Koh Pha-Ngan, Gulf of Thailand

After leaving Phuket we spent two nights up the west coast snorkelling and jungle trekking around Phang Nga (giant raffelasia flowers included), and a couple of nights back at Ao Nang (climbed at Railay and did a 3-dive day at Koh Phi Phi - sharks, turtles, all good stuff). Had my last rabies jab and now I'm safe to go scrapping with the monkeys again.

Arrived here last night after a long day spent on buses and boats. This island is on the other side of the main Thai peninsula, and it has a different vibe - less developed than the west coast, no mass tourism, independent-traveller types only. No climbing mind, but plenty of other stuff to do.

Only a short hop here to Koh Tao, our next stop before wending north to Bangkok in time for (gulp) the Plane Home.

It still lives!

The lizard that bit Linda, in its new home at Khao Sok National Park. It's on her trail now it's tasted her blood...

What's that smell of rotting meat? No wait, it's the Giant Raffelasia, the largest flower in the World except, crossword lovers, the Amazon.

There are only two interesting buildings in Medan, so it seems, and the city mosque purports to be one of them...

You can go inside even if you're a raving atheist.

Summit crater, Mt Sibayak, near Beristagi, Sumatra. Linda at the top!

Jungle Tip: terrapins, it turns out, are partial to a bit of egg fried rice, should you ever tire of the stuff yourself.

Hairy Man of the Jungle, Bukit Lawang, Sumatra

Bat Cave, Bukit Lawang, Sumatra

Traditional house, Samosir Island, Lake Toba

Hot springs near Samosir Island, Lake Toba

Impressive grave structures, Samosir Island. Well you need a proper job if you're going to worship your ancestors, eh?

There is rock climbing on Sumatra!

Well there is now. It's on the road about 5 km up north from Tomok, Samosir Island, Lake Toba, Sumatra.

You can't miss it - several large boulders in a meadow on the left side of the road, with a big steepley-looking church-monument-thing right on the opposite side of the road.

This problem is probably a new V0, 5c and I've called it Animist Twist. Unusual for granite, there are good pockets on the steeply overhanging face that is traversed R to L.

And this slab is a few km further up the road...I know it's a boring photo, but hey. This is way hot news on a v. impo first ascent.

The left side of the slab (just R of the marker in the pic) shall be known as Ancestral Vices (V0, 5b).

Other possibilities exist further to the right, but only if you a) have a small collection of traffic cones or b) don't mind being run over by passing minibuses or out-of-control motorbikes driven by tourists without a license.

More hot air, this time from a volcano. At the top of Mt Sibayak, Sumatra.

OK so we have a great time in Sumatra, caldera-exploring, gibbon spotting and volcano climbing, but these activities are the only fun in town unless you like dirty towns and chicken-fried-rice twice a day. Dreaming of Thai food we arrived in Phuket...then what? I get the wildies and am confined to quarters with a pile of immodium and paracetomol for company, tucked up in bed with my Moby-Dick.

Time for the return of the chainsaw-toting Two Line Review, but as these three books have been hard-going, maybe they deserve three lines or more. 'Merely messing with the form', I hear you cry. But these books are so deep I can't touch the bottom and new rules are needed: Two Line Review becomes OK Three-ish But I'm Keeping it Brief. Heavy reading on holiday? When else are you going to do it...:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville ****
Everything you don't need to know about whaling in the mid-1800s in all its tedious attention to detail, and all you do need to know about mental health in modern life: when the nutter gets on the bus it's time to get off, especially if he's the driver. Oh, wait: you can't actually get off, and now he's losing it completely! No changes there then.

Picture This by Joseph Heller *****
Imagine you're Rembrandt painting Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. Now imagine you're Aristotle in the painting being painted by Rembrandt which is finally to be hung in a gallery in New York City, and wondering why things haven't got much better for anyone except the slaves since Socrates was put to death in ancient Athens. The failings of democracy? Wars that cannot be won? Henry Ford decorated by Nazi Germany? It's all here.

