The Lost Chapters

Well… it has definitely been WAY too long since I have updated… (so for those of you who are actually interested, I apologize). Its just gotten harder and harder to make myself sit alone in front of my computer, when every day I’m invited to go and do something. When I have to choose between going out and having all this fun, or writing a blog, of course I choose fun. So by going and doing all these things, I don’t have time to write, but at the same time, if I freed up all my time to write in here, I’d have nothing to write about. I think its like a paradox or something. Yeah… I’ve heard that word before somewhere..

Anyways, I really haven’t written in this thing for ages, so I have no idea where to start… well… to tell the truth, there are two blog entries I’ve done before and just haven’t posted, but the most recent one is about my time in bali… well… more specifically just Nyepi.. :S ok so what else…

Rocky’s Birthday:
I bought him a cake and some of his fav red label, he invited a bunch of his mates to his dad’s warung for dinner. There was prolly about 20 of us, it was heaps of fun, they all LOVED uno, surprise surprise, and there’s some pretty funny photos of Sat who passed out on a table. Oh and I got to catch up with Arie and Kadek again! They both look so different! But then I guess so do I.

The rest of Bali:

Well… I didn’t really do that much in Bali, but I didn’t go there for all the touristy things, I went to see Nyepi, n to celebrate Rock’s birthday. Still had heaps of fun, went to the beach and spent heaps of time hanging out at his friends kos. It was a pretty good kos, good sized room and kamar mandi dalam, so cheap, and seemed more like the kind of kos I wanted. Friendly people, all around the same age, just had heaps of fun hanging out there. I was already thinking about moving kos before I went to bali, but this made me want to move out even more.

Well… I think thats about all for Bali… I can’t really remember much… mainly just hung out with Rock and his mates… it sucked a bit tho cause he said he’d be finished uni at about 11 am everyday but it turned out to be around 2-3 pm… which kinda sucked at first, but after a couple of days wasn’t too bad, went to the beach or shopping, or just stayed home and played with Koko, he’s so funny. Just reminds me, his birthday is coming up.

Back in Jogja:

Kinda sad to come back, but at the same time, it felt like I had spent long enough in Bali. So back in Jogja, some friends were talking about going to KL for a weekend cause the tickets were cheap as, 600,000Rp return. I said I didn’t really wanna go cause I couldn’t afford it. But after much convincing, by Cheryl, I ended up agreeing to go along, I also realized that I’d be getting paid twice before I left. (wait a min, this KL talk was before bali! Haha… geeze Brendan! Get it right! Cause I didnt’ think I’d have enough money for both) 

Anyways, I started looking for a kos, and needed to hurry, cause if I was going to KL, I had a week to find a new place. I  didn’t tell anyone at my old kos (except Karan) that I wanted to move.. The first day I searched for about  7 hours! I was so tired, and my butt so sore from being on my bike all day. But I found a couple of good kos. There was one in particular that I liked, but I couldn’t move in until the 2nd of April (I can’t believe I’ve only been here 3 and half weeks!! Feels like I moved AGES ago) anyway, I decided it was the one I wanted, the room is big, and it has KMD and its 250,000Rp less per month. So I paid a deposit and was going to wait to move in. The only problem being that I had to be out of my old kos by the 28th of March, so I was gonna have to find somewhere to stay for a few days. The good thing about the Malaysia trip was that we were leaving on the 26th and getting back on the 30th.. So I only had to find somewhere to stay for two nights. I ended up asking Karan if I could move all my stuff to his room and camp there.

Kuala Lumpur:

The KL trip happened to fall right around exam week, bad timing… but hey, who could refuse such a cheap trip! Luckily our Percakapan lecturer is super nice and she let us do the exam a week later. The flight was actually from Solo to KL return, so we had to make our way to solo, thinking we were running late, and being as lazy as we are, we really didn’t want to bother with catching the train or a bus there, so we decided to catch a taxi there! Haha. It was the most expensive taxi ride I’ve ever taken (in Indonesia) it took about an hour, solo is around 75km from Jogja. But all up it cost us 50,000Rp each, yep a total of  $6AUD.

