Back in the USA!

Whoops! I forgot to tell you that we’re back in the District of Columbia! Sasha said that everyone probably thinks that we’re dead in some shopping mall in Jakarta

We’re not! Cheers!

But really, it was a great trip and we can’t believe we had the opportunity to travel for three months. 

Here’s some things I missed about the USA that I didn’t realize until we got back.

1. Sidewalks. Don’t take them for granted.

2. Cooking, even just heating up oatmeal in the microwave. It feels good to not have to rely on restaurants. 

3. Trash cans. Don’t take these for granted either.

4. Wine (alright I realized I missed this before we got back, let’s be serious.)

Thanks for reading and we’ll catch you on the next big life trip! I’m looking at you, Scandanavia… Or am I looking at Madagascar? Maybe a good old American road trip… Or all three!

The Mall Rats of Jakarta

Introducing the new mall rats of Jakarta, George and Rachel. 

Jakarta is a huge city with a whole lot of nothing but shopping malls. It’s nuts. So we’ve been hanging out at the Lotte Mall for the last two days and will continue to live at the mall for the next three. Look at the cool mall entrance!

Also, check out this crazy glowing statue of two women arguing over a durian in front of the mall!

If you’re not familiar with the durian, you are not missing much. It’s the smelliest fruit on the planet. Most of the hotels we have stayed at have signs specifically saying “NO DURIAN” and we met some guy who ate a whole durian for a few happy hour beers and everything, including the beers, tasted like BO. So I’m not sure why these ladies are fighting over it. 

Also, the traffic is crazy. Here’s a motorbike parking lot that we pass on the way to the mall.

Here’s another fun fact for you, the Muslim Call to Prayer is blasted through loudspeakers all around the city four times a day. The first starting at 4am, that one lasts for an hour. Our hotel faces two speaker towers. At least the rest of the hotel is nice?

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P.S. The private jet was very quick and smooth! Thanks Susi Air.

Pangandaran- Beach Vibes

We found a beautiful, not blown out with tourists, black sand beach town! It only took a 4 hour train ride from Yogyakarta, a bicycle Tuk Tuk and then a two hour insane bus ride to get here. The bus driver was on the phone basically the whole time, I almost punched him in the face but I didn’t want to be that american. 

Yesterday we walked to the main beach, hoping to find an umbrella to chill under. Weird thing when the beach town isn’t blown out… There’s no umbrellas, there’s no beach chairs,there’s no way to get away from the Java sun. These locals could make a lot of money if they invested in umbrellas! Maybe that should be our next calling… We are… The Umbrella People. So we walked, then we snuck into a hotel and swam in their pool I was told to “act like I was supposed to be there” and it worked!

Then we went to the fish market for dinner. Actually we went for lunch and dinner because it was so tiiiiiiight! For lunch, we had a whole fish and squid for $5. That’s loco! So for dinner we splurged and got crabs and jumbo shrimp for $10. Can we take you home, fish market?

Today we decided to rent a motorbike and head to Batu Karas, this small beach like an hour away. It was wonderful, the ride to the beach was beautiful, the man chain smoking cigarettes at our lunch spot was not so wonderful, but we’ll take it. 

George tried to surf again, it did not go well.

Here’s the Green River we passed by on the way to the beach. It’s green! Surprise!

 Annnnd some pretty fields, to remember our last trip to the countryside:(

 

Tomorrow we’re taking a very small plane to Jakarta, our last city this trip 😦 I think we may be the only passengers… So you could say we are renting our own private jet. Ballers! 

Yogyakarta- Temples and Temples

We made it to the island of Java! Our first stop was to the city of Yogyakarta, which is known as the cultural center of Java. Eh. We weren’t that impressed with the city itself, I definitely would not recommend spending a lot of time exploring the city. We went to the Sultan’s House, not great. Though we did see a golden goose, but IIII want it nowwww. 

What takes this city to another level is the Borobudur and Prambanan temples. We had a driver for the day (we’re turning into celebs, nbd) and he took us to both. 

Borobudur is a Buddhist temple, which has these crazy bells all over the place. It’s similar to the temples in Burma, but not anywhere else we visited this trip. Very cool, very hot. 

That’s a volcano in the background!

Prambanan is a Hindu temple, and George realllllly liked it. It’s the biggest Hindu Compound in SE Asia. Note that India is not in SE Asia.

Each of the towers had a statue of a god inside. In other temples, there’s multiple entries or small windows for light. These had none… Sort of spooky. 

That completes Yogyakarta! Today we’re heading to Pangandaran to hit the beach one last time and visit the green canyon… Very excited.

