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The Gili Islands

After finally traveling once across Java now we can start the relaxing part of the holidays. Since the last blog we have seen some temples around Yogyakarta and have also been to the volcano Mt. Bromo. Even though we didn’t have much sleep for quite a couple of days it was deffinetely a very nice adventure and abselutely worth it.
Friday night we left Java and took a ferry to Bali, til then we had met one Dutch, two Finns, four Germans and a woman from Swiss, who made most of the journey with us. But on Bali our ways parted. Thorsten and I made it immediately to the harbor of PadangBai where we stayed for one night. (After 12 hours in a bus with seats that were 20cm wide, sleep was totally necessary). The next morning we took a speedboat to the Gili islands from where I am writing this blog right now. The Gili Islands do have one big advantage, there is no Police on the islands and therefore pretty much no law.
The idea is phenomenal, take three islands, put some young people on them and let them do whatever they want. Its amazing out here.
Especially the nights are wonderful around here. A lot of restaurants directly on the beach, and you just sit there and have a magnificent view over all these lights in the dark … it really is very hard to describe. And after dinner of course there are the parties, which are not very bad out here either. By that we met an American, an English girl and a guy from Argentina.
Tomorrow we might move on to the next island, to do something more typical like lying on the beach, snorkeling and doing nothing. After that we want to go to Lombok and to the Beach of Kuta (on Bali) but we really do pretty much live into the day and see what comes, so we’ll see.
So long, yours
Andi

Some Things Just Get Annoying

Last but not least, there are some thing getting on my nerves over here. The one thing that is a pain in the ass is the fact that I constantly feel robbed. It happens on a very subtile way but it does happen, a little bit, every day. Last night there was one more of these moments. Graefi and I had decided to go to Jogjakarta by bus. We knew that it would be a long ride, so we paid 200.000 Rupiah for an upper class bus. Description wise everything seemed fine, until we saw the acctual bus. It was a total rip off, the bus was small, smelly and in the back there was something like a closed room with a hole in the ground and only the sign on the door made it obvious that this was the promissed toilet. The seats had nothing of what they should have had. After a 13 hour ride we had arrived in Jogja with every muscle acking. Those are the things I will surely not miss when I go back to germany.
Its just that it is completely random. The moment you show your white fact you pay extra, all the time.
In Jogja we finally had a pretty good day, and we were really lucky with the hostel.
Greetings from Java,
Yours Thorsten

The silence before the Storm

Since the Trip with my mates from UI was cancelled, I make the best of my time in Depok. For those UI students who go to Australia for the next two years, it starts to become serious. Two days ago we had the first farwell party and it won’t be the last one. And even if there are no farwells to celebrate the World Cup is providing plenty of opportunity to go out for a drink. Meanwhile I try to improve my indoniesian by reading „TinTin-Comics“ 🙂

On Thursday I will finally start my journey with two weeks in HongKong. On the first of July I’ll be back to welcome ‚Gräfi‘ to indonesia and together we will go the long way over Yogyakarta to Bali. Maybe, if we have enough time, we may even make it to Lombok. On Bali I will put Gräfi into an airplane back to Germany and will see how I spend my last weeks in Indonesia. Most probably I will fly to Sulawesi for two weeks before I have to go back to Jakarta to apply for an „Exit Permit“. Yes, I acctually have to apply for a written allowance for me to leave the country. I do wonder how much that will cost me. So Long,

-Thorsten-

PS: Kris was on Mount Bromo two days ago and is now on his way to Bali, where he will meet Hilde and go to Lombok with her.

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A New Beginning

10. June 2010

Over the last few weeks the blog did lack a little in caretaking, especially because I was pretty much wrapped up with my studies. Since now the University stuff is finally over I can use this blog for what I ment to use it for: let the people I care about and who care about me know where I am and what I am doing. Especially because from now on, I might get stuck in places where access to the WWW is limited. With the Blog however I can just keep posting messages like: Hey, still alive even if I don’t find the time to answer all my Mail.