We arrived in Solo earlier than expected, because the busses and trains take much longer, and with not much to do, so we just found a place and ate while waiting til we could enter. The guy at customs or immigration or whatever really started to piss me off.. With the visas we have, we are, for the time being, technically Indonesian and therefore are supposed to fill out a local “entry / exit permit” but the guy insisted on us filling out an international one. We are indonesian enough to have to pay the 1,000,000Rp exit fee (which we are able to get waved :D ) but not Indo enough to fill out the local form. It wasn’t that much of a big deal, but the way Phil said it, it made it sound like we were going to have trouble if we filled out the wrong forms, which made me frustrated when the immigration dude wouldn’t listen. Anyways, it turned out when we got to KL that we didn’t even need an entry permit! Gah!

I think we ended up getting in at around 9 or 10 pm Wednesday night… so we just ate and slept. I basically only had three days there, cause my flight home was at 7am on Sunday. Day one we went to the Patronus towers and did a bit of shopping. The towers are pretty amazing, definitely worth seeing, especially at night when they have all the lights on, just beautiful. We were a little disappointed tho, because you can’t go all the way to the top, visitors are only allowed to the sky bridge. At the beginning you gotta watch this video which basically just says how awesome Patronus is and how they help the community and the world and all that, seems a bit ironic, considering its a fuel company, so I’m sure is somehow contributing to global warming. But yeah, the view was awesome, and its free! Which I was really surprised about. I thought the whole building would be offices or something, but in the bottom its actually a shopping centre, so we wondered around there for a bit, no idea what else we did for the day. Haha

Before we left for KL we ran into Genta at Parsley, he was excited as to hear we were going n he suggested we go to Genting highlands, he’d never been, but heard it was awesome. Its like a theme park, but its on top of a mountain! We caught the bus there, along the way I noticed a building at the top of this huge mountain n I thought it would be amazing to go there, after we kept getting higher and higher, I realized that was where we were going! Genting has the worlds longest cable car (I think), and the worlds largest hotel. The cable car was pretty awesome, nice views, but every now and then it’d be a lil freaky as you realized how high above the ground you were, only suspended by one wire. The ride takes about 10mins, so there is plenty of time to freak out along the way. But its amazing there, (I know, I keep saying everything is amazing! ) but you’re literally in the clouds! Its a bit cold there, but once you get moving around its not too bad. We bought out tickets from Central Station in KL, so its was a return bus ticket, cable car transfers and unlimited rides for something like 50 Ringgit. Great deal! (also recommended! Hahaha.. I’m starting to sound like an advocate for Malaysia! Maybe I can start my own travel program :P ) but Genting isn’t JUST rides, there’s also a heap of shops, cafe’s and restaurants there, not to mention a cinema. We spent ALL of our second day running around the place, one of the rides takes you so high you’re in the clouds, its one of the freakiest and most fun rides I’ve ever been on, suddenly you plummet back to the ground before being flung back up the tower again. Took my breath away, but sooooo much fun. By the time we got back to the hotel it was already about 8 pm and we were exhausted, so just ate and slept.

