Globalization

One of the many thousands of Buddas at Borobodur
Just miles away at Prambanan, a Bull in a Hindu temple for Shiva
Vivian sporting our (not very good) guidebook in front of Prambanan
The puppet master working his magic at a wayang kulit performance
A member of the accompanying Gamelan orchestra
Ayam Goreng -- Indonesia fried chicken

It’s a bit like visiting America, and having your first week spent in Alaska, and forming an opinion of the country from the Northern oil fields and the good, simple people who inhabit them just in time to travel to the Eastern Seaboard. We arrived yesterday in Java, in Yogyakarta, from a quaint backwater into stammering mass of humanity, onto roads packed with cars, restaurants teeming with variety, and (mercifully) into fine hotels with clean sheets and no bugs.

Yogya, as it’s called, is in the heartland of Java, amid the fertile rice fields that feed this island’s 70 million people. Java is the heart and the brains of Indonesia, and it’s often said that Yogya itself is Java’s soul. It was the last part of the island to hold out to the Dutch, and the first to turn to communism as an alternative to Sukarno’s brutal mismanagement of the country post-independence.

Today, Yogya is said to be the cultural capital of Indonesia, which is what brought us here – the desire to sneak a real glimpse of the nation between the jungles of Borneo and the beaches of Bali. What we found was a fascinating amalgamation of influences, understandable as Indonesia is first and last a trading nation, sitting astride the waterways between China and both India and Europe. Java, which had the benefit of a bountiful harvest of cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon to trade with, became an early winner of globalization, exporting cash crops and importing fineries and ideas alike.

When Java came of age in the sixth and seventh centuries, it had simultaneous contact with all of the world that mattered: India, China, and kingdoms of Southeast Asia. These three regions were all in the throws of discovering the gentle redemption of Buddhism, interpreting it in ways that met their local cultural needs, and reconciling it with their pre-existing beliefs, most notably Hinduism. The Javanese were presented with a great slate of conceptions from which to chose, and these quickly permeated the island in what must have been an effect similar to how Yankees hats and Hip Hop music have flowed from the super-power of today into the world at large – good ideas, even very foreign ones, spread quickly.

Hinduism, with its colorful deities and intricate stories would have been an instant hit with the islanders – indeed, the Ramayana exists in almost its entirety today as an important piece of Javanese culture. Its told predominantly in the mode of Wayang Kulit (shadow puppetry), itself an art form also imported from India. To this day, travelling companies will help celebrate important village events through an all-night performance, intricate puppets held on sticks dancing behind a gas-lit screen to the accompaniment of a gamelan orchestra, dozens of bells and drums and a single female singer.

Buddism had instant appeal for the Javanese, with its celebration of merchants as a selfless class of wanders, accepting years of toil on the roads and seas just to bring goods and happiness to the sedentary masses. Not long after the importation of Hinduism, Buddism made a showing in Java around the sixth century – in particular a form of the religion known as Esoteric Buddism, which promised the ability to reach salvation in a single lifetime but has sadly been largely lost amidst the ascetic charms of less optimistic Mahayana and Hinayana varieties.

For about two golden centuries, the two great religions co-existed on the island in the form of two ruling families whose fortunes rose and fell in largely amicable oscillations. It was during a period of Buddist ascendancy around 800 AD that the breathtaking complex at Borobudur was built, just north and east of Yogya. It’s said to be the largest Buddist monument in the world, covering a few acres with nearly two million pieces of intricately carved stone. We went at dawn, and climbed the four layers gazing at the hundreds of Budda statues in progressively greater states of enlightenment in the company of about three thousand school children. Our ability to remain in a state of awe despite their clamoring and requests for us to post in photos with them is a true testament to the timeless wealth and erudition of the Javanese merchant-princes of yore.

Buddism declined fairly quickly after the building of Borobudur, and more earthly Hinduism prevailed right through the coming of Islam in the 14th century – although Buddism did return in the form of Chinese diaspora starting in the 17th century with the arrival of the Dutch.

In another and more tasty example of Javanese expertise in adopting foreign memes is in the “traditional dish” of Yogyakarta: Ayam Goreng, or Fried Chicken. The dish America’s unique contribution to the world culinary stage, although it has been adapted to great success by other cultures. After failing to find the Lonely Planet’s top food pick for the city, last night we gave up and put ourselves in the hands of our taxi driver, saying only “Ayam Goreng, Tidak KFC” (Fried Chicken, and not KFC). He took us to what Vivian instantly described as the “Palace of Fried Chicken” – a cavernous restaurant that had the name of the dish flood lit about the entrance. Success.

The Javanese twist on Fried Chicken is, first, that that they use freshly killed chicken (which makes the all chicken here taste 100x better than even the most organic birds available back home), but that moreover before frying it is first parboiled in water teeming with spices and aromatics. Instead of bread crumbs, desiccated coconut is then used as a covering and the assembly is only quickly fried before being garnished with turmeric leaves and served. At the Palace, the dish was deconstructed somewhat, with the dried coconut being friend separately from the chicken, and then heaped on top in a showy and delicious pile.

