Ari's Trip

This really is the longest post I think I've ever put on the blog. I'm just posting it for myself, so no pressure to actually read this novella. 

Ari was here from February 16th (he arrived pretty late that night, around 8pm) to March 1 (his flight was at 8, so he left the hotel around 5am). Which was about 13 days, give or take. But given the fact that Ari saw all of the sights of Surabaya (I think there are 2?) and visited FOUR islands in that time, I think we made the most of it. And not least of all, we got to see each other after six months apart!!

So Ari flew into Juanda (Surabaya) airport, and we checked into Novotel, a pretty ritzy hotel compared to our usual standards—this was a recurring theme in pretty much all the places we stayed, thankfully. For dinner, we ordered room service, and Ari got to try his first Indonesian meal: gado-gado. It was a success! The next day, we swam in the hotel pool (Yes! Pool!) and ate at the posh breakfast spread that cost a whopping $10 each (this was one of the splurges of the trip). I thought it was worth it for all-you-can-eat American-style breakfast, though. This was Ari’s second chance to try Indonesian food, a chance that he took every single time during the trip. I can’t blame him; Indonesia has some pretty unique and tasty dishes. The only problem was, I am pretty sick of all of them (or at least all the veggie-friendly ones) after six months here. So we often looked for restaurants that offered both Indonesian and American style food on our trip.

The first full day in Surabaya I hadn’t planned anything, since I was planning for Ari to have some jetlag. However, he didn’t really have any. Hooray! So we watched TV in our room, walked around the back of our hotel for lunch at a legit warung for Ari’s benefit (he had bakso!! The national dish of Indonesia! Or at least people are really proud of it.), and then went to the nearby mall to hang out before meeting up with some friends (Steve and Sakti) for dinner.

Getting hoarse thanks to two hours of karaoke. 

We ended up having about two hours to kill before dinner, so we decided to sing karaoke! $12 for a private room for two hours. I have never done karaoke with only two people before. But let’s just say the two hours sped right by, and I almost lost my voice. It’s hard to sing continuously for two hours! And, we pretty much sang every decent song in the “English” section of the karaoke book. Lucky finds: 2 Radiohead songs (Creep and No Surprises (I think)) and the Stranglers song No More Heroes. After karaoke, we met up with Steve and Sakti and a professor friend of theirs for dinner at d’Kampoeng, a warung-style restaurant where you can just walk around and pick what you want from about 20 different food stalls, and then pay for everything when you leave. Ari loved all the choices, and we ordered a decent quantity of food. AND they had cotton candy! Be still my heart.

After dinner, we drove around (and got a little lost) trying to find a local venue to hear some live “indie” music by a musician friend of Steve’s. We eventually found it (and instantly became centers of attention at the concert—four bules all at the same time!?) and stayed for about an hour before calling it a night and heading back to Novotel.

Kalimantan (Borneo)

The next morning, we had a lazy breakfast and then headed to Surabaya airport for our first flight to Pangkalan Bun, as part of a pre-arranged tour package to see orangutans in Tanjung Puting national park by riverboat. We at a traditional Padang-style lunch at one of the airport cafes, and then flew to Kalimantan, arriving there at around 4pm. At the tiny airport, we were met by our guide, Ambo, who took us to a car and drove us straight into the town, called Kumai, where we would board our riverboat. We drove the hour, and then got on our boat. It was really cool! We “lived” on the top, open level, while the four guys who were part of our tour package lived on the lower level, where the kitchen and bathroom were. When we first boarded the boat, the sun was just setting. Ari and I couldn’t get over how unreal the experience was as we started sailing down the river. All along the sides were giant palm trees that were covered completely by the river water up to their fronds. As it got darker, we could see random trees here and there that were COVERED in blinking fireflies—it looked like some kind of awesome all-natural Christmas light show. We sailed for a couple hours, and then we were served dinner by candlelight on the boat. All of the food was freshly cooked right below deck, and the portions were huge! Then two of the guys set up our sleeping mats on the floor, making sure there was a good mosqito net covering it. And that was our first night on the boat.

Dinner by candlelight.

The next morning we woke up naturally at about 6:30am, thanks to the sunlight. I also woke up to the sound of mosqitos angrily buzzing right outside the net. And I had been sleeping with my knee touching the net. Ack! When I pulled my knee away, I had five mosqito bites on it! Good thing I was taking malaria pills.

