Smart Travels: Indonesia

Showing posts with label Indonesia. Show all posts

Saturday, 29 March 2014

Some tasteless humour

The above photo was featured in the The Telegraph's Sign Language special photo gallery on toilet humour with the caption 'The world is your urinal'. 'Sign Language' is a picture gallery where readers send in amusing photos of strange signs and bizarre translations in the UK and around the world which are published each week. Pisse en l'air is a small waterfall on Reunion, in the cirque (natural amphitheatre) of Salazie, but ironically it's not the waterfall shown, which is actually 640m-high Cascade Blanche. Pisse en l'air literally means 'piss in the air' and it is another smaller waterfall renowned for falling from a cliff onto the road - and onto your car if you happen to be driving by underneath (make sure you keep your car windows closed!).

Something else that frequently amuses non-French visitors to Reunion is Le Tampon - this is the name of a town and municipality in the south of the island, not far from the volcano.

Le Tampon logo

While 'tampon' only has one meaning in English, in French it has several meanings, including 'buffer' or 'stamp', however in this particular case no one is exactly sure of the town name's origin. There are several theories:

- Tampony is a Malagasy word which means 'viewpoint', or 'summit that can be seen from afar';

- it could come from tampon de combat, or 'shot plug', a type of stopper used to seal a projectile hole in a ship's hull during combat, and/or tampon d'écubier, which was a 'hawse-plug' or 'buckler' (a block used to stop up a hawse hole at sea);

- documents dating from 1727 mention a small river gully known as the Ravine du Tampon, so known because a tampon de hublot, or 'porthole stopper', had been placed there as a landmark.

Keeping with the theme of toilet humour, I saw this sign in the lavatory on an Air Koryo flight when I was flying back to Beijing from Pyongyang (it also featured in The Telegraph’s ‘Sign Language’ photo gallery):

Hips don't fly

Still on matters of taste, what about this on a Delhi restaurant drinks menu:

Name your poison - toxic or tonic?

Back in Reunion a restaurant in Saint Denis has these offerings on its menu:

Drop in for dinner?

For those that don’t speak French the Crotin [sic] de Chèvre Chaud should be ‘Warm Goat’s Cheese’ in English and not ‘dung’! (These photos were also featured in The Telegraph’s ‘Sign Language’ ‘Best of January 2014′ photo gallery).

Here Souris [d'agneau] (knuckle of lamb) has been translated literally as ‘mouse’:

Puts a ro-dent in your appetite?

Things have improved however, as a few years ago filet was translated thoughout as ‘net’ instead of ‘fillet’, and cabot de fond (a type of fish) was translated as ‘dog bottom’!

Related links:

Monday, 5 November 2012

Books about Reunion & worldwide literature

A recent exchange with Ann Morgan, who's currently reading her way round the world, got me thinking about Reunion Island books in English. As far as I'm aware, with the exception of 'Bourbon Island 1730', the list I came up with contains only books that I have been written directly in English and not translated. In fact as far as I know there are no English translations of books by well-known Reunionese authors like Daniel Vaxelaire or Axel Gauvin, although the latter's books have been translated into German.

Books about Reunion I haven't read myself (but which are all on my Bookmooch wish list!):

Reunion: An Island in Search of an Identity by Laurent Medea
Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage by Françoise Verges
Island Born Of Fire: Volcano Piton de la Fournaise by Dr Robert B. Trombly

: Bourbon Island 1730

Books I've read myself:

Crags and Craters: Rambles in the Island of Reunion by William Dudley Olivier (this is my favourite).
The Last Colony: An Experience of Reunion Island by Michael Steane (an e-book but full of inaccuracies)
Six Months in Reunion: A Clergyman's Holiday, and How He Passed it by Patrick Beaton (I didn't like this much).
Bourbon Island 1730 by Appollo & Lewis Trondheim (a graphic novel)
Island Awakening by Lynne Martin (romantic fiction).
Dead Sexy by Kathy Lette (a "satire on the sex war")
Second Chance and its sequel Second Chance Sister by Linda Kepner (romantic fiction - thinly disguised sequels to François Truffaut's film The Mississippi Mermaid)

I've written reviews of all of the above books.

