Rad Sujanto in Papua

Me in Papua New Guinea

2008-08-03T09:04:00.002-07:00

(I have decided to copy this blog from my Blog page and paste it here
as PNG is still in Papua. The trip to PNG was done on 9th of July, 2008. Enjoy!)

Border's gate to PNG

Marcus and I

Alvie, Wendy, Marcus and I

Me and a very cool big truck. Police car of PNG. Gee, so cool!

Cool! I went to PNG (Papua New Guinea) last Sunday in the afternoon before going to a friend's wedding party later in the evening. I was not alone obviously, but with some other people in the house and friends' friends. PNG is apparently quite close from Jayapura, it took us approx. one and half hour going through such a beautiful view. Yea! we went through a wild jungle; with car of course. I meant the road is in the middle of a wild jungle. We even spotted 2 eagles flying over a huge gulf. Fantastic! We actually went to the border of Indonesia-PNG.

Imagine! I have been to the very edge of Indonesia's map!! How cool is that! :D

Closing the blog..

2008-07-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Yes this is me closing this blog (hopefully only for now). I am already back home in Yogyakarta, Java island. I am no longer in Jayapura, Papua. Nothing much to say now, but I like to thank everyone I know and knows me there for any-single-no-matter-how-tiny-thing.

Thanks to : Marcus, Alvie, Wendy, Annisa, Antonia, Michael, Nathan, Puspa, Betty and Agnes in Wamena, Jean-Jacque, Hannah, Evan, Louise, the Sate-Es Campur-GadoGado-all together big family at Lampu Merah Dok V and Nasi Kuning very near there..

Will update this blog again when I get to Papua again! So, see y'all!

Last week in Papua.... happy?

2008-07-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Yea, this is my last week being in Papua. I'll fly back to Yogyakarta this weekend for a couple of weeks and fly to Singapore if everything goes well as planned.

I don't know what to say whether it's sad to leave Papua .. or happy, instead? The problem is sometimes it's pretty boring here as there's no much to see, but in the other side my trip in Wamena was superb! It was unbelievable at all. I think I can say I don't really like Jayapura but places like Wamena instead. But, it doesn't mean Jayapura is not worth missing.. I kinda like the city, just different than any cities in Java that I've been to. To be honest, there will be some people I'll miss when I leave the city. One is a friend of mine, one of my house mates, Alvie. The second one is Annisa, or what we call 'Ibu Junior/Muda' (haha), the maid in the house. I was talking with her yesterday and when she found out that I'm leaving this week, she was sad and quite surprised. She decided to take a picture of me using her hand phone. Alvie was the same last night. She said she's gonna miss me..

I dont know, even though it's only been one month, I've felt like pretty close to them. But gladly, Alvie and I have agreed to meet up in Singapore sometimes. So I wont feel that sad to leave her :)

Wamena..,. my name is Abori (my given Papuan name)

2008-07-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

tickets to Wamena and return

in Sentani airport (so crazily confusing at the moment)

Plane to Wamena (at Sentani airport)

Me on the Wesaput swingy bridge

Me at Soreba rocks

Me and three sexy women.. hehe (this is the village where I saw the mummy)

(not me!)

The 350 year-old Jimika mummy

Me and a guy at Soreba rocks

Me at Wesaput (after crossing the swingy bridge)

Me on the way to see the mummy

A village near the cave Ventiloka

Me with local villagers near the cave Ventiloka, Agnes and her daughter Betty

Me near the entrance of a cave

Me with the head bags sellers at Jibama market

Me at a local market.. the background view was just great

Me posing at one of natural fences around the town

Wamena is so cold. It is a small town in the middle of great valleys. The people seem to be friendly there. I went there by plane from Sentani and it took me 45 minutes. The town is still original. As you can see in the pictures above, there are still houses with natural fences around them. I was impressed by the fences, just so naturally made.

On the first day, I went to the local market named Pasar Jibama or some calls Pasar Baru (New Market). I bought kotekas and head bags. I will put some pictures of them later as I haven't taken any pictures of them yet.

