Karimunjawa!!

2 weeks after the Dieng trip there was a trip organised to go to Karimunjawa, a group of islands off the north coast of java. 4 friends (Meg, Lucy, Sarah and James) went to Semarang (the port city) on Thursday, I went with Eda and Lisa on Friday after our classes. It was much easier than to Dieng, we only had to catch a 3 hour direct bus. We got there just at sunset, got off the bus at a random intersection, and caught a taxi to the hotel where the others were staying. The hotel was… amazing!! It’s an old dutch building, on the luxurious side of things, but cheap. I stayed in a huuuuuge room with the 4 who were already there, and hired a mattress on the floor because the beds were full. To my disdain, all of our time in Semarang was spent in the hotel (either the room or the hotel’s pub) taxis and the port. I had pizza for the first time since arriving, which was reaaaally good, but apparently theres heaps of good chinese food there, I wanted to try that too.

the Dutch hotel

almost at Karimunjawa, from Java

We went to the port nice and early for the 9am boat (wouldn’t want to miss it, not another for 3 days), but Lisa left behind all her money and camera in the taxi. Luckily the driver returned it to the hotel for her to pick up later. The boat ride was nice, especially if you had 3 padded seats to lie across and sleep on. Once on the main island we decided to stay at a floating hotel, which was a kilometre out to sea from a small fishing harbour. We had lunch first, at a ‘warung’ on the edge of the town square. This weekend happened to be the lead up to the Islamic festival of idul ahid, which would start on Monday. This is the time when goats are sacrificed, partly for the purpose of more well-off people feeding the poor, by providing them with goat. This resulted in goats (and other meaty beasties like cows and sheep) being fattened up wherever there was grassy areas. It just so happened that this town square was particularly green, so we watched the doomed goats running around while we ate… I was really happy to not eat meat!

goats, anyone?
me, james, lucy, sarah and meg on the prahu to the floating hotel

We packed ourselves into a little prahu boat and went to the hotel, Wisma Apung. It was so cool!! It was all made of wood, which was rased just above the sea. It wasn’t floating, but poles had been sunk into the seabed, which was only 2 metres from the surface. There were walkways everywhere, so we could walk around pools of small sharks, sea turtles, miscelaneous fish etc. I stood in the shark pool for a while! My friends were constantly screaming at me, saying I was crazy, but I didn’t think they’d bite, they seemed tame from being fed fish. There was a pontoon where we did crazy jumping stunts for everyone else waiting with their cameras ready. There were about 15 rooms, some with doors opening onto the sea, some with toilets (umm, you don’t want to know about the waste disposal system!), some with just beds. We were fed amazing fish for dinner, but it sucked for Eda, who is vegan. There was a choice of white rice and cucumber for her, until she convinced the cook to make her a packet of indomie. After dinner we played cards and crazy games (wink murder!), sitting above the sea.

selamat datang!

lisa, lucy, james

lisa...
lisa and eda

a ray in the shark pool... where are the sharks? camera shy.


sitting on the other side of the hotel, watching the sunset...... ahhh

In the morning we hired a boat with 3 Indonesian tourists to go on a snorkelling tour of some islands. The first one was an idyllic tiny tropical island, perfect white sand, covered in trees. We stopped near some small sandbars which led to the island. The Indonesians (Hary, Fifi and her boyfriend) snorkled on the other side of the boat, which was much deeper. We wallowed about in the pale turquoise water, snorkelling through little seaweed ecosystems and watching a starfish turn itself over. I walked on the island a bit, then went back near the boat, played around with james and lisa doing handstands.

On the way to the next spot (which was actually a beach on the main island with the goats before, but far from a town), I steered the boat, I kept asking the ‘captain’ which beach we were going to, he kept saying ‘the white one’… useful! That island had amazing coral (amazingly sharp too, I cut my feet so many times from stepping on dead coral), I swam around a huge reef, saw so many cool things, like a coral that looks like splashes of purple paint, a grey spiky one with bright blue tips, one that looks like an enormous pink plate, etc etc etc! and the fish were just as amazing! A pale one with a light pink head and a green ridge between its eyes popped out of somewhere and just sat right in front of my face, looking at the strange underwater creature that I am. There were schools of tiny silver fish flicking around me, and I saw nemo too. And angel fish, I think.

Back on the beach we got a local to climb coconut trees, we had a coconut feast right there, we tried very young, young, medium and old cocunut juice and the ‘meat’…. Aaaargh so delicious!! After that we went to a spot in the ocean, and snorkelled there. It was deeper, but much more extensive… I didn’t have as good a time there, I couldn’t get the snorkle and mask to work in unison.

We went back to the hotel, had amazing crab for dinner, we played more crazy games, I chatted with the indonesians who went with us on the tour. And the mosques on the main island were going all night long, because the next day was goat day. We got up at 6:30 I think, to go back to Java. We packed, had breakfast, and caught the little boat back to the main island. Oh dear, there were no goats in the town square anymore. We tried to not think about that. We caught a big ship to Jepara, not Semarang like the first boat. This took cargo of coconuts, and cars and motorbikes, with people on the top 2 levels.

