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Published: August 3rd 2009
It has been 4 months ago that Anna and me had to say goodbye because of her internship in Jakarta. Though I was most excited for her being able to have such an experience and nowadays the means of communication are cheap and easy, spending longer time without each other would have been out of the question. You can imagine how thrilled I was on that tuesday July 14th, when I could pack my backpack and catch the plain to London, from where I'd have my flight the following day to Kuala Lumpur and connecting flight to Jakarta to finally meet with her!
Delay On arrival in London I got a text message from Air Asia (good service!) that my flight has been delayed from 18.00 hrs on the 15th till 02.30 am on the 16th! That was disappointing, especially because I knew that I would miss my connecting flight in KL. In London I was staying at Sue's place (we traveled in Vietnam together last year). I could use her landline to call AirAsia, and over the phone they could change my connecting flight from 19.00 - 16th to 07.00 - 17th the next morning, so my actual delay
would be 12 hrs and I'd have the inconvenience of spending the night on the airport! Since this solution wasn't acceptable to me, I wrote a complaint e-mail to Air Asia, and got an instant reply saying that they could only offer me a 40 pound discount credit on my next booking!
London So I had one full day in London to spend with Susan. We used it to spend the evening to meet up for drinks in a "Dutch Pub" with some Canadian friends who I had met in Laos and Cambodia. Of course we could not miss out on a shot of old fashioned
"Jenever". The next day we spend in
Greenwich, wondering in the Park, the museum with it's clocks and telescopes and of course the famous 0° longitude meridian.
London to Kuala Lumpur When I arrived at Stansted Airport to catch my delayed flight, another setback came to me: the flight was delayed with another 2 hours (leaving 04.30 am). To make things up, they gave everyone 20 pound vouchers for snacks and drinks. Since this was way to much for snacks, I spend most of it on drinking beers ;-), while most of
my fellow passengers were sleeping spread out all over the tiny airports departure hall. After a 16 hour flight to KL during which I couldn't sleep at all despite of all the beers I drank, they offered to stay overnight in a hotel. Since I only had to wait another 6 hours for my flight to JK, I decided not to accept and stay at the airport, entertaining myself with smoking cigarettes in the humid and hot air of KL airport "Lounge" (read passenger drop of area) and trying to catch some sleep in the airconditioned departure hall.
The Moment Finally.....finally the moment was there. After a quick customs check and baggage claim, I rushed to the arrival hall, and there she was! I won't get to much into details how our get-together was, but lets say that it felt just as I had imagined it: great, fantastic, releaved, and touched. Quickly we went to the taxi together and drove of to her apartment in central Jakarta, to start our adventures in Asia......
The Bombing The euphoric feeling soon came to an end, when 10 minutes later in the taxi, Anna received texts from her friends asking if
she was ok, because some idiots had bombed 2 hotels, killing as much as 7 people (I won't count the deaths of the bombers; could one consider that they are human?) This was particularly shocking to Anna because the embassy office where she worked for the past 4 months was situated in a building right next to it and her apartment is only a 10 minute walk from there! Luckily none of her friends and colleagues were injured. This of course doesn't mean that it is less serious, because so many others were.
At first I thought the bombing had a huge effect on public life in Jakarta. In every mall or big public place, our bags were subjected to "serious" examination (complete with metal detector). Most of the time they only checked half of each bag and gave half an eye into the taxi's trunk (transportation in JK is easiest by taxi when you are with a group of people or when you are alone and you can stand the humid heat in JK, taking an Ojek (motorbike) is the cheapest and fastest option). But Anna told most public accesible places such as malls were "heavily guarded" like
that.
Jakarta We spend only 3 days in Jakarta, from which a lot of time was consumed by catching up with enjoying each other. The rest of the time we spend on dining and drinking with friends of Anna's and going to a lot of malls on our hunt for Trekking Shoe's for Anna, which was tougher than expected. We'd almost say that you couldn't do any trekking in Indonesia! One evening after dinner we went with the 2 of us to the Harry Potter movie in a Cinema which had one room of filled with the most comfortable beds. The one and only "cultural" thing we did was visiting the Monas (Monument in Central JK).
Yogyakarta After three days it was time to leave JK for Yogya. We took the early morning train after 2 hours of sleep (we had been partying till late with some of Anna's friends). The train was very comfortable, so we could spend our time sleeping, listening to music and having our own made breakfast (sandwiches and fruit, which Anna had prepared the day before....could not think of traveling alone anymore ;-) ). On arrival we checked in the Dewi hostel. Because
I was already here last year, we arrived a bit earlier that the rest of the travelers in the train at this hostel hot spot, and could take the last room.
Sickness and exploring Anna I think the whole jetleg-heat-and-going-in-and-out-airconditioned-areas thing did it... I got sick. Therefore Anna had to explore Yogya on her own. While I was laying in bed most of the time for 2 days, she did a walking tour around the Yogya sites (mentioned in Lonely planet) and she visited the Borobudur. Luckily I already did most of it last year, so I didn't have to miss out on a lot. The last day in Yogya I was feeling much better. We bought presents fo my nephew Dax (his birthday would be the next day in Bali) and Anna's continued writing her report for her Jakarta Internship.
