Alor – Nusa Tenggara

Alor misc rambling

The following evening there was a big celebration with the moko drums and gongs at midnight to welcome the new year.

Their song that reverberated into the night and into the morning. It was fantastic!

Traveling with a laptop and digital camera changes the dynamics of your trip.

It can be really enjoyable to peck away at the keyboard while watching geckos zip around on the ceiling catching moths and mosquitoes.

The downside to traveling with all this gear is the added weight and electrical requirements to keep the thing charged up. When traveling on the boats you have to take extra care to keep things dry. It is cool to be able to show the people on a remote island a slide show in the evening.

These islanders have a keen interest in pictures taken around town but are not as interested in pictures taken of far away places.

To the right the locals enjoy infamous “Andre the Dog Eater’s” photos. He returns the following year and distributes developed photos to the ones he took pictures of. (Up to 3000 prints at a time.)

Some difficulties to deal with when traveling heavy with equipment is keeping the stuff dry and not letting it bounce around too much if you are traveling in the back of a truck or whatever. The security thing is another problem but you just have to take the chance and take extra care if you are in highly transient places like bus stations and harbors.

In the villages it would be highly unlikely that anything bad would happen because it becomes a matter of honor to your host to make sure you are in good hands.

Leaving money around would be irresponsible though because it is an unfair temptation for someone that has very little and you are considered to have so much.

In Kalabahi on Alor I use the internet connection that is behind the Kantor Daerah for 7500 rupiah an hour. It can be very slow at times but it is possible to update my site from a fairly out of the way place.

I am staying at the Adi Dharma Hotel next to the mosque near the harbor. Alor is a tad pricey but the value is good.

The economy rooms are around 40 to 47,000 rupiah but I decided to stay in the VIP rooms for 72,500 rupiah because there are less mosquitoes and there is a remote controlled air conditioner. Serious travelers might feel that I am getting soft but I think it is just great.

I did invest in an electric Toyosaki mosquito racket that zaps the little buggers into oblivian. These things are the greatest.
Mosquitoes can be an annoyance but there is also the health issue of malaria and dengue fever. I don’t take preventative chemicals because the long term damage to your body from constant use is not acceptable to me.

The whole malaria debate is controversial and can be fodder for many arguments from the idiotic “I didn’t take any malaria meds so therefore there is no danger” to the “My doctor says I need to take meds for my 5 day holiday in Kuta”.

Malaria is a huge killer in Asia. For western travelers that can get to a hospital it is usually quickly cured but many locals simply cannot get to a hospital in time and weather it out perhaps taking natural medications that seem to work. Keep in mind there there are various strains of this disease and one of the cranial malarias can kill you in a day.

In Indonesia there is a very good medical system that provides health care free or at a very low cost to those that can not afford it. If I am not mistaken, the medicines must be paid for but they are subsidized by the government and fairly inexpensive but still out of reach for some financially.

When we were staying in Pulau Pura one of the kids had deeply cut his foot on a bamboo bali bali. Andre, a French guy that stays there, organized a moonlit trip by boat to Alor Kecil the Saturday night before New Years eve to find a doctor. Where in the west could you find a doctor that would be willing to do a minor surgical procedure at that hour?

In Alor Kecil the doctor worked on the kid’s foot in the living room with all the onlookers sitting around watching the performance. Andrea had a flash light so he was able to assist with the sewing.

It was a rather unusual cut, slicing inwards between the big toe and the next. The antibiotics cost 20,000 rupiah (a little over 2 dollars) which Andrea paid.

I had stayed at the boat to watch the gear and we set off on the return trip in a couple of hours. The kid was walking again in a few days but it could have gone bad if an infection set in.

Another fortunate development that night was that the seas were calm. Even Andrea, a devout atheist, suggested that the kid must have a guardian angel looking over him.

Back in Palau Pura everyone was getting ready for the New Years celebration.

The following evening there was a big bash with the moko drums and gongs at midnight to welcome the new year.

Their song reverberated into the night and into the morning.

…sampai jumpa lagi!