After my exams, I originally intended to go on a one week trip around Java with some friends from UI. Now I learned that making plans is not one of the Indonesians best qualities. Until today we did not go on the trip and whether or not we will tomorrow, as planed, is something only god knows. The trip was rescheduled over the last few day pretty often which did give me the time to at least get around Java a little. First I went to Bandung for two days, which was really not that interesting. Last Monday however I joined Kris to go to a small village by the sea called Pangandaran. The place is really nothing special, not very beautiful, not very cold (which would here mean 25°C) but it somehow is a nice place to be. For Kris it meant the beginning of his two months travel around Indonesia and Vietnam. And like the other Europeans and Indonesian travelers we met there at the beach, he now decided to drop half of his plans for Java and stay there for a few more days. People really just get stuck there and if I did not have to go back for the trip with my classmates, I would easily have stayed longer.

Well, so much for the update, from now on I’ll try and blog more often, especially to tell my parents that I am still breathing. Again, if the trip tomorrow works out I’ll be back to Depok by Monday/Tuesday and tell how the national park was. So long,

-Thorsten-

LATER – Just now I received a text from Aryo saying that the trip is cancelled.

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On The Edge

20. April 2010

Well, so far, I believe, that two weeks without a new entry must have been the longest time but as long as I don’t receive complaints, I guess, that everything’s good. The last two weeks were a little boring, just the ususal. Lectures or no lectures, is pretty much at the will of each professor over here and since some put up with the believe that too much lecturing might cripple their health not having some lectures has become a pretty common thing around here. Yet as the end of the semester is approaching, we all notice a certain raise in homework and exercises.

To escape the usual we decided to go to a small village called Cibodas at the foot of a volcano in central West Java. Apart from the National Park around that volcano and a very nice botanical garden there is nothing much there to see, but for one weekend, that was already too much. Even though the place is less than 200km from Depok it took us a solid five hours to get there and one hour more to find the hotel. Once we had finally settled in and had had some lunch by 4pm we met a local tourist guide who offered us to take us up to the volcano (3000m) that very night so we would be able to see the sunrise at 5.30am. The trip he said would take around six hours up and another five to get back down. When we had all the equipment we would need it was 8pm which ment that we could get one more hour of sleep before we would meet again to get started. At 10pm we finally set off and boy the way up was a pain in the ass. After two hours of walking the track stopped to exist hence we were walking through the bushes in the pitch black darkness of the rainforest. Without our two guides we would have been completely lost. After another three hours we arrived at something that is used as some sort of camping ground. Here we allowed ourselves a short pause of one hour since we were doing fairly good in timing. This however turned out to be a mistake. Only here we noticed how cold it actually was. Our guides had packed warm jackets, but we had to deal with what we had taken from Jakarta, which was a mainly T-Shirts, a longsleeve and a towel. Who could have know that we would be camping at 7°C on a mountain that night? At 4am we moved on. The last part which should have taken one hour took us two hours since we were all being on the edge of mere exhaustion. But we made it just in time to see the sunrise and it was beautiful. From up the volcano we could almost see from the northern until the southern shore of west java. The whole sight was breathtaking. Although that could have been the smell of sulfur.

The way down was torture. By now we all were totally exhausted. I almost fell asleep on the top, that’s how tired I was. Even though the way down was not as hard as the way up you still needed to really concentrate on where to put your foot or otherwise you would slip and fall. Even the pause at the hot springs half way down didn’t make it much better. I was never more glad to see an exit.

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Carita

05.04.2010

Pictures To The Article

Remember how I was saying it might be a bad idea to go to Carita by myself. And boy was I right. On Thursday Kris and I checked if there was a bus from Depok directly to Labuan, from where we could take an Angkot to Carita. At the bus port we were told that there would be one leaving at 7pm that night. Since it was 6pm already we rushed home, and made it back to the bus port by seven, only to find that suddenly there never was so much as a bus in that direction. Eventually we made it to another, by far bigger bus port called Rambutan where we got into a bus going to the west coast. Against all expectations however the conductor told us after only 45minutes that this was Labuan and that we would better get out. Outside we realized that this place was everything but surely not Labuan and surely not anywhere useful. In the end we had to hire an Angkot for the ridiculous price of 30€ to take us directly to Carita, where we arrived at 2am.

On Friday it rained a lot, but still, it was a good day to arrive and get a first look around. In the afternoon we even managed to swimming, the waves there were the best. In the evening we met two girls from Netherlands who are doing some sort of pedagogic project in Bandung.

