Beijing adventures

Beijing is almost nothing like I remember! While there are small alleys and traditional neighborhoods that detour off from the main, wide boulevards, there are with huge modern apartment buildings and malls everywhere. When we were here, I remember that I needed as sweater because it was cold. We had one option – the government friendship store – where to buy it. Now there are clothing stores (including fancy ones like Gucci and Prada) all over the place, car dealerships and fast-food restaurants galore.

We celebrated our arrival with a big Peking duck feast. In fact, we decided to make it our goal to find the best Peking duck in Beijing while we were here. We managed to eat duck for three of the five nights we were here – all different presentations and all delicious. We probably ate more duck here than the kids have eaten in their whole lives!

Our first day out was rainy and cold. We bundled up and headed out for the Forbidden City. It was huge and impressive and definitely consistent with everything we had read about it. We went through building after building and the complex just went on and on. When we were up on the higher buildings it seemed all we could see in the distance were more of the iconic peaked yellow roofs of the palace buildings. While we weren’t quite up on all of our Chinese dynasties, we had recently watched “The Last Emperor,” which was filmed at the Forbidden City and was about the last Qing emperor whose reign ended in 1911 when he was just a boy. It made it even more exciting to recognize the different parts of the palace from the movie and give them little more context, as the whole complex is giant and a little overwhelming.

One night we arranged to go to a Chinese acrobat show. We weren’t really sure whether we had truly arranged it or not as the concierge didn’t speak English very well but he assured us there were tickets waiting for us at the theater. He wrote the name and address of the theater on a card for us to give to the taxi driver who took us to the other side of town (past Tiananmen square) and dropped us in front of one of several acrobat theaters on a small square and directed us to walk down a small alley. We did as we were told (actually were pantomimed to do) and ended it making it to our seats.

The theater was nearly empty when the show started – only about 15 seats filled out of about 100. Despite this, all of the acrobats put on an amazing show and seemed to be really enjoying themselves. The show consisted of about 10 different acts from contortionists to jugglers to girls hanging from wires. All four of us were ooing, aahing and clapping for each act until our hands were sore. Dylan managed to click a few pictures before we were told it was not allowed. Emma and David both now want to be Chinese acrobats.

We had our first Geocaching experience at the Temple of Heaven – it was a blast. I didn’t know anything about it until we met some people on the Great Wall who were really into it. It is basically a treasure hunt using GPS to find the location. When you find the location you log your information and if the cache is large enough, you can leave a little treasure behind. It is a great thing to do with the kids especially. Our school theme this year is navigation and they have learned about latitude and longitude so they can understand how the GPS works to help us find our location.

The cache we found was located right outside of the Temple of Heaven in the fork of a tree. It was hard to be quiet or subtle as we weaved through the trees counting down the distance to the cache on the GPS. This was a very popular cache as we were the fourth group to find it that day! We added our name to the list, GeoGarlands, and then quickly put it back in it’s hiding place and went on our way to the Temple of Heaven. The temple was beautiful but was a little overshadowed from the excitement of our geocache adventure. The kids were already begging to find another.

The afternoon before we left for Xian, we headed for the back lakes area, a part of Beijing located northwest of the Forbidden City. It was very different than the other parts of Beijing we had been in where we had been surrounded by skyscrapers and big busy streets. This area has a few small lakes surrounded by walking paths and bridges. All around the lakes were small restaurants and bars that would have been great in warmer weather. We watched the sun go down and the moon rise as we walked around the lake.

We were surprised to be sad to be leaving Beijing. We hadn’t planned on spending more than about a week here as we thought it would just be crowded and polluted and that week would be more than enough. After a few days however, it had really grown on us. It just felt like a very exciting place to be – it had a energy to it – kind of like Washington DC, where you realize you are in the heart of everything.

The cold weather has certainly been a change for us – it is freezing compared to where we have been – in the low 40s. We are wearing everything warm that we own and are seriously rethinking our plan to spend winter in Europe…Australia and New Zealand might be more our speed.

