In Your Indo

Hey friends! I have been living in Australia for four months now and I still have yet to finish all my blogs from my South East Asia travels! Shame on me! In my last post I expanded and polished up a “How To Travel Guide” that Court and I wrote (Court mostly wrote it! I just told her some key facts! MAD PROPS TO COURTNEY BOSS!) for Leigh and John Boy for their Indo trip.  It is purely informative and has next to no stories involving Court and I, a knife, and an aggressive Indonesian trying to break into our room late at night. This blog however… may have some stories in this vein.

HERE. WE. GO! Holly shoot, does Indo have it all! I said Thailand has it all but MAN was I a liar! It’s cheaper than Thailand, way more authentic; the food isn’t as good but still AMAZING! haha, the people are just as awesome, there is amazing surfing, diving, hiking, it would take you forever to explore the whole country. Lastly, each island is bursting with a different culture and experience! If I was asked the question "if you could only pick one country from your trip that you were allowed to go back to which one would it be?" I would without a doubt say Indonesia! It is soooooooo big and just so dynamic!

Court and I flew into Jakarta the capital city which is on one of the larger islands called Java. Our plan was to slowly move east to the end of Java and then ferry or fly over to Bali… unfortunately things don’t always go the way you want them to haha. We unfortunately got into Jakarta with about a week and a half left in the Muslim’s most sacred and celebrated holiday… Ramadan hahaha. Now my good friends Joe and Casey from Victoria warned me not to travel the Muslim part of Indo during this holiday and that’s why they were about three weeks ahead of us on the same path. I unfortunately didn’t heed their warnings and boy do I regret not heeding! WHY DIDN’T I HEED!!!!! Java is a primarily Muslim island and during the later part of Ramadan all Muslims return home to be with their family. During this time the biggest human migrations happens in the world.

“nearly 30 million people in Indonesia participated in a yearly massive migration for the end of Ramadan holiday”

and guess what? Court and I flew right into the middle of this massive migration hahaha. This was one of those moments in life where you just have to laugh. Luckily my good friends Thomas and Kelsey recommend an amazing hostel for us to unwind and discover all this interesting information out in.

Favourite Hostel in South East Asia

Now over my seven months of backpacking I visited a lot of hostels. I slept in some pretty dirty bug infested SARS ridden hostels and some super nice top of the line hostels/ hotels but my favourite hostel in all of South East Asia is… SIX DEGRESS!!!

http://jakarta-backpackers-hostel.com/

Now this is a ballsy statement to make because most experience backpackers would argue to the death that Hanoi Backpakcers or KL’s Reggae Mansion should hold the title of best hostel in South East Asia. But I think Six degrees takes the cake! It is the perfect size (not a huge money making machine and not a little shack), it has EXTREMELY nice rooms for good prices, it has a gym, a home theatre (with a hard drive full of movies to pick from), it has a rooftop bar, it has beautiful bathrooms, cheap beer, tons of games, tons of travel information, it is located in the best possible spot for Jakarta (Jakarta kind sucks so there’s not much to see haha), BUT MOST OF ALL the owners are awesome!  Ian, David, Watsi, and Lici are the owners and are so awesome! Boddy is the night deskman and he is super cool as well. The hostel has a real identity and they are not focused on making money off backpackers but instead they are more interested in living a relaxed lifestyle where they get to help people travel Indonesia and provide a stand up service at the same time. If you ever find yourself in Jakarta do yourself a favour and stop in and say hi!

Court and I stayed in Jakarta for five nights trying to figure out how we could pull off our trip east and spent four amazing days at Six Degrees. It was so nice to work out and have every movie thinkable at your disposal. It was… a very nice change of pace. 

One day we went out for a pretty long walk through some of the poor neighborhoods near our hostel. We played with some of the local kids and got to see a spinet of what their life is like. I really enjoyed this day!  

This is a gift basket you give friends and family at the end of Ramadan 

All the kids were so amazed with us and what we were doing in there little part of town haha

Yes these kids do have a pink chick as a pet haha.