The economy section sucked, there was cigarette smoke everywhere and crying babies. I went to the open deck, and hung out with the indonesians who had been on our snorkelling boat. We found shady spots next to the captains deck, slept, ate, took photos of the sea. It was a slower boat than the first one, and jepara was closer than semarang too. Even so, it took 6 hours to go about 40km! In Jepara, Hary, my new friend, offered to take us all (7 of us) back to semarang in his dads car… we thought ‘how can you fit us, yourself and the driver bringing the car in 1 car…?’ we saw it coming towards us and thought ‘oh no, its really small’, then it turned and we all signed at once, cos it was extra long, with 3 seats in the back! Hary asked the driver to catch a bus back to his dads’ town, and we all fit in, so off we went to semarang! We found the hotel from before really easily, and Lisa got all her money and camera back. We stayed there again, and once again ate in the hotel pub. We thanked Hary profusely, who is currently on holiday from work in Jakarta, and he’s planning to come to Jogja, so maybe we’ll meet again.


The next morning we got up, did the packing thing again, went to the bus station (where I bought the obligatary oleh-oleh, food gifts from the place you’ve been visiting for friends at home), and came all the way back to jogja again.

Dieng Plateau

3 weekends ago I decided that I’d had enough of being in the city, so on Friday morning after my class I hopped over to the main bus terminal in town, to go to Dieng Plateau in Central Java. This area is famous for being over 2000m high, very cold with bubbling craters, hot springs and volcanoes.

here be dieng...

I caught a bus to the next city from Jogja, Magelang, another to Wonosobo, then another to Dieng, which wound up through narrow roads on mountain slopes, terraced with farms. I arrived in Dieng at about 5, got off the bus and directly opposite me was a little hotel which my friend recommended to me. I got a cheap room, stashed my bags and then went for a wander around the village. I had nasi goreng/fried rice for dinner, during a blackout. Then I walked down the other side of town, found a group of teenagers around a fire in the middle of the street. That’s the nightlife in Dieng, roll a tyre into the street and set it alight! It was warm, and pleasant if you stay upwind of the smoke. I was really cold, even though I’m tasmanian. I think I’ve happily adapted to the Jogja heat. We chatted for a few hours about australia, I played them australian music on my ipod, it was good fun. I went to bed at about 10pm, with the intention to get up at 3am for a morning hike to see the sunset from a mountain, but I was woken up at 11 by really loud voices outside my room… I listened, realised it was in english, and opened my door… there were 4 of my australian friends from uni (hi andy, james, lindsey and martha!!) Neither of us knew the other was coming to dieng, let alone staying in the same hotel! Anyway, the walk was postponed cos it was raining like crazy all night and morning the next day.


hindu temples

After the rain stopped I went for a walk to check out the Hindu temples (sorry, that’s the other thing in Dieng, the oldest Hindu temples in Java), then the others turned up – its obviously a small town, if we keep finding each other – and we all bussed out of town to go to a hot springs area. It was beautiful, in a steep mountainous very green valley, and hot sulfur water comes out of the mountain. Bathing pools had been built around the springs, and my god it was HOT!!! We wore sarongs and sat inhaling hot sulfur… rotton eggs! We were a source of amusement for the indonesians, our skin is so white, and we’re so untalented at getting changed modestly in an open area. I think the people who were already there sms-ed their friends, cos 10 minutes after we arrived heaps more people started coming to see the crazy foreigners.

more dieng

We walked back up the steep mountain slopes back to the main road, and wanted to eat. We are always skeptical of bus drivers who say that the nearest ‘warung’ is far, because that means we’ll catch his bus. It’s not necessarily far, he just wants to get money. He said its far, we asked other locals, they said its just down the hill. So we walked down the hill, and it turned out to just be a tiny shop, sellling a few food items, as well as cigarettes, shampoo, water etc. so we had to catch a bus anyway, and got off in a tiny little town, with 1 place that looked like it had edible food. We almost filled the place, but even so the whole town came to watch us eat and say astoundedly ‘do you speak indonesian??’, even though they’ve just heard us speaking. Kids were peering over the windowsill, the adults were crowded in the doorway or on the floor… we’re a source of constant entertainment! Once we had managed to extract ourselves from their gleeful hospitality, we caught a bus back in the direction of Dieng.

bathing area on the right hand side of the valley, above the river


I got off the bus earlier than the others, to check out a crater near Dieng. I walked and walked up a hill, through the mist, just before the top I saw a tree… I thought it looked familiar, and realised it was a gum tree!! A huge one too. There are actually gum tree plantations in Sumatra, and I think some types occur naturally in Eastern Indonesia, closer to Australia. This was just all on its own… who knows how it got there. At the top, everything further than 30m away was densely covered in white fog, including the lake. Trees and whiteness were the sights. I got a lift back to town with 2 indonesians who were also looking at the fog, I was ‘dibonceng’ (taken on the back of the bike), but there were 3 of us! 1st time I’ve been on a bike with 2 others, and it probably wasn’t the best situation to try it in! the road down the hill was so steep, and had more holes than bitumen. The wheels sort of slid around, making my bum slide. And bikes are only designed for 2 people (thank god, really), but that means they only have foot stands for 2 people… bad luck if your leg muscles give in on speedy road! We got back to town all nicely, me with a piece of gum tree to surprise my friends.


