the gay question

So many people asked before we left how we thought the gay/ambiguous gender situation would play out, and I thought the report warranted a blog entry. In the Philippines we noticed several evidently butchy ladies, and out and proud "lady boys" as the local term goes. We happened to be on an island where that is particularily ok, and exchanged cultural differences with Yan Yan, the self-procalimed ladyboy who was in charge of cleaning our room. She wanted to know which one of us is the lesbian, apparently in the Philippines the more gender bending one of the couple is "gay" or "lesbian" while the gender typical one is just man or woman. On our way to Malaysia we opened the guide book and found out that it is illegal to be gay in Malaysia, so we planned to downplay the situation significantly. Not like we're super "public-y" anyway, but....Only to find SO many gay and lesbian Malaysians, rainbow belts, a visible trans population, and a gay man in a store who smiled a lot at us and then rode off on his scooter, waving and calling out "WELCOME TO MALAYISA!" Also LOTS of gay tourists in Malaysian Borneo. Here in Indonesia, the situation only gets more interesting. We are pretty much mistaken for boys everywhere we go, which is fine by us, or Meg is mistaken for a boy, also fine by us. Then the kids get up close and shriek with laughter, "I thought you was boy but you girl!!" They are so busy laughing that being gay never seems to come up! Also fine by us. Then, one guy at a surf spot was really nice, we talked a lot about Barack Obama (very popular here!) and then he asked if we were married. We decided to try it out, and said we were married to each other. He had no idea what we were trying to say, and extolled the virtues of marrying Indonesian men. huh....ok...we just listened and nodded and drank the coconuts he had opened for us. The Europeans pick us out as gay right away and that's nice, they treat us like a couple...right now we have friends from Spain, Sardinia and Germany in our homestay, a very nice bunch. We share meals and play cards and go surfing together. So far none of the people in our lodgings have asked about our relationship, leading us to conclude that they know and don't care, or just don't think about it, or just give their guests privacy. Next week we go to Yogyakarta on Java, then Jakarta for 2 days, then to Cambodia and Vietnam. More to report then!!