The little kid running away wouldn't stop crying and thought we were white devils! 

A coconut with the shell off for 20 cents!!!!

Story: Court and I Almost Getting Murdered In Our Sleep!

One night in the middle of our stay Six degrees was booked solid so we had to go somewhere else. So we reluctantly booked somewhere else and packed up our things. We ended up going to this sketchy hard to find mansion hostel thing. Court and I settled in and went to bed. Around 4am in the morning there was a massive POUNDING on our door and someone outside our room yelled “OPEN THE DOOR. NOW, OPEN DOOR!!!” There was NOOOOOOO way in hell was I going to open the door so I ran to my back pulled out my handy Swiss Army Knife (DON’T LAUGH! The blade is pretty big on this bad boy and it’s actually from Switzerland! So you know its good!) and I yell out “NO!... What do you want?” All the person behind the door would say was “Now, you open door now!”. After a good two minutes of us shouting at each other. I was able to unhinge the window beside the door and look through the window. Outside the door stood a 24 hours McDonalds delivery man holding a METRIC SSSSSSSSHIT TON OF FOOD haha. When he saw me looking at him he smiled and said “McDonalds food!” hahaha.

Once we made it back to Six Degrees we realized that we should probably just skip java and fly right to Bali like my old travel companion Mick Mack did a few days prior. All the trains were booked solid for weeks and same with the bus companies. But we were determined to try one more bus station. I wish every day that we had just given up and bought $60 tickets to Bali right then and there… but we didn’t.

Story: The Worst Transportation Experience of My Life!

In the end we did find a bus to take us a bit further east on Java (to Yogyakarta) but as you shall soon read this came at quite a cost! I shall leave it to my beautiful and extremely talented girlfriend Courtney “flatfish” Boss to tell this impressive tale. Here is a section from her travel blog: 

“The cost of the normal tourist bus was something ludicrous — $50 or so. Even the “economy” bus was ridiculously priced at $27, especially considering the tourist bus usually costs about $10. Being the stingy backpackers that we are, we of course opted for the economy bus, believing that it’d be something like a cushy city bus, just without aircon; after all, this bus wasn’t cheap! How bad could it be? The man at the sales desk told us that the journey should take 10 hours in total — a very manageable amount of time, we figured.

The day of our trip arrived and our jaws hit the floor when we saw the bus we were taking. This thing was ancient… I’m talking about a metal box on wheels with seats the size of those on a children’s school bus, but in this case they were meant to fit 3 fully grown adults each. We stepped aboard to find that there were no seats left and no other westerners. 

This was local transportation at its most authentic. A few locals were nice enough to shuffle around so that Der and I had room to squeeze in beside a young Javanese man who was sitting in a ball with his knees pressed up against the seat in front of him — that’s all he had room for. Der sat, only to discover that his legs were also too long for him to sit straight; the ball stance would have to suffice. I took the aisle seat, with only half of my ass actually fitting onto our child-sized bench. The sun was a-blazing this day, and we were sweating as soon as we took our seats. The locals all looked on and laughed as we tried to barter with a fan salesman on the bus, wiping the sweat from our upper lips as we did so. We took the laughing as a sign that we were being ripped off so ended up opting to make our own fans from whatever materials we had available to us (Leigh, your card was put to good use on this day. Thanks sista!). After quite some time of sweating, watching salesmen and women clamber through the sea of bodies to sell rice and fruit, and waiting for still more locals to find seats on the floor or in one another’s laps, the bus finally left the station and hit the open road. Of course, the road wasn’t quite ‘open’ seeing as it was Ramadan and traffic was largely at a standstill. What did this mean for us? No breeze, no airflow, no relief from the stifling heat or the stagnant cigarette smoke coming from the man a few rows ahead. It was still early in our trip though and we were still optimistic about the ride. We were adventuring! Becoming one with the local people! Getting CULTURED baby! It wasn’t until about five hours later and we still hadn’t stopped for a pee break and the girl across the aisle started puking into a bag that we realized that perhaps we should have left this ‘getting cultured’ business for another time. 

