Chapter 7 Visit Lombok

Padangbai (Padangbai) is a ferry port located on the east coast of Bali, and it is also the gateway to Lombok. If you really want to describe it, it is a dirty and messy town, far away from Sanur and Nasado A (Nusa Dua), Kuta (Kuta) beaches, these tourist attractions that have made Bali famous and thus caused ecological disasters. In Padang Bai, there is no pleasant sound of waves crashing on the shore, and there are no five-star hotels. Looking from the protruding seawall, the gray-blue outline of Lombok can be vaguely seen on the eastern horizon, like the morning sun in winter, giving people a sense of gray uncertainty.

I do not know how many Westerners and Japanese tourists flock to Bali every year, but less than one thousandth of them will visit Lombok eastward.I believe that except for a few people who have the concept of island ecology, Lombok is just an unnamed island to ordinary people. I knew the ferry was leaving at two o'clock, but my translator, driver and friend Niorman told me that the ferry was full.At the time, Neoman's eyes gave me a glimpse of hidden sarcasm.So, I had to accept the bad news and wait patiently.But Nioman told me that there might still be vacancies on the ferry, and if I could pay a bribe of 5,000 rupees to the conductor, I might be able to get on the boat.

Niorman is a mild-mannered Balinese tailor who runs a shop in Ubud.Ubud is a distinctive town on the highlands, with temples, craft galleries, dexterous mask carvers everywhere, and endless music.Although the booming tourism industry has changed the appearance of Ubud in recent years, the gentle and god-respecting folk customs are still stronger than most towns on Bali, especially compared with bad places like Padang Bai. Neoman is a typical Ubud man, and I persuaded the young man to leave his tailor shop for this expedition.A man of his integrity was not skilled in negotiating such extortionate bribes.If he thinks it is unreasonable for a conductor to accept bribes, but the conductor thinks it is the norm, then the young man must be struggling mentally.I decided to give Neoman some rupees, give him full control, and then I'll go foraging myself!

Although Padang Bai is just a ferry terminal, it has the characteristics of a border town. The streets are full of taxi drivers trying to rip you off, part-time masseuses, and a group of children clamoring to ask if you want to change money.There is none of the artsy and crafty glamor of Ubud, nor the celebration of Indian animism.Lombok, which is dominated by Islam, has begun to have an impact on Padang Bai. The most obvious example is that beer is becoming less and less easy to buy here. In addition, Padang Bai has some mischievous frankness.Hello!Where are you going?The people around me shouted, what do you need? , as if no matter what you want, they can do it.But at this moment, I just want to find a place to sit in the shade, and of course it would be even better with a cold drink.At this time, I caught up with my partner, the Dutch biologist Bas van Balen, and we chatted about what we had seen and heard in Padang Bai.

Beren was lean as a Quaker, with a bristly black beard and an alimentary canal that remained in control.Don't doubt, he has lived in this country for ten years. Belen studies birds, can speak fluent Indonesian, and can imitate 60 different bird calls.This is also his first time crossing the sea to Lombok.We found a coffee shop and ordered rice bibimbap.I still remember the first night I met him, Beren took me to a roadside stall to eat rajak cingur, a dish of beef nose and bean sprouts mixed in a thick gravy.The bull nose is barely acceptable, but the suggested side dish of jamu, orange mixed cream and garlic aroma drink is really unappreciative.Today, I escaped the noon sun in Padang Bai at the store and drank Temulawak, a non-alcoholic drink made from tuber juice, which is acceptable to the taste buds to quench my thirst.To pass the time, I revisited clips from Wallace's trip to the Malay Islands.

These accounts come from a book called "The Malay Archipelago" (The Malay Archipelago), which is about Wallace's eight years of exploration in the Malay Archipelago. On my way to Lombok, I stopped for a few days in the northern shore of Bali.I saw birds whose ornithological characteristics had much in common with those of Java. It was 1856, the third year of Wallace's Malay expedition.In the early years, his base was in Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, and this year began to extend eastward.At that time Java was known as an outpost of British and Dutch colonization, and people already knew something about the bird life that inhabited the area.In Bali, Wallace noticed a seemingly unsurprising fact: At least some Javan birds are active in Bali.

In all, Wallace mentions half a dozen birds, including the yellow-headed weaver, the rose-coloured pseudo-woodpecker, and the three-toed woodpecker.He then added a striking observation: Across a strait less than twenty miles wide, I came to Lombok, hoping to see those birds again.But I stayed for three months, but I didn't even touch a single species. Instead, I encountered some very different birds.Most of these birds are not only absent in Java, but also unheard of in Borneo, Sumatra, Melaka and Celebes. The most prominent bird in this group is the white cockatoo, which is not found in Bali and Java, but it has the characteristics of Australian birds.A line with some mysterious meaning is thus drawn.

This line is called the Wallace line.When the line was drawn, it followed the strait that separated Borneo and Celebes, and extended southward to the narrower gap between Bali and Lombok.As recognized by these biogeographic predecessors, the two brother islands of Bali and Lombok belong to different boundaries in biogeography. To the west of the Wallace line, there are tigers, monkeys, bears, orangutans, pseudo woodpeckers and trogons; to the east of the line are friarbirds, sunflower parrots, birds of paradise, and kingfishers of paradise ( paradise kingfisher), spotted marsupials (cuscuses) and other marsupials, including (further east New Guinea and Australia) the wonderful tree-kangaroo, clumsily but competently filling the space left by monkeys (niche, a The role a species plays in its ecosystem) gaps.

