photos West Sumatra

                       Head of TV department taking landscape pictures during the crazy weekend trip

                                                      Chill near the waterfall

Waterfall near P. Panjang

Landscape taken during the freaky weekend

women in traditional clothes before performance

                                crazy guy doing crazy things during the performance, West Sumatra

Second part of the "Weekend of our dreams"

I am really happy that you liked the first part of our incredible story so here it continues (sorry that it is a little bit long, but worth reading I think):

So it was saturday evening and we were still bored, we had really nothing to do there. We knew some of the student there but they had some tasks to do since it was their teambuilding so they all were busy. We did hang out with some of the teachers for some time and it was kind of fun because they knew a little bit English so we were finally able to talk to someone more than just a stupid small talk.

The evening program was like on every other school trip, watching movies, playing some “get to know each other” games and so on. It was funny watching it. And here comes the weird part of the evening. First of all I have to say that Indonesia is a very mystical and spiritual country and most of the population believes in another world, the world of the spirits or ghosts, which is a part of our world but we just don’t see them or interact with them. Some people say that they are able to see the spirits or communicate with them. And sometimes some people get possessed by these ghosts. I personally believe that there is something paranormal going on but I don’t know what and why.

So we are sitting downstairs watching a movie and suddenly we hear screams from upstairs. Weird screams. First we don’t really pay attention to them, because we thought that it is just the freshmen acting like little kids but then some people rush upstairs and also some of the teachers so we know something is not right. After few minutes, while the screams still continue, I decide to go check it out. Some people on the stairs tell me that one girl got possessed by a ghost and they don’t pay much attention to that.

So I came upstairs into the room where this girl was and she was lying on her back, few people were holding her arms and legs and massaging the fingers. One guy was sitting on her chest holding her hair saying something in Indonesian and then spitting water into her face. It was really intense thing to watch. I didn’t know at all what is happening. She was still screaming and fighting with the people holding her. After few minutes she “woke up” from this thing. She looked very disoriented and didn’t know what happened at all. But she didn’t remember a thing from the whole afternoon and evening.

I literally wasn’t breathing and had a head full of questions. So I went to talk to some of the people who were holding her while the guy on her chest was trying to get the spirit out of her. They told me that she got possessed by this spirit during the afternoon, because they saw that she was acting weird. And in the evening they were sure. The thing is that here the people believe that there are two types of ghosts, good ones and bad ones. The good ones just try to communicate and the bad ones will probably try to hurt someone.

The one that got into this girl was a good one they told me. It just wanted to communicate. I don’t know exactly how and when is it possible for the spirit to get into you, but since we are here in Indonesia I eye witnessed around 5 or 6 ghost possessions. It was very weird every time and until now I don’t know what to think about it. If it is really real or what is it. Other thing that when you get possessed you don’t remember anything after that moment until the spirit leaves your body. I heard stories of people who are possessed for several years and nobody is able to get the spirit out of them. When we were in Bali I was talking to a lot of young Indonesian people who had similar experiences or some of them are able to see or communicate with them. Hindu people believe in this spiritual world even more then Islamic people. We even have one American girl here in Padang Panjang with us and she says that she is also able to see or communicate with the spirits and she has a lot of experience with them from what was she saying. And I kinda believe her.

So after this whole ghost possession thing we didn’t really sleep the next night since we were in the middle of forest on the top of a hill heh. We were happy that we go back to civilization the next day. It’s up to you if you believe me or not, but this story really happened. It was few months ago but I still have the whole situation it that room alive in front of my eyes. If someone has a question feel free to ask anything. I don’t even mind if you write that it is bullshit in the comments. And if someone wants I can write a whole another post about these things here in Indonesia.

