Fanning Island Kiribati: Paradise Found?

david ellis

BLINK while you're looking at a map of the Pacific and you'll miss it, this tiny dot whose few visitors will tell you its the closest they've come to Paradise Found.

Fanning Island is part of the independent nation of Kiribati in the Line Islands, a remote group in the central Pacific that stretches 2350km north-west to south-east, and yet contains just 503 square kilometres of land area.

But that tiny area is home to lagoons with picture-perfect turquoise waters, powder-white beaches, drooping palms – and the largely-drowned remains of a trading ketch that sank years ago, and which now looks somewhat like a carefully-staged Hollywood prop.

Visitors to Fanning liken it to TV's Gilligan's Island, the South Pacific of the 19th century, and a kind of tranquil Heaven on Earth all rolled into one – indeed to the 2500 islanders who live here, it is called Tabuaeran, which means "Heavenly Footprint."

So why don't people flock to this Pacific Paradise?

It's because it's 1600km south of Hawaii and is lucky to be visited by a passenger ship once a month, and a cargo ship with a few adventurous passengers every couple of months.

But those who do get there do find it's Paradise Found with that setting, no cars, just five trucks, twenty motor-scooters and 270 bicycles.

And bizarrely that it's also been subject to a German naval raid, and as part of the independent nation of Kiribati, uses Australian paper currency, and coins the same size and face value as Australia's, and keeps these on par with the Aussie dollar.

And islanders' favourite beer is VB, while the door on their minuscule 2.5m X 2.5m jail cell is from Alcatraz Penitentiary, complete with signage. How it got there is anyone's guess.

Fanning Island was discovered and modestly named after himself by US trader Captain Edmund Fanning while sailing to China in 1798. Fifty years later Scotsman William Greig bought it to grow coconuts, and as it was unoccupied, engaged workers and for himself a wife, from the neighbouring Cook Islands.

Greig's heirs subsequently sold out to trading firm Burns Philp, who in turn sold Fanning in the 1980s to the nation of Kiribati.

Cable & Wireless built a relay station on the island in 1902 for their cable that connected England to Australia by way of Canada, Fanning and Samoa, but in 1914 the warship Nurnburg sailed all the way from Germany, cut the cable, smashed much of the equipment in the relay station, and sailed away.

The cable was retrieved, repaired and used until 1964 when radio spelt the end of international cable communications.

During its pioneering days, the International Date Line sliced vertically through the Line Islands, and wiley workers realised they could walk off Mr Greig's plantation and sail across to the next island that was on the 'other side' of the Date Line – giving themselves two Saturdays and two Sundays off work every week.

To their indignation Mr Greig had the Date Line zig-zagged around them, ending their regular long-weekends.

Fanning Islanders are welcoming hosts to visitors, with school and church groups performing dances and songs, and villagers selling necklaces and other souvenirs made from shells, driftwood, coconut palms and animal bones. Visitors can also take village walks and bike rides, swim with the fish in the shallow lagoon, surf the big Pacific rollers, sun themselves on the beach and explore the coral reefs.

But the Kiribati Tourism Office readily points out that Fanning has no electricity, no telephones, no internet, no TV and no running water, and often runs out of imported food basics, the islanders and any visitors relying on subsistence gardening and fishing until the next ship arrives.

There are three small guest houses, and three primary schools built with funds given mostly by visitors. And when its one-cell jail is full, other felons on minor charges like riding their bicycles while drunk, are chained to the police station flagpole and their mates and family allowed to spend the day chatting with them. Such is "island time."

Holland America Line's Westerdam and Seabourn's Silver Spirit visit Fanning Island during voyages from the US mainland to the South Pacific Islands and Hawaii. For schedules see travel agents or visit www.kiribatitourism.gov.ki

PHOTO CAPTIONS:

[] BLINK and you miss it: Fanning Island from the air. (Georgia Inst. Technology)

[] ENTRANCE into the lagoon from the sea. (Wikimedia)

[] SIMPLE village homes on Fanning Island. (Flickr)

[] LONG way from anywhere. (TripAdvisor)

[] ISLAND children all smiles for the camera. (Flickr)

[] OLD shipping container makes a cosy home, complete with verandah and bike rack. (David Ellis)

Pearl of Istanbul: Agatha Christie's whodunnit

HOTEL GUEST LIST A PEARLER OF WHODUNNITS

david ellis

AT her grand opening in 1892 she was hailed as the Pearl of Istanbul, a visionary hotel whose luxuries and services were of the likes never before seen in Istanbul – nor in much of Europe for that matter.

