Malaysia, new beginnings

Having taken the most empty plane we've both ever been on, we arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport number 1. Kuala Lumpur is a pretty incredible city and it's growing faster and faster. It's two airports that are side by side are growing at the same rate, and what used to be a humble little airport, to our surprise, was now two mega buildings connected by a train line, with massive duty free, entertainment, facilities etc. A lot of progress since the last time I was here.

No Bromo

From Semarang we took a train to Surabaya. Although we spent two nights there, I only took these two photos.

Surabaya?

Surabaya train station accidental selfie

We basically spent our time in Surabaya enjoying what city life had to offer. We stayed in a cheap 2-star chain hotel called Pop! to recover from all the rock solid beds and crappy showers we’d been experiencing so far. One of Surabaya’s calls to fame, apart from the recent terrorist bombing, is its ridiculously large shopping malls. We visited two of them. One we went to on our first night to have a food court dinner. I don’t think its really fair calling it a food court dinner because the food court is actually a bunch of pretty nice restaurants, just all in the one building instead of a long a street. The other mall we went to was where we spent most of our full day in Surabaya.

Semarang and so on

Following our escape from the Animal farm, we got on a local bus and had a very cheap and yet incredibly comfortable ride up to a city by the north coast of Java, Semarang. It seems that the town we were in, Ambawara, is somewhat considered part of Semarang, as the bus we were on was a city commuter bus – ie lots of standing room, air conditioned, and men have to sit down the back. We’d booked a hotel in Semarang already, so we conveniently could just stay on the same bus as it drove around the city and got off as close as possible to our hotel with a 20-30 minute walk afterwards.

Pimped out bicycles to ride around the square

After checking in to the hotel, we headed out for some dinner. Our hotel was actually in a bit of an awkward spot and we had a pretty hard time finding food

Indonesian Animals

Before leaving Ambarawa where we had, by most accounts, had a pretty good time; we had one last stop recommended to us to check out. A little place by the name of ‘Cimory on the Valley’. Those who haven’t been in Indonesia likely wouldn’t of heard of Cimory. Cimory is a widely popular milk brand in Indonesia. I’m not sure who they’re owned by or what else they own, but their wide spread of dairy products can be found in large supermarkets to small corner stores. Having been in Indonesia a little while now, we had definitely seen and consumed this brand, and a place called Cimory on the Valley sounds really nice.

Temples on the Hill

On our last night in Jogjakarta, we booked a so called travel car to an arbitrary place in the direction we wanted to travel – North. The travel car concept was something we learned from a good Samaritan who had previously given us a lift. He gave us magic words in Bahasa Indonesian to type into google to find cheap and direct minivans that would take us from door to door between close but not too close cities. Our destination was Ambarawa, a small village on a large lake almost directly north of Jogja, halfway to the North coast of Java.

The City of Culture

Water Castle

Other side of the castle viewed from the tower

Jogjakarta is well known as Indonesia’s cultural city. Indeed, there are many temples, mosques, local music, local art, and food for your enjoyment and consumption. On our first night in our hostel, we met a French couple who had also just arrived in Jogja. They were yet another couple on a long, somewhat endless, South East Asian vacation –but one of the first we were to meet. They had plans for the next day to rent a scooter and drive around the city just seeing what was around, heading in the direction of Prambanan, one of the two major temples of Jogja on every Top 10 list of the area.
We had organised precisely nothing so we decided to tag along.

Jak to Jog (Part three: Cianjur and Bandung)

View from the top of Puncak Pass

Jogjakarta is still some distance away from Bogor, but looking at a map there is a pretty obvious direction to go – east! East of Bogor are mountain ranges with a pass, followed by a few towns and the city Bandung. We were aiming for Bandung, but as we had heard that the pass over the mountains were quite scenic we weren’t too concerned if we didn’t make it all the way.

Jakarta to Jogjakarta (Part two: Mt Salak)

Arriving back at our new hostel after exploring waterfalls around Bogor, we found there were quite a number of local travellers who had checked in, as well as some other foreign tourists. One of the local travelers suggested to us foreign tourists that her friend would take us up to Mt Salak the next day, a nearby volcano, for just the cost of whatever a grab car would be. This sounded pretty good as we knew there was a shady guard post at the top that would charge foreigners whatever they felt like on the day, so local help would go a long way. The person offering this help wouldn’t be coming with us, as she had already booked the train for the next day for her and two other foreigners to another popular local destination. She offered for us to join her many times and kept telling us how surprising it was that she could book these train tickets for tomorrow, a public holiday. We declined however as we already had our minds set on seeing the volcano.