Hiking and Sleeping on the Great Wall

We had packed up, cleared out of the room and breakfasted all by 8am, and Gary and Lara were waiting for us, on time, in the lobby. It was Gary's (the owner) day off, so Lara, a recent Tourism grad from university in her home province of Sichuan, would be our guide. We learned that ours would be a private group (just the four of us and the guide) which suited us fine. We piled into the van and the driver headed north. Lara decided we should stop and see the Bird's Nest (olympic stadium) on the way out of town rather than the way back, as she knew we would be tired the next day. She was right.

The Bird's Nest was very cool to see in person, much bigger than we realized from seeing it on TV. We didn't get to go inside, but it was still neat to see it, as well as the Water Cube where Michael Phelps made history. 

It was very cold in Beijing, and since arriving we had been a little apprehensive about hiking and sleeping on the Great Wall. As far as we understood, we would sleep in one of the many watchtowers which dotted the wall. We would have sleeping bags and mats provided, and we would be inside a room with a roof above us, but with no heat or fires. The website had mentioned something about a nearby hotel which was used as a backup in the event of inclement weather, and I think we were secretly hoping for that - we could have the best of both worlds: hiking on the wall all day, and sleeping in a bed in a heated room all night! But Lara soon dispelled us of that notion; she had led a group the previous weekend, which had been just as cold, and they slept in the tower, and it was cold (she didn't sugarcoat that) but they survived. So at least we could now resign ourselves to our fate and get on with enjoying it.

We drove for about 2 hours to our starting point, while I napped in the back of the van most of the way. And then, on the outskirts of a small village, we stopped suddenly, the doors opened, and a warmly dressed woman in a red wool jacket climbed in. We were told nothing about who this person was or why we had stopped to pick her up. We had become accustomed to this in China: it was partly due to language challenges, but also partly cultural, but we often felt that we were on a "need to know basis".  It seems that you are often expected to follow along, with no questions asked or instructions offered, and anything you need to know will be made clear when and if you need to know it. This happens at restaurants, hotels, museums, and even private tour groups. 

We exited the main rode and drove along a smaller road for another 15 minutes or so, with some dialogue between the driver and the woman we had picked up. We had our first glimpses of the wall, with towers perched on hill crests stretching off to the distance. Then we stopped abruptly, all eyes turned to look at us, and Lara (who spoke decent English) asked if we wanted to do a 6-hour hike or 4-hour hike. All the information we'd been given said that we would do a 6-hour hike on day 1, it was what we had signed up for, so Wendy and I looked at each other and replied "6-hour hike" in unison. This having been decided, we then made a U-turn, and drove for 15 minutes back the way we had just come. No questions asked, no explanations offered, though at some point towards the end of the hike the next day I managed to glean from Lara that the normal "6-hour hike" usually only takes about 4 hours, so we actually ended up doing a few miles more than planned...which was fine with us.

Back on the main road we stopped outside a toll station to make a last public bathroom break before starting out. Walking back across the road, under a cold and gray sky, on the desolate outskirts of a small village somewhere in northern China, with a dozen or so locals milling about, waiting for a bus, staring at us (something else we have become accustomed to in China) I had a lonely, apprehensive feeling. WTF were we doing here? Lara finally introduced the woman to us as "a local farmer" (and she was thereafter referred to by the children as "The Farmer") and explained that she would be accompanying us on the first leg of the hike because "it could be dangerous" without her. No questions as to what exactly this meant, no explanation offered. This didn't help to put my mind at ease.

Back in the van, we drove into the village, and turned onto a small lane. Walking down the lane was the most iconic old Chinese man I've seen here, hunched over his walking stick, wearing his blue-gray Chinese-pajamas suit, chin jutting and lips sucked in over his toothless gums. He didn't seem to notice us driving past.