My final day, we went to the Batu Caves, I’m not really too sure what its all about, it would have been great to get a tour guide or something while we were there, all I know is it has something to do with Hindu. It was still cool to see, but it would have been heaps better with the story behind it and more information about the place. After that we headed to china town and the central markets to go oleh-oleh hunting, I felt bad after not bringing anything from bali, so I couldn’t go to KL and come back empty handed again. Though, I’ve only given them to people here… I still have some stuff to send back home… but that means I will need to find the post office in Jogja.. We decided to go and check out the revolving restaurant in KL tower that night, had to pay to get up, but the views were good, they had telescopes up there too, but they were so strong the only thing they would be good for is stalking people! Haha. The restaurant was out of our budget tho, but on our way out we noticed a cheap indian place at the base of the tower, so we ate there instead, nice place, great food and awesome service! Also highly recommended! We didn’t really wanna go home just yet, so we went for a wonder around the streets and then found Mitch some accommodation for his remaining nights. Somehow we ended up in a “reggae” bar, (I say “reggae” because in the three or so hours that we were there, they only played one reggae song). It wasn’t bad, just had a few drinks there before heading home, all the staff seemed to be waria tho, which was pretty funny. By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 2:30 am, and I figured I had to leave soon to catch the bus to the airport, so I just wouldn’t bother sleeping. Packed all my stuff, n made my way back to Jogja. And yes, when I finally got to Solo I was too lazy to catch a train, especially by myself… so I caught a taxi again, butm from Solo to Joga is more expensive, so on my own it cost me a whole $22. Still not bad considering its door to door, and its a TAXI! Haha. In Adelaide it would be about $80 for 25 kilometers!

Back in Jogja - Part two :P

Yaay!!! I’m home! But exhausted as! No sleep last night and barely any in the taxi cause the cabbie wanted to talk to me the whole time. Anyway, quite a few things have happened since I’ve been back, including two weddings, a few birthdays, a trip to an orphanage, kali kuning, merapi, the beach, a music studio and an international day celebration on campus, and I’m no doubt forgetting something as well.

Both of the weddings were pretty interesting, both very different, the first was a muslim wedding, the second was a christian wedding, but still in the traditional Indonesian style. Who would have thought the first weddings I went to were not only outside of Australia, but I don’t even really know the people who married. Its normal here tho, everyone rocks up to weddings, if you know someone who knows someone who knows the bride / groom, then all seems to be fine, if there’s a free feed involved, you can expect everyone to be there! Yes, including the random white people who know one knows. After the second wedding, Ijo, his friend, Indra, his girlfriend and I all went to Kaliurang, it was too cloudy to see merapi again, but at least this time it wasn’t pouring with rain. It was so nice up there. On the way down we stopped at Kali kuning, its said to be good to keep looking young ( I’ve forgotten how to speak english :S ) it was pretty amazing tho, walk down through this valley until you reach the stream, the water looks so pure, and its freezing! Well… refreshing. Haha. So nice, but it seems a bit hard to find, you could easily drive right past it without even knowing, I had three times before! 

...I just remembered what I was forgetting…. I stayed with Karan for a couple of days until the guy in my new place had moved out. Piled all my stuff in a cab and moved in.. And haven’t looked back! I love the new place! People are so friendly, around my age, they hang out in the kos, just heaps good friends. Unlike my last kos, where we knew each other, but it didn’t really feel like we were friends. Well.. Yeah… I better take some photos of my new place so you can all see it huh! Ooo and a new development, I think I might get the internet at my kos! I’m kinda excited, means I’ll be online more often, but what I’m really hoping is that it will be fast enough to do a video chat with my family and friends. My hopes aren’t too high tho, I asked about the average speed and one of the dudes said 36kbps… but I think he was refering to the speed he gets when downloading something, which if I’m in OZ is slower than the actual line speed, so I’m hoping its the same here.. Well.. We’ll see I guess, I’m gonna try it out for a month first anyway, if I dun like it.. I’ll just be back at the warnet, no dramas.

Ok… back to the list..

