Combining Jewellery and eco-friendly way of living – the John Hardy lifestyle I liked this concept – the guy designs his jewellery and seems to treat the factory workers well – they all eat together at lunch and it is mostly organic food, like the brown rice grown on the property! The show room is a fantastic bamboo structure which has water running under it, and everything is made of bamboo. Underneath it there is a safe room where a lot of the jewellery is exposed and that room is made of wax! JH used to make candles, and there was a bit of a surplus! I saw in the factory that to make a bracelet for example: you sculpt the design and full bracelet from the sketches made by the designers out of a hard wax. Often there are many pieces of jewellery made from one wax piece. Then you put it into a cylinder that you fill up with a white liquid which you then bake it – it solidifies and creates your new mould! Then you pour in your silver or gold and put in the furnace. Break the mould and you find your now silver stand with several pieces of jewellery on, so just clip off the bracelet from the wax stand where other pieces may be, polish it, and add on whatever bits of other material. Hard to explain but fascinating to watch!
We had lunch with the management team (although John Hardy himself just retired) and were able to get the inside stories of how this place runs. JH opened up a “green” school that does IB! But we didn’t have time to visit it. Of course couldn’t take pictures inside the factory or of the jewellery but they have their own website for the latter. (Couldn’t afford anything in this place despite the 70% off though...)
Garuda Airlines, offered me the bumpiest ride so far from Jakarta to Bali and despite the 4 mg of Valium, freaked me out pretty bad... The black clouds on my way to the airport in Jakarta had prepared me for it and we flew into a nice monsoon tropical storm... so the plane reacted accordingly – basically the seat-belt sign just never switched off!
Having survived that and relieved I don’t have to fly for at least another 2 months, I arrived at the Longhouse, in Djimbaran on the hill overlooking all of Bali – See on map it is on the little peninsula south of Bali http://mapsbali.com/
The Longhouse was conceived by Linda Nederkoorn (Amanda is my friend from school in Singapore and the Linda’s daughter!) who worked together with the architects, interior designers, lighting specialists, construction company and picked out all the decoration herself! Robin her husband was in charge of some aspects too including the landscaping and the garden. These two Indonesia lovers used their extensive knowledge and travel of the region even around Bali to decorate each of the 6 bedrooms with the artefacts and style of an island around (and including) Bali – so Lombok, Sumatra, Sumba, West and East Java and Bali of course). I’ve taken some pictures myself (see in Flickr - yet to be completed), but the website they have done is great, have a look! http://thelonghousebali.com/
Last April Amanda, a friend of hers, me and a friend of mine joined Linda and Robin and were the first “guests” to try out the Longhouse. That amazing experience inspired me to come back and here I am! I may even get a little involved in the villa’s management, so that is all very exciting!
Jakarta (I'm late as still figuring this thing out so am posting from Bali... ooops...)
Daniel the driver was waiting to take me to Hana’s house where I was kindly housed for my 5 days there.I’d been there when I was 17 yrs old when I’d spent my first New Year’s away from my parents (was quite a debauchery, Hana and I reminisced)...
Hana is one of the sweetest people I know (another UWC but a border and one of my close friends there) who has kept in touch and at least has managed to visit me in France and London regularly throughout the years. She is getting married to a great French-man, Antoine soon!She is so kindly putting me up and lending me her driver for my various needs around Jakarta. So cool!
First night out, a great Indonesian restaurant Lara Djonggrang and then a fierce Wii-Band playing competition in one of their friend Mat’s bachelor pad: Wii, wide flat screen, pool table... Very fun!For those who don’t know, with the Wii you can pretend you are part of a cool-ass band and you have the guitar, drums and mic and follow on screen instructions to play either instrument or be the sexy lead singer! Takes coordination and some GnTs to get over the humiliation of trying to have any rhythm while playing percussion and then getting a measly score – as you even get judged by the computer on your performance!!!All this on the 16th floor of a 30 floor tower block which swung so violently last year during the big earthquake that Mat was literally thrown out of bed!
