{"id":28,"date":"2011-03-01T15:41:50","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T23:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=28"},"modified":"2013-12-08T23:22:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T07:22:26","slug":"28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=28","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Sadness – Madang"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u201cDidn\u2019t<\/em><\/em> you ever dream of sleeping under the stars?\u201d
\n\u201cNo, I dreamed of having a house in New Guinea\u201d
\n~ Swiss Family Robinson<\/em><\/p>\n

Madang was another of those disturbing ports for me. One of the ones that makes you very aware as you step onto its shores, that you are the \u201cother\u201d, you are the foreigner, you are the interloper, and yet, you are also the curiosity, the source of fascination, the source of support.<\/p>\n

I felt the same way months ago when my ship ported in the Amazon, a strange sense of two way dichotomy.<\/p>\n

The ship towers over the city,\u2013 topping even the tallest structures of the industrial ports, and towering over the huge trees that line the muddy streets. It rains a lot here, like Australia, this area is in its wet season, and will remain so well after we depart. Hot and humid, your clothes and hair stick to your skin the moment you leave the blissful A\/C of the ship. There was an eerie silence as we all made our way off the ship, under our identical clear plastic umbrellas, as soon as we reached the port gates, the first thing you become conscious of is the eyes. The residents of the city turned out in throngs and lined the street alongside the gates, staring at us. Not begging, not greeting, saying nothing at all in fact, just staring. This is a very dark skinned area, and for one as pale as I (that would be the Irish blood showing through), it\u2019s very easy to feel \u2026a little overly conspicuous. But the people are friendly \u2013 in some ways a little too friendly \u2013 and the town easy to navigate once you figured out which way to turn your map.<\/p>\n

It was a Sunday so many of the local markets (which are the biggest draw for stopping in a place like this) were closed, leading some passengers to wonder openly why we had bothered. For me though, despite the fact that I find poorer ports unsettling, I also find them enlightening. I\u2019d much rather explore a place like this than make my way through yet another big city. Are we seeing the way these people really live? I doubt it. I doubt that they always line the main street hawking hand-carved totems and shell-necklaces (though they may well do so, we\u2019ll never know), but we are least seeing something different, something outside ourselves. Outside our shell, and our comfort zone.<\/p>\n

As far as natural occurrences goes, what intrigued me most here were the trees. The roots grow from the crown of the tree down, and in the oldest ones, you can\u2019t even see where the original trunk is, because the root structure has grown so thick, its as if each tree is its own miniature forest. You can actually walk around inside the roots of some of them.<\/p>\n

There is also a resort on the island, though it\u2019s not what you would call a resort by our North American standards, but of particular interest to me was that they had a small menagerie outside. I have never been the biggest fan of the idea of caged zoos, much preferring the \u201cnew\u201d way of doing things that allows the animals plenty of space to roam (ala the London Zoo), but I had never actually seen a menagerie like this. The animals were beautiful, without exception, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever seen the colour of crimson that graced the breastfeathers of one particular breed of parrot, but they had no room. I don\u2019t doubt the birds had their wings clipped, but even if they did not, there was no space in that cage for them to fly more than a few feet. Beautiful and sad all at once, that even in a place as comparatively remote as this, human nature is still to dominate and contain for its own pleasure.<\/p>\n

Beautiful, and sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDidn\u2019t you ever dream of sleeping under the stars?\u201d \u201cNo, I dreamed of having a house in New Guinea\u201d ~ Swiss Family Robinson Madang was another of those disturbing ports for me. One of the ones that makes you very … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[61,62],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2011","category-ports-of-call","tag-61","tag-southeast-asia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3GtNE-28","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}