Nine hours passed before we made our first pee break, though it goes without saying that many a pees must have been had on that bus already; there were young children on board for god’s sake! I experienced another wave of optimism here, since our ride was only supposed to take 10 hours total. Factoring in extra time for traffic, I figured we’d have another 3 hours or so ahead of us. Doable. Upon leaving the break stop, an ambitious young musician hopped aboard and serenaded us with his amateur guitar skills and brutal female-like singing chops for about 2km before requesting compensation from Der and me. Ohh please. Surely, we weren’t about to reward this punk for forcing us to endure his sorely distressing performance. See ya later buddy. But that’s Asia for you!
To make a long story somewhat shorter, the ride took 23 hours in total. During this period we stopped a grand total of 2 times for food and toilets, I was able to sleep for maybe 10 minutes, and the girl beside us threw up an estimated 15 times. Pretty sure a man up front stood for 20 of those hours to allow his wife to sit comfortably with their baby. Getting cultured was a bitch. It was all we could do to get oriented enough to find a guesthouse and check ourselves in upon arrival in Yogyakarta. Sleep couldn’t have come any quicker!”

Haha as you can see we should have just flown to Bali from the get go. But you live and you learn. Yogyakarta was an absolute ghost town but we did manage to convince a tour guide to take us to the world famous Borobudur. Here are some pictures: 

Coming up to this amazing sight in this intense mist was so cool! 

Your suppose to tackle this warlock by walking around all seven levels clockwise till you get to the top. Once you get to the top you will have become enlightened.

  Sad head stand! Sorry Elliot! 
 

Kuta Bali

We then came to our senses and flew right to Kuta Bali. We spent a few nights here checking out Kuta and partying. Sky Garden absolutely blew me away! The $5 rooftop BBQ is amazing!!! And they offer free drinks for an hour. I heard some terrible stories about how these drinks are made but I won’t go into that haha.

We met back up with Mick Mack, an awesome Australian duder named “Cowboy” Jack, and my friends that I met in Laos Joe and Casey! We rented some motorbikes and hit Padang Padang beach where a big surf comp had just taken place a week before hand. We all went drunk bowling one day and of course frequented skygarden. After a few days they all left and it was just Court and myself. So we got a van up to Ubud and stayed there for a week.

Ubud

Ubud is amazing! It has such a cool, magical, peaceful vibe to it. There are so many amazing restaurants here and I was glad to see a bakery that specifically sold donuts! They were just subpar donuts though.

We stayed in an amazing little place called Warsa's Garden Bungalows and Spa. They had beautiful bungalow styled rooms and they brought breakfast to our porch every morning! I loved this place. One night while Court and I were out an about we ran into an extremely lovely man named Madu! We talked for a bit and then we all agreed we would do a sight seeing tour together the next day. The next day was full of visiting cool local temples and exploring beautiful shrines.

This little guy is a baby Luwak! These animals help make the worlds most expensive coffee! They are fend coffee berrys and then Luwak poops the bean part out and that is collected, washed, and then used to make LUWAK COFFEE!!! Which, get this, sells for $100 a cup in North America!!!!! Court and I both tried some and I can assure you its just as shitty as normal coffee (pun intended)

Learning about the whole process

The oldest woman in the world!!! Still works eight hour days!

THIS IS SNAKE SKIN FRUIT!!!! It is sooooooo good! It is a mix between a relaly good apple and a couple grapes!!! You have to try this fruit at least once in your life! 

Sampleing shitty coffee and really good organic tea!

At the last temple we went to we met a little (and I mean little) local woman who couldn’t speak any English but kept trying to get us to follow her. So we eventually did she took us to a waterfall and kept trying to get us to strip and jump in the water haha. We didn’t entirely trust this little pervert but we enjoyed this secret waterfall nonetheless. We then returned to Ubud where Madu, Court, and I went and had an amazing meal of crispy duck, which is a very traditional Balinese meal. It was a very memorable day!

Look how small she is!

