems and make special discoveries at almost every turn. And we didn’t do so bad budget-wise either as we were able to stick close to our plan of spending only $100 per day. But had we gone to Japan as planned, we probably would have really gone over.

It will take weeks, if not months for me to digest this amazing experience. But as of right now, if there is one word that can summarize the entire trip, it is “guilt.” Every day, we read about the widening gap between those who have wealth and those who do not. On this trip, I was confronted with the reality of this discrepancy almost every day. Of course this is completely my fault for choosing destinations where our dollars could be stretched. I suppose if I wanted to avoid guilt, a trip to Europe could easily make me feel like a pauper in just a couple of days. But instead of feeling lucky to have what I have, I felt sad for those who have so little. It would have been okay if the poor and uneducated had opportunities to improve themselves. But they do not and are doomed to live out their lives in poverty. The world today is simply not a fair place.

On this trip, it also became obvious to me that government and policies can make a huge difference in the well-being of its people. In countries with weak or corrupt governments, market forces have taken over and these are the countries where the common people are suffering the most. It’s obvious to me that market forces don’t always make things better, and in fact they often facilitate the exploitation of the little people by letting the bullies have their way. Capitalism is simply not fair and only a strong government can level the playing field.

So now that I have reliable internet access again, it’s time to finish up the sabbatical project. But first, I'm going to cook myself a good home-made meal. No more eating out for a while!

8 Days in Java

Java is the next island over to the west of Bali. Java wasn’t on our list of stops to make, but our friend Danny lives there and he invited us to come over to take a look. Danny was an international exchange student from Indonesia who came to Parkland College on a scholarship a few years ago (we were his “homestay family” in the USA). So we flew over to Yogyakarta (a.k.a. “Jogja”) for a visit since it was only a short hop over by plane. Jogja is Java’s second largest city (after Jakarta) and it is also Java’s artistic and cultural center. The city lies in the shadows of Mount Merapi, an active volcano that last erupted in October of 2010. Jogja is a popular tourist destination for Indonesians, but there are very few foreigners here. Bali is the polar opposite with almost all foreign tourists, so we’re getting a more authentic Indonesian experience here in Java.

Upon landing in Jogja, we headed immediately north to Borobudur, the most popular attraction on the island. Borobudur is a restored Buddhist temple built around the 8th century. It is the largest Buddhist temple in the world and it is extremely well preserved because it was covered with volcanic ash and “lost” for many centuries. It wasn’t until the 1970s that restoration work began and the entire temple was taken apart stone by stone, cleaned, and meticulously put back together again with structural reinforcement and a new drainage system. To make our visit to Borobudur special, we booked the Manohara Hotel which is right on the grounds of the temple complex so that we could partake in a 5 a.m. sunrise guided tour the next morning. The temple was so impressive we went back again twice for another look before returning to Jogja.

Another major highlight of our Jogja visit was an excursion to Prambanan, the restored Hindu temple complex that’s just as impressive as Borobudur but much less well known. Built at around the same time as Borobudur and located within an hour’s drive of each other, both temples stand as historical testament that multiple religions can co-exist peacefully in the same region at the same time. The rest of the week in Jogja was spent shopping in the central Malioboro district and trying out the local cuisine. Throughout the week, I tried various cooked jackfruit dishes, two types of ox skin stews and a bowl of soup with a roasted chicken head. The best deal was a delicious bowl of noodle soup with mysterious unrecognizable ingredients bought for 10 cents from a street vendor right in front of Rumah Mertua, our second hotel.

We also met up with our friend Danny and his friends who picked us up for a tour of the Java countryside and Salatiga, his current home town. Danny will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree this year and he has plans to go abroad to study for a master’s degree. So who knows, maybe he’ll end up coming back to the USA.

Japan would have been our next stop, but with the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis still unresolved, we changed our plans. We’ll be coming home a week earlier than expected, but the timing feels right. We’ve been gone for over 3 months and we are definitely starting to miss the comfort of home.

(See more pictures of Java)