Indonesia Leg

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First impressions, cool (compared to India) green, wet (well the ground is) clean, less English around and people seem more helpful, but still out to grab your custom.
We arrived in Surabaya on Thursday 19th May (my half birthday hehe) and found a hotel (again from the guide book) called Sparkling backpackers in Surabaya, Java. (which I got bitten alive from bed bugs!) we had a nap coz the traveling for 17hours had taken it out of us. We went out to the local train station and bought tickets for the next day to Jogjakarta (where a man shook our hands but made some gesture to other men and they all laughed, not sure how to read that!) and then went for dinner at a self service Asian restaurant we had a grill and a saucepan (the best way I can describe it) in the middle of our table! All I can say is we didn't know what to do. we ended up being taught how to use the instruments and ingredients by the women and feeling very silly when we got caught doing something that made them laugh!
Friday we got up at 5.30 to get the train at 7am. we waiting in an executive room and rambled up to the platform we thought a bit early where a train was sitting ready to depart when the ticket inspector asked to see our tickets and informed us it was our train ready to depart! 5 comfortable hours on the best seats in the world, brought us to Jogjakarta where we checked in to another hotel called Setia Kawan a gorgeously decorated artistic place with tranquil water features and authentic Vespa mopeds filling the halls. We went straight out to find a telephone to phone home (which was more difficult than we imagined) after half an hour we ended up using this restauranteurs mobile phone. Just walking down the street and you get people trying to talk to you, less want your money but just to practice their English, lots of the Becak men (cycle rickshaw) hound you for a very cheap ride. We went to a restaurant called superman's where Sean had chicken with coconut sauce and I had a grilled sandwich. A man chatted to us for the whole time we weren't eating and told us about this art exhibition where they do Batik painting we spent nearly two hours in there and bought some great work. We went for dinner at EFeM and Sean had chicken satay and i had this seafood noodle thing, wasnt very nice but the bintang washed it down!
Saturday we got up even earlier (4am) to go to Borobudur a buddist temple, we walked round ity three times clockwise as you should with any buddist temple (don't tell me you didnt know that!) and we were enjoying looking at all the different hand positions of the buddahs when we were bonbarded with school children and we became the attraction, shouting, laughing, pointing taking our photo without asking(this is really starting to annoy me now, Seans ok with it) it ruined our experience of this suposed tranquil place. We were on this trip with a German guy who didnt reply when sean said goodmorning to him and never spoke to us or looked at us until after when we were sitting eating breakfast (as part of the tour not out of choice) it was really hard work. We got into another tour bus and went with more friendly people to another Hindu Temple called Prambanan three wonderful 'Candis' dedicated to Brahma, Vishu and Shiva, it is a 9th Century site that went into ruins and wasnt reconstructed until 1937. Again there were school children, but these were differnt they were polite spoke to us and asked us questions like our name, where we come from and our signature before asking to take a photo with us. We got back to the hotel around 1 and I had a nap then we went out to eat by the road, first time but it was a good experience, good food, good drink just a little uncomfortable when we were asked to breath in when a coach drove past us! so close!
Sunday we got up at a reasonable time today had free breakfast at the hotel and took a becak to the sultans palace at the Kraton, we had a little walk around, trying to avoid all native people there from the photos and school children, and sat down in the inner pavillion to watch some traditional dancing by 4 women and 4 teenage girls they seemed to be acting out a war scene. they were very hot as they did the dance for 2 hours straight, no faultering!!! After we walked to the bird market that wasnt a bird market anymore and bought fruit, some Durian (horrible fruit noone seems to like, very expensive, spikey) a sirsak (a green spikey one that we didnt eat for a few days but when we did it was rubbery texture) and a small green fruit we dont know the name of(it was green outside looked like an apple but had red flesh with small pips everywhere, wasnt nice either) So all in all a good fruit tasting experience! Then we took another becak(bicycle man with the seets for us at the front) to the new bird market position (it had moved because the sultan was worried about bird flu!) we saw fish, turtles, ants, lizards, snakes, bats, puppys, rabbits, cats, turkeys, chickens, love birds and loads more birds! we took another Becak to ViaVia and had the best meal weve had since weve been away. I love the pink drink (es Kopyor) Jaffle a toasty thing, and ayam bumbu riyak great chicken n rice thing.