And then we stopped, got out of the van, put on our backpacks, and headed out. The driver would meet us at our destination. We walked up into the hills above the village, and quickly passed a number of dilapidated old brick buildings, which Lara told us was an old army barracks. We hiked up and up and we could see the wall above us, snaking along the ridge as far as we could see, demarcating our trail. And then we reached it. It was very deteriorated where we started out and we had to follow a trail next to it for a while, but soon we were able to scramble up and begin walking along the top of the wall. 

The hike was amazing. One vista after another opened up, each more amazing than the last, with always the wall snaking out along the ridge top as far as we could see behind us and ahead of us. The kids were in heaven, and though we ended up hiking over 8 miles that day (seeing only a handful of other people the entire time) they never tired or complained. The wall was unrestored, but in most places it was in good enough condition for us to walk along the top of it. One area was impassable and we had to divert down a trail into a narrow valley, and hike back up another valley to rejoin it. The valleys were all farmed, mostly with corn, which had been recently harvested. We saw old people working in the fields, and we were struck by how things had probably changed very little in that valley over the last few millennia or so. There were piles of corn stalks everywhere, all of which had been gathered by hand, some of which had been partially burned for reasons I'm not sure, and the smell of burnt corn combined with that of the tilled red earth. 

At one point later we passed an abandoned farm house, and we couldn't resist going in to take a peek. It was a low-slung mud-walled dwelling set against one side of a very narrow valley. Just like Wang Lung's original house in The Good Earth, which Wendy and I had both just read, it consisted of three rooms: the main room, which was about 10 ft x 10 ft, with a brick-walled stove, and nothing else, and one bedroom off to each side, each smaller than the main room, each with a 3 ft or so high adobe platform which was the bed. The grass-thatched roof hung low, and was blackened from years of smoke. The walls were papered with newspapers, as had been the wood-latticed "windows". The floors were hardened dirt. There was a wooden outhouse and a rock-lined well outside. And that's about it. It was truly amazing to step into this ordinary peasant's home, and to imagine that not too many years ago an entire family would have lived and worked here, and to think that most Chinese people have lived in homes just like this for millennia, and many still do. 

On the last segment of that day we reached a fully restored section of the wall. The unrestored section had been very cool, but it was amazing to walk on this restored section and see how the wall would have looked when originally constructed hundreds of years ago. The towers were also restored, and David and Emma had fun running around them, climbing to the second level on the two story ones, and playing hide and seek between the pillars. In one of these towers we encountered a group of 4 Chinese, each armed with an enormous and expensive looking camera, and they pounced on Emma and David and proceeded to pose and photograph them for 20 minutes! At one point David was getting tired of it, and I snuck away with him to play Mongol-invader fighting in another part of the tower, leaving Emma to handle the photoshoot (she seemed to be enjoying it). A couple minutes later two of the women found us, literally shoved me aside, and began snapping away at David again. I've never seen anything like it. It literally went on for 20 minutes, and the four of them must have each taken several hundred photos of our children! The man gave me his card, which Lara said indicated that he was a professional photographer. I'm supposed to email him to get copies of the pictures, but I haven't yet.

Finally we were done, and we walked down into a small village and we were seated (outdoors) and quickly offered tea and beer. Once we stopped hiking it became very cold, so Wendy and I bundled up with everything we had, but Emma and David had already started playing with a few of the local children, so they didn't get cold at all (David was sweaty!). Another tour group joined us for dinner, and we had a great time getting to know all of them. There were two families from Australia, one with two boys and one with two girls, so Emma and David had a great time playing with all of them. It was surreal to be sitting out on the main street of this tiny village, illuminated by a single bulb hanging on a wire behind our table, eating the (mainly vegetarian) local feast which had been prepared for us, shivering as we drank our ice cold beers (which, by the way, the locals thought was crazy, as they prefer their beer hot!), but it wasn't the lonely, apprehensive feeling I'd had in the morning, it was the good kind of surreal. An old man shuffled up and sat down in a small room behind us to slurp his bowl of noodles. I took a small video of him as he posed for what he apparently thought was a photograph. He was very nice and complimented us on our children and then shuffled back off.

