Our night at the Hotel Sayang Maha Mertha in Legian, Indonesia droned on at a snail’s pace, as we tossed and turned, attempting to sleep over the roaring laughter and screeching conversation of drunken Spaniards courting similarly intoxicated American women around the nearby pool. Our fan buzzed and creaked overhead, while the coil of mosquito repellent incense which we had lit smoldered apologetically amidst the late night din.

Needless to say, we were happy when the sun began to rise, and though the aforementioned noise seemed to switch seamlessly from crazy hour carousing to young children splashing and yelling in the pool, we were at least free now to get up and wheel a little.

The breakfast at the Hotel Sayang Maha Mertha proved quite tasty. Though we were forced to pay a little extra to flesh out the free breakfast with an egg, the addition of infinite cups of coffee was quite welcome.

In good spirits despite our lack of rest, we initiated beach mode and took to the streets, arriving in short order at the sea.

Though in the sunset it had been glowingly idyllic, we could see in the light of day that Kuta Beach too was a fascinatingly post-apocalyptic sight. We made our way across refuse blowing in drifts in the sand, waving good morning to the many fellows who made their living wearing Coca-Cola and Billibong branded shirts while raking up the evidence of yesterday’s defilement of the beach. We entered the surf to find that with each wave, we became entangled in rubbish, plastic bags mostly. We waded out some waves, and body surfed for a while before the sight of what looked like medical waste in the water turned us back toward land.

Back on the cycles, we explored the north of Legian. We worked our way along a surprisingly Sanur-like beach path. This one was about five times as wide, sporting the same gray brick and barriers every kilometer or so, which required us to hoist the speed TRs up and over before continuing on.

After we reached the end of the path (where we found a large tower advertising sunset bungee jumping), Scott called an Uber-Rausch and we worked our way back toward the Hotel Sayang Maha Mertha along the meandering back roads of Legian. One of our missions for the morning was to find some kind of protective system for our derailleurs. One lacking of the Speed TR is its vulnerability to damage on the derailleur during transit. So far we had been lucky, but from the scratches and damage to the bags that held the bikes while they rode in the belly of the airplane, we knew we were playing with fire.

We tried a number of solutions, including a variety of local wooden hats. Finally, we found a couple of plastic bowls (Melamine Ware brand) and a ball of twine that we decided would serve as a stopgap in our search for a better solution. Armed with this equipment, we checked out of the hotel, and after picking up our laundry, we decided to wheel to the airport.

Though this was our longest trip to date on the cycles while fully loaded with our inventory, it proved surprisingly easy, in part due to the flat terrain and in part to the friendly nature of the local motorists. This is not to say, however, that we did not make quite a sight arriving at the Balinese airport by cycle. The guards at the front gate, sported looks of 50% grin and 50% befuddlement as they flagged us through the bomb check station.

We arrived at the international terminal, and quickly began to disassemble our cycles, struggling briefly to attach the plastic bowls, attracting a small crowd, receiving reprimands for attempting to use the wrong kind of baggage cart, briefly alarming the security guards with the ukulele, and finally making our way toward the Air Asia counter.

At the counter, we were somewhat furious to discover that we would need to pay an extra $15 dollars each to transport the cycles (sports equipment charge…). After quickly recovering from that unanticipated expense, we were hit with another, when we learned we would need to pay approximately 30 bucks each to get out of the country. Luckily, we had, in anticipation of the unsuccessful trip to the Gilis, taken out a fair bit more money than we had spent. But it is worth noting, dear reader, that had we been out of cash, this might have become quite a sticky boarder crossing.

On the other side, we found many small shops, and restaurants, where food and drink was valued at 500% to 1000% greater than the normal Indonesian level, and at the end of the terminal our gate, which required another complicated security check. We had loaded up on drinks for the plane, which we were now forced to consume on the spot or discard. As the snaking security line for flight QZ 8496 to Singapore wore it way down, we engaged in the bizarre and fraternalistic practice of consuming as much liquid as possible in the shortest amount of time, upon which we had to submit our bottles to the recycling for security reasons. With my belly expanded to full capacity and glugging with our prematurely purchased beverages, I thought about a scene from the movie Charlotte’s Web, with which my sister had quite the affinity during my youth.

Meanwhile in the Denpasar airport, a uniformed man was intently scrutinizing my ukulele case, which turned out to still be holding the bike tool from our last wheel. The fellow explained that we could not take such a tool on board (perhaps for fear we would loosen all the Allen bolts on the aircraft?). We frowned at each other, and I tried to explain the importance of this tool and the mission of AsiaWheeling using sign language. He still frowned and refused, plunging his hand into my bag and removing more materials that he now seemed to consider forbidding. He then held up the ukulele pitch pipe and sternly questioned me as to its function. I began to blow into the pipe, producing a sweet note, which appeared to temporarily transport the fellow to a distant and dreamy place. He began to walk slowly away from me, still clutching the bike tool, with the distant gaze of a moth approaching a candle. Then suddenly he snapped around, and without a word replaced the tool in my bag, smiled a large and very Indonesian smile and bid me safe travels.

It’s a magical world we live in, dear reader. A magical world.

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According to our map, the journey to Kuta should have been very short, but for one reason or another the drive took quite some time. Upon finally arriving, our driver was very kind in indulging us as we drove from hotel to hotel comparing rooms and rates. Finally we selected a very cheap place, by the name of Hotel Sayang Maha Mertha with a nice pool and the welcome return of free breakfast. It seemed to be frequented primarily by rowdy Spaniards and overweight Australians. Our kind of people.

With our debts paid, and our belongings safely stashed in the room, we took to the streets. Our first waypoint was a laundry joint, where we dropped off some truly foul and rankly sopping articles of clothing. In exchange for a few pennies per article, we would be saved the labor of hand washing and attempting to line dry in the foglike humidity of this boiling land.

That done, we headed for a cafe that might provide Internet and sustenance. Both we found to be available in moderate quality. As we awaited the arrival of fried noodles, boiled greens, and a kind of seafood soup, I booted up the MacBook and waded into a sea of unread email. As always, this process began with a scan for fires that might need to be put out. This time the scan pulled up a fierce bogie, necessitating the hasty scarfing of our food when it finally arrived.

It seemed AirAsia had canceled our flight, and as best we could determine from the poorly worded piece of computer-generated communique, our flight to Singapore had been moved to the 28th.  Looking at the email below, would you know exactly what was meant to be communicated?

This was some three days in the future and well overshot our plans to meet AsiaWheeling Dive Master and Instructor David Miller in Singapore. Obviously, we needed to speak with AirAsia and understand how they intended to get us to Borneo in a timely fashion.

Back on the cycles, we rode furiously toward the local AirAsia office, hastily locking our bikes to a telephone pole, and dashing into the relatively freezing and stark interior of the AirAsia office. A woman sat behind a large red plastic desk, quietly typing away. We were relieved to find she spoke English quite well, and even more relieved to find that our flight could be easily moved forward to the following day at five, leaving us time for a morning wheel. It would get us to Singapore in time to run our personal errands before meeting up with the esteemed Mr. Miller.  It turns out that the email was actually trying to say that for three days, the given flight would depart and arrive at a later time.  Either way, now it was aces all around.

