It sure doesn't feel like December as I am in shorts and t-shirt. We saw our only hint of the season in a 7-Eleven last night: Christmas M&Ms. They were right next to the fried-squid-in-banana-leaf stand. The duality of this place still makes me laugh from time to time.

I suppose that after the excruciating detail of the journal up to this point I should be feeling guilty for having skipped a day between writings. Well, the fact is that yesterday I didn't actually have access to any of my things or indeed my room until about 11:30 in the morning. This is because at 5AM yesterday morning (I hadn't gotten to sleep until about 3AM due to a very noisy thunderstorm) Jason knocked on the door. Grumpily, I asked him what the hell he wanted. As I opened the door, he said he had a huge favor to ask. I saw that he had company. Female company. Oh Christ. You see, I was the only one out of our party with a single room. He asked if we could switch beds. He was not to be denied, so I went off with Michael to the Nat, where the TV was still on and people were still watching it in the "restaurant". Amazing. We had some chicken drumsticks from a street vendor and then went up to go to sleep - and Michael needed it; he and Jason had been up drinking again. Suffice it to say that I did not join in that night.

As I lay in the extra bed I began to wonder why there was so much light pouring into their room from the street - oh, hehe, the sun was coming up. I knew at that point I wasn't to have a proper night's rest, but I tried anyway. Woke at around 10AM or so, ate breakfast, then waited until 11:15 to go kick Jason out of my room. Logically I should have gone back to sleep at this point (after having changed the sheets, mind you!) but I was restless and so I went out and wandered the city, picking up a Press Card. Oh what the hell, it was only $3 and I knew that if I left Bangkok without having gotten one I would always regret it.

We all hung out and did the video scene at the Nat last night - there was not a drink to be seen. I am happy that Michael and Jason have broken their cycle of constantly goading aech other into drinking more and more, niether one ever backing down. Why travel?

Don't know what the plan is for today. Have a pretty late start at this point - I've been reading and writing all morning. Ah, well, time for lunch :).

Well, that night Jason and Michael proved me wrong. They were back in the Maekong (rice whiskey, or The Stuff That Knocked Me Out) and going with a full head of steam. I sat at a different table, partly because their table was full and partly because I had had enough of it. Soon, "The Flintstones" started up and I was just debating whether or not I should go home and read when a lovely Swede asked, "Do you mind if I sit here?" Guess the answer. Anyway she had started on some postcards, and for all intents and purposes it looked as if there was going to be not a word exchanged between us, until we both started rolling our eyes at the stupid bits in the movie (there are quite a few of these). After a bit we were in a full-on conversation. She was a nice person, attractive, but I had no designs on her, so I didn't mind too much when Jason and Michael sat down, in light of the fact that they hadn't spoken to any women (other than prostitutes) in several days. When she went to the loo both of them turned into 13-year-olds, slapping me on the back for a good catch. I said I wasn't in pursuit and they were overjoyed - they started making bets on who would end up with her. I started to wish that I had "laid claim" to her after all, if only to protect her from these two. Later on, as we moved into the Hole In The Wall Disco, it became apparent that Henrietta (that's the girl, stupid) was warming to Michael; the insanely jealous Jason gave Thomas and I an ongoing play-by-play of what they were doing on the dance floor. Poor guy. Pathetically enough, when Michael and Henrietta left to go home together (she was also staying at the Nat), Jason immediately suggested that we go get hamburgers. Guess where. Yep, that's right, the Nat. Thomas and I agreed to a hamburger, but after a diplomatic wait of five minutes. Jason was insistent to the point of pleading that we go. It was a sorry sight. As a condolence he broke out his new videotape of True Lies and we watched it until 5AM.

And so I awoke at 2 in the afternoon Friday, went down to the New World complex, had some lunch, tooled around for awhile on Khao San, then fell asleep again at 4 (speaking of sorry sights). Finally went down to the Nat at 6:30 to see that Ian and several of our other friends from earlier on had turned up for my send-off bash (I was off to Indonesia on Saturday). They all made short work of my gift of the J&B, then they decided it was time for me to see Pat Pong at night. And so eight of us (7 guys and Henrietta) piled into two tuk-tuks and were off in a derby race to the infamous red-light district.