Peace 

The weekend of our dreams

Internet in this beautiful place wasn’t working yesterday so sorry about the delay. Today’s blog will be a little bit longer, but it is a interesting story that happened to us few months ago. Here it is:

So since this is a university scholarship program, we had to choose something to study here. Our intentions were to travel not to study, but we had to choose something. So we chose photography in the TV and Film department. The classes were really boring because we didn’t understand anything. And this department was organizing a TV camp one weekend. Everybody was really excited about it so we paid 50k rupiah for this thing and decided to go with them.

There were two buses ready for us in the afternoon on thursday. First shock was that there were too many people outside the buses to fit inside, but the space- time continuum here has really different attributes than anywhere else in the world so we did fit in somehow. Intredasting 2h drive. Then suddenly we stopped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a hill. Fog everywhere so we didn’t see anything. Then all of them started to continue on the road up the hill and the buses stayed there. 

We realized that the buses were stuck there because the road was in very bad condition. Like everywhere in Indonesia hehe. We felt like in a movie because when we said this can’t get any worse it started to rain. So when we came to the cottage we were soaking wet and it was around 10°C outside. I didn’t think that it can be this cold in Indonesia. Except from the mountains, but this was a small hill.

At least the cottage did look quite good but again, too many people for the rooms. There were 4 rooms and it was around 70 of us. But we put our stuff in one of the rooms and didn’t care about anything else. It was already evening and time for dinner. They put stripes of waxed paper on the ground and on this paper they put rice, noodles, eggs, some meat and whatever else they had, I don’t even know. Everybody sat down around these stripes of paper and started to eat. No forks, no knives, just your beautiful right hand and your skillful fingers. Most of Indonesians eat with their hand fiy. After dinner they cleaned everything from the ground and started watching some movies. But we were really tired so we decided that we should go to sleep. But everything was already taken so we ended up on the terrace with no warm clothes because we didn’t know it’s gonna be so cold there. They gave us a mattress and also when they saw that we are shaking from the cold weather, they dug up some blankets for us from somewhere. Aaah finally some sleep we thought. No way. The little freshmen fuckers were running around playing catch or something like they were 10 years old. We finally fell asleep around 4.30 am.

Ha but they woke us up at 6 am, I don’t even know why. The fog cleared and we finally saw the beautiful view from the top of the hill. We found out that this TV camp is something like a teambuilding for the freshmen and they were doing some teambuilding activities but everything was in Indonesian so we didn’t understand. So we were walking around the whole place, bored as fuck. You know, if you wake up at 6 am, the day is really long and neverending. But we totally forgot about the boredom when we were sitting on the terrace and suddenly mr. spider was walking on the wall behind us. Ha you think that it was a small cute spidey. That creature was bigger than my hand. I thought it is going to eat me. Try searching for indonesian banana spider on google. It is harmless for humans but it scared the crap out of us. And also at that time, we didn’t know that it is harmless. And then some guy killed him with his bare hand and a facial tissue. We didn’t sleep well the next night because we thought that his friends are waiting for revenge, and some other things that happened during the night. But I will tell you the next part tomorrow.

To be continued.

some photos

this was around 40cm long

name of the local football team

after the 2009 earthquake in West Sumatra

My buddy Allah

so today’s topic is religion! Very sensitive topic so I’ll try to be gentle.

On the beginning of our year in Indonesia we had a dilemma. Dilemma was pretty clear and it was about religion in Indonesia. Hinduism was much more attractive for us than Islam so we tried to go to the only Hindu place in Indonesia > Bali. But many, many people applied for the scholarship we got scared and we really wanted to go somewhere so we picked a place nobody wanted to go to. Sumatra. And Sumatra is one of the most orthodox and one of the strongest Muslim places in Indonesia. So we tried to avoid Islam and ended up in Sumatra. Makes no sense huh?

I haven’t made up my mind in the question of religion. I don’t like radical atheist because i find it as narrow-minded as following something you don’t understand. To say that believing is the result of brainwash is nonsense, even though some f***heads made it a great business. I’m not talking about that kind of religion, i leave the church as it is and leave everyone with their own opinion. Like Gandhi said: „I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” But after all i see myself as an atheist, not particularly proud of it.

