Malaysia and Pakistan

Once again I am waiting for a flight in Qatar. This time I only had three magnets left. The first I gave to a family waiting to fly back to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At first the older of the women was reluctant to take it because we had absolutely no means of verbal communication. Once she realized it was simply a gift, she smiled a thank you and I walked away feeling a little uneasy.

In the Qatar airport, only the US flight section is barricaded, completely sectioned off with yet another checkpoint and scan. This is the only place in the whole airport I see people having to take off their shoes. I walked away with all my gear except the bag with my diary/drawing pad. A woman chased me down to give it to me...whew! I gave her a magnet and have no idea where she is from.

In the line to board, I struck up a conversation with a younger woman in traditional dress that includes long dresses and headscarves. I noticed her earlier because I liked her choice of colors. She was from Pakistan on her way to an event in California. I gave her a magnet and we had a short conversation about the dangers of taking things from strangers at airports. After joking about how it didn't blow up or shoot bullets, she tucked it in her gear. We also sat near each other on the plane and she noticed me working on a drawing. I handed her my book and another lady, older, dressed as if from India, came up, snatched it from her hands, leaned down to me and rapid-fired a long comment that only had one recognizable word it in: talent. I thanked her and she sat down without seeming to notice that one of my drawings was of her.

Flores, Indonesia

From Labuhan Bajo, a city on the west end of Flores, one of Indonesia's many, many islands, I booked onto a tour of Rinca and Komodo Islands with some snorkeling thrown in. On our boat was a French couple, a Brit, Spaniard, and two Americans and three Indonesian crew members. We hiked short loops on the islands and saw:

Komodo dragons,

water buffalo,

 

 huge clusters of bees hanging from tree limbs,

 

 

 

monkeys, beautiful views, and islands, islands and more islands.

 

 

The captain of our little boat got the magnet. That's him on the left. The only metal I could find was on his little steering wheel so I stuck it there.

 

 

Yogyakarta​, Indonesia

I went to Java to see the Borobudur temple complex and was directed to meet a friend of a friend, a young man by the name of Yogi who I now call my friend. Yogi graduated from Indonesia's most prestigious university the day I arrived. There I had the honor of meeting him for the first time as well as his mother and younger brother. 

Yogi hopes to see the world so I gave him travel gifts: a North Carolina Tar Heels T-shirt, a mug from the MeMeTheWorld project (http://www.memetheworld.com/), and a magnet. The first day I was there Yogi and 'the boys', other friends of his at the university, took me to Prambanan, a Hindi Temple complex. The story is that a ruler had the desire to marry a woman who was not so enthusiastic about him. In hopes of winning her affection he allowed her to ask one thing of him, anything. She asked the impossible, one thousand temples to be built in one night. In the morning there were 999 temples. He had failed at his task; failed to win her love. Spurned, the enraged ruler turned her to stone and so she became the thousandth temple. This temple is still being rebuilt from piles of block that lay around, looking almost organized. Its got to be a daunting task.

 

I was teased about taking flower photos but that's what women do

The following day we all piled in and drove to Borobudor, a Buddist temple complex. This one is huge, certainly the largest in all of Indonesia. It is tiered and each level is lined with releif carvings telling depicting life in days long, long past. None of us are Buddist so we could only guess at what it was all about. We did notice that they were more about work and other earthly things on the lower levels. As we climbed, they became more and more about clouds, some with reclining figures. Could this be heaven? Nirvana? Yogi had the presence of mind to bring the MeMeTheWorld mug and his magnet. We had fun placing them in the arms of statues and in the teeth of lions.