But after a hundred years of attracting the rich, the famous, the adventurous and the infamous, this Pearl's lustre was waning; in 2008, aged and frail, she withdrew from public life to undergo a face-lift that would take two-and-a-half years and cost a staggering AU$32-million.

And when last month she removed the last of her dressings, the Pera Palace Hotel could once again lay claim to truly being The Pearl of Istanbul.

Originally built to provide accommodations for the affluent who rode the famed Orient Express train from Paris to Vienna and ultimately Istanbul, the Pera Palace Hotel attracted myriad admirers.

Agatha Christie slid into town on the famous train in the early 1930s and booked herself into the hotel's room 411 to write Murder on the Orient Express. And then from Room 411 she disappeared in circumstances more bizarre than anything she'd ever created in her intriguing whodunnits.

Ernest Hemingway also found the Pera Palace a wondrous ambience in which to write, as did Graham Greene, while Greta Garbo regularly retreated there in search of solitude.

More infamous was an exotic dancer named Margaretha Zelle who performed at the hotel. To her audience she was known as Mata Hari – and she was eventually executed for spying for Germany against France in World War I.

Later in the Cold War, an English public servant named Kim Philby was posted to Istanbul as First Secretary of the British Embassy, a cover for his real role as a spy for British intelligence agency MI6.  But Philby was a traitorous double-agent, also working for Russia's KGB, and used his time in Istanbul to frequent the Pera Palace to loosen-up staff from the next-door American, as well as his own Embassy, at the bar.

And he spent hours sipping on drinks while on an old 2-piece telephone at the end of the bar, a phone that many believed he had been able to manipulate to tap into lines into and out of the two embassies.

Philby was later stripped of the OBE he'd been awarded for his British Intelligence work, after helping two other British double-agents, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean escape to Russia, and himself defected to Moscow as well.

But as intriguing as all this is, it has always been overshadowed in the history of the Pera Palace by Agatha Christie's bizarre disappearance after writing Murder on the Orient Express, and finally being found hiding in a small hotel in England's country Harrogate after an 11-day search.

She claimed not knowing how she got there, blaming the shock discovery of her husband's infidelity for memory loss. But more weirdly, after her death in 1976 a manager of the Pera Palas found a note in a hotel safe in Christie's handwriting: "The key to my disappearance will be found in my diary," it said. The manager called in a clairvoyant – who remarkably found a key between a skirtingboard and floorboards of Christie's room 411.

What it would open is still a mystery, and as her diary has never been found,  the reason she hid the key there remains as intriguing today as ever…

The just-completed refurbishment of the grand old Pera Palace saw 30 guest rooms removed to allow more light into the central foyer and lobby of the hotel, a new art deco restaurant named Agatha opened in Christie's honour, and the hotel's room 101 in which founder of the modern Turkish state, Kemal Ataturk regularly stayed, refurbished as a museum to his memory.

Original gold-tinted chandeliers have been re-touched with gold leaf, thousands of metres of hand-laid marble and mahogany re-polished and re-stained, and while an additional two modern lifts have been installed, the original 1890s steel and timber "cage lift" has been retained and is still a popular novelty with guests.

Guest rooms have been refurbished with 21st century luxuries whilst retaining their late-Victorian theme, including chairs individually hand-embroidered with English rose motifs.

The Pera Palace Hotel as been officially listed as a "national hotel-museum" and is well worth a visit when in Istanbul.    


 

PHOTO CAPTIONS:


[] ISTANBUL's Pera Palace Hotel as colourful as the stuff of novels.


[] AGATHA Christie's Room 411 at the hotel in which she wrote Murder on the Orient Express – then vanished for 11-days – with her photo on the wall.


[] THE ornate interior of the just-refurbished Pearl of Istanbul.


[] ELABORATE gates to the original cage lift that's as popular as ever with guests at the Pera Palace.


[] FINDING out whodunnit – the author on the Pera Palace's old two-piece telephone said to have been used by British double-agent Kim Philby to eaves-drop on the unsuspecting.


