a short stroy

Semarang, Ubud, Padangbai, Kuta

Ok I’m not good in writing short stories about my trip. After Yogja we went to Semarang to visit a friend of my sister.

Semarang:
Happy, a friend of my sister (which she knows from an exchange project from uni), took us to a really fancy hotel. We wanted to go to an other hotel, because it was really expansive, but she insisted that we staid and of course she didn’t let us pay. She really wanted to pay for everything, that’s how it goes when they get visitors, but we felt really guilty. Finally we got a chance to pay for the food, but she really didn’t like that.

They took us around and I went horse ridding to 9 different temples at a mountain (beautiful). I hadn’t been riding a horse since I was a kid and there I was riding a horse up on the mountain. The man thought that I could ride the horse and left me alone with the horse. I was scared to dead that I was going to fall down the steep slope. It was a beautiful ride and it was great to see all these temples up the mountain. The only negative thing was that suddenly the man stopped us half way and said that if we wanted to go furder up we had to pay extra. I hate it when they do these and they seem to do this everywhere in Indonesia, bah. Sometimes you get really sick of these people trying to rip you of., and they seem to do that all the time.


Bromo
Than we took of to Bromo (we first had to go back to Yogja because we couldn’t go strait away). There we had to go up in the middle of the night to climb up to the volcano. It really smelled and it was so cold. We took a jeep first and than I went a part up by horse he just let me drive by myself; pretty scary). It was nice to see the volcanos and a beautiful view we had.
It was amazing to see al these volcano’s together, so many. Some were still so active and you could see smoke coming out after every few minutes.
The smoke and clouds made it really magical and powerful.

There were so many tourist there, especially those Japanese groups. Lots of locals selling warm winter jackets, which I thought was funny to see in the tropics, but indeed it was really cold up there. I burrowed a jacket from our tour guy and I felt and looked like a Michelangelo poppet.
Funny story: a lot of times you have these locals who want to go on the picture with you, because than they can tell at home that they have a white friend. This time a France guy came up to me and ask me if he could go on the picture with me, whaha, how funny is that; me in my Michelangelo jacket with this old France guy haha.

Transport to Ubud
We arranged a trip to go to Ubud, because we didn’t want the hassle and finding transport for hours; so we took a tourist good arranged expensive trip; but instate of that we got a lot of local transport, a lot of waiting, and no comfort (so that was a good deal and a good lesson). Even my bag got stolen on the bus, so not a good experience.
Ubud was really nice; we did a lot of shopping; because the have plenty of nice art and craft shops there to. It’s a beautiful place with a lot of rice fields there as well.
It was really different than Java or Sumatra; it’s much more touristy and more Hinduism; you can see the offer Andes and smell the incense everywhere (also a lot of traditional party’s going on in town and they all dressed up in these colourful clothes and bringing food)

Padangbai
We met nice people from Germany and went with them to Padangbai; this is a really peaceful and quit place with nice white beaches.
We went to this beautiful white sand beach were they had little bars and restaurants, even massages. There were not many tourist and we almost had the beach for ourselves.
Some old guy’s were standing in front of the water and were falling down al the time because of the undercurrent. Later the waves were quite and we decided to go in the water. We went floating far in the sea, but than we wanted to go back…and than it happened. The waves came and the undercurrent took control over us. We didn’t know what to do. Every time we came up an other big wave came and took us under water. Finally we came to the beach, exacted and choking. A man was laughing when he saw us like drunken kittens, but he didn’t realize that it was serious and that we did almost drowned. After a couple of hours we recovered a bit and could breath normally again, although the salt was still making us cough al the time. (It’s good that my mother didn’t see us, almost, drown)

Kuta
The last day’s we spend in Kuta; really big beaches, lots of tourist, lots of surfers, lost of shops, shops and shops, people hanging on you to get you to buy there stuff (pretty annoying) I bought lots of nice things (so my sister could take home some more bags, haha), couldn’t buy to much because I still had to travel.

Kuala Lumpur to Brisbane
I took the plane to Kuala Lumpur staid there for one night and took of to Brisbane. It was weird to see all these white people again; I wasn’t used to it anymore, haha, they looked so big and angry to me (after seeing all the Asian people). They are really paranoid about decreases and stuff so I had to take out all my stuff because I had an apple in there (I was glad they didn’t found the shells).

There I was; In Australia.