Plastic or Paradise?

You’ve arrived in paradise, the sun is shining, the water is turquoise and the beaches are white sand and lined with palm trees… You’ve been passed a cold cocktail – now sit back, relax, enjoy the natural beauty and heat of this foreign land – you’ve earned it.

But what’s the actual reality of the Instagram-perfect portrayal of these remote luxury destinations or the top sites for luxury hobbies like scuba diving. At the moment, the truth of the photo is that it is cropped or photoshopped for the travel magazines and travel blogs and the reality is that soon no amount of cropping will remove the amount of waste that’s washing up, plastic forks from our lunch breaks are arriving on the shores of our holiday spots.

We have described the small fishing town of Labuan Bajo as ‘developing’. It’s well known that many poor countries, like Indonesia, have struggled to find income from tourism and land and therefore pillaged many of their beautiful natural resources. As an example; palm oil production has seen the irreversible destruction of rainforests of Indonesia – destroying ecosystems for countless species in order to plant palm trees and sell cheap oil with a fast turnaround in growth and production. Education on ecosystems on land is as lacking as it is about the ocean – this is a country surviving on whatever they can create or produce in order to gain an income to feed their families.

With tourism growing in Indonesia, including remote dive spots such as Labuan Bajo; so closely commutable to the world renowned Komodo National Park, it’s hopeful that education about these ecosystems, which tourists flock to visit may encourage them to protect them more. This is evident here in Labuan Bajo, a town sat on the harbour as the entry point to the Komodo National Park. From speaking to people who have lived and worked here for the past ten years, it seems much of the infrastructure and huge development has come about only over the past five. With this it has brought with it extra tourism from Indonesia, Asia and further abroad and so increases the demand for food, housing and transport. All of these things have grown due to the neighbouring world underneath the waves here; scuba diving in Komodo National Park is on almost every scuba diver enthusiasts bucket list – and truly, there is little other reason to come to Labuan Bajo.

Scuba diving in the Komodo National Park is magical and rarely do you see plastic floating to meet you in the ocean – though you do see some. This, however, can only be short lived with the current processes here. Having taken a walk to see the coast line to find some viewpoints for photos and drone shots we came across a, quite literal, breath taking scene right on the beach. There’s a whole host of local tourists taking their kids to an inflatable water park. It’s a busy beach as children splash around in the shallows, parents are having picnics on the sand and enjoying the view, when suddenly there’s a strong waft of burning in the air – not the soul filling smell of a wood fire or a beach barbecue however, no, a chemical, choking smell of burning rubbish.

Rubbish which has been cleared off the designated area of the beach for those tourists to enjoy the water park, piled high and set alight – a solution to the problem washing up on the shores of Labuan Bajo. We continue to walk down the beach and find that the problem is far wider stretched than one pile of burning plastic. The uncleared coastline runs for miles, covered with plastic bags, bottles, styrofoam, plastic cutlery and various objects including building materials, food scraps and a bloated rat lulling in the tide. Horrifying and heart breaking. Further along massive pits of burned remains of plastic lay along the coast; this seems to be the local’s only solution to the problem.

The infrastructure here is growing in the only way they know how, buildings, buildings and more buildings – but yet they only have water delivered two times a week and there’s no knowing where the rubbish that is collected is put. The set-up and support for a growing town is not available and doesn’t outwardly seem to be a concern. Though, that is from the perspective from someone who neither speaks the language or understands any of the political structure, so I may be well out of my depth here. But ultimately, the evidence speaks for itself – and it will not be long until this rubbish is washing up in the Komodo National Park and laying waste to the corals and thriving marine life there – from the resident Manta Rays right down to the shrimps, nudibranchs and pygmy seahorses.. everything will be notably affected.

The problem is that we travel to see the beauty of a place, we take photos to capture the best bits of our holidays and create an image of a lifestyle as we do so. We crop out the rubbish, the building works and the poverty. The reality is all too real for us, inconvenient for our unwind time. No one wants a beautiful sunset with rubbish in the foreground, or beach photos of their children next to a drowned rat.

The photos in this post aren’t glamorous, they’re taken with my phone in the moments we came across it – because it’s the reality that you can’t crop out of this scenario. Since this we have since been to beautiful, breath taking view points and Aaron has taken stunning photos at every place – yet the reality is that we are standing among crisp packets, plastic water bottles and wrappers and packaging from all kinds of single use plastic. It’s incredibly heart breaking and it doesn’t make for a pretty picture – right now we may be able to crop it out, ignore it, but it won’t be long until there’s no potential to crop it, no national parks to escape to and no coral reefs to scuba dive on or fish to swim with.

