Tuesday 30 June 2015

Really the LAST one!

I thought I'd finished the blog but I have to write about this morning when we were leaving Denpasar. 

About 10 minutes after take off, I said to Mum, looking out the window, "is that a volcano erupting?". She squashed me as she leaned off to look, then quickly went for her camera and told me to take some shots. 

It was - a volcano erupting - Mt Raung, on the west coast of Java near Bali. Mum found out when we got to Singapore that flights had been cancelled  from Bali this morning because of the volcanic ash so we were lucky to depart. 

I will NEVER forget that Indonesia is on the ring of fire .. after seeing quite a few volcanoes, climbing an active one and then seeing one erupt. 


Tonight in Singapore we caught up with close friends. Phoebe and Toby are the two kids who have known me longer than anyone. I met then the day after I returned to Singapore after Mum adopted me. We had a fun night at the Tanglin Club. 


Now it's the end. We leave Singapore tomorrow night. Sydney and Term 3 ahead. 

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” 

– Henry Miller.

Seminyak and the END!


We fly back to Singapore tomorrow morning after spending a day in Seminyak. It was completely different to anywhere else I’ve been in the last 12 days, and I don’t think I would come to Seminyak again. It was far too touristy, shops everywhere (I did look at a few!! .. and am packing a few more things tonight!!!), bars and restaurants, and the only people I passed in the street were Australians! Jalan Raya Seminyak was like Warringah Mall without escalators or air con, just a very very long street of shops!

AND the beach was awful, lined with pubs and restaurants too with people spilling out to the sand, to sit on daybeds they have to pay for! The natural environment was not important, which was clear with the rubbish thrown into the sea. The tide had just gone out when we walked and plastics were deposited as the sea withdrew.




Seminyak/ Legian beaches
I saw a documentary exposing the damage tourists are doing to Bali. It showed how the drainage and sewage system can’t cope with the huge numbers, and how the focus on dollars is more important than the environment. It was interesting shopping though, because NO shops gave plastic bags, only paper ones which is more than happens in Sydney!

I did support the local industry though ... new aqua dress!






















This my last night in Indonesia, we fly to Singapore in the morning. Mum asked me tonight what my highlights were, and they are:
·               snorkeling in the gilis
·               seeing so many turtles  and dolphins in their natural habitat
·               climbing the volcano in the dark, and sunrise from the top
·               cycling around the local area (except not the mud!!)
·               staring out into the jungle from our balconies and terraces soaking in nature
·               wandering around Ubud and its surroundings, meeting local people and talking to them


When I come back (and I will), I will definitely stay away from the tourist part where culture and the environment are being invaded by insensitive people. The Balinese live with nature, it’s part of their culture and beliefs. I love the offerings of thanks they give every day, it’s good to stop and appreciate everything we get and give thanks.




Dolphins

We saw another sunrise but this time from the Bali sea. We paddled out to the outrigger at 5.50am in the dark and glided towards the sunrise and dolphin pods. More photos with sunrise ambience!    




Although I swam with a dolphin in Singapore when I was 7 yo, this morning was even better because the dolphins were in their natural habitat.

Mum and I talked about the comic scene when a dolphin pod was spotted and all the tourist outriggers turned and motored towards them. I don’t think the boats were menacing for the dolphins because they didn’t have to be near us, they have a huge sea.

Dolphins are intelligent, and I think they were playing with us, taunting us, and could even be laughing at stupid humans chasing them all over the sea to spy them through camera lenses!

A scientist recently did MRI scans of dolphins brains, and it proves that their brains are structured to all for self-awareness (and complex emotions). The part of the dolphin brain associated with processing emotional information is large.




And here's a video I took:



You might be wondering why I am laughing in these photos. Well, it’s poor Mum with her lack of marine knowledge. 

She checked with me saying “dolphins don’t have spouts, do they?”. Yes they do, I told her, and explained that they take deep breaths and can hold their breath for a long time.

She then said “so they can’t breathe under water?”. No Mum, they don’t have gills! 

THEN, she asked, “I wonder where do they lay their eggs?” Oh Mum ... blessed be thee, she didn’t know dolphins are mammals! (Mum didn’t want me to write this in the blog, she SAYS she was tired and she wasn’t thinking clearly!!!!).




