Message from Bandung

When you have to work so much, good food is a welcoming reward. And darn, Indonesia has great food to offer! I’m having an issue now for my nr 1: Indonesian kitchen or Thai kitchen…It’s a close call.

And it’s the streetfood & local warung where you find the real taste here (just as in Thailand). Gado-gado, martabak, satays, bakso, gorengan, nasi padang & nasi uduk, soto soups…yummy!
Lots of tempeh en tahu (tofu) is used also. Vegetarians would be in heaven here. It’s healthy and it’s cheap, very cheap.

What else to say? Work, eat, work, make love, work, eat, drink, drink, make love, sleep?

Not much travel to see in the future. I booked a ticket to Laos, but it seems that I will be restricted to more urban areas too, due to work. Anyway, there’s always a next time. I’m gaining more and more experience in how to handle work and travel and the best thing would be renting a place for longtime in an interesting hub, from where I can go to many places for short time, but without all my stuff around my neck. Getting tired of dragging all those kilos with me.

on the way to Bandung

With Shayne & David (a ‘Bandungese’) @ Cloud9, a very cool bar up North Bandung, with splendid view on the main city….and Djeez, I’m slowly becoming bold!

And oh, hereby one of those Jakartian Bintang nights…when my hair was still there…Thanks Sara for the pic! Belongs in the series: ‘How not to play your guitar with a cigarette’

Bali: south, Kuta (heaven or hell?) & northeast region, Amed

We had a plan, a birthdayplan (31 recently), and like most plans in my long itinerary, it turned out very different.

I met Shayne again at the airport of Jakarta, the 7th of august, in the very early morning, being 0.10h.
Only 6 hours later a plane would take us to Bali, one of the most famous islands in Indonesia, not to say the world. A must see, for the good and the worse. We landed near Kuta, one of the southern coast cities, mashed up with australian surferdudes and other white goodies. The Balinese culture is washed away there and only commerce sustains (mainly the whole south region after asking around with locals). Saying we didn’t like it is an understatement and I will end my comment here. We wanted to get out as soon as possible. Hell it was for us.

The plan was to go to Gili Islands, a small group of tropical paradise islands without motorized traffic, northwest of Lombok, the island next to Bali. We informed, but as it’s high season, places were packed also. “Full sir”. There was a small chance, but you had to take risk and just go there and knock on the door to see if there was a room free. If we had more than 8 days and I wasn’t stuffed with all my gear, I wouldn’t even hesitate.

Instead we decided to see if Bali still had a few untouched places where we could sense the original culture.
We found. Go North, go N-West or N-East, just don’t go South if you want to have a bite of the real Bali. We ended up staying in some midrange places at the Amed coastline, N-east, and rented a motorcycle for our stay (at 3 euro a day…beat that). In front of us protected coralgardens, along the coastline beautiful vistas and farmer villages where we got friendly hello’s. Inside country, more beautiful scenery, formed by the terraced mountains and paddyfields. Commercialisation is coming, but it’s so far not disturbing at all and seems to come in a slow pace, just like life is there.

Bali has very strong Hindu culture, and you sense that. They praise the water and sky etc by setting up little daily offers at their doorsteps, the beach, on the street,… These people are so religious, one by one. I was touched by that, knowing that dozens of planes fly in daily.

Ok, enough writing, some pictures:

Jimbaran sunset.

Having a good laugh with myself at Kuta beach. Being on the most popular beach, on a rented beach chair with Coke advertising, having a Bintang beer.

Time for a haircut. I gave up my idea to let it grow as long as I travel. No point feeling lousy with it.

One of the dozens of volcanoes on Java, view from the airplane.

Amed beach, with view at Gunung Agung, Bali’s highest.

Amed region: coastline, with down the protected coralgarden at Jelemuk. I snorkelled there for hours and hours.

It’s obviously dry season and we seemed to be in the driest region in Bali on top.

Kids who jumped in front along one of our many motorbikerides.

coastal scenery, I don’t know which village we were at that time.

Watertemple in Ujung

What we mainly saw on the coastal rides

Shayne doing one of her funny faces

Tom acting as if he doesn’t know being in the picture

vista more inside country

lovely ricefields

And here some of the underwater views, I saw some Japanese shipwreck also. The corals were beautiful, I hope it stays that way.

Monday we’re off to Bandung, a city in West Java, located in the mountains. Much cooler breeze, capital of WIFI connections and amazing food (so I heard)! The place to be for my jobs and ease it out at night.

worky times in Jakarta

Hmm, it looks more and more like I’ll have to cancel a lot of the places I intended to go to in Indonesia.
Only one reason, but a good one: work! A lot! And if there are some great new clients between it that may supply a lot of jobs in the future and don’t mind where you’re located, then you’re not gonna think twice. Screw my itinerary. If I look a bit further into the future, this all gives me the opportunity to travel quite instantly back to Asia and continu this quest. I do love this way of living and the sight or idea of being back in Belgium and trying to catch up there again doesn’t attract me anymore. I see lot of ‘things’ fade away and often don’t seem like they seemed to have been.

It was a big test, and after being 8+ months on the way I do know: damn, this is what I want. I’m living my dream. Weird to realize that. But once in your dream it becomes reality and you start dreaming again (that was the hard tricky part!). The ball never stops rolling here. I’m so easily bored. But as long as you know yourself and learned to take peace with yourself, it’s a pretty nice life. Simple things are hard to get, or should I say, hard to see?

And mm, no pics yet, camera is burried for 8 days already. It was time for a break. Just google a bit for Jakarta ;