Blogs from Cengkareng, Jakarta, Java, Indonesia, Asia

So I've just finished reading two pretty incredible articles on a subject which is quite close to my heart. Reverse culture shock. I've been around and been to some pretty incredible places, Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Zambia and Kenya. That's just to name the real exotic ones and the ones which are probably closest to my heart. Coming back from these truly amazing experiences changed me and every time people around me would remark on it. Africa taught me to be more respectful of what I had, Brazil gave me a more heightened awareness of things around me (I still religious check my shoes before I put them on - dam spiders) and my current trip to Asia is teaching me new things all the time, which i won't truly appreciate until I leave. However, the biggest ... read more

Travel is an unusual business. Its full of mystery, happiness and most painfully, farewells. If there is a bad part to travel, it is that there are farewells far too often. Between my last blog and now, we said goodbye to a teacher who had cut her contract short to return home to her family. It was a sadder farewell than I can remember in my travelling days, because I had grown to depend on her, like the others in our little teacher family more than most other travelers I've come across. As one of the others put it, we depend on each other out here. We get along or we fall, we need each other to survive, to help us through the hard times and really get through. So to see her leave, left an ... read more

Well it's been a long time since I last posted anything on this website and for good reasons. It's been a long since odd months since I last left the UK and during this time I've undergone a couple of massive changes. Firstly, I am no longer doing an MSc in Evolutionary Biology and I am now an English Teacher in Jakarta Indonesia. Pretty drastic huh? Jakarta has been described to me as a city which is difficult to love and I can totally see why. It's a massive contridiction in terms of Muslim values and Western institutions, it just doesn't make sense. Yet despite the smog, high buildings, poverty and unpredictable weather, it is a place I can feel myself falling in love with. The tree which grow almost everywhere help you forget that you're ... read more

We arrived in Jakarta on the 29th of November at around midday and took a Damri bus to the train station of Gambir - probably the easiest way to get into the city centre. After the comfortable 45 minutes bus ride we refused to take a taxi or a bajaj and walked to JL Jaksa, the "backpacking district" of Jakarta. I expected it to be a bit like Khao San Road in Bangkok but I was completely wrong. It is a very narrow street with loads of traffic and it took us quite a while to find a nice, low budget accomodation. We were really relieved once we had found one and after a nice refreshing shower we started exploring the area around JL Jaksa. It was grey, dirty and noisy. The traffic in Jakarta is ... read more

Having spent a week on the beautiful island of Gili Trawangan we really started to settle into the slow and easy lifestyle. Wake up each morning to the sounds of relentless cockerels and men chanting over loudspeaker from the mosque, then enjoy pancakes and fruit salad for brekkie before taking a walk around the island - we figured since we were beach bumming around we should at least do some exercise! After this a lazy lunch on the beach with a few hours soaking in some rays with the odd dip in the crystal clear sea before eating again and watching a film along the beachfront (we even found one 'cinema' that was literally a huge projector on the beach with sunbeds so you could watch a film under the stars). We had considered doing a ... read more