Originally 25 OCTOBER 2010

Newgate Prison: For whom the bell tolled

David Ellis

THERE are few people, it seems, who haven't got an interest these days in delving into their family history, and many are combining that interest with holiday travels to the realms of long-gone forebears.

My wife is up to her elbows in it, after discovering that her grandfather was the captain of a South Seas trading ship, the Janet Nichol that took Robert Louis Stevenson and his family from Sydney to settle in Samoa in the 1890s, and becoming a life-long friend of the Stevenson family.

And a mate recently combined his fascination with his family's background with a wedding trip to Britain, knowing that his great, great, great, great grandfather and his family came here in 1848, fortuitously, he says, as paying passengers rather than as guests of Queen Victoria.

And he tracked down a little Anglican church, just a stone's throw from St Paul's Cathedral and the Old Bailey criminal courts, where that great forebear of his was baptised in 1804 – a church that bizarrely he passed almost daily on his way to his newspaper job in Fleet Street in the late 1960s, and which he never had an inkling would turn out fifty years later to have such a deep family connection.

That church is St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in London's suburb of Holborn, and dates back to 1137. Amongst other things it is closely associated with the infamous Newgate Prison which once stood on the site of what is now the Old Bailey – its priests being regularly called upon to pray for the souls of inmates of the prison condemned to be executed.

There's even a glass case still in the church today in which is stored the so-called Execution Bell: this handbell was taken to the prison, and rung at midnight outside the cells of those poor creatures to be hanged by the neck until dead the following morning...

And interestingly in the ground of the church is the grave of English explorer Captain John Smith, who died in a nearby house in 1631.

Smith is best known for an incident while exploring the state of Virginia in the United States in 1607: according to him, he was saved by the beautiful Indian Princess Pocahontas from being clubbed to death by her father and other warriors, throwing herself as a teenager across the Englishman and begging her father to spare the white man's life.

It resulted in one of the world's most famous alleged-love stories between Smith and Pocahontas, retold in gusto in a 1995 Walt Disney animated movie – but these days most historians believe it to be nothing more than the fertile imaginings of Captain Smith.

The explorer is commemorated in one of the church's stained glass windows.

And the church, my inquisitive mate discovered, even has an Australian connection. The great diva Dame Nellie Melba, born as Helen Porter Mitchell in Victoria 150 years ago this month, is also honoured in a beautiful stained-glass window created here by renowned designer Brian Thomas, whose works also appear in St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

And St Sepulchre-without-Newgate is also known as the Musicians' Church: it was at it's magnificent circa-1670 organ that, at the age of 14, composer and conductor Henry Wood got his introduction to music, later as we know, going on to organise the famous Promenade Concerts ("The Proms") that still run in London every summer...

As well St Sepulchre-without-Newgate is still the venue today for regular free lunchtime recitals on that grand 300 year-old organ, while the 12 bells that still ring out from its 32m high bell-tower are those mentioned in the macabre 17th Century nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons."

They're referred to in the poem as the Bells of Old Bailey, the question "When will you pay me, say the Bells of Old Bailey" referring to the fact the Newgate Prison not only housed condemned criminals, but also many debtors as well.

But it is it's tenor bell that has the grimmest history of all: it was the one that rang out at 9am on Monday mornings to alert the hangman to begin his gruesome task… one that was held in public, and bizarrely attracted crowds of up to 100,000 gawking spectators.

Could your forebears have been amongst them?



PHOTO CAPTIONS:

[] AUSTRALIAN connections in London's Church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

[] ELABORATE interior of the historic church.

[] DETAILED stained glass window commemorating Australian diva Dame Nellie Melba (lower centre.)

[] GRIM reminder of past history: the Execution Bell is still housed in the Church today.

[] CONTEMPORARY painting of Pocahontas "saving" Captain Smith.


Photos: Anglican Church Library; Malcolm Andrews; Frank Lin.





Originally for 16 MAY 2011

Yoga for Blokes. Just for softies?

Misconception #1: Yoga is for skinny chicks who eat mung beans and don’t wear lipstick

Misconception #2: Yoga is for ‘girly men’ who really just need to HTFU.

You can just picture it can’t you? Bronzed and buff tradies down tools for a quick chakra before smoko [OMM], then back to work with a nail gun blissfully attaching a cross beam like Arnie with an Uzi.