Jakarta – in my eyes – is a Megatropolis of extreme luxury areas next to poorer derelict areas. The 5 star hotels are breath-taking in their high standards and architecture. The 10 storey shopping malls are freezing with air-con and all complete glass elevators and Gucci, Dior, Guess, and even high end Indonesian brands.There is even a Harvey Nichols but also Zarra... Women stride past in their high heels manipulating their Blackberrys and enjoying chain coffee shops like Starbucks and Coffee Bean. The toilets in these malls have the air blade system to dry your hands and have a little spout thing to wash your private parts – which I first mistook for the flush and got squirted on my already pulled up trousers making me look like I just peed myself...Hence the “use while sitting down sign...” So this place can be like Europe, only a huge step up on the customer services (in the high end places), quality and cleanliness and mostly much cheaper.
So lunch and gym at the 4 seasons, cappuccino and Wi-Fi at the Pacific Place, and a visit up JP Morgan’s tower (building called energy tower as a part of its energy generated from solar!) to pick up Hana.
Visited an older area of Jakarta called Kota which had remains of old Dutch colonial buildings that were abandoned but had so much charm with their overgrown vegetation and looking out onto what was once probably a clean canal (now the bubbles and the smell whiffing out if it participates to the country’s methane emissions...). It got us all dreaming up plans of rejuvenating the area. Went inside Cafe Batavia which had a whole wall covered in old pictures of Hollywood stars, had a bar layered with black and white cow hide, pictures of Queen Elizabeth and of one of the Dutch princesses, rattan furniture and a 2 man band playing early 90s songs.We walked to the old train station where I finally understood I may be too old to “rough it” again like an 18 yr old backpacker when I saw the state the business class was in...
We also met up with Harumi and Mario, two more Indonesian friends who were in school with me in UWC.So great to see people you haven’t seen for over 10 years and still get along! With Harumi and her husband Sinartus, we dined at Crystal Jade Palace for some great Dim Sum, and with Mario to the best Japanese (non-Sushi) I’ve ever had!
Yes, South East Asia is all about eating with friends!
But who said getting there was going to be easy...
Nowadays unfortunately, it is often not as simple as just getting on an airplane to get to the other side of the world...I started off in Geneva airport where my mother dropped me off on the French side, convinced that British Airways did their check in on this side. .. to only find out I had to cross back over the border to Switzerland (invisible line in airport), go down some stairs and down some empty corridors until I popped out into the arrival hall, as if I just got out of an airplane and had to go through passport check to get out into Geneva, all this lugging my heavy bag around with me. How I was even allowed to do this is beyond me and makes me doubt the usually famous Swiss rigour...
Finally checked in and relieved my bag was exactly 22.6kgs (allowed only 23kgs) and thinking that that painful week of packing and repacking and selectively taking one tiny item out and re-weighing was useful after all – I saw on the departures screen that all flights to London were either seriously delayed or some even cancelled!The 2 inches of snow which fell in the UK was enough to paralyse the country for the last 3 days (wasn’t I watching the news?) and delays upon delays resulted in cancelations... The horror of being stuck in Europe any longer, or worse, bumping through an ice storm while flying, crossed my mind. But miraculously, my BA flight to Heathrow was the only one which wasn’t cancelled and was just 20 mins late! That would allow enough time for my connection... Phew!
I got to Heathrow’s impressive new Terminal 5 and was pleasantly told at transfer desk that I had been bumped up one class to Executive World Class or something!That great news, plus the 2 mg of Valium (the result of flying for 2 years in DRCongo...), the upbeat phone conversation with friends before flying out and the wide seats and personal TV with lots of movies got me up on a Valium high! We happily taxied to the runway and just as we revved the engines up, we just stood still... the pilot embarrassingly announced that the flaps on the right hand side of the wing were not working!He said safety was first with BA especially for him as he had a wife and three kids... I wondered if they were told to say that during their customer sensitivity training...But hell, I agreed.
