It was a confusing couple days because unsure of what to do next. We planned on going to Sumatra, but there was an earthquake there a few days before, and the roads are notorious for being awful all over the island. We weren’t sure exactly what to do in Sumatra, or where to go, and while looking up the ferry we found out about a few other options. They were having sales left and right, probably due to the low season and the next day we were on our way to Tanjung Priok, the Jakarta port area. What we booked was a 28 hour boat trip to Batam, a small island not too far from Singapore, renowned for golf and sex tourism. We didn’t go there for either, but to jump on a 20 minute ferry over to Singapore, thereby completely bypassing Sumatra. It’s a shame that we didn’t go, but none of our plans are set in stone, and the spur of the moment decision to jump on a boat in a first class cabin seemed like the best idea at the time. For 50$, it didn’t bleed us dry, and from the few reviews of the boat we read, you definitely didn’t want to end up on the cattle class. The night before we left I got drunk at a “bar” on the side of the road. It was nothing more than a fridge, a tarp and a couple of benches, but the beer was nice and cold, and a jolly Papuan guy there on business kept buying me beers and trying to have a conversation.

The boat ride was nice, and to Helen’s liking, it was very smooth sailing all the way. I don’t think I’ve ever been in first class for anything but it was the only way to get a private cabin, and really outside of that it was only the meal time that seemed very special. They had about 10 stewards around our table while we ate pretty decent Indonesian grub like spicy fish, we had about 4 different forks each. We spent most of the time messing around in our cabin or reading on the deck, but there really wasn’t so much to do. The ride was nice anyway, and soon enough we were making our way through immigration after a 20 minute ferry across to Singapore. After what seemed like a long time traveling already, we were just about to change countries for the first time.

In high spirits, we got on a 7 hour train. It was packed and incredibly uncomfortable but we were happy and we didn’t mind so much when relentless salesmen would leave their junk on your lap in hope you’ll change your mind after a while, a sales tactic that might actually work in the west. The train had frequent stops over in small towns, and at one of them I bought a meal from little old ladies walking next to the train. I misheard them when they said the price and dropped about 10 times too much out the window. They thought I had dropped one of the bills by accident and ran after the departing train to give it back to me. At one point, a chubby slow witted teenager sat down next to Helen and started touching her clothes and her hair. I know the girl was sweetly retarded because this old man who was sitting across the way made the universal “she’s stupid” sign with a finger on the head. I ended up connecting with the old man, helping him to get his heavy bags out from the overhead storage, sharing a glance whenever something weird would happen. We got to Probolinggo pretty late, and haggled the price of a rickshaw (well, a basket in front of a bicycle) down to something reasonable all the way to a recommended hotel.

Helen managed to get a picture of the smiling old man as he pulled off in his own rickshaw. People in the street were shouting “Hello mister!” with no intention of selling us anything. At one point I caught the gaze of this woman on the side of the street. She was so surprised to see a white man that it stopped her mid-conversation to point at me. When I waved back, she let out a gasp and looked all embarrassed. Very cute. The room we got wasn’t too expensive and nice and cool after a long day. We realised that we’d actually travelled by bus, boat and train all in the same day, and we were exhausted, not to mention my back was really sore from the uncushioned train seats.

We spent a lazy day in the town and booked our Mount Bromo trip with the guest house we were staying at. We ended up getting ripped off quite a bit but set out on these windy mountain roads in the early evening. The town in Bromo was pretty beautiful already. For the first time in a while we actually had to get under some covers because it was nice and cool in the moutains. We had to wake up at 3am to get a jeep ride to the top of a mountain to catch the sunset over Bromo. We ended up leaving at 5am and we were packed in with a bunch of my greatest nightmare: Canadians. The sunrise was very ho-hum, I’m fairly cynical when it comes to sunrises, most of the time I’d rather have the extra sleep instead. However, it seemed to be mostly so we’d get a clear view of the volcanoes because the whole area goes up in the clouds very early. After way too long of standing around and taking the same photos as everyone else we got back in the jeep and were driven to the base of mount Bromo. About 30 men were trying to sell us a horse ride to the top but we decided to hike up there instead, not an easy feat. We got to the top fairly quickly and stood in awe at the amazing views that obviously do not translate right in the photos. I started realising that I was on the rim of the crater of a fucking volcano and I was frozen in place with my fear of heights while Helen took a leisurely stroll past the fenced area. “I think you can go the whole way around”, she said. People were selling flower bouquet offerings to throw into the crater.