We had a delicious fresh-cooked breakfast, and then sailed for another couple hours or so to the first feeding site for the orangutans. All of the orangutans in the park were released back into the wild, so they generally all are “tame” in some way. A lot of them were kept illegally as pets when they were babies. Ari and I were really excited to spot a our first orangutan, a wild one (on the other side of the river, outside of the park limits), just chillin’ in a tree near the river.

Wild orangutan sighting! 

When we docked, we walked about 20 minutes to get to the site, and on the way, we happened to come across the “king” for that area—the head orangutan. He was really big. And there was nothing separating us from him! Kind of a crazy experience. But he was pretty chill, just sitting on the grass eating a bunch of bananas. When we continued to the site, we found another male and a mother with a baby sitting amongst the fruit. It was really interesting just to sit there and watch the apes interact and eat. We probably spent a couple hours there before heading back to the boat to go to the second feeding site.

To get to the second feeding site, we sailed on a narrower tributary of the river that has really clean water; the guide called it “black” water, and it definitely did look black. When we reached the docking point,  we walked a little further into the jungle-y area, and got to see quite a few orangutans as they came out of the trees from different areas of the forest, looking for the fruit that a ranger had put out. It was really neat to watch a baby figuring out how to swing on the vines, and one of the mothers came out into the viewing area and just sat among the people for about 20 minutes. We also saw a gibbon who darted in and out of the feeding area, grabbing fruit that the orangutans were supposed to have. Oh! And we saw quite a few wild boars as well, on our walk in, including a couple troops of adorable baby boars (piglets?).

After the second feeding site, we got back in the boat and started to sail in the homeward direction, since Ari and I had a flight to catch at 8:30am the next morning. On the way, though, we got to see a decent number of macacques and proboscis monkeys up in the trees. Very cool! And we saw a couple beautiful kingfishers as well.

The next morning, we got dropped off at the airport and checked in just in time for our flight to Jakarta, with a transfer there to Lombok. Ambo had the trip timed perfectly; we only had to wait about 10 minutes before boarding our plane and flying off from probably the most amazing part of our whole trip. Not that we didn’t have fun the rest of the time...

Lombok: Gili Trawangan, Kuta, and Mataram

We had a five-hour layover in Jakarta, where we decided to pay the 50,000 rupiah ($5) for an “executive lounge” where we could get wifi and free (nasty) food and drinks until our flight. Then we boarded our plane about about 3pm, arriving to Mataram airport at about 5pm. This was after all the fastboats were done for the day, so we had to hire private transportation to get us to Gili Trawangan, one of the tiny islands off of Lombok. It cost $45 each, and it involved a harrowing, windy drive up to the harbor area, followed by a choppy speedboat to the island, but I thought it was generally a lot of fun. Ari was less enthusiastic about it—leading me to think I may have become more adjusted to the relatively crazy driving style that is the norm here in Indonesia.

We reached Gili T by about 7:30pm, exhausted from a day spent entirely in transit, but happy to have cute place to sleep. Our bungalow was in a traditional “Sasak” style, one of the indigenous groups in the area, and it was really cute. But importantly, it still had a/c. Thank goodness. After taking an hour to motivate ourselves to go out, we walked around the main area, and stopped for smoothies in the night market, which had lots of amazing looking fresh fish (Ari made a decision to come back there soon).

We booked a snorkeling tour for  the next day, which left at 10:30am. It hit three major spots on all three of the Gili islands: Gili T, Gili Meno, and Gili Air. Although it was raining the next morning, we met up with about 10 other people to climb into a boat and sail out to the three sites. The first site was pretty great; lots of colorful fish (that would have been even more colorful had the sun been out, sigh). The second site was called Turtle Cove, and a guide managed to point out three sea turtles. However, I had to get out after the second turtle, because I was being stung all over by tiny jellyfish! Actually, everyone was, and I was just more annoyed by it, although a few other people did decide to cut their snorkeling short due to the annoying stinging. Our last site was pretty good (no more jellyfish), and we did get to see another sea turtle up close! The turtle was trying to eat something in the coral, so he wasn’t really going anywhere, and we got to take a nice long look at him. After the third site, we sailed back to the dock, which was a more challenging task than expected, thanks to the really choppy waves (it was still raining). The trip took a little while, due to the need to avoid all the choppy waves (and we got splashed A LOT), but overall it was a pretty fun day.

