It's a monkey!

Yesterday was National Day, so it was a holiday. There were flags out everywhere, but all that seemed to change was that those lucky enough to work in an office had a day off. The warung stall holders and restauranteers all worked as hard as usual (not that I am complaining, it's hopw I got my dinner).

I spent the day finally working out why I could never find the market or the pool- there are unmarked streets on the map, but they're normally quite small. I'd been wandering up a large one, not realising it was actually a residential unmarked street and subsequently becoming completely lost. Yesterday I managed to find the pool :) and know the market is just down the road.

The pool charges 20,000 RP, which is about $4. Cheap enough by home standards, but when you consider that this is equal to 20 pineapples, or 3 kg of bananas, or about 6kg of potatoes by prices here, it is pretty expensive. So I will go once a week or so... and just deal with the staring. People keep staring! It can be frustrating being a novelty item. Sometimes it is funny though- having watched me swimming, a father tried to teach his girls freestyle. Also yesterday, a teenager called out 'Cantik! Beautiful! You are very beautiful.' This resulted in a herd of small boys running after me calling 'Beautiful, beautiful!' Very funny, and like a cheesy scene in a movie.

After lazing around (the heat makes this so easy, and I have a nice seat on a balcony which gets some breeze. It's my favourite place in the house) for several hours (I'm going to finish all my books soon!), I decided I was wasting my time. So I lazed around planning trips around Sumatera I probably won't be able to take! My only long weekend while I am here begins... tomorrow. So while I' love to go down the end of the island to see Krakatua and Taman Nasional Way Kamar (the big old volcano and a national park with tigers, elephants and Sumateran rhinoceros), it takes a 28 hour bus trip, so I doubt I'll make it. I will definitely make it to Bukitinggi though, a 2 hour bus trip, where they have a zoo and creepy Japanese caves and other STUFF.

If I chose to stay longer, I klnow I could see all these things. In fact, I'd pretty muich have to, because i have discovered that I could not leave the country. A kitas, work visa, allows one entry and exit only. To go home for xmas, I'd have to pay about a million rupiah. And who knows how much to get back again. It's not worth it. I will have seen enough of this area in two months, and I will just come for a holiday if I want to see the rest one day.

Anyway, realising that I was STILL wasting my time, I decided to trek to the local Tamar (Park) on top of a very big bloody hill. It didn't look that big. However, half way up the steps, (huge steps, how do such tiny people go up such big steps?) I realised I was sadly going to DIE. I had to stop numerous times to sit on the steps and look like a fat unfit bule. On one of these stops an Indo guy tried to talk to me (An Indo guy with long hair, tatts and a big KNIFE), but clearly he spoke no english and I didn't understand all he said. He decided to walk with me, but not long after I started to die again and had to sit and was quite happy for him to go on without me.

When I finally got to the top, I was disappointed: I'd been told there were many monkeys up there, but I saw none. I saw goats, and the Indo guy stopped chopping whatever he'd come up to chop with his big knife and sat and smoked and watched me (which was disconcerting), but no monkeys. So I decided it might be the wrong time of day, and headed off to take photos of nearby islands and wait for the Indo guy to go away. He did, and I turned to find the way back down this big hill/ small mountain and saw... MONKEYS! Three big grey monkeys walking across the clearing. These guys ran away when they realised I was there, so I only got one shot. I soon realised there were monkeys jumping in the trees too, red ones. And then, walking down the hill, I cam across monkeys who just ignored me as I came within metres of them.

I actually got pretty emotional about it. There's something really special about seeing animals in their natural habitat. In Australia we don't see that much. Kangaroos in the fields, possums in power lines. It's not exactly natural, they've adapted to what we have created. One of my favourite things in Melbourne is to go to Yarra Bend Park and watch the flying foxes. But to see animals that are wild, and still living very close to the way they always have is really nice. The INdoneisans are doing some awful things to their country- I didn't realise til Nick asked me about it, but we don't have cloud at the moment, it is smoke haze from bush burning for clearing areas for farming- but they still have wild animals.