That night we had a hot mandi (shower) to clean the sulfur off… it had to be hot, cos the water is icy at 2000m! even in indonesia. But because running water in indonesia is usually only cold, the hotel owner had to boil it for us…it was amazing! 1st hot shower in 3 months.

We organised to go on the same walking tour as I wanted to do the day before, so we got up at 3am, and walked for many kilometres, out of town, past geothermal power stations, by the time we were going through the highest village in java we were running because we didn’t want to miss the sunrise. We climbed and climbed up a steep zigzagging track up the side of a mountain and finally came out of the forest to see an amazing view… villages and a city spread out in the early morning light in the valley, with 4 or 5 volcanoes behind them. The clarity was stunning, we could even see Merapi volcano, the one behind Jogja, and we were hundreds of kilometres away. The mist was slowly rolling in hundreds of meters below us, a thick white carpet covering everything. We could see both coasts of Java, it made the island seem so small.

me, andy, hiding martha, james and lindsey

volcanoooooooooes
exhausted!!

After we got our breath back and soaked up the view, we headed back down the mountain, back through the potato fields, past what we called the ugliest mosque in central java, it looked like a badly designed greek villa with fat white marble archways that went up and up for 3 storeys, topped off with, rather than a dome, 2 little buildings which looked like houses, or the top of Chinese temples. On top of each was an erratically designed chunk of spiky gold coloured… stuff. It might be gold, apparently these villages are pretty well off from potato farming. But still ugly.

ugly mosque

potato farms... can you imagine climbing to the top of your farm every morning??

me and james at the sulfur crater

We walked down a hill through more potato farms, and next went to a sulfur crater… the floor is covered in yellow sulfur rocks and steam vents, and theres a hot bubbling pool of grey sulfur mud in the middle! Mmm yummy rotton eggs. After that we kept walking through a nice foresty area, to another lake. This one is blueish green, and the water is different colours in different areas because of the specific chemicals coming out of the ground in that spot. Finally we walked back to town, and I think we got there before 9am! Not even late for breakfast. We all went back to bed, and started the bus trip back to jogja at 12pm. I think we got back home at around 6.

yes, i'm still here

sorry, so long between posts! i've been busy busy busy!
things i've done since last time: went to a small town called salatiga for an environmental festival, about 3 hours from here. really nice, in the mountains, not humid like jogja. i listened to drumming bands, thrash metal, made political t-shirts with radical punk musicians, ate strawberry icecream, all in really nice green fields, with hundreds of locals and my australian posse. 13 of us went for a ride in the back of a ute (including aforementioned punk activists), flying down the highway to cool springs on the edge of the forest near the town.

after that i had my first exams (mid-semester), that was interesting! until studying for those, i had little clue of what one subject was about, so that was definately useful. apparently i didn't fail, but i don't know the marks yet. i think i should just be given good marks for understanding thee questions and being able to write 5 essyas in indonesian in an hour!

after the exams, practicals started for one of my classes, and these are veeeery difficult. the lecturer prefers to give as little information as possible regarding what we actually have to do for the report each week. i spent all last week making maps, according to what my friend told me to do, and then according to the lecturer this week, it's wrong and needs to be redone... excellent.

last weekend i went on an 'extracurricular activity' through uni, where you spend the weekend in a village, with a family. this village was about half an hour away, in the foothills of merapi, the local volcano. it was really cool there (maybe 20-25 degrees... so low for me!) and i was shivering in bed. then i woke up at midnight, i was so hot and dehydrated, and for the next day i was completely weak in bed, i couldnt eat, but the family kept bringing me rice, bread, porridge, tea, milk, even though i couldn't eat it. while i wasn't sleeping i was staring at a kids poster of the arabic alphabet... exciting times! i woke up the next day and could move, so i did the activities with my uni friends. first we helped make a traditional snack, made from ground, wet cassava, mixed with spices, then flattened into little strips and deep fried... it had a bit of a strange flavour, but ok. then walked to another house, opposite an adventure playground with games made from motorbike tyres, a flying fox and a balancing rope over a pool of water. a guy decided that we should follow him to walk up a river (??), so we went down to the bridge, and it was pouring with rain by then, so i decided to walk back with a friend because we were both not feeling too well... i'm so grateful for umbrellas here! the others got in the rushing river, it was probably only knee deep, but fast, and with heavy rain. they came back half an hour later looking as wet as ever possible! they all went on the flying fox then, which was actually quite high and short. after that we all just went back to our homestay houses to wait for people to pick us up and bring us back to jogja.

