Twin towers, Port shitson and Batik adventures
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Jakarta,
Jakarta Raya,
Indonesia
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Next stop after Penang was Kuala Lumpur!! Really western..the kind of place your job could plonk you and you wouldn't really notice..apart from the sudden appearance of noodles and rice on every corner. Our hotel was in China town so we got to experience the market and it's craziness every time we left or arrived at the hotel..but I managed to buy a couple of fake perfumes for 12 quid so i was chuffed! We went for dinner in the Twin towers..if you've seen the film entrapment you'll know how impressive they are..we got the sky train which is like the one in bangkok but easy to figure out since they have english signs!! In the twin towers they have offices and a giant mall..we went to the food court and i shamefully had fish and chips from the london stall (equipped with fake red phonebox!) The fish was good but the chips just made me miss real ones from home! We then went to a reggae bar for sambucas and dancing..not very cultural but an enjoyable night out nonetheless!
The next day we went up the other Kuala Lumpur tower..think it was called Menaka (believe me these things roll into one in your head eventually!). The view was amazing and it's one of the worlds tallest tellecommunications towers..they had an advert for multiple weddings..as in they have a particular day where 20 couples can go and get married at the top in one whack..very romantic! We then decided we had to check out the mall which had a roller coaster inside but when we got there we realise our imagination had gone wild and it was a bit like trocadero rather than a rollercoaster out in the open space! So we got a starbucks (again shameful) and headed back for a night of Karaoke..oh yes i did participate and sung I wanna dance with somebody by Whitney..the owner Henry loved us and said I was a song bird..ha!
The next day we were excited as we were due at the beach in Port Dickson..we needn't have been excited and therefore named it Port Shitson. We were staying at some weird staff training type resort and seemed to be the only ones there which made it seem really eery and we were secluded in the middle of nowhere..oh and the sea was polluted along with dead fish..lovely! The restaurant was the worst bit though with crap food and a horror film playing on the telly, it was like a crap school trip abroad..though we find it quite funny now! We were lucky enough to have an apartment so we played articulate and card games until the early hours to keep ourselves amused! (oh and the swimming pool was ok!)
Our next stop was Malacca, which was occupied by the dutch so looks half european and half chinese, they had amazing chinese markets with fresh pineapple tarts! We spent the day wandering around and even went to Carrefour for a look!! (Yes they have Tesco and Carrefour in Malaysia!) We really liked Malacca as it's quite a pretty town and we found we didn't get bugged very much there, the Malay people are quite easy going and pretty friendly. We left the next day for Singapore our trip coming to an end..I liked Malaysia but i think we didn't get to go to the best bits and it didn't feel like our tour took us anywhere particularly cultural. Apparently the islands are beautiful and the east coast has nice beaches but i think Thailand wins on the beach front. Also it's so much more western, every town we went to had a mcdonalds, starbucks and KFC which is pretty disheartening. Singapore was really commerical too, we were staying in a lovely hotel for our night and wandered around, it's really modern and has a river which is surrounded by really nice restaurants and funky architecture. I can see why it's so easy to live and work there, it's like being at home apart from all the chinese signs and the chinese food venders on the road! (There was even an O'Briens sandwich bar, topshop and dorothy perkins!)
Holly, Ciaran and I then got the metro to the airport which was so efficient and with aircon (London get it sorted!) so we arrived with plenty of time to spare and had a really nice meal of avocado toasties with salad! A welcome change after all that damn rice! The flight to Jakarta was only 40 minutes so we got a taxi and quickly got to know our next tour group, a swiss couple, a maltese couple, a kiwi couple, a young aussie girl and chris a single guy in his 50s. Everyone is really nice so we feel like a little family, we call chris 'dad' and since hes a doctor he gets bombarded with all our symptoms..we've all become a bit obsessed thinking we've got swine flu! We didn't get to see much of Jakarta but as we drove in their were huge hotels..Marriott, Meridian and it seemed so western but then when we drove to the area where our hotel was it was like being in a slightly cleaner India. Our train journey the next day further demonstrated it's likeness to India with shanty type houses and green rice fields, the views were stunning and it's quite mountainous here. I've completely fallen in love with Indonesia, you do get bugged quite a bit but the people are friendly and the country is just so luscious and beautiful. Our first stop was In the South by the beach so we had a couple of chill out days, i spent a day zipping around on a moped with my tour leader as i couldn't afford to do the trips he took pity on me and took me round meeting people and going to the beach..was more cultural than what the others did!
Our next stop was YogJakarta, it was a busy town and we did a few tours visiting Borobudur the Beautiful buddhist temple, it was rediscovered by a brit in pieces and half buried and they put it back together one brick at a time. Apparently trying to fit every brick together and numbering them..basically a process of elimination...i don't think i'd have the patience! But the end result was stunning, though we spent a lot of the time be harassed by people taking our photos and autographs and filling out school children's questionnaires! I also tried my hand at Batik while i was there and really enjoyed it, the locals found it funny to see us painting sitting on the floor in the dirt so also took our photos!
We then travelled to an ecofriendly environment centre which showed us how to make herbal drinks and all the different herbal cures. We went for walks in the rice fields and took amazing photos, we also saw huge spiders but we won't go into that! We also had the best coffee i've ever tasted in this 90 year olds wooden shack! The next day we travelled to the Mountains in order to get up at 3am to go to see the sunset over Mount Bromo the live volcano, it was bloody freezing!! We had to layer up all our summer clothes and i'm so glad i brought a hat! We unfortunately didn't get to see the sun through the clouds but it was quite a nice view anyway, we then climbed up to the volcano and peered in. It's quite spectacular, we all secretly wanted it to erupt! The climb was quite hard work so we were knackered when we got to the bottom and had a bumpy ride back to the lodge in a 1940s jeep.
We then had a long journey to Bali and arrived in Lovina 12 hours later, it was worth it though as we arrived in nice tourist spot with restaurants on the beach and bars with live music. We'd been so cultural we'd forgotten about other tourists and nights out! So we made up for it with a meal complete with jugs of cocktail and a couple of us played pool and went dancing, i was the only tourist girl in the bar but it was lots of fun!
The next day we went diving and it was really something, the visibility was amazing and we got to see such bright reefs, and an eel garden which was really creepy, like being on another planet, there were hundreds of them sticking their heads out of the sand! On the way back the water was really choppy and there were very strong currents underwater so i was exhausted and practically green with seasickness, chris was amazing and packed my stuff up for me!!
We're now in Ubud and our tour ends tomorrow! Ubud is amazing and i'd love to live here, it's the cultural centre of bali with hundreds of art galleries and different shows every night, there is a brilliant market too, i'll have to come back when i have money! Last night some of us went to a bar with a live band and they let us do Karaoke, was fun until the club packed out and they started calling me up for songs i hadn't even asked to do! I got a free cocktail though and felt like the club celebrity so was quite fun..though i go red when i think about it now!
Holly, Michelle, Chris and I are going to head down to tourist central (Kuta) tomorrow and then i leave Bali monday evening to get to New Zealand which is apparently freezing at the moment..noo! Anyway i will next update when i am settled in Australasia. I'm really sad to be leaving Asia behind but it's been the most amazing 7 months and i'll be back again soon..so many more things to see here! x
