The Light and the Dark

Last weekend was full of the senses. To start with Puji and I did part of the Lonely Planet self guided walking tour in central Banjarmasin. We took a Kota Taksi to the big Mosque that is featured in my photos from last month (the one that is described by the lonely planet as a space ship). We missed our stop so had to back track by walking (not too awfully far). At the intersection by the Mosque we met a kind policeman who let us sit in his air-conditioned hut to cool off before crossing the street and continuing to the first stop: A Taoist Temple. Turned out the police officer is from Java. Puji is meeting quite a few Javanese here (she is also from Java) so now we're calling Banjarmasin "New Java."

The Taoist temple was amazing. Atop the entrance gate the yin-yang symbol is displayed full force. The guide told us that no matter how good you are you have a little dark inside and no matter how bad someone is they always have some light deep within. The temple is used for Buddhist worship as well as Confucian and Taoist ceremonies and prayer so the beautiful images we saw related to all three of these belief systems. Sadly my photos aren't that great but you can get a sense of it. It's not surprising to find bits of Chinese culture here. There are plenty of Chinese immigrants and business people here in Borneo.

After visiting the temple we walked to Gramedia bookstore where I bought a non-bootleg DVD of the Nightmare Before Christmas full on with Indonesian subtitles. Non bootleg DVD's in Banjarmasin run about $5 U.S. Bootleg… I hear the going rate is about 60 cents but don't ask if I know firsthand….

To finish off our walk we stopped at Depot 59, also listed in the lonely planet and I had Nasi Padang, similar to Gado Gado but with rice. It consists of peanut sauce, rice, cooked veggies, egg and maybe tofu or tempe. I think you can also get it with chicken. There I rehydrated with tea and water and then we went grocery shopping and picked up my new batik from the tailor that I in turn wore to the wedding party on Sunday. People think we are crazy for walking so much all the time. Nobody walks here, it's like LA.

The wedding party was in Martapura, which is about 1 hour away from Banjarmasin and is well known as a place to buy stones both precious and semi-precious. There are diamond mines in the area, as well as coal mines… So we went to the party (the actual wedding was a week ago) had some good food, took photos with the bride and groom and then headed to the market place in Martapura. We looked at and bought some beautiful stones and visited a beautiful mosque at the edge of the market. (See my profile picture and the photo link) I was complimented on my traditional Kalimantan Batik called Sasirangan wherever we went. A tailor even ran out of his shop and told me it was beautiful. I got quite a different reaction wearing this than I usually get walking around here. It seemed that they were impressed and full of pride that I wanted to wear this style of batik. Wearing this didn't change the amount of stares but it did conjure up more traditional respect from the locals in their interactions with me. Puji even commented on noticing this.

So these were things that were full of light and fun but living here is not without moments of darkness. The least of my worries was that we just had a power outage the other night that lasted for a couple of hours. I coped by doing some yoga in candlelight. Worse… I've had two incidences over the past two weeks where my water was turned off, once officially by the water company likely in part due to the half work days of Ramadan and there was some confusion as to which campus office receives the water bill and pays it! Then someone turned off my main line again last weekend… maybe they were trying to help with keeping costs down or the water dept. thought nobody lived here? I sincerely don't know but all I can say is I started to feel cranky when I couldn't take a shower in this hot and humid weather. But the saddest news of all, you may remember I wrote about visiting a young boy's family at the hospital while he was in the ICU a few weeks ago. Laela told me that he passed away the week I was in Bali. I'm beginning to think I can handle a day or two without running tap water.