Loved this restaurant!  

SOOOO GOOD!

Court and I also rented push bikes one day and just flew around the rice paddies of Ubud and were blown away by the scenery! The scenery alone is worth a trip to Ubud!

We rented a motorbike one day as well and I taught court how to drive. Here she is all proud about to drive us through the last leg of our journey to MT Batur! 

That's the mountain we climbed in the background.

Court exploring a temple.

FRIENDS!!!

I love this pic!

While visiting MT Batur and the near by area. We got to see a local wedding take place at a temple and we also got sold on the idea of hiking Batur. 

Simon Monk visited Indonesia before me and told me the highlight of his whole trip was climbing a Mountain on Lombok called RINJANI!!!! Thus, this was the one things I wanted to do while in Indo. So Court and I thought this small one day hike would be a good start!

Turns out we were right. We got picked up at 2am and driven an hour or two to the Mountain and then with our head lamped we started hiking up it. There were quite a few tourists climbing it so it looked like a big snake climbing the mountain because we were all wearing head lights. We moved pretty quickly and we were one of the first groups to summit the mountain. Before the sunrise we put our breakfast, which consisted of bananas, bread, and eggs in the volcanic heat vents in order to cook them! HOW COOL IS THAT!?!?!?!? Then the sunrise came and it was amazing. Here are some shots I took of the whole thing. 

After Ubud we had to headed back down to Kuta to finish dealing with our Visa Extension process (because we wanted to stay for two months instead of just one) It costs like $60 to get sketchy back alley duders to do it for you or if your going to be in kuta for about five days and don’t mind going back three different times you can easily do it yourself.

After we sorted out the visas we went straight to the Gili Islands! Word to the wise the tickets that are sold at Kuta Bali to get to the Gili islands are HIGHLY inflated! We paid 400 000 for a RETURN fast boat ticket, which included bus transfers from Kuta to the Padang Bai terminal and from Padang Bai back to Kuta.

My good friend Mathew Bartholomew Dixon told me his favourite place in all of South East Asia was Gili T so I was, to say the least, a bit keen to have a peak at these two warlocks! Let me say they did not disappoint! We first visited the chilled and laid back island of Gili Air. We stayed at Harmony Bungalows on the far side of the island. This Restaurant has two little rooms above their restaurant and it is absolute paradise! Every night the two guys that run it pull out big comfy lounge chairs for people to come chill on and have a drink while the sun sets. There are no cars on the gili islands and just horse drawn carriages taking people around the island. There is a path all the way around the island, which made for an awesome running path for the early morning or late afternoon so Court and I took full advantage of that!

Here are some pictures: 

After spending a few days LOOOOOUnging, snorkeling (WE SAW A OCTAPUS!!!), coconut hunting, and running around the island. We decided we were all relaxed out and wanted a change of pace. Something with a bit more energy. So naturally we jumped on a boat to Gili T (a short twenty minute jaunt away).  Now if you know me at all you know that I am one of the most FRUGAL (not cheap) people IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD! Also I never exaggerate! EVER! Thus, when we got to Gili T Court and I did what we always do. We walked around for about a solid hour in the hot sun looking for the best deal :D! We found THE BEST deal over at Bukit Bungalow. We dropped our stuff of in our new CLEAN and shiny room and met some friends and went exploring. We climbed a little hill our first afternoon and saw the sunset which wasn’t as good of a situation as to what we had on Gili Air haha but it was still quite nice.

