Holidaze

Admittedly so, I have been back from holiday for over 5 days now and have been hiding out (no school til next week). Guess I just needed to take a break and space out for a few days – sorry. But the holiday was AMAZING. You need to visit Indo.

We began our journey by taking an overnight bus to Kuta, Bali. Some important lessons I learned on this ride: 1. The “passing lane” here constitutes going head-on into on-coming traffic and playing a version of chicken. 2. If the roads in Southeast Java had a soundtrack to call their own, it would be very angry heavy metal. Kuta is the party area of Bali – beaches, stores, bars, clubs. It is also where two terrorist bombs went off in nightclubs – one in 2002 and one in 2005. The effects can still be seen there – most of the people there are Aussies (Bali is like their Mexico, except McDonald’s delivers here…) and locals are very surprised and excited when you tell them you are from America. “Americans are just now starting to come back here, after the accidents.” It was amazing to see so many bules. White people everywhere! Weird. And just like in Mexico, there were peddlers everywhere we went. One silly shop vendor tried to take me for a ride, saying a t-shirt cost 150,00 rp (~$15) – he clearly knew I was American, but I got him to get down to 30,000. Kuta was actually a pretty lax time for us – massages by the pool, beach time, good food, lots of naps. We did, however, manage to get kicked out of a hotel pool – oops. Apparently sitting at the pool bar constitutes swimming in the pool, and if you are not staying at the hotel connected to the pool, you must pay to swim…haha. We did happened to meet some Americans living on Bali. One guy, Lewis, makes enough money to live here by selling Indonesian jewelry once a year in Hawaii. As he put it, “It’s great, I surf, I party, I sleep.” And after 5 years of this routine, he still enjoys it. Because Bali is Hindu, Ramadan didn't seem to really affect the lives of the people living or traveling here – meaning, yes, we partied, finally. And still, it was somewhat odd to know we were in a country celebrating a very traditional holiday while being on an island that was more or less oblivious to it. TII.

After a few days kicking it on Bali, we headed to Senggigi on Lombok, the next island over. It was here that we went to a Texan-owned Mexican restaurant. After all, we were on vacation. Unlike Bali, Lombok is a Muslim island, so Ramadan festivities were still going on. Which made getting there quite the experience. For the end of Ramadan, or Lebaran, people travel back to their homes and families. So when we boarded the ferry to take us to the island, I can quite literally say I experienced a human stampede that turned into a somewhat scary mosh pit, minus the music. It got to a point that one friend was lifted into the air, complete with her 20 pound backpack and our escape plan was to jump into the water off the edge of the dock. Needless to say, forming lines is apparently a foreign concept here. (I hate to say this, but when, a few days later, we were again boarding a boat, we were ready to run and fight the pack back, only to find that we were met with line formers – Westerners…).

The next day, after quite literally buying an entire (small) boat after yet again another line fiasco, we made it to the small, quiet island of Gili Meno. This island has beautiful coral beaches and scenery and water. It’s really chill and inviting. We were able to walk around the island in around an hour, got massages right next to the waves, and saw the sun set over neighboring Bali. After we had our fill of snorkeling the next day (lots of sea turtles and rainbow fish. Oh! And I saw a fish pee for the first time – kinda odd) we headed over to the next island, Gili Trawangan, “the party island” complete with an Irish bar. There were tons of travelers here and ex-pats living as dive masters. It was such a good time that when one friend tried to dial her boyfriend back in America and got the answering machine of someone she didn't know, she decided to leave a message for this unknown saying, “Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m on a tropical island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and wanted to tell someone!” Of course, when we decided to rent bicycles to ride around the island, my tire went flat in the first 20 minutes. But this turned out to be nice, because I got to sit by myself and enjoy the scenery (and fresh juice!) for a while. For dinner on one of the two nights spent on this island (where I had bed bugs! Ew! Note to self, spend the extra $5 for the “mid-range” hotel), we went to Australian owned Scallywag’s where I ate a whole crab for the fist time – yum (and kinda tricky!). Being FBers, we spent quite a lot of time on holiday reading and discussing. The hot topics included: the election, the economy, religion and literature.

The flight back to Bali (no more scary ferries for us) was quick, painless and beautiful – the landing takes place right over a coral reef. It was a great holiday. We got to see the side of Indonesian most people see – the tourist side. And even though it may have been frustrating to be a tourist at times (because we could tell when we were getting taken for a ride, which happened at least every other day), it was worth it.