Refuse. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

WD.x

Welcome to Labuan Bajo & Komodo National Park

Well, to say that one should always be prepared to be unprepared and expect the unexpected seems to be a valid point, well, in my case at least. Here’s a few things that happened since arrival that took me by surprise but was not so much of a shock to Aaron – mostly down to our differences in experience with travelling thus far.

So, a little history before we begin, in 2016 I left the UK to travel Australia with my partner in ‘avoidance of real life’, Rachel. How did that go? Well, I made it to Sydney (the plane did that hard bit for me there), then over to Perth and after that I took three stops on a coach up the West Coast and found myself in Coral Bay, a tiny settlement on the edge of the coast sat alongside the Ningaloo Reef, and there I stayed for the remaining nine months of my visa, along with both Rach and Aaron; who incidentally I met out on the boat he was working on, on the Ningaloo Reef. So, here we arrive back in current time in Labuan Bajo…

… and it must be said that I have found it a slight struggle to deal with, well, any of the situations thrown at us so far. The uprooting of our life and full throttle pace at which this journey has begun and maintained over the five days so far has been rather exhausting and, though I claim to be a carefree soul who wants to spread wings and fly, I genuinely struggle with getting off the ground with no home comforts for a the first part.. Like a little fledgling, mustering up the courage to jump out from the nest. But there’s a quiet confidence within me that I will soar when I do it. After all the last time I did it I had the best time of my life! Whereas Aaron, he definitely knows he can fly, that dude was born ‘falling with style’ and has evolved to be an Eddie the Eagle kinda guy.

So, we arrived in Labuan Bajo and found that our double room had been allocated and ours was a twin room, *cue melt down*. Just push them together, I hear you say. Yes, I’d have said that to me too.. That was, me before we moved all our stuff, flew across the world, spent three days doing endlessly awesome things and didn’t sleep all that well – yes, that is exactly what that me, rational me, would say because it’s not a drama. But, ladies and gentleman, this is an exhausted, overheated and PMT situation now, so on that account you’ll excuse the dramatics, right? Because I did, eventually rearrange the beds and then obviously complain about the gap – just to make a bigger point. As you can tell, there’s a lot of flapping and not flying at this point.

But fast forward a day and here we find ourselves, we’re sat in our hotel room, two twin beds pushed together after a day of bewildering and incredibly genuine kindness from a man we bumped into, whilst staring through a closed shop window in hope of answers!

Introducing Talise, a middle aged, friendly faced man who tells us the shop is most certainly, closed but that the good news is, much like a lot of the shops nearby – he has a bike to rent! It just so happens we are in the market for a bike, we’ve been asking around to get an idea of prices and it seems we have found that the price is variable depending on the size and state of the vehicle. Well, long story short, we took the bike because this man wanted to show us not only the bike but houses and rooms for us to rent in the village. We had been reliably informed that the place was basically filled up, so we couldn’t just potter around – we needed to get to know the area, so it sounded like the perfect opportunity.

We took to the road, the one main, extremely dusty road that runs one-way straight through the middle of the town from the airport. There’s a couple of ring roads that loop around and off to local houses and one that runs you through the centre of the Island of Flores for over 13 hours before you reach the next stop. But otherwise, there’s a whole bunch of mopeds, vans, trucks and a few cars that run the dust dry all day and night from what we’ve seen so far.

From 10am to 2pm we drove from home to home, house-stay to house-stay, with Talise introducing us and explaining our situation at each stop. Luckily for us, because few locals speak more than a few words of English – we saw a huge variety of accommodation on offer. Unnervingly though, with the nicer, higher standard of accommodation being full we were left to get to grips with the idea of squat toilets, fan only rooms with a mattress on the floor – no bedding, no furniture and rarely a dry ceiling or solid door. Disaster.

During our visits the locals were incredibly welcoming and kind to us, we were asked to sit and have some food or tea at a lot of the houses (green bananas are delicious here) . But, asides from the lack of western toilets, we decided later on that the reality of driving up the hill away from town when it is pitch black here by 7pm wasn’t entirely enthralling for either of us. So, we bid farewell and thanks to Talise for the day and we came back to our now very luxury looking hotel to rehydrate, reconsider and rest a bit after what had seemed a very long and very unsuccessful morning of home hunting.

