Indonesia: A Summary

Easily one of my favorite South East Asian countries (so far!) Indonesia has been absolutely incredible. The country is simply massive and considering I visited just 3 of the 6000 inhabited islands within Indonesia I feel like I have seen and done so much in just one month. It would be so easy to travel Indonesia for a year and not get bored. Each island that I visited was so different from the last, almost like stepping into a new country; different languages, religions, architecture. I've witnessed various traditional arts including lessons in shadow puppetry, Batik artwork and seen performances of 'gamelan' (a traditional Indonesian orchestra) accompanied with Batak dancing. After Bali we got around using just local transport. Public buses, coaches and trains were really cheap and not too uncomfortable even though the seats aren't designed for Western (tall) people. One thing I noticed is that every man in Indonesia chain smokes all day long. Cigarettes are really cheap and I don't think I met a single guy who didn't smoke. It didn't bother me so much except for on the public transport. When you get on a bus or train it waits until it is full before heading off. The longest we had to wait was 2 hours and when the entire bus is smoking it actually becomes quite hard to breathe!

It rains often and the landscape is inevitably the greenest I have seen. Although much of the countries rainforests has been razed for logging, there are expanses of national parks dotted all over the country making for unbelievable viewing. The majority of travelers in Indo are Dutch but we also met a number of people from the UK, America, Australia, France and Germany as well. Despite this, Indonesia is the least 'touristy' country I have visited in South East Asia and although some cities have their tourist zones (Kuta Beach in Bali, Sosrowijayan area in Jogjakarta, Masjid Raja area in Medan, to name a few) it is not on the scale of that in Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia.

A conversation with a local tends to go as such:
Local: Hello mister!
Me: Hello
L: Where are you from?
Me: England/Ingerris
L: Ahh, David Beckham!/Wayne Rooney!
Me: Yeah. World Cup?
L: Ahh, yes
Me: Abu Kabaarh? (meaning: how are you?)
L: confused look (I can't roll my R's)
Me: Bagus? (meaning: good?)
L: Ahh, ya. Married?
Me: Tidak (meaning: no), We're just friends

One conversation ended with a bus driver thinking that I am a piano teacher somehow. The locals love to practice their English and most who try received some sort of high school education in English. Some actually spoke very good English and would strike up a conversation in any situation, be it on an opelet (local minibus) or just passing in the street. A Batak man named Gom-Gom in Medan even gave me his e-mail address to add him on Facebook after a conversation about University life in Indonesia. Some locals only know how to say 'hello mister!' and will do so whenever we pass by - even to Briony! Learning the Bahasa language isn't too difficult for the basics e.g please, thank you, yes, no, counting, etc, and a lot of the words come from variations of English, Dutch, German and Latin.

I really enjoyed Indonesian food as well. The basics were simply fried rice/noodles/thin noodles with veg, egg and chicken, which you can eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. The best food was in Pangandaran for its fish. Barbequed fresh fish, such as red snapper, and fried prawns were really tasty and really cheap. The local beer is called Bintang and you can find it everywhere you go. It is taxed quite heavily though. The other popular drink is Arak, a rice wine. Arak goes into every cocktail and can be very deadly.

I just realised I havn't mentioned Lake Toba in my blog yet. Toba, one of the worlds largest and deepest fresh water lake was really cool. The island (that isn't really an island) in the middle of the lake is huge and it would be possible to explore it for weeks. It was very chilled out and although we were only there for 3 nights we managed to see a lot of the Tuk-Tuk village where we stayed and the villages to the north and south. We stayed in a traditional-styled Batak house with a pointy roof and low ceiling. We spent one day on mopeds speeding around the villages. It was really fun and we found a place with a jetty that had a long diving board into the water (see the picture below). There were some fantastic views of the mountains that surrounds Toba and the climate was very different to that of the rest of Indonesia. It felt much cooler and fresher.



Me and Briony left Tuk-Tuk on Thursday afternoon and went back to Medan. We arrived quite late but managed to find a cheap place to stay and a cheap place to eat. Because we were flying out early we needed to get up at 5am to catch our 8am flight to Kuala Lumpur. We got into Malaysia and waited in the airport for our next flight to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, northern Borneo (I must be one of AirAsia's most valued customers by now!). We arrived in KK late afternoon yesterday and after getting on buses having no idea where they were going we found our way to the northern part of town where the cheaper hostels are. There are more backpackers here than I expected and virtually no motorbikes. It's actually quite a culture shock after Indo with its large un-congested, clean roads, the high rise buildings, KFC and Pizza Hut down every road - you could be in Australia or America and not even notice were it not for the people and the Japanese cars. It is a cool city though and being right on the sea it looks very pretty. From the seafront you can see the off-shore islands and I am looking forward to visiting those. I have already tried laksa, a great Malaysian coconut/prawn/chicken/tofu curry dish that left me stuffed.

That's it for now. Hope you have had as much fun reading this is I have had writing it. Also, I want more comments on my posts telling me how much you are enjoying it!! Now I get to spend some time in Malaysia. Hurruh! x