Meeting my family on Bali After another delay of a few hours we finally arrived in Bali's Nusa Dua, where my mom, aunt, sisters and niece are going to stay for 4 weeks in a villa rental of friends. It has only be a week or so that I left home, but we had a lot to
talk about since this was for most of them their first holiday so far away in Asia. The first night we could spend in their villa, but we unfortunately couldn't stay (lack of space) there, therefor we checked in a hostel in Tanjung Benoa (15 min motobike drive from there).
The first few days we spend hanging around the pool of the villa and on the beach enjoying massages and enjoying the sun both in Nusa Dua and Kuta. One day we went to the airport to book ourselves tickets for Bali-Sulawesi, Sulawesi-Ambon and Ambon-Jakarta (Indonesia is cheap, but all those flights eats out a lot from your budget, but to see and experience Tana Toraja, Banda Islands and Kai Islands is well worth it I'd say!).
My family decided to take a Bali round trip for 3 days. Jimmy a Balinese friend and former guide, badminton player and rooster trainer for cockfights is well known throughout Bali and is their driver and support this holiday. He was planning to take them around Bali for a few days seeing the sights.
Around Bali by motorbike We wanted to do it slightly different. We rented a motobike for
our whole staying via Jimmy (50.000 IR = 3.50 euro/day) and planned a tour around Bali ourselves. First idea was to do it for 3 days - 2 nights, but we ended up going around Bali for 5 days. Motobiking around Bali is exciting, especially when you experience the left hand-chaotic traffic around Denpassar and Southern Bali (most densely populated area). It seems that there are no rules in the chaos, but, overtaking on left and right hand side and always honking their horns, the Balinese always find their way in the crowded traffic without making to much accidents.
The first 2 nights we spend in Ubud (known for the artistic crafts and paintings), where we visited the sacred monkey forest, saw a authentic Balinese dance performance, had manicure (Anna) and massage (Floor) and bought a special bag for Anna's stretching and Yoga mat. We enjoyed staying in Ubud, because, even though Ubud is one of the mayor touristic villages, we could experience some tranquility in the laid back town and surrounding area, which consists mostly of never ending rice fields. One morning we'd planned to do a 8 km walk in the rice fields around Ubud. At km
3 we discovered a nice theahouse with stunning view. After a drink we decided to go back to town for a massage (how lazy is that!).
Next stop was Lovina beach. To get there we had to drive over the crater rim of Gunung Batur, which gave us marvelous views of the Gunung Batur area, which consists of a lake, a vulcanic cone and some other craters. from there we could descend to Lovina beach which is on the northern end of Bali. Lovina, another touristic, but quiet hot spot in Bali. We checked in a few km from the main area in a very decent bungalow right on the beach. Don't expect white sand beaches in Lovina.... all are dark, almost black sand beaches. Normally that would be ok, but the beach near our place was just covered in litter! The black beach near the resorts are much cleaner, so we stayed there to enjoy the sun and a sunset beach walk.
From Lovina, we biked to Banjar to visit a Hindu-Budddhist Temple and via the nice hill town of Munduk where we saw a nice waterfall, we got to the outer rim surrounding lake Bratan, from
which we had beautiful views of the lake and surrounding area. When we were on our way to the quiet and cold lake town of Candikunning, we had a puncture. We were lucky that we were in a tiny village, and people wher so friendly to point us out where the nearest "garage" was. After 10 minutes walking we found it and got our bike fixed. He replaced the whole inner tube for 30.000 IR (2.10 euro) and we could continue our way to the lake, to Candikunning. There it was so cold we had to actually use blankets at night!
The last day on our way back down south, we visited the apparently most photographed temple of Bali. Tana lot, which is amazingly build right on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the sea. Since we were early and passing by Kuta area anyways, we ended our trip with shopping for a bikini for Anna in Syminyak (she will need this in Molukku) and beaching in Kuta enjoying another sunset.
The last three days we have stayed down south for beaching. One of those nice beaches is Padang Padang, a small beach in between
cliffs and rocks, seeing an amazing sunset. That day we also visited the monkey inhabited Ulu Watu Temple, situated on a cliff as well. The view was even more spectacular then from Tana Lot. Saturday we went out with my sister and niece in Syminyak's trendy cafes an clubs such as Red Carpet Champagne Bar (recently opened by a friend), Living Room (old western guys with young Indonesian girls) and La Vida Loca (Bar dancing with a live band). Yesterday we went out for dinner with my sister, but since they didn't have acces to their car, the three of us went on 1 motorbike!
Later on this week (present date is august 1st) my brother and 2 nephews are coming as well (we won't be able to see them, because we will continue our travels to Sulawesi on tomorrow. We are now in Kuta beach...... when I uploaded this blog, I think we are going to the beach, so I better hurry!
Terima Kasih Banyak!
Floor and Anna
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Sue
non-member comment
Hi
Thanks for the blog update. I was thinking about you yesterday and wondering where you were. You have both been very busy over the last couple of weeks. Look forward to the next update. Sueh