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i spent two hours online the other day uploading my photos and then the computer cut me off, i was very annoyed so im not gonna try and upload them until im in thailand now, and hope that their internet connection is better than here! before i start to write i want to give a warning before you start to read this journal article, ther will be a LITTLE bit of talk about squat toilets, vomiting and prostitution in amongst the culture of the last few days (i know you all want to hear about the bad as well as the good whilst im away) so i make no apologies but give this warning so if your feeling delicate you can either skip it or read it another day!
on sunday i headed into kuta to try and get a trip to java booked, i heard that a sunday in kuta would be quieter than during the week but my goodness it drove me mental the people were so pushy and there is just so few tourists at the moment so any tourists there are are easy prey. anyway i finally managed to book a trip to yojakarta in java starting on the tuesday which included food, accommodation, flights and an english speaking guide and i headed on back to seminyak happy to be away from kuta again. monday was a very relaxed day, i went for a walk, had a pedicure and finally made it to the black beach after it had stopped raining (a mini tropical rain storm - it is the wet season here). i got up at 3.45am tuesday morning and headed to the airport for the very short 1hour flight to yojakarta, i couldnt believe it when i found out there was a time difference between the two places yoja is 1hr behind bali. so i arrived at 6am and was met by a local guide and driver, we went straight to the borobudur temple, which is the biggest buddhist temple in indonesia - funnily enough ther arent many buddhests in yoja to appreciate it, 97% of yoja is muslin so it had a very different feel to it than bali, where hinduism is so strong. borobudur was fascinating it was so huge, there was a big earthquake in may this year that has left parts of it damaged though, it is all built out of the volcanic stone and was founded in 8th century (history lesson of the day) then we went on to to smaller buddhest temples in the region and the carving was so beautiful in them, it is amazing how like art these temples are yet they are so ugly until you look closely. after that we went for lunch at a buffet style hotel, i wasnt particularly impressed with the food and a lot of it wasnt hot so i didnt really eat much apart from some noodles and some fruit. we then went to the hotel for the night which wasnt great (im getting fussy in my ways now im used to having a room to myself) but it was ok, i had an hours sleep as i was very tired by that point and then i was planning to get up and have a walk round but when i woke up i was sick as anything, and there was a childrens party in the garden behind my room where they were playing music which sounded like an indonesian version of the smurfs and i would hav given anything to be able to leave my room and that noise behind but i was vomiting from 3pm right through until 4am and i even fell asleep in the bathroom i was that exhausted and couldnt bring myself to leave the toilet - the only thing i could blame it on was the lunch i had eaten as i have been so careful with the food i eat and the drinks i have, all i kept thinking was i hope im ok to see the rest of yoja tommorrow and at least it happened on the afternoon when i had no plans, i also cant believe how sick iv been since iv come away considering im never sick at home really. anyway indonesian food consists mainly of water based vegetables so my stomach was soon empty but my body just wouldnt stop heaving. i eventually made it into bed about 4am just as the muslims 'call to prayer' at the mosque started, now no disrespect to the religion as i dont know much about it but if you have ever had the 'call to prayer' wake you up at 4am in the morning, or stop you going to sleep when youve been ill all night you will know what i mean, it is the most annoying noise i could imagine, then to top it off the call to prayer obviously woke the animals up and i just happened to have a rooster living in the same garden as the childrens party, so the rooster was cockreling for hours. eventually i gave up and dragged myself into the shower at 7am and then went and collapsed on my bed until 9am (without breakfast, which was already paid for) when my guide for the day picked me up, we headed to the sultans palace - now i have to confess even after asking questions i still dont really know what the sultan is, he seems to be like a king, yet he has a lot of religious standing - the people that speak to him including his wife and children have to hold their hands together like they are praying, so maybe hes like the pope but the muslim version. anyway the palace wasnt very spectacular and to be fair i felt like rubbish, they did do a very good puppet show though, again depicting good versus evil, all the religions here seem to have the yin/yang balance about them. during the puppet show i needed the toilet, now here comes a problem that i would love some help with - how on earth do you use a squat toilet? it was the first one i have ever seen and i just couldnt work out which way to face, after that comes the problem of how you flush it, pouring water down doesnt flush away whats inside it just fills it, also they dont use toilet paper they have a jug and some water that your meant to throw at yourself - well if id done that and pulled my shorts up they would have looked like id wet myself! anyway i decided i wasnt desperate enough for the toilet to try and work out the answers to all these questions and went back out to watch the puppet show, but if anyone has the answers please get in touch with me as iv heard ther are a lot more sqat toilets in thailand - they really should have a diagram on them for westerners lol.
so after the sultans palace we headed to some places where they make batiks and sarongs and i got harrased half to death, the people in yoja aren't as nice as the balinese and so i learnt the indonesian words for 'no thank you' in the hope that they might listen if i spoke their language, it worked for a few of them but others were more persistant, ther is also a lot of beggars in yoja and my guide told me there was a prostitution gang that stands outside the hotel id stayed at the night before - thankfully with being ill i hadnt seen them though i am curious to know what an indonesian prostitute would look like. we then went for a 'pre-paid' lunch where they brought out course after course of food for me and i managed a spoonfull of boiled rice and half a slice of pineapple, i felt incredibly guilty but i just couldnt eat and didnt want to push my body to take food when it wasnt ready. we then headed to prambanan temple, the 2nd largest hindu temple in indonesia, again wasted in yoga with it being a muslim area, the earthquake in may had a devastating effecy on prambanan and we couldnt go inside as it was falling down, we were walking round when it began to rain and when i say rain i mean heavy rain we got given umbrellas but i hav still never been so wet - it reminded me of the cook islands and the tropical storms, it then began to thunder and lightening, the paths around prambanan were mini rivers - my foot got stuck in one and when i got it out my flip-flop had come off, i finally rooted round and found it but then decided it would be easier to go barefoot. it was so funny and horrible at the same time. anyway the rain calmed a bit after an hour but didnt stop but we managed to finish the tour of the temples around prambanan, one of which was a buddhest temple that had over a hundred mini temples - to be honest it looked like a building site and that wasnt because of earthquake damage, the mini temples are just small rocks stacked on top of one another! anyway after that we had two hours to kill before i had to get to the airport for my flight back to bali so we wentto a'traditional' coffee shop, which is basically a few stools on the street, thankfully undercover as it was still raining and i got an 'indonesian tea' through no choice of my own as they dont do any other kind of tea, it is basically back tea in a tall glass, like a tankard, and it has at least 5sugars in it - now i have never had sugar in my tea and if i was going to start doing so now i wouldnt have 5, i managed about 2sips before giving up. got back to bali and seminyak about 1am this morning/last night and i have two full days here before heading to thailand early saturday morning.
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