Also: Bonnes Vacances!: A Crazy Family Adventure in the French Territories by Rosie Millard is about a 4 month tour of the DOM-TOMs Rosie made with her husband and four young children to make a documentary series for the Travel Channel ("Croissants in the Jungle"). Its final chapter covers Réunion (briefly); see my review of the book here.

In the introduction I mentioned Ann Morgan who is currently reading her way around as many of the globe’s 196 independent countries as she can, sampling one book from every nation. (She's also recently included a Rest of The World wildcard section, hence our exchange about Reunion Island). However as she asked herself: what counts as a story? Is it by a person born in that place? Is it written in the country? Can it be about another nation state? While in some respects she's still answering that question she had to lay down her terms and so decided to limit herself to all narratives that could be read to full effect by one reader on their own e.g. memoirs, novels, short stories, novellas, biographies, narrative poems and reportage, but not non-narrative poetry and plays.

It got me wondering about which countries I'd already read literature from, and after a quick tour of my bookshelves (and my memory!) this is the (non-exhaustive) list I came up with, in English and French:

Algeria - L'étranger [The Outsider] - Albert Camus [Author/Setting]
Australia - The Secret River - Kate Grenville [Author/Setting]
Belgium - L'Enfant de Noé - Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt [Author/Setting]
Botswana - The Kalahari Typing School for Men - Alexander McCall Smith [Setting; Author is British]
Brazil - Rouge Brésil [Brazil Red] - Jean-Christophe Rufin [Setting; Author is French]
Cameroon - La saison de l'ombre - Léonora Miano [Author/Setting] (added November 2013)

: The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Canada - Where White Horses Gallop - Beatrice McNeil [Author/Setting]
Central African Republic - Princesse aux Pieds Nu - Evelyne Durieux [Author/Setting]
Burma - The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason [Setting; Author is British]
China - Leaving Mother Lake: A Childhood at the Edge of the World - Yang Erche Namu [Author/Setting]
Czech Republic - L'Insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being] - Milan Kundera [Author/Setting]
Cuba - Our Man In Havana - Graham Greene [Setting; Author was British]
Democratic Republic of Congo - The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver [Setting; Author is American]
Denmark (& Greenland) - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow - Peter Høeg [Author/Setting]
Egypt - Woman at Point Zero - Nawal El Saadawi (translated by Sherif Hetata) [Author/Setting]
French Polynesia (Tahiti) - Breadfruit: A Novel - Célestine Hitiura Vaite [Author/Setting] [August 2014 - I read the French translation L'Arbre à Pain by Henri Theureau]
Germany - The Book Thief - Markus Zusak [Setting; Author is Australian]
Haiti - Island Beneath the Sea - Isabel Allende (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden) [Setting; Author is Chilean American]

: "Island Beneath the Sea"