For Saturday we had originally booked a trip to the nearby volcano island Krakatau which was canceled in the morning since the boat was full. Kris didn’t mind that since he had spend the night throwing up into his toilet. Hence Hilde, the two girls from Netherlands and I made it for the nearby nature reservation where were, after one and a half hours of walking along a small trail through the rain forest we found a really nice waterfall. It was totally worth the walk and all the mosquito bites. We could even take a swim in the pool below the waterfall. Later that day we went back to the beach and rented out BodyBoards which if you caught the wave right would carry you very far.

On Sunday Kris was feeling well enough so we could make it to another beach in Anyer where we spent the day and in the evening made it back to Jakarta. The trip back was surprisingly smooth.

After all the trip was totally worth all the annoyances. It felt good to finally breathe fresh air again and see some nature. Depok does become quite dull after a while. And breathing that kind of smog all the time would get on everyone’s nerves. At the end of April we will have to meet the two Netherlandish girls again to celebrate their ‚Queen’s Day‘ and we will be forced to wear orange. Last but not least the password for the pictures is still indo2010!

So long

-Thorsten-

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Carita, and this time we will do it

31.03.2010

Since I couldn’t be bothered last time to travel to Carita all by myself, I had decided to go to Yogya. Now however Kris and Hilde will be coming along. The whole University thing is getting quite annoying by now. For seven weeks now Kris and I always had to study and by now we both are really at the edge. Tomorrow we both will take our last Mid Term exams and then we are finished, for now. So far the exams were quite, well, lets say interesting. Details I will not tell here, those of you who wanna know, send me an E-Mail (would be nice to know how you are doing anyways). As all of us can do with some time off, we decided to go to the beach for the weekend. A National Park, the beach, the snorkeling and mosquito the size of a 1 Cent coin. Even though the price for alcohol will increase by 40% tomorrow, (then it is about 1,5€ per can of beer) we might still be tempted to cheer on the end of a very long exam period.

We will update you on Monday, or Tuesday. So long,

-Thorsten

Indonesia Fun Facts:

1) According to an Article in the Times Magazine, Jakarta is number eight of the worlds most polluted citys. One of the reasons for us to move the hell away from here in May.

2) After the tax raise on alcohol, you will be able to get two packs of cigarettes for the price of one can of beer.

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The Doctor Experiment

28th March 2010

When I woke up on Monday I realized, that I was cold. When you need a blanket at 20°C to stop shivering, you just know something is wrong. Therefore now the Moment came which we had postponed for so long: finding a decent doctor in Jakarta. Kris did already feel a little of for the past few days so he had tried the international hospital right around the corner, only to find that the only international thing about it is the name. Strangely some weeks ago I did have the desire to find out what exactly a so called ‚Student Health Centre‘ is. Just after a short trip back to the 1950’s I had a better understanding of how military hospitals must have been like back then and where I will never ever go again (as long as I am fully conscious). Even tough I’m bitching a lot about their equipment now, the doctor were really good and extremely nice. Luckily however there are doctors in Jakarta who only treat those who can afford it. A private insurance does come in handy every once in a while.

The result of all this is that Kris has no actual reason to feel off, at least his blood claims that, and I just had some bad food. In fact it was very bad food and in retrospect I should have left the restaurant the night before after realizing that the waiter/cook had not seen a shower in what smelled like two days.

By now both of us are however fine and now that we are feeling better it’s time to write out mid term exams, hurray! The thing that really lifted my mood this morning was an Email telling me that a good friend of mine will be coming over in July. Tonight our friend Hilde (the girl from Netherlands) will be back from a holiday on the west coast. For us that means Pizza, beer and an annoying story on how much fun the world out there can be.

Once our Exams are over we’ll try to entertain you a little more. 🙂

So long, all the best.