We skipped going back to Probolinggo and went straight to Yogyakarta (often called Jogja), a fairly big city near the centre of Java. It felt pretty good to be in a big city again and we embarassingly succombed to some of the spoils, including going shopping and eating at Pizza Hut. Everyone kept telling us we have to check the Batik exhibition and when we finally gave in and had a look, it was nothing but a shitty store, the art wasn’t even so great. A day or two later we checked out Borobudur, this huge temple at the edge of town.

It was very impressive but the heat and the sun were bearing down on us so hard that we might have hurried through a bit too quickly. Numerous people took photos of us because we were white and exotic, it was the last time we’d get so much attention for a while. We had to walk through this maze of little stalls on the way out of Borobudur and I saw a Hot Water Music t-shirt at one of them, weird. The bus back to town dropped us off in the wrong place (we had decided to make it there by ourselves instead of booking a tour) and we had to walk around for quite some time. We were done with Jogja.

This sounds like the perfect way to get scammed, but we end up finding a nice, very affordable room. We’d continue this method of finding accommodation for the rest of Indonesia. It’s best to just end up in an area where there’s a few hotels and just take your pick depending on your budget and capacity or willingness to haggle. That night we go out to eat too late and only tourist restaurants are still serving food. We end up spending a bit less than double what we paid for a room on a meal and we buy 4 large beers we plan on drinking on the veranda outside our room. We drink 1.5 before passing out, exhausted.

We wake up all sweaty and sticky in Ubud. I love hot showers but they don’t exist anymore and already I don’t miss them too much. We get served some breakfast that was included in the room price, a delicious banana-encrusted pancake and a bowl of fruit. We later find out they were made by a chubby woman who walks around the yard topless. There is an unseen oinking pig nearby and constantly present chicken and bats swooping around in the evening but they don’t bother us too much, it’s a nice place.

The way that most Balinese accommodation seems to work is that you have little huts scattered around a lush green courtyard, they’re usually called Guest Houses and unless you’re willing to splurge for a hotel they’re your only option. The difference in price usually comes down to how dirty it is – This place in Ubud had an ant colony in the filthy bathroom, most bathrooms are pretty awful – or all the little extras they throw in, like swimming pools, A/C, hot showers (or showers at all instead of just a mandi), wi-fi..

We set out to explore the town, only to find out we’d seen most of it the day before. We stop for lunch at this lovely place by a river where we sit cross legged on a cushion and if we stay still we can pretend we don’t see all the trash scattered around the river bed. After lunch we walk by this traditional assembly complete with drum & bell music and colourful head gear. Right after that I spot a sign that says “Rice paddy walk” and we set out on a quieter, prettier side street for about 20 minutes until we reach said paddies. It’s nice, and we take pictures, but the rice paddies would stop being so amazing pretty soon since they’re so damn common a sight. We walk back to town and make our way to the hotel to have a shower as I am completely drenched in sweat like every outing that lasts more than 5 minutes. I would end up getting used to that too, but the very limited amount of t-shirts I packed would soon seem like a bad idea.

We need to do the laundry and send a few items back in the mail so we set out to the post office with a backpack containing both. On the way over we walk on a quiet street full of rabid looking dogs and find a “Laundry Service” place along the way, We persuade the lady to finish our clothes by 10am instead of 4pm because all the signs for shuttles and busses out of town we’ve seen all leave at 11am. The post office is closed so we have to come back early in the morning. We get handed this flyer for the “Black Beach” restaurant that advertises an all night long Happy Hour. We go there for dinner and find out it’s a lie and the beers are barely discounted. The place is nice though, the lower level has black sand all over the bar area with these white rocks you have walk on to get to the bar or the toilet. Very ritzy and not exactly what we’re looking for, but barely more expensive than the warung that are everywhere and generally filthy (but fun!).

In the morning we send off our things by mail which is incredibly expensive, close to 50$ for only 5kg! We then pick up our freshly ironed socks and t-shirts and set out to catch the bus with our backpacks that now only weigh close to 10kg. There is a brief panic when we realise we’ll get to the bus station after 11, then relief when we find out the bus is departing at 11:30, and for the same price as the cheapest advertised we’ve seen it anywhere. We jump on a half-packed tourist shuttle towards our own black beach, Lovina.

