Crazy on a Crater: Crazy on Crutches

The expedition across Java continued. Vic, Sietske and I, alongside a German backpacker we'd befriended and our Indonesian tour guide, Zee, who claimed he was meeting friends in the next town, boarded a mini bus in coastal town Pangandaran and arrived in Yogyakarta at 3am after only a few hours of semi-sleep on the bus due to the fact that Zee insisted on sitting next to me, taking up all my space and putting his hand on my leg more than once which he claimed was an accident; the unsociable hour of our arrival meant that it was too early/late to find a guesthouse and so we were stranded in the quiet streets of the city without a place to go. Zee insisted that he had a solution for our problem so we all bundled into a taxi, bleary eyed and sleepy, without a clue what was going on whilst he gave mysterious instructions to the driver in Indonesian. We got out of the taxi at the side of a pitch black forest where a old, bearded man appeared out of the shadows and silently led us through the trees until we came to a clearing; the old man shone his torch on what appeared to be a tree-house which we laboriously climbed up and then we were instructed to wait. The tree-house was home to some bizarre objects including some hanging, dried gourds, a phallic-shaped ash tray, giant wooden animals and some trippy masks that we kept bumping into whilst we waited in the dark; thirty minutes later we realised what we'd been brought there for when the sky suddenly burst into life from the pink glow of the sun that emerged from behind a mountain. Myself and the two girls I was travelling with stayed one night in Yogyakarta and all crammed into one small double bed like sardines to save a bit of money - Zee was still with us, setting up camp alone in the room next door, despite him claiming that he had travelled eight hours with us to meet friends...something was a little fishy. That evening we went to a bar and met some other travellers; Zee followed us there and became extremely jealous that we weren't talking to him as much as he'd have liked and turned very nasty, resorting to writing vulgar things about us on our Facebook walls. We'd been so impressed with how safe we felt with him when we met him four days before but he became possessive and pretty scary if I'm honest. We blocked him and swiftly made plans to move on.

The pink sunrise as seen from the tree-house

Once the sun was up we couldn't leave without trying on the masks!

The streets of Yogyakarta.

A twelve hour journey involving several oppressively-boiling mini buses and numerous waits at random bus company offices took Vic and I to the nearest settlement to Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park which is home to Mt Bromo - the active volcano we planned to climb in time for sunrise the next morning. Cemoro Lawang hamlet is 2200 metres above sea level and up until now we had been enjoying (or should I say 'suffering through') the Indonesian heat however when we arrived at our guesthouse at midnight we were immediately struck by how bitterly cold it was! Everyone and their dog was trying to sell us jeep tickets to take us to the volcano however Vic and I, in a bid to keep costs low and adventures high, decided to hike there ourselves, unguided, in the pitch black and errr...without a map or torch. It sounded like such a fun idea until I just wrote it down. After only a few hours sleep we left our guesthouse at 3am and walked off into the night; we'd been told that the village was surrounded by mountains however, because of the lack of light pollution, it was so dark that all we could see was the billions of bright stars that dominated the sky. After a couple of hours we started seeing jeeps whizzing past and men on donkeys offering us rides to the volcano - we must have said no a thousand times - we were buzzing from our pitch black trek and felt pretty pleased with ourselves! We waded through The Sea of Sand and clambered up the impossibly steep volcano to the mouth of the volcanic crater which was spitting out sulfur clouds that scratched the back of our throats - there was barely a soul up there with us. We spent an hour going 'crazy on a crater' (i.e. fifty five minutes of taking photos and five minutes of screaming "WOWWWWWW!!!!!") before we started to head down and tried to feel sorry for the hundreds of people who had arrived late in jeeps and had to wrestle for space with each other (actually, that's a lie - we floated down on a cloud of smug!).

We literally had to feet our way along a track before the sun peeked over the horizon and we were able to see the silhouettes of the mountains around us.

Mt Bromo, an active volcano, is the smoking crater on the left.

Sulfur clouds!

I'm standing at the mouth of an active volcano whilst pointing at another nearby volcano...just a normal Wednesday morning then!