Bali and Lombok are two small islands of similar size, similar topography, and similar climate. They stand side by side, but the differences in animal populations on the islands are quite obvious.Wallace wrote that the birds and mammals inhabiting the two islands differed as much as between England and Japan.Since then, he has been trying to find out. Wallace's line, the answer to the mystery of the deep sea, was revealed by later biogeographers. The strait between Bali and Lombok is narrow but deep because Lombok is off the continental shelf, and Bali happens to be on the southeastern edge of the continental shelf.At one time, Bali was connected by land with Java, Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, and their flora and fauna could communicate with each other.The islands to the east of Lombok are located in the deep sea and are truly part of the ocean.Although these answers were not proposed by Wallace himself, they were elicited through the key patterns he discovered.

The contribution of this model does not end there, as it, the strait between Bali and Lombok, became a research subject that gave biogeography its first appearance in academia. A little white butterfly flying across the strait I went to buy water and bananas and left Beren alone in the café.Out of curiosity, I bought some brown, scaly fruits the size of golf balls.It was only after I asked Belen that this fruit was called salak, and another more familiar name was lizard︱skin fhiit.I peeled one open to reveal the firm, milky flesh, and biting into it, it tasted like a combination of pineapple and garlic.In the blink of an eye, I really want to know if it is the secret recipe for Jiamu.If not, why are many foods in Bali mixed with garlic and other aromas?When I was still in a daze, Neoman's innocent face appeared with a guilty shame, and he told us that everything was arranged and we were on board!

As the boat pulled away, I glanced back at Padang Bai.The dazzling silver spire of the mosque stands above Padang Bai's coffee shops, shops, sailboats docking in the harbor and a large conspicuous Bisang beer sign.Bitang beer is manufactured by Budweiser in Indonesia. It is a popular and affordable beer, and it is quite popular in Indonesia.Compared with other Budweiser beers, Bitang tastes much better. In Bali, even in Islamic restaurants, as long as you write that I am a heathen on your face, the restaurant will still provide you with Bitang beer.But on the next island, things might not be like that. The crossing took three hours.The upper deck was crowded with all kinds of Indonesians, some on holiday, on pilgrimage, on business, and on family visits.A salesman weaves through the crowd peddling dentures, a stack of molars, incisors, and canines in a corrugated box, about half a dozen of each type.Shrinkwrapping each tooth like an anti-allergic pill was a good idea, but no one bothered.But, like all good salesmen, he wasn't discouraged by his failures and rejections.Maybe he thought that this trip to Lombok dental doctor's tour would bring good business. Two miles from Padang Bai, I saw a small white butterfly flying eastward on the wind.This butterfly flutters across the strait between Bali and Lombok in what appears to be a reckless attempt to cross the Wallace line, which is emblematic of larger issues: isolation, speciation, dispersal (dispersal), all three are closely related to a larger theme of island biogeography. Isolation fuels speciation, the process by which species split into smaller species.But the isolation of the island is not absolute, there are always some animals that will try to break through the barrier, which is called dispersal. If that little white butterfly successfully lands on the other side, it can contribute to the gene pool of the butterfly population in Lombok.However, the vast majority of such behaviors end in unfulfilled ambition.The specificity and certainty of island biogeography can be established in part because of the difficulty of crossing the channel.Countless animal creatures tried to break through the level, but only a few could pass the level in the end. These failures and deaths reduced the possibility of dispersal, so the isolation time was prolonged, and new species were bred and formed. Remember, speciation is a modern word that was never written, spoken or even thought in Victorian times, when Darwin and Wallace were on their voyages of discovery. Did God create everything with a single hand? At that time, most people believed that everything in the world was created by God, and it was carefully but illogically arranged in every corner of the earth.For example, there are tigers in one place, but not in another; sunflower parrots are only seen in certain places; rhinoceros are only found in certain tropical islands, but not in neighboring islands; blue butterfly.All these irrationalities were based on the whim of God.Even biogeography, which took this as its object of study, remained stuck until the middle of the nineteenth century: divinity also had an incoherent, unmeasurable ideology, and could not provide any proof for these phenomena. I stared blankly at the horizon, and the butterfly across the sea disappeared from my eyes. On the way to Lombok, people fell asleep leaning on benches or rusted iron panels, and the salesman selling false teeth just now was no exception.The waiter cleverly appeared on the deck to demonstrate the wearing of life jackets for passengers.The waiter spoke crisp Indonesian and recited the safety regulations.Although I don't understand, I still listen carefully to the brisk tone of Indonesian.Later, I found a bilingual instruction card, the English half said: In an emergency, please remain calm and follow the instructions of the crew.Chaos will only make things worse.When disembarking, please give priority to ladies, children and the elderly.Do not carry anything other than your valuables, and keep your hands as empty as possible.There are lifejackets in each cabin, please confirm where the lifejackets are stored, how to put on the lifejackets and the escape route in the instructions. In the country of Indonesia, these exhortations do sound more reassuring. As the ship slipped into a well-sheltered harbor on Lombok's northwest coast at sunset, Islamic chants blared from the ship's loudspeaker.This is a solemn and soothing Vespers.The highest peak in Lombok, Glenn.The volcanic cone of Gunung Rinjani looms above us, blocking the evening sun.The low-hanging lead clouds floated from the direction of Komodo and Timor in the east, but the water in the harbor was still miraculously calm, and a Malay sailboat was dotted in the distance, sailing The sail is cruising briskly.A pair of strong Australians took a video camera to record the commemoration of their visit here. Suddenly, I thought of Wallace's lonely journey in the past.