Java.......HOLY SHIT!

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Java...........J-A-V-AGGGGGHHHHHHH! LOL This is the closest I have ever come to crawling out of my skin!!! Rats, garbage, stench, poverty, lack of education and corruption........what a place, LOL! Shortly before we left Bali we found out just how crazy the natural disasters where in Java and therefore preventing us from seeing much of the country. As soon as we arrived in Ketapong we got to the train station to head across to Jakarta.

Now anyone reading this knows what I look like, average height, shoulder length (depending on my last hair appointment) blonde/brown hair, somewhat tanned skin and a couple tattoos. Koop.....tall and blonde, blue eyes and some tattoos as well. At home, no big deal.......Java, YEAH RIGHT!!! I can say that I don''t think people here see many foreigners, and to Java is Muslim!! SERIOUS Muslim. Children were over the moon to chat, laugh and give high fives. Some of the men coldn't help but stare at Bryan's height and feel his arms and shoulders, ahahahhaaaaa. Everyone very very modestly dressed, the women only showing their faces and hands. Holy Shit where did we just land! As you can imagine even us being in tshirts and knee length shorts our tattoos and skin color was totally foreign to them. How about speaking English, heeeeheeeee....Thanks to this experience Koop and I will dominate in ANY game of shurraids.

The train.......Oh the train. First: Hoping it was going to get us to Jakarta. Second: Hoping that it wouldn't break down and Third: Clean. We got 2 outta 3.....SCORE! All I'm gunna say is mice!. The long train ride was through the night and in the early morning made for some wonderful scenery as the train goes through mostly farm land and rice fields. Can you imagine still carrying all of the rice that you hand cut, in HUGE bushels on top of your head! How about still guiding two ox through the rice paddies, barefoot, to plow the fields. There is still an incredible amount of use of livestock just for packing crops and doing manual labour. AMAZING!

Arriving in Jakarta long enough to grab our bags and hit another train station so we could go to a city called Bogor. The train station is Jakarta is crazy! Mostly the local trains in Jakarta are crazy! As we were awaiting our train out of town we had time to witness the mayhem of budget train travel in this city. The train comes whizzing by packed LIKE PACKED full of people, all standing, face to face, hanging out of the train......EVEN! Sitting on the top.......no joke, there where just as many people sitting on the top of every traincar as there where inside! That was incredible to see......I wish someone would have snapped a photo of the expressions on our faces.

Hoping that Bogor would be cleaner and allow us to enjoy the island of Java. HOWEVER........that was not to happen:0) Once we were in Bogor we did find a little repreve as there was a beautiful botanical garden in the midst of the city. Needless to say that was a full day of walking and hugging trees xoxox. There was an incredible orchid garden there as well, that Koop thought was kinda cool till I explained how expensive and hard to grow orchids are. Then he started to appreciate it ALOT more, typical boy! HA After our day there we decided that I had had enough of being stared at and we should head out. So we booked flights from Jakarta to leave the next day and flew to Singapore!!!!

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