Birthdays: 

That would be Lyndle and Cheryl’s.. Both were just the usual, but still fun. We went out to dinner and everyone chipped in for a present. Lyndle’s was at Parsley, not a bad place, its one of the favorites among Anak ACICIS, and she got a cute pair of turtles. I didn’t know what present we were getting her, but yeah, I was a lil surprised to see turtles, so I hope she wanted a pet! But apparently she loves them.. So all is good.  I have no idea what we did after dinner. Cheryl’s was at Via-Via (another ACICIS fav.) also not bad. Both places are a lil expensive… well, not in comparison to Australian standards, but when you can get a meal, including a drink for around 50c, everything “normally” priced seems expensive. After dinner we went to Jendelo, its a nice cafe above a bookstore on the north end of Jalan Gejayan, also a wifi hotspot, but the only time I’ve used the net there it was quite slow. But anyway, we were there for coffee and cards, just in the lesehan playing tongues. Its a pretty fun game, I’ll have to show you guys when I come back. Some of the others went to big belly, so after Jendelo me and Ijo were gonna go meet them there, but as we went past, they were all getting in a taxi, so the night just ended there.

International Day:

UGM holds an international day every year, its actually held over one day and one night. Its an opportunity for students from all over the world who are studying at UGM to show a little bit of their countries culture. In the ACICIS group, there are 28 students, of those there are 25 Aussies and 3 “Dutch” (and “Dutch” because all of them are actually Asli Indonesia) anyway, cause there are so few dutch, they asked Adam and I if we would help them out. So basically, I was dutch for a day, but still helped the Aussies out a lil too. But yeah, day one is mainly all about the food, each country makes a few dishes and either sells or gives it away so everyone can get a taste for the traditional food of that country. There’s also a bit of singing too, it was a pretty good day, we all went insane in front of all the camera and were jumping in on everyones photos, it was nuts. With the “Dutch” girls we made cheese cake, some kind of bread and butter pudding and some sloppy mashed potato salad. Both the sweets were delish, the salad wasn’t too bad, but it looked horrible, so I was surprised to see it just disappear. We sold out in about 40 mins! After the day came to a close, we all piled into the ACICIS house to clean up and chill out for a bit. Ijo said he and Tess were going to a music studio to have a bit of a jam and invited me along. So not long after that we headed down to the studio where Tess was on the drums and Ijo was singing and playing guitar! Didn’t sound too bad either! I wanted to join in, but they weren’t playing from music, and Ijo was facing the other way, so I couldn’t see which chords to play. It was still fun to hang out and see them both play. Niken had a bit of a go on the drums and after a while some of Ijo’s friends rocked up too. Its pretty awesome! We should have something like that in Australia! Its just a big room with a drum kit, two electric guitars, a bass guitar, a keyboard and a few microphones. You can just go in there, pump up the speakers and have a great time making music! The following night was “International night” basically a performance night, each country puts together a traditional performance of some sort, most of them were dances. It was pretty amazing to see. But silly me forgot my camera! Haha, after the last performance Vando and I went and played some pool. (are you getting to see how things just never stop here?)

The Orphanage:

From the International day sales we made around 200,000Rp, we decided we would go to an orphanage and do a heap of shopping for them. Before we went shopping we heard that Sam was in hospital because he had put a cotton tip in his ear and needed it removed, he was ok, but we just wanted to visit him so he could see some familiar faces. He’s such a cute kid, there was another little girl there too, we were joking that she was checking him out. Even tho I think she was probably less than a year old and sam is probably not even two yet. We left together and had breakfast at a nearby warung that plays live music. After breakfast / lunch we headed off to the shops, we bought some milk, biscuits, chips, lollies along with some colouring books and crayons. When we rocked up they were just having their arvo nap tho, so we cruised around and looked at a few near by temples and had lunch at a floating restaurant. Its surrounded by water and to get there you have to pull yourself across the river on a raft / boat type thing. Great place, all the water keeps it cool, not too expensive and the food was nice too. After lunch we headed back to the orphanage, it was a little bit of a shock at first, because most of the kids there have some form of disability, both mental and physical, but it didn’t take long to get over this and just have fun with them. They mainly spend the whole time colouring the Popeye books while eating all the food we brought. Some of them were pretty funny. I started colouring with them, and wasn’t putting any effort into it.. Just colouring like I was still 4 years old, and one of the girls kept commenting on how good my colouring was, once I had finished I decided to give it to her, she looked so happy, she immediately took it and walked away with it under her arm.

