Giving the people what they want.

wow. today in indonesia was awesome. i have not seen popularity like this since filling oj's backpack with bacon and sending him through grizzly bear country.


so today jen and i went see the ancient buddhist temple of Borubudur (abondoned around 900 AD). As soon as we hit the bus station, people started shouting with joy at us. i don't know what the hell they were jibber-jabbering about, but i'm pretty sure it translated as "hey whities, get on my bus, i love you (your money)"

The temple was awesome, i'll try and get pics going if i can make picture uploading-in-indonesia happen (as a gambling man, i'll take the under on this). the best part was how much people loved us. Background: whitey tourism in indonesia has been slim since the Bali bombings. Thus, the Borubudur temple appears to be visited by 98% indonesian tourists, apparently most of whom are from small towns who don't get visitors often. About every 5 minutes we'd see kids inching towards us, when we would turn around and say hello, the parents would rejoice and then ask if they could take a picture of us with their kids. The kids would then use the opportunity to practice the english taught in grade school (similar to the spanish you all learned on sesame street: usually "hello," "thank you," or my favorite, "one, two, three!"

Then i tried to book a flight to elsewhere in indonesia. try this over the phone someday for awesomeness. i had to spell names for flight tickets exactly, it went like this

Ringo: My last name is Dingrando. D as in dog, i as in igloo, n as in nancy, g as in grill, etc.
Indonesian receptionist: so your last name is dolardo? B as in bali, i as in india, m as in malsdkljs, and q as in qlkjseotijh?
Ringo: what?????
Indonesian receptionist: sorry?????

i would have taken up heroin right there if there wasn't a death penalty for shit like that.

after returning to the bus station (several miles away from hotel) we couldn't find a taksi (taxi), so we hailed a bekat (cart on front of bike). this poor guy had a LONG way to take us, but he was up for it, and i was high-rollin'. this was like driving on I-25 in rush hour in an electric wheel chair, the wrong way. holy shit. 5 million scooters are passing us, but then to make up for it, our bekat biker doesn't heed stoplights, and he passes when he needs to, oncoming traffic be-damned. did we have helmets? seatbelts? ha. did Noah's neighbors have life jackets? we did have lots of people staring and waving at us. i figured it was a sort "we salute those who are about to die."

miraculously, after about an hour, we made it. i washed the sweat off at the hotel (several buckets of water dumped over the head). and then i feasted on spaghetti with beef, tuna, and squid on top (delicious actually!).

wooooooooooo