When I was in Jakarta last week, I was curious to see if I could find more of these nifty little creatures, so I went to the Pramuka Bird Market otherwise known as Pasar Burung Pramuka. At first I was told that there aren’t any monkeys or lorises in the market as it was illegal to sell them. But all of a sudden a guy popped up and wanted to show me around. So he took me to what he claimed was the only slow loris in the market at the time — all the others had been bought. It was an incredible creature, but I really didn’t like the way they treated it. They held it by the back leg so it wouldn’t run away and generally treated it roughly. I got some great shots though. Check them out.

What a cute Javan Slow Loris

What a great set of eyes they have!

The slow loris is hungry!

It’s illegal to buy or sell the slow lorises, but the law is no barrier in Indonesia. So they offered it to me for $100 and when I had a startled look on my face (I couldn’t believe it was that cheap!), he laughed hard and told me to negotiate. In other words, he was trying to rip me off by charging $100! I could have easily got it for $50, I’d say.

Elsewhere in the market there were eagles, civet cats and animals that were a cross between a cat and a dog and very cute. I would love to have one of those, but again the issue of them being ripped from the jungles of Indonesia is concerning.

Ever wanted a slow loris? What do you think? Cute or what?

So I took my lens into the Indonesian authorised repairer of Canon products called Datascrip today in the city of Bandung and I had a very poor experience. Very poor.

As I expected, they need to take the lens away and conduct diagnostics on it to determine the exact nature of the fault. Also as expected, they wanted a flat fee for this diagnostic check. But what was unexpected was the size of the fee and a little quirk that I’ll get to in a moment. Firstly about the fee. The minimum wage in Indonesia is about $120 per month. As skilled workers, the technicians looking at my camera would be lucky to get anywhere near $500 per month. I’m already 95% certain of the fault in my camera and I am not a lens expert. Yet the repair centre wants to charge $75 or the equivalent of 1/3 of a month of labour at minimum wage or 3.5 days labour at the higher salary.

Well, if that was the end of it, I’d probably complain anyway, but it isn’t. The quirk is that because I bought the lens outside of Indonesia, Canon’s authorised repairer Datascrip doubles the labour charge. Essentially an extra fee for being a white guy as no Indonesians are going to buy their gear overseas as it’s already cheap here. So the price becomes $150 and we don’t even know what the fault is yet. That is how much my housekeeper gets paid for 3 months of work. That’s more than what a department store worker gets in a month. Hell, it’s more than what the person serving me at the counter gets in one month. It borders on stealing. And people don’t forget when they are treated poorly. Canon is treating its customers in Indonesia poorly.

The other thing is that it will take 2 weeks for them to figure out what the problem is. So I buy a professional lens and it breaks in a manner that it shouldn’t. That sucks hard. Secondly, Canon wants to charge me exhorbitant prices for diagnostics and possible repair, far above going rates in Indonesia. Angry. Thirdly, they don’t want to provide a speedy service — instead they are going to take all that money of mine and then take their sweet old time. Well I have this to say to you Canon. Fuck you.

More to come if and when they decide to tell me what the problem is.

<nerd> This has mainly been a travel blog over the past couple of years, but I’m now feeling like complaining about stuff… Especially stuff that warrants a good old whinge, just like this one.

In 2009 I bought a brand new Canon lens, the 24-105mm F4 L professional lens for about $1400. $1400 for a lens… I can’t even believe it myself. Anyway, the reason to buy these professional L lenses is that they are quality items. Great picture quality and great build quality. Except mine just broke through no fault of my own.

I’ve done some diagnosis myself on the issue and the following are the symptoms:

- Err 01 code
- Code appears above 24mm
- Code appears above f4
- Makes a weird hunting sound as the diaphragm moves around
- Ocassionally lens gets stuck when stopped down and won’t open again

There’s a number of ways to test the problem, but the best one is to do this. Set the camera to M mode, 24mm, f4. Half press the shutter and hold. While holding the shutter, hold down the depth of field button. It should stop down normally and you can look down the barrel of the lens and see it doing its thing. Next, move the aperture to f22 or whatever you feel like and try stopping down again. What should happen is that the lens chucks a fit and the problem is diagnosed. Your lens is broken. A sickening feeling. (drop a comment to tell me how sick you feel)

The most likely cause is a broken ribbon cable inside the lens. The problem is that this ribbon cable is soldered to the aperture controller or diaphragm and that means that when the lens is repaired, the repairer has to replace the ribbon cable and control unit! Madness! But that’s nothing compared to what comes next. That unit and cable is housed in a plastic moulded assembly… which contains a lens element. And when you start playing with lens elements, they need to be realligned so the lens becomes sharp again. But that’s too hard to do so they have to replace the lens element as well. So a good portion of the lens is actually replaced because of a stupid crappy cable that is faulty.

This problem is common with the 24-105mm. Canon do not acknowledge that there is a problem, but if you search enough on the internet, there are hundreds of cases and mine is just another one.

I’m living in Indonesia at the moment and need the camera for work, my honeymoon in June and July and a wedding in July. It’s important. I’ll see if I can get the lens repaired locally and report back on price and success of repair!

</nerd>

Well, that feature does not work. It’s broken. A heap of crap. I could report the problem to Evernote and go through a problem isolation procedure, but I can’t be bothered. I paid $50 for the app to work, not to be dicked around by some tech support guys in order to help fix their errors. So… I’m writing this post just to air my grievance and to let anyone else that searches for evernote offline notebook problems know that the feature is indeed buggy and you have indeed done your dough. Never again will I pay money to evernote and I encourage others to follow suit.

That feels better. Back to regular viewing.

