Jackie's World Tour 2009 – Let the mayhem begin!

Here I am sitting in the airport at Kuala Lumpor trying to kill 2+ hours before our next flight. Yep, I am no longer in Indonesia and I am now off to Malaysia. Not wanting to be in a big city, my travel buddy Claire and I decided to fly into KL and then right out again to head for a the Perinthian Islands off the coast of Northern Malaysia. I am very excited even though I am limping along from lack of sleep. I know it has been a long time since I posted so I am going to back up and tell you all about my adventures in Singapore and Indonesia.

Last I left you I promised I was going to talk about Singapore. What a weird country. I mean it is about the size of Manhattan and has no real defining qualities except that it is like 20 different countries in one. I stayed in a hostel that was right outside of Little India and let me say that when they say it is Little India, it really is. It seriously seems like you are stepping into India. And I have to say that everyone talks about how clean Singapore is, well I am calling Shenanigans. It found it to be somewhat dirty, especially in Little India. Everyone was on top of each other and it was always crowded. I went to the 24 hour mall at 12am and it was packed…on a weekday. I mean don’t people work? It was so weird. I really enjoyed Chinatown. That was pretty cool. It was just like a typical Chinese market area you would see in Thailand or NYC Chinatown. The food in Chinatown was kick ass and super cheap. I spent most of my time there. They also had a huge Buddhist temple that I visited in the heart of Chinatown. It was beautiful and they had a museum of all different kinds of buddahs. It was really interesting. Other than that it was like any other big city. Big malls, expensive shops, etc, etc. They also had the one resort area, Sentosa. I went there one day with some people I met at the hostel I was staying in. It was fun. We rode the 3D rides and went to the aquarium where I got to see some pink dolphins. I didn’t even know pink dolphins existed. Learn something new everyday. 🙂 The one really great thing about Singapore was that I got a travel buddy for Indonesia. Claire was in the same room as me in the hostel and due to some wonky work issues she was able to extend her trip and come to Indonesia with me. And let me tell you, thank god I had her to travel with cause I think I would have curled into a ball about cried about 1,000 different times throughout my jaunt through Indonesia.

I knew at some point I was going to hit a wall with this whole traveling thing. I suspected that it would be somewhere in SE Asia because that would be the start my trip where I would run into the whole language barrier. Well, I predicted correctly. Indonesia was rough going in the beginning. Thank god I had Claire with me cause I think I would have lost my mind. We decided to fly into Jakarta in Java and then go from there. We got in touch with this woman Clara who runs a B&B out of her house about 20 minutes outside of Jakarta and arranged accommodations with her for about 3 days. She had her driver pick us up from the airport and take us back to her place. Ok, first off, there is never a time in Jakarta where there is not traffic. It was insane. Not only is there so much traffic you could walk faster than the cars, everything is really spread out. It took us about an hour and a half to get to Clara’s place. On top of the fact that there is an amzing amount of traffic people drive like asshats all the time! It seriously puts NY to shame. You have buses, trucks, about a billion motorcycles, pedestrians, beggars and an occassional rooster thrown in for good measure that are traversing the roads all at the same time. Passing slower drivers by driving into oncoming traffic is a common practice all over Indonesia and I seriously thought I was going to die at some points during my journeys. Nothing was worse than the 9 hour drive to Mt Bromo when I was stuck in the front seat with a fellow American, Nathan. We both thought we were going to be eating windshield at least 10 different times during that trip…but I digress. We will get to that later. Back to Jakarta. I am not going to go into to much detail about Jakarta except to say that it is a dirty and overcrowded place. I was not really a fan at all. Clara’s home was the only exception. She and her family were wonderful hosts and the house was just magnificant. It was the highlight of Jakarta. The one down side to her place was that there was a mosque right around the block. Ok, let’s take a poll….how many people here have actually heard a call to prayer from a mosque? I am assuming that not many of you have. Consider yourself lucky! It happens about 6 times a day and I think they choose the person with the absolute worst voice on the face of the planet to sing over the loudspeaker. And it seems that they pick the man with the absolute worse voice to do the 4:30 in the morning call to prayer. The first night in Jakarta I was awoken by what I thought was a dying cat screaming into my ear. Nope, it was super bad singer over the VERY loud loudspeaker which sounded like it was mounted in my room next to my bed. Man, I thought I sang badly. These dudes take the cake! The call to prayer actually became the bane of my existence while in Indonesia. I could not get away from it. Everywhere we stayed I got stuck in the room where you could hear the singing. For some reason Claire always got the rooms where you couldn’t hear it but I was not so lucky. Sigh….that is what you get for visiting Muslim countries I guess.

