Surviving Yogyakarta & Bali

We flew to Yogyakarta on 12th of December. We arrived late in the evening and all I saw from the taxi's window was empty streets, darkness and graffitis so I of course thought that this place would be dangerous. The taxi driver left us in some dark alley and said "walk that way" pointing in even darker and narrower alley. Well... ok cool I guess. We started walking and very soon we saw 'Pondok Ijo', our guest house's name on the wall. We checked in and I discovered quickly that our room and particularly our bathroom was open. I mean open like when you sit on the toilet you can see palmtrees (bananatrees), spiders and the sky. Someone might say it's romantic, cool and like a healing environment (because there is access to nature. And for the locals it's normal..). Not me. No no no. I hid under the duvet and wanted so badly to change rooms. I do not like mosquitoes and all the other creepy-crawlies there are. I thought to myself "Sini.. please, next time remember that if the place's name has "Pondok" in it.. maybe it's better not to go there?!". The staff member was a cool and understanding dude and we upgraded to a better room which still had an open toilet and shower but the bedroom was more covered. Ok, I guess I can live with this.

Our guesthouse in Jogja

Enjoy the nature while taking a shower

The first night we just visited nearby restaurant Warung Bu Ageng and ate the local speciality Nasi Campur ("mixed rice" with little bit of everything). After that it was mandatory to have a beer in our Pondok's restaurant. It was kinda nice there and we played with cards at least for an hour or so. There was soothing reggae playing in the background and all of a sudden I hear Finnish reggae playing! Whaaat.. :D it was Raappana's Kauas Pois and I was feeling all types of feelings then. I missed my family a lot but still it felt so cool to be there.

At night though I heard some weird noises which spooked me a little...

I had never heard such noise before but after a Google search and asking the hotel employee, we now know that it was just a big gecko! :) It was kinda creepy because we never saw it and didn't know what in the world was it but luckily geckos eat mosquitos so I was cool with that.

The next day we went walking and started our search for a post office.
It quickly started to hit me that Yogyakarta is actually a huge city! I wasn't expecting that at all after checking the place from Google Maps and from some YouTube videos.

But yeah the post office was important because I have a godson so I wanted to send something small back home ❤️. Before finding the post office it started to rain and a becak (local rickshaw)  driver appeared from a distance. He was calling us, offering shelter and telling that he would drive us around for one hour and it will only cost us 20000 rupiahs (1.3€).. Mad cheap. Our censors were on but the rain made us hop on and the first stop was the post office. The rickshaw driver mentioned some places we needed to visit but he talked so fast that we didn't quite get it (or cared so much at first). While we were in the post office Matias did some Google research (local prepaids are handy) that this cheap of a ride will end us up in a batik clothing store where we are almost oblicated to buy something. The rickshaw driver would get his share (commission) on the overpriced products. Then Matias paid the driver the 20000 rupiahs and said that we would continue by foot. The driver still tried that "No no no, don't you want to see the batik store..".. no we would not, thank you.

Riding the becak

We continued our way by foot (despite the heavy rain) and ended up in some shopping district. After some walking around we got hungry and looked up this legendary pempek restaurant nearby. (Pempek is a savoury fishcake from Palembang, South Sumatera.)
This particular restaurant was called 'Pempek Ny. Kamto' and we would definitely recommend it.
We selected three dishes and two bottles of water and the total price was 64000 rupiahs so around 4€.

Tasty Pempek

Later, after lots more walking we wanted to head back to Pondok and we happened to see a Grab pick up stand outside of a mall. "hmm should we finally try it..?".. "yes!" So that's what we did and it was so nice that we were able to see immediately what the about 20 minutes trip was gonna cost us. It was 25000 which is less than 2€. Cool! And just like that we were hooked on Grab :D (we had never tried Uber or anything similar before because it's not a consept that works well with the Finnish laws and regulations.. bummer).

Now how does this work..? 

Superstar treatment at Borobudur

For the next day we scheduled a trip to Borobudur which is a famous place and actually the biggest Buddhist temple in the world and rightfully a UNESCO world heritage site.

