Hello there again,
It's a good thing I feel like writing today as not only am I due a blog update, i'm sitting on an Air Asia flight to Malaysia and have 2 1/2 hours to type away. This is my 13th flight since leaving the UK nearly a year and four months ago and they're beginning to feel like the only piece of familiarity in my life, like little pockets of time that connect one adventure portal to another. Like I say, we're leaving Indonesia today and heading for the bustling city of Kuala Lumpar with its considerably larger population than i'm used to of 1.5 million.
It's been a busy few weeks and we've squeezed lots of things into our time in Indo, we did cut it slightly short though by making the last minute decision to cut out a visit to Jakarta and fly straight from Yogjakarta (central Java) to KL instead. Apparently Jakarta is a bit of a rank city, over populated, over polluted, over developed and has on going politcal tensions with the Malays making it not the safest place at the moment so every day saved now is an extra one down the line later in the Thai islands :)
So going back to Bali...
We finished off the holiday part of our time there by filling the days with a combo of relaxation, good food and more shopping. A salon called 'Smart' got to know us quite well because of our frequent visits for manicures, pedicures, facials and massages...and I know it's extravagant but I just had to try the '20 finger' full body massage where you're 'served' by 2 therapists! (Was good but maybe a bit too much going on to relax!).
We also visited some great little Indonesian restaurants in Kuta, one called Keputat and the other The Clay Pot, we both tried traditional dishes which were awesome...even though I did order way too much by mistake :/
As the week drew to a close we had left some of the best stuff till last by taking a walk down to the beach for the famous Legian sunset which we viewed from a local cafe institution called Double Six (the chicken satay was excellent here). In the evening we utilised those free VIP tickets we got from the local guy at Gado Gado the week before and got dressed up to pay a visit to a couple of clubs, one called Cocoon and the other Bacio. Much to our delight the alcohol for invitation guests was free and the music (house, of course) and entertainment was great.
Our last night was equally good, another good meal at an italian restaurant (and run by one) and then a live gig by Aussie Gold Coast band Tjuana Cartel who rocked it. I'd been meaning to go to their gig when I lived in Surfers but couldn't make it so was pretty happy to see them live on the beach at Ku De Ta in Bali! It was our 3rd trip to Ku De Ta in a week but justified because I think it's the best bar i've ever been to...ever.
The following morning was the usual rush of packing, checking out and ordering a taxi. We were headed for the Perama office (local tour operator) who were shipping us over to the Gili Islands just off the coast of Lombok, the next island over to the east.
Anthony recommended the Gilis and he wasn't wrong to do so, the islands are tiny, just three spots of land made up of white beaches, palmy coconut groves and wooden bungalows but it was a little paradise. We were staying on Gili Trawangan, the busiest one (even though you could hardly call it busy) and during our three days there we took a boat over to Gili Air (2nd busiest) which was practically deserted. God knows what quiet Gili Meno was like!
I'll try not to bore you with the finer details but after some hunting we found some good priced accomodation in the heart of the village amongst the locals and got down to the business of eating fresh fish and drinking beer, very important obviously.
Tina and I had just been talking about her extremely strong fear of animals and how it had begun to affect her enjoyment out here in Asia when something of particularly bad timing happened. We'd just got back from dinner when I strode into our bathroom to use the bin, I hadn't bothered turning on the light but as I placed my water bottle on the floor something dark and large moved on the wall about 3 inches from my hand.
Jumping back I slammed my hand onto the switch to reveal the biggest spider I have ever had the misfortune to come across in my life, it was greeny/black and large, and that's all the information I needed to know to get the hell out of there.
It's fair to say that I don't deal with spiders very well. Snakes? Fine. Rats? Fine. But spiders? Not fine. I screamed nice and loud (as expected) and began to break out in a cold sweat. what ensued was half an hour of chaos which resulted in me running out to the village and grabbing a random local who didn't speak English and dragging him into our room until he removed the offender. It was 11pm which made me feel extra bad as he had to wake up his mates who were all asleep in preparation for their Ramadan worship at 3am but we were both near hysterical and they had no choice.
In the end we had three Indonesian guys locked up in the bathroom with a broom and a series of banging, crunching and yelling noises ensued. Then it went quiet...