LOVINA

It must be a very quiet time for the tourism industry in Bali and we wouldn’t have known until we reached Lovina. The first instance when we realise this comes seconds after we step off the bus. They shut the gates behind us, and this company stooge who talks too fast informs us that they’re giving us a free lunch and a free night’s stay, all because “the bus was expensive”. It soon becomes clear that the lunch is a tiny half portion of nasi goreng and that the room is the most awful thing we’ve seen so far, it has tiny twin beds and a barely functioning fan and outside communal bathrooms that don’t lock and I’m certain have never been cleaned. While he’s showing us this, mister fast talker keeps mentioning the very cheap upgrades they have on offer, and he keeps acting like we’d never even consider the free room, clearly underestimating our thriftiness. We set out to explore the nearby beach and the meter or so of grey sand beach isn’t much to look at in high tide, but the fishing boats are kind of cute. We hurry to catch a swim before it starts raining and the warm water isn’t too refreshing but it’s nice anyway. This is when we’re confronted by the second evidence of the low season: Persistent motherfucking hawkers.

This lady starts talking to us and introduces herself and her shop assistants, and they’re all very nice and they suggest we go eat over at their warung and we’re still hungry from our tiny lunch so we agree. We shoo away the few wandering sales people offering  trinkets and jewelry and massages and.. magic mushrooms? Jesus. And we tuck in our fairly impressive meals, big chunk ‘o bland-ish fish for me, gado-gado for Helen. This is when it gets tricky. The main woman who had started the whole thing grabs a stool and makes her pitch. She’s got a big bag full of shitty clothes and she’s determined to get rid of them. We’re halfway through our meals and our polite refusals are getting ignored. She focuses on Helen and gets her to agree that a sarong looks nice. Then she really gets into it.

- You like? Very nice, 200 000 (20$). Very good price.

- Oh, yeah it’s nice, but no thanks.

- Okay you name your price.

- I don’t…

- Just say a price, it’s okay.

- Um..

- Say a price.

At this point, Helen looks over and whispers “Help me out here” through her teeth, I’m too dumb to realise this means “get this woman off me” and not “name a price, I absolutely want this shitty sarong”. A cat jumps on a nearby stool and starts miaowing uncontrollably, we say “Oh please, not you too”. The warung owner finally swats it away (the cat, not the woman). I decide to help.

- Oh okay honey.. Say miss, how about 100 000?

- Okay we have a deal (holds her hand out) We have a deal. Thank you.

- Oh no, I..

- It’s my first sale of the season, it’s good luck, good luck for me and good luck for you.

- Oh, we don’t have enough money on us.

- It’s okay, I’ll come find you, you just hold on to it.

This carries on until Helen finally gets her to hold on to the sarong until we come back to the beach tomorrow. We try to get as far away as possible from that particular beach in the morning in hope that we won’t bump into her again. We succeed. We walk across town and these two young guys on mopeds tell us they can get a good room for us for 80 000. We hop on the back of their bikes to the place 5 minutes down the road. It was bullshit of course and the woman tells us the room can be ours for something like 150 000. As we’re walking away she whispers “Okay, fine, 100!” and gives us the key to what is probably the nicest place we’ve stayed in yet.

Even the dingier rooms we’ve seen in Bali all have this very ornate wood bed frames and windows, this place has massive carved wooden doors that give a satisfying medieval squeek when you fling them open. They have a fancy pool we check out for a couple hours but it’s also barely refreshing and dull and generally out of place. The two moped guys are hanging around and they want more of our money but they’re a bit nicer about it. One suggests diving, which is too expensive since we don’t have any kind of certification, but also snorkeling, which sounds like good fun. The other guy suggests we go to a big event in town today: a cock fight. I’m so surprised he suggests this that I agree to go. Now I don’t condone this kind of thing, they are terrible examples of animal cruelty and I hate to support it, but we were across the world, it was happening anyway, and as horrible as it may sound, I was curious.

He drives us up the hill to a residential alley that has a few houses and an abandoned lot that looks like a former temple. We go towards the back of a row of houses where a fairly impressive tent has been set up. About fifty men are sitting around the main arena, chompin’ on fruit and drinking little water cups. About another twenty men are in the center of the ring, most likely checking out the chickens, getting them angry, speculating, something like that. After about fifteen minutes of this, everyone seems to be ready. The fattest man in the place, whom we assume is some kind of boss man, directs us to two metal seats and the thing gets under way. Everyone starts screaming.. something about betting in Indonesian and people flail their hands around.

To make the whole thing even more sinister or maybe just quicker, they strap these blades to the back of the chicken’s feet so that they can stab the other bird on the way down when they jump over each other, I think. The guy sitting next to me seems to be in charge of the blades. He has this dedicated little brown leather pouch where he keeps his arsenal of what looks to be half of a scissor, but maybe they’re all made for this exact purpose. I wonder if there’s a different size to all of them and the main event gets under way. The moped guy who drove us over keeps asking me who I think will win and I get it right most of the time, but I didn’t want to bet. Fights go on for a couple of hours and about fifteen chickens go through, half of them dying, of course. Only as we walk back towards the town that we start questioning if the whole thing was legal. We assume it’s not, but on the way to the snorkeling in the morning I see these two guys just fighting two chicken out on the beach at 8am in front of everyone, making us think it’s grey area, at best.