Making our way up the path to the crater

Jakarta to Jogjakarta to buy a fat hogjakarta (Part one)

I wrote this blog covering Jakarta and our trip to Jogjakarta and it was some seven thousand words long, so I broke it down into a few smaller pieces.

Overwhelmed by choice of food in a trendy shipping container street food court

Landing in Jakarta was pretty exciting and felt like a different world to what we had experienced over the last few weeks in the rest of Indonesia. Arriving at the airport we felt we had stepped into the future with modern, clean buildings, drinking fountains, and public transport with well advertised predetermined prices. We stuffed around a little at the airport trying to work out how to get into the city, and found that Jakarta suffers one of the many problems of Sydney – with two or more people, the train to the city is more expensive than a taxi. So we took a taxi to our hotel and checked in for the night.

All the way to LBJ

After arriving at Labuan Bajo late at night, we were glad we had the foresight to look for and book accommodation. As we walked to our hotel, the power on the whole town went out and we found ourselves walking a creepy backstreet in the dark.

The view from our second accomodation

We arrived at the hotel to find noone was around for check in. So we wandered back to the hostel we had seen earlier on the main street. The price we had seen of 70,000 rupiah per bed per night was for beds in a massive dorm room of 20 beds, but the room was relatively empty and we were pretty tired, so we crashed there.

Bus Treachery/Wretchery

Warning: The following post contains graphic imagery of being on a bus.

Mimi at Mojo, looking how she feels

After our experience on Moyo Island, we were pretty eager to get away. We were in the mood to get to Labuan Bajo, Flores, where we would be able to board a tour of Komodo National Park. Flores was just four legs away, ferry from Moyo to Sumbawa Besar, bus from Sumbawa Besar to Bima, bus from Bima to Sape, ferry from Sape to Labuan Bajo. We assumed that after the slow, loud, two hour ferry trip from Moyo, our troubles would be gone and we would be away free.

Tropical Paradise but reality knocks…

So we’re now in Pulao Mojo, or Moyo Island, and it’s really eye opening.

At a very long stop along the way where I wish I got food

After a long trip on a rusty bus that was shaking itself to pieces, we arrived in Sumbawa Besar – what I assume to be the capital of Sumbawa. Even in this bigger city, like most of Sumbawa, there is not much accommodation for travelers. We faffed around when we arrived, with google maps sending us to the wrong place and bemo drivers looking to make a quick buck, but eventually arrived at a homestay

Tears, Fears, Jeers, and Cheers

Mimi napping on the ferry to Lombok

I left you on my last blog with a bit of a cliffhanger, we were on the ferry from Bali to Lombok island, with some vague notion of heading to Kuta once getting to Lombok, hoping to escape the tourist crowds and the bad vibes that come with them. The ferry ride went along with no hassles, and did in fact go to Lembar in Lombok as we were expecting it to.

Bye bye Bali

2 full days of Bali is enough for now. After publishing my last blog, Mimi got up and we had our hotel breakfast. Banana pancake and fruit, very simple but tasty and the sugar hit was welcomed, what more can you ask of $10 a night accommodation?

Working the magic rice fields

We headed out in the morning and toward the monkey forest of Ubud, but actually it was away from the forest. I realised this after about 10 minutes but instead we saw a sign to the "Magic Rice Fields of Ubud". The sign pointed down a sketchy alleyway that eventually opened into rice fields.

Evacuation day

So we're here, and without a hitch.

Waiting for Dad to leave for the airport

Monday morning we were up at 5 am to leave home by 6 to make it to the airport in time for mum and dad's flight to Europe. Unfortunately our flight was 3 hours after theirs, and we were at the airport before their flight check in had opened - let alone ours. So we spent 8 hours at the airport waiting around, mum and dad's flight had left even before we had checked in, but eventually we got onto the plane at 4pm and had a decent flight here. The German girl sitting next to us sounded like she had the flu with an awful cough and sniffling that meant none of us could sleep.

Gerhardt or Go Home

Finally moved out of Canberra and set up shop back at mum and dad's. Got a fair bit to do to get stuff in order but am looking forward to leaving it all behind...wish I got rid of a bit more but mum and dad are happy for me to leave a fair amount of junk in their garage.

Not quite sure what to pack yet - it's tricky knowing how much and what I'll need.
I somehow need to choose some subset of this to fit in one bag that will suffice for a year...