We made our way back up to the wall, and along to the tower where we would sleep. We were given two sleeping bags and two mats apiece, and managed to stay plenty warm and relatively comfortable during the night. Because our group was smaller (and our guide more assertive) we slept in the small wooden room which had been built on top of the tower, which was fully sealed off, while the larger group slept one floor below us, in the actual tower, which had windows open to the elements. They survived as well, though a few who slept under the windows got a bit wet when it rained during the night, and one guy had a rude awakening in the early morning hours when something scurried across his chest! 

We were all up early the next day, with hot coffee and cold cereal to revive us, and in good spirits all around after surviving our night on the wall. We only hiked a few miles that morning, but with some very steep up and down sections of the wall. It was very foggy and dramatic looking back down a steep section we had just summited, or looking up at the next one to come. Emma and David spent the whole morning walking and talking with their new friends, as did Wendy and I. Finally we came to the end of our hike, bought a celebratory beer from a vendor on the wall, took some group photos, and headed back to the van for more napping on the way back to Beijing.

Overnight Train to Beijing

We are on the train from Hong Kong to Beijing. The same landscape has been whizzing by since I woke up this morning to see the sun rising out of the haze over the fields. Tracks of open fields, mostly fallow, lined with tall, sparse trees that are occasionally interrupted by unknown, sprawling towns and sliced up by elevated, concrete roadways. There are big, tall , modern apartment buildings with piles of rubble around mixed with what look like abandoned Mao-era government buildings. On the outskirts of the towns are the old town remnants – one story brick compounds with flared Chinese roofs that look like they have been around since before Mao. They look just like something out of “The Good Earth”. Rice and ears of corn are spread out on tarps along the side of the roads, drying in the sun (just like in Bali).

Outside looks more like what I thought China was going to look like. On the train yesterday afternoon we kept wondering when we had passed from Hong Kong to the Mainland. The Chinese woman on the intercom system did not give us any indication - at least not in English. The first thing we noticed before we arrived at Guangzhou station, where we knew we were in mainland, was that cars were driving on the right side of the road and the drivers were back on the left side of the car.

I wish I could remember more of what China looked like when I came with my dad 30 years ago. I remember 1-2 story brick and cinderblock buildings, everyone being dressed in their grey, dark blue, or olive Mao suits, and bicycles everywhere. I remember seeing the occasional old lady hobbling along the sideway with her tiny bound feet (I am sure none of them are alive anymore). We were here in April, I think, and I remember that it was mostly cold and dreary every place we went (Guangzhou, Gulin, Beijing, Shanghai). It is cloudy out now and I am sure the coolness will be a pleasant change for us.

Golden Week in Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong from Bali via Singapore just in time for the huge fireworks display for National Day to kick off Golden week. There are two Golden weeks celebrations in China where people travel home from big cities or as we discovered, travel to Hong Kong to shop! We were lucky enough to be able to watch the fireworks over Victoria Harbor from our hotel on Hong Kong Island. Seeing the harbor lit up on both sides from all of the high-rise buildings almost dwarfed the fireworks!

We have adventured out to find some famous Hong Kong dim sum. We found a place inside one of the big high-rises. It was a little intimidating as we were the only foreigners in the restaurant until we realized that it wasn’t really that different than venturing into a dim sum restaurant in Monterey Park! The only real confusion was trying to get some soy sauce (we didn’t know the word in Cantonese) and “soy sauce” seemed to translate as vinegar…

Other meals have been a little more challenging – with vague menus or descriptions that are only slightly more useful than just staring at the Chinese characters (eight delights with XO sauce). We have been trying to try something new each meal – something we would not be likely to order. Shredded jellyfish was our first challenge (I was holding a grudge against them every since snorkeling in Indonesia). It wasn’t much – more like really stiff Jell-O with sesame oil – we probably don’t need to get again. Another meal it was stir-fried eel. We actually weren’t that sure about it, but the “helpful” waitress wouldn’t really let us NOT order it. It came in a sizzling hot stone bowl, cut into delicate fillets and stir-fried with green onions and ginger…and yes, it was delicious! We also tried something called “mantis” prawns that ended up coming looking just like 2-inch lobster tails. I think they were actually langoustines. Hairy crabs are the big delicacy here. We haven’t tried that yet but are working our way up to it!