Usually sunrise at Borobudur would be the way to go but now, when it was the monsoon season it was better to go later (Or so our guide said and that was ok for us as we weren't too excited of the thought of waking up at 03 am..).
We left at 8.30 from Pondok Ijo with our drivers (on motorbikes) and the trip took maybe like an hour. (We were actually waiting for a van and more people to join us but the bike ride was a nice alternative)

The entrance to Borobudur was 600000 for us two and the bike trip 190000/person so in total it was something like 30€/person. Quite expensive in my opinion, but I guess this was a once in a lifetime type of a thing so going over our daily budget was justified.
When we entered in we noticed that people were staring at us and it looked like people were trying to catch us in their selfies. And then it didn't take long for a group of kids to surround us wanting to take pictures with us! I was overwhelmed by the situation. I'm guessing that this was something that could happen to a celebrity, but I didn't comprehend at first why it was happening to us :D

We learned soon that it was a school holiday and there were a lot of people visiting also from remote places where people looking like us don't often visit. So we were something new. I also later read that to some extent "Western" is considered to be something cool and a pale skin is something to be admired. Some might also believe that Western people bring good luck.. well hopefully we succeeded in that :)

There were at least 5 different groups of student that wanted to ask questions (practise their English with us) and to have pics with us. Of course we wanted to help them out! It was fun for us too :)
But it took our time a bit so it was little hard to concentrate on the actual location of Borobudur.
There were quite a few adults also grabbing us gently, wanting to take pictures with us. Some said few words and some only wanted to shake our hands.
But yeah, it was all good. The kids in particular were so wonderful! So polite and cute and they were smiling a lot! Now based on our travels I could vote Indonesia for the new Land of Smiles :) (Koh Mook could still hold the title for the Island of Smiles).
After Borobudur we just chilled and the next day ended up changing Pondok to an Ibis hotel closer to the airport. 

First of many groups who interviewed us

Borobudur views

The Earth is shaking

On the 15th of December I was having a chill video chat with my mum and granny when we felt the floor moving. It was bizarre. It felt like a cruise ship in Finland  approaching the harbour.. but now there was no harbour to approach.
It was an earthquake. I put my clothes on and said to my spooked mum that "everything is alright.. we are just gonna check what's going on and I'll call again soon..". I mean I definitely wasn't sure what was going on and how dangerous the situation actually was. This was our first ever earthquake but I just hoped that mum and granny wouldn't worry too much.
After some confusion I learned that the situation was ok and we were safe. There were hotel employees on the corridor with Walkie Talkies for some while but there was no panic after some screams from the initial tremble. It had been an 6,7 magnitude earthquake in Java (the same island) but it was 250km away from us so it was ok to breathe and go to sleep. But I read that there might be some aftershocks also.. Yikes.
I called my mum again and made sure all was cool. I got a little spooked and I slept with my clothes on and my small backpack packed that night being ready to escape if that was needed. Luckily we got to sleep peacefully.

Bali

The next day did not offer aftershocks for us luckily but we fled and flew to Bali. Yeahh.. that place with the infamous volcano. I must say I wasn't feeling too good about this. We stayed at Kuta beach, near the airport for a couple of nights. Unfortunately it was raining A LOT so we weren't able to explore the place as much as I would have liked. We did some walking around, shopping mall exploring and checking out the beach (so dirty that day!) but it didn't feel right to stay there longer as we had originally planned.
We debated for awhile what to do next. It would have been only 200€ to fly to Brisbane the next day but the living in Australia is pretty expensive so we started to look for flights back to Thailand.. We realized that we would have to spend 500€ more (each) if we just went back to Thailand but it also felt something that had to be done and that is what we did.

I feel like I missed out on many nice places in Bali, but now I have reasons to return. Though I have to add that I hate that the taxi scene is so effed up there. I felt that there are too many scamming drivers and that the price system should be clarified. Grab would be good there also, because you get to know the final (good) price immediately with no surprises so it's nicer to give a tip and it gives a good feeling also.. like I can trust the system and the people.
But they are trying to ban Grab in Bali and Matias read somewhere that some Grab drivers get their asses kicked there by taxi drivers so.. no feeling of trust there :(

All in all.. Indonesia is huge and it's so diverse. There are a lot of wonderful, polite and very hospital people in Indonesia so the good outs the scumbags and I will definitely recommend visiting Indonesia. But please look beyond crazy Jakarta and the touristy places in Bali, there are tons of places to explore, all different (try Lake Toba or Bukit Lawang for example -editor's note)

Selamat Jalan! (Goodbye in Malay/Indonesian language)

-Sini

Rainy Bali

P.S it was fun to learn that 'di sini" means 'here' :D I also saw signs at bus stops which said 'turun di sini' :) I understood that it means "jää pois tässä", "get out of the bus here".
Cool language.. I wish I could understand it more.



Our route so far