Bali was our next destination. The beaches in Bali are as beautiful as you'd expect but what really stays in my memory are the volcanic mountains draped in vibrant green forests and the streets of brightly painted houses and shops, shrines adorned with lotus flowers around every corner, trees and plants sneaking on to pavements in myriad shades of intense greens and a multitude of carved teak statues draped with multicoloured garlands all illuminated by the Balinese sunshine and the cobalt blue sky. We spent the day at the beach in Seminyak and then travelled by bus to Ubud; our hostel, called In Da Lodge, is a palm tree-peppered complex of dorm buildings in-keeping with the Balinese style with a swimming pool right next to a lush rice paddy. When I walked into our thirty-person dorm a guy said to me that he was worried about falling out of bed because the ridiculously-high top bunks didn't have any sides to them and I replied, "Don't be silly! You don't fall out of a regular bed without sides do you?!". Little did I know that in about ten hours time I'd be eating my words. Vic and I joined a group of Americans to drink around the pool and we went for a night out in Ubud; the next thing I know I'm suddenly awake in the middle of the night groaning in pain with my face squashed up against the cold tile floor  - I'd fallen out of the top bunk, body slammed the floor and woken up twenty-nine sleeping backpackers in the process. The next morning I had excruciating pain all down my left arm, left leg and, weirdly, my right pinky finger which had turned a worrying shade of black. Three guys had to lift me out of bed, one of them being the very same guy who had pointed out the bunk bed hazard in the first place, and I insisted that the hostel find me some crutches. Hobbling around on crooked Asian pavements, hungover, in thirty-five degree heat with crutches that are too small for me is NOT the one. Poor Vic had been terrorized by mutant mosquitoes during the night so both of us were a pretty sorry sight. A girl at the hostel saw me struggling with my crutches and we got talking about how difficult it is backpacking with an injury and it turned out she had been on Koh Tao in Thailand a few weeks ago at the same time as me; not only that but she had met the very same guy on crutches with a gammy leg who I'd befriended on the way to the ferry port! It's a small world: a small world full of idiot backpackers with an array of preventable injuries. 

  Bali. Even the name evokes a sense of paradise and I've been dying to go since before I came to Asia.

In Da Lodge hostel as seen from the poolside chair where I was stranded for hours waiting for crutches.

This night was the start of amazing friendships and the end my ability to walk!

Somethingabout...navigating through a forest of monkeys whilst on crutches.

A Stick Called Rick and a Hair-Eating Bat

To begin my month's school holiday I spent a few days on Koh Tao, an island off the south east coast of Thailand. This is my second visit to this backpacker's utopia (I was on Koh Tao in November 2014: Spicy Family, Sunsets, Fire Shows, Fish Death Matches and Injuries...) and I just knew I was in for four days of unabridged mayhem and that's exactly what I got (plus a neck injury from laughing so much). One night a couple of people from my hostel fell into a large free-standing fan at a bar near the beach whilst dancing and broke it; the Thai owner became extremely aggressive and wouldn't let us leave until they'd paid an extortionate amount of money despite the fan being ancient. We tried to negotiate with him but he was becoming irate and threatened to call his friends which was worrying because Koh Tao, despite it feeling very safe, is infamous for being secretly run by callous Thai mafia - you may have seen happenings on the island in the media over the past few years - and so, eventually, one of the guys who fell into the fan went back to our hostel, Spicy Tao, to get some money and the situation was, thankfully, resolved. Naturally we thought that since we'd paid for the fan we may as well take some of it with us. This is where Rick The Stick was born! A simple fan leg became our new, metal friend - hey, do you want to meet my friend Rick?

In true Koh Tao style the sky was ablaze with a multicoloured sunset as we arrived on the island.

I went to Koh Tao with Kiren and we met up with Ash who is living a couple of islands away on Koh Samui.

Rick The Stick. Yes, it's real.

A random plug socket on a ceiling with no apparent use - anyone for high tea?

I trekked and climbed up to a view point on the highest part of the island.

Do I really need to put into words why I love this island so much?