We have been getting to know our way around Hong Kong Island and Kowloon little by little. We took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor to Kowloon and wove our way through the crazy Chinese shoppers. People were actually lined up to get in to the Chanel and Prada shops! We found our way through the crowd to end up at Kowloon Park to let the kids run around and check out the bird aviary.

Another day, we took a double-decker hop-on, hop-off bus around town. We toured all through Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. We were blown away by the number of huge, high-rise buildings and how many people we saw in the streets. Singapore is also very densely populated, with most people living in apartments, but you never felt crowded. Here in Hong Kong, you are very aware of how many people are around. The parks are all full of people playing tennis, basketball, doing tai chi and just hanging out and the streets and metro are almost always full.

Yesterday, for a change of pace from Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, we took a ferryboat ride out to Lantau, one of the hundreds of outlying islands. It was so small and sweet! There was a small waterfront area with delicious seafood restaurants and pedestrian paths with almost no one around. We took a bus up to the top of the island where the largest outdoor Buddha is seated (he is 34 meters tall!). There were lots of people here, but still fewer than Hong Kong! It was drizzly and foggy, so Buddha looked very mysterious peering down on us through the wispy clouds.

For all of its modern and Western ways, Hong Kong is still very traditional. In the newspaper there was a story about people in the new territories being able to sue the government for public projects that impact the feng shui of their communities. In addition to this, the government has a fund to pay for the requisite rituals to be conducted before starting on new projects to appease the proper deities. We also heard about fortunetellers that you could go to (who many locals go to) to put curses on your enemies. Apparently there is a relationship between how long the curse lasts and how much it costs – you can chose for just a day or two or for eternity if you are a big spender!

We are really enjoying Hong Kong so far and still have much more to explore. We will be here for another week and then head off to Mainland China. We’ll spend a about a week in Beijing, a few days in Xian to see the terra cotta warriors, and then a few weeks to Shanghai (including the Expo before it closes!).

Cruising the Eastern Indonesian Islands

After Singapore we spent 4 amazing weeks in Indonesia, the first 3 in Bali and the 4th on a cruise through the islands east of Bali. Wendy is going to post about Bali, but below is my (admittedly lengthy) account of the cruise.

Also, we've reactivated an old Flickr account which we'll use to post photos going forward (it's a little cumbersome adding them one by one to the blog). We have a lot more photos to upload, but here's a start:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garlandpix/

After 3 great weeks in Bali we signed up to join a small boat cruise through some of the eastern Indonesian islands. After some confusion over where exactly in the harbor the boat was moored, we finally found it and boarded on the morning of the 22nd. The boat is called Ombak Putih, which means white wave in Indonesian. It's a beautiful wooden ship, painted white with blue trim and huge blue sails (when they were somewhat infrequently raised) and a bow that sweeps upward in a seaworthy arc. We met our fellow cruisers, about 20 of us in all, who hailed from Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and America, all very friendly and we were happy to see two other small children in the group. We were welcomed on board with cold towels and fresh juice from the friendly and smiling crew, an auspicious beginning to our week. We motored east out of the harbor and settled into conversation with our fellow passengers for the next week.

