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Published: December 18th 2014
So it's been a while since I've blogged anything. If I'm honest, checking out Travelblog just ends up making me yearn for the times we were on the road with little more responsibility than parenting two kids, figuring out where/what to eat and where to sleep next. Obviously these are pretty big responsibilities, but here at home we are surrounded by a whole host of other chores and tasks that we
need to do, that it's hard to make time for the things we
want to do...
The blog is incomplete though, and it feels wrong leaving it as it is, so with that in mind I'll carry on where we left off, we were in Java for the Holidays.
Having travelled in Java before, we know how long it takes to get anywhere by road... With this in mind we cheated and flew direct from KL to Yogyakarta, which was where we wanted to spend pretty much all our time in Java anyway. The reason we wanted to visit Yogyakarta? Shopping of course! Faye wanted to shop for Batik, and also if possible, take a course and pick up skills to try out when we return home.
Before we finally left Malaysia we had to navigate the monstrous LCC terminal in KL. We also had to try and get Nate's seat assignment changed as for some reason when we checked in online with AirAsia the computer was too dim to evaluate the ages of the passengers and sat Nate out on his own several rows away from us. I'm sure everyone would agree sitting a three year old on his own away from his parents is not the best of ideas. Check-in were no help at all, saying there's nothing they could do as the flight was full. This of course turned out to be complete bullshit as once on board the flight the attendants moved us all to an EMPTY row of seats, which wasn't too hard as the flight was half empty. Another example of how 'saving face' is a great concept, but damn infuriating at times, if you can't help just say so, don't lie!!!
It was a short uneventful flight to Yogyakarta and we arrived nice and early giving me plenty of time to search for suitable accommodation while Faye and the boys hung out at a restaurant tucking into second breakfast.
The first thing I noticed was that the prices were considerably more than elsewhere in SE Asia and also availability was limited, leaving us with not much choice in the budget category. In the end we decided to spoil ourselves and shelled out mega bucks (well comparatively speaking) for our own little A/C hut with a swimming pool. We planned to stay in the city for a couple of weeks so I think that swung things in our favour while bargaining the price of the room down. We ended up getting 30-40% knocked off the price for the majority of the stay, although it would be full price for the 4 days over Christmas... We thought it would be nice to have a bit of comfort though over the holiday period as let's be honest, Christmas just plain sucks without family and friends.
So with a couple of weeks to fill we had plenty of time to prepare for Christmas, and as they don't celebrate it all that much here we had to make do with a truly handmade one. We spent some time making plenty of decorations to cover the room and I managed to fashion something
that resembled a tree out of the A4 paper that we carry around for the boys to draw on and some toilet rolls. There was also a mall nearby where we could buy some presents. Thankfully the boys like 'Hot wheels' cars which are nice and small and easily carried and we also got them a tiny electric keyboard to get their musical creativity going. Due to all the preparation we actually ended up having a really great day which was a surprise. The morning was cool as the boys loved opening their presents and playing with their new toys. In the afternoon we took a horse drawn carriage around the city and had pizza for dinner, which although not conventional, it was delicious and loved by all. The day was rounded off with the boys showing off over Skype to family and friends back home.
While in the city, it would have been a crying shame if we hadn't visited
Borobodur, as it is so close to the city. Faye and I have been before whilst on our previous travels and we thought the boys might get a bit of a kick out of running around the single
largest Buddhist structure in the world. They seem to have taken a liking to the various temples we've been to previously so this one should blow them away. Ideally we would have liked to do the sunrise tour as you get to see the monument while it's empty, but it was really expensive so we just did the standard tour which still leaves really early and gets you in just as the doors open, leaving it relatively peaceful for a while before all the big tours and school classes arrive.
We strolled into the temple as the sun was rising, covering it in a beautiful morning light and had a great time wandering around exploring. After a while though it started to fill up quickly and we couldn't walk more than a few meters without being molested by a group of school kids wanting photos with the boys so we quickly made our way out to get breakfast at one of the many restaurants outside the site. Borobodur is seriously amazing and I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting as it's sure to impress.
