Indonesia

Compared to traveling in countries like Iran, Russia and Mongolia the four weeks we spent in Indonesia were quite uneventful. The country and the people were nothing but pleasant, the food was cheap, diverse and tasty and the overall infrastructure for handling large amounts of tourists made getting around, visiting the most relevant sights and spending a few weeks on different beaches almost too easy. Therefore, unlike the novel-like post I published on our travels in Mongolia, this post will be kept rather short.

At last we had made it to Southeast Asia! After four months of making some very exciting and very exhausting experiences, after constantly adapting to new environments and after living in the extreme conditions of the Mongolian wilderness, being in Indonesia felt like taking a break from traveling and finally going on that vacation that some of our friends and family and all of our former employers and colleagues insinuated we were on since May. This feeling was certainly strengthened by spending the days around Lea's birthday in some upper class resort with her mum.

After flying to Jakarta from Beijing we spent four days doing, well, mostly nothing. The city was way too big, incredibly overpopulated and grossly polluted by unbelievable amounts of garbage in the streets (Which, unfortunately, we found to be the case in the entire country). Plus traffic was insane! We left the house only once to go to the train station on a hopelessly overcrowded bus and buy a ticket to Yogyakarta. You know, to leave Jakarta as early as possible. So instead of actually visiting the city we made up for those three WiFi-less weeks in Mongolia and wrote some messages and uploaded some photos. In between we walked the streets of the rather slum-like neighborhood our home stay was located in, mostly to experience the local food at one of the street food stands.

When we left for Yogyakarta we were happy to find that in comparison to Jakarta, the city was rather tiny and pleasant. Traffic was still crazy, especially due to the ridiculous amount of scooters on the streets. Luckily we escaped the stress and the noise by staying in a hostel outside the city. It was a one of the best hostels we had ever been in, too! Surrounded by rice fields and palm trees it offered the entire range of backpacker cliches: hammocks in the garden, open air bathrooms, painted walls and plenty of guests with the same stories, views and attitudes. The facilities manager was 54-year-old Asep who looked like he was younger than 25. He took us to his favorite street food joint and we filled up on a bunch of local specialities including nuts fried in chili paste and marinated buffalo skin. After dinner the woman who ran this tiny kitchen went inside where her husband was waiting with a keyboard. The two gave the karaoke performance of a life-time and provided us with one of the most genuine and memorable nights of our stay in Indonesia.

Unfortunately our visit to Yogyakarta wasn't just fun and games. Apparently someone had hacked my e-mail address, iCloud account, computer, phone, or I don't know what. Then that someone started sending out spam-mails to every address I had ever sent an e-mail to. At this point I feel like I should apologize to all of you who have received e-mails sent from my account telling them about discounts for pharmaceuticals and the services of Eastern European ladies. After spending two days on the computer, changing passwords and dealing with the surprisingly friendly but utterly incompetent support of my e-mail host, we were glad to leave Yogyakarta and finally discover the island.

To do so we let them talk us into booking a two-day tour which took us to the most impressive places on Java and dropped us at the harbor to catch a boat to Bali. The tour itself was unbearable: fifty white people crammed into three minivans driven by a bunch of suicidal kids, ridiculously run-down hotels, overpriced food in touristic restaurants and a constant sales pitch for more activities and add-ons. Luckily we were with Hanne and Django, a couple from Amsterdam whom we had met in Yogyakarta. They were film makers and musicians and they shared our disapproval of mass touristic activities.

Even though its setting turned out to be quite awful, the places we got to see on that tour were amazing:

For starters we went to Boro Bodur, an ancient buddhist temple complex that left us speechless due to its sheer size and the magnificence of its stone carvings. Once again we were baffled by what people had been able to accomplish thousands of years ago and with the simple tools of those times.

Next we went to Gunung Bromo, the highlight of the tour. Walking along the crater of an active volcano that constantly grumbled and thrusted out smoke and sparks was a truly scary and mesmerizing feeling.

The tour finished off with a one-and-a-half hour hike up Gunung Ijen, an inactive volcano with a turquoise crater lake and a sulfur mine. I couldn't help but think of my song CHAINS when I saw the miners climbing out of the crater with more than 80 kg of sulfur on their backs while the western tourists blocked their way to take pictures.

After the tour Hanne and Django as well as Lea and I were in need for some peace and quiet. We decided to go in the opposite direction of all the other tourists and caught a bus to Pemuteran, a tiny village located in the less touristic north of the island. Together we spent three days on the beach, swimming and snorkeling, talking and jamming, taking long walks to the fishing villages in the area and simply hanging out.

After leaving Pemuteran we stayed on Bali for another seven days. Still we can hardly comment on the island itself. After all we spent most of the remaining time with Lea's mum who came to visit us for her birthday in mid September. This meant that on the first day of meeting her we crossed the line into a touristic bubble with upper class accommodation and food, colorful cocktails and beach-front massages. And just like it took some time for us to get used to the basic lifestyle in Mongolia it took some two or three days of getting used to the luxuries that came with a traveling style which we had not been familiar with. We did eventually get used to it and then we thoroughly enjoyed the break from living a backpacker's life. Needless to say: we indulged in the comfort as hard as we possible could.

Other than that we didn't experience Bali as the nice place we had expected it to be. We actually found the direct and indirect repercussions of the island's mass tourism to be quite appalling. Take Ubud as an example: the eight-year-old guide book we took from some guesthouse's book exchange described the city as a hub for Balinese culture and a pleasant hot spot for locals and visitors alike. When we got there we found that the city was overrun by western tourists to an almost ridiculous extent. And most of the Balinese culture that may have been there at some point had been replaced by souvenir shops and spacious restaurants selling overpriced local and Western food. After seeing Ubud we decided to skip the south-east of the island all together. Even our outdated guidebook marked those areas as a tourism hell frequented mostly by white kids in their early twenties.

The same seemed to be true for the Gilis, a group of three tiny islands north of Lombok. Again we decided to go in the opposite direction of all the other travelers and headed south. We spent three days on Gili Gede, an island that was so remote that they didn't have flushing toilets, running water or electricity. The place was gorgeous though. We slept on an open platform that was surrounded by palm trees and had nothing but bamboo mats as walls. We rowed around the bay and its many smaller islands in the guesthouse's fishing boat. We reached far off beaches that we had for ourselves. And we got to experience the diversity of the Indonesian cuisine: from rice and noodles with different vegetables, meat sauces and nut toppings to pumpkin soup, fried bananas and black rice pudding.

Just as Gili Gede the entire island of Lombok seemed to be in a state where it was waiting to become the next Bali. It's beaches were still remote and incredibly beautiful and getting around without a scooter was close to impossible. Still there were signs of progress everywhere: from an increasing number of surf- and food shags to half-finished resorts and street signs announcing the construction of restaurants and hotels. And just like so many times before we felt incredibly lucky that we had seen a place before mass tourism got its hands on it to consume it whole.

In its current state and with its beaches and waves Lombok was a paradise for surfers. Therefore I had booked a surf course with local teacher Sarriel that I gave Lea for her birthday. So we had a reunion with Hanne and Django and the four of us went to get salty in Gerupuk. Four intense days later we were able to catch a wave, to stand up on our board, to pump our legs to get more speed and to steer and turn the board. Nothing compares to the feeling when you are riding the wave for the first time. And nothing compares to having a piece of Snickers when you are back in the boat and heading back to the shore.