To shake off the frustrations of home hunting we decide to head over to introduce ourselves to the dive shop teams and get an idea of what the plan of action might be for the Advanced and Rescue courses and Divemaster Training and see if anyone else had any bright ideas for accommodation. It’s exciting to start to think about getting in the water here, one morning of being around the town has made us feel dusty and excited to jump into the main event – the entire reason we packed up our jobs and lives in London – to dive here, in the Komodo National Park!

What we hadn’t anticipated in doing so, is how developing Labuan Bajo is; the construction work is either ongoing or abandoned on many buildings whilst others lay vacant and disused. The pavements are halfway complete with huge holes and big drops to the drain network simply left uncovered and unmarked – pretty smelly. There’s essentially pot holes and death traps everywhere so you have to keep an eye on your footing and quite frankly I don’t envisage myself getting legless here without the potential of actually becoming legless.

The bizarre nature of this place is that it feels safer to be on a moped than your feet – the driving system works with toots and a respectful awareness of mopeds as the locals will have their entire family balanced on one at any one time. So, as long as you’re not fast, flashy or too reactive with the breaks and obviously wear your helmet.. it’s generally a safe bet . So we had decided by the end of our few hours with Talise to rent the bike from him, if nothing more than for his kindness during the day. And so we had finished the day with one strong accomplishment – transport! Tomorrow is a new day and more specifically – my birthday! So we shall see what gift fate brings along for me, hopefully a decent home for us for the next few months!

The Gates of Heaven at Gambar Pura Lempuyang, Bali

Day three in Tulamben and with only one full day left here we’ve decided that we will let our dive kit dry out and instead go to see some of the local sights on land. It’s a hot day and instantly we realise how glad we are to have hired a driver for the day. OK, I know what you’re thinking – not the most authentic travel experience but, the roads here are busy and ruthless, the drivers have a tooting language of their own and neither of us are blessed with any directional skill whatsoever…. So after taking one look at a map of the local area we both opted that this would be the more productive (life prolonging) course of action – don’t’ judge us! #tofftravellers

8am pick-up means another early morning, but not without breakfast to set us up for the day; we’ve got five sites to see and a long day ahead. Big bottle of water packed, breakfast devoured we’re out on the road and feeling comfortable in a rather large, rather bright yellow interiored white car with tinted windows. Looking around at the other local cars, all I can think is that ‘Pimp My Ride’ must’ve made it to Bali. Our driver, NiangNiag is full of chat and has us pulling up alongside the main road on the edge of the winding cliff that we took on the way here in the dark – it’s now a clear view of the rice terraces in the valley, with farmers cutting and whipping the grass against boards, rows of perfectly planted seedlings and as Niang Niang informs us, some sweet potato fields too. It’s stunning and with the early morning mist still rising up it’s a moment of realisation of just how far from home we are and how beautiful this place is.

The next stop takes us to the famous temple site, Pura Lempuyang. It’s more likely you would recognise the photos of this temple than the name, as it draws a frenzy of visitors to pose between the gates for a perfectly framed photo with the volcano in the distance. We pay a donation fee and a small amount each to hire a sarong and make our way to see just one of the many temples in this one area. Our tour guide has informed us that due to the schedule for the day we only have an hour to spare. I mentioned we have no sense of direction, right?

Just a little note here: if you plan on visiting temples you can save yourself a small charge by ensuring you cover yourself from the waist to below the knee and ladies, be sure that you have your shoulders and chest covered too.

Back to it then, where are we? Well, we’re standing in front of some locked gated wondering how on earth we make it to where all the people are on the other side – nothing too unusual for a couple with less directional sense than, say… a zebra on ice.  Thankfully there’s a group of tourists behind these zebras slip-sliding everywhere and they seem to know better than us, so we take to following them around the corner and thankfully we find ourselves entering the huge stone gates of the temple. Well, actually it’s more like we find ourselves photo-bombing one of the many who have come here to stand between said gates and have their ‘instagram gold’ photo taken. Whilst people politely queue for their turn at looking regal and in awe in front of the volcano we take a little look around. In front of us is a courtyard and at the opposite end stand three ornate stairways up to the second temple. It is here I will admit we don’t get beyond the first temple, and why? Because we spent a good portion of the time trying to get ‘that’ Instagram post – guilty as charged, it’s beautiful to stand there and look out on it all.