What I found interesting about this trip is how infrequently I came across other travellers. At times I would goes days without seeing another white person, yet the places I was visiting were great tourist destinations. Places like Surabaya are well-worth a stop… so why aren’t people checking it out? Well, I think I know the answer. There are hardly any travellers out there that are adventurous. Hardly any. The vast majority are more comfortable taking pre-arranged transport than public transport, eating at malls rather than warungs and staying in hotels found on hostelbookers rather than those listed in a guide book (or worse, finding themselves by walking around).

Gunung Bromo Savanna

It’s a big call, I know, but what else explains why people aren’t visiting the temples of Trowulan, the temples at Singosari or Gunung Semeru, the largest volcano in Java? This despite them being very close to other locations that attract quite a few visitors such as the well-connected Gunung Bromo.

Dwarapala in Singosari, Malang

So Indonesia has a problem. Foreign visitors generally aren’t going to be bothered heading to cities like Malang unless it’s easy to get there and once there, the sites are easy to reach. An example of the difficulties that one must endure is the process of seeing the Singosari temples near Malang. If you want to do it, you either have to hire a car and driver for the day or utilise pubic transport. A car and driver is usually quite expensive and people just don’t bother. To get to them all by public transport in a day is an exercise in perseverance. One has to catch at least 10 angkots. 10! So to speed things up, it’s best to mix it up with a few motorcycle taxis too. But most people just aren’t going to be bothered with this approach either. The better option would be to hire a motorbike, but I rarely see foreigner tourists on motorbikes in Java. I think I’ve seen one.

Huge, active volcano, Gunung Bromo

Anyway, it saddens me a bit and I wish Indonesia would try and tackle this problem. This is not a problem of visitors. It’s a problem of infrastructure and marketing. Hardly anyone knows about Gunung Bromo which in my opinion is one of the highlights of my experiences in SE Asia. And even when people do know about it, they really need to land in Yogyakarta to easily book direct transport.

Temple in Trowulan, outside Surabaya

These issues make Indonesia a brilliant place for those that are slightly more adventurous and determined. It means you can have authentic experiences every day you are here. It means you won’t be bothered by loud-mouthed drunken louts, teens in “in the tubing” shirts or fools reliant on hostelbookers/tripadvisor to get their accommodation ideas. It’s perfect really. But sad for Indonesia.

So what’s my point? My point is that Indonesia needs to do more to give its attractions the best possible chance of being seen. In the meantime, Indonesia is a virtually unspoilt wonderland just waiting for adventurous souls to come and try it out. Give it a go!

Note: The Indonesia view of this issue is slightly different because they speak the language, are familiar with the modes of transport and how things work.

Java is a petite-looking island home to 135 million (!!!) people nestled between enormous Sumatra and bite-sized Bali. The problem with viewing Java as petite is that it’s often easy to think that as a tourist you can breeze through in a week and more or less have it covered. Java is packed with activities for tourists such as enormous volcanoes, sprawling rainforests, white sand beaches and thousands of years worth of culture. A week is never going to be enough.

I’ll be trying to cover the entire island in about 2 and a half months and I will not be stopping to sun myself on the beach, spend late nights drinking with other backpackers or generally doing anything that wastes time. It’s a big job. And that’s a lot to do with how many cool places there are in Java, how slow travelling through the island is and the detail in which I need to do the research.

Java, here we come!

The Journey to Yogyakarta

Normally I don’t write about journeys between A and B — mainly because people like to hear about destinations and that is fair enough. But the train journey across Java is brilliant and is worth mentioning here. It really is part of the Javan experience to sit on the train outside of the toilet and just chat with all the people that wander past — or go to the toilet. And the scenery is to die for. Take a look at my short short short video if you’re interested in what it looks like.

Yogyakarta City

Compared to anywhere else in Java, Yogyakarta is absolutely packed with tourists. But even then, it’s not like many Asian destinations where white people outnumber local people. Yogya is an easy city to get around, a great place to eat nice food and undertake hassle-free tourist activities. There are a bunch of backpacker hotels located near the train station which I recommend as being the best area to stay. The other backpacker area is slightly more upmarket, but further out of town. That problem is countered by the fact that there are nice cafes around there. I headed over there 4 times during my Yogya stay and a fave of mine was…Via Via. Basically some hippy Western joint with ethical principles or some such thing. I forget. But the food was nice, the staff knew what they were doing and there was a good cause behind it.

Pecel

So why do people go to Yogyakarta anyway? Well, there’s a few temples around that are pretty famous and spectacular and stuff. I didn’t see them this time, but have done before. Number one on the hit list is always Borobodur. Number 2 is always Prambanan. There are plenty of others, but it’s not always easy to get to them unless you’re on some sort of comprehensive tour, hire a car and driver or ride a push bike there. And that is possible if you’re a cycling fiend.

The other cool thing to see in Yogya is Gunung Merapi. If you’ve never seen a volcano before, this is a sight to behold. The volcano towers ominously above the surrounding landscape and erupts with frightening regularity often killing many.

Taman Sari, Yogyakarta

In the town itself there are bunch of things to see such as the Sultan’s Palace, some old swimming pools and a the bird market. Forget the bird market. There is absolutely no touristic value there. The swimming pools are good and I didn’t get into the Sultan’s Palace.

In fact, I didn’t do a whole lot when I was in Yogya. I just hung around and chatted with fellow travellers, rode a bike for many kilometres, ate good food and got a lift to a restaurant in Bedhot’s fantastic VW. And absolutely fantastic vehicle.

Bedhot's Amazing Volkswagen

Out of all the cities in Java, Yogya is the one that most foreigners will feel comfortable in but it is still a very local city, not a tourist city. That really just says that other cities in Java are not tourist cities in the slightest and you will feel uncomfortable — which is good for some, not for others.

Yogya has it all…temples, swimming pools and good food. Give it a go!