Solaris by Stanislav Lem ****
Sci-Fi genre classic, filmed twice: once by Russian master Tarkovsky at the pace of an England test match, and more recently rather charmlessly by a well-meaning but clumsy George Clooney. The planet Solaris can mess with your head, conjuring up a different kind of madness to Captain Ahab's, as three unfortunate space-station crew-members are tortured by apparitions from their past and their duty to each other...not exactly using the force so much as giving in to the Dark Side.

Lake Toba

Your humble scribe and his esteemed travelling companion are now to be found in the small town of Tuk Tuk, on the shores of Samosir Island, Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia, and very nice it is too. We arrived yesterday after a short flight from Penang to Medan, a rough-and-ready bus journey from Medan to Parapat, and a ferry from there to the island whereupon rests this small town called Tuk Tuk. Lake Toba is a huge crater lake - the biggest lake in SE Asia and the biggest caldera world-wide: Samosir Island was formed by a volcano erupting inside a bigger volcanic crater, now flooded, and it's all on quite an impressive scale. However, it's not a World Heritage site because, presumably, no-one has bothered to lobby enough to make it one.

The natives are friendly. Very friendly. But it was not ever thus...

Indonesia is now nominally Muslim, but this official religion was superimposed on a background of animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and later Christianity brought in by that most pious of seafaring traders, the Dutch. All jumbled up in a melting pot, or cauldron.

There is plenty of evidence of the old tribal ways around here though - the locals had cannibalistic tendencies until a mere 250 years ago, and you can see the tombs and carvings of kings at local villages such as Tamok (where we went today). Also totem poles and stone seats in circles, where they used to hold court and pass judgement before killing their victims, who were mostly warriors from feuding neighbouring tribes, but could also have been serious transgressors of adat (traditional law), such as, I suspect, pesky women who were perceived as doing a bad job of running the home, family, fields and livestock while the men were busy feuding with neighbouring tribes.

All of which leads, in the latest of a series of seamless transitions, to...

What Afterlife

Part 9 (I think): Animism

Well, it's quite simple really, at least around here. Everyone believes in tondi, a sort of spirit or soul forming the essence of a person's individuality. You throw in a bit of cosmology (the creation myth is one of the omnipotent god Ompung creating the creatures of the Earth from the falling branches of a banyan tree), mix in a tad of ancestor worship and spirit worship, and stir in a hot cauldron.

The 'What afterlife' deal? Simple. You worship your ancestors, and you keep your tondi happy with a few sacrifices (lest it leave you and cause you to be temporarily ill, or even die). Then, when you're dead, your tondi lives on. Your descendents worship you a bit and look after their own tondi in turn. If you're a king you get to be buried in a stone tomb, which makes you a bit easier to worship when your tondi has done a bunk.

Not sure what happens to your tondi if you've transgressed the adat and been ritually eaten, but I'm looking into it.

Two units of personnel from Langkawi to Penang...

...honestly, you can't move for UNESCO World Heritage Sites around here. The criteria for this accolade (only one needed from the list below...from Wikipedia) seem to be met by these two places, though sometimes you wonder whether backsheesh may have changed hands. It's open to judgement, and in the case of Johnstown, Penang, was awarded following much lobbying.

Next: Macclesfield and the Peak? You decide......

Cultural criteria:

• I. "to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius";
• II. "to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design";
• III. "to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared";
• IV. "to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history";
• V. "to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change";
• VI. "to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria.)

Natural criteria:

• VII. "to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance";
• VIII. "to be outstanding examples representing major stages of Earth's history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features";
• IX. "to be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals";
• X. "to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-site conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation."

Tonsai, Krabi province, Thailand
Luckily the local apes at Tonsai are benign dusky langurs rather than than them nasty crab-eating macaques.

Now over my first two rabies jabs, but went for a third today so will have to wait and see if I feel lurgy again afterwards. Next one in a week. Added to the rabies jabs, I've got Moby Dick. Linda gave it to me for Chistmas. Don't know which is worse.

Climbing well yesterday, on the excellent Thaiwand Wall at Railay. Best crag hereabouts. Linda bitten by a lizard, luckily small and non-poisonous. One-all. We can laugh about it now.

Deciding where to go next - Penang is odds-on favourite.