The snorkeling is great, we go on these little Jukung-like boats and they drive us out to a coral reef where we see all kinds of colourful fish, all for a pretty low price. We rush back to the hotel where we have 20 minutes to shower and pack and jump on a cheap public minibus towards the harbor on the west end of the island. We’ve decided to leave Bali on that day. Things had gotten progressively better in Bali, but the whole thing seemed a bit too touristy, too aggressive, too scummy.. We have a lot of things to see and only 30 days in Indonesia and both agree that spending longer in a place we just don’t really like isn’t worth it. We pay something like 40 cents for the hour long ferry that takes us across to Java.

Extremely tired, or at least tired of going through airports, screenings, shuttles, take your shoes off, belt off, what is the purpose of your stays, but we finally get to our final (flying) destination, Bali, Indonesia.

Right off the bat we get scammed. These two guys with official looking shirts and badges and name tags that say “PORTER” grab our bags before we could get to them and usher us through the customs. We go along with it and they start getting suspicious when we say we don’t need to change any money. Then they ask for a tip, not too politely, and when I lazily take my wallet out, they keep shouting “the blue, the blue”. This is where Helen jumps in, and since I had no idea what the currency was worth (she only knew a tiny bit more), she tells them that no, they will not get a “blue” each, but rather a “brown” and they can split that, and we never asked them to carry our bags in the first place and we need our money and that’s just that. So rather than getting the equivalent of 5$ each to walk 10 meters with our frankly fairly light bags, they get about 50 cents each.

Then it gets worse. It’s about 9pm, and since we woke up at about 4am without being able to get back to sleep (our sleep schedules were still fucked and would be for a few more days), we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than a beer and a bed. We start heading across the airport parking and we continually get harassed by taxi drivers who won’t take no for an answer. We are looking for a fabulous “Bemo” bus, that will let us be amongst the locals while saving a bunch of money, but it is nowhere to be found. We go up and down the main drag with no success and we finally stop to buy a drink and ask the shop lady where that famous Bemo might be. She points in a direction and says “about 10 minutes” we agree that’s not too bad and set out on the main street. This is the first time we’ve seen this, but the main street, right outside the airport, is actually full of people, bars, cars, shops.. Life begins right over the parking lot, compared to the usual dead zone encountered outside of any other major international airport.

Ten minutes turns to twenty, thirty, forty and still we cannot find that fucking bus. In fact, we haven’t even seen any buses go by at all, and walking around drenched in sweat, carrying an array of backpacks, clutching a Lonely Planet book makes you an attractive target. Every god damn taxi that goes by honks at us, seemingly saying “HEY HI I’M A TAXI YOU ARE A CUSTOMER” and some even stop in the middle of traffic to insist that we ride with them. Absolutely no one will tell us the truth concerning the bus, cute little tiny women and grown men carrying babies on death mopeds alike are trying to get us to spend money on them, somehow. After about an hour or walking on the sidewalk that has chunks broken through to the sewer below here and there, seeing bats swoop by, and having no idea which town we are in or even which street we’ve been walking on, we give in and hail a cab. Again, Helen gathers up some strength from god knows where and haggles the price of the cab down from 50 000 to 30 000 rupiah and we collapse into the back of the air conditioned cab. It turns out we’ve almost walked to the place we wanted to stay, but in the maze of unnamed alleys and “gangs” with a million shops and stalls that all look the same, there is absolutely no way we would have found it. In fact, we got lost the morning after after just walking to the beach.

We wake up to the sound of palm trees being chopped down outside our door and set out to explore the area. Kuta (and the almost identical Legian, where we’re actually staying) is a terrible shithole. Whitey is everywhere, and when he’s not a balding, crispy surfer with dreadlocks in his late thirties, he’s a pasty 50 year old Australian couple, shopping for ugly undersized beer brand undershirts. Hawkers are everywhere, and the nightmare from the night before starts again. Transport? Taxi? Rent moped? Dvd? Come in the shop! Check this out! We can’t even eat two mouthfuls of breakfast without someone recommending we check out “New Moon” on badly pirated dvd. We were already pretty certain we weren’t staying there, but 20 minute walk to check our surroundings has solidified whatever opinion we had and we race to pack our things and find the bus station out of town. Of course, we can’t find the station either, and we end up biting the bullet and going to one of the many tourist information stalls to get out of town. The last bus has left already, but they make a quick call and while we wait for someone to pick us up, we have a nice chat and a cool drink and things are looking up  and finally this grumpy lookin’ fella with a white van picks us up to take us to Ubud, a town past Denpasar, about 1 hour away, all for a 10% surcharge (1$).