Much relieved, we returned to the same cafe, and feasted like wild beasts on the Internet connection. Before we knew it, the sun was sinking low in the sky and we had not even visited the beach yet. Rumored to be quite beautiful.

So we packed up our things, grabbed some bags of our favorite local crispy-snack-shape called “Taro Net” as the convenience store was blasting swooning eletrohouse music.

Dave Darell – Children (Club Radio Mix)

Pushing off, we pedaled for the beach. We got there just as one of the most miraculous sunsets of my life climaxed on the horizon.

We parked the bikes and sat down in the sand to watch bright oranges flash against purple and blue clouds in an evolving and shimmering light show. Really, truly, something to behold.

Indonesia had treated us well.  And at this moment, watching the beautiful pastel painted clouds pass over and young merrymakers frolic on the beach, we knew it was time to leave these islands.  The next morning we would be bound for Singapore, and whole new array of challenging pleasures.

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This is the first post in a series titled “Adventure Capitalist’s Notes,” which will be posted at the end of our time in each country.  They will be written by Scott, the AsiaWheeling resident “Adventure Capitalist,” and comment on curious market-oriented phenomenon occurring in each currency zone.  We encourage informed opinions, corrections, and clarifications in the comments of the post.  These posts, like all of AsiaWheeling’s content, are not to be construed as investment advice.

Pre-Measurement

One thing we came across in Indonesia was the premeasurement of petrol used in motorbikes.  While many more developed countries and cities will sell all petrol using pumps with large reservoirs, smaller stands in Indonesia will measure out liters of petrol to be stored in bottles.  This achieves a series of valuable benefits specific to the market.

Mechanisms of Trust

First, it creates transparency and trust regarding the actual amount of petrol being purchased.  Signs across Indonesia warn consumers against vendors tweaking the sensitivity of their scales in favor of overcharging.  A makeshift pump or on-the-spot measurement system exposes itself to this dubious behavior.  Premeasurement also allows the buyer to inspect the hue of the petrol and see that each bottle is issued by a previous third party with the liter marking.

Inventory Dosage

Second, for the buyer, it provides for an appropriate “dosage” required by both the buyer and the seller.  For the buyer, one liter at a time is all that is necessary to keep her bike going, and is a cheaper purchase  than an entire tankfull.  With small bottles available in abundance, there is no need to tie up working capital in excess gas.

Likewise, for the seller, it provides an appropriately sized inventory on hand, rather than a traditional underground reservoir requiring land, construction, maintenance, and a huge capital outlay to refill.

Branding Petrol

Third, and possibly the most intriguing differentiation from stand to stand is branding.  The petrol itself isn’t branded with an oil company, but rather by the vessels in which it sold.  Across Indonesia, one sees Absolut vodka bottles as a standard for one liter transactions.  Above you see Coca-Cola bottles, and below, Absolut vodka.

Coca-Cola, Absolut, Jack Daniel’s, and even giant sake bottles are used to store single liter doses of petrol.  Is there a value ascribed to these branded holding vessels? Is one stand considered subtly more reputable if all of their bottles are matching in brand?  Does this suggest that Coca-Cola and Absolut are more reputable brands than Pertamina or Shell?

Modular Currency

In paying for a box of biscuits that came to 4,000 rupiah (USD 0.42), I handed the woman a 10,000 note.  With the box of biscuits came rp6,000 change in the form of a rp5,000 note stapled to a rp1,000, effectively minting a single rp6,000.

Brilliant.  I’d never encountered this before, and in the U.S. where bills are slightly more sacrosanct, this would be considered a defacement risking rejection or confusion if used in a transaction.  Most likely, of all the change given out at this counter all day, there are two or three most common amounts.  To save time, the shopkeeper could prepare by finding these most common combinations and joining them together for later use.

This got me thinking about the concept of a modular currency, one that physically can be combined to create single units of a larger amount; one that has the tactile and visual attributes of the value it represents.

Both physical and numerical currency, like all other things, has been designed.  In the case of the combined rp6,000 note, the top down design of the Bank of Indonesia has been modified and re-designed by the end user of the currency.  If universally accepted within the nation (the key attribute of currency), this modification may have further implications.

The concept of currency itself is completely modular.  One hundred cents make one dollar, and 100 pence make one pound.

Whatever the total amount owed happens to be, the buyer can combine any denomination of smaller units summing to the amount due.  For the most part, coins worth less are smaller, and coins worth more are larger and sometimes shinier.

The five Swiss Franc coin (~USD5), for example, is heavy enough to serve as a paperweight, and about the size of a Ritz cracker.  It really feels like it’s worth something compared to any other coin out there.

Because of the relative velocity of notes, larger, less common bills like the USD $100 are more often crisp, where $1 bills are worn, crumpled, and soggy.

In developed nations, representing and designing on top of currency rarely happens on the physical level, because the transactions demanding re-designed currencies are generally very large and represented primarily on computer screens.  Medium sized transactions in the developed world, done on credit card, are notoriously non-physical.  Because the use of “plastic” is so effortless and removed from the concept of actual cash, it is a huge contributing factor in amassing large personal debt and even bankruptcy.  It seems removing the physicality of cash has both large costs along with its obvious benefits of traceability and compactness.

However it’s the largest transactions in the developed world which are the biggest examples on non-physical currency modification, and also have the power to be the most harmful for our economy.

These supercharged re-designed currencies, an analog to the rp6,000 note, are over the counter (OTC) financial derivatives.  Swaps are a piece of currency that you revisit every couple of months to staple on given amount.  A subprime CDO is no more than the soggiest, most disgusting one dollar bills stabled together and placed to equal value as a crisp Benjamin.

These are the transactions that underpin a lot of the success the U.S. and Western Europe has had, but can you picture a CDO?  Can you put a swap in your filing cabinet?  Not like you can touch two stapled notes.  Would standardizing a physical representation of these complicated products make a difference?  I’d love to be involved with an experiment in package design for this purpose.

And on the grandest level, the central banks of governments are doing what the shopkeeper did with the rp6,000 note with their own currencies by design.  Because many developing world currencies like the Chinese Renminbi and the Russian Ruble are pegged to a (secret) basket of currency combinations, it would be like the government is stapling four dollars, two euros, and two pounds sterling together and calling it 100 RMB, packaged for domestic consumption with the crimson face of Mao Zedong.

The sun began to warm our room at the Rocky Bungaloes and we were confronted for the first time on AsiaWheeling 2.0 with the challenge of acquiring breakfast.

Rocky was hard at work outside on a restaurant for this place, but in the meantime, we would have to fend for ourselves.  Workers were perched on this restaurant frame, assembling it piece by piece.