....which updates us to this week! i'm currently having a hell of a time ploughing through centrelinks online appllication system. tomorrow i'm meeting with an english speaking club sponsored by the american embassy, saturday morning going to a wedding, some of my kosmates are the organisers, saturday afternoon going camping (i think) with australian/and/or indonesian friends, and going rafting on sunday morning.
whew!

reply reply reply! thanks

Ramadhan, a new kos, jalan-jalan

Hey peeps, sorry for the delay in udpates, been having too much fun. Probably the biggest news is that I’ve moved out of my previous ‘homestay’ house into the coolest place imaginable. After almost a month on the previous place (in Pogung Baru), I’d had enough cos the I

bu kos (the woman who runs the place and looks after people) was waaaaaaaay too overprotective, asking me where I wanted to go everytime I walked out my door into the kitchen. Also, there was a curfew, and although it was supposedly at 11pm (not too bad), wh

enever I got home after 9 the place was often completely looked… kinda problematic. Then, in the last week the owners decided to take in a new friend… a HUGE rooster, which lived on the other side of my window, about a meter away. Combined with the 3am get-up time to eat breakfast for ramadhan, the 4am wake up time of the rooster, who doesn’t like to sleep until 6pm, and crows whenever he’s awake, and all the other problems, I promptly started house hunting again. I decided that the Pogung Baru suburb was too sterile, not enough interaction between neighbours, so wanted to be on the other side of Kaliurang road

, which is closer to uni anyway. 

Here’s an introduction to house-hunting indonesia-style. 

You can find various types of accomodation: homestay; where you live with an indonesian family, but have your own room. Usually pretty luxurious, the families are rich.

Kos; which can range from almost a homestay, but with more rooms, to huge places, look almost like housing complexes. They are usually strictly all girls or all guys, with a guest room at the front of the house for guests (usually also the limit for ppl of the opposite sex). These either have a bathroom inside ur room, or shared. They also range in curfew limits from 9pm to no curfew at all, and provided services etc. At some, breakfast or wifi internet might be included, might be furnished or you might have to pay more to hire furniture.

Kontrakkan; which is where you rent a house with a group of friends, highly variable in price.

Kos’s are far more popular in jogja, than the other types because they tend to be cheaper, and they provide a group of similarly-aged uni friends. The process of finding a kos is getting into the suburbs and walking/riding, and asking everyone you see whether they know of a vacancy, then you get to see the room/s. the decision/negotiating/payment process usually takes place over a cup of hot sweet tea and cake. There’s no bond here, but the asking price is usually a minimum of 3 months upfront, but can also be 6 months or a year!

After a few days of looking, I came a

cross an enormous pink place, and a few guys there said that if I came back the next day I should be able to meet the owner and ask if there are any rooms. The fact that there were guys means it’s mixed, which is pretty rare. I wasn’t particularly looking for a 

mixed one, but strangely 2 of the 3 vacancies I looked at were in mixed kos’s. so I came back the next day, the owner was re-painting a room… I pretty much said I wanted straight away, so this is my new house! 76 people live here! It’s crazy!! Because most of the people I’d seen here are guys, I asked how many girls there are…. 

Thanks to me, the female population has just incresed 100%! There’s 2 of us! Everyone has a door that opens outside, with a bathroom within the room, so it’s very 

private. Almost all are students, and although most of them aren’t here at the moment because of the end of ramadhan (idul fitri) holidays, it still seems pretty busy. 

So, about ramadhan… the last month has been the fasting period for muslims around the world. As indonesia has the largest muslim population, this is a pretty big festival here. And I thought, as I’m living here, I might as well give it a go and get in on the festive community feeling. It means that you get up at about 3am for breakfast, then go back to bed. I find sleeping immediately after eating very difficult, so when I’m tired or have a 7am lecture, I just skip breakfast. From the time of the early morning azan (call to prayer), around 4am, til sunset at 5:40pm, muslims aren’t allowed to drink or eat. It all depends on how deeply religious or committed the individualy is, as to how extreme they go. I have many muslim friends who don’t really do it, or do it randomly for a few days now and then. For people who do hard labour, they’re supposed to still drink, but I think there are plenty of people who would say that the work is not hard enough to warrant drinking. At buka puasa time, when the fasting stops, hundreds of roadside stalls set up around the city, especially around the uni’s. you can buy all sorts of yummy juices, icy fruit soup, little cakes and banana snacks, fruit, coconut drink, and other things I don’t know the name of. I’ve been fasting (for food only) for most of the time, except when travelling and my friends want me to try different food which isn’t in jogja. I tried half a day without water, gave me a huge headache and didn’t feel good. You sweat so much here, and the roads are so dusty and polluted, I dunno how people can not drink every day. It’s the 28th of september today, the last day of fasting is the 30th  or the 1st. there’s gonna be lots of parties, lots of eating and celebrating for about a week. My birthday is on the 2nd, so I imagine that everyone’s going to be feeding me lots. Also, because there’s about 2 weeks of holidays for most students, almost everyone has left jogja to go home, pulang kampung, to spend idul fitri with their families. It’s like how australians always try to be home for christmas. 

On Thursday after a forestry class I was talking to one of the students who I had vaguely met previously. He started telling me about his research project on the coast, where he’s finding out about how to us pine trees to stop coastal erosion. 