The next day, I went to some other cool places. First stop was a cave. I forget the name. The cave was cool and quite deep. The guide believes that it is endless as they've tried tracking it until 2 kms but they never found the end of it. Well we didn't try to track the cave that deep, just 100 meters deep as they still don't have lightings deeper than we reached at the time. They're still working on them though.

Next stop after the cave was (supposed to be) another cave, Ventiloka. But the gate was closed due to the key guy going to a funeral. In fact, I went to a village of one family just close to the cave to talk with the people. We talked and shared things. They showed me around their 'village'-house; the kitchen, bed huts (yea,, strange it is. instead of rooms, they have huts for what-we-call 'rooms'. One thing so exciting me was that they gave me a Papuan name. It is Abori which means a boy. So don't mind to start calling me with that name. Oh almost forgot, the ladies that I met and gave me the name were Betty and Agnes. They seem to be Christian names.

Anyways, after that, I went to what so called Soreba. It is an area where you can find rocks shaping like a small hill and there is a tree on top of it. So cool.

Next, I went to see a mummy (yea! real mummy). It's Jimika mummy. That's what the people call it. It is, as believed, 350 years old. I took some pictures with it and the people in the village. It was not all free at all. We paid with money and strangely cigarettes. They apparently love smoking. Not just men but also women.

My last stop was Wesaput swingy bridge. Let me tell you, it really swings!! Haha so funny when I was like crossing the bridge there were 2 kids, one with his bicycle crossing it also. In the middle of the bridge, instead of walking in the center point of the bridge (to stay in balance/to not make it too swingy), me and the 2 kids moved aside. We had to walk on each side of the bridge. We were freaked when the bridge suddenly went really swinging! The funny part is when we were all freaked out, the kids screamed "Jesus! Jesus!". Haha, I just couldn't stop laughing. They were really freaked out... it was so much fun.

There are still hundred of things that I experienced in Wamena, but I don't think I can describe them one by one here. Wamena is simply beyond beauty. The valleys are 'unpicturable'. That means pictures can not describe the beauty of the town..

I would really love to go back to the town in the future.

Congrats to Antonia and Michael!

2008-07-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

"You are now husband and wife"

Yea! Their wedding was great. Held in a nice restaurant, it was so much fun. They had dancing performance from local Papuans. I can't recall the name of the dance but I did join dancing as some other guests did (sure!). I went to the wedding with Marcus, Alvie and other people from English First company. We were actually one hour and a half late as scheduled. It was totally fine tho'.

We all drank glasses of wines and cocktails, ate nice dishes, met various cool people, not to forget danced and obviously had fun!. We all got so tired when home. We were supposed to wait for a friend, Louise, who said she would come to visit us in the house to have more drinks and talks but we guessed she got already too drunk at the party to stop by. Cool tho'. Anyhow, I find Louise so much fun as a person. She's so energized kinda of person. Loving hanging around her. Anyway she lives in Wamena, Papua. Just wanna give you an idea how freaking cool is that!

More updates soon!

Dinner at Yasmin Hotel restaurant

2008-07-04T02:19:00.000-07:00

Me, Wendy, Marcus, and Alvie decided to eat out at one of restaurants in the town. It was Yasmin Hotel. We had fun and nice meal. There was a we-considered-pretty-bad karaoke which made us have fun though. We talked about many things as a way of relaxing ourselves. I had grilled chicken and pineapple juice. They were not the best I've ever had honestly. I indeed had better. They were okay though.

Let's do something like that again, guys!

Continue soon, I gotta go to the market near here to prepare the dinner. I am cooking!! A friend is waiting there, see ya!

Fruit here are supremely expensive!

2008-07-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

Imagine one mango (only one piece) cost IDR10000! which is back in Yogyakarta would be IDR5000 for three mangoes. Crazy!

One other weird thing; there were many times I went to some places and some people just said hi and started asking me questions. One example, it was when I went to StarMart supermarket in so-considered-main-area Ruko, one of the store keepers said hi to me. I said Hi back to him. Surprisingly he asked me if I knew Rizal. I said No as I really had no idea about that name. Then more surprisingly he asked where I lived and etc. OMG, I just stepped away from him after grabbing my wanted ice cream.