All I can say is that I saw some things I never expected to see, as well as some things I'll be happy never to see again, and some things that just seemed to fit (like Jason bargaining with every single prostitute in the bar). But I was pretty cool on the whole scene; prostitutes just aren't a temptation and even if they were I usually prefer my women to be above 15. Yikes! The whole situation is kind of sad, but when you get frisky men into a bar with naked women clinging to them the men seem to forget what goes on behind the scenes. Suffice it to say that all the rest of the guys sat at the bar; I was up in the booths, and I just watched the whole scene with a weird mixture of amazement, laughter, and disgust. I tooled off alone at 2AM as I was to catch an airport bus at 9AM.

So today went pretty much according to plan. All my flights were on close to on-time and now, benefiting from a call made to Patricia in the airport, I am staying in the Sumaryo Guest House, the very same one that she and my parents stayed in when they were in Jogjakarta. Cool! For the first time I'll be able to share impressions with them. Well, off to bed now, this place seems to have the late nightlife of Kathmandu - i.e., none to speak of. More on that later as I sort out my feelings on Indonesia. Sleepy time....

I arose rather late today due to the previous night's lack of sleep and the ensuing long day. When I got out into the streets of Yogya I discovered that the lack of nightlife last night wasn't due to any cultural restraints of the country - there just aren't any tourists here! Evidently, the large volcano some 40km north of Yogya erupted within the last week, killing 60 people. As a result, tourists and package groups cancelled by the droves, though you can see the eruption's effect on Yogya if I had to be *told* about it. Add that to the already low tourist season (this is the monsoon) and that means that even through walking a mile up and down the main shopping street today I have seen less than twenty other tourists. My guesthouse (one of the nicest in the country according to the Lonely Planet here) is catering to maybe five guests right now and I ate dinner by myself in a huge restaurant. Go figure. I'm sure that will not be the case in Bali...

It sure feels weird to be back in the Third World after Bangkok. Not to say that the going has been particularly rough so far, but you can just tell - the men trying to sell whatever to you are again yelling out "Hello" to you as you approach, as if you are going to be polite and say "Hello" back, instead of "Piss off", which is what you are saying after the fifth guy within ten meters nabs you. It was nice in Bangkok to walk down the street and just window-shop without being leapt-upon. But hey, all in all I have found the Indonesians to be amazingly friendly and outgoing, and reasonable in their bargaining. I didn't even have to walk away today to get a rikshaw fare down from 2000rp to 1500 (about $.70).

Well I must be off to bed as I am booked on the 5AM tour of Borobudur (one of the largest temples in the world). The idea is to be at the temple at sunrise and beat the waves of package tourists who de-bus at 10AM. I'm to be back at the Guesthouse by 9AM or so. I need to go downtown again, partly to make an American Express visit, partly to pick up a new paperback; there's not much to do during the daily 2PM-5PM rainstorm!

On a final note: Even though Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country with some Hindus sprinkled here and there, walking through the shopping district was very odd today as there were wreaths and bunting hung from the storefronts, and painfully warped local versions of all of your favorite Christmas carols blaring from the store music systems. Somehow, 8 degrees below the equator, technically in the middle of summer, with sweat running down my temple, and trying to hurry home so I'm not caught in the monsoon, I don't particularly feel the old Christmas vibes. However, I was amused to discover that both Christmas and New Years on our dating system are state holidays here! Maybe it's a remnant of the Dutch occupation, though I find that a bit hard to swallow.

Yesterday morning I did manage to wake up at 4:30AM to catch the bus to Borobudur at five. I was the sole passenger on the bus, and when I got to the front gates there were at most ten other people waiting to get in. To the biggest Buddhist monument in the world. Maybe this 5AM thing was a good idea after all.