Gili T

Now, it was about this time that it came to my attention that two friend groups of mine were in not only South East Asia at this time but Indonesia!!!! “The Boys” which consisted of my middle school, highschool, and youth soccer friends Carson, Steve, Josh, and Ben! and “The Girls” who were two crazy cats I met at UVic Jackie and Krysten. Thus, a plan of grandeur and alcohol started to form in my backwards mind. I had heard, through a couple of different backpackers, that the boat trip from Gili T to the Komodo islands was AMAZING!!!! So I decided it would be EPIC to bring these two friend groups together and combine it with NEW FRIENDS and hire a big old boat to take us to the island of DRAGONS!!!! The balls were in motion and “The Boys” and “The Girls” were on their way. After not hearing anything from “The Boys” for awhile I started to think they weren’t coming but then a short but sweet message from Carson assured me that he and Steve we be accompanying us. One night while Courtney and I were making a scheduled donut and banana fritter run we walked into Carson and Steve!!!! It was a joyous reunion to say the least and we booked the famed Komodo Cruise together. We booked two extra spots for “The Girls” and Steve and Carson explained that Ben and Josh would not be coming because they were off having girl problems with… girls. So we would embark on the morrow for Komodo.

Now on Gili T every second night is a party night! The party rotates from a handful of different bars every second night so that you have one nights rest in between each night of partying. It is actually quite genius and civil. This way you stay on the island longer and have less of a chance of dying. This night before our great nautically themed adventure just happened to be a party night. So naturally Carson and I were in the middle of the party making new friends (well I was as I recall Carson made a lot of anti-friends that night). We headed up to the bar to grab some drinks and after I ordered for us I turned  around to see the outline of a male figure that looked a HELL of a lot like Josh (Carson’s fallen travel buddy and my old friend) and just after I said “is that Josh?” Ben fucking Ericson turned to this “Josh” figure and they started talking. What happened next cannot be described in words because for one I am pretty sure I blacked out while it happened and for two I assume there is nothing I can type on this key board that will make your heart explode while simultaneously having your bathing suit area intensely tingle. I couldn’t believe my good childhood friends, whom I thought were far away off in the slums of Java, were actually right beside me on Gili T at the beginning of a insane party night!!!!  Carson and I lost our shit and grabbed Josh and Ben and all four of us started brawling and yelling and knocking, I would says 87% of all the drinks in the bar onto the ground! That night we drank and partied excessively! It was one to remember! A side note to this story is Courtney and Steve were off sleeping while this was all happening because they’re super soft and CITY!!!!! Side note done.

Our Komodo ADVENTURE!!!!

There is a snorkeling boat “cruise” that you can take from Gili T to the island of KOMODO!!! It is a four-day boat trip that ends on Flores right beside the famed island of Komodo where, yep you guessed it, KOMODO DRAGONS RESIDE!!! Throughout the four days you stop at different islands along the way and snorkel, hangout on beaches, drink excessively, and make friends! Then at the end of it all you stop at the only two islands in the world that have Komodo Dragons on them and take a tour and have the good possibility of seeing these warlocks in RL!

Now my BEEEEEEEEEautiful girlfriend Courtney and myself were discussing this amazing adventure just the other day and she asked me “would you recommend that trip to friends? It was really dangerous if you think about it”. Haha I took a few seconds and thought about these safety hazards she was talking about. The boat we were on was over populated. There weren’t enough life vests for everyone on board. A few points into the journey we hit some pretty big rollers in the middle of open ocean a fair distance away from…. Anything. After thinking about these points I agreed with her that yeah that was pretty dangerous I guess but my god it was a SWEET adventure!

We met some amazing people from all over the world, I survived some of the roughest seas I hope I will ever been on (thus, I am quite curtain I have conquered my seasickness tendencies!), I rekindled old friendships, did a ton of snorkeling, learned some great beginner tips on how to play the harmonica from some stellar Swedes!, practiced min svenska, explored some amazing little islands past Lombok, and most importantly got to see nine komodo dragons up close! The word “luxury” should never be used in the explanation of this trip but the words “badass, authentic, and adventure” definitely should. We did some sweet hikes, we watched a chicken get killed, skinned, and made into chicken curry, and we sailed the high seas try and tell me that’s not an adventure. 

Everyone meeting each other.

Two ship hands making dins.

Studious Steve!

Carson!!!!

Komodo island!

Scary bastards haha!

This guy was 6 feet long!!!

Learning how to kill, clean, and prepare a chicken.

Travel drunk group twister! It's actually a really fun game!

The end of our adventure!

 hahaha the morning after the last night of celebrations haha.