After Koh Tao it was time for me to add to my list of visited countries during this trip by heading to Indonesia - country number eight. I embarked on my journey by clambering on to the back of a truck that took me to Koh Tao's ferry port so I could get an overnight bus to the mainland; this is where I briefly got talking to a poor guy who had smashed his leg up in a motorbike accident and was hobbling around on crutches that were too small for him whilst trying to carry his backpack. I felt really awful for the guy as it's hard enough to carry all your worldly possessions on your back without any injuries! When his crutches, that he had just paid 3000 Baht for (£60) only half an hour before, snapped the workers in the clinic angrily refused to give him a replacement; the Thais on this touristy island seem ruthless and greedy, not at all like most of the Thais I have encountered throughout the rest of the country, and I think it's a shame that holiday makers come to these parts of Thailand and get an unfair view of what Thai people are like. A truck, boat, eight-hour bus to Bangkok, taxi, international flight, local bus and finally a tiny tuk tuk made out of blue tin driven by an exceptionally polite Indonesian man took me from Koh Tao in the south of Thailand to a hostel in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, on the island of Java. I dumped my bags down and climbed up to the rooftop bar which is where I met up with my ultimate travel buddy, Victorine. Vic and I met on Koh Tao a year ago and travelled for a month through Laos together before she went back to Holland where she's from; we've stayed in touch all this time and she flew from Amsterdam to come and meet me so we could backpack around Indonesia together. When I started this trip in July 2014 I would meticulously research each place before I visited it but now I have a much more relaxed attitude and enjoy the thrill of arriving somewhere and not knowing a thing about it so when Vic and I met on that sweaty rooftop in Jakarta we didn't have a clue how we were going to utilize our three and a half weeks in the sprawling, volcano-studded archipelago of Indonesia and it felt great! That evening we made very loose plans to slowly head east across Java towards Bali, stopping wherever we felt like on the way to break up the overland journey. First stop: Pangandaran. 

Nap time.

Yellow watermelon!

Vic in front of the flea market.

A local woman helped us order food when the bus stopped at a roadside shack for lunch - this was beef meatballs with noodles and we were instructed to douse it in glutinous, sweet soy sauce - delicious!

A ten hour bus took us to the small coastal town of Panganderan where we got a lift to a home-stay on these rickshaws that looked like wheelchairs.

Pangandaran beach.

As soon as we arrived in Pangandaran we headed straight for a restaurant on the beach where we tried Gado Gado - a to-die-for Indonesian dish consisting of vegetables smothered in peanut sauce - and met a local man called Zee who offered to show us around. The following morning we got up early, met Zee and spent the day exploring the countryside on scooters; we visited a wooden-puppet maker and a turtle sanctuary, went cliff diving at a waterfall, rode a boat through a giant cave and, most memorably, stopped off in the clearing of a jungle where a family, who made brown sugar from coconut palm sap, showed us their very unusual pet...a giant bat! The tamed bat wasn't chained or caged and seemed to be very attached to its owners, probably because it was constantly being fed lumps of brown sugar, and it was also perfectly happy chilling in the midday sun despite it being a nocturnal animal. Have you ever wondered how bats have a wee whilst hanging upside down? No? Well I'll tell you anyway - they wee into their own mouths...! The following day we were determined to fit in a surfing session before we had to leave Pangandaran as the nearer we got to Bali the more expensive it would be; we ended up paying only 150,000 rupiah (about £7) each for a whole morning of one-on-one lessons from Zee and his friends.

Holding this giant animal and seeing its veined, translucent wings shrivel when touched was one of the most bizarre experiences I've had on this trip.

We were allowed to feed it, hold it and it even 'cleaned' my hair!

We met a Dutch girl called Sietske who travelled with us for a week.

Our scooter ride took us through tiny villages surrounded by palm tree jungle.

The turtles at the conservation centre. 

*Trying* to surf the Indonesian waves!

Last of Lampang

My Thai friend, J-Muoy, volunteered to take my American friend, Sarah, and I to Chae Son National Park alongside her eighteen year old son who came suited and booted in his army uniform because he was due to leave Lampang that afternoon to serve in the small war happening on the Malay/Thai border; we drove through Lampang province on roads flanked by craggy mountains that jutted up into the clouds and we arrived a couple of hours later at Chae Son - a sprawling protected park which is home to waterfalls, caves and hot springs. First on the agenda: dunk a basket-full of eggs into the boiling, steaming water of the hot springs and leave them to boil. We then went into our own private spa room with a large, tiled pool full of very hot water and, after alternating between the hot pool and the cold shower next to it for a while, we walked to a row of beds next to a river where we all laid down for an hour-long Thai massage whilst relaxing to the sounds of the waterfall. 

Before we left the park we made sure we tasted our hot spring-boiled eggs which we ate with salty Thai soy sauce and pepper. 

J-Muoy showing us how it's done in the spa pool.