We achieved finding an already fabricated a restaurant with little difficulty, hanging a Rausch outside our hotel and pedaling the short distance to Uluwatu Beach proper. There we found many restaurants all catering to the foreign surfing crowd, and selected one with a view of the water.

Refueled by two wicked cups of coffee, a plate of honeyed banana pancakes, and one very salty omelet, we decided to head down to the beach. Once again, the beaches in the area proved significantly stranger than the paradise we had found in Candidasa. The beach itself was more like a small inlet, into which giant waves of clear blue-green water crashed.

In order to access it we had to make our way through a number of concrete ledges, filled with clusters of surf shops and eateries catering to surfers, and serving burgers, pizzas, spaghetti, and beer. We finally reached the beach by way of a very steep collection of differently shaped concrete steps. The sand was clean, and the place seemed deserted. We attempted to wade out into the sea, but when strange currents began pulling at our lower extremities, we headed once again for dry land.

In climbing up out of the sand and into the rocky area surrounding the inlet, we saw a number of wooden ladders and walkways, all in varying states of disrepair and offering access to unknown regions above.

Exploration of these areas uncovered a number of observation platforms , some ruined and one still standing, from which one could see surfers riding the large  and pounding waves that were forming in an area of water separated from us by a shallow reef. Certainly, we thought, this is not the place to learn to surf.

We took a moment to ponder the global spread of surfing. It was due to young men with a similar spirit of exploration and adventure that brought surfing from its origin to the western world, and then east again.  Surfing began  in Polynesia, where the most talented surfer was named the tribal chief, and first witnessed by Europeans during an expedition to the islands in 1767.  From Polynesia and Hawaii, it spread to southern California and then to Australia, where it held a relatively small following until the 1960s.  With the release of the film Gidget, it grew from an underground fad to a mainstream cultural phenomenon through films, music, and fashion.

How does this relate to wheeling?  As the movement grew, the beaches of Oahu, Santa Cruz, and Huntington became crowded, motivating adventurous surfers to explore.  This brought them across Asia and Africa, putting surfers in contact with indigenous people in a relatively happy-go-lucky, non-combative fashion.  Such an exploration is detailed in the classic and influential 1966 film, “The Endless Summer. ” An excerpt plays below of the two travelers embarking in their suits to be the first surfers on a break in Ghana.

Since then, surfers have been discovering breaks all over Indonesia, such as breaks on the southern point of Nias Island, where one can also spend time with one of the last remaining Megalithic cultures.  By wheeling these many new places on land, we felt a connection to the surfers that had come before us and plied the waves of Uluwatu.  AsiaWheeling may not have the same infectious style of dress, which has now been adopted by the youth of Indonesia from their Australian  neighbors, but we’re at least trying to educate the world on the utility of the Panama hat.

Heading southward, we mounted the cycles and began to ride the rolling hills of the Bukit Peninsula. It was to be the southernmost wheel of the entire ten-month trip. We worked our way on the meandering steep roads, through Balinese farmlands, low-laying salt jungle, and many, many roadside stands selling water at up to 10 times the average price we had hitherto experienced.

Lunch took place at a roadside rooftop restaurant that clung to the side of a hill.  The food was tasty; the view was spectacular.

The clientele were mostly Australian surfers, tolerating the relentless cycle of Avril Lavigne records which the proprietors chose to broadcast.

At one point, near the southern tip of the island, Scott’s planetary transmission failed, and we pulled over to the side of the road to do some repairs to the mechanism. The moment we stopped wheeling, the immensity of the sun and the heat fell on us in a thick and sticky blanket. This was below the equator, and is the southerly most point of the entire trip. Since the month was January, we were in the depths of summer. Without our motion through the air to evaporate our sweat, we were soon drenched. Though the repair took no more than five minutes, we remounted the cycles with our clothes pasted to us and eyes stinging from the salty mixture of sweat and sunscreen.

We spent the rest of the day wheeling from beach to beach. None of them were able to come close to the wonderland we had found in Candidasa, but each proved unique and fascinating in its own way. We even found ourselves revisiting some beaches, using different entrances.

By the end of the day, we were tired, hungry, and in high spirits, only dampened slightly when we discovered that in Uluwatu, the Internet was not working, so correspondence (including a large load that I knew would be waiting for me, since my birthday had since transpired) would have to wait.

Instead, we relaxed in the hotel pool, conversed with some Dutch university students, and watched the sun set shimmering gold and purple across the glassy surface of the sea.

Ubud shined brightly in the relative cool of the morning, as we munched on fried eggs at the hotel restaurant. Allow me to explain, dear reader, if it is not already obvious, that we would certainly prefer to be eating Indonesian breakfast foods (rather than Jaffles and the like), but that here in Bali breakfast was (as, it seemed, in all of Indonesia) included with a night’s stay. So we felt pressure to break our fast in the hotel restaurant, which offered only western choices that among many lackluster qualities featured significantly smaller portions than the Indonesian equivalents we had enjoyed in Java.

Some shopping around secured us a car and driver to Candidasa for a few dollars, and with that we were off.

We asked the driver if he had eaten lunch, and he assured us that he was just as hungry as the two travelers in his 1990’s era Toyota Kijang.  He suggested suckling pig.  Being Hindu, Balinesians do not restrict pork from their diet.  This was a fantastic  blessing, as it led us to a delectable meal eaten right on the street of a small town outside Ubud.

Candidasa had come to us on recommendation of a French Canadian network administrator turned Balinese photographer, and a highly respected member of the court at Naughty Nuri’s.  The ride was about an hour and 40 minutes, and took us out of the mountains and through coastal rice paddies and coconut plantations. Candidasa proved a gorgeously sleepy little hamlet, and we quickly found amazing and quite affordable accommodation therein.

Our hotel, a place by the name of Kelapa Mas Home Stay consisted of a number of small duplex bungalows set in the midst of an ornately manicured and somewhat sprawling Balinese garden, complete with multiple stone temples, curling tiled walkways, and a private beach in the rear.

We were to be staying that night in a beach-facing bamboo bungalow, complete with private porch, two large beds, and the most delightful outdoor bathroom, which was quite clean and sported a cold-water shower that was no more than a large jug, cemented into part of the roof, which when activated, overflowed through a spout and down onto the bather in a refreshing deluge.

Though the urge to linger was strong, we decided to mount the cycles. There was much to do this day, and the first order of business was the beach. This, of course, demanded that we switch into AsiaWheeling beach mode.  AsiaWheeling beach mode is a simple transformation characterized by subtraction.  Only a small pouch of  cash and keys are brought.  Mobile phones, wallets, and sadly the WikiReader gets left at home.  Swim trunks and a light shirt with sunglasses and sandals makes beach mode complete.  The camera is the only piece of digital technology on the better side of the beach mode cutoff.  Assembling ourselves, we climbed onto the Speed TRs.

We had read of a hidden and secret beach about seven km from town and were tearing out of town. The scattering of shops that constituted the city were quickly replaced by thick jungle, dotted with small wooden,pig and chicken farming operations.

