"And I've always felt that the beauty of being surrounded by the foreign is that it slaps you awake. You can't take anything for granted. Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love,because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked 'on.' Suddenly you're alert to the secret patterns of the world.” - Pico Iyer

The view from the docks behind our hotel in Langkawi

With the end of my first semester teaching at MAN Ngraho, I was ready for a well deserved vacation. So my new minimalist self, armed with just a backpack, headed to Malaysia with Terrence for 10 days. We passed through sparse security checks in Surabaya, boarded a flight to Malaysia and after a quick 3 hour nap, we landed in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. The airport wasn't much to look at, but there was a distinct difference from the airport we had departed from: English was everywhere! The language of Malay is very similar to Indonesian, a language I have spent the last 8 months learning and feel relatively comfortable with, so I wasn't worried about communication. But when it came to interacting with not only people at the airport, but those in restaurants, when asking for directions in the street, when buying train tickets, they all spoke English. Aside from saying terima kasih (thank you), we barely spoke Indonesian for the duration of our vacation.

City Streets: Kuala Lumpur

Batu Caves

The first two days were spent in Kuala Lumpur. We stayed at a hotel in Bukit Bintang, a lively, young neighborhood within walking distance to the center of the city. The location of our hotel was perfect and the food was varied and delicious. Every street was lined with restaurants and bars boasting happy hours and daily specials and they came to life as the sun went down, filling up with locals and tourists alike. During the day we walked the streets, went to the Petronas Towers, ate in Little India and visited Chinatown. We also went to the Batu Caves, which house Hindu temples in a beautiful setting. Compared to the Indonesian cities I have been to, KL is organized, clean and easy to maneuver. Public transportation was easy to use and took use where ever we needed to go, the city streets were more or less trash free and there are sidewalks making it easy to walk around.

Hippie Towns: Georgetown, Penang

Gurney Drive

Temple on Penang Hill

After a longer than expected bus ride, T and I finally arrived on the island of Penang. Too exhausted to try finding a bus into Georgetown, we jumped in a taxi and asked to be taken to our hotel. I thought taxi drivers in Indonesia were chatty, but they got nothing on the driver we had that day. Once he found out that we are American, he excitedly told us about some Americans he had meet a while back who had come to Penang in search of weed and had spent many night smoking up with our taxi driver and his friends. Coming from Indonesia, where drugs laws are so strictly enforced, this conversation was a shock to my system. To top it all off, as he dropped us off in from of the hotel, he let us sneak a peek at his homemade bong made out of a plastic bottle. He left us with his calling card, and while tempting we decided it would be best not to get into any trouble.

After dropping off our bags and freshening up, we hit the streets in search of food and drink and we found some amazing places. Wandering the streets, we found our way to a lively Indian neighborhood, where music was blaring in the streets and incense smoke was wafting out of every store. We kept walking, making our way to Fort Cornwallis, built by the British East Indian Company along the water. We were starting to feel as though we had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a deserted part of town, but we wandered down to the end of a dock and found a beautiful, secluded bar sitting at the end of the dock, over looking the water. We sat, talking over wine and beer, enjoying the view and our wonderful surroundings.

Penang Hill

Christmas Eve in Penang, T and I went to Penang Hill, taking a cable car to the top where you can walk around, eat and enjoy the view. The views from the top were incredible. We sat at the restaurant for a beer and snacks before heading back to Georgetown. Once we had showered and changes, T and I got in a cab to the Gurney Drive hawker center. While we were wandering the streets of Georgetown that evening, we decided to get drinks at a place called Reggae Bar. The people seemed friendly, there was outdoor seating and it had a cool vibe. We joined a growing group of foreigners sitting outside, while the friendly proprietor eagerly introduced us to everyone at the table. Some Germans, some Italians, some Brits, the list goes on. T and I started talking to a pair of students Julia and Abdol. She is a German student and he a Libyan student studying in Georgetown. We made a plan to meet them the following morning and spend the day at the beach.  

Left to right: T, Julia and Abdol at the bus station

T, Abdol and Julia at the beach

Getting served Arabic coffee

 Our second day in town, we joined up with Julia and Abdol and spent Christmas day at Ferringhi Beach. After a late start and a stop at a bakery for the first bagel and cream cheese I've had in 8 months, we hopped on a bus to the beach. What a great way to spend Christmas away from your family. We swam, we lay on the beach and for dinner, we went to an Arabic restaurant recently opened by Abdol's family friend. I had an Arabic salad and it was delicious. We finished the meal with some of the famous Arabic coffee, which was the strongest and most flavorful coffee I've ever had. After our meal, we wandered back to the beach as evening fell, then walked along the main street, now taken over by a night market. It was such a relaxing Christmas day, but busy enough to distract from the fact that my family was on the other side of the planet, celebrating at home without me. 