This has gotta be getting boring by now.. I just keep saying how fun everything is.. Haha… but I dunno what else to say, I’m just having a great time here, there is ALWAYS something to do. Even today, as I’m here typing this, (procrastinating from all the work I should be doing) I had to blow off a trip up a mountain do to it, I already went out with my kos mates for breakfast, I was invited to play soccer this afternoon by Hee Jae the crazy Korean (he’s so funny), Niken and Ima came to collect their camera which resulted in lunch together and there are plans for dinner tonight to celebrate Yodim’s birthday. This is what my “day’s off” are like. Don’t get me wrong, I love always having something to do, but sometimes I just get so exhausted. Not to mention I have barely done any study since I’ve been here, but that hasn’t really presented a problem so far, so fingers crossed it wont in the future. 

I have no idea what I’m talking about anymore… I’ve just been out and had a haircut, the cheapest haircut EVER!!!! No really, if you can get your hair cut cheaper, I’ll give you…. 50,000 (lima puluh ribu!) and friend discounts don’t count, it has to be the full priced cut…. Ok… you ready…. Here it is… 4000Rp… yep.. Thats right… 50c Australian! Well I guess you can add haircut to the list of unplanned events today.

Woah… I’ve been writing this thing ALL day! Well… basically… its taken MUCH longer than I thought! Its 6pm already! I began this thing thinking, “I’ll just write my blog and then start all the study I have to do”… gah… wrong decision.. Here it is… already almost 4000 words and I still need to talk about the beach! If only writing essays was this easy! Mmm maybe I should put intermission breaks in this thing… turn it into a three part series… good idea.. I’ll go back and add em in… on second thought, after scrolling up and seeing that there are six pages… I think I’ll just leave it up to you for when you take your toilet / coffee breaks.

Ok… the beach… (I’ll try to make this quick) I can never remember the name of which beach I went to… I thought it was Udiombo… but that might be a mountain,,, I have no idea.. It sounds kinda like that anyway… haha.. I sound like such a foreigner! Anyway, the beach! (trying to keep on track!) we decided to leave at 1pm by motorbike, so it would be cheaper for everyone, and being the usual Indo crew, we were 2 hours late and didn’t leave til 3pm, I’m not trying to be nasty, but well… I’m pretty sure Jam Karet is an Indonesian creation.. (damn it! It was less than 2 lines ago that I said I was keeping on track!) Anyways… we left, got there at 7pm!! My butt was so sore, haha… but we weren’t driving the whole time, we had to wait for the police (someone’s bike wasn’t up to scratch), went to the mosque for prayer, waited for the rain and then finally arrived. 

The following day we spent on the beach, so much fun, taking heaps of photos, walking along the beach, we came across a rocky area which seemed to block the huge waves, it looked pretty clear and relatively calm in comparison to the actual beach. We swam there for a few hours, the waves kept getting bigger and bigger until we were being dragged around and pushed into rocks, it became to dangerous to swim.. But before I got out I managed to get slammed into the rocks too, not that badly tho, just small cuts all over my feet and only one deep one on my toe. (btw I’ve just been told the beach is Wediombo). Met some of Vando’s friends when we were there, pretty cool people, except one of their motorbikes broke down so only two of them could come.. 

We didn’t really do much at the beach, just relaxed.. The place we stayed in was just a huge open pendopo, it was great, at night it was even a little cold, and there were NO mosquitoes! So surprised. On the way back there was a couple of accidents…. Three people fell from their bikes because the roads were either all up hill or down and really curvy, but they’re all ok… just in a bit of shock at the time. On the way back we stopped at a warung on the side of the mountain, great views of jogja. Wow… that actually was relatively quick… 

well… its now 6:15 pm… and I haven’t studied at all today, supposed to be going somewhere for Yodims birthday at 9…. Maybe I’ll just go to a warnet and upload this instead of studying today…