Real blokes just don’t do yoga. But why not?

Paul von Bergen

Paul von Bergen was a bloke’s bloke. Cool as all get out, money to burn, fast cars, trendy pad and all the trimmings. Then something went wrong.

“I spent my twenties and early thirties living the London life, running a youth marketing agency and organising glamorous parties on yachts in Ibiza, getting paid very well, living in the penthouse, driving the convertible BMW and partying very hard. Yet it still wasn’t enough money for the $2 million yacht I dreamed of.”

Now what is wrong with this picture, chaps? It’s everything we dream of. But even when we get it all, it’s still not enough.

“So I sold my business and all my homes, put $1 million into a new business which was meant to make me richer and sexier - and I lost it all in 9 months! Yes, all of it.”

Paul did a little reassessment, actually a big reassessment. He went to Thailand and stumbled into yoga.

“I rented a beach house and lived down the way from a health retreat and learned about fasting, diet and health. At the same time my mum had become a chronic alcoholic and was numbing herself to life. She had all the material trappings too but still wasn’t happy. I knew I would go the same way as mum if something didn’t change.

During that time, Paul’s mum died after a messy battle with her demons. It was the catalyst he needed to make a radical change to his own life.

“I got serious about yoga and it cured my ten years of chronic back problems and stopped my addiction to alcohol, cigarettes and recreational drugs.”

Then he and wife, Tory, bought land outside Sydney and created Billabong Retreat, an 18-bed eco getaway that enabled Paul to practice his new expertise.

Bush cabin

Within easy reach of the CBD, it’s a perfect location for busy city folks to de-stress over the weekend and return to work with a fresh perspective. Kind of a re-boot for the brain. There’s healthy food, massages and lots of bush to just wander in. Heck, swim in the billabong too.

Massages at Billabong Retreat

Now for the tricky bit. Time for this middle-aged, portly writer to join a group of lithe females for a yoga session. I’m feeling very self-conscious as Basia, our disturbingly blissful and smugly serene yoga teacher, sits cross-legged in front of us. The only ‘cross’ I can manage is a cranky look when my weary knees won’t comply.

Was I paying attention when Paul explained the benefits of yoga to our assembled group some hours prior?

“It is important to define what we mean by yoga because most people have a completely incorrect perception,” he said patiently, “It’s not about wrapping ourselves into pretzel-like positions, it’s about mastery of the mind and in turn, mastery of the breath, the body, the emotions and the senses. It is about living, as much as possible, an evolved life. The physical postures are merely one aspect or technique where we can practise self understanding.”

Paul also went into some detail about the history of yoga, the 195 sutras and the fear of death. But I won’t spoil things by clumsily paraphrasing him here. Suffice to say that Western routines teach us much about physical preparedness, fitness of body, but sod-all about fitness of mind. That's where the spooky Eastern stuff comes in, controlling thoughts, actions and habits.

Basia does tea

Our class with Basia continues. We’re breathing – in … out – and stretching (ouch!) “Just hold it there”

Am I feeling any benefit? Well, yes, even if the initial pain is off-putting.

“Most blokes I know have back problems, way too much stress and while they might be strong,” says Paul, “they’re tight and inflexible. All these things can be addressed with yoga and gentle exercise.

“Men like to act all tough but deep down most men want meaning and purpose to their life too - the connection through yoga meditation gives us that.”

Ironically, yoga was originally for men only. For 4000 years women weren’t even allowed to do yoga and now within the 60-or-so years it has been in the West, it’s all changed big time.

“We men have a habit of being pretty un-tuned to our bodies,” says Paul with a look of authority that comes with experience, “but the danger is that we are numb to the damage we do to ourselves through drinking, stressing or getting angry.”

Now I’m wondering just how many of our top footy and cricket players are closet yoga freaks. With the kind of battering these guys get, yoga sounds like a ‘secret weapon’. I can just see Fatty Vautin and Sam Newman now in a lotus flower.

So blokes, next time that 12th vertebra reminds you of that bag of cement you shouldn’t have lifted or that little old lady changes lane without an indicator, breath in, breath out. Ommm.