Well sort of experiences are fun though. I think I will miss Jayapura or Papua when I leave the island.

another news from Papua..

2008-06-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

This is my second week in Jayapura, Papua. So far so good. I went to some places here and mostly to so-called Base G beach. It takes one 'angkot' and some walks through a forest to get to the beach. But I admit the beach is worth visiting more than one time. Today was my third time being at the beach. What I like more about going to the beach is to take pictures of anything that I find while walking down the hill to the beach. Such as flowers, bugs, the view. I will surely upload more pictures that I've taken to this blog. The problem is the internet cafe where I am online now is barely unreliable. This cafe is considered the best one in the town which is back in Yogyakarta considered the lower-than-basic one. I can not even upload pictures on Facebook because they don't have the software installed yet!

Next week we're all going to one of the teachers' wedding. She's Antonia from Switzerland. She just resigned as DoS at English First Jayapura. I am still thinking what kind of gift we should give to her on the wedding. Wine? No. We all thought silly once, we thought to give her condoms! Haha.. of course it was a pure joke. I hope to find what it is as the gift very soon.

Speaking of teachers living in the shared house, they are Wendy from Canada, Alvie from The Philippines and Marcus from England. We mostly spend time watching DVDs at night before heading off to bed and planning to go somewhere for a small picnic to a beach or somewhere else.
Guess that's all for today. See y'all!

the island is not boring, but my room is

2008-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Base-G beach

As I've introduced in the previous post, Marcus, Wendy, Alvie and I went to a beach called Base-G, on Sunday. We had so much fun (again) swimming, playing with the rocks, having nice lunch in a small cottage. It was a short trip tho'. It was so much fun.

Badly, back to my room, things get a bit boring.

Oh anyway, there are not only Papuans here, but generally mixed, mostly from Java. But FYI, everything here costs double compared to prices in Java. For example, low basic internet cafe here is IDR10.000 per hour.

The wages are equally pretty high too tho'. A shop keeper is paid IDR1.000.000 per month here while in Java sometimes it is only IDR300.000.

finally I landed on the island...

2008-06-26T01:16:00.000-07:00

The island is full of new unexpected things! What's so obvious about the island is the fact that you have to get used to living in the jungle. Haha, JK! But true that living here feels like living in the jungle, in some way. You can't find taxis here, only cars that happen to be "taxis". We tend to call them 'angkot'.

I am living in a shared house with some foreigners who work as English teachers for English First (EF) company. They are Marcus, Wendy, Alvie, Michael and Antonia. I enjoy hanging around them. Anyway, on the second day since I arrived, me, Wendy and Alvie went to the local festival called "Lake Sentani Festival". We had so much fun taking pics with local people which are called the Papuans (obviously!).

The lake is super wide. I even thought it was the sea before being told that it was the lake Sentani. The people here are friendly and even sometimes they give a ride to us. We entered and exited the festival area by hitching a car. Hey, it was 2,5kms from the entrance to the lake where the festival was held.

Flight route (very loooooooong...)

2008-06-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

My flight to Papua is in Thursday this week (June 19) in the evening. I'll fly with Garuda Indonesia airline for the whole route. The route from Yogyakarta to Jayapura will not be short and easy. My first flight for this trip will be started from Yogyakarta to Jakarta which is gonna take approx one hour. I may have to wait for like two hours in Jakarta's airport to catch up the next flight. The second flight from Jakarta would be at 9.30 flying to Makassar (South Sulawesi). So, so far I will have traveled Java-Sulawesi. In Makassar I'll have to wait again for a while to wait for the next flight to Biak (Northern of West Papua). I don't know exactly how far it is from Makassar to Biak. Shortly, I'll supposedly arrive in Jayapura at 7am in the morning (Jayapuran time). FYI, Jayapuran time is 2 hours later than time in Java. E.g. 6am in Java = 8am in Jayapura.

It is going to be a looong journey and so much tiring. Hope it'll be worth it though. At least I know it's worth a new experience that not everybody can have.