I am not a tourist !

Next week is when I must wake up to the fact that I am not actually here on holiday although, to be honest, the last four weeks have been a most enjoyable way of getting used to living in Indonesia. On Wednesday evening we will meet our employers for the first time as we start a two day workshop with them in a Denpasar hotel. After the two day workshop ends, we will then travel to our placement locations (Maumere on Flores in my case) with our employers for a one week field visit. The objectives of this visit are to introduce us to our colleagues at work, open local bank accounts, sort out accommodation arrangements and generally get an idea of the location in which I will be spending the next fourteen months. Many of the places in which we will all be working have limited shopping facilities (other than basic locally available food) and so this week also provides an opportunity to see what we will need to buy in our last few days in Bali before moving to our placement finally. After the one week field visit we return to Denpasar for a final ten days or so in language school before heading off to start work proper. I’ve had a few emails from other VSO friends whom I have met on various courses and know that VSO Indonesia’s eight week induction programme is much longer than in most other countries, especially African countries. The main reason for this is of course the need to be reasonably proficient in Bahasa Indonesia before starting work whereas volunteers to most African countries are able to use a lot of English, at least initially. Speaking of which, last week we had our first oral test (with a different teacher to our usual one) and also a written test based on what we are supposed to have learnt so far. I was pleased with my results in both – I think Pak Bagia was generous in his marking of the oral test and I now know some of my areas of weakness in the written test (don’t ask me to make any comparisons - more expensive than, less tall than, older than, etc. - in Indonesian just yet !).

As I mentioned, after my one week field visit, I will return to Denpasar for about ten days to two weeks before my final move to Maumere. However, not all of our group of ten will do this – volunteers whose placement is for a year or less will not return to Bali. Instead they will start their placements immediately so our close-knit group of ten will be reduced to six for the last few classes. To mark our last weekend as a group (and the first weekend for some time that we haven’t had classes or training sessions of some sort or another) a few of us headed to the town of Ubud for the weekend. Ubud is about 35kms north of Bali and is regarded as being the other half of Bali’s tourism duopoly (along with Denpasar). Some went by taxi or bus but I borrowed one of VSO’s motorbikes for the weekend and with my partner in crime, Peter (also bound for Maumere), hanging on behind me we first headed south to Uluwatu.
This is an ancient temple site at the western tip of the “foot” of Bali and is a really spectacular location. The temple is on the clifftop overlooking the Indian Ocean and is the scene of a ritual fire dance every night (tickets Rp50,000 each). We were there early in the morning and almost had the place to ourselves apart from the hordes of monkeys and a few other visitors - with the place so quiet it was easy to appreciate the spiritual significance of the location. After Uluwatu, we headed north back past Denpasar to Ubud where we met some of our group and enjoyed a very pleasant (and reasonably priced) night’s stay in a lovely Balinese style bungalow homestay called Sania’s and a good (western style !) dinner last night. This morning (Sunday) Peter and I headed further north to see Gunung Batur, one of Bali’s volcanoes (the Indonesian for volcano is gunung api or “fire mountain”). This is a spectacular location reached after a long gradual climb to about 1500m but our enjoyment was unfortunately marred somewhat by the masses of hawkers who besieged us every time we stopped to draw breath or take a photo. This was our first exposure to Bali outside the city of Denpasar – Ubud is a lovely town full of art shops and is certainly worth a visit and it was really interesting to see some of the countryside, including the spectacular terraced rice paddies and the much cooler, fresher and greener uplands. After enjoying Gunung Agung, it was back to the traffic and motorbike chaos of Denpasar and an hour or two’s PR (pekerjaan rumah – homework) for tomorrow before I go out to my local internet shop to post this and catch up on emails. Finally : en route to Uluwatu yesterday morning, I had to call in to the hospital for the last in my course of three Japanese Encephalitis vaccinations and while I was there, I asked if I could weigh myself. In the four weeks and five days since arriving in Bali,I have lost just over 4 kgs. If this continues, I will have disappeared completely by the time my placement ends.....