Hawaii - Comfort Woman - Nora Okja Keller [Author/Setting]
Iceland - L'homme du Lac [The Draining Lake] - Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Eric Boury) [Author/Setting]
India - A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry [Author/Setting]
Indonesia - Krakatoa - Simon Winchester [Setting; Author is British]
(Inner) Mongolia - Wolf Totem - Jiang Rong (translated by Howard Goldblatt) [Author/Setting]
Iran - Jamais Sans Ma Fille [Not Without My Daughter] - Betty Mahmoody [Author/Setting]
Ireland - Angela's Ashes - Franck McCourt [Author/Setting]
Israel - The Red Tent - Anita Diamant [Setting; Author is American]
Italy - The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino (translated by Archibald Colquhoun) [Author/Setting]
Jamaica (& Dominica) - Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [Author/Setting]
Japan - Out - Natsuo Kirino [Author/Setting]
Kiribati - Paradis [avant liquidation] - Julien Blanc-Gras [Setting; Author is French] (June 2014)
Lebanon - The Fifth Mountain - Paulo Coelho [Setting; Author is Brazilian]
Madagascar - Muddling Through In Madagascar - Dervla Murphy [Setting; Author is Irish]
Malaysia (Borneo) - My Life in Sarawak - Margaret Brooke [Author/Setting]
Mauritania - Le Tambour des Larmes - Beyrouk [Author/Setting]
Mauritius - Paul & Virginie - Bernardin de St Pierre [Setting; Author was French]
Mayotte - Mon Mari Est Plus Qu'un Fou : C'est Un Homme - Nassur Attoumani [Author/Setting]
Netherlands - Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier [Setting; Author is American]
New Zealand - Behind Closed Doors - Ngaire Thomas [Author/Setting]
Nigeria - Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe [Author/Setting]
North Korea - The Aquariums of Pyongyang - Kang Chol-Hwan [Author/Setting]
Norway - Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder (translated by Paulette Møller) [Author/Setting]
Pakistan - The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid [Author/Setting]
Rodrigues - Voyage à Rodrigues - JMG Le Clezio [Setting; Author is French]
Russia - Dans Les Forets de Sibérie - Sylvain Tesson [Setting; Author is French]
Seychelles - Travelling Hopefully - Maggie Makepeace [Setting; Author is British]
South Africa - Disgrace - JM Coetzee [Author/Setting]
South Korea - Who Ate Up All The Shinga? - Park Wan-Suh (translated by Yu Young-nan) [Author/Setting]
Spain - The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón [Author/Setting]
Sweden - Millennium Trilogy - Steig Larsson (translated by 'Reg Kreeland') [Author/Setting]
Tibet - Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa [My Journey to Lhasa] - Alexandra David-Néel [Setting; Author was French]
Trinidad - A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul [Author/Setting]
Tromelin - Les Naufrages de l'ïle Tromelin - Irène Frain [Setting; Author is French]
Turkey - My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk (translated by Erdağ Göknar) [Author/Setting]
United Arab Emirates - The Wink of the Mona Lisa and other stories from the Gulf - Mohammad Al Murr (translated from the Arabic by Jack Briggs) [Author/Setting] [October 2015]
Uzbekistan (& Iran) - Samarcande [Samarkand] - Amin Maalouf [Setting; Author is from Lebanon]
Vietnam - L'Amant [The Lover] - Marguerite Duras [Author/Setting]
Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) - The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing [Author/Setting] [August 2014]

: Samarcande

Notes:

I've arbitrarily excluded the UK, France and the USA as I've read so many books from these countries I'd have trouble choosing just one!
If I've read several books from a country I've generally just listed my favourite.
I've also taken liberties by listing some non-independent regions (e.g. Rodrigues, Hawaii, Tibet, Tromelin).
I excluded some books (such as Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, or William Boyd's African novels) that take place in unidentified countries.
I also excluded books (such as Elie Wiesel's Night) whose action takes place in several countries.
If I've read a book in French but an English translation exists I've added the English title in brackets [].
I've included books not written by natives of the country in question.

My conclusions:

I have vast swathes of the planet where I haven't read any literature from, for example South America or the Pacific! Places like South East Asia or Central Asia are patchy too. Although I list Paul Coelho and Isabel Allende the books of theirs that I read were not set in their native countries. And despite living and travelling for three years in Asia I've mainly read Korean books (North and South) but very little from the many other countries we travelled to in the region. I need to broaden my horizons even more.

What about you? Do you enjoy reading books from other countries? Do you have any books to recommend? Is literature from your native (or adopted) country easy to find in English?

P.S. Here's the link to Ann Morgan's site: A Year Of Reading The World. Other reading around the world blogs I've come across are: Reading the World, The Rushlight List and World Lit Up.

This post originally appeared on A Smart Translator's Reunion.

Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Pulau Weh - scuba-diving off Sumatra's north-west tip

The second part of our trip to Indonesia involved a week's scuba-diving at Pulau Weh, a small island off the north west tip of Sumatra.

To get there from our previous destination, Yogyakarta, we had to fly to Banda Aceh via Jakarta. Flight and ferry timetables meant we had to spend a night in Banda Aceh before taking the next day's ferry for a two-hour trip to Pulau Weh. Most people know the name of Banda Aceh as it is the city closest to the epicentre of the 2004 tsunami, although you'd be hard put to know it now as much has been reconstructed. 31000 people died on that day.

Banda Aceh, February 2005

A lot of NGOs came to the city in the aftermath, and from a tourist point of view this had the negative effect of driving accommodation prices up artificially - room prices in BA do not reflect quality at all unfortunately!

Ferry from Banda Aceh to Sabang, capital of Banda Aceh

Map of Pulau Weh, showing dive sites

The ferry arrives at Balohan. Our dive club was situated at Gapang.

our dive club

It's a very quiet and idyllic location. We stayed in accommodation belonging to the dive centre, but there is other accommodation too. We had a choice of rustic eating places for our various meals:

breakfast

lunch

another lunch option

tuna sandwich - made with fresh tuna!

our favourite dinner restaurant

freshly caught dinner!