The whole day only cost me less than 400฿ (about £8)

After designing six end of semester exams - one for each year of high school - I tested my students; once I'd marked all 230 exams and issued their results I had fulfilled my duties and so it was time to say goodbye to Maethapattanasuksa school and my students. I have loved every minute of my five months in Lampang but it's time for the next adventure and so, after a month's school holiday, I will be moving to a town called Sisaket in the north-east of Thailand. During the morning flag raising ceremony on my last day two students read out the sweetest speeches to me on stage - they thanked me for being their teacher said they'd "miss me everyday" - one girl burst into tears and wrapped herself around me in a big hug. A few hours later some of my students led me outside, covered my eyes and said, "promise no looking, Teacher", whilst they led me to a large group of students from mathayom three (high school year 3) who had clubbed together to buy me a leaving cake. The cake was then taken back to my desk and everyone, including me, was handed a plastic spoon which we used to attack the typically-Thai cake with its mounds of white, sweet fluffy icing that went flying everywhere and still remains today in the crevices of the very laptop I am typing this on. Over the course of the day I was presented with a mountain of leaving gifts including a large framed photo of The King of Thailand (who is adored by the whole nation - most Thais have a shrine for the King in their house and pictures of him are EVERYWHERE). 

Farewell presents from three girls from mathayom three - these fruits are called pomelos and are similar to grapefruits. 

I must admit that it wasn't just my students who teared up on that stage!

My goodbye-cake being attacked; forget cutting cakes into slices - no, no, no, no...we do it the fun way in Thailand!

All my leaving gifts...now how am I going to fit these into my backpack??!!

This. THIS is one of the reasons why I love living in Thailand - all the juicy, sweet, unusual fruit!

I've been continuing with my running despite the constant threat of violent rain; one evening, during my last week in Lampang, I found myself in a countryside village three miles from my apartment when the sky split open and decided to spit out torrents of water. I had no choice but to seek shelter in a deserted temple and, whilst it had all the colourful adornments typical to the Thai style and it was almost inconceivably luxurious considering it belonged to a tiny village, it obviously wasn't somewhere I wanted to stay night so I began to get concerned as it got darker (the sun sets in Thailand pretty early and only varies by about thirty minutes over the course of a year). I decided to brave it and run-swim home. Never before have I had a more literal example of 'making a run for it' - my trainers were aquaplaning most of the way back and I was half carried home by the current that had materialised on the side of the road.
My last few days in Lampang were spent trying in vain to fit all the stuff I'd accumulated into my backpack as well as attending various staff parties which are worlds away from those drunken staff events I'm used to at home - in short, they all involve small, luke-warm plates of Thai food delivered one at a time to share over the course of three hours, thirty to forty people on a stage receiving awards (I have no clue what these awards were as it was all in Thai so I sat there in silence admiring their colourful outfits) and probably about five thousand photos of each person. Sometimes I wonder whether these events only take place so that the Thais can take photos! 

Stranded outside a temple.

Goodbye students!

Goodbye to the view from my apartment!

Once I'd managed to cram everything in my backpack I left my little apartment for the last time; I will miss that room despite it being an ant palace in which pretty much everything was broken - dare I say it I will even miss the hideous, grimy, faux-satin blue curtains and the 'mattress' made out of concrete. After saying goodbye to J-Muoy, Neal and their family, my friends and Lampang I boarded an overnight bus to Bangkok and made my way south to my favourite place on earth - Koh Tao!

"I love meth"

During an English seminar last month my American friend, Sarah, and I met some lovely Thai teachers who wanted to 'adopt' us; one of these ladies was called Pan and she offered to take us to The Thai Elephant Conservation Centre just outside of my hometown, Lampang. Thailand is unfortunately infamous for its mistreatment of elephants however The Conservation Centre is the only government-owned elephant camp, it's known for its pioneering conservation and science work plus it is home to HM King Bhumibol's own elephants so it seemed like somewhere I'd be comfortable visiting. We watched the elephants bathe with their mahouts, fed them bananas and corn, got hugs from baby elephants and saw them paint pictures with their trunks. One week later during the morning drive to school through countryside villages, in a completely different part of the province, I saw a huge flash of grey in my peripheral vision and suddenly the car swerved off the road and screeched to a halt because a baby elephant, bigger than the car, had just run across the road. You don't see that every day! 

The elephants loved their bath - some of the smaller ones would roll around squirting water in the air with their trunks.

Baby elephants!

This is Kru Pan getting up close and personal with the elephants - they weren't in cages or enclosures.

The centre has an on-site hospital and manages a free mobile clinic for needy elephants - this big guy was getting his foot seen to.

After the elephant camp Sarah and I found an actual club with a dance floor in Lampang! But...this is Thailand and so the dance floor was full of tiny tables that everyone kept tripping over!