You see, dear reader, the city of Candidasa was a boom town during the 1970s, sporting a number of developments and a large swath of white sand beach. Unfortunately, a miscalculated government project harvested a large amount of stone and coral from the surrounding reef, which had the unintentional effect of completely wiping out the white sand beach, and plunging the region into an economic and ecological doomsday.

The beach toward which we rode was the last stretch of virgin beach in the area, and was rumored to be quite glorious. We climbed over a small mountain, and began to snake our way down the other side. Traffic was light, the roads were relatively free of hazard; and we were feeling great.

On the other side of the mountain, we came to a number of temples and an even smaller townships, where we were able to purchase water and gain directions to the beach.

We now rode on an even smaller and more winding path, which switched between gravel and concrete. The path had plenty of Indonesian “sleeping policemen,” however, most of these had been broken in one place or another and excavated to create a clear path for those on only two wheels.  We slowly descended to sea level on a gravel path of rugged terrain.

Eventually the road dissolved into packed red jungle earth, and descended steeply. After paying a fellow the 25-cent entry fee, we found ourselves at the beach.

It was far from secret, but also not overly developed and crowded either. The place was about 300 meters of meandering white sand beach, with bright blue surf energetically lapping against it. The first third of the beach was lined with identical grass huts, from which the locals we selling everything from fresh green coconuts to back massages.  A team of men rolled concrete piping from one side of the beach to the other, evoking the myth of Sisyphus.

Further down the beach were lines of fishing boats and the beach became scattered with discarded puffer fish (which, being poisonous, are no use to the net fisherman after being caught.)

We swam in the ocean. lazed on the beach, and generally rejoiced in our good fortune.  Generously, a French couple offered to share their loungers with us because we were almost completely out of cash.  Luckily, the cost of two coconuts to drink was within our budget.  After we had drained the milk in our state of beach-induced dehydration, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the service included a slicing of the young coconut and the fashioning of a spoon.  It was exactly what we needed.

When the sun began to lay low enough to indicate afternoon was well underway, we remounted the cycles and headed back into the city to deal with our primary problem: we were down to about two dollars in cash.

Back at the hotel, we wiped the sweat out of our eyes, and consulted the front desk about the location of an ATM.

It seemed the closest one was some 10-15 km away in the nearest large settlement. We would need to either ride it, or charter a cab for the round trip. In many countries to which we will travel on this trip such a situation would be cause for assessment and calculated maneuvering to avoid being over-charged or ending up between a rock and a hard place short on cash.

Here in Indonesia, however, we found the entire experience to be relatively stress-free. Feeling tired from the long wheel and the sun, we decided to splurge on an only mildly over-priced cab, and in no time a jolly fellow in a blue Kijiang appeared to drive us to a local grocery called Hardy’s which sported among other things an international ATM. We loaded up on cash wandered through the store with our driver. He recommended a number of interesting snacks, and we suggested he throw a few in to share with his family.  Below, at this supermarket, is the most Pocari Sweat one may ever see in a single place.

And the coffee aisle.

The snacks were being purchased for consumption on tomorrow’s boat ride to the Gili Islands. The Gilis are a small cluster of three tiny islands in the sea that separates Bali from the neighboring large island of Lombok. Our main reason for the visit was the fact that the islands have no motorized traffic, and reportedly run on only bicycle and horse cart.

Among other interesting attributes, a theft or occurrence of misconduct on the Gili Islands is handled by the village elder, as there are no policemen present. So as you, dear reader, can no doubt imagine, we were none too thrilled to learn that rough seas and need for repairs had canceled our ferry for the next day. Stripped of our plans to visit the Gilis we were forced to re-chart the last few days in Bali.

Retiring to the beach in front of our bungalow, we recalled classic alternative rock tunes from the mid to late 1990s and nestled into some books as the twilight rolled out to the horizon.

With such a beautiful and affordable hotel, and the finest beach I have visited in my entire life only a glorious seven km wheel from town. We decided to spend another night at the Kelapa Mas in Candidasa and chart our trajectory from there.  As the ukelele continued, the sunset overlooking the Indian Ocean eased us calmly into an evening of rest.

And, believe it or not, dear reader, the next day we did something that has never happened in the rich and meandering history of AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises: we did the same thing two days in a row.

On the morning of our second day in Ubud, the skies opened, and torrential rains fell on the city. In the hotel restaurant, we decided to experiment with a dish known as the Jaffle which was served as a breakfast food in our hotel. It proved to be a very well buttered grilled cheese sandwich cooked in a kind of a press –which might for lack of a better word be called a Jaffle press. The coffee was tasty and fresh, but milk was served in the form of a strange and insoluble powder, which just floated throughout the cup as a kind of roiling particulate, like snowflakes in a night blizzard.

We responded to the rain by setting up the mobile offices in a nearby restaurant with a beautiful trickling water garden, large tables,made of minimally processed rain forest trees and a number of small sweet smelling flowering shrubs, one of which contained, notably, a large bat, which struggled voluminously to sleep in the small and exposed tree amidst the downpour and the sounds of the restaurant.

The Internet was, unfortunately, more like a thin trickle of information that would dry up from time to time, and we struggled to operate. The coffee on the other hand was stupendous, and served in a vast steaming kettle, just brimming with a thick fragrant brew, a bowl of deep brown local sugar and real honest-to-goodness milk, which easily balanced out the poor data flow.

And then suddenly the sun was out and we were off again, wheeling south, back to the monkey forest. When we saw a local looking fellow on a scooter take a small side path into the forest itself, we followed suit.

Inside the forest, we found ourselves pedaling along a slanting and coiling path of interlocked stone plates, immersed in an entirely unprecedented concentration of monkeys, fighting amongst themselves, harassing passers by, and generally creating the kind of ruckus that only primates can.

On the other side of the forest, we followed the path onto a large paved road, that was a straight shot through about a kilometer of Hindu temple after Hindu temple, many of them devoted to Hanuman, though a diversity of deities were represented. We wheeled on, through another concentration of touristy places, out eventually into the country, where terraced rice paddies and deep ravines containing roaring rivers reigned again.

Feeling the onset of the madness, we stopped for a bowl of Bakso (that delightful Indonesian noodle and meatball soup, which had saved us so many times before).

The Bakso joint was little more than a wooden overhang, which contained a modified version of a cart that had at some point patrolled the streets selling Bakso. Now, in its old age, the cart had been incorporated into this permanent kitchen. In addition, the restaurant sported several very solid teak tables.

We continue to be astonished by the quality of furniture here in Indonesia. Even a humble roadside noodle stand sports very well made and comfortable wooden pieces. If only project K9 were a little further on it’s way to fruition…

The Bakso was delicious and, all be they typically modest portions, a bowl was less than a dollar, and we were back on the cycles in no time. Rain seemed destined to revisit Ubud, and sure enough we were forced to duck into a protected roadside stand (once again sporting very nice hand-made furniture) near the street of temples on our way back. We snacked on peculiar peanut butter-filled pastries, crackers, and jelly, while the rain fell in buckets.