The tourist trap that will never be

The madam enjoying her breakfast outside our room
Derawan's fleet, ready to sail for the night
Evening soccer game played in Derawan's only street
Dude fixing boat above some very clear water
Fish: the only thing we know how to order. Served with home made sambal.

I read in a travel article once that you could determine the life stage of a beach town by its dogs. A few sickly flea-bitten mutts meant a town was not yet touristed, villagers and canines alike living their undisturbed existences. A robust and healthy population of well-fed strays meant that the beach town was at its peak, enough visitors to promote enough restaurants to produce enough scraps so that the dogs would thrive, but not so many as to push the town into its last stage: No dogs. No dogs means of course that the locals have seen the economic opportunity tourism presents and have decided to clean up their act. At this point, the town is lost.

Derawan had a few dogs skulking about, its prime condition was displayed primarily by its cats, a small committee of which had attached itself to every losmen (homestay hostel) and warung (informal restaurant) on the islands square mile or so of territory. A particularly assertive tomcat appears every morning at the door of my room, having walked down the long pier to get to my ocean front terrace where at 6am sharp a tray of sweet tea and Indonesian pastries is placed by the shirtless, goateed owner.

Derawan is a speck of sound off the coast of Borneo, about half a day’s flight, taxi trip, and boat ride from the major cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, close to the regional hub of Berau. The region, as I’ve written, is rich in lush jungle, black gold, and legend. It’s where Joseph Conrad got his start (his first two books, Almayer’s Folley and An Outcast in the Islands are set in the coastal settlements at the mouths of the many rivers), and also where Royal Dutch drew its first sips. Today its many mines and oil derricks given an unusual patina of prosperity to what would otherwise be a backwater quite removed from Java and its big cities. The mining companies supply fleets of glistening white Toyota Hilux double-cab pickups to ply the good road between the airport and the coal mine, where massive coal-bearing dump-trucks trundle from an unseen pit to a prominent crushing tower and barge port. As in all of the few mining towns I’ve been, the locals seem quite unmoved by the environmental degradation that must be taking place, complaining only that the mine doesn’t provide enough jobs, and what jobs it does are too often handed to more mercantile Javanese. You get the sense that if they could will into existence 10 more giant mines, they would.

We haven’t done much here on Derawan, mostly as there’s not much to do. The tiny island has a single street, along one of its beaches, off which sprout about a dozen long piers, each of which is a sort of warren of retail shops at the front facing the street, houses and tackle sheds in the back over the water, and in a few cases, guest rooms built in a row extending about a hundred yards out. Power runs from a municipal diesel generator from dusk to dawn, and during the day the only untoward noise is a small engine that powers the islands two (!) cellular towers. A few residents have inexplicably imported scooters, but since there is literally nowhere to go on them, the noise pollution is minimal. The tableau is one of lapping waves and mothers shouting after smiling children, all at a cadence set only five times a day by the mournful call to prayer from the island’s only masjid.

Not a single local speaks a single word of English, as far as we can tell, so we’ve been mostly in unmolested peace. Our diet has suffered somewhat, since the only food-word we know is Ikan (fish), something that the townsfolk can provide in abundance, given that most of the able-bodied men earn their keep with rods and nets. A peek underwater with even a humble snorkel mask reveals why – the water teems with fish of all kinds – yesterday during a single dip in the still, crystal clear water we saw two stunning manta rays and more than a dozen sting rays. We couldn’t even be bothered to charter a boat to go out to the other islands where the really good snorkeling is supposed to be.

Despite all this, the visitors to the isolated island are almost exclusively locals or oil workers off for the weekend to relax, with a smattering of long-distance backpackers stopping over on their way to or from Malaysian Borneo (the only way to cross Borneo’s two halves legally is by sea, at a point not far from us). This means, as I explained to Vivian, “that the standards are a little different” from what we would normally expect on a honeymoon.

The isolation and its resulting standards also mean, however, that Derawan’s canine and feline population will be secure for years to come, keeping the island trapped at its peak for bold and leisurely travelers to discover.

Sungai Makham

Upturned satellite dish, implying latitude appx 1 deg south
Our faithful ship
The Sungai Makham "River"
The Navigator at work
Ben clearing the way

Determining latitude has always been one of the easier navigational feats (relative, at least, to longitude), and in recent years it has become even simpler. A simple trip down any populated waterway, with a casual gaze cast at the middle class houses built on stilts to avoid the floods, will provide ample satellite dishes pointed directly at an azimuth some 30,000 miles above the equator. In the northern hemisphere, these dishes would point south, but here, in the tropics, they point straight up. Like bowls of offering, set to receive the blessings of the god in the form of the latest RAI soap, or motorcycle race on Eurosport 3.