On the same weekend J Muoy took me to 'Hug You' sheep farm which is basically a load of outdoor structures for people to pose for photos with (this is photo-obsessed Thailand after all!) as well as a few 'sheep' that looked suspiciously like goats.

Halfway through September I needed to visit Chiang Mai again to get my visa extended for another thirty days. I woke up at 3.30am and walked a mile and a half along a motorway in the dark to the bus station in the hope I'd get into the queue at the immigration office by 7.30am. To my utter frustration and dismay the bus broke down halfway there (T.I.A.!) and we were trapped inside the bus for over two hours whilst the rain raged outside; I couldn't figure out what was happening because of the language barrier and I was incredibly worried that I would be too late to extend my visa and possibly be kicked out of the country and lose my job but...what I was most concerned about at the time was the fact that I was starting to feel sick with hunger so I had to resort to eating someone's snack that they had left unopened on the bus...needs must! Later on that day I was walking in Chiang Mai city when I saw a cat on its back in the street with its legs in the air which is not an uncommon sight considering how many cats and dogs wander the streets of Thailand; on closer inspection I realised it was bloated, covered in flies and it was, in fact, very dead. Now, I have seen a lot of dead things in Asia (including humans!!) but never have I seen such a spooky case of rigour mortis as this cat with its scraggly paws frozen in a desperate clawing motion.

Luckily I was able to sort out my visa and force the memory of the cat out of my head so the rest of the weekend in Chiang Mai went very well; I spent the day at a swimming pool under a perfect blue sky once the rain had cleared and I bought a replacement camera and spent the day photographing the city.

My friend, Kiren, came to meet me in Chiang Mai. We found a kebab stand after craving them for a very long time and whilst we ate a drunk Thai man sang to us and showed us magic tricks with matches. 

Rachel, a teacher we'd met during an English seminar, came to visit Sarah and I in Lampang one weekendand the three of us squeezed on a moped and scooted round the city.

There was a Lanna, which is the name for the culture in the north of Thailand, and ASEAN concert in Lampang when Rachel came to visit.

After discovering that we can rent mopeds in Lampang, Sarah and I took turns at weekends to drive each other around the countryside.

We stopped at rice paddies - these little huts are where the farmers rest during their hard work on the fields.

I always have a lot of fun with my students at school because I organise a lot of games and activities for them plus, when I stand in front of the classes full of children every day, I feel like I am on stage and I find myself entertaining them like a clown which is especially enjoyable since Thai students are very happy kids. The students have been making me laugh a lot recently; I'd asked a class of my seventeen year-olds to write down questions I had written on the board and fill in their answers in English in preparation for a Q&A speaking activity and one boy decided to copy the answers from another student (rampant copying in school is a big issue in Thailand, in universities they've been known to make students wear paper helmets to prevent it) however he'd copied the words into the wrong spaces for example he'd written 'yesterday I ate Italy for lunch' and 'my telephone number is chicken' - the whole class and I were killing ourselves laughing about this, as did the boy in question after someone explained to him in Thai what he'd written. I have to try really hard not to laugh at some of the things the children say sometimes, especially since I find it off-putting when I get laughed at when I attempt to speak Thai. I am beginning to really appreciate just how difficult English spelling is to non-native speakers, especially those that have a completely different alphabet; I get a lot of 'I am fanny' (i.e. 'I am funny'), 'I feel wankerful' (i.e. 'I feel wonderful') and 'I love Meth' (i.e. 'I love Math'...well, hopefully that's what they meant)!!

My duties at school included designing and writing an English exam for each of the six high school years I teach. I asked them to spread their desks out to prevent cheating and it was the first time I've managed to get them to be silent all semester!

The school is very close to some large mountains and so the rain can get pretty violent during rainy season - often we'll travel ten minutes down the road only to discover it's been bone dry there all day.

Some of my younger students being silly.

Each year is split into two classes, higher and lower, and this is M6/1 so they are the oldest and brightest students in the school and I have to say they are definitely my favourites as they are so funny, polite and keen to learn.

Our 'Thai Mum', Pan, often takes Sarah and I to restaurants for dinner - once she cooked a big Thai spread for us at her house including a massaman curry which is a chicken dish with potatoes and coconut cream.

I have always been a 'dog person' but after suffering through endless sleepless nights because of the barking dogs next door I am starting to see cats in a different light, especially this fluffy one who likes to shop in my local 7/11!