After a bit of a wait the gates opened and we were admitted. Our free tour guide gave us a bit of a rushed tour and got us to the top of the monument in under a half-hour. We were then free to wander around for ourselves, as long as we followed tradition and walked around the temple in a clockwise fashion. I went on a major photo-safari for a while, and when I had satisfied my urges I came back around and spoke to the tour guide, who was now free of the worries of a tour group as it was pretty quiet that morning. He let me know that we were lucky; on most days around this time of year swarms of grade-school Indonesian children invade Borobudur to practice their English on the foreign tourists. And they don't fool around, either - they come armed with a list of up to eighty standard questions to ask, from the standard "Where are you from?" to the highly advanced "What are you liking most in Indonesia?" After a while the guide invited me to try the old traditional way to good luck - to try and touch the finger of Buddha through the walls of the stupa. The stupa is the main symbol of Buddhism. It is basically a bell-shaped dome used to house artifacts, with different parts of the bell representing different parts of the philosophy. Now there are maybe a hundred similar lattice-walled stone stupas surrounding the main one, so I suppose it doesn't matter which one you pick. I did eventually succeed in touching his finger by stretching my arm to the limit, as several pilgrims waited to do the same.

As I wound my way around the temple studying the inscriptions, I came to one of the archways which covered the stairs leading down to the hillside below. I paused here for a drink of water, and as I removed my backpack I heard singing. At the base of the stairs was a Buddhist monk, whose hands intertwined with men in plainclothes on either side. Behind the monk were at least thirty people, mostly Western, all chanting along with the monk as he made a great affair of mounting the first step. I should explain that the stairs on all four sides of the monument are carved in such a way that when you mount them you become acutely aware that they are taller than reasonable comfort allows. Supposedly this was because, as you strove to reach the top of the structure, to the final stupa which represents Nirvana, you are to proceed with great care and discipline rather than rushing for it headlong. Nevertheless, the pilgrimage all managed to make it up the first set of stairs and all the way round the first stage, walking clockwise round until they made it back to the same stairs, which they climbed to the next level, and so on, all the way up to the top. As I took the time to look around it became clear to me that there had been pilgrims here the whole time, quite a few of them Western, spread out along the monument and on the grounds, most in the Lotus position. I couldn't help but feel the old American good-old-boy mentality inside me stand up and say, "Weirdo!", but on the outside I was properly respectful of others' beliefs. I asked another tour guide what the deal was - were these really Buddhist pilgrims or was this just some sort of weird "Learn to be Buddhist" package-tour? He said they were real pilgrims, and that some of the people are so devoted to it that it's scary. There is a pilgrim hotel on the grounds, and the guide said that there were people who literally took months to get from the bottom to the top, sometimes only covering meters in a day, doing a weird interpretive-dance sort of thing, marking where they stop in the evening and starting there again at the crack of dawn. Not for me.

Returning to the guesthouse around 9AM, I ate breakfast with a young American couple (Martin and Lisa) who were touring Asia as a by-product of Martin having worked in Thailand for a year. He and I seemed to agree on Thailand - that it was the hidden jewel of Asia. Lisa did not agree, and we finally figured out that it was because she had never been into a Third-world country before coming into Thailand. Martin and I had both gone from the Indian subcontinent to Bangkok, and Bangkok seemed absolutely lush. Lisa had come directly from the States.

My day after that consisted of going to American Express, getting denied more money, then buying lunch and a paperback book before more or less heading home for the day. Took advantage of the swimming pool to combat the opressive heat. Other than that I read.

Ate dinner with Martin and Lisa, and we continued our discussion of Bangkok. they said that I should get my hands on a copy of a brilliant book, "Bangkok Knights", which lampoons the whole farang (foreign visitor) scene in Bangkok. they gave me highlights, such as when an American opens a firetrap guesthouse on Khao San Road and names it the Cherry Town Hotel, in the hopes that confused tuk-tuk drivers would drop off tourists who had reservations in the Sheraton. And, playing off a particular pet peeve of mine, he also takes a poke at the New Age Asian Traveler when he writes in his journal for the day, "Siddharta Jones and Siddharta Smith checked in this morning." That actually seems to some things up pretty well.