I said that I really like beaches and that his project sounded really interesting, so he said he’d take me the next day! We left jogja at 2 on Friday, and travelled south west for about 2.5 hours… it doesn’t sound far, but it’s a very long way sitting on the back of a bike. All of your skin shakes and jarrs…. You can’t feel it when you’re moving, but when you get off it feels so weird! It’s like pins and needles, but all over. I guess it doesn’t happen in city driving because it’s slower. Hery (that’s the guy) said when we left uni that we’d go to his house first… a bit confusing, cos we left jogja in the opposite direction to where he told me he lives. Anyway, we drove and drove and drove, went through Purworejo city, which surprised me cos that’s where one of my best friends lives, and he always talks about it. After another city or 2 we entered a village, and stopped. It was his parents house! Not his jogja house! That was a bit awkward! So met the parents, and as it wasn’t long til the end of fasting we waited around and ate there. Then we kept driving for about half an hour to Ambal, a little town about 2 ks from the coast. There’s a kontrakkan house there (remember from the house hunting lesson?) which is rented by a group of people who work with an extensive forest rehabilitation project, in conjunction with the local community. Apparently lecturers from my uni (UGM) occasionally stay there to check up on the projects, and so do the students doing research. There were about 6 others there, we just chatted about uni, the local area, then watched a James Bond movie. I had to train my ears to understand english again! Although english is used here, it’s usually sparse in conversation, only with my australian friends do I often speak english. Also, I told Ape (my friend from purworejo, who I have classes with) that we had passed through his city, and he invited Hery and I to go an visit the next day.

I slept on a bed with one of the female researchers, after we had both agreed that we were definitely tired. The bed was quite different! The structure was made from very narrow metal, and the bed base was flattened bamboo. The mattress was thin, and made from some dense organic thing, meaning the whole bed was very hard, and whenever you moved it creaked like crazy. Also, indonesians have a fear of sleeping in the dark, so we slept with the light on. Yay! In the morning I went to the local market with Sul, another girl who lives there and does some housekeeping and cooking. This was seriously a rural village! Although, still got its own quirky innovations. Ok, so a becak is a pedal powered form of transport, similar to the rickshaw in india, but here the driver sits at the back. In ambal, they’ve further complied with the national aversion to exercise, and stuck an engine at the back, where the pedals normally are! It’s a suped-up speedy becak, allowing a speedy arrival at the market through the coconut palm groves. The market was nice, lots of ladies sitting on low platforms, surrounded by huge baskets of chillis, oranges, apples, mangoes, corn, cabbages, leafy green veggies, potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, spring onions, rice, noodles, chicken, tempe, tofu, everything necessary for the daily cooking. I was probably a lot taller and whiter than anyone they’d seen for a while, so I guess I can understand all the pointing and whispering… after Sul got all the food (and cigarettes from the little shop next to the market, for the guys back at the house), we walked back. Then Hery and I went for a ride to a few of the beaches. They’re black sand, not white because the source of the sand is volcanic rock. He is researching about the best environment, amount of water and distance to plant the pine trees to prevent erosion.

From where we were standing, there was 4km on either side of planted trees along the coast, all planted by the local communities. We went through chilli and corn plantations to get to and from the beach, then travelled a few ks more, and entered another large village farming area, this time for watermelons. We were there at harvesting time, people were filling up trucks with hundreds of the things. 

On the way back to the house in ambal we had chicken sate (yes, I eat chicken here because if I didn’t so many people would be offended when I refuse the food they offer), which is a specialty of the town. Sate in most of the country uses peanuts in the sauce, but there they use soybeans, the basis of tempe and tofu. The taste was similar, just not as crunchy. Had a shower back at the house, then went on our way to Purworejo to meet Ape. His friend Aang came along too, who I’d already met in jogja, I think he studies nuclear engineering at UGM. They live in the same house in jogja (not coincidentally, on purpose), went to school together in Purworejo and both managed to get high enough scores to enter UGM. So Aang was in Purworejo anyway because of idul fitri. We drove to Ape’s house and talked about the adventures in Ambal, while eating fresh mango ^-^!! After an hour or so Hery and I were planning to leave, went into the dining room to say goodbye to the parents, and the table was laid out with food! So there we were, eating again! 

Ape, ape’s mum, sister, me, ape’s dad, aang

After that Hery and I went to Glagah beach, maybe half an hour from that city. He’s got research activities there too. This area is so nice, I can’t believe it’s not full of tourists! There are heaps of little motels, lots of beaches to walk along, and a really pretty lake area where you can hire a boat and driver, and there’s recently been wave breaks built so that ships can enter a new port. Also, there’s heaps of dragon fruit farms. The plant is a type of cactus, whick is grown upa tall stake, the seedlings and fruit are both really expensive. I wanted to try one, but they had all been sold… I don’t know who to, seeing as there were barely any tourists.

After that, we returned all the way to jogja! A very long trip, but much fun. I spent the night hanging out with my kos mates, singing along while guys played guitars. I’m going to jakarta on Friday to meet a friend, doing my own version of pulang kampung, going home for the holidays. 

Oh yes, here’s a random bit of information… indonesia has the best stuff to get rid of ants, and its such a good idea! The chemical which kills them is mixed with what I guess is chalk, and made into chalk sticks. Then, wherever the ants are, you draw a few lines on the floor or wall, when they touch it they get sick, and when they touch other ants they get sick too, after a few hours it kills the whole nest! It’s quite a cool invention.

