Java + Bali = Jolly

The last week or so has been a crash course of Indonesia. We left Singapore and headed to Jakarta, the capital of the country with 9 million people. It's a far cry from Singapore, but a lot cheaper. We got there late in the evening, and the next day went sightseeing. What we failed to realize, however, was that it was Muhammad’s birthday- let me tell you, a country with 200 million Muslims is not the place you want to be on that day. Oh well, it was an interesting experience... albeit a tad crowded. The next day we booked a train ticket for the 9 hour ride to Yogyakarta. We accidentally booked 'executive class', which was expensive, but man was it nice. Sure, there were people riding on the roof. And sure, most of the train was a crowded messy smoky mess. But we were in AC and extended-legroom-bliss, so we didn't mind in the least. In Yogyakarta we got a great deal on a hotel. $10/night goes a LONG way there, but we decided to forego the A/C and TV and get a nice pool instead. That may have been the best decision on the trip so far. The next couple of days were spent reading, swimming, and shopping at the many little markets in the area. Good fun!

This is where things got crazy. Our last morning in Yogya we got up at 7am to catch a supposedly 10 hour bus ride to the active Bromo Volcano. We got there at around 7:30 that night, exhausted. We got to bed at around 10:30, and then woke up at 3:30am and headed out on a morning trek to see the sunrise over the volcano. The experience ranks as one of the coolest natural things I’ve ever seen, but man, we were tired. After getting back at about 8:30am we took a 2 hour nap, grabbed a lunch (which wasn’t very good) and jumped on another bus, this time headed to Bali. It’s a long ride, followed by a ferry ride, followed by another long ride. We were nudged out of our not-quite-awake but still can’t sleep mode (typical of bus rides) at 3:30am, and dropped off at a bus station in Bali. We had no idea where we were or where to go, so we got a taxi to take us 30min to the tourist area. Finding hotels in Vietnam was fun. You get to scout out the area you are going to stay and find a good deal. Over 5 months into our trip, the thrill is dissipating. At 4am, the thrill is absolutely gone, especially with drunken tourists and prostitutes roaming about. To be fair, the prostitutes were somewhat helpful on nice places to stay, but I digress. After a few crummy hours of sleep we got up to our first day in Bali. We both sincerely apologize to anyone we spoke to that day. We were grumpy, and may have sounded unappreciative or simply pissed off. We were both, and tired.

Anyhow, flash foreword to today, and Bali is great. We’ve been here a couple of days now and have done some shopping, eaten great food, laid at the beach, and went surfing (with only minor injuries MICHELLE). Tomorrow we’ve got a 7am flight to the remote island of Sulawesi, for one of the most adventurous parts of our entire trip. We can’t wait!

Pics of all this should be pretty much uploaded by now.