Eventually they emerged with a broken mirror, destroyed picture frame and the dead spider. Needless to say the whole event didn't go down too well with Tina who was already feeling extrememly fragile from all the stray cats and dogs outside.
I thought after that we'd be fine but the following night I walked in to find a big fat cockcroach scuttling across her
pillow.
While on the Gilis we also met the French and Italian Stefan and Alassandro who invited us to their hotel's private beach to watch the sun set behind Bali's three volcanoes. It was nice, a campfire, beers and lots of travellers lying back and enjoying the live music. The circumstances how we met those two was pretty funny...basically...I stole their double stuff Oreos.
We were walking around the island and stopped off at a bungalow bar to indulge in a smoothie when I spotted the unopened pristine packet of goodness hiding underneath our table. Like any normal person I assumed they'd be left or forgotten about and seeing as i've I have a healthy addiction to double stuff Oreos helped myself lol. You can imagine my profuse apologies when Stefan came wondering over looking for them eek!
Once we left the Gilis we had a pretty uneventful stopover in Lombok, although beautiful and much more deserted than Bali we were staying in a bit of a ghost town and some of the people I saw were more than weird.
From Lombok we began the long and slightly painful 3 days of travel back over to Bali and across onto Java. I think we did something like 36 hours of travel in 3 days. The only plus from this trip was meeting Patrick and Agnes from Austria who became our new buddies. I was very happy to discover that Patrick is a fellow kitesurfer at the same level who loves to do kite surfing holidays with his mates and extended an open invite my way to join them. Bring on Greece, Spain, Tahiti and of course Hawaii again!! :)
While crossing islands on the ferry the local boys seemed to have a fixation with our small group and started taking out their mobile phones and trying to get inconspicious snaps of us. It really began to piss me off (i'm sure the blonde hair doesn't help) so I used my sarong as a headscarf so only my pair of mirrored aviators popped out of the burka like slit on my face. They probably thought I was taking the piss out of them oops but no-one was getting a photo of me without my permission!
Our destination was Mount Bromo for a sun rise hike and eventually our minibus was climbing up the mountainside in the pitch black towards The Cemero Inn, our accommodation for the night. Unfortunately for us, the acommodation was a big pile of crap.
This place was more suited for a family of bed bugs than a bunch of weary and travel tired backpackers and Tina and I couldn't stop laughing hysterically when the local guys showed us to our "room". A cell in Alcatraz would've eminated more warmth and invitation than the 4 square feet infront of us. We both popped a sleeping pill and set the alarm for 3.30am, it was the only way to get us through.
The actual walk was really enjoyable, Patrick, Agnes, Tina and I layered up against the cold and began shuffling forward into the darkness with our torches. We didn't have a guide and took a wrong turn resulting in a decent sized detour and nearly missing the sun rise, the very reason we were there(!) but With nothing but grey dust around us in every direction we were lucky to stumble upon the right route and once I knew the summit was acheivable pushed forward despite having to shed layer after layer of clothing to compensate for the constantly increasing temperature.
Determined not to miss this I stroad on ahead and pulled myself up the 'stairs of death' a near vertical climb to Bromos summit while shouting words of encouragement behind me such as "Nearly there guys! Come on, only another......238 steps to go!!!". Anyway, we all made it in the end and it was beautiful, a great start to the day.
There wasn't any time to hang about in Bromo, by 9am we were back in the minibus and continuing west towards our next stop, Yogjakarta. Yogja gets great reviews in the lonely planet and is depicted as a bit of an arty town with its roots based in traditional batik work and a scattering of restaurants worth sampling.
We spent three days in total there and although I didn't get to see the famous bird market nor the Kraton (main historical attraction!) because of bad planning we did get alot of vital planning done as well as odd jobs and decided to skip the visit to Jakarta and jet off straight to KL from where we were.
Highlights were going to Via Via for dinner (twice because it was so good) with Patrick and Agnes, visiting two famous and beautiful temples (the buddist Borobudur and hindu Prambanan) and haggling a guy down from 50,000 rupiah to 15,000 for the cutest little leather belt pouch ever.
No idea what to use it for but it's sooooooooo cute.
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