Monday we met our mini bus and had an 11 hour journey to Probolingo with 4 (rude) french people, we stopped for lunch at this horrid restaurant on route, they didnt clean a table until customers wanted a table and so it was filthy and flies everywhere. the waitress brang me whai thought was my lunch but then brought over the dish i actually ordered but by this time id eaten the other thing, she tried to charge us for it, but my sweet talking got us out of it. We arrived at Probolingo and had to change tyo another bus for another hour journey up Mt Bromo to our hotel Cafe Lava, It was the first time we'd experienced cold being above the clouds and all!
Tuesday we were up at half 3, put 3 layers of clothes on (in the absence of warm clothes) met a jeep it took us part of the way to the viewpoint, we had to walk the last bit there were loads of men offering us horse rides, it was pitchblack and i was glad to have brought my torch. We watched tohe sunrise and saw Mount bromo from up high, we could see smoke billowing from Mt Bromo. we met the jeep and it took us to the base of the volcano and we walked up a little closer to it, but as it is still active we couldnt go too close, just in case. We could hear the rumbling of the volcano which was Scary.
We went back to the hotel now about half 7am to have a warm shower! And breakfast before meeting the bemo to take us back to probolinggo bus station. We got on a public bus which was very cramped we changed buses at another bus station beggers and food and drink sellers got on at various points and we even had buskers getting on one even had a cd and microphone and sang sething awful to the whole bus when he came round asking for tips he tapped me to wake me up and ask for a tip! We got on a ferry to go to Bali and had noodle soup. We changed seats when we got back on the bus to smaller seats, woops. And we were squished really bad now. We arrived at denpasar and as usual lots of taxi drivers hounding us and telling us the wrong information. We walked to a hotel the other tourists we had made friends with on the bus were there. We checked in at 11pm the longest and most tiring day yet!
Wednesday 25th
We checked out at what we thought was 12 but we hadn't realised the time change it was actually 1pm but they didn't mind. We took a cab to legism next to kuta it wad a 5 min walk to the beach and we watched the sunset. There were lots of people on the beach selling services like tatoos, massages and sunglases etc. We treated ourselves to a steak dinner. It was very touristy with the locals even having Australian accents!
Thursday 26th
Seanies wasn't feeling too well today.
Friday 27th
We walked around a bit today went back to the beach and I got bracelets and a manicure and a foot scrub. We went out on a heavy one and I wasn't well all night!
Saturday 28th
I wasn't feeling too well today.
Sunday 29th
We rented body boards and I got a gecko henna on my foot and a pedicure. We got rather burnt so we went for a sunburn soother massage together. We went to the Bali hard rock cafe.
Monday 30th
There was a storm during the night thar had woken me up and it was stil heavily raining at 11am when we needed to leave with our backpacks! We got to the bus office and they had lots of animals that they weren't very nice to which made me want to work for the RSPCA. We rook our bus to Ubud (which is in eat pray love) it was a nice quiet town. The men stand in the road sides shouting taxi or transport at you no matter how many times you say no. We had a lovely dinner and sean tried the hottest sauce by accident and burned his mouth off! I found it very funny. We got back to our large room with a thatched roof and wooden beams and found the largest gecko ever. There were lots of animals around out hotel and we woke up a lot.
Tuesday 31st
SEANIES BIRTHDAY
We went for cake at a cafe whilst it was raining. It stopped raining so we went for a 6km long hilly walk. The beginning of the walk was lovely but it got very tiring. We had foot reflexology which was nice but too much presure.
Wednesday 1st June
We went into the monkey forest today it was nice, the monkeys would be so close to you but wouldn't touch u unless u had food (I had a sealed bottle in my zipped bag but a monkey knew it was there and jumped on my bag for it, I won in the end) the older monkeys would spend ages ripping into coconuts only to have it stolen from them at the last minute.