-Thorsten-

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My Not So Very Perfect Holidays .                                           17.03.2010

Pictures To This Article

Nothings always works out the way you want it to and when I got to realize how I would have to go to Carita, I adjusted my plans. Firstly I would have had to take a train to Jakarta, then about two busses to the actual bus station, where I would have to ask for a bus going to Labuan and finally I would have to catch an Angkot to Carita. Instead I chose the lazy way and took a train to Cirebon on the north coast of Java. Cirebon did however not turn out to be quite what I expected. Tourists almost never get off here and as a result to this people do not really know how to react to white people. All they do know is, that white people have money, big money. Therefore Banjai¹-Drivers are a) really eager to get to drive you and b) charge you big time for doing so. After all I had to realize that this place would have nothing relaxing and laid back, wherefore I chose to move on to the ‚Heart and Soul of Indonesias Culture – Yogyakarta‘. Only just getting there proved to quite an adventure. In Indonesian long distance trains there are two classes, the lower one being the Business Class and the first class called Executive Class. For some reason I decided that Business Class does not sound so bad after all and took the seven hour train ride in this not air conditioned class. I also found out that it is called Business Class because business is being made in here. It was very much like a marked coming to you. Coffee, cold drinks, toys, food, refreshing tissues, snacks, baggers, clothes and hats. There was nothing you couldn’t buy.

In Yogya I quickly found thanks to the Lonely Planet a very neat backyard hotel, which hosted mostly europeans. The very best about the Hotel was (apart from the terrace on the roof) to meet some people. Most of them were quitters, who quit there jobs back home and now make use of their time off, to travel through south-east-Asia. The city itself was rather pleasant and relaxed, at least people tried to rip you off moderately. Banjai-drivers for example started bargening at 20.000 IDR instad of 50.000 IDR as I had to experience in Cirebon. A trip is however mostly not worth more than 6000 IDR.

Yogya might have that because it is and always has been an artists city. Especially the Batic-Art is some of the best and best known in Indonesia. It’s just the Batik-Sellers that can be a real pain in the ass. They will always try to lure you into an innocent conversation (I was surprised how many people in Yogya should have relatives living in either Berlin or Munich) on the end of which he would always tell you: “Hey man, I know a store for lacal arts, you have to see this, it’s real interesting. It belongs to a friend of mine…. “ He would however not tell you that the shop does pay a nice little commission for paying tourists.

Facing that I would return with Krisko anyways I decided not to do all the big tourist attractions now and focus on things I would hardly see again when returning in May. Of course I took a stroll down Maliboro Street, the main shopping road in town but also checked out remote places like the Affidi Museum, which might surely be interesting to someone who does have an understanding about arts. But most of my time I did spend doing nothing, reading and getting a massage.

After all I did have a really nice and relexing weekend and it was simply good to finally get out of Depok for a change. Now however, sadly the Mid-Term Exams of UI are coming up.

So long

Thorsten

PS: The password for the pictures is indo2010!

1 : A Banjai is sone sort of Bicycle Taxi.

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The Last Few Weeks                                                                         15.03.2010

My last entry is quite long ago already, so it’s again time to support you with latest news, this time also in English, as some of our non-german friends and classmates were interested. For those, who read the german blog already, this is gonna be nothing new.
Here in Indonesia, things are still going well for us and we feel fine over here. By the time, a daily life has built up and we got to know a lot of people, especially on the campus. However, so many people call me by name, that I can’t remember to get to know all of them. So I used to spend time with other students to play Basketball, Billard or just checking out Jakarta’s nightlife.
Last week I took part in a university basketballgame in the team of our faculty, even though not completely voluntary. And although we did not win, my basketball-skills from long ago could at least avoid the biggest shame on me 😉
Thorsten and I actually had the plan to expand this weekend for a trip to West-Java, since tomorrow is a public holiday. But unfortunately I had to hold a presentation today, so this didn’t work out for me and Thorsten had to go alone.
While he has been on tour(actually he still is), Hilde and I checked out a location called „Melly’s“ in Central Jakarta. A small, nice place for going out, a mixture between traditionall and western, but in an authentic way. Next to seats and tables it’s also possible to sit on small platforms with a table in the middle, which is quite comfortable.
In general, we are trying to find out the nice places in Jakarta by ourselves. When people from here want to show us the city, it’s usually a mall-seeing tour instead of a sight-seeing tour since people from here love to spend their freetime in this places.
However, tomorrow I’ll have my last attempt for a guided tour through Jakarta, this time by a guy from the german studies who offered to show me the real Jakarta. So I think it might be something different this time. We’ll see…
That’s it so far, next time it may be more….
Krisko
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Java Jazz                                                                                          08.March 2010

Ahhhh, … the good old weekend: Going out, Studying, Festival, Studying, Partying, oh it’s Monday already.

