The 5000 Project

Original plan was to head to lampung to take small steps towards batam and singapore, but my jakarta friend (the one with the printing business) convinced me to go with him and his family to visit relatives in a rubber plantation village deep in the thick jungles 4hrs drive from Palembang. Well, due to the language barrier I thought we were just going to palembang, 5th yr in a row winner of the cleanest city in indonesia award, was not expecting a trip to an isolated village that has no phone signal and day long frequent power outages.

After a 25hr bus ride from jakarta, then a 4hr car ride – the jungle terrain started to get thick and the roads were almost undrivable; suddenly I was ambushed by islamic extremists and taken hosta…. actually no, this didnt happen; much of the complete opposite occurred:
– I stayed with a very loving family, the mamma adopted me as one of her own and didn’t want me to leave, she wanted me to abandon my australian family (bit of competition there, mum)
– I went to the second wedding in indonesia, huge wedding with ~200 people. After a brief chat with some guy who knew a bit of english, he later spoke at the wedding and suddenly changed from speaking indonesian to english, welcomed me to the village and said: “Don’t worry, we’re not terrorists, just people trying to be good Muslims”. After the ceremony I had about 20 photos with me and some random village people, I found out later that no westerner has ever been to this village. I felt like a celebrity.
– Upon wandering around on the outskirts of the village, I took photos of someone opening a coconut with a metal rod in the ground and a machete; they then explained (with the help of zain translating) that this family Organizes the traditional dance festival which occurs once a year, they found a DVD of a recording of it and played it for me on their TV; it involved a bunch of guys on cardboard horses dancing in slow movements, the second part of the ceremony involved the village tough guy putting on a 110kg head costume and attempting to dance around like an animal. after 20min or so he would take off the weights and go crazy doing flips and shit, I was told that sometimes the dancer would go into a frenzy and act like a wild animal; later he would forget the event occurring – the locals say this is magic. I’m pretty sure its the head trauma from the weights, but hey, I could be wrong. After they DVD they presented us with a feast of different foods, zain had no idea who these people were, nor did I.

I found out recently that there is an islamic guideline that goes something like: “Treat a stranger like your brother” which explains exactly how I have been treated during this last month. I also found out that the guideline goes further, states that the stranger should stay for 3 nights…. happens to be that every local that I have stayed with always seems to have an excuse why I cant leave after the first or second night; either they show me too many sights, then its too late to get a ticket out, or they tempt me with going on a trip later in the week with them.

As it happens, I am currently in Palembang city with only 5 days left on the visa and a network of buses and boats to cross in order to get to batam then singapore – planned it out and I should make it two day before the visa expires. Word on the street is that there is a speed boat that can take me there directly from a harbour town nearby, however it only leaves on saturdays and rumour has it that it may not be operating anymore due to the introduction of flights to batam. Going to stick around for a couple of days to wait for couchsurfer request responses anyway, see how it goes.

Glad to finally have decent net to upload photos, got a bunch on facebook right now. Memory card reader is playing up though for the more recent ones, and panoramic vids. Next post will probably be in the comfort of singapore.