Later we went White water rafting we shared a boat with Crystal and Jess, crystal kept falling over and once she fell out but then so did our guide at one point. We were able to get out and float down river at various points. It was a great laugh. We went for food after at a local restaurant. The waitress came over and said something to us we didn't understand we said yes and then she asked us what we wanted to drink and that was it, we'd ordered with no menu! We got back to town and I finally got my street corn, it was lovely best thing ever! Mine was spicy but the guy short changed me so we didn't go back for more.
Thursday 2nd
We left early for our bus to Padang bai, we had breakfast and saw a really fat dog. We got the uncomfortable boat over to Lombok. We met the mini bus and we were planning to go to mataram to extend our visa but it was a public holiday so we went to sengiggi and checked in at a hotel. Later we went looking for corn! We ended up on the beach where loads of people were eating from the array of eaterys we tried everything. We had BBQ corn, steamed corn, chicken satay and roasted monkey nuts washed down with a young coconut drank with a straw.
Friday 3rd
The hotel we were staying at had a bird that would repeat a whistle back to you so we had breakfast whilst whistling! We got a cab to bangsal harbour (a note aout bangsal harbour: the lonely planet guide says how the touts are relentless but sean and I thought we've done India it can't be worse well try it and save some money) so we arrived our taxi wasn't allowed close to the harbour do we got a horse cart called a clipclop to the harbour an extra man was on our clipclop talking very nicely to us and the cart pulled over and the men said this is the ticket office but we knew from the book that it was on the beach front and we didn't move so the driver took us to the correct place. Now we knew we had to be careful who to trust but when you arrive somewhere looking gormless walking around in circles acting gormless and everyone was telling us places to go we didn't know what to do. We got to the ticket office (which didn't look very official) loads of people were standing around and the ticket ladies told us that we'd missed the boat and we should pay these annoying men a charter fee (155 instead of 10) to get to the gillis we were dissapointed. We kept asking the ticket ladies and we finally found out a boat only goes when there are 25 people on it, all the while ignoring the 5 pestering men shouting at us to take their boat, we paid and put our names on the waiting list. One man got very angry at us called us tight stingy and other rude words I won't use here. He made everyone very uptight. The other men would just watch him and when he would humiliate a tourist they would laugh with him! It was needless to say a very nervous time for us. Anyway our boat didn't take too long to fill up and we were on our way. Seam got talking to a german guy called Sven who gave us some good tips on travelling, it was a long overloaded and choppy ride to gilli trawangan. We disembarked on the beach up to our knees in beatiful clear water. A local tried to tell us the hotel we were looking for had burned down and to go to his one but we'd just dealt with bangsal don't you know! We got talking to an auzzy guy called dan who offered us a room in the house him and his mate were sharing. It was more expensive than a hotel we could have got but it was a good experience. We weren't sure if we could trust them so we locked the door then we wernt sure if we were being to rude, too British. But they couldn't have been nicer. We had corn for lunch! Went to the north east point on the island for good snorkeling and rented some old broken gear, we couldn't walk out to the good snorkeling area due to the hard waves, dead coral and broken gear so we gave up. We watched the sunset from a mice cafe with water bungalows. We went out that night at the islands Irish bar had pizza, sean wanted to drink but I was tired.
Saturday 4th
We said our goodbyes to the boys and moved to another hotel there was bat poo on our bed so we asked for the sheets to be changed. We went on a glass bottom boat snorkeling trip. Had a great time met a girl called christina. We saw loads of coral life and turtles. We had lunch with christina at gilli air I could have snorkeled more but the other tourists wernt snorkeling much by the end.
We had dinner at skallywags sean fell in love with his dinner of fish and chips wouldn't you believe! We watched brothers the film at 'it's a wonderful life' films on the beach huts. Our bed had bat poo on it again so we moved to a less exciting room. We started a whip today, living off £20 each and we used all of it up.
Sunday 5th
It's been one month today!