Anyway, after a couple of days Claire and I headed out of Jakarta and took a 5 hour train ride to Yogjakarta (Jogja). This is supposedly the cultural area of Java. I liked Jogja much better than Java. We stayed in a really awesome losem (hostel). Again, Jogja, like Jakarta was very dirty and super crowded. There were so many cheap places to shop and I got a pair of nice sandals for $3. Yea! 🙂 We saw a traditonal ballet at the largest Hindu temple in Jogja. That was pretty damn cool. I really enjoyed it. We also went to Borobodur which is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It was quite impressive. There are a couple of places I have been in my life where I sit back and I am so awed just thinking about the fact that the stone I was touching or where I was standing was where someone had stood thousands of years ago. It is just crazy to me. That feeling doesn’t hit me often but it certainly did at Borobodur. The sheer amount of work that it must have taken to carve each stone just blows me away. It is a beautiful place and I wish I could have spent more time there. We stayed up at the top amongst all the buddahs to wait for the sun to set but decided to head down early cause there was alot of cloud cover. Too bad cause I am sure it would have been magnificent.

After Borobodur we signed up to take a sunrise tour to Mt Bromo, the largest active volcano in Java. It was a nine hour drive  in a mini van to get to the town where the volcano was located. At irst I thought I was in good shap cause I had the front seat and I thought the vn was full. Well, I was wrong. We stopped in another town and picked up another person who had to squeeze in the front seat with me. Thank god the guy, Nathan, was cool cause I think I would have killed myself if I was cramped next to a moron for 9 long hours. it was pretty funny though cause Nathan had to be the tallest guy on the trip and he got stuck sitting in between me and the driver with the stick shift taking up half of his leg room. Poor guy but he handled it well! He was a cool guy and we chatted the whole 9 hours. Of course that was in between clutching to each other for dear life cause we thought we were going to die. There were many times we both thought that we were going to run headlong into a huge truck. Indonesians give new meaning the playing chicken. At swear at one point I looked up and we were driving on a sidewalk! It was actually kind of funny. Needless to say we got the Bromo in one piece and after about 3 hours of sleep we went to see the sunrise over Mt. Bromo. It was uneal. The colors were so vivid and half the time I thought I was looking at a watercolor. Just stunning. Totally worth freezing my ass off and dealing with the 9 hour drive.
 
After JOgja we headed off to Kalimatan, which is the Indonesian side of Borneo. We decided it was time to get our asses into the jungle and see the oranghutans. What a great trip. The planning of the trip was highly difficult considering that Borneo is not really set up for tourists but we finally were able to get it together with the help of Harry, our saviour in Borneo. He runs a oranghutan tour and he was one of the only people that spoke good english. He helped us with  everything from plane tickets to permits. So into Borneo we fly and we head off to Harry’s boat (called a Klotok) to start our 3 day river tour. The boat was our transport, where we ate, slept and hung out. It was awesome. It was very basic but both Claire and I loved it. There is nothing like cruising down a river in the middle of the jungle and watching monkeys play around in the trees. So cool! During the day we woudl got to different Oranghutan Rehabiliation feeding stations to see the orangs. They were amazing. They are just like hairy little people. I got pretty close to them and I got to hand feed them. Again, totally amazing.

I know you guys are probably getting bored with the adjectives I am using cause if I had a penny for everytime I have used the word awesome or amazing I would be rich. But honestly, I really don’t know how else to explain it. My life at the moment just astounds me. I can’t really believe that it is actually my life. I had this conversation at lunch the other day with Claire. She asked me if I lost the wow factor cause I have been travelling for so long now. I have to say that yes, I have lost the WOW factor a bit. It is like I see these amazing things and it registers but I don’t fully appreciate it until I really think about it or I look back at the pictures. Like sitting here writing my blog or when I post my pictures I actually get a chance to really THINK about what I have seen and experienced and it just blows me away. I mean I get to see the most beautiful things on a daily basis and do the coolest things. I can choose to do nothing but lay on a beach or I can pack my days with adventure. It is totally up to me which is really cool. I have never really had that. I guess I am someone who tends to put other people first and I tend to not be selfish enough. I like being selfish. It is a great feeling to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. It is not in my nature to be like this all the time but it is nice to be able to live just for me for a little while. So when I look back on the last 6 months (I can’t believe it has been 6 months already!) I sometimes need to pinch myself just to convince myself that this is reality. I am so lucky that I get to live this life and I thank the man upstairs everyday for giving me the courage to do this.

Ok need to catch my plane. Next update I will tell you all about Bali, where Indonesia really starts to kick ass! And the next update will be within a couple of days, I promise. Hugs to everyone!