After a very good lunch (another very auspicious sign) we disembarked in a small harbor in eastern Bali where we boarded awaiting cars and drove to a small Bali Aga village. The Bali Aga are the original inhabitants of Bali prior to mass migration from Java, and there are a number of villages where there culture and traditional ways are still preserved. They have been able to preserve their villages through strict rules regarding marriage: if you marry outside of the village you must leave the village. In this way the ownership of their land has remained in the village for hundreds of years. However, with only 600 or so people in the village we saw, intermarriage has caused some challenges genetically. Brothers and sisters do not marry, but first cousins do. But, if you marry outside of the village and are later divorced you can return to the village, with your children, and the gene pool is freshened somewhat in this way. The village we saw is also noted for double-ikat weaving, and incredibly complicated weaving process that I will not even begin to attempt to explain, as I don't understand it in the least. Maybe Wendy can take a crack at it in another posting...

After the Bali Aga village we drove to a temple, known colloquially as the Bat Temple because it fronts a teeming Bat Cave. There was a ceremony going on when we arrived, but everyone very friendly and welcoming and they ushered us around the worshippers to the mouth of the bat cave. Thousands upon thousands of large fruit bats, all hanging upside down, squeaking, flapping wings to find a better spot, guano-ing and stinking, and posing for endless pictures. An incredible sight, not for the squeamish or bat-phobic, and just one example of the teeming abundance of life in all forms that we encountered all over Bali.

Then back to the boat and motoring overnight east to Lombok island. In between Bali and Lombok lies the Wallace line, which roughly delineates Asia from Australia in terms of flora and fauna. West of the line all is lush, green, tropical, and teeming with bats and lizards and snakes and leeches (all of which we encountered first hand in Bali). East of the line the climate becomes drier, the vegetation becomes drier and more Australian - eucalyptus trees, more scrub, etc. The difference was noticeable in eastern Lombok, though we did still see lots of rice paddies and greenery. But the further east we went the more apparent it became, and we actually saw pampas grass and cactuses on some of the eastern islands.

We took a bus from the port in Lombok and headed to our first village where we were to see a traditional dancing performance. We exited the bus and were immediately overwhelmed by our greeting. A full gamelan (orchestra) broke into loud, clangy and drummy song in the middle of the street, and two villagers stood waiting to administer a flower lei greeting to two of us. Wendy and I were selected by our guide as it was the day of our anniversary so we proceeded to greet them, received our leis, and led the procession in a slow march down the street. Children and villagers gathered on all sides, the gamelan banged away, and 22 or so westerners marched down the street accompanies by several hundred Indonesians, with Wendy and I at the helm. Nobody had told us to expect this when we got off the bus!

We turned down an alley and entered a medium-sized courtyard, fully covered with a large cross-thatched awning that filtered the bright sunlight into a blanket of thousands of small diamond shapes that lay over everything. The westerners sat, the villagers and children poured in all around, tea was offered and drunk, and the gamelan clanged away. We were treated to several interesting dances, culminating in a ritualized stick fight dance between two men who were selected. They had large bamboo sticks, and rectangular wooden shields stretched with dried cow hide. They made a loud band when struck by one of the bamboo poles. The combatants each had a coach (who had selected them) and there was a referee. All was ritualized, all knew their parts well, and the actual fighting was continually interspersed with dancing, including the two combatants dancing together. But, ritualized though it was, it was still a fight between two testosterone-fueled men, and in between the dancing they did whale on each other with the bamboo sticks, with both men emerging with large welts on their backs and sides. There was a rumor that one of the men was later taken to the hospital, but I don't know if this is true. Finally the westerners were invited up to dance with the locals, and after a few thousand more photos were taken we marched back to the bus, waving and smiling, and entirely overwhelmed by this, the first of three villages we were to visit that day!

Next we visited a village known for pottery making, and the reception was significantly more low key. We watched the traditional pottery-making process, Emma and David were invited to help, and more photos were taken.