Ok, it’salmost time to break the fast (get it, break-fast, haha, except it’s more like dinner time). Hopefully I can upload this soon, been having internet complications.

Cya!!

I'm Rules The World

Ok, I bet you’ve all been waiting in confusing states of delirium before my next update…

Its your lucky day, you can all relax now, cos here it is!

I’ve only had the chance to use the net 2 or 3 times since I actually got in the country! Hopefully I’ll be able to remember enough of the last week and a bit.

So, I flew with Garuda from Sydney to Bali (after a great 4 days in sydney! Hi to everyone there!). I was sitting next to a lawyer from sydney who was going to a ‘conference’ with about 60 other lawyers… it just happened to be held in 2 of the best surfing spots on Bali, and most of the participants were surfers. Hmmm. In true style of australians on holiday in Bali, who like to make good use of their wads of rupiah in exchange for much alcohol, they decided to get started early: so set up a bar in the back of the plane! And ignored all requests to sit down and put their seatbelts on over the indian ocean. Oh well. So in Bali I stayed in a pretty nice place, but so expensive considering indo costs! It was only about $20, but that could get you 100 bottles of water from Circle K, or 30 budget lunches from a street side stall.

I was in Bali for Independence Day (the indonesian one!), and saw some celebrations on the beach. One was a whole lot of singing and chanting that I couldn’t understand, then teams of guys had to co-operate to climb to the top of 10m high bamboo pole, which was wet and oily, making it very hard to climb. It’s called panjat pinang, you can probably see it on youtube, quite funny. Once someone gets to the top, they get first pick of prizes hanging up there for their team. Then met up with the brother of a friend who lives in the next city east of jogja, but works in bali. We went cruising on his bike to some yummy warung (indo style café/restaurant) in the backblocks and had javanese noodle soup for dinner. Then we went down to the beach, had a conversation 100% in indonesian for about 2 hours… can’t believe I could swap from english in sydney to indonesian in a day!

Then we went to his flat for a bit in the denpasar suburbs, watched dodgy indonesian wrestling, then he took me back to my place. In the morning I had to get up at 5:30 for my 8am flight… yay! Had nasi goreng at the airport, and was fed lollies and chocolate on the plane. The bali-jogja flight is quite spectacular… because of the 100+ volcanoes on java alone (maybe twice the size of tassie), the planes have to dodge them! It’s like playing dogem flying cars! Although the planes fly higher than the volcanoes, they can’t go near them due to the possibility of an eruption and the ash stopping the engines. All along the way are huge mountains popping out of the blanket of cloud covering the island, with puffs of smoke coming out.

In jogja I caught a taxi down to the budget tourist area (just a street really… quite insignificant compared to bali) and found a place for $7/night. There I made a really good friend, Didik. He’s an artist and costume designer, works in Jogja and Jakarta, but lives about 10 hours away from here by train, in the direction of bali. He is very persistant in inviting me and some friends to go and visit, hopefully we can find 3-4 days off soon. For those few days, I went out with him and another indo friend, Feby. She has a car, so we went driving down south to a local village where she is doing agricultural research. She studies at the same uni as me, but their main research facilty is out in the sticks. We also went to see indonesian bands, and just hung out a lot. And we went to a really good cinema complex, saw The Dark Night for only $3!!!

On the 20th, the ACICIS orientation began, so Didik and Feby dropped me off at the uni hotel… or what they thought was the uni hotel. There are soooooo many buildings and faculties, that few people know where everything actually is. We actually turned up at the building for some economics masters program, which had a similar acronym to the hotel. Oh well. I must have looked intersting walking into a research building with all my bags!

We found the right place next, and I had to say goodbye to my new friends… the last few days had been ‘super bloogy bagus’! Next… meeting all 25ish new australian ACICIS students, with an american and 2 londoners mixed in. We had an orientation session that afternoon, cant remember what it was called. That evening we were all invited to an art exhibition of an australian artist in the southern part of the city. It was opened by an indonesian band (of course! For every event here, there’s a band. So much music!). that was fun (what isn’t here?!), some of my friends ordered beer, so we sat around a large fancy table, and whenever their glasses looked slightly empty, a waiter would rush over and top up their glasses. A little on the fancy side!
Later the band invited us to their next gig that night, so we all walked up the market street at about 10pm… I think the locals were a bit shocked to see so many westerners wandering past late at night! On the way me and 3 friends met a busking group who knew some australian songs… killing any chance of being reputable residents of this city, we decided to dance to Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, and other disputable classics.

By about 12:3oam, I managed to convince some friends to leave the café to get a taxi home, due to having to meet with the police early in the morning. We walked and walked, all the taxis either had no driver, or he was asleep. We eventually found one who agreed to take us for a little less than a small fortune, and 2 other friends had to get a becak (3 wheeled pedicab) all the way home! It must be atleast 5-7 ks! Meeting the police was interesting. We had to fill out forms for the uni international student department, and also the regional police department. The most interesting bits were: a policeman classifiying almost every bit of our bodies in code… such as hair, eyes, nose, ears, lips, teeth, height, weight, tattoos, and my personal favourite, disfigurements!!! Everyone who wears glasses had to tick the disfigurement box! Then there were four types of face shape… long, oval, round, or box!! I don’t think any of us were lucky enough to be box faced. Then we had to fingerprinting! Black ink everywhere. I’m surprised we didn’t have to have our teeth sketched or something.