Wheeling through the streets, we explored the back roads of Ubud and came across all manner of shops.  Bicycle repairmen, light bulb saleswomen, Internet cafes and theaters all lined the green streets of the city.  Coming across a strange and ruptured statue of a young boy cast in concrete, we were briefly spooked.  You can see why for yourself below.

It was no more than 20 minutes later that the sun reappeared and we took again to the cycles. We struck out again into the hills, and climbed up a long street of merchants selling musical instruments, wooden masks, and oodles of furniture. Of particular interest was a shop specializing in furniture cobbled together from pieces of old boats. Beautiful rugged wine racks, dining tables, Adirondack chairs, and chests of drawers lay with peeling paint seemingly varnished with seawater.  A fantastic opportunity for western import here, no doubt.

From the summit of this elongated strip of craft houses, we descended back to the main roundabout affixed with Arjuna’s statue, and headed back home to wash up and prepare for dinner.

Dinner was again at the Dewa Warung, which had treated us so well the evening before.  As rare as a repeat dining experience is for AsiaWheeling, we felt there was a certain magic to the cocktail of food, people, and atmosphere that this place involuntarily cultivated.  This evening, we ended up speaking with a woman in town to produce a line of clothing.  A former modern dancer and roommate of circus performers, she provided fantastic perspective on the trade-offs between garment production in Bali and Pushkar, Rajasthan.  As luck would have it, she was a fan of durian and put half of a very large fruit on the table.  We happily obliged by sharing the fruit with her, which was sweet and meaty.

From there, it was a quick wheel home to our nest, followed by a deep slumber before the next day of transit.

Scott packed up the last of our belongings inside the pleasant confines of our cottage at Prima Cottages while I haggled through the interpretation of the fellow at the front desk on the rate for a cab to Ubud. We had all intention of taking the tourist bus, but it seems it had been canceled. This, we later found may also have been a ploy by the cab company to secure our business. Regardless, the price was reasonable, and a fellow arrived just as Scott and I were finishing folding up the Speed TRs.

The drive to Ubud was beautiful and the driver allowed us to indulge in his curious collection of compilation CDs. It all seemed to be Euro-Techno remixes of B-pop tunes from the U.S. Fine by us.

We asked to be dropped off at the beginning of Monkey Forest Road in Ubud, and so we were. We paid the fellow and began to unfold the cycles. All around us were stone temples and giant arching jungle trees. The place was aptly named, as monkeys were to be found everywhere, picking through rubbish, begging from humans, and bounding out of the way of oncoming traffic. With a tip of the Panama hat to the prolific little monkeys, we were off on a somewhat savage uphill, fully loaded with gear. At one point, I actually had to dismount and hike it up the well-maintained but rather steep road.

At the top of one of the many hills that lay ahead (Ubud is by far the hilliest place yet visited on AsiaWheeling), our first choice for a hotel proved full, but we were waved across the street to a location that proved very affordable and quite spacious. For about 15 U.S. dollars per night, we were given the entire top floor of a bamboo and concrete bungalow, with our own private balcony, and a delightful view of the city in one direction and the pool, the jungle, and distant mountains in another. We indulged in just a moment of relaxing and ukulele playing before taking to the streets, but not before applying sunscreen.

We headed north, climbing in elevation, past Hindu temples, and endless stands selling all kinds of souvenirs. We also passed many restaurants, which labeled themselves “Warung” but were decidedly different compared to the Warung we had seen in Java.

These were handsome sit-down joints with much more westernized menus, English signs all over, and significantly inflated prices. We hung a left onto a larger and cobbled street, which took us past more of the same, though the urban zone was thinning and more scraps of jungle and rice paddy were appearing on both sides.

We zoomed down a hill, thanking the kind Jogjakarta tailor for our newly modified Panama hats, and part way through the ascent we called an unscheduled waypoint at a local print shop.

Now dear reader, as very few of you know, there has been a recent development in the trip that required not only this stop, but a revision of the itinerary going forward. David Miller, the AsiaWheeling Dive Master, was to be joining us for the next leg of the trip, and the three of us will be scuba diving in Borneo.

This of course would, among other things, necessitate a set of business cards for Mr. Miller, and of course a revision of the Malaysian itinerary to include the easternmost islands of Borneo.

The fellow at the print shop was affordable and professional. He could tell that we had made a few business cards in our day, and quickly cut through the fat, launching his copy of Adobe Illustrator. He manipulated his yellowed Compaq with such finesse, and patiently waited while his machine responded lethargically to his commands. We selected a paper and a printing style, and after he confirmed that our PDF would open on his machine, we were back on the road. Once again, getting things done in Indonesia proved a painless and swift endeavor.

As the city began to dissolve into a lush rural landscape, we caught sight of another cue which required an impromptu waypoint. It was the fading painted corrugated asbestos roof of Naughty Nuri’s Warung. This was another of those Warung which are so by name and roadside location only. Rather pricey by Indonesian standards and filled with foreigners, it had recently been mentioned in the New York Times and for that reason we decided we might as well sample what it had to offer.

Immediately upon entry, we were flagged over by a table full of sun-baked white men, sipping noontime beers. “Do you speak English?” they asked. When we answered in the affirmative, they encouraged us to join them. “You know this place was in the New York Times?” “Hell yes, we do!” they replied, deeply unbuttoned Acapulco shirts fluttering in the wind.

This later turned out to be no surprise, as this group proved to be a kind of court held by the owners of the place (at least the male half) and a group of his friends. “No one should leave Ubud without having a Naughty Nuri’s Martini, they explained. And you must get the ribs.”

With a savage wheel ahead of us, and no interest in paying for $6 ribs, and a $10 martini in a country where lunch usually costs $2.50 including a beverage, we settled for two cups of coffee, some delightfully spiced BBQ’d chicken, a similarly spiced sausage, and some French fried potatoes.  The owner warned us, “I’m worried about the coffee.”  But we were sure as dawn and downed them with smiles.

It was all incredible, decently affordable (at least by western standards), and well worth the cost simply for the interesting conversation that we enjoyed as guests at court. Though the fellows continued to encourage us to hang around, have a cocktail, and continue our discourse (since after all it was going to rain any minute now, they said), we could not keep from wheeling when the sun was shining and the road so inviting.  We had also developed a bit of a sixth sense for Indonesian precipitation patterns by this time, and had reason to believe their forecasting was simply to keep us longer. So we remounted the cycles and kept wheeling.

One of the gentlemen of the court had suggested to us (in the unlikely event that the sun kept shining) that we might take the current road a little bit farther north and then take a side road up into the mountains. This we did, and it proved to be a truly stunning wheel, with gnarly ascents, and tearing downhills. Eventually we reached something of a demi-summit, and decided to hang a Rausch at a sign for the sunset lookout.