Then we went to a village known for weaving. The weaving was beautiful and I'm sure would be much more interesting to me if I had the slightest comprehension of how the process works. But to witness the weaving we wove ourselves through the narrow streets of this village, glimpsing into courtyards and returning the many friendly smiles that were offered. Our presence was noted more and more until we had a dozen or so local children following us around, smiling, saying "hello mister", high-fiving, mugging for photos, and herding younger siblings along. I said hello to one small boy standing with his sister. He boisterously yelled back something not understood by me, and his sister clapped her hand on his mouth and looked at me red-cheeked and bug-eyed. After a nice lunch at our guide's home in the village, and after Wendy bought a nice woven sarong, we found our way back to the bus and back to the ship.

After the amazing but overwhelming day in Lombok we had a nice down-time day of swimming and snorkeling on day 3. In the morning we visited Moyo island, which is known for an ultra-exclusive resort that caters to the rich and famous of the world, of the likes of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, and a parade of Saudi royalty. But we steered clear of them and anchored off a beautiful, deserted, white sand beach. The water was littered with jellyfish which made us very nervous for snorkling. Our cruise director, Peter Dieman, a very talented Dutch artist who has resided in Bali for years, calmly plucked a jellyfish from the water with his palm flat. We thought perhaps he was immune to them, but he calmly said (everything Peter did was done calmly) "I have it's back". So apparently you can hold a jellyfish on its back in the flat of your hand without being stung, but none of us tried.

Despite the jellyfish the temptation to snorkel was too strong, and some of us waded in carefully. I spent as much time looking up and at the water around me as I did looking down, but I managed to avoid being stung. The snorkling was amazing, as was all of the snorkeling we did on the trip, with an incredible variety of coral such that I've never seen before. We saw amazing, bright tropical fish, and more exotic sea-life including moray eel, a sea-snake, giant purple sea-stars, bright blue-lipped clams, all "clamming up" as we passed by, and two large lion fish. But the coral itself was the star, more alive and unspoiled, and in more variety of colors and shapes than I've ever seen.

In the afternoon we visited tiny Satonda island, a small crater with a lake in the middle that was once fresh-water but is now brackish after being swept by a massive tidal wave in 1815 after the volcano on nearby Sumbawa island erupted in the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history, far larger than Krakatoa. The volcano lost 1200 meters of its 4000 in height and spewed 24 cubic kilometers of lava and debris into the air. Tens of thousands died instantly, hundreds of thousands more in the famines that followed, and world-wide weather was affected so that in Europe it was known as the year with no summer, and even Napoleon's troops were slowed as a result.

And on Satonda island we saw our first monkeys of the voyage!

The morning of day 4 found us in the harbor of Bima, in eastern Sumbawa. We watched the morning trading at the harbor, fisherman selling their catch to dozens of head-scarved women, all yelling at once. Mountains of bananas being unloaded onto the docks. And load after load of cement bags crane-lifted from the cargo holds of wooden ships like ours, and settled into the backs of trucks by men with rags over their mouths and cement dust covering their bodies. We loaded the bus and drove a few blocks to the market. We wandered threw the market, ducking under low-slung tarpaulins and stepping carefully over muddy puddles, and returning the smiles and greetings of stall after stall of what seemed to be the friendliest and happiest people on Earth. Every imaginable product and produce was for sale, but no one bothered to try to sell us anything. They were genuinely happy to see us, as we were them, but the stars were Emma and David, who had their legs grabbed, their noses plucked, and their cheeks pinched so many times they were sore when we finally stumbled back to the bus. It was just a half hour meander through a market in a small port town on an island most of us had ever heard of before, but it had quite an effect on us, as though our faith in humanity had been restored. I wished naively that Bima could always remain as it was then.

Then we went to a small village in the mountains above Bima where we were treated to more traditional dancing. Three women performed a dance which represented the various stages of planting and harvesting and processing in wet rice farming. Then, more ritualized combat, this time of the head-butting variety! Again there was a referee, and again the two men danced together while the band played, but then one lowered down, elbow on knee, head front, eyes down, while the other danced and waited for the referee's signal. It came, he charged, and foreheads collided with a loud thud directly in front of us. But both men, seemingly unfazed, immediately resumed dancing and eventually they traded places and thudded again, and then we were done, said our thank you's and goodbyes, waved to more friendly people, high-fived more children, and re-boarded our bus.