The rest of the day was spent walking around the entire circumference of the island, which takes about 1.5 – 2 hours. We enjoyed seeing the quieter areas of the island (Gili T is known as the party island), and stopping midway to get spring rolls and soda.

For dinner, I got legitimate ITALIAN FOOD! Who knew I missed Italian food so much?!! Ari patiently waited for me to eat my pizza, and then we headed over to the night market for Ari to pick out a fish (maybe it was a red snapper? We never really knew) from one of the vendors, who grilled it up and served it in about 15 minutes.

On our second full day in Gili T, the sun came out! For the first time! So we utilized that time to take photos and lie on the beach. 

Evidence of the sun. 

When it eventually got cloudy again after a few hours, we tried to rent a kayak, but apparently the weather’s too rough during the rainy season, so we ended up renting snorkeling equipment and never using it. Instead, we just sat at a cafe on the beach for several hours, looking out at the ocean and reading our ebooks (Consider the Lobster for Ari, A Confederacy of Dunces for me). We also went on another pretty good walk, this time attempting to find the elusive mountaintop lookout, that we couldn’t find the day before. We got lost again, with Ari getting really frustrated and embarrased. (He doesn’t like getting lost ever. Even if we are tourists.) I finally asked a couple people in very basic Indonesian for the path to the top, and we found it. We were able to reach the top just in time to see all of the islands before it got dark. We also got a little lost finding the “correct” path down the mountain. We couldn’t find anything that looked official, and ended up having to cut through what might have been someone’s back yard (which stressed out Ari again). For dinner that night, we got pretty good sushi and sashimi. And then I ordered a pizza. Because you can never have too much pizza (although Ari seems to disagree with me on this).

After several hours of indecision the previous day, we decided to spend the one unplanned day and night that I’d left in our schedule in Kuta, a town in the south of Lombok proper. So we booked transport through Perama travel company (they seem to do most of the tourist transportation in the Bali-Lombok region) to come pick us up on Gili T with a little speedboat, then drive us (private transport because it’s the low season! Woohoo!) the two hours down to Kuta, to the Surfers Inn, a little hotel we’d planned to stay at(no need to book ahead because it’s the low season! Woohoo!). We got dropped off at the hotel around 11:30am, checked in promptly to our very spare, but very cute hotel, and pretty much rushed off to the beach. It was just across the road, and it was BEAUTIFUL. And there was basically no  one there, except for a group of naked 5-year-old girls playing in the water. It was also SUPER hot, since there was no shade and the sun was out. We decided to walk along the water to a cool little outcropping in the distance, where it looked like there might be shade, and there were some neat rocks and trees. The trek ended up being quite a trek—the sand was very loosely packed (is that the way to describe it?), so our feet sank in almost up to our ankles with every step. It was like low-key quicksand. But we managed, with much sweat and frustration, to eventually work our way to the desired site, and it was totally worth it. There was a school group playing nearby, but as Ari and I observed, it was really their beach anyway, so we couldn’t hold much of a grudge against them for slightly disturbing the total silence. We then explored around the very shallow, turquoise water, finding crabs and little caves to sit in. We both agreed that this beach was pretty much one of the top best beaches either of us had ever been to. It was just so beautiful and empty.

We stayed there for about two hours, after which it was simply too hot to stay out longer, since there still wasn’t shade anywhere. We opted to walk back along the main (really tiny) road rather than trudge through the sand again, and stopped for lunch at a really tasty local joint that only served traditional Indonesian food. We both got nasi campur telur (vegetarian nasi campur) and soda to drink. What a treat! Then we went back to our hotel, jumped in the pool and read a bit, before discovering—gasp—that the vegetarian restaurant we’d heard recommended to us by multiple people closed at 6pm. And it was 4:30. So we jumped up, changed into actual clothes, and hired a couple local guys to drive us up the steep hill to the restaurant (Astari) and pick us up when we called them.

We safely got to Astari at about 4:45, and I’m so glad we made it. It had a gorgeous view of the beach we’d been at during the day, as well as a lot of the surrounding area. And everything on the menu was vegetarian! So we ordered paninis, coconut milkshakes (which were a little disappointing and were essentially just super-creamy coconut milk), and a chocolate brownie for dessert. Everything was pretty good, if not NYC-vegetarian-restaurant good. But the view made up for everything 100%.

