Emails home: Mayra

More news from Yogya... 13 March 2002

It seems to have become a trend here among the Australian students to burn your leg on the exhaust pipe of a motorbike! And of course, me being someone who will never fail to follow the latest trend, went one step further and burnt both my legs!! So I've got two big circles of red on both by legs. But it's all good, they're healing well. (last time i was in Indonesia i did the same thing but it got infected...gross!!)

Apart from that, my motorbike is absolutely fantastic and i'm now a regular traffic hazard just like all the other crazy Javanese drivers. I still haven't worked out what the speed limit is but the rule of slowing down when there's police around has been serving me well enough.

Sumatra here I come... 2 April 2002

Goodness me Ii hardly know where to start with this email. Well, first of all, I think i need to explain the situation I'm in at the moment. I'm sitting in Boulevard Internet absolutely dripping wet. not just wet, not soaking wet, but literally dripping. There's a pool of water under my chair. I've been scooting around on my bike doing a few jobs today and at one stage I was driving down Jl. Kaliurang and i could clearly see in the distance exactly where it was raining and where it wasn't. It was amazing. They sky was cloudy but over the area where it was raining the clouds were really black. Unfortunately that was where I was headed! But as it turned out, i arrived safely and the rain moved off somewhere else. Then as I was on my way here, to write this email, I could feel the wind getting colder so I knew the rain was coming, luckily (i thought) I was almost here, but unfortunately I didn't make it. This is hard to explain, I'm sure you won't really be able to get a sense of what it was like through my description but I could see the rain coming, it was raining about 50metres in front of me, then all of a sudden i was in the middle of it and it was absolutely pelting down. Huge big drops. i've never seen anything like it.

So in conclusion, I'll probably get sick!

Rivers, Jungles, Orangutans = Kalimantan... 26 June 2002

Hi everyone, So far I've had absolutely awesome holidays. I think by the end of my time in Indonesia I'll have an adopted family in every island in Indonesia. I met a girl on the boat on the way over to Kalimantan who invited me to stay with her family in Kumai. They are absolutely gorgeous and proudly showed me off to all their friends! They called me buleku (my westerner) and kept commenting on how pretty and long my nose is.

In Kumai I spent two days at Tanjung Puting National Park. Tanjung Puting is famous for it's orangutan rehabilitation centre. I went hiking in the jungle, saw wild orangutans and ones that were born in the rehabilitation centre, slept on a little boat (called a klotok) in the river, heard the call of the gibbons (they sounded very funky!), saw probiscus monkeys swinging through the trees on the edge of the river, rare birds and a stunning sunset.

Orangutans are absolutely amazing animals. They're so powerful and strong but can also be really gentle. I had a great time watching and learning about them, until one got a bit too close! I wasn't scared of them, but I knew how strong they were so I was being reasonably careful. As I was walking past one of them, her name is Yunuk, she suddenly became interested in the litter black bum bag I was wearing. She came up to me and grabbed my arms. I got my arms free but then she grabbed my bag and started pulling at it. I was so scared that she was going to bite me (has happened often!) that I just immediately undid my bag and let her have it.

She was so clever. I had no choice but to stand back and watch as she sat down and carefully undid the zips. She then went through my bag and took everything out one by one. I brought that bag with me because it had all my most important things in it! It had my passport, my plane ticket home and to East Timor, my credit card and other ID, all my money and my camera. She was looking for food. My heart was beating so fast as I stood there and watched as she took out my credit card, put it in her mouth, rubbed it on her head, inspected it closely and then decided that it wasn't tasty enough so threw it into the mud. Then my passport, my tickets...etc. And finally my camera.

She spent ages inspecting my camera. She opened up the back of it and took out the film and tried to eat it (that film from my last few days in East Timor!) She then opened another little compartment and found the battery. Having not found what she was looking for, she then put the camera in her mouth, and just as the park rangers came running to help me get my stuff back she climbed up the nearest tree.

Luckily I was able to get everything that she had thrown away back. It was all a bit wet, my plane tickets were ripped (but still readable), and my passport has teeth marks in it, but its all ok. Well, everything except my camera. The park rangers got my camera back but I don't think it's fixable. I was really upset at the time, and shaking from the experience of such a powerful animal grabbing me like that (especially after hearing all the stories of people who have been bitten), but it's ok now. A close up and scary encounter, but I didn't let it ruin my trip!