The best diving of my life!

After being dropped of in Flores I had one thing on my mind and that was SCUBA DIVING!!! I heard that just off the island of Komodo there were some of the best diving sites in the world! So Court, Steve Massey, our new friends from the boat trip Dan and Ayse, and I went on two dives! We dove Castle Rock and The Caldron and the Castle Rock was and will be the best dive I probably will ever do in my whole life!

Steve and I were partnered up for it and Dan and Ayse together then our dive master. He explained on the way to the dive site that the currents around Komodo are extremely strong (they were especially strong on this particular day) so we would be doing a negative entry into the water. Normally when you start a dive you each jump into the water and then come up to the surface and all single “Okay” and then you all start descending together slowly, but because the currents were so strong you have ZERO time for that Nancy-boy tom-foolery. What we would have to do was enter headfirst and not come back up but instead enter the water and just keep heading straight down as fast as possible. This is kind of an advanced entry technique so it was pretty thrilling to see the dive master jump in and then we all had to follow quickly and equalize and just follow him down to the bottom. We got to the bottom and noticed we were all good. So we pressed on against an extremely strong current. I was swimming as hard as I could and we were hardly making any ground but after about five minutes of this I realized I had already used up around 70% of my air! Luckly when I looked up we had made it to a drop off and our dive master instructed us all to grab hold of anything and just… watch. The sight I saw next I will never forget ever in a million years! On the edge of this drop off was dozens of massive white and black tipped reef sharks, massive tuna, and hundreds of other fish all swimming along side each other. It was definitely the most awestruck by I sight have ever been. It was magic.

The two other groups that came with us to this dive site got swept away by the current so we were the only group of our three that got to see it and Court was in the beginner group so she unfortunately missed it. The next dive was really cool and all the groups hit the site and got to see sharks which was a huge goal for everyone but that first dive was unreal! To top the whole day off on the way home we saw three packs of dolphins one of which came and swam in the front wake of our boat! It was an insane day! I really wanted to stay an extra day to do a dive sight that has TONS of eagle rays all around it but it was expensive and we needed to get going.

So a huge group of us all traveled via two ferries and three buses 26 hours back to Lombok haha that was a fun trip actually. We played a ton of Mafia!!!! And made the time fly by.

Kuta Lombok (NOT KUTA BALI!)

Kuta Lombok was definitely one of my favourite places in all of Indo. It was a small little town with a cool relaxed strip of restaurants, bars, and shops along the main town/ ocean road. If you are ever fortunate enough to adventure to this amazing place you have to stay at Kuta Bay Homestay (www.kutabayhomestay.com). Suzie who runs show there is awesome. As I explained in my previous post she is a true Entrepreneur! Anything you want or need she will somehow get it for you and for cheaper than anyone else in town! She is a rock star and she has big plans for her very comfortable and clean little bungalow homestay!

Carson, Steve, Court, Jackie, Krysten, and I all stayed here for about a week. We rented four motorbikes from Suzie the second day we were there and within two hours 50% of those motorbikes had been crashed haha! Krysten had never driven one before and was trying to get the hang of it and… well lets just say she didn’t get the hang of it. Then a few minutes later Carson and Steve were coming back from a little journey and Carson was trying to do, in his words, “a sweet slide” and he lost control and got thrown off his bike into the ditch right outside the homestay haha. Neither of our companions were badly injured just shaken up a bit haha.

We spent most of our time exploring this beautiful city, eating amazing local food, and going for beach runs and playing soccer with the local kids. I loved my time there.

Near the end of our stay here we all rented surfboards and a van from Suzie and we all took a day trip to an awesome reef break about thirty minutes out of town. The wave itself is called Grum-puk and was a beautiful reforming big slow wave. You have to pay a boat man to take you out there and sit by the reef while you surf . This costs about two or three dollars and is well worth it for such a nice big fun wave! I was surprised how many people were surfing this middle of no where wave but it didn’t really matter. Other than two dumbass New Zealanders the whole day was awesome. Court and Jackie got two ripped local shredders to give them a lesson and the rest of us just hit the water and tried to grab anything we could get. I had an awesome first day!