After dinner, we called the guys to pick us up again, and after not answering the first few calls, they finally picked up the phone and showed up to get us and take us back to our hotel. We spent the rest of the night just sitting out on the little porch in front of our hotel room, reading our books and chatting a little with the German girl who had just checked into the room next to ours.

The next day was a big headache.

We got picked up easily and punctually from our hotel at 8am, and the driver took us back up to Mataram, where, ideally, we would have taken the fastboat from Lombok to Bali. The fastboat takes 1.5 hours. However, the fastboats weren’t running, since the weather was too rough. So we booked a trip by ferry, which takes approximately 5 hours. We got on the ferry an hour early, bought snacks from vendors on the ferry to tide us over for the trip, and settled in. The ferry sailed away from the port, started off, and then hit really choppy water. The water was so choppy that I began to feel seasick after only ten or fifteen minutes. Suddenly, it turned around. We headed back to the port, but just sat there, nearby the port, apparently waiting for the sea to calm. We ended up sitting there for about three hours total, before the captain gave up, and we just went back to port. In the meantime, I managed to call Perama and have them book us a flight to Bali the next morning at 9am, so we could still get there, if a day late. And no refund from the Bali hotel, either. 

Sitting on the ferry. Not too excited about it. 

We had to wait for the Perama bus to take us back to Mataram (for the fourth time, or maybe more; I’d lost count by this point), and then once in Mataram, we paid for our flight ticket (after freaking out momentarily when they told me all the flights were booked. I was SURE I’d already booked a flight, and it turned out I was right, alhumdullilah). Then we checked in to the Lombok Garden Inn, the same hotel that Christen, another Fellow, was staying in (for the entire length of her fellowship), and which was conveniently close to Perama. We checked in and enjoyed the chance to finally relax, even if it wasn’t where we had hoped to be. We met up with Christen for about an hour just to chat (she was wiped out from doing the Mataram Access camp that weekend), and she walked us to a decent local Italian restaurant we could go to for dinner. I got gnocchi, which was actually pretty good, if a small portion, and Ari got some kind of not-so-great fish. Then we checked out the local (and only) mall, where I got a McFlurry, which I’d been craving since earlier, when Ari had mentioned the name. Ari got his first Magnum chocolate bar, which he was suitably impressed by.

Bali: Ubud

The next morning, we had to get up early yet again to catch our flight at the Mataram airport at 9am. We checked in easily because the airport is really small, and even managed to buy and write a couple postcards for family back home. Then we took the 45-minute flight to Denpasar, where we hired a taxi to drive us to our place in Ubud, called Sri Ratih Cottages, about 1 ½ away, thanks to traffic. The cottages were really nice. They gave us a delicious ginger/lemongrass/lime soda welcome drink, and then showed us our pretty nice room in beautiful grounds. The pool was obviously recently renovated and looked wonderful. We decided to swim later, but we were pretty hungry, so we went on a long walk to Sari Organic, another vegetarian restaurant I’d heard good things about from friends. It’s located pretty far out into the rice fields. We got lost a couple times trying to find the entrance on the map (which I should have remembered from my last time in Bali, but couldn’t). But we eventually found it, and it was, again, totally worth the trip. We got a table right on the balcony area overlooking the rice fields, and the food was really good too. Unsweetened watermelon juice and an avocado salad for me, some kind of green drink and lontong (Indonesian food) for Ari. 

On our porch at Sri Ratih Cottages

Then we walked back, going into town a bit of a ways to book tickets for one of the cultural dance shows and for the eco bike tour, and then coming back just as the light was dying to swim for an hour or two before leaving for the show. We picked the show because of the venue—it’s a beautiful temple surrounded by water lilies. We also got there extra early, so we had good seats in the front row. The performance was good, and I enjoyed it even more, I think, because the tourists around us also seemed to be having a blast. At the end, there’s a part where the audience can come up and dance with one of the dancers. Ari and I didn’t do it, but we had fun watching others do it! We had dinner at the Lotus Cafe aftewards, which is the restaurant attached to the temple. It was pretty good, but fairly pricey, due to the scenic location. And Ubud in general is more pricey than all of the places we’d been to earlier in the trip.

