Day 42 – Flying to Indonesia (14/09/2015)
“Learning a new currency is a pain in the ass.” – Caleb’s wise words of the day
It’s crazy, today was the day we left Malaysia. First 1.5 months are already over. So many memories, so many people we’ve met. We had a great time in Malaysia and we will miss it, even if we are excited to see the next country now. We definately had the perfect end with Areef and his family. In the last three days we tried almost all the Malay food we had missed out on. We saw places that we would have never seen without being with locals, we learned a lot about Malaysia and we experienced so much generosity and friendliness. I can’t even express how much we appreciate the memories we’ve made because of amazing people like that family. So much goes wrong in our world but experiences like that make you believe in the good in people. I sincerely hope that Areef and his family will come visit us in Switzerland so that we can do the same for them as they did for us.
We got up this morning, got ready and started packing. Areef’s mom told us to come have breakfast and I couldn’t believe when I looked at the table that was full of Malaysian sweets. How do we deserve all this?! It was really interesting to try it all. Some of the things had such a special taste, tastes that we don’t even know. Then it was time to say goodbye to the parents. We really left a place like home.
Areef brought us to the airport, we changed our last Ringgits into Indonesian Rupiahs (we’re millionaires!) and off we went. Bye Bye Malaysia…
After about three hours we touched Indonesian soil. We were excited to see what comes next. How different will the food be, the people, the nature. Unfortunately our first experience was not very thrilling. It seemed that there was no way to get out of the airport without paying way too much. Everyone tried to get us into their taxi and apparently there are no public buses you can take. It was ridiculous. At one point we met a German girl that has been to Bali for a while and she knew that there was a very cheap public bus. We decided to go find it with her. We were walking in heat, with our big backpack on the back, small backpack on the front, sweating and there was no bus stop in sight. We had to give up and we stopped a taxi. We managed to get it way cheaper than what he wanted from us at first but still it was already the first time we got cheated. He dropped us of somewhere, we didn’t even really know where we were. We agreed on him dropping us off at Kuta beach but when he dropped us off we couldn’t even see the beach. We started walking without a destination. Soon we realized that we had to get Wifi to find an accommodation so we stopped at Starbucks. We found one and we kept going and going…and going. I was at the end of my energy so we decided to just start looking at what we could find. We found one, looked at the room and agreed on it. I stayed in the room and Caleb went to the front desk to pay. When I checked out the bed I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was disgusting, the whole bed was full of stains. I knew I had to run to get to Caleb before he could pay. I made it to the front desk right in time, we took our household and left.
So we were on the road again, walking towards the place we found online. We got to a place that looked really nice and it even had a pool. We stopped to look at the rooms. After bartering the price we made a deal and we finally had a room. Double room with our own bathroom and a balcony. The room was not that nice but the pool and location made up for it.
Pretty much as soon as we put our bags down we put our bathing suits on and jumped into the pool. I was dreaming of a pool since the first week of travelling and we’ve never been in one till now. We enjoyed it so much.
We got pretty hungry so we checked out what LonelyPlanet has to say about the food situation. We decided to go to the night market. We figured the location out on google maps and went on our way. The further we walked the darker, dirtier and less touristy it looked. When we got to the market we were honestly quiet disappointed. The problem probably was that we expected it to be like in Malaysia, which it wasn’t. There were about five “half restaurants”. I don’t know how to explain those kind of places. It looked pretty sketchy but as we learned in Malaysia: the more sketchy it looks the better the food is. And the food was in dead pretty amazing and so cheap.
Back at the hotel we wanted to use the pool to the fullest extend possible. It was night time but it was still warm. That’s the good life! When we went back to our room we couldn’t believe how loud the music was from the clubs. Even if we would play music in our room, we wouldn’t listen to it that loud. You can not imagine the volume I’m talking about. The guy from the hotel mentioned it when he showed us the room but we would have never thought that it’s actually that loud.
Day 43 – Kuta (15/09/2015)
“Friendly people can be found where no white man walks.” – Caleb’s wise words of the day
Surprisingly we slept very well. We fell asleep after a second and the music didn’t bother us at all. We got up pretty late and decided that we will stay another night at this place because we wanna go to the water park tomorrow.
Our first mission was to find breakfast. Because we had such a cheap dinner last night, I think we got kind of the wrong idea about prices. Everything seemed so expensive now. We were walking through the streets and we couldn’t decide on anything. We ended up at the “Beach Walk Shopping Mall” because they had a bakery. We got five items and it cost as much as dinner last night. It wasn’t bad but definatly not like the stuff you get in Switzerland or at Black Kettle in George Town.
Our second mission was to find a dress…still. And a bikini…still. And Caleb wanted to find board shorts. There are so many stands with dresses and board shorts and shirts and souvenirs and penis sculptures, penis bottle openers, penis keychains. Penises everywhere. When you walk on the street people wanna try to sell everything. You can’t walk two seconds without someone asking “Transport”, “Taxi”, “Yes, yes”, “Massage”, “5 dollars”…it doesn’t take long to get really really annoyed.