Gapang Bay

looking to the island from out in a dive boat

One of our dives was on a tugboat wreck in Sabang harbour:

tugboat wreck

On the way back we stopped at some hot springs bubbling up from the sea floor in Pria Lot Bay:

another reminder of local volcanic activity

Here's some of the aquatic life that we saw on other dives (note that all photos with a date encrusted on them were taken by Rob Taylor (thanks Rob!)).

moray eel with attendant cleaner shrimp

not sure whether this is a green or hawksbill turtle

sea anemone

group of garden eels

clown fish in sea-anemone

This sea star looks striking but is actually quite harmful to the coral reefs - it's a crown of thorns, the second largest sea star in the world:

this type of sea star destroys the coral reef

On our last day we couldn't dive as it was a Friday and to respect local Muslim custom no boats go out diving or fishing. So we hired a scooter and visited some of the rest of the island.

vegetation, island interior

monitor lizard

Not far from Gapang is Indonesia's northernmost point, which is marked by a commemorative monument.

Indonesia's Point Zero

It's guarded by a group of aggressive monkeys, who are not above stealing anything they can get their hands on.

a few of the thieving monkeys

Thankfully we also met some nice locals!

visitors from Banda Aceh

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Yogyakarta - Java's cultural capital

An hour's flight from Jakarta is Yogyakarta, Indonesia's cultural capital, often referred to as Yogya, where we had planned to stay 4 nights.

In Yogyakarta itself we started by visiting the Kraton, which is the local Sultan's palace complex, situated in the centre of Yogyakarta. Every morning there is a different performance of typical Javanese culture, and on the day we visited it was music:

Most of the performers were quite elderly.

After watching for a while we wandered around the palace complex.

in the Kraton

The current sultan still lives in the complex.

in the Kraton

ceiling, Kraton

It was in the toilets of the Kraton that I saw this amusing sign.

Afterwards we visited the nearby Taman Sari, which the Dutch called Waterkasteel. A 18th century former royal garden, today only the central bathing complex remains.

Taman Sari

The next day we headed to Borobudur which is about 40km north-west from Yogya. As we didn't fancy taking public transport we used Rumah Guides, which is a community project organisation.

En route to Borobudur we stopped off in the village of Ngilpoh, which is locally famous for its ceramics.

As they don't have a kiln to fire their ceramics, they use a method whereby the items to be fired are covered in dry grass which is then set alight. A man creates a draft using a hand-held device so that as many objects as possible are covered by the ashes:

Ngilpoh 'kiln'

It seemed to resemble pit-firing, but without a pit!

After lunch we headed to the day's main attraction: Borobudur.

approaching Borobudur

This 8th or 9th century Buddhist structure is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

stone carvings

Borobudur is surrounded by lush countryside

Unfortunately nobody knows who built it or why it was built.

gargoyle for water drainage

Built as a single large stupa, it has nine platforms. the lower six are square, and the upper three are circular. The upper platform contains 72 small pierced stupas surrounding a central large stupa.

Some of the 72 stupas on the upper platform

central stupa in the middle

panoramic view

Inside each pierced stupa is a statue of Buddha.

this stupa has been left uncovered to allow visitors to see the Buddha inside

It is the single largest Buddhist structure in the world.

Three kilometres east of Borobudur is the square-shaped Mendut Temple:

Inside are three statues, a three metre high Buddha flanked by bodhisattvas.

central Buddha statue

Our last day started by a visit to Kaliurang, 25 km north of Yogya and situated at over 900m altitude. It is on the southern slopes of the volcano Gunung (Mount) Merapi, which last erupted in November 2010, ie about 7 months before our visit there, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. Unfortunately cloudy weather prevented us from seeing "Fire Mountain".

sign reads "Mount Merapi National Park"

Some houses were destroyed in the last eruption, and some of these have been charmingly "graffitied".

On the way to our next stop we saw a warung (restaurant) advertising rabbit satay!

Our final stop was at the Prambanan temple complex.

Also a UNESCO heritage site it is splendid in its own right but is often overshadowed by its more famous neighbour, Borobudur. Probably built about 50 years later these temples are dedicated to Hinduism however, not Buddhism.