5 hours later, we were still in the airplane and about to take off with a brand new motor for the right flap that the best engineer in the airport had put together in the few hours – during which the poor lot in Economy class were sweating like mad as they had to turn off the air-con at the back of the plane...
So I was definitely going to miss my connecting flight in Hong Kong to Jakarta so I just hoped they’d put me up in a hotel and fly me out the next day.As could do with a break after being 16 hours in this plane! Of course that’s what happened! Hurray! So called my 3 friends in Hong Kong and managed to see even 4 of them...
I met up with Alex the HK (Hong Kong) salsa on-the-2 King for a few mins at the central station – He left the UK scene about a year ago and just radically changed his life around, moved to HK and now runs the only on the 2 salsa dance school in HK! And he is doing just great! Then Christine, a UWC (Singapore) friend took me to diner in a 24 hour place in the centre, where Wendy (another UWC person) joined us and we laughed and giggled about the good old days.
Then off to one of the hippest RnB clubs where we met up with yet another class mate (Left, photo me, Avi, Christine), after having walked through the urban jungle of drunk “Guilos”, red-faced Chinese, and stumbling tourists in HK’s hottest night spot. We unfashionably queued while the fashionistas cruised on past us... Inside it was so packed and tight and people dangerously waved cigarettes in your face while trying to move their hips even an inch to the RnB beats.
Left by 3 am back to my airport hotel which had a grand hideously kitch fake-marble lobby and a luxury SPA but no free Wi-Fi! ?*£%^!@~#
Did I mention how shocked I was at HK’s clusters of tightly packed sky-scrappers dangerously bordering on the sides of the sea shores!? This place in un-real! I am finally in ‘culture-shocked awe’, very contrasting to the type of awe I experience back in Congo...
This is my first blog ever... I thought I may start one as a new way to keep people who are interested informed on my whereabouts and activities, instead of sending the group emails like I always do. Now people won't feel bad if they didn't read my 3 pages of monologue, but can just check the blog when there is a new post, and they should be shorter, I hope! But it is also for me. I have a bad memory as most of you who know me know... so this is also to organise my thoughts. Well I'll try.
I'm now about to leave on a trip for the self, the mind, the spirit and all the senses - no drugs involved I assure you - to Bali... Why Bali? Well, I've been there twice: once when I was 17 with my schoolmates - a huge party with lots of drinking, beach-buming, clubbing, partying, staying up til sun rise, sleeping until the afternoon, hooking up... although it was supposed to be a class trip! Main place of hang out was Kuta beach and some time at the Bamboo Foundation in Ubud where our class project was...
Then, I went back this year when I turned 30 with one of my best friends and it was a totally different experience: mostly in Ubud - the cultural centre of Bali, where we enjoyed lots of SPAs, massages, walks in Padi fields, eating healthy food, did cooking classes, yoga classes and a day at the beach with some diving. But this time, I knew there was something about this place. Something so south-east Asian that I missed so much, something so peaceful, but intense. Something that just drove me to go back there but on a different agenda. Perhpas a sort of spiritual quest, a place to be just me. A place to search, learn, discover, experience the little pleasures of life with the most authentic eyes and mind. Just to be.
I have little contacts and little plans out there but I'm going to let myself be guided by the good that comes to me and see where it takes me. I have to be carefull to not have such high expectations, but the few things I want to do there are: learn to meditate, practice yoga, work on my memory, learn how to do something creative with my 10 fingers, fully rest my mind and then, perhaps start looking for jobs - maybe even there! Dream on! I know... Well, one can just hope.
So I'll leave it at that. I leave tomorrow Geneva-London-Hong Kong-Jakarta... I don't adore flying but this trip should be well worth it.
I'll try to update when I get to the mad city of Jakarta - 23 million people, the world's 12th largest city with traffic jams of at least 2 hours to succumb to before getting home. But I'm sure it has its charms...