Island Getaways: Langkawi

The boats we took to the islands

Island beach

Dayang Bunting Lake

The next day, we took a three hour ferry ride from Georgetown to the island of Langkawi, known for the beautiful beaches and secluded smaller islands surrounding it. Our first full day there, T and I went on an Island Hopping tour. We joined a group of about eight others on a boat and cruised over to a small island with a beautiful beach. We spend an hour swimming and lying on the beach, then we got back on the boat and cruised to a secluded alcove full of eagles, diving into the water, catching fish. We snapped a few shots then headed to the last stop, and the one I was most looking forward to, Dayang Bunting Lake. Our captain dropped us off at the docks and we followed the trail, up into the island. Followed by monkeys searching for food, we hiked our way to the fresh water lake, isolated in the middle of the island. It was breathtaking. The pictures do not do it justice. We swam, bought some snacks and relaxed on the docks. It was the perfect end to our island adventure. Once we were dropped off in Langkawi, we walked back to our hotel, got dinner next door and walk down to the water to watch fireworks celebrating a festival in town.

On the boat

Look out point at the top the mountain

Our second day in Langkawi, we rented a car and drove to the Oriental Village, where we took cable cars up into the mountains. While there was a great view from the top, there wasn't anything to do at the top, so we took a few pictures and headed back down the mountain and drove to Cenang Beach. First stop in town was to a Mexican restaurant. I was somewhat wary at first, but the food turned out to be amazing. We filled up on nachos, quesadillas and fajitas then, with full bellies, we walked to the beach for the evening. Before heading back to our hotel for our last night in town, we stopped by a falafel and shawarma stand for dinner. The next day we took a bus back to KL for two days, then took a flight back to Indonesia.

Cenang Beach

Homeward Bound: Readjustment in Surabaya

We've all heard of culture shock. While Indonesia and Malaysia are similar in certain aspects, my personal experiences in each country have been radically different. Going from vacationing in hotels, taking hot showers, relaxing on beaches and eating a wide variety of delicious foods to a little desa (village) with bucket showers, squat toilets and mice is a hard transition, no matter whether you've made the transition before or not. So before heading back to my desa, I spent a few days in Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java where the Peace Corps office is located, getting back into the culture and language of Indonesia. After the winter holidays, the volunteer lounge at the PC office was full of return travelers recounting their adventures and taking some time to readjust to Indonesia before getting back to the desa life. It was great to spend time catching up with friends, but hearing all about their awesome adventures made me realize how much there is to see and experience. I have barely scraped the tip of the travel iceberg.

Back to reality

My ibu and host sister sitting on the porch

My host brothers washing their motorcycles in the rain

Ending vacations are always bittersweet. You don't want the excitement of traveling and the relaxation away from our daily pressures to end, but you're also exhausted from traveling and long to return home to your family and daily routine. My favorite part of returning home, is realizing the differences travel makes. Once back in this neutral place, or at least one you have adjusted to, you see how you have changed against the backdrop of your home. The interactions between you and your family change ever so slightly, almost undetectably, and the space you are surrounded by holds a slightly adjusted place in your heart. Depending on the person you are, home will feel either more significant or more insignificant.

Soaking wet and happy

“The real voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust famously said, consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes. And of course, once you have new eyes, even the old sights, even your home become something different.” -Pico Iyer

The apple tree in the backyard of our Tiburon house

Up until the age of 14, home was a specific place to me. My family had lived in the same house in Tiburon, California since I was a year old and was a place I could claim as my own. I knew that house like the back of my hand: the grassy front yard, the apple tree in the back, the finicky heater in the hallway next to my parent's bedroom. The physical space that was our house had meaning. I'm not sure if this meaning came from all of the significant events that took place in the house or simply because I had no other idea of home to compare it to, but that house was home in every sense of the word. The physical and the ideological. And then we moved. I no longer resent my parents for moving our family to Connecticut and have grown to love the east coast for what it is, but my initial idea of home lost its meaning once we left California. Home was no longer a physical location, building or apple tree. Home had transformed into wherever my family was. Connecticut became my home because that was where my family was. The specific location or house didn't have much significance when it came to my new idea of home. The important part was the WHO, not the WHERE. 

The three Akinyemi children

  Then we started to spread out. We were no longer a compact unit, instead we functioned as a family from different corners of the country and sometimes, different corners of the world. Since I no longer had a concrete sense of home, whether physical or familial, I took a page from Lion King's Pumba. “Home is where your rump rests.” So home turned into wherever I happened to be living, whether that was Manhattan, London or Greenwich. This way of thinking about “home” worked for me all through college and the year I spent working before joining the Peace Corps.

Senior year dorm room

But now, living in Indonesia, that definition of home no longer works for me. If you ask me where I am living or where my house is, I would tell you that I currently live in Desa Tinggang, Kec. Ngraho, Kab. Bojonegoro on the island of Java, Indonesia. This is pretty specific in terms of location, but the house, the village and the culture are not mine. And for that reason alone, I cannot call Indonesia home, no matter how much I love the people, the culture, the village, my host family and the school where I work. I know I belong here at the moment, but Indonesia is not my home, it is where I currently live. So where does that leave my definition of home? I'll let you know once I've figured it out.

Temple outside of Malang with my ibu and her daughter

 “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed.” - Pico Iyer