We awoke as the sound of blenders as the clank of silverware worked its way into our comfortable beds at the Prima Cottages. The other guests were outside enjoying their free breakfast. We were eager to join.

A very well salted fried egg later we were mounting the cycles, and took off to explore the city of Sanur. Quite honestly, dear reader, it felt like another country. Everywhere there were white people. The roads were very good, and all the signage was in English. In fact, almost every service person we encountered spoke surprisingly good English.

After a brief stop at the local Citibank ATM, we began working our way toward the beach. What had been misty gray light of morning had quietly become a scorching sunshine, and we were loving it. We ended up reaching the beach near what we reckoned to be its northern extremity, so we headed southward on a very new looking brick path. We dodged around sunburned and retired Dutch people, declining repeated offers of massages, drinks, and other goods and services, stopping from time to time to chat with the plethora of English speaking tourists wearing Panama hats. Truly a bizarre place.

Past endless rows of beach chairs for rent, past the Hyatt, past an infinity of little souvenir stands, past a number of what we would find to be extremely prevalent convenience stores by the name of “Circle K,” and quite a bit farther down the beach we finally broke free of the western tourist zone. The brick path we were on began to dissolve into an eroded scatter of crumbling stones, and we followed it away from the beach, over a small bridge where an Indonesian family was lazing in the sun, and into a salty jungle.

I heard a commotion to my right and was just able to catch sight of a lizard the size of a small dog bounding off into the jungle. The path had become quite bumpy by the time we parked the Speed TRs at a delightful little shrine that marked the end of the path.

It is probably worth pausing here to discuss the religious differences between Java and Bali. They are two very different islands, in many ways. Perhaps one of the most important is that while Indonesia is about 86% Muslim, Bali is about 93% Hindu. We have yet to hear the call to prayer here, an ever present part of our time in Java, and it seems that every couple of blocks there is a shrine to one god or another. Also Bali is by far the richest island in the country (per capita), and the great majority of that comes from tourism. So Bali is tailored for tourists and ex-patriots. More importantly, with its fine roads, beautiful scenery, and relatively sparse traffic, Bali is great for wheeling.

Meanwhile, back at the salt jungle temple, no sooner had we parked the bikes, than another couple of wheelers pulled up behind us. “I heard you talking about Rauchemburg, so we decided to follow.” The couple turned out to be American holiday makers here in Bali, and photographers by trade. We explained a little about the wheeling field commands and one of them replied “so what’s a left turn? Lévi-Strauss?”

Fair Enough.

At this moment, the heat was really kicking in, and AsiaWheeling decided to switch into beach mode

We also decided it was high time for a snack. Up until this point, we had been meticulously careful about the foods that we ate. Knowing from our experiences in India during the pilot study, that not doing so might just set you off into deep and debilitating stomach sickness.

But here in Indonesia, it was a different country with different rules, and we were ready to try eating at a more local place. So we selected a Warung (small roadside cafe) and proceeded to order a fine feast of roast fish, greens, and seafood fried rice. It was incredible, and for the record proved every bit as safe as the more expensive restaurants we had been eating at. The coffee was also superb.

Refueled and refreshed, we spent the rest of the day beach wheeling, with waypoints scheduled to jump in the ocean, and to snack on corn being grilled by the seaside.

On our way back to the Prima Cottages, we noticed a fellow who appeared to be rebuilding the engine of his muscle car using an electric drill on the side of the road. If anyone in the readership can shed some better light on what the fellow might have been doing, please share with us in the comments.

Our room at the Prima Cottages had in the meantime been sold to another customer, while we had been wheeling. But the lady was happy to put us up in one of the actual cottages. So AsiaWheeling reluctantly moved its belongings into an even larger and more luxurious accommodation in a stand-alone cottage with a private porch in the middle of a sculpted Balinese garden. Real rough.

From there, we struck off again down the beach and headed north.  After a while of wheeling, we smelled an intoxicating odor that turned out to be grilled corn.  Spiced with chili and slathered in butter, the ears proved to be a delightful and much needed snack to prevent the much dreaded blood sugar crash.

A few hundred meters down the beach, we found where all the locals were swimming.  The sand was black, with families gathered on the shoreline sitting on rocks and the embankment.  In the parking lot, youngsters on motorcycles showboated around and gunned their engines, giving us smiles all the while.

That evening, we followed the orders of the illustrious Mr. Fu and proceeded to a chic local eatery by the name of Ming’s. The meal proved to be quite a luxurious experience.

It was a Euro-Indonesian Fusion restaurant. As far as we can tell, this means hyper rich versions of Indonesian dishes, pumped up with butter and garlic. Fantastic. Our meal covered all the bases, with an Indonesian fisherman’s stew, Indonesian Caesar salad, a curried buttery fish dish, and calamari served in the shell of a giant clam (we think the clam might have been part of the dish too, but perhaps in a ground up form).

Full and happy, we wheeled home through the steamy night, stopping at a local convenience store for drinking water, and to do some schtick with some local fellows who were drinking some strange local home-brewed liquor, and sitting on the ground outside the Circle K where we bought the water.

Despite the intensely touristy nature of this place, I believe both Scott and I were thinking Bali was not only great for wheeling but a heck of a comfortable place to visit.

The breakfast provided by this place was perhaps the best we had experienced yet, with a nice pile of fried rice, an over-easy egg, a piece of Kentucky fried chicken (quite literally), and a mound of very mildly fishy wafers. The coffee was excellent, and made with just the right amount of sweetened condensed milk. Wifi was plentiful and lightning fast, which always puts us in a good mood. It seemed that the departure from Surabaya would be much nicer than the entry.

With our entire inventory strapped to our bodies, we took to the streets and made short work of the kilometer or so to the train station, cat calls and “hello misters” aside. When we got there, we yet again attracted an unprecedented crowd of observers as we packed up the cycles.

Inside the train station, we loaded up on water and Indonesian snack cakes from the “Holland Bakery” and other little bodegas.

And in no time we were settling into the ride.

Our seats were the very last on the train, allowing us to get up whenever we pleased and take in the retreating view from the back of the car.

We snacked contentedly and worked on correspondence for you, dear reader. I made sure to take breaks to go play my ukulele in the caboose area where Indianian business men were lounging and smoking clove cigarettes. For obvious reasons, the songs “City of New Orleans,” “Hobo’s Lulluby,” and “Long Train Running” were on heavy rotation. The Indonesians proved very forgiving, and tolerated my playing in a most hearty way, at times humming along in an interesting and dissonant fashion.

Meanwhile, we were witnessing a change in the terrain which whipped by outside the squeaking and leaning train car. For the first time, we began to see crops other than rice: what looked like sugar cane, fruit trees, palms, and even a type of tropical coniferous forest flying by our periphery. Anyone who knows about tropical coniferous forests, by all means, please share with us in the comments.

