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Published: September 8th 2011
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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 4 day trip on a boat over to Komodo island to have a look at the famous dragons, but unfortunately with our tight time schedule (and increasingly tighter wallets!) we weren't able to. We were able to do some snorkelling just off the coast though which was good - the water was so so clear.
On other days we found a newly opened
luxury resort that allowed outsiders to use their infinity pools if you bought a few drinks there, and we also caught the red sunset over the mountains of Lombok a couple of times. Yet another breathtaking sight! How spoilt we are.
Now, up until this point our travel plans have run pretty smoothly. We weren't expecting Ramadan to be the first thing to interfere. Or rather the end of Ramadan.
We had planned to travel back to Bali on the 31st of July, not realizing that this marked the end of Ramadan and the start of Eid - this meant that NOTHING was running on, or away from, the island. Since we already had our flight booked from Jakarta in central Indonesia up to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo we now had a race against time on our hands. Getting to Bali at 6 in the evening a day later than we had planned meant that we only had half an hour to find where we were in those stupid spaghetti streets of Kuta, and see if we could get there on time by bus and if not possibly change the flight we had booked, or book a flight
from Bali to Jakarta.
Unfortunately the only thing we could do was book a slightly more expensive 2 hour flight to Jakarta for the next day - instead of the cramped, stuffy, sweaty, bumpy 24 hour bus ride - ...poor us eh?
Jakarta
What a contrast.
After spending the last 3 weeks or so beach hopping, being in a bustling vast city again was a strange, but not unwelcome, sight. The high rise buildings stand tall over the very wide roads which clatter with a variety of tuk-tuks, bemos, cars and buses. We'd read and heard that Jakarta isn't the nicest of places, but we actually really liked it (though we were only there for a day and apparently most locals journey out of the city to celebrate Eid).
Having spent a long time slumming it, the last week with only cold salt water to wash with, we decided that we deserved a night of luxury. For only 14 pounds each!! we spent a few hours enjoying hot showers, room service, comfortable beds and even a tv!
Post pampering we walked around the large square park just next to where we stayed to get a
feel for Jakartan life and see the city at night. This is when we were stopped for the first time and asked for a photo. We thought this nice family wanted us to take a picture of them in front of the national landmark in the centre of the park, but no, they wanted a photo
with us! One for the living room wall so we've heard, "This is us with our friends from England, Tom and Emily".
We ended the day with dinner at Chili's (so cultured), where we chowed down on fajitaas and bottomless dc's before heading back to the comfort of the hotel.
The next day we caught a train up north to the old town of Kota. The train was jammed full of people and when we arrived at the station the amount of people seemed to triple. You just kind of had to slot in to the wave of bodies moving out onto the streets. There were hawkers selling fake goods and even food (freshly cooked) literally as you step off the train. It was easy to spot each other though as Emily's was the only blond head and I have an extra
couple of inches on the average Indonesian.
From the station we hopped in a tuk-tuk to a fish market, which we soon discovered was a couple of market stalls not selling fish, but the streets had an intensely strong fishy pong...nice. Then on to look at the impressively HUGE wooden fishing boats along the port, where we had our second moment of fame, gracing another living room wall. A bemo later (basically a mini van with the back seats torn out and benches put in) we were back at the square to try and scale the 130m national landmark which had unfortunately closed just before we arrived. But the experience of just walking through the park was hilarious. We were stopped every 100 metres by locals wanting their photo with us! At this point we realized that it can't be just the 'wow a westerner' thing as there were other westerners around getting no attention. The conclusion we came to was that it's either the combo of Emily's blond with my beard, or that we look like celebrities - since we've been called 'Piquet and Shakira' a few times we went with the latter.
I'd actually already written
this post in Jakarta but accidentally (and VERY annoyingly) navigated off tha page without saving. So here it is again and it ended with 'sorry no photos again as we're now hurrying off to catch our flight to KK, but we will upload soon and if not we can show you them when we get back as it feels as if the end is just around the corner!' - How cruelly ironic this would turn out to be.
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