I must have gazed at thousands of such dishes, as we cruised up the Sunghai Makham, the main artery of Indonesian Borneo. It’s the first stop on my honeymoon, and while I certainly will deliver my wife into the lap of tropical luxury, as usual we feel the need to earn it a bit first by being bounced around along broken roads and doused with tropical rain. An air conditioned room with clean sheets is only properly appreciated by flea-bitten bodies.

We flew via Singapore to Balikpapan, the commercial hub of the region, where we were met by a father and son team who were to be our guides on the river. The father took up river guiding after retiring from first the oil industry and then the coal industry. The Balikpapan airport’s advertising inventory dispensed with the usual cell phone and hotel ads, and instead flogged the latest in industrial pumps, and oilfield services. Most of the travelers through here would apparently be interested in such things. The region is Indonesia’s wealthiest, containing as it does most of the nation’s energy reserves and some of the world’s largest coal mines.

The industry has spawned a substantial middle class, darting to and from along under-built roads on smart looking scooters. Whenever I see large number of scooters I shudder, since the scooters reflect a transition, not equilibrium – every single one of the tens of thousands of scooter drivers I’ve seen in the past two days would have been on a bike or ox cart twenty years ago, and will certainly be a family car twenty years hence. Watch out, global temperatures!
The nominal purpose of the river trip was to visit some Dayak communities isolated from civilization, but as is so often the case civilization’s reach appears to be longer than our own, and despite two days travel by river, we never quite escaped cell phone range, and even had an electric fan in the home-stay room we shared overnight. The Dayak, a name given to the 4 million or so indigenous inhabitants of Borneo, are a loose collection of tribes, who claim to be descended from Mongolian princes (the king sent them here in search of medicine for an ailment that had befallen the royal princess. They were given orders to return with the cure, or not at all. They stayed.) They are the original head-hunters of popular myth, a practice that earned them splendid isolation through the end of nineteenth century, when the pressure of neighboring Java’s teeming masses proved too much. The Dayak were dragged into modernity first by thousands upon thousands of Javanese immigrants (who now number over ten million in Borneo), and then by the oil majors and mining companies that followed. Interestingly, it has always been the land-seeking immigrants who have caused the most offense. As recently as 1996, a group of several hundred farmers resettled from Java under a government program were found beheaded right under the noses of the police placed there to prevent exactly such an occurrence. In defense of the Dayak, according to our guide, it must be noted that the Javanese had unprovoked placed a hex on a Dayak chief’s son, causing him to die.

Most Dayak make their living as fishermen along Borneo’s impressive inland waterways, giving up their traditional communal longhouses for elegant homes perched on stilts along boulevards of water, set in the midst of vast inland lakes. I’m told in the dry season these boulevards become more normal rivers, but now, with the north-west monsoon just a month behind, the impression is that the entire country is covered with a sheet of water several yards deep. Men smoke clench clove cigarettes between their teeth as they steer their canoes with one hand and work a net with the other. Women, only a few in headscarves, chat gamely on their front porches, sorting fish or tending shop. Healthy looking kids outnumber both handily.
We rode a motorized canoe, the kind where the engine is attached directly via a long shaft to the propeller, with the whole apparatus mounted on a pivot and used to steer as well as drive the craft. It’s a model which I’ve spotted in Africa, South America, and beyond, but we are told is indigenous to this archipelago. And why not? The boat captain we hired for the trip up river was as skilful as any we’ve seen. We sliced through water as still as a mirror, and just as easily cut through vast fields of tall water grass on our way up river to our destination.
At one point, when the vast pools had narrowed to a channel through the swamped forest, we very nearly ran directly into a large tree which had fallen completely across our path. With no way around it, I quickly declared defeat and prepared myself for a night in the rather shabby looking stilt-town a few miles back. But just then the captain leapt up on the trunk of the tree with a two-foot machete and proceeded to whack away, easily severing the vines and branches from around the tree with single expert blows. After a few minutes of this, he handed me the machete and headed back into the boat. Thinking that I was to help play hero, I leapt forward and started gamely whacking away. I had almost hacked by way through a small branch when up from below me, from the water, emerged a saw, and attached to it the boat captain, now shed of all clothes, who had jumped in the water to attack the main trunk of the tree. No more than ten minutes later, the captain was back behind the engine, clove cigarette in teeth.

Update: After reading Richard Lloyd Parry's excellent book In the Time of Madness which recounts his first-hand experiences witnessing the slaughter of the Madurese people in Borneo at the hands of the Dayaks and the Malays, I must reconsider my flippant remarks above, informed mostly by the guidebook and the comments of several Malays I've met -- Madurese are a poor minority, labeled as "dirty", "thieves", "uncureable" and so on. The general consensus is that he genocide was well justified -- it sounds remarkably like what some present day Europeans might say about Romany Gypsies... or what used to be said about Jews.