That night (last Thursday) we met our Pendampings/student helpers/dumplings for the first time. They help us find somewhere to live, set up our room, and help us at uni. ‘My’ one is Tyas, a really sweet girl who is always concerned about whether I’m too hot, thirsty, hungry, and never stops asking me about it. Friday was our first opportunity to go ‘kos’ (student sharehouse) hunting, and by now everyone has found one. I found this one on Friday, but maybe I should have kept looking, even though I seemed almost impossible to find one with spare rooms. There’s 3 rooms here, but one of them is occupied by the worker of the adjoined warung and her husband, and the other one is supposed to be for a girl from sumatra who hasn’t arrived yet. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.

One night… must be Friday, I’ve run out of other options, we heard about a huge concert in ther suburbs, at thhe Jogja Entertainment Centre… so we decided to tag along! There were 2 huuuuge concerts, 1 pop/emo thing in the concert hall, 10,000 rp entry fee. That’s only $1.25, but we collectivley forgot to take lots of money, so we decided to save it for the taxi home. Anyway, next to the hall was a huge outdoor stage, we saw a great metal band there, followed by reggae. It was some motorbike celebration thing, so even more people brought their bikes than normal. There was a type which seems popular with the police, it’s almost a very fast moving couch. I think it’s a modern type of harley? Doesn’t look anything like an old one… anyway, they’re huge, maybe half the width of a car.

On Saturday I met the brother (Inug) of the guy in Bali (Luki) and his friend in jogja. We went to the kraton (sultan’s palace),and saw a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show in javanese, walked around the buildings and saw traditional cloth of the palace, hundred year old paintings and javanese scripts. The gardeners there cut the grass with huge scissors, while wearing the traditional sarong of the kraton. Then we ate lunch at a roadside stall near uni, and chatted until their train back to solo.

Later went shopping for a fan (I can feel it now, so refreshing!), towels, and other random household things. Went out on the street at about 10pm with ada, an aus friend to find something to eat, stopped at a tiny little stall which frys different and wondrous combinations of flavours in bread… we chose chocolate and pinapple! They use a mini size loaf, cut it 3 times down the middle, and fry it all over on a hotplate, then add the flavours, fry them into the bready goodness. It’s very big and filling! It wasn’t too high on the fried side, but tried not to eat anythi ng too greasy for the next day. We met up with another group of aussie acicis people, who of course wanted to find a local bar. It was empty except for us, and by 1am the waitresses looked like they wanted to kick us out so they could go home. I was so tired that I kinda wished they would! I think by that tiime I still hadn’t been to bed b4 midnight for the whole time in the country. We walked back to the hotel via one girl’s new kos, which is in a compound of islamic style kos’s. it was sooo quiet there, I think we woke up a lot of people because some people kept forgetting where they were (due to the copious amounts of beer) and yelling… once we got outside, someone told us all to sit down on the street (don’t worry mum, it’s the pedestrian part of the street… there’s no room for pedestrians on the footpath cos its fulll of trees. Cars were on the next bit over.)in a circle, and play the new ACICIS game… slap your face with either hand, send it to the next person depending on which side you slap. The 8th person has to salute and yell ACICIS in either direction, and so on it goes. Anyone who stuffs up is supposed to drink.
On Sunday morning I was woken up by a thumping bass coming from the street, rattling the windows in my room. I looked outside… party time! Only 6am, but why not?!! Sleep is so over-rated.

I woke up Ada across the hall, we wennt outside into the squinty bright day. It turned out to be he Gadjah Mada University’s Sunday market! Bought a fluro green wasking basket for my room for $1, had some wierdly coloured snacks, and then went to an adjoined Pocari Sweat festival. Is Pocari Sweat a known phenomenon in aus? I think it’s only sold in asian shops in hobart… behind the times people!! It’s a rehydrating drink from japan, quite popular here. Eda and I decided to pay 7000rp each for 2 bottles, a ‘green’ bag and a game token. With this we had the unique opportunity to be human chocolate wheels!

I was strapped onto a chocolate wheel, and wherever I stopped, I won a prize according to the word at the top. We both got pocari sweat festival t shirts! It was so crazy, but so fun! Late on Sunday we checked out of the uni hotel, and moved into our kos’s.

On Monday we did the language placement test, and I’m at the advanced level, so I can do all normal classes if I want… but I think that might give me a headache. I’ve enrolled in 2 forestry units, a camping subject (yay!), gamelan, indonesian for research and indonesian grammer. On Wednesday I went to my first class… it was at 7am!!! But even then, it’s still hot. Anyway, the class was so good! I was told not to expec t too much, that the stanndards of teaching aren’t as high here… but it was just as good as at home! Oh, and I could understand the lecturer too! Very interesting class about land use and mapping it. After class had breakfast with Didik, Ada, and 2 other acicis people, Brooke and Heather. We sat on a little wooden seat, on a dirty street,but had one of the best meals yet. Rice, veggies, corn patties, fried potato balls and tempe… yum! Later on I found out that there was a javanese class at 1pm, so I went along to that, it was really interesting to learn another language through indonesian! And it’s so useful, cos we can then use it on the street after class.