Wallace Line

I've written this post over the last week, since we were in Lombok because I needed to do some research. It's about the Wallace Line, one of the reasons Mum wanted to take me to Lombok and Bali. There's a lot to read, so you don't have to, I did it because it will help me remember this trip, and about the Theory or Evolution - natural selection. 


Alfred Russel Wallace


Alfred Russel Wallace didn’t come from money or education like Charles Darwin yet he lived at the same time –in the 1800s. Wallace was born in 1823, he left school when he was 13, but read and read. He was a naturalist with a passion for understanding how the different species developed. Wikipedia describes him as an naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. Others add that he was a poet and a spiritualist. He was a humble man.

Charles Darwin

A bit about Charles Darwin

Admiral Phillip Parker KING
Darwin left for South America (esp Patagonia) in 1831 on the HMS Beagle, which was under the command of Admiral Phillip Parker King (1791 – 1856) [the son of Australia’s 3rd Governor, Governor Philip Gidley King  (1758 – 1808)]. Darwin’s mid-shipman was Admiral King’s son (also called Philip Gidley King (1817-1904) and Philip Gidley King’s illustrations were used by Darwin. It was on this voyage that Darwin began to form his theory of evolution. I write this because Governor King is my 7th grandfather, Phillip Parker King is my 6th, and Philip Gidley King is my 5th. It’s the reason my name is Apsara May KING Lindeman!

Alfred Wallace was born in 1923 so he was younger when Darwin was on the HMS Beagle. Darwin returned to England in 1840 but didn’t publish anything because he was still wanting to document everything clearly so he had all the evidence to support his theory. At the same time, Wallace was exploring, observing, discovering, documenting and developing his own theories.

Back to Wallace

While Wallace was still an apprentice, and a building surveyor he loved to spend his time outdoors and reading books. Books in which he read were novels written by Darwin of his travels around the world! Wallace became inspired by Darwin’s travels, especially the Beagle voyage. Darwin was an inspiration to Wallace, and he managed to save enough money for an expedition of his own to South America. Wallace went to the Amazon when he was 21yo first and discovered new species, but on the way back to London his boat caught fire and he lost all his specimens and notes, four YEARS of his work was destroyed. BUT he didn’t give up, but decided to start again and he travelled to the Malay Archipelago and Indonesia. He didn’t have money backing him, so he funded his explorations by collecting animals and selling them to museums in London, but this time he also collected for himself.

The Malay archipelago - Wallace's map drawing

Wallace spent his days catching and shooting animals to observe in detail. He drew illustrations, notated them all, he measured and weighed the animals, he even skinned them and looked at their anatomy. He discovered species that were unlike any others discovered, and were truly intriguing to him so he wrote in a journal of all his observations. Mum has been reading Wallace’s book The Malay Archipelago which was printed in 1869. She’s been showing me relevant sections from the book.


When he was travelling through the Malay archipelago, he noticed there was a sharp distinction between the western parts and the eastern parts even though there was similar climate and terrain as they are both volcanic islands. 

Sumatra and Java were ecologically more like the Asian mainland, while Lombok, Sulawesi and New Guinea were more like Australia. He especially saw a great contrast between Bali and Lombok because they were so close. He saw marsupials like the tree kangaroo in Lombok which had only been seen in Australia. He saw the white crest cockatoo on Lombok.

He wrote a letter from Lombok in 1856, which said:

“The islands of Bali and Lombok, though of nearly the same size, of the same soil, aspect, elevation and climate, and within sight of each other, differ considerably in their animals. As an instance, I may mention the cockatoos, a group of birds confined to Australia and the Moluccas, but quite unknown in Java, Borneo, and Sumatra; one species (Plyctolophus sulphureus, the lesser sulfur crested cockatoo) is abundant in Lombok but is unknown in Bali. The island of Lombok appears to form the extreme western limit of the cockatoos range and that of the whole family. Many other species illustrate the same fact, and I am preparing a short account of them for publication”

Wallace noticed a pattern in the distribution of fauna in the islands. Wallace was the first to notice there was a biogeographic boundary across the Lombok Strait and there was a striking difference between animals of Indo-Malaysia and those from Australasia and that there was a distinct definition between the two regions. This boundary is now called the Wallace Line.