Day 5 found us anchored off of Komodo island, one of only two islands which contain the dragon population. We set off early, bought our tickets, and fell in line behind our guide for the walk, who carried a very large fork-pronged stick. We were surprised to learn that, in addition to the terrible dragons, the island was also home to vipers, pythons, and spitting cobras! Wow, dangerous place. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any snakes, but 15 minutes or so into our walk we came upon our first dragon. Like most of the dragons we saw that day and the next this one didn't do much, other than lay on it's belly with it's arms and legs splayed out, 5 long razor-sharp claws on each. There were 30 or so of us humans around it, within 10 feet or so, but the dragons are basically indifferent to humans. They have no natural predators when fully grown. (They do however eat each other and eat their young. Baby dragons, after hatching, will immediately climb up a tree and live in trees for the first few years of their life, eating bugs and lizards. Adult dragons are too heavy too climb trees, but even their own mothers will eat them on the ground.) Nor have they been targeted by humans: their loose skin is not good for clothing, and their meat is not good for eating. So they don't care much about us, but we were still wary. We were warned that, even when they are splayed out and look half-asleep they can jump up in an instant, and they can run faster than humans. Their tiny lizard brains operate on instinct, and when their forked tongues pick up an interesting smell they react, as we learned the next day...

On the evening of the fifth day we were treated by our amazing crew to a BBQ on the beach, a tiny spit of beach on a small island somewhere between Komodo and Rinca. We sat on bamboo mats on the sand and ate grilled fish, calamari, and kabobs by candle light, washed down by white wine. Emma and David borrowed flashlights and discovered that the small bait fish in the water were attracted to the light. Then they discovered that if Emma held the light in one spot and David bent down with hands poised he could reach down and scoop up a fish with his bare hands! After catching a few and throwing them back they found a half coconut, filled it with water, and began to populate it with fish. They were up to 5 or 6 fish in the coconut by the time we had to leave, all of whom we're set free, to the kids chagrin, though one or two hadn't taken too well to their new home and were floating a bit...

We woke up on day 6 in a small, swampy inlet of Rinca island. Peter had told us that Rinca was even better than Komodo island for seeing the dragons. We had only seen 4 dragons on Komodo, two of which were camped outside of the lodge having been attracted by the smell. A family of monkeys was playing in the mangrove near us as we set foot on the island. Two minutes later Peter was proved right. We were walking across a large dry river bed, heading towards the visitors center - we hadn't even bought our tickets or got our guides yet! - when to our left we spotted a large dragon, not laying down but purposefully walking towards us, head high and tongue actively flicking. We were out in the open, with nowhere to hide, and no guides with large forked sticks to protect us. Peter quickly rushed us along to the safety of the visitors center. We saw 15-20 more dragons on our walk that day, as well as the scant remains of a buffalo carcass that our guide told us had been devoured only 3 days earlier by 40-50 dragons! We also saw a wild boar, lots of buffalo, and megapods, which are basically a kind of wild chicken, but with a very cool name. At one point we were paused watching some megapods when two dragons came over a ridge towards us, tongues flicking. Our guide then noticed that one of us was bleeding from a small cut on his leg. The guide quickly cleaned off the blood and applied a local balm to it to mask the smell. If the dragons had picked up the smell of his blood they wouldn't have thought, they would have just reacted, but the guide seemed to have masked the smell just in time.

We had another fantastic beach and snorkeling session on our last afternoon, and then our last dinner on deck under the stars. We arrived in Labuan Bajo, Flores island the next morning, and caught our flight back to Bali. It was a great week of visiting villages, snorkling, seeing dragons, and getting to know our delightful fellow passengers, whom we hope to keep in touch with. We flew back to Singapore the next day, and as I type we are hurling through the air towards Hong Kong!