Before I start, I should mention that I am not a travel writer. At least, I am not what I picture in my mind when I see a travel writer: someone open-minded, enthusiastic, and an all-around inspiring person. Someone bravely jumping into the depths of the unknown without need or want of the creature comforts of the modern world.
I am a sarcastic, bitter, lazy, stand-up comedian - desperately trying to shove some world culture into my jaded, closed mind. In all reality, I am more prone to exploring World of Warcraft on my computer rather than the actual world.
Still, here I am, on a rickety ferry to a small remote island off of Sumatra, itself a small island of Indonesia. My mind is overloaded with all the weird minutiae around me, every sight and sound acutely clear and loud. However; I am not freaked out because of all the weird foreignness around me - I am freaked out by the fact that I am no longer freaked out anymore. The family of five with no shoes sleeping next to me; the man selling fried something; the fact that I haven’t spoken a complete sentence in English in over a week, yet I am still alive. It has been a year now in Indonesia; this weirdness has become my home.
I gaze out the back of the ferry towards Java, my “home” island. I see the dirty port, with a dirty road leading up to the dirty bus terminal, where my dirty bus provides shade to a couple of dirty goats eating garbage. That is how you could describe my life in Indonesia: dirty. Yet, the word doesn’t ring as something negative, rather it seems to take on a new meaning. There is an inherent realness to this type of dirty, an intimacy to one’s environment. Sure, you really don’t want touch it, but it is still there - whether you like it or not.
Beyond the dirty city, I can see the green mountains that are the hallmark of Indonesia. Lush jungles, old temples, and everything else they told me to see in my guidebook. I saw them, took my picture beside them, posted and tagged them on Facebook. Beautiful and awe-inspiring, yes, but too clean - too unreal almost. The impovished family sleeping soundly next to me, a man carrying his goat like it was a child, the smell of gasoline wafting from the engine room that surely cannot be doing my health any good - these are real.
The ferry will stop soon and my next adventure will begin. I will take photos of the natural beauty that I am sure will be there, but those pictures will not be what I see when I revisit this place in my mind - it will be what exists outside the camera frame.