Friday night Kris and I were out for Pool Billiard. Kris’s classmates had previously shown him a nice ‚kind of sort of Pub‘ which we checked out Friday night. Billiard, Guinness by the Pitcher and good music. Plus the best thing was, it’s really close to our apartment. And in fact, it really was the first time for us to hear real music to be played in public, other than that Indo-Pop they usually play around here. At first Kris was a little tired and needed some Motivation, but at last we did have a really good night out.

Saturday night I was taken to the “Java Jazz Festival” by a classmate of mine. Despite the three hour trip to get there, yes Jakarta is that big and has that much traffic, it was a really nice experience, just something different for once. Of course Jazz isn’t really the kind of music, that blows you away, but it was totally worth it. Even though the Expo on which the festival took place on more than 20 stages, was totally packed with people. The best thing was the experience of queuing up in a car. Only to get on the expo parking lot we had to queue up for half an hour and once there we couldn’t find a free space. Luckily we were in Indonesia, so it only cost us 5€ to bribe a guy to get us into the reserved area for BNI VIPs (the BNI Bank is the biggest sponsor of the festival).

For Sunday night I was actually invited to meet a guy from UI at his gig, but ended up being too tired to go. Instead I planned a weekend trip for the upcoming weekend. On Friday exams will finally be over and by that time I’ll have seen nothing but Depok, Jakarta, concrete buildings and shopping-malls for six weeks. It’s time to get out of here and for that I found a little city at the west coast of Java from where we can do trips to a near by volcano island, to a National park or simply spend some time at the beach. From the description in the Lonely Planet the perfect place for a short term holiday.

So Long, and to the ISE-people, all the best for your last two exams,

-Thorsten

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03.03.2010

Going Out In Jakarta

It’s not quite as good as in Germany but there is an almost equal alternative. ‚Kumang‘ is the “Mini Bali” of Jakarta which means an entire block in which every legal alcohol seller has gathered. The only thing that really is missing are real Pubs, but at least the place is not short of clubs, junk food and restaurants. Hilde instantly became a VIP member at the Nu China Club which gave all of us an instant 25% discount. Long story short, we did have quite some fun last weekend and finally did see a little more than shopping malls. Of those we did lately see a little more than we actually wanted to but times are changing. While I at least used the daylight for studying, Krisko was invited to a small BBQ at his lecturers home. Yet arriving there he was raghter surprised to find that this little BBQ was much more a gathering of the entire ‚Electrical Engineering Department‘, meaning nothing less than all heads of the department plus all the lecturers. The food must have been extraordinary, apparently Indonesia has some more to offer than fried rice and boiled vegetables. When Indonesians try to show off you are offered all kinds of Fruits, grilled rice in bamboo-leaves, Tempey (a speciality, which is mainly soy-bean) and some stuff of which Kris is not entirely sure what it is, but it’s got something to do with some sort of root.
For this weekend we even have an entire programme worked out. Java Jazz is in town, the biggest jazz festival in Indonesia and supposably even internationally well known. Friday we will probably try and see a guy called John Legend. The rest of the weekend we will have to split up, as both of us are getting to know people around here and every now and then we should also pay some attention to our social commitments here (don’t worry, we also really want to). So I will spend the day studying and the night with a friend at the Jazz-Festival while Krisko is getting a free tour around Jakarta. And finally on sunday night, we both are invited to a gig of a guy I met in the food court. Supposably a really really good guitar player.
Tomorrow I’ve got to write my Thermodynamics Exam, while Kris is doing nothing (bastard).
Next week, after I’m done with all my exams, we’ll maybe go to Bandung, and as Tuesday the 16th of March is a public holiday around here that seems to be a good excuse to skip Monday as well 🙂
Stay tuned for the updates, again, as this is only a translation of the real blog, we are sorry if we sometimes don’t make it to translate an article, so you might be well advised to check the real blog as well. Plus this one is not going to be as up to date as the original blog.

We hope you enjoy the freezing temperatures of Germany, while we are having cosy 25-30°C 😛 Take care everyone, thanks for reading.

-Thorsten