Today, after a late start, I checked out the Sultan's Palace. Decent. As I was emerging from the back gate of the Palace proper (but still on the Grounds within the walls) a young man came up and said, "Hello", and I started brushing him off in Indonesian, but he said, "No problem, I am student, father works at palace, you going to Water Castle? No problem, I show you, I going there anyway..." Yeah, right, I thought, but what the hell, I thought, maybe he is just doing it out of the kindness of his heart and to practice his English. Well, after an extremely abbreviated tour he invited me into his home, which, surprise surprise, was filled with Batik paintings, for which he could give me a special price. I was in it now, so I surreptitiously set my watch alarm for two minutes hence, and, when it chimed, thanked him but explained that I must be going, and made a dash for the door. Wandered out and caught the next becak(rickshaw) back to the Guesthouse. I was angry; angry at myself for being taken, hook, line and sinker, and angry at him and at people in general - why couldn't someone just be nice for a change without seeing travelers as a walking moneyroll. It was obvious in hindsight that he had pulled exactly the same scam many times - for God's sake, there were signs in English in his home indicating which rooms were private! I am still put off at the whole affair, not so much in itself but as a symptom of a greater illness. I guess that's why we appreciate a place like Thailand so much, where you can wander around un-harassed mostly, and if you desire an item or a service rendered unto you, *you* solicit it, not the other way around. I must effect an attitude change or I will wind up spending all of my time in guesthouses in Indonesia. More to come...

So, will my parents go apoplectic when they realize that I was in Bali for seven days before getting to Ubud? Well, maybe, but it's my trip. I feel slightly guilty becuase I have been negligent in my journals for a week and a half. But, as I spent a great deal of time in Kuta Beach and around the southern end of Bali, I entered Limbo Mode. Throughout these journals I have had two atttitudes - either I go into the minute details of every day (let's call this Stephen King Mode), or I only write vaguely every few days of the general experiences in the area (Limbo Mode). My time in Bangkok was a prime example of Stephen King Mode; conversely, one can see that in Kathmandu, or, more recently in Kuta Beach, the days were similar enough to one another that Limbo Mode seemed appropriate.

In Kuta I stopped traveling for a while and went on vacation. Outwardly, that statement may appear to be nonsense, but there really is a difference. "On vacation" means that you have left home for a short period of time to visit one or two places before returning, whereas "traveling" connotes spending a great deal of time away from home to wander through a great number of locales, interacting with the locals, and not sightseeing so much as experiencing. Backpackers are a large subclass of travelers, and the two terms are often interchangeable. Though travelers and tourists may go out and see the same monument during the day, at night the tourist will go back to a nice air-con room in a big blocky hotel, and only meet other people as they might happen to come through the hotel bar. The backpacker, on the other hand, is staying in the $7-a-night places, eating at the local food stall, and through hardship or loneliness is meeting hundreds of other travelers on a single trip. I'm not saying one approach is better than the other (though it should be obvious what my opinion is), but there is a time and place for each.

So when I say I went on vacation in Kuta, that means that I gave in to the sheer hedonism of the place. I just relaxed and gave in to it, and I enjoyed myself. OK, I didn't experience too much Balinisian culture, to be sure, and I did spend an inordinate amount of time either enjoying the plentiful nightlife and recovering from it, or collapsed decadently on the beach - should I feel guilty?

No, because I am spending an equally long time here in the environs of Ubud, on the other end of the cultural spectrum, and making up for "lost time" in Kuta. For example, the second day I was here, a monkey bit me on the ass. Now if that isn't cultural, I don't know what is. I have rented a motorbike during my time here, in order to explore the area around Ubud thoroughly.

In retrospect, the cultural benefits that I reaped from my days in Ubud were mainly culinary. That was where the vast majority of my budget went everyday- to finding the best nasi goreng (fried rice) or decadent chocolate cake (for example, at the Wayan Cafe a popular dessert is Death by Chocolate), or what-have-you - I was stuffing myself silly.

I'm on my way to Singapore after a cursory 24 hours in Kuta (and an uncooperative immigration office in the airport).

So far Asia has convinced me of the relativy cultural homogeny that is North America. Once again I have crossed borders in Asia to find something totally new and alien to my experience.

I suspect that if you took Tokyo and Frankfurt and put them in a blender, Singapore is what you'd get. It's a city founded by an Englishman, populated mostly by expatriate Chinese, wearing American clothes, eating American food on the odd days and fried rice on the even ones, speaking crisp BBC English during the working day and switching to Mandarin (or what have you) when they go home at night. It is a city-state that has managed to blend smoothly a dichotomy of cultures. There is, however, evidence of the frightening trend of the global village looking more and more like America.