The second stop takes us to Tirta Ganga, the lily and coi carp water garden, another unexpected entry fee here – be wary of day tours with this little detail; they may tell you what they’ll take you to see for a cost, but they won’t necessarily pay for you to see it. The tour cost is for driving only and slightly confusing; it seems cheeky but it’s best to clarify what you’re paying for before handing over the cash and to be sure it’s worth it before you presume it’s all included. We had gone in there blind, asked no real questions and allowed them to mostly dictate the best sites to see – do the research, don’t make the mistakes we did! As much as we went on to see a few more things we saw more man made attractions than we wanted, paid more than we’d have like to for them and somehow our tour which was supposed to be from 8am to 5 or 6pm ended at 2pm with a forty minute drive back to our hotel.

Now, had we known we had to pay the entry fees it might have been less begrudging on arrival and we may have also considered more fully exactly where we wanted our driver to take us for the IDR 700,000 we paid rather than IDR 60,000 we could have spent renting a bike for the day and taking our own route and time schedule (but I did mention the directional issues, didn’t I?). The driver and car was definitely a good idea for us but be sure you know what you want to see, have an idea of the time scale between each location and don’t be rushed out of a place before you’re ready, but do agree a time schedule with your driver before you go in and stick to it.

So Tirta Ganga and the Ujung Water Palace (another man-made attraction with culturally interesting structures, somewhat blemished by the big plastic animal pedalos floating around in the shape of a giant seahorse and a pink swan…) were nice enough, and it seemed plenty of people were enjoying the photo opportunities on the stepping stones between the fountains in Tirta Ganga. Others were using a speedboat around the floating platform for food and shade in the Ujung water palace, but it felt a bit too man made and for us a little uninspiring. Nevertheless, we spent our time finding the little beautiful sparks of nature inside and enjoying a little time sat in the shade – occasionally joined by a few locals who wanted to join us for a photo.

Now, let’s just have a think about what we mean when we say ‘man made’, there’s the temples and palaces and water gardens category and then there’s ‘The Tree House’ category, in this category we include a multi-storey network of tree houses joined by bamboo and rope bridges and crow’s nests… Once again we find ourselves in the situation, having paid the money without quite knowing what we were walking into or in this case, on to, there wasn’t any chance we could walk straight out of this bizarre local attraction.

Stepping in it seemed we were the only foreign tourists there, something that came to my attention instantly as I find myself surrounded with camera phones flashing and children being pushed towards me for a photo. A good five cheek aching minutes later and I may have become a small Instagram celeb in the Tulamben, Bali realms. Aaron has missed the whole thing whilst I’m left slightly bewildered wandering amongst bamboo swings, birds cages and wondering which of the stairs upwards looks less rickety. Safe to say we only had one photo opportunity here, the rest was spent clinging on for dear life whilst kids happily strolled along the rope bridges and adults took no notice of the number of person restrictions per platform… Yes, I was saying my final goodbyes whilst wishing I felt more like Indiana Jones and little less like Donkey in the volcano scene.

Next stop was for lunch, we headed to Virgin Beach, another must see and what with it being a beach we weren’t adverse to the idea. You wouldn’t anticipate a beach would involve an entrance fee, well my friends, surprise – this ones does! So, once again, hands in pockets and we’ve been given a one and a half hour time slot to see the place and grab a bite to eat. We spent the time in the second beach-side restaurant we came across and watched as two local girls spent the hour (and a half) swinging their hair around and perfecting poses for Instagram… running in fear as soon as the water touched their toes mind you. The food here was the worst we’d had since arriving and it wasn’t the most affordable either. Beware that tourist traps will have a guaranteed influx of new customers so there’s no real drive for them to improve beyond the basics, the general rule of thumb is to keep it simple or head elsewhere, funnily enough the western food looked much more appealing than our rice and curry tasted.

After making our way back to the car for 2pm we were stunned to hear our driver ask us what to do now, because he didn’t want to drive 40 minutes to the coffee plantation as we didn’t want to buy any – instead he asked if we wanted to buy silver or just go back to the hotel. It’s a shame to think that he was keen to take us places to potentially engineer a profit and a cut for himself but it felt like that was the situation. We would have happily seen the plantation and taken some photos and learnt how it was farmed and planted as initially offered and no doubt been back before 5pm, but once again as we were not interested in spending money he didn’t really care. Beware of this too, we were wrongly informed of how long we could spend in places and how long the day would last, a day trip from 8am – 2pm is long enough if you expect that but to be cut short by at least three hours with no alternative is a bit frustrating.

Ultimately, we live to tell the tale and though perhaps with a few more hours to spare and few IDR less to spare than expected, we put it all down to experience and all in all it was a culturally exciting and different day out! Never be afraid to try something new and out of your comfort zone (even if it’s from an AC car).

WD.x