The Good Oil:

Billabong Retreat Sydney‎
41 McClymonts Road
Maraylya NSW 2765
(02) 4573 6080
www.billabongretreat.com.au‎

Struth! Mount Titlis Cliff Walk - Don't look down

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says a must-do for those with steely nerves is to take a walk on Switzerland's new Mount Titlis Cliff Walk – billed as Europe's highest suspension bridge and most-certainly one of the world's scariest.

Stretching almost 100m over a vast drop between two points of the Swiss Alps and at 3000m above sea level, the bridge offers views across the Alps, and on a clear day into Italy as well.

With a steel-mesh deck just 90cm wide and reinforced wire-mesh sides 2m high to prevent any possibility of visitors falling off, the Cliff Walk took five months to build at a cost of AU$1.53m.

And while it sways as visitors walk across it at any time, it can truly rock 'n roll when swept by 200kmh gales, making it as a spokeswoman said, "the highest-adrenaline new adventure in Switzerland.

"But as well as winter gales it's strong enough to carry up to 500 tonnes of snow and ice – something that's highly unlikely as it will be regularly 'groomed' during the winter months."

Kawah Ijen. Worst job in the world?

Kawah Ijen, 2,799m. East Java.

By Michael Travers



Antok has a hernia. He has dropped his basket of sulphur and sits against a rock on the mountain path. “Obat, obat - medicine, medicine,” he calls as he clutches his stomach in obvious agony. We have nothing but cameras, passports and crackers. I give him my water bottle and apologies along with a kretek clove cigarette, which he accepts. We walk down to the weighing station to tell the manager about his plight. “Antok sick? Yes. Everyone knows about Anton’s stomach,” he says, as he goes back to stacking bricks of brimstone. We look at each other and shrug.

Kawah Ijen

Such is the working life at Kawah Ijen in East Java, one of the hardest places in the world to make a living. It’s a daily grind filled with backbreaking journeys, heavy loads, poisonous gasses, low pay and a life expectancy of less than 50. Yet, despite the hardship and marginal working conditions it is one of the most dramatically beautiful places I have ever visited in my life.

We had risen at 4.30 that morning for the hour-long drive up the mountain to the start point for the three-kilometre trek up the mountainside to the crater rim. We pass through all the wonders of tropical agriculture along the way. Rice terraces and bananas gave way to coffee and clove plantations before we hit the heavily forested slopes of the mountain where the land is too distant and high up to farm.

Endemic langurs watch
curiously from the trees

The road also seemed to give up its domesticity and our jeep struggled to find a footing along the once long ago paved road. “Just like Jurassic Park,” says our driver, Hasim, of the misty, towering forest. It is the only English he seems to know but it gets a laugh, and that’s all you really need to communicate sometimes. But make it to base camp we do and we load up with water and biscuits and small denomination notes before heading on up the path to the crater rim through coniferous forests filled with song birds and troupes of langurs, the large black monkeys endemic to the area.

We hear the miners before we see them: the creak-creak-creak of bamboo against shoulder gives them away. Coming down the mountain with their yellow payloads of sulphur, 80kg of it, the maximum a man can carry, two men stop to chat briefly with us and pose for photos in exchange for cash and cigarettes before we part ways; them down, us up. One worker, Ali, shows us the disturbing scars on his collarbones from six years of toil. He has no plans to stop. He can’t, he has a family.

Deceptively beautiful: sulphur lake

For the tourist, it requires a medium effort to hike the three kilometres to the top, making it pretty much accessible to everyone. The track is wide and in good condition with covered rest areas along the way. At the 2km point is the weighing station where the workers stop to tally their loads before carrying on down to the collection point. The last 500 metres become quite barren with scarred scrub and ferns and scorched trees, and at every corner is unveiled an impressive view back down the valley - but it’s nothing compared to what waits for us at the top.

The odour of rotten eggs hit us before anything else and turning the last corner we were faced with a colossal sight that, if the sun wasn’t shining, could be mistaken for the gates of hell. Before us lay a huge barren crater, devoid of life, with choking sulphur clouds wafting up from a milky green lake, deceptively beautiful in the sunlight and giving no hints as to its extreme, unfriendly pH of 1. It was ages before anyone said a word.