By the way, we’ve forgotten our camera behind in Iceland. After a few days of hectic traveling, we accepted that we weren’t going to get it back for a while and that until we could find a store that sold cameras at an acceptable price, we should just make do with our cellphone cameras, so many apologies for the crappy picture quality. We have a new camera now but for the next 4-5 posts the photos won’t be great. The only photo for this post will be the one of the celebratory drink we got as soon as we were convinced we were finally getting out of Kuta.

We got to Hawaii after leaving our friends and jobs in Melbourne. We spent a fairly uneventful few days in Sydney (went to the Opera House, missed a plane, got drunk in a hostel bar on cocktail jugs whilst laughing at all the flashpackers) and then we flew to Hawaii.

After getting through the seriously retro airport, we made our way towards Waikiki, where we had booked a hostel room. We got breakfast at the most depressing restaurant chain in america (the name escapes me) and promptly fell asleep on the beach. We checked in, slept some more, and went exploring. We soon realised Waikiki was the most depressing, fat tourist, shopping mall, gigantic hotel resort-ey place in the whole state and that we had to leave as soon as possible. Also, we couldn’t believe how cheap everything seemed to be. When I  say everything, of course I mean booze. Sure tomatoes were 4$ each, but 750ml of vodka for 12$? Americans sure know how to party. We ended up spending one alright night out in Waikiki after finding the one cool bar where they sold “hundreds” of beer on tap (I counted about 40, tops) and overpriced fusion food, stuff like avocado rocket tuna pizza.

The following day, we booked a room from a pay phone and then jumped on the public transport towards the North shore of Ohau, something that was definitely not allowed according to signs everywhere that said that luggage was not allowed on busses. Undeterred, we boarded as if we hadn’t noticed, and the driver warned us about the bags getting in the way but let us on. An hour later we were near Shark’s Cove, past the town of Haleiwa.

This new place was amazing, we couldn’t believe we wasted so long in Waikiki. A nice old couple rented out a room to us, there was a supermarket 5 minutes away, a fast food truck next to our place and a beautiful little lagoon place right across the road. To top everything off, they were expecting the biggest waves they’d seen in the last 20 years or so. They were supposed to be a dubious sounding 40 feet high, and shit, on the last day, maybe they were.

One thing that I wasn’t expecting to be so great in Hawaii was the food. Combine more traditional Islander food tendencies with a strong Japanese influence and a natural American fondness for meat and fast food and you’re getting close. The fast food truck next to the place we were staying was stocking these amazing meals for around 5$ each and we had some ramen at a place where people would queue up for half an hour and got some fat greasy burgers to help kill a hangover.

The only hawaiian dish I was let down by was the ubiquitous Spam Musubi, a thick, salty slice of fake canned pork on top of a  big ball of rice. Sounds good, but the taste just didn’t do it for me. The one surprise however was the shaved ice everyone seems to be enjoying. Tons of flavours, and although I expected them to taste like the shitty ice cones I grew up with, the flavour was blended perfectly amongst the soft smooth slush. It kills me we had only one.

Soon enough it was Christmas day, and we made the most of it, with massive turkey & ham sandwiches, kilties (pigs in a blanket) and a few other side dishes. We packed our bags, said goodbye to the house kitten we had grown quite fond of – we nicknamed him the “Prown” after the aliens in District 9 – and we hitched a ride with the owner’s stoner son to the airport.

After landing in the Newark to catch our Montreal connection, we waited…

So it’s raining pretty hard right now in Yogyakarta, and we were supposed to check out the night market this evening, but to be honest, we were at the day market today, and we’ll be here for another two or three more days, so screw it, I’ll have a few beers, listen to the rain, and give you all a quick update, and a backdated post too, if I have time. Oh, yes, backdated posts are photos and stories we gathered up on the way from Melbourne to Denpasar (see cutsey little map above) that we didn’t have time to put up yet. We should have a new post for every one or two yellow “stops”.

We are in central Java right now, and it’s pretty good indeed. I’ll cook up a similar map of South East Asia when I have a minute to show you what we’ve been up to in these here parts. Anyway, on with the fun.