We hired bikes and cycled half way round the island where the boys had told us we'd find an Olympic sized swimming pool we were able to use if we bought something. It was a neverending pool and it had bar side stools in the water. We met a brazillian guy called Bruno who had worked in zizzis in hornchurch! Later we ate out at a fish BBQ sean had gruffer I had red snapper. I really feel for all the stray cats here, they sit by ur table watching u. So I took some fish n gave it to a lucky cat outside our hotel.
Monday 6th
We cycled the other way around the island today back to the pool for the day. Had BBQ meet n fish kebab skewers.
Tuesday 7th
Today we rented snorkeling gear n went right off the beach, we saw a massive turtle. We went back to skallywags n sean had the fish n chips again!
Wednesday 8th
We walked the unbeaten path through the middle if the island to the swimming pool today. We saw loads of locals, a school, a tip n many a palm tree. On the way back a horse with no rider came galloping towards us. Now if u know how much I love animals I'll know I needed to touch the horse, I of course calmed it down and walked it back towards where it was coming from. There is a horse riding company for tourists n it looked like the girl riding the horse might have fallen off. I begrudgingly gave the horse back to the guide. We went out that eveningto the irish bar where we met andy n ally a couple from Bournemouth. We had a shot at the bar it was cheap but it turned out to be fresh melon juice in a shot glass. Sean got drunk n started dancing with the locals!
Thursday 9th
Major hangover combined with no sleep made it a rough day, but we managed to meet andy n ally n Bruno for snorkeling, sean was given bread and fed the fish in the sea. We had a nap, we ate some bad food n I fed the cats again.
Friday 10th
We went to watch hangover 2 at the beach we went snorkeling n we bought bread so j could feed the fish, but I found all of it for too much for me n I dust like all the fish swimming at me pecking my hands so I threw what was left, which was three quarters, in for the fish to frenzy over themselves. We saw the big turtle again, we could have watched him for hours. We got dinner n I fed the family of cats at our hotel.
Saturday 11th
We got the public boat back to bangsal at 8am, very confusing men taking our ticket away from us, shouting at us n we didn't know who to trust or where to go. We eventually found our bus station, by bus station I mean alot of Indonesian guys hanging around a pizzeria and tourists waiting to be picked up in bemos. We got our bemo to mataram, first we were taken to the wrong bus station, then we were dropped on the road side to haggle with 6/7 men all quoting different prices to go to senaru. In the end we got in at over double the price we were told n then we drive around for nearly two hours filling the bus up with people n all their wares n tears. It was a weird journey one woman kept turning around and staring at us no matter how long i stared back then it was quite obvious she was talking and laughing about us the driver cut up another public bemo n then later when we'd stopped the driver was hurling abuse and spitting n grabbing our driver from their seats in their bemos. It was really funny n all the locals gathered from all around it was amazing how many people had come out of such a small derelict town. The old woman in front if sean started talking to herself n laughing like she was telling someone what had just happened, sean said she was yoda! We arrived at the end ofthe bus route and offered the driver some more money to take us to senaru but he said no. we couldn't get to our town n locals offered us a ride on their motorbikes withthem but we had our big bags. We walked n walked then finally thedriver of the bemo said he would take us. We settled then went walking to the classy waterfall we saw mekaks, dogs, people washing n much more. The water was nice but cold I drank some. We had dinner overlooking the valley all the way to the sea. We met a couple of travellers but the guy kept talking even when our food arrived and throughout our meal he kept talking he only need a 'oh right' from us to keep on going.
Sunday 12th
We met our guide Imman n he took us to the second waterfall over bridges through the brambles n we crossed through the river three times! It was very cold the waer spray made it hard to see n breathe. Locals arrived n were nice n friendly in awe with sean. We went back to the first waterfall by ourselves n sean posed for photos with the locals.
Monday 13th
We got a 4x4 to mataram n then went. To aduli anak a childrens home n school for Indonesian street children they even get to go see their parents during holidays. We walked around a bit but didnt get to see much we arrived at the wrong time of day. We went to mataram mall n had pizza hut sean bought three tshirts all for less than £7 altogether n all brand names like billabong.
Tuesday 14th
We arrive in plenty of time to the tiny mataram airport flew to singapore via Jakarta.

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