In the States, when one says, "I stayed in the YMCA," it denotes a real bare-bones, no-frills experience. Not so in Singapore - here the Y is nine stories tall and the rooms are laid out like a mid-range hotel's rooms should be. This is fitting, as the Y's address is 1 Orchard Rd. Orchard Road is the Champs-Elysees, Fifth Avenue, and the Ginzu of Tokyo all wrapped up in a tidy package. For a least two miles there are back-to-back shopping complexes and up-market hotels, all meeting an exacting standard of cleanliness and ultramodern decor. It is disgusting and enrapturing at the same time, the utter commercialism. The different shopping complexes have even started growing like trees, branching out in underground boulevards between complexes, so that it is possible to go from mall to mall without ever seeing the sun or feeling raw, un-air-conditioned air upon your face. And watch amused as occasionally an escalator breaks and the Singaporeans are caught short as they realize they actually have to climb the stairs!

Boy, have I ever entered Limbo Mode!

I have had some startling revelations over the past few days:

1. Christmas was a heck of a lot more like Christmas in the States than I would have thought possible. Christmas Eve I struck out onto the town to listen and sing along in the caroling along Orchard Rd., which was bedecked in all of the usual mall-type Christmas trappings of plastic Santas and styrofoam snow. I attended an Anglican Christmas Eve service in lieu of the usual Unitarian service that I would have attended were I at home. Happily, I did not also observe the tradition of the post-service cocktail party with the people that we never talked to any other time of year, because, hey, I was not about to go tripping 9000 miles on Christmas Eve, no matter how good the brownies were. Throughout Christmas Eve and Christmas itself I was plagued by not having hooked up with any other travelers for the festivities, but I did not feel it as acutely as I'd thought I would several days earlier.
2. Christmas night I called home (where it was Christmas morning) and received the surprising news that September next my father would be leaving Charleston and his law practice to attend Harvard Divinity School in preparation for becoming a Unitarian minister. That certainly puts a twist on things, but it inspired me - what he is doing takes courage; you don't just switch careers at the drop of a hat.
3. Sometime in the last several weeks I have put on some pounds. My pre-trip normal was about 153 pounds. I know that when I had dysentery I lost a lot of weight, but I sure have gained it back since then - today I weighed in at 159 pounds. Not a belt-buster, but surprising nonetheless.

Oh, yeah, and I managed to get out of Singapore without any welts on my behind.

Fate and my total lack of self-discipline have conspired to keep me in Kuala Lumpur for the New Year's celebrations.

When we pulled into the KL train station, I hopped a taxi to Jalan Silang, the "traveler's street" in the middle of KL's Chinatown. It was 6AM, and the only piece of information I had on KL (and Malaysia for that matter) was the name and address of the Moon Lodge scrawled into the leaf of my notebook. But the Moon Lodge had yet to open for the day, and I was pretty tired from only an hour of restless sleep, so I checked into another dive down the block. There I collapsed, dead asleep, not to arise until 1PM. I cursed myself, as I knew that the Thai Embassy would observe the normal consular custom of only taking visa applications between 9AM and noon. This meant at least another night in KL beyond the one that I was planning on. I wandered the city for the rest of the day.

Guess what? Because I had taken such a long nap that morning, I did not fall asleep last night until well past 3AM. Consequently, I slept through my 10AM alarm and sailed right on through to 11:40AM, just enough time to collect my gear and switch locales to the Moon Lodge, but not enough time to make it to the embassy. Which means a least another night here, if I'm lucky. Today is Friday. If I am lucky, the embassy will open briefly tomorrow so I can process my application. That means a Sunday morning departure.

Which brings us back to where I started. As Sunday is the first day of the New Year, that makes Saturday New Year's Eve. Supposedly there is a big bash here in one of the town squares. Big Party. 7AM departure. Historic lack of self-discipline. Missing the party is not an option. You only get a finite number of New Year's Eves, you know...

Do you believe in miracles?