Plans are useless

So I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure out where to go, and what to do, and whether to fly / drive / walk / boat / crawl / swim / hitch / not go. I've been a bit off mentally the last little while and am suffering from paralysis by analysis big time. I am also remunerating on the age old questions: "what the hell am I doing here?" and "are you kidding me?". I've been on the pot for too long and its time to finish my business and move on. I have simplified my requirements to a) learn to surf and b) do random acts of kindness for myself.

SO, I decided to just throw a time frame, and some geographical boundaries on my Indonesia trip. I can't armchair this one. I have refused to buy a guide book on this trip cuz although handy for maps and points of interest, I really want to go with the flow a bit more. If I have a guide book in my hand, I only tend to stay in places that are listed there and in my price range, I only see the sites they recommend and I thumb my nose at stuff that they thumb their nose at. If you get lost then you have to ask for directions (even if you don't the language) and thats where all the good things start (remind me to tell you the story of the butler to the political heavyweights). If you sleep at "random place" then it could be freakin awesome, or an unmitigated disaster, but an experience either way. I guess the point is that LP might not have liked it and I might, or listed it and used careless or undefined adjectives like "Clean, but noisy", "Dirty and quiet" or any other qualifications that may or may not apply to me (or apply to me yesterday when I cared about "clean", but not today when all I really care about is "quiet"). What do these terms even mean? They can't be calibrated to what I feel about any of them in their present form and right now I feel much better asking a random person and taking the risk. I'll get burned badly one of these days, but its a better model for me right now than scrubbing my traveling experience free of colour. It also depends on where I am at (obviously). These places so far are a little bit like Disney Land: fairly forgiving of mistakes and if you don't like it, you tell the operator to stop the ride and you run to random safe place for cover. Drop me in East Timor or Jakarta (or any Anti-Disneyland place) and I really better have a name of a place to stay, a map, SOME understanding of what the heck is going on there and an understanding of how to tell someone to take me there. I better be damn sure that the place is what I am looking for (whatever that is).

SO the time frame is 25 days. The geographical brackets are Bali and North Sumatra (thats a bit like saying "Newfoundland" and "Vancouver". Indonesia is a massive collection of islands and has the 5th largest population in the world). I have booked a flight from here (KL) to Bali and I will take a ferry out of Sumatra to Penang and then back to KL and on to Bangkok again on Sep 25th. In between is up for grabs. Its kind of stressing me out that most of the beginner waves in Indonesia appear to be in Kuta Beach, Bali (Disneyland for Disneylands). We shall see. I also think that it is kind of funny that I am using the Internet to research beach and point breaks in Indonesia. Wouldn't want a guide book! Mike: you are a farce.

After an indeterminate amount of time in Thailand, I will be in India (as long as I can do some fancy passport work - Sey, I can't believe I didn't listen to your advice... of course I was going to stay traveling longer). I will be in Southern Ontario for Xmas.

Lata,
Mike