We were out all day and I guess I got a little sun burnt but not bad at all. I had such a stellar session that I really wanted to go for round two the next day but this would be a decision that would haunt me for THE. REST. OF. MY. TRIP! I woke up the next day feeling pretty crummy, which I attributed it to the multiple servases from the previous night, but I soldiered on and Jackie and I drove our motorbikes to the little fishing village and we hired a boatman and hit the waves. Unfortunately the session wasn’t as nearly as good because I was so tired from the day before and the waves just weren’t as glassy as the day before. But I decided I had come all this way, I was going to catch a few sick rides then head in. But I wasn’t getting much at all and this made me more persistent to catch just a few good ones haha. We ended out staying out in the scorching sun all day then headed back in the late afternoon. We got home and the other were out going to this mountain-top restaurant they said they were going to wait for us to go to haha. So Jackie and I spent the rest of the day looking for them with no luck. By the end of the day I was wasted and when I woke up the following morning I was … SICK!!!! Now this might not sound like such a terrible thing. You might think to yourself “derek your on a seven month trip it’s bound to happened don’t worry about it. It’s not like you have any time restraints right?” WRONG!

If there were two things I really wanted to do in Indo it was surf a ton of cool locations and climb Mount Rinjani! My old travel buddy Simon Monk had done it while I was still in Thailand and the pictures and the stories of the three-day volcano hike sounds UNBELEIVEBLE!! So the whole time I was in Indo I was comparing prices for it and even doing a little training for it (the last day is kind of hard). The day before we went surfing Court, Carson, Steve, and myself all booked this hike in three days (we got an AWESOME deal I was so jacked!). So the morning I got sick was the morning we were suppose to leave for this three-day ball-breaking hike! So I had to postpone it by a day, and then another day, and then we drove up to the town where the hike starts but because of the altitude it was really humid and cold up in this town under the mountain so my fever and cough turned into full-blown BRONCHITUS!!!! Long story short, we postponed the hike one more day but then we realized I needed to get back down to the coast where it was warm because I wasn’t getting any better. So Court, Steve, and Carson went on THIS AMAZING HIKE and I went back to Kuta Bali by myself to recover and apply for jobs in Australia (not like that helped at all haha). I have such a clear memory waiting at a little dock for a boat to take me back to the mainland. I remember just stewing in my own rage about getting sick! It was here where I made a promise to myself that one day I WILL CLIMB MOUNT RINJANI! It is now on the bucket list and I can’t wait to do it!

As expected Court, Steve, and Carson had an amazing time doing Rinjani and they all said it was their biggest highlight of their WHOLE South East Asia trip! I got better in Kuta and surfed a bit and did some work and research for Oz and then we all reunited again. I knew Court would be super sore, tired, and DIRTY! So I surprised her and booked us the nicest room I could find and filled it up with all of her favourite things. Even if you are super frugal like Court and I sometimes you just got to splurge and live life like Eddie Murphy on a coke binge (minus the coke).

On last few days in Kuta were SOOOO much fun we had thanks giving dinner with our whole gang up on the rooftop of  SkyGarden (ALL YOU CAN EAT BBQ!!!). My BCOM friend Aliie Keller and her rad bf joined us and so did two awesome Limies (James and Jess) I befriended when I came back to Kuta by my lonesum.  It was an awesome Orphans thanks giving!

On our last day in Bali we rented motorbikes and we checked out Ulawatu beach, and Ulawatu temple, more of the south island, and stopped at Jimbaran beach on the way home for the famed seafood dinner on the beach. Evan wrote a challenge in my journal that I had to order the grossest thing on the menu that night for dinenr but everything on the menu that night was AMAZING! So my “friends” made me eat this really HARD fish eyes haha. It was an amazing last day! 

I know I will be going back to Indo soon! I really connected to that country and love all the activities that one can do! SO MANY ACTIVITIES! So I am really excited for the next time I return.