Slowly but surely the train was emptying out. We struggled to explain why, as most of the stops appeared to be little more than jungle road crossings. Despite this, huge numbers of well dressed people with laptop bags would depart the train. Finally, still somewhat puzzled, and after some seven hours of travel, the train arrived at Banyuwangi, another small station, where we were to find a bus waiting to take us to the ferry and on to Java.

The air was sticky and the scent of the sea was strong, as we lugged our Speed TRs down the platform, and around a corner toward the road. Two fellows seemed to be officiating the loading of the only bus, and generally orchestrating the human traffic. Neither of the two was uniformed, and neither appeared to be the driver. But both came over to us and requested our tickets. Scott found cause for pause, at the demand from such a dubious officiate, but eventually, as it seemed they held the keys to this kingdom, we relented and turned over our tickets, loading our belongings into the belly of the bus.

Onboard we careened maybe 500 yards before the bus stopped in order to be boarded by some five or six peddlers, selling everything from snacks to fake Ray-Bans. Knowing full well there was a pair of devastatingly handsome Maui Jims waiting for us in Singapore, we opted to continue on with our current eyewear.

After the sales sweep, the bus yawed its way onto the ferry. and everyone was encouraged to get off. The ferry was quite interesting, and may have been held together primarily by white and green paint.

After inspection of some heavily painted over characters, and some of the framed signage, we determined the ship to be an old Japanese ferry later purchased and relentlessly painted over by an Indonesian ferry company.

The engines sounded labored and seemed to be burning a fair bit of oil, but nonetheless propelled the ship forward, which I guess should be enough for anyone.

With Bali looming ever closer in the misty distance, we wandered the ship. Of particular interest was the on-board prayer room, or Musholla, and the instant noodles stand, the owner of which proclaimed his wares by clanking a spoon against a bowl, an amazingly loud and surprisingly nautical sound.

Eventually, the same fellows who had been running the show (one of whom was wearing a tee-shirt proclaiming him the cast iron specialist) called for everyone to return to the bus.

We climbed in and soon we were lumbering toward a kind of customs station. The cast iron fellow approached Scott, and motioning to a woman, suggested that she should sit next to him. In the only half full bus, I was puzzled by this, but Scott assured me that everything has a purpose. So he shared his seat with the woman, and soon all the Indonesians were asked to exit the bus. You see, dear reader, all Indonesians are required to carry their KTP cards, as part of a national identification system. We, as foreigners stayed on board, having no KTP card and being cash cows not worth hassling, and so its was with this woman.

It was then that it occurred to us. This was some kind of a person smuggling technique. The woman would be assumed to be Scott’s companion. When we had made it to the other side there was a small hurrah shared between the cast iron fellow, the woman, and the other official, and the woman resumed her seat next to the two fellows running the show. AsiaWheeling is always glad to be of service, but if anyone else would like to conjecture as to what might have actually happened here, please let us know in the comments.

Then commenced an unexpectedly long bus ride, made all the longer by my increasingly vehement need to urinate. Four hours, six naps and one endless, meandering ride over a mountain later, we arrived in Denpasar, the capital of Bali. We had determined on the train that we should not sleep in Denpasar, rather we should make our way to the nearby beach town of Sanur. So we loaded our cycles into what I am pleased to announce was the first taxi cab ride of AsiaWheeling (pilot study excluded) and arrived in Sanur 30 minutes and one closed road later.

The Illustrious Mr. Fu had taken the liberty of making us a reservation at a splendid place by the name of Prima Cottages, and though we made some puzzling wrong turns in violation of signs pointing us toward the hotel (that is until it quickly became obvious that our cab driver did not read and required our assistance in the signage department) we arrived in one piece and while somewhat frazzled from the day of travel, in good spirits.

Though it was called the Prima Cottages, we didn’t have a cottage. But what we did have was a very nice and clean room, with comfortable beds and a very clean bathroom. Right outside our room, there was a beautiful tropical garden and a very inviting pool.

It seemed a Bintang was in order. Bintang means “star” and is the local brew in Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, it is a subsidiary of Heineken (the Dutch still play a big roll commercially here), and the label design is very Heineken-esque.

It’s very expensive by local beverage standards (likely due to Islamic influence on Indonesia’s government reflected in alcohol tax) and rather seltzer-like, but we felt we had earned it. So we unfolded the cycles and rode into town, to buy a bag of meat flavored potato chips, and a couple bottles of the stuff. So we put our feet up by the pool, cracked into the ice cold Bintang, stared up into an infinity of blurry dark humidity speckled with dim stars, and relaxed into the end of a very long day.

Our train arrived in Surabaya on time and without a hiccup. AsiaWheeling is pleased to report, that in stark contrast to Indian trains, the trains in Indonesia run quite impressively on time.

At the station, we found ourselves badly in need of water, sustenance, and an ATM. The water and the ATM were no problem. The food issue could have been dispatched quite easily as well, but we decided we might as well make our way to a hotel before finding sustenance. As we are slowly learning is always the case, this proved a poor idea, because the madness began to descend, manifesting itself in a number of ways.

The first was that we jumped at the first hotel we came to, which was a place nearby the train station, with a glorious and comfortable lobby, where a fellow was raging on a greasy and distorted sounding CasioTone keyboard, a nice restaurant upstairs, with a big projection television displaying Indonesian daytime soaps, with free WiFi, and rooms that proved to be windowless cells, with no hot water, grungy molding bathrooms, and reeking like a cab driver after three packs of cheap cigarettes and a 12 hour shift.  The bathrooms at this hotel actually locked the visitor in once the door was closed.  Even when inside trying to pry the door open, it took a swift kick from the other side to actually break free before the cholera would take hold.

Sweating and in a compromised mental state, I began to jumble my Indonesian, turning “Makasi” (thanks) into “Kamasa”, and “Masaki.” All very nice sounding words as well, but resulting only in outpourings of laughter. I had misplaced my sunglasses, and was generally disheveled.

Allow me to make excuses for myself. One particularly pertinent factor here is that the AsiaWheeling mobile team has been experiencing quite an aggressive increase in our metabolic rates. What once was enough caloric intake to justify a meal, has since become simply too little. Also, we have been eating foods that are primarily vegetables, refined grains, and oil, so the overall sustenance contained therein is less and the half-life of the food in the intestine has diminished. The resulting state of perpetual peckishness is actually quite lovely most of the time since an affordable abundance of snacks is usually easy to come by. But from time to time we get burned.

Meanwhile, despite our generously slathered sunscreen, that was exactly what was happening in Surabaya. Traffic was dense, and the number of people calling out to us had spiked sharply. The subset of those who were literally screaming out at us in a most shrill and terrifying “hello mister!” and “Where are you going mister?” proved a sizable and quite vocal minority.

With the sun beating down on our Panama hats, and the shrieks of what was beginning to sound like ghouls and cackling witches soaring over the growl and bark of thousands of mopeds, we wheeled on toward a large shopping center that advertised all kinds of restaurants therein. We wheeled into entrance after entrance, through multiple parking garages. Each possible parking location waved us away, either deeper into the lot or out of the area completely. Each time we would dismount, a smiling fellow in a policeman-like uniform would come over to us and explain “no here,” or “cycle no.”