Our hotel is $10 a night there, so I’m not too sold on the wifi. Catch you in a few!

The Bali Beach Hop

Wow, these southern beaches are exactly what we needed! Especially since we both caught colds and needed to rest a bit. Everyone in Asia is coughing all over the place without covering their mouths. It’s not cool, I’m going to make a “cover your f-ing mouth” PSA.

We started in Nusa Dua, which is known for its  five star hotels covering the beach. We did not stay at these pish posh hotels. So we got sneaky… We walked along the beach all la de da, saw a couple chairs that were free, and sat down like we were staying at the $500 a night resort. I was like “ohhhhh we’re going to get caught, we don’t have a purple towel.” G was like “chill out, they’re not going to say a thing.” And they didn’t! 

Very nice view, thanks Nusa Dua Beach Hotel and Spa! We also walked through the St. Regis “private beach” (I was told to chill out again) and it’s crazy how rich some people are. Do you really need to spend money on your own beach house? Give me some! 

The next day we motorbiked to Blue Point, this awesome surfers beach. We had to walk down a bunch of stairs to get to a cave where it opens up to the ocean.

All those dots are surfers!

We took a beach break to see the Uluwatu Temple which sits on a cliff. We are kind of templed out at the moment, so we just went for the view. Apparently that’s what the excitement’s all about anyway.

Then we bike over to this unmarked road that is supposed to take us to a secret beach and park the bike. We look down the cliff and realize we need more than an hour to explore this one… Especially with the cliff hike.

So we saved it for today, like three days after I took the photo. We needed a few pool and tissue days for the colds.

The secret beach is called Nyang Nyang and it is the shit! Look at this! There’s like one person on the beach!

And some shipwrecks beach ghosts?

Low tide exposed a ton of coral. I walked out a bit… Until I saw something sticking out from a rock… It was some sort of ocean spider and I freaked out. George found one later and we took a pic. I googled ocean spider and just got photos of giant sea monsters so I have no idea what it actually is. But I’m not touching it. 

And that concludes our Bali adventure! We fly to the island of Java tomorrow.

Last but not least… Happy Father’s Day to the coolest dad in the world! I hope you’re doing some of this tomorrow. Be prepared to do it again in a couple weeks. 

Lovina Beach is Not Paradise

Man! The Internet really got us good this time. All of this talk about beautiful black sand swimmable beaches that are not blown out with tourists… 

It was covered in trash, the locals harassed us every step we took. There was a very small area between fishing boats to swim, but it was right next to the shops so you couldn’t get away from the hustle. Very disappointing.

So instead, we rented a motorbike and got the f off the beach. It ended up to be one our favorite days actually, yay!

First we went to the buddist temple Brahma Vihara Arama that was pretty much deserted. It was beautiful. 

Then we motorbiked through the mountains to get to the sea goddesses temple Pura Ulun Danu Beratan on Lake Beratan. This was the view from our lunch pitstop. 

The temple itself was a little blown out, but still really nice and the temperature was much more comfortable because of the elevation.

Then we biked down the winding roads to our hotel to get ready for our trek BACK down to the south where apparently the beautiful beaches live. Time will tell!

While we were on the road, we saw some sort of parade, not sure what it was for but it looked fun!

And here’s a video of the winding roads.

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GOTCHA! Aahahahaha

Mount Batur- The Active Volcano Hike

That’s right! We hiked to the rim of an active volcano! Because we’re loco! 

The last time Mount Batur erupted was in 2000, so we did kind of play with fire… Or lava…

Here’s the volcano from our hotel. Yes, this is our view.

This is us with our view. Cray.

We woke up at 2:45am to hike the volcano, in the dark, so we could watch the sunrise. It was a wonderful experience (except for the part where the guide tried to rip us off, but George whipped him into shape) and I’m really happy we made the trek up here.

The terrain went from forest, to rocks, to volcanic ash. The ash was crazy, it was like hiking up a sand dune… Going down was like surfing, probably not the safest to slide down a volcano but it was fun!

Here’s some shots from the top.

Also, I was wearing socks with my Teva’s…How embarrassing 🙄

And here’s the mouth of the volcano… It doesn’t look that scary but we did see some steam rising through the rocks. 

And a nice daylight panorama with everyone hiking back down.

After the hike, we took a taxi to the hot springs (more like warm springs) and pool hopped for the afternoon. It’s crazy what a little warm water can do for the body, we weren’t sore at all the next day.