The next day, we had to get up at 7:30 to be picked up for the bike tour (so many early mornings!). Our guide, Joe, and impeccable English. I’d done the tour with my dad when my parents came to visit around New Year’s, and our guide then had had pretty good English, but Joe’s was amazing. He sounded Australian. We had a really good tour, too, despite the fact that both of us had fairly wonky bikes. The gears kept changing on my bike, even though I wasn’t doing anything but pedaling. But we saw some different stuff (people preparing for the Hindu New Year, which was in about two weeks). And Ari LOVED the Indonesian lunch that was included. 

After the tour, we decided to get dropped off at the Monkey Forest, where I just enjoyed watching the Balinese Macacques messing with people as they walked by. We then walked ALL the way back to our hostel, which took about 1 ½ - 2 hours. Then we bought tickets to see Kecak dance, which is the tpe of dance that Bali is apparently most famous for. I had misgivings at first, because I thought we might be too tired, but it ended up being worth it. Then, before the performance, we jumped in the pool again for a quick swim. We then took a taxi to the show (got there early again for good seats), and really enjoyed seeing all the men chanting and the fire-walking trance part at the end. We later read that Kecak was a style of dance/music basically invented for tourists in the 1920s. Bummer. But we had really good vegetarian food at a restaurant we stumbled upon on the way back, called Back to Earth (or something like that). I got a veggie burrito that was really good! And I also got a mint chocolate avocado mousse cupcake, which was pretty good.

The next morning we were finally able to sleep in, since our flight was at 3pm. I’d originally booked it for 5pm, but annoying Sriwijaya Air called and told me it’d been moved up. We walked into town, mailed our postcards, got snacks and drinks at Bali Buddha and played Scrabble on Ari’s phone, and then walked back to our hotel to take a ride back to Denpasar airport, where we sat for quite a while—first because we were early, then because our flight was delayed. But at least it wasn’t cancelled!

Surabaya (Again)

We arrived back to Surabaya at around 4, and took a taxi to TS Suites, which is the hotel connected to SUTOS (one of my favorite malls in Surabaya). Ari told me he’d splurged a little on the room, but I didn’t realize how much until we walked in, and saw the floor-to-ceiling windows, COMPLIMENTARY mini bar, and awesome bathtub in what was essentially the middle of the room. We also got really excited about the fairly fast wifi we could also access in the room. For dinner, we went to the mall area, and Ari picked a really tasty restaurant where he got...a lot of stuff covered in peanut sauce. I can’t remember what it was exactly, but it was something new to me, with some kind of fried tofu in it. I got rujak manis, which was kind of a letdown, again. It’ll never be as good as the time I had it in Ambon. I had planned to force Ari to get a second, non-Indonesian dinner with me afterwards, but I  ended up eating so much of his food that I was too full.

Enjoying the big windows. 

The next morning, we had a great breakfast at the hotel’s cafe, where we industriously got up at 7:30am all on our own, just to seize the day. I kept eating until I felt sick, because I coudn’t bear to skip one of the choices—potatoes, omelette, cereal, fruit, yoghurt, juice, etc. Then we hung around the hotel for a bit, waiting for House of Sampoerna cigarette factory/museum to open at 9am. We had planned to go see Zero Dark Thirty at 3pm, so we needed to be back in time for that. We took a taxi to HoS, which is soo tiny, we were able to see everything and be done with it in about 45 minutes. We decided to stop over at Tunjungan Plaza (one of my OTHER favorite malls) just to walk around for a bit. We ended up having a pretty good time, taking hipstamatic-style photos in a photo booth shop for $3, and then buying frames for the photos for about $6. Then we got potato donuts. Fresh off the griddle. Or fresh out the oil, I guess. They were good, and Ari was, again, suitably impressed.

We got back to our hotel room and went to the movie theater, only to discover that the online listing had been incorrect, and the next showing wasn’t until 5pm. So we went back to the room and hung out a bit, sharing camera photos and enjoying the internet. We went back to the 5pm showing of Zero Dark Thirty and had our proverbial socks knocked off. The subject matter of the film kept us talking through most of dinner afterwards, at another good Indonesian restaurant that Ari found. This time, however, I decided I didn’t want Indonesian at all, so we went to a not-so-great Japanese restaurant chain afterwards, where I had teriyaki dori fish.

That night was our last night together before Ari had to check out of the hotel at 5am! So we used the amazing bathtub, and drank the free Guinness that came in the mini bar. And then went to sleep. At 5am, I walked with Ari down to catch the cab, and we said our half-asleep, half-awake goodbyes. And I was sad. But I will see Ari again in about three more months!