80kg loads make heavy work for these men

For the workers, the journey isn’t over just yet as they still have to descend over 200 more almost vertical metres down to the lakeside and into the heart of the mine. An active vent at the edge of the lake is the source of elemental sulphur and it is here that escaping volcanic gasses are channeled through a network of ceramic pipes resulting in the condensation of molten sulphur. Deep red in colour when molten, the sulphur pours slowly from the ends of these pipes and pools on the ground, turning bright yellow as it cools. Amidst the toxic fumes the miners break the cooled material into manageable pieces and carry it out in loads of about 80kg up to the crater rim and then down the mountain. Few have decent walking shoes and almost none have gas masks.


But what is it all for? Sugar. In its raw state it has a yellow to brown colour, but by bubbling sulphur dioxide gas through the cane juice before evaporation it turns white, the perfect colour for our kitchen tables and sensibilities. The nearby sugar refinery pays the miners by the kilo and most of them manage two journeys per day earning them about US$6 per trip.

Men work without masks in the pungent fumes

Despite the very real tragedy playing out in its mines, Kawah Ijen’s mines are the only source of income for the men in this part of the world. Several years ago a suggestion was made to employ mules and horses to shoulder the burden but it was met by howls of protest from the workers. How else would they feed their families and educate their children, they cried? So, the daily march to an early grave carries on regardless, but strangely enough, we tourists have become a vital part of the supply chain with the extra money the miners make from posing for photos and selling small pieces of sulphur going a long way to padding out the household expenses for people like Antok.

Antok takes a welcome rest

Because of the stark contrast of lush green agricultural landscapes and the barren wasteland of the crater, Kawah Ijen has to be one of the most sublime areas of the world in the truest sense of the word. In all, we spent about four-and-a-half hours up there, clamouring over rocks and scree, sitting on the denuded hillsides and pondering the dark beauty and awesome power of nature, while being bombarded with the acrid steam clouds that pour out of the sulphur vents. It’s beautiful and it’s tragic, but the Banyuwangi region of East Java is a place that has so much to offer the tourist looking for something more than just Bali. If more visitors would venture to this land of rice fields and volcanoes, the long term opportunities for Antok and the people of the region could be made just a little bit better.

Top tips for shopping abroad

Travelscene American Express' Top Tips for Shopping Abroad!

Shopping and travelling go together like bees and honey – a perfect match. Meandering through bustling markets, weird and wonderful shops, bazaars and boutiques can be a holiday highlight. To ensure you make the most of your next holiday shopping sprees, the experts at Travelscene American Express reveal their top 5 tips for shopping bliss!

• Spoil yourself a little! The strong Aussie dollar means you could pick up some real bargains abroad, and you might even stumble across some 'one off' gems that can't be found back home. Go on - bring back fond memories of your time away.
• Pack light – or take a collapsible bag inside your suitcase, or why not do both! This way you will have plenty of space. Check with your travel agent before you go on luggage weight and piece allowances too so that you're not caught out.
• Do some research – got friends who have been there before? Ask them where they loved to shop. Put the word out on social media, check online and ask your travel agent. Better yet, when you get to your destination, why not ask a few locals who could help you find some great shopping spots 'off the beaten track'.
• Check customs restrictions – every country has its own laws, customs restrictions and duty free allowances which do change, so before you fly, visit www.customs.gov.au for up to date information to avoid any disappointment.
• Utilise your travel agent – because chance are, they've been there too. Travelscene American Express travel experts can give you tips and advice for the shopaholic in us all!

Whatever type of spender you are, there is nothing better than finding shopping bargains in a brand new city. For more tips to make your next holiday really pay off, have a chat to your local Travelscene American Express Member Agency – you never know what could be waiting for you around the next corner….

Contact 13 13 98 or visit www.travelscene.net.au  to find your nearest Travelscene  American Express Member.

Struth! No smoking, no eating, no sex please

 

IN his continuing search for the more weird, whacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says authorities in a village in Bali are considering putting up "No Sex" signs after a tourist couple was fined for having sex in their temple.

Youth leaders arriving at the Hindu temple in the village of Saraseda detained and turned the Estonian couple over to police after discovering them in the act. Police however said they knew of no law forbidding sex in temples, and suggested authorities and the couple negotiate a suitable "fine."

The couple, aged 43 and 32, agreed to pay 20-million rupiah (AU$2000) for a "cleansing ritual" of the temple, and the officials say they are now thinking about displaying "No Sex" warnings  alongside the already existing "No Smoking" and "No Eating" signs in their temple.