It is at times like these, racked by hunger, lost in the infinite that I wonder: “Where does the hope live?” Where in our battered and wind torn frames did this small flame reside, such that it could not be extinguished by the blustering wind of rejection, could not be blacked out by the acrid exhaust of an overloaded cement truck burning oil? Such questions I cannot answer, but I can bravely report that hope still burned strong in the hearts of AsiaWheeling, rejection after rejection. Why would these people not take our money and harbor our cycles? We may never know.

Disgusted and frothing with maddening hunger, we left the mall and wheeled on, finding ourselves on a giant highway, which gutted its way through the city center heading north. Cars, motorcycles, and other cyclists battled for space as flows emerged within the traffic, and were soon destroyed as other traffic piled in.

Scott called a waypoint on a street warning against the presence of bicycles and rickshaws, to consult the map, and we heaved the bikes up onto the crumbling sidewalk. It was then that I spotted a restaurant! It looked sanitary enough, and was just across the street, separated from us by a mere 100 meters, and eight lines of raging traffic. Spotting a pedestrian bridge in the distance, we made a break for it, hoisting our bikes onto our shoulders and bounding up the steep steps. And then down again, carried in a half-run half-fall by the weight of the Speed TRs.

And then we were rolling into the parking lot of the restaurant. The parking attendants rose in standing ovation, screaming at us and directing us toward a basement parking garage. Down in the garage, we found even more parking attendants, probably seven or eight in all, clamoring and suggesting possible parking locations.  They seemed to be excited and friendly, taking photos with us and asking questions about the bicycles.

The gargantuan squad of parking staff was made all the more puzzling by the fact the the interior of the restaurant was completely empty. I’d like to say the food was tasty but I was in no position to judge.

Let it suffice to say that the food was transformative. We took a moment, to relax and feel the surging ecstasy of our blood sugar uptake curve.

Then it was time for more wheeling. Refueled and refreshed, we took to the streets with new vigor. The traffic was still bad, and the verbal assault from the locals still quite banshee-like, but we were able to much more effectively channel the duck’s back and we wheeled north toward the central mosque, the Arab quarter, and the Surabaya old city.

During the wheel, we experienced the longest traffic stop for passing railways to date.  The full ordeal lasted five minutes and consisted of deafening bells, but we will spare you, our dear reader, by furnishing merely a 12 second video:

At one point, we called a waypoint to buy bottles of water from a small shop tucked into a cubby in a crumbling wall. As we transacted, a giant crowd of kids arrived.

They began to tug at the bikes, attempting to climb aboard, singing local songs in screeching pre-pubescent counter tenor, and shouting in Indonesian with the occasional western naughty word. We attempted to leave, but they were blocking our path. Executing a classic fake to the left, I dashed to the right and mounted the Speed TR, I broke free of the crowd and laid in. Tarnation! The gearing was set way too high, and she was eating road slowly. As I struggled to downshift, a number of children caught up to me and began pulling at the rear rack and fenders, causing me to wobble quite perilously. Finally, with a lower gear successfully engaged, I shouted a final taunt back at the kids, and really let’r rip.

I turned back to see Scott had broken free as well, and we were off, soaring like condors northward, asking directions from time to time, and relying on our compasses, which strangely enough, were refusing to agree in this bizarre city.  Finally we found a father and a son reconstructing what seemed to be the solenoid of a giant internal combustion engine; they pointed us to our destination, the great mosque of the city, the Masjid Ampel.

Finally we arrived in the Muslim quarter. It was crowded, with row upon row of bicycle rickshaw drivers, lazing in the sun. As we approached, it seemed, word spread and they awoke to heckle us. Finally, we saw the entrance to the inner sanctum of the Masjid Ampel.  In order to reach it, we traveled through a long meandering alley full of merchants.

We first attempted to take the bikes in, but this proved impossible and met with hoots of instruction. So we scanned for the nearest parking spot and a crowd of gentleman formed around us. One on them handed us little tickets proclaiming that parking was five cents per bike. Immediately, some others began to scold him for disclosing the price. We locked the bikes to a fence, and the crowd of men began to demand a wide range of amounts of money from us. We knew never to pay until we returned, so we repeatedly communicated this to them with words, gestures, and pantomime. Finally, a woman selling dried apricots and yoghurt drinks, dressed in full headscarf came over to scold the men and in the moment of confusion we slipped away and entered the market alley.

We looked behind us where the men were now scrutinizing the Speed TRs, ringing the bells, lifting them to test the weight, changing the gears, and tapping at the tires to attempt to determine pressure. Thank goodness they are such solid and reliable cycles.

We gestured and called to them with smiles just letting them know that while we were relatively powerless, we were at least watching them and they replied in kind. A few more steps and they were out of view and we were into the market. People called at us from every angle, and some walked by us with very stern looks. We were asked again and again where are you from. “U.S.” we would say or “California.” Invariably these responses were met with a small frown.

We walked by a local shop that was playing a very entrancing middle eastern/Javanese type of music, and we began haggling with them for a copy of the disc. We no doubt paid enough for 12 of the CDs, but were also successful in decreasing the asking price to %40 of its original value, and for about a dollar we walked away with some of these gems:

Scott stopped to sample some dates and began to collect quite a few locals conversing with him in spare bits of English.

We wandered to the gates of the mosque, but decided since it was technically illegal for us to enter, and due the the high chance that it would be a venue for extracting cash from us in the form of admittance fees, donations, and bribes, we decided to enjoy it from the exterior.

Back in the cycle parking lot, the fellows appeared to have finally lost interest in the Speed TRs. When they caught sight of us, however, they perked right back up again, and began demanding parking charges in excess of the agreed-upon amount by orders of magnitude. We paid the 10 cents that were owed, and despite the proclamations of a growing hoard of Indonesian men, we took a cue from the headscarf-clad woman and hit the streets.

The sun was now hanging low in the sky, so we pulled an uber-rausch back towards the godforsaken hotel. The wheel back was brisk and full of interactions with our fellow traffic, which now consisted mostly of those commuting home by motorbike after a day’s work. A fellow with a giant leather jacket proclaiming “Star Rider” in sequined cursive, screamed at us to follow him, and he roared off into the distance. Needless, to say we appreciated the gesture but did not indulge in the pursuit.

Back outside our hotel we decided to relax in a nearby park, which apart from hoards of rats included a very strange walking path that included many, many sharp stones, affixed to the pavement so as to point upwards.

This allowed the park-goers to remove their shoes and walk on this bed-of-nails-esque pathway, perhaps to strengthen the feet? If you have a better idea, please let us know in the comments.

We spent the rest of the evening strolling through the city, past bombed-out looking buildings, reeking and bubbling open sewers, and piles of burning garbage.

The extremes of experience, indeed.