Also while in Yogyakarta Faye shopped her socks off, buying mountains of batik fabric
and taking a batik course, which left us with the task of trying to figure out the Indonesian postal service to get it back home. After traipsing around the city, bouncing between various post offices to get it packaged, it finally got sent surface mail for about £60, which I didn't think was too bad considering it was about 20kg.
Leaving Yogyakarta was quite hard as we'd spent so much time here but we had to move on as we had a flight out of Bali to Perth booked and we wanted to spend some time on the island beforehand as we really enjoyed our time there previously. Sadly as New Years eve was coming up, flights to Bali direct from Yogi were really expensive. We didn't want to do the trip overland as we remembered it being awful the last time so thankfully I found a flight leaving from Surabaya early new years day for next to nothing, I'm guessing as most people don't want to fly then. It meant we wouldn't be in Bali for a few days but it was definitely the most cost effective solution.
Surabaya is a fairly comfortable 5 hour train journey
from Yogi and is not normally on most tourists itinerary as quite frankly there is no reason for it to be. It's just another big Asian city crammed with people and clogged with traffic. I think the most exciting thing we noticed was the street art, rather than the usual mindless graffiti or tags it actually had some pretty good murals dotted around the place. We did visit the zoo whilst there as we wanted to see some Komodo dragons, but it was pretty depressing, the animals 'seemed' well cared for in that their basic needs were met, but it was pretty run down and had definitely seen better days.
New years eve came and went. When you've got an early flight and kids asleep it doesn't leave you too enthused for a midnight celebration so we didn't bother, watching the Sydney fireworks a few hours ahead of our time and then heading off for an early night.
The flight to Bali was super quick and it wasn't long until we were out the airport and in a cab on our way to Ubud. Our prebooked hotel was was a little pricier than I'd hoped but it turned
out really nice so wasn't too bad and after checking in we headed out to get some food. We quickly realised that the higher prices we'd seen in Java weren't an anomaly as the prices in Bali were even higher, clearly Indonesia was doing well out of all the Aussie tourist dollars flooding in. It took us a while to find anywhere to eat where the prices were reasonable, but it turned out that the reason the prices were reasonable is because the portion sizes were tiny. There was barely enough on the plates to feed a starved sparrow and after the boys had destroyed it all leaving us with nothing, we headed to the supermarket to get some snacks to fill up on.
We spent a few days in Ubud and after an attitude adjustment to the local prices we had a fairly enjoyable time there. We visited the local temples, saw a performance of Balinese dance, hired a bike and explored the surrounding countryside and of course visited the monkey forest which the boys loved. By boys, I of course include myself in that as I cant get enough of monkeys, they're like tiny, badly behaved little
people.
From Ubud we moved to Sanur for some beach time. We chose Sanur because we thought it would a bit quieter than Kuta but it turned out to be a bad decision as Sanur was well deserving of it's 'Snore' nickname, being completely dead. Also the surrounding restaurants were horrifically priced, bordering on what it would cost to eat out in the UK. The beach wasn't even worth staying for as it was tiny and crap, so reluctantly we moved on to Kuta for the remaining few days. We got as good a deal as we could get on a hotel room and hung out amongst the awful aggressive touts, the disgustingly filthy beach and the hordes of drunk westerners. The only saving grace was the food options as they were plentiful and there were even a few restaurants that were both cheap and good.
During these last few days our mood and motivation dropped dramatically. We were at break point. Sitting on Kuta beach with a small area in front of us cleared of all the trash so the boys could dig in the sand we waited for our flight out wishing the plane we would
be jumping on was heading in the opposite direction, back home. We were tired and Bali had ground us down further. We loved our time when we were last here, maybe because it was a gateway into Asia after spending 6 months elsewhere and we could overlook the bad bits but this time it lacked everything that we value in our travel experiences and watching our kids play in the garbage that passes for a beach didn't help. There's also an incredible amount of guilt involved when you feel like this. Here we are visiting places some people can only dream of, and we just want to pack it in and go home and to add insult to injury the ATM at a mini mart just before heading to the airport ate my card, maybe it was a sign, maybe we should have just cancelled our flight and rebooked. We boarded our flight to Australia, wishing our time away, hoping to just get it over with so we could head home...
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
JAVA
Great to hear from you guys again...and haven't the kids grown? Gotta say Java is a fantastic place to go and explore.