Indonesia

Thursday afternoon I took a cab straight to the airport from school and met up with Karlijn and Gerrit (my two absolute favorite people here) and we flew to Jakarta. This turned out to be a pretty crazy trip. I had a revelation about a day in where it just like, "Maddy. This would NOT have been okay with you three months ago. I think we're growing here, girl."

We landed in Jakarta and tried to get a flight from there to, well, anywhere basically (Jakarta is not known to be the nicest place to visit, let alone spend your weekend). Alas, it did not work, so we took option B and rode a bus into the city and found the train station. After a confusing bout of trying to buy tickets that they insisted did not exist, we got a train for the next morning at 8:15am to Yogyakarta (we had wanted to leave the next evening). Although everyone wanted us to take a cab, we chose to walk and finally made it to the street with all the hostels around 9:30-10pm. It's an awesome street with lots of hostels, bars, restaurants, food stalls, and colorful lights. We found a little place with space down a little alley (unfortunately, Karlijn and I got attacked by bed bugs there. Too bad, 'cause it was a cute place with a very nice guy running it). And we found a different hostel that had a mini-van shuttle to Yogy every night. I went to bed (did I mention I had a horrible sore throat and had had minimal sleep the past week because of Joe and Penang? still went, though...) and Gerrit and Karlijn went back to the train station and managed to get a partial refund for our morning tickets.

We spent Friday wandering around Jakarta and I actually really liked it. It was very dirty and polluted and smelly and had a lot of poverty but it was a very real city. Very raw. I think I enjoyed it as much as I did because I was there with good people but the realness and rawness was also an almost refreshing change from rich and regulated Singapore (lots of 'r' adjectives). We took a train (like a poorer version of the MRT) to the old town square (they were filming a car commercial there, actually), had tea in this very elite, colonial but cool restaurant that Lonely Planet suggested (the walls were COVERED, including the bathroom, in framed portraits of all different ages, styles, and people. I saw Bush Senior, Mick Jagger, a young Elton John, the current and two previous queens of Holland - Karlijn pointed them out - Katherine Hepburn and a collection of interesting photos of unidentifiable people) and then spent the rest of the day wandering around. We stumbled upon this very busy and crowded market built into this maze of alleys and ordered nasi goreng (fried rice) because it was the only recognizable thing we could communicate to the smiling guy at a food stall. It was delicious. We also spent considerable time exploring antique shops, which was also very cool.

The mini van that night was supposed to leave at 6pm and arrive at 5-6am. Needless to say, that's not at all what happened. We left aroun 6:45 and drove around Jakarta for about two hours picking up two other guys. That meant that there were seven people in a eight-seater car. It was the three of us (shoved into the middle seat) plus another girl from Holland and then three non-English speakers (including the driver). We made it to Yogy around 10am the next morning - do not ask me how we survived 15hours in the car. The answer probably lies in the four-six bathroom stops (I can't remember the specific number) and our (meaning me, Karlijn, and Gerrit, of course) system of rotating seats so that everyone got slept on the same amount.

Our morning on Saturday consisted of figuring out logistics like a flight back to Jakarta and hostel and temple touring. In the afternoon, we went to beautiful Borobudur, a Buddhist temple built in the 9th century and enjoyed wandering around taking pictures in the rain without umbrella/poncho. Drying off was in order before dinner. We went to a nice restaurant because it was Karlijn's mom's birthday and had some pretty bad food while admiring the food stall below us that had live musicians rocking out. We laughed that we had become so accustomed to eating at relatively sketchy little places and that "nice" restaurants are often not that good - just expensive. I love laughing with them.
Sunday morning we got up suuuuuuper early and went to see the Hindu temple (built in the 9th century as well) called Prambanan. It was a cluster of different towers/temples that were all for different deities, whereas Borobudur was one big temple with lots of Buddhas. Both were made out of big stone bricks with intricate carvings. I wanted to climb them.

Our driver to the temple swung me by the airport at 10am on our way back so I could catch my flight back to Jakarta and then Singapore and I had an easy day of traveling (except they took my deet away at airport security and that did not make me happy). Fit in some good journaling time. Karlijn and Gerrit didn't have class until Tuesday, so got to spend an extra day in Yogyakarta. They should be back now, I'm going to go find out what they did...

I'm so lucky to know such good people all over the world.