I tried on dresses, in the middle of the open stands. Many dresses and believe it or not but I finally found one. I found a long dress! Hallelujah! And because we are experienced backpackers now, we got the dress for IDR 60 instead of IDR 150. 🙂
Part two of mission two…finding a bikini. Lord Jesus that was not easy. We went to so many stores, it was insane. At the street stands they don’t sell any bikinis so we had to go to normal stores. Most of the stores are Roxy, Rip Curl and brands like that so the bikinis were super expensive. After walking around for four hours, I’m not kidding, four f****** hours I gave up. Caleb was still convinced that we will find one but I was tired, angry and frustrated and all I wanted to do is go back to the hotel. Caleb was not even thinking about it so I just walked away. Luckily he followed me.
We were arguing for a while until I gave in and went at it again. We decided to not care so much about the price anymore. We went to the same stores again and we finally found one. Caleb loved it, I thought it was a bit too big but of course I just wanted to have one. In my opinion it was way too expensive, it was IDR 350 for a no-brand bikini but Caleb made me get it. We were so relieved. Without bikini our plan for tomorrow would have been ruined because I have no straps on the one I have, which is not very safe at a waterpark. Now that I had a dress and a bikini Caleb wanted to get board shorts. I could not believe that we still had to keep shopping but whatever. Of course it didn’t take him long to find a pair. Of course they were a brand, on sale and cheaper than my bikini. Life sucks sometimes.
Back at the hotel we finally did what I was dreaming of all day. We went into the pool. That’s when the real disaster happened. My bikini top was definatly too big. That was just too much for one day, I freaked out. I went back into the room and I didn’t wanna ever leave it again.
Long story short, Caleb managed to make me calm down, which was not an easy job and I agreed on going for a drink. I thought what I needed is to just wear something nice and feel like a girl. Something I haven’t done since we left Switzerland. I showered, put on make up, made my hair and put my new dress on. I felt like a normal person, like everyone else that was walking around, not like a backpacker. It was such a good feeling. I was so sick of the same four shirts and the same two pants, about not wearing anything girly, not having a purse, either walking around in flip flops or hiking shoes. I almost felt like a new born.
We went down to the beach with our self mixed drinks and we were pretty surprised when we saw how empty the beach was. We expected beach parties at a place like this. So we sat on a boogie board and enjoyed the waves and each others company. When we started to get tired we walked back up into the madness. We went from bar/club to bar/club. Honestly nothing was that exciting. The highlight of the night was when a guy that worked in one of the clubs made me a ring out of straws and made Caleb propose to me on stage.
Back at the hotel we jumped into the pool and after that we slept like babies.
Day 44 – Waterbom in Kuta (16/09/2015)
“People that don’t size their bathing suits properly look ridiculous.” – Caleb’s wise words of the day
What an awesome day! Today we went to Waterbom, the number 1 water park in Asia and number 3 in the world.
But first we still had a problem to solve…my bikini. The bottom I could keep but the top was definatly too big, so we had to continue/start again looking for a bikini. Already at the second store, I found a top. It was way too expensive but we didn’t wanna loose more time and at least it is Rip Curl. Now we just had to grab some food. We were walking towards the water park, nothing looked that great except the expensive places. At one point we just decided to go in somewhere. We chose the wrong place, that’s for sure. Our waiter was stoned as hell. We couldn’t believe it. He was seriously not on this planet. When we ordered, we had to say everything three times, then he left and came back to write it down. Of course he still brought me the wrong drink. The food was pretty good, thank god he wasn’t the cook. When we wanted to pay his brain utterly left his body. We saw him flipping through the menu. It took forever. He already took our money and I was worried that we will not get our change back anymore. He was trying to figure it out for about ten minutes when I told Caleb to go over there and help him. Sill nothing happened, so I went there too. I asked him “Can I do something?”, took the calculator and counted everything. It still took a while but we finally had our change. He was so high that it kind of scared me.
After that nightmare we made our way to the water park. We were so excited about it. It was way too expensive. 1 million for both of us was only the entrance fee. Our day budget is 800’000. But we saved a bit of money in Malaysia so we thought we will splurge and we do not regret it at all, it was so worth it.
The water park was very nice made, a little paradise. We had a lot of fun on all different types of slides. Fast ones, steep ones, dark ones, painful ones (not that much fun), ones with tubes, ones without tubes, ones that we could go on together, ones where we could race with each other…in some points people never grow up 🙂
After about 5.5 hours we were pretty tired and we left. We walked back to the hotel where we made ourselves ready for dinner. We didn’t really have much of a choice where to go, we already spent too much money today, so we went to the cheapest place, the night market. Like the first night, the food was amazing.
The Travelling Smiths 