After that I met up with didik again, he took me on his friends motorbike to a computer market. I’m looking for an external dvd drive… there’s one for about $80-90… does that sound good? After that I started battling with the centrelink website… so not fun!
Then I met up with everyone at the acicis favourite café/bar, Bintang (also the name of the most common indo beer). And that brings us to today! What a journey! I went to uni this morning, finalised my enrolments, found out how to become a member of the forestry faculty library, and met the leaders of the forestry club… I’m invited to their agm next weekend!
I think that’s enough for me now! I’m starving, time for dinner!

Don’t forget to write a reply, send me a txt or sumthing!

Selamat malam!

Sydney!!!

Hurray, I'm done with all the organising in hobart, and I left yesterday morning!
I finally got my passport last friday, a whole 5 days before leaving!
Since the last post I finished work at centrelink, held a hilarious fancy dress costume party, where I was a scaly man fish from the Mighty Boosh, commonly known as Old Gregg (look it up!), went to dinner with mum and cameron, went to the movies with friends and saw The Square... bad name, cool movie.
And now I'm in sydney! got picked up from the airport by my great aunt and uncle, staying at Neutral Bay (really nice green suburb), got my new camera from the city... and have conquered the bus and ferry systems! now i'm at harbourside, an expensive tourist shopping centre at an internet kiosk with 2:40 remaining and counting... I'll update this more next time, hopefully with photos too!
Hope you're enjoying the snow if you're in tassie (i saw enough from the plane to keep myself satisfied for the next year), and please tell me how you are... i think you can reply to this.
ok, gotta go and have lunch now!
cya xox

This is it!!

Hello there!
I thought I'd better make an entry to this interweb thingy before I leave for
---Indonesia--- (am I really going?) it doesn't feel like it.
I'll give you some background on what i'm going to do. I've been planning this trip for quite a while - I think I first heard about ACICIS (the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies) in 2006, and I've wanted to go on an exchange with them ever since. I sent off the huge application form in May 2008 to the ACICIS office in Perth. This involved lots of self-evaluations, teacher evaluations, medical checks, passport photos, academic transcripts, passport photocopies etc etc etc.

A few weeks later I found out that I'd been accepted into the program for the second semester of 2008 (which is actually the 1st semester of the Indonesian uni year). Yay! so this set the cogs turning for actually getting myself there. In between then and now (July 2008) I've been very busy... while applying for jobs at the same time to keep Centrelink happy. I got my international flights booked on Garuda a few months ago, and have sent off my passport to the Indonesian embassy in Perth to get my visa. I've had almost all of my vaccinations, just recently bought my travel insurance, and booked a flight from Hobart to Sydney so I can spend a few days there with friends and relatives.

3 weeks ago i finally got a job! Guess where... centrelink! hahaha, i didn't see that one coming. In fact, i didn't even apply for it! I've applied for over 100 in the last few months, and I get this one with no effort on my behalf. Anyway, i've been working 6 hours a day, and I'm actually able to save up money for when I go. It's pretty good, I move boxes from the bottom floor of the wharehouse to the second. It's only about 10 degrees there, but we warm up pretty quickly. And it gives me an excuse to try and do beep tests in the aisles which hold thousands and thousands of centrelink files.

Things to do before I go: buy presents for my friends in Indonesia; get my Indonesian friend (who studies at Utas, but is on holiday in Jakarta, hi Lilis!) to buy me a ticket from Bali to Jogja because it's really expensive to book domestic flights from here; get Microsoft Office for my pretty new laptop; continue arranging my going away party! i first booked it for the 8th of August, but found out a few days ago that two of my Indonesian friends who live here are getting married on the same day, same time (congratulations Monica and Dhaniel!), so I've changed it to the 9th of August, now I have to call everyone up and make sure they know... argh! I'm sure it'll get done. Then I have to pack!!!! how do you pack a bag or two for a year??? that's going to be a challenge.

then on the 13th i actually leave for sydney! I have four nights there, then it's off to Bali, aka the island in the centre of the cosmos which sits on the back of a turtle, with intertwined serpents. Sound like Terry Pratchett? No, thats just Balinese Hinduism for you.

And then I go to Jogjakarta, central java. I went there in 2006 for a month to study at a language school. It's such an exciting, fun city. That's where I'll spend the first semester, studying at Gadjah Mada University... only one of about 100 universities in the city. Amazing! how can there be so many students?? But, apparently there are LOTS, cos 55,000 of them just go to this one. If you wanna have a look from the air, go to http://wikimapia.org/#lat=-7.7692925&lon=110.3753042&z=15&l=0&m=a&v=2, or for city photos, see http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/pb/125995/.


I'm having trouble believing that there's actually somewhere warmer in the world than infront of the heater in my living room. But according to popular belief or myth, Indonesia's in that place kinda near the equator. Hmm, I'm going to have trouble convincing myself not to take thermals and fleecy jackets.

Ok, thats enough for me, I'm hungry now. Stay warm people!!