Yesterday we arrived in Lovina, hoping to lay on a gorgeous black sand beach for a few days. Alas the Internet tricked us and we found a dirty beach with lots of pushy locals 😦 But we prevailed! And found amazing things to do today thanks to the motorbike. More on that soon, I’m sleepy. 

Bali Gold

Ohhhh man, you know what this post is going to be about! But first, the journey. 

We landed in Bali and headed straight for Ubud, this laid back hippie town full of yoga and raw food. We loved it, George overdosed on fresh juice for three days straight. We stayed in this amazing hotel called Sri Bungalows for like $30 a night. What a steal!

On our first full day we went to the Monkey Forest and played with, surprise, monkeys! They jump all over you, it makes for fun photos like this!

Then we went to a temple, had more juice and got the best massages of our lives!

I got a full body massage, then they scrubbed me down, covered me in yogurt, and put me in a bathtub filled with flowers. That’s never going to happen again. I hope it does but I’m not counting on it. 

We get back to the room before dinner and George is like, how much money do you have? So I checked and told him. He said, check again! And I found a little note about picking out an engagement ring and he proposed! THIS IS REAL LIFE. Best day ever!!!

So obvi we went shopping the next day in the gold and silver district, and boom! Ring! And a ring photo shoot. 

For the rest of our time in Ubud, we just celebrated love and pranced around town. It was wonderful. 

We hiked to the top of a volcano yesterday, more on that next!

Mount Kinabalu – Rain and Leeches

We planned on taking the bus from the Orangatans to Mount Kinabalu to hike around for a few days. A lot of people hike to the top, but I already hiked to Machu Picchu so what do I have to prove? Nada.

Our hotel dropped us off at the bus stop… Apparently they don’t fill up, even on the holiday! HAHA. After three hours of full buses passing us, we had to take a taxi BACK to Sandakan ( where we flew in) and buy bus tickets directly from the station. Six hours on mountain roads later, we made it to the park!

The next day was really cloudy, but we decided to hike anyway. P.S. It has rained all night.

We’re hiking, it’s a rainforest. Cool bug! Cool fern! Cool leech? Nooooo.

They were everywhere! We had to keep stopping to rip them off of our shoes and our ankles. Oh, and they don’t die. And they stick to the bottom of your shoe and keep crawling up even when you’re walking on them. Here’s one!

Then the rain came… A lot of rain. We’re on some path in the middle of the jungle with tons of leaches and a wet map. Spoiler Alert! We made it out! It was definitely an experience.

We stopped by a restaurant in the park to regroup and George found a leach inside his sock sucking his blood. Always bring your leech proof socks when you are in the jungle!

The views were nice though, when it cleared up. Right after I took this, George got food poisoning. Don’t order seafood when you’re not near the ocean!

Since our shoes were pretty much done, and all of this “wildlife” kept sneaking into our hotel room (wasps, giant cockroach like bugs, tons of moths) we skipped out on the second day of hiking and hitched a ride to Kota Kinabalu. It’s not much of a city, but it has bug free rooms, George’s dream juice bar, and foot massages! Here’s the only photo we took. I call it: a rainy day at the mall.

We landed in Bali last night. Last leg!

Orangatans and Sun Bears!

Orangatans in the jungle? Sign us up!

We were a bit concerned that the Sepilok Orangatan Rehabilitation Center was going to be blown out with tourists, because guess what? It was a Harvest holiday in Sabah! So all of the locals had a four day weekend. This seems like a trend for us… Showing up for local holidays

The morning feeding was totally crazy, it was like Angkor Wat sunrise all over again. We decided to ditch the feeding and go on the “bird walk” in search of not hungry Orangatans and birds. No birds… But we did find one Orangatan! Pretty cool.

After that we took a monkey break and walked over to the Sun Bear Conservation Center. It was surprisingly awesome! The sun bear is the smallest bear in the world. A lot of people keep them as pets, which is where this place steps in. You can’t keep a bear as a pet!
Lucky us, th founder was there to answer any questions we had. My main question: Sun Bear vs. Monkey, who wins? The bear wins! Especially if he’s hungry. He also let us look in his bear lens to see them up close. 

After a couple hours we headed back to the Orangatans for the second feeding. Baby alert! There was a baby and his mommy on the platform! The baby kept swinging around on the ropes and the mom kept pulling him back down. 

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Then we were walking toward the nursery and came face to face with two adult Orangatans! The park workers made us keep our distance, Orangatans are very strong. Fun fact, they are 96.4% just like us!

Edit

Our next stop was to the Mount Kinabalu National Park. That journey and our rainstorm in the jungle leech experience coming soon… 

Oh, and we saw the biggest ants ever. They kept fighting each other to the death.