rdm_ation

Selamat sore teman yang baik! Saya sudah kembali ke Australia sesudah liburan saya. Saya menikmati itu, tetapi saya senang sekali karena saya pulang. Saya ingin berlangsung di Bahasa Indonesia, tetapi kosa-kata saya tidak baik tanpa kamus.

Good evening my friends! I have returned to Australia after my holiday. I enjoyed it greatly, but I am happy to be home. I want to continue in Indonesian, but my vocabulary isn’t good enough without my dictionary.

I’m finally home, after what turned into 5 weeks. Like any period of time, in some parts it felt like it went forever, and in others absolutely flew by. My current dilemma is how do I even begin to write about over a month’s worth of (completely awesome) trip? I could start at the beginning, but that would very soon get boring. I could tell you just the funny stories, but half of them need too much explaining to write them in a list. So, I am stuck. *ponders* I know – I’ll start with the little things I now appreciate about home. Nothing like travelling around a country like Indonesia to make you miss the most random things.

1. Shower doors. Yes, you read that correctly. In Indonesia, the hotels have grasped that Western bathrooms must have a toilet, shower head, and sink (some don’t even have that) but they haven’t really worked out how to put them together in a bathroom that makes sense. Most of the ones in our price range simply had the bathroom with the toilet in one corner, the shower head sticking out of one wall, and the drain in the floor. Often in the opposite corner of the room. ~~We got ridiculously excited when one of the hotels on our tour had a shower curtain~~. I have to admit, this bathroom was pretty damn cool though (there was an entire garden just out of view of the camera).

2. Not eating out. It’s amazing how sick of it you get – 3 meals a day for 5 weeks is a lot of meals. I kept craving the most random things, mainly because I simply couldn’t get them. The breakfasts were probably the worst – again, they attempt to be Western and it usually doesn’t work...

3. My bed/bedroom. Ok well mainly my pillow. I think this one is fairly self explanatory.

4. Walking down a shopping strip without being constantly hassled. Most of the time I was away it barely bothered me, but as it wore on and I got more and more overtired they started to bug the hell out of me. Especially when they call us ‘baby’ and ‘darling’ – I’m pretty sure they don’t know the connotations so I had to remind myself constantly not to let it get to me.

Alright so I now have enough energy to go through an actual rundown – be warned, it will be long, some of it might bore you, and some of the things I found hilarious may not be understood by anyone else. I’ll break it up into the islands, at least.

First stop: Ubud, Bali.
Arrival time: 9pm New Years Eve.
So, like the *cough* normal *cough* 19-year-olds we are, we stayed out until midnight Bali time to see in the new year. All well and good, even though we were both dying to go to bed. Funny how plane travel takes it out of you. Neither of us drank any alcohol (surprise, surprise) but we stayed up, and made a whole lot of noise with these random cardboard trumpet things they give out. Woot. It certainly hadn’t sunk in that we were actually *in* Indonesia.
I won’t go on too much about Bali – except that it was ridiculously hot and humid, and the power went off every few nights. No air con = no sleep for me. And I rode a bike down a mountain. And realised just how damned unfit I am. And we did far too much shopping. Not to forget the random d&ms while walking home in the dark on our own. We’re special.
Funniest image: a really bogan Aussie guy outside one of the temples – you had to wear sarongs to be allowed to enter them. So, he had on a Bintang (beer) wife-beater, the sarong, thongs, huge sunnies, and had a beer in his hand. N and I just got the giggles and seriously contemplated taking a photo – apart from the fact it would be a bit rude. Inspired a rather amusing afternoon once I got home XD

We stayed in Ubud for a week and a day, which was probably a little long, but it was good to relax and bum around too.

Next destination: Yogyakarta, Java
Arrival time: One week in
While we had seen plenty of temples in Bali (they are absolutely everywhere) the two most famous ones are located just out of Yogya. Ironically, as Java is almost entirely Islamic, one is the biggest Buddhist monument in the world, and the other is one of the largest Hindu temples in Asia, if not the world. Go figure. Borobudur was amazing, well so was Prambanan actually. The sheer size, but the amount of detail that went into those buildings is absolutely phenomenal. On a related note, I really really really want to go back in dry season to see a full-scale production of the Ramayana Ballet. Just saying.

Destination: Pangandaran, Java
Verdict: strange sleepy little beach town with loads of hotels but no restaurants. That’s pretty much it. We wandered, we slept, we read. And then we somehow ended up touring around the countryside on the back of motorbikes. Considering we were both absolutely shitting ourselves at the beginning, it turned into an awesome day. Swimming in this really cool cave with these local boys who thought the water was freezing (it was like 20 degrees – cool, but definitely not cold). It’s amazing how the sense of temperature is completely relative. One of them was actually shivering. Explaining this in a combination of broken English and broken Bahasa was also fun... XD

Destination: Bandung, Java
Arrival time: 2 weeks in
By this time the contrasts of the country were really starting to get me. For example, we ended up in two different shopping centres in the space of a couple of days. One, was a sort of hybrid market/shopping mall with people yelling everywhere, shops spilling out into the corridors, maze-like webs of shops. It was INSANE. We were just like ‘whoaa’ when we walked in, as we thought it was just a little plaza. Then, there are the big glitzy Western shopping centres that put ours to shame. We had felt underdressed walking in there – high fashion, more skin on women than we’d seen since we’d been in country etc etc. And these two within about 10 minutes walk of each other. Of course, the contrasts don’t stop there. Within the big shiny plaza, two shops side-by-side caught our eye. On the left, a hijab store. To the right, a fashion chain with very short dresses on the mannequins in the window... Oh and all the becak (3-wheeled passenger bikes) drivers had mobile phones.
Watching English movies subbed into Indonesian is very funny. We watched 3 in total, and we know enough Indonesian to pick up when the translation just doesn’t convey the humour. We were laughing at completely different things to the rest of the people in the cinema. And ‘The Princess and the Frog’ misses it’s target audience completely...

Destination: Jakarta, Java
Verdict: Big crazy city, remind me never to drive in Indonesia. Ever.
The best part of our stay in Jakarta was the day trip to Bogor, for the Botanical gardens. They are stunning. Taking a million photos, getting caught in the rain, listening to Hamish & Andy podcasts on the way home = brilliant day.

Destination: Sumatra
Verdict: Simply stunning. I’m not even going to try to give a rundown of all the separate places we went to – there are just two that I’ll put up here. The first is Lake Toba, possibly the most beautiful place we went (photo below). Just gorgeous. We spent just over two days, but could have easily spent longer just relaxing. *laughs* we got ambushed by so many students wanting to practice their English. I so wasn’t in the mood (I was feeling rather off) but they were really sweet. The second is the orang-utans at Bukit Lawang. We had to go trekking through muddy jungle and such to get there, which I hated at the time, but we saw a mother and baby and another male so it was worth it. They were so cute!

Lake Toba/Samosir Island

Destination: Kuta, Bali
Back to the excessive heat (Java and Sumatra weren’t too bad) of Bali, and the touristy shops and beaches of Kuta. To be honest, it was probably my least favourite place of all. I’m not a normal Aussie 19-year-old at all. I also saw firsthand why Aussies have such a reputation as drunk slobs in Bali. I’ll leave that there. Then Jetstar decided we didn’t need to go home yet. We were more than ready by this point... ah well. At least I didn’t have to cancel appointments like N did.

And that brings me up to now ... well kind of. More on the rest of my week later, this blog is already very very long.

Rdm