We all know urban myths about Islam and to tell you the truth I had kind of twisted view of Islam before. Islam has a huge problem in the world. The problem is that it’s not understood. Even Muslim people don’t understand Islam properly. It’s not about extreme ideas but keeping people in big ignorance and kind of a fear.

Sometimes we get this feeling that fear is a big influence in every day’s Muslim life. I have a feeling that most of the restrictions they obey are because they are afraid (we pretty much do the same, don’t we). It doesn’t matter if they fear Allah, their parents or Ku Klux Klan, this fear keeps them obedient and everyone likes that. They don’t know they can do this and that and that half of the restrictions don’t make any sense and its futile explaining that to them. It’s essential to realize that we are in their country so we shouldn’t feed them with our western „knowledge“.

How do we feel Islam?
Well, one thing is what we call „Allah time“. It’s several times a day and its basically praying time. You can hear it all around the city in many, many mosques. Why Allah time? Because the Dj starts the beat, mc starts to rap and everyone begins to breakdance on the rugs. The first Allah time of the day starts at 4:30 am.

Except that we have these sexual restrictions. It seems like nobody has sex in this place unless married. Girls are not allowed in boys houses and vice versa, most of the girls are covered, and the topic of sex is greatly tabooed. It’s very funny. When you talk about sex they start to giggle and act like we acted when we were 14 years old.

It’s not easy to write about religion. It affects too many people and sometimes you just don’t know what can be disrespectful. That’s why I hope it was acceptable and clear enough.

Keep posted and see ya next time.

Is Indonesia racist?

Indonesia is without any doubts one of the most racist countries I have ever visited. But it is racist in a different way. Not like what we know in Europe, America or in any other country of the western world. I don’t know how to call it so i will call it positive racism (but in my opinion any kind of racism is wrong).

White people are glorified here from the first moment they step out of the airport. It is very funny to watch Indonesians how horny they are when they see white face. Most of the people here treat white people as celebrities. Except Bali, there they are used to tourists, but also there we had some weird situations because of our white faces.

We went to one shopping mall when we were in Jakarta, and few days before they had some terrorist bombings in catholic churches, so policemen were all over the city, in the hotels, in public buildings and also in front of shopping malls. And they had these metal detectors through which you have to go to get inside, like in the airport. And we, a group of white asses, are going inside through the detector and every-fucking-one of us did beep. We were expecting some troubles but the policeman just smiles at us and waves at us. If I was a terrorist, this would be that lucky moment I am hoping for my whole life hehe.

They treat us the same here in Padang Panjang where we live. Everybody thinks that we are something better because we are white. Just yesterday one guy told us that we are so much smarter that people in Indonesia just because we are white, just because we are from the west. When we go to the market to buy some food everybody is looking at us with open mouth. They whole world literally stops in the moment when they see a white person. This happens all the time and we live here already for half a year. I can not even count how many people took pictures with us when we were walking on the street somewhere. This whole thing gave me one life lesson. I don’t ever want to be famous!

Maybe it sounds like fun but it isn’t heh. Everybody knows what we do all the time. Everybody is watching us all the time when we go somewhere. Everybody knows where we live. And most important thing is that they all think that we have shitloads of money, because we have to, we are white and from Europe so we have to be rich. But we are not. We have to explain all the time that we are poor students who live from the scholarship, which we are getting every month. In the beginning, when we didn’t know the prices for food in market, they always overpriced it for us. For example instead of 5 000 rupiah for 1kg of tomatoes they asked for 10 000, and for Indonesia that’s a big difference. Now we know the prices for almost everything but they still try sometimes.

Always an entourage.

 Gregi

Another set of photos

Here are another interesting photos from our trip. Later this day I will post some "cool story bro" stuff so make sure you come back here later. Thanks dudes

Jakarta by day

This is typical Indonesian bathroom

Bus station in our "city" Padang Panjang

Yes we live under active volcano