Wallace thought it was the depth of the Lombok Strait that kept animals on either side isolated from one another. When sea levels dropped during the Pleistocene Ice Age, the islands of Bali, Java and Sumatra were all connected to one another and to mainland Asia, so they were mostly Asian fauna. The Lombok Strait was very deep, so the islands (like Lombok, New Guinea, Sulawesi) were colonized by Australasian fauna.

He wrote:
“the wide expanse of sea which divides the islands of Java, Sumatra and Borneo from each other is so shallow that ships can anchor in any part of it since it rarely exceeds 40 fathoms in depth. And if we go as far as 100 fathoms we shall include the Philippine islands Bali, east of Java”

He also wrote:
“it is well known that the natural productions of Australia differ from those of Asia. Australia in fact stands alone, it possesses no apes or monkeys, no tigers, no elephant, no horse, no squirrel. Instead of these it has marsupials, only kangaroos, opossoms, wombats and the duck-billed platypus. In birds it is almost as peculiar. It has cockatoos, honeysuckers and the brush tongued lorries which are found nowhere else across the globe. All these striking peculiarities are found also in those islands”

“The great contrast between the two divisions of the archipelago is nowhere so abruptly exhibited as on passing from the island of Bali to that of Lombok where the two regions are in closest proximity. In Bali we have barbets, fruit thrushes, and woodpeckers; on passing over to Lombok these are seen no more but we have abundance of cockatoos, honey suckers and brush turkeys which are equally unknown in Bali or any island further west”

He also thought that species survived better in environments because of their genes, and these would reproduce more so the strong genes survived and adapted to the environment. The weaker ones died off. It was survival of the fittest. This was exactly what Darwin had discovered – the theory of evolution through natural selection.

Wallace sent his findings, with his observations, hypothesis and evidence, and an essay to Charles Darwin (who he admired and looked up to) in London to ask his opinion. When Darwin read Wallace’s theory he realized Wallace had the same one as his, but Darwin hadn’t published his yet. So Darwin used Wallace’s essay (Wallace collected over 120,000 specimens) and his own and presented a paper in 1858 – with both their names. Wallace wasn’t told about it, because he was still in Asia. In 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species, with just his name, and this is who history remembers. 



Lovina

 Today we traversed the centre of Bali. From Ubud (where the red rectangle is, in the map), we went south to join the main road north (just 2 lanes). I was checking the compass on my phone and we were mostly travelling between 358 degrees to 2 degrees, except when we wound our way through the highest peaks and valleys in Bali, then we were going from 80 degrees to 170 degrees with one turn. It took about 3 hours, but I slept through some of it (I DID stay up till half past midnight watching a DVD series about Queen Mary of Scots!). 


Amazingly, we got upgraded to the family villa at Lovina. When I say a villa, I don't mean just one room and a pool, we got 3 bedrooms, 3 dining areas, 3 lounge areas, a garden, a playground and full view of the beach. AND, it's all open (except for the bedrooms) so it feels so open. (I actually couldn't find Mum!).



1. find the "apsara" 
2. find the "apsara" 
ok - there I am


Then sunset from our beach door, with the moon almost full.


almost full moon


Offerings and colour

Offerings

These are small offering baskets called ‘canang sari ' that Balinese offer to their Gods three times a day.

It’s  basically a ritual of giving back what has been given to you by the Gods. It is a sharing that is not based upon fear, but on gratitude to the richness of life.

The offerings appease the spirits and brings prosperity and good health to the family. It is a duty and an honour at the same time, and for the Balinese it’s a very natural thing to do to maintain a good relationship between people and spirits.

Balinese Hinduism is strongly influenced by animism and naturalism, where the power of spirits are in all objects and elements of life. All elements of nature are from the supreme spirits.

Good spirits are believed to reside in the mountains, whereas the seas are home to demons and ogres. There are also the spirits of the dead.


Balinese Hinduism revolves around having balance and harmony between the different elements in life and the spirits in their afterlife. The balance in life comes from a harmonious relationship between the spirits other human beings, and the nature that surrounds us. Offerings are given to appease the gods three times a day, they are footpaths, in restaurants, in bedrooms, in shops – a bit like alters in Chinese homes.





And here are some other colours of Ubud