My last stop in asia.
I honestly cannot believe it has been four months since I landed in SE Asia. Where has the time gone?? I have been so fortunate to see every country (except Philippines as already traveled there a couple of years ago). I never once felt unsafe in this region of the world, the people are so incredibly kind and welcoming, the food is mouthwatering good, and the scenery is impeccable.
Indonesia was the final country to visit before moving on to a different continent. I had one month to explore, which seems like a long time, but Indonesia is the 14th largest country by area and made up of 17,000 islands. HOW AM I GOING TO FIT ALL THAT IN IN ONE MONTH? It is known for its stunning and remote islands lined with turquoise beaches, Komodo Dragons that can only be found in Indonesia, active and inactive volcanos with huge craters, yoga and spiritual rituals in Bali, and so much more. It was going to be a busy month and while travel fatigue was starting to get to me, I knew I had to pull it together for my last hurrah in Asia.
Sunrises.
Mount Bromo is not the highest volcano, but it is the most visited in East Java. There are hundreds of agencies that organize sunrise tours so I got the name of a group through my hostel in Surabaya, my first stop in Indonesia. I communicated back and forth for days with the guide to iron out details and plan for a three-day, two-night tour with stops at Mount Bromo, Tumpak Sewu waterfall, and the Ijen Crater. While I thought we were good to go, that was far from the truth. I wont go into details, but it was the worst experience I have had with an organized agency. The tour took off from a completely different city than was advertised, the waterfall was closed with a bridge down that was failed to be mentioned when booking the tour, and the drivers spoke no English. I took a local train from Surabaya to Malang where the tour would start from. I had the afternoon to explore Malang and walked to the Rainbow Village (which helped ease my stress levels). We left Malang city at midnight to make it to the top of the mount by 5am. We rode in an old school jeep through small and narrow roads, once we got towards the top of the mountain, it was bumper to bumper jeeps all competing to get to the top first and find a close parking spot. It was a nightmare, and I was going on little to no sleep.
There were four other French people in my jeep and we got a cup of coffee (which is just coffee grounds and hot water in Indonesia) and walked to find a spot on the lookout for sunrise. We had 45 minutes until to wait in the brisk morning air and wind so I opted to rent a blanket for $3 while we sat at the edge of the cliff. Sunrise came and went with people coming out of the woodworks to get the perfect picture and stand directly in front of our group. I was frustrated and couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. Around 7am we made our way down to the foot of the volcano to snap some photos and hike up to the rim of the crater. The line just to get up the stairs was about 30 minutes, so that should tell you how many tourists were there. While it had been a long and tiring morning, the views made you forget all about the journey.
Because the waterfall was closed, we were headed straight to the eastern most edge of Java to visit the Ijen Crater. It should have taken six hours, instead it took 10! The bus driver (our third one of the day) was so aggressive (typical driving in most SE Asian countries) and I was sitting in the front of the minivan. That was a mistake. My PTSD was in full affect and the entire van was exhausted, hungry, and frustrated that it was taking so long. We stopped for an overpriced, mediocre lunch and proceeded to our destination at a homestay close to the foot of the crater for the next morning. I replaced dinner with a large Bintang beer and called it a night. 3:30am came quick the next morning and we climbed back in the van to hike up another volcano. At least this time we were hiking and not in a jeep. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the top. If you were feeling lazy you could hire men to take you up or down on what looked like a wheelbarrow chair. I would not want that job, those men were struggling going up with humans in their carriage. Tired or not, the views were incredible. The Ijen Crater lake is the world’s largest highly acidic lake. We walked along the rim taking photos and soaking in the beauty before hiking down into the lake reservoir for an up-close look. This was by far the coolest part. We had to wear gas masks due to the dangerous levels of sulfur in the air but were able to see how they have turned the natural resource into a small manufacturing site and therefore money. The two days of travel were hell, but the time on the mountains and craters made you forget about the journey.
I climbed one other volcano, Mount Batur, while in Indonesia on the island of Bali. One of my previous Amazon colleagues, Dominic, quit his job and was starting his travel journey in Indonesia. We met up in Ubud and traveled to the highlands of Kintamani to get out of the hustle and bustle of Bali and spend a day hiking the mountain. While most tourists hike the volcano at sunrise with an organized tour group from Ubud we opted to do it on our own time and avoid the crowds. We stayed at the foothills for two days at a small homestay with natural hot springs and spent the evenings lounging, drinking Bintang and reading our kindles. Made was our local tour guide and we met around 11am to start the journey. It only took about 1.5 hours up and we spent an hour or so walking around the rim. At the top, there were sulfuric rocks and we hard boiled eggs for lunch in the steam. We warded off monkeys trying to steal our food and took some photos for the gram. We walked a full loop around the crater, stopping at different viewpoints along the way before making our descent. It was so great to catch up with Dom and get to experience that together.
Bali beaches.
Like so many SE Asian countries, Indonesia has those stunning beaches that look like screensavers or post cards. With so many beach cities to choose from (party, remote, small, large, etc.) After many sunrise hike excursions I decided to opt for more chill and relaxing vibes. I made my way to Uluwatu on the southwestern tip of Bali. I had a friend, Ellie, whom I met in Thailand that would be there at the same time, so we planned to spend a few days together. We chilled on the beautiful beaches, I did yoga on the coastline cliffs, and we enjoyed a Kecak fire dance at the Uluwatu temple. I explored the temple prior to the show and got attacked by a monkey. Yes you heard the right…he jumped on my back twice, pulled my backpack off and tried to get into it. I panicked, screamed so loud that everyone around me stared until a local guide helped me to safety. Thank goodness my things and I came away unscathed. I was so shaken up. Needless to say I am terrified of macaque monkeys and now avoid them at all costs.
After Bali, I boarded a ferry to head to the Gili islands, a popular group of three small islands. I opted for Gili Air, the second largest with plenty to do but not huge parties and young kids like Gili T offers. I stayed at a hostel/yoga studio (H20 Yoga and Meditation – https://www.h2oyogaandmeditation.com/) and got my own room (luxury). I think I needed a break from people. The islands have no motor vehicles on them, only bicycles and horse drawn carriages. I rented a bike to explore when I arrived. I did yoga every morning, met some friends, Tizana and Jesse, who were on my Ijen tour, for drinks and enjoyed the live music at many of the beach bars. I spent a day snorkeling with 14 strangers and saw the islands’ amazing coral reef and turtles. What I didn’t know is Gili air is mostly for couples and families, but I made the most of my time there.
Yoga in the rice fields.
Ubud is one of the most recognized places for yoga and yoga teacher training courses. Funny enough, after chatting with some locals, I learned that Ubud was originally known for arts, creativity, and a nomad lifestyle. Westerners started visiting decades ago and brought along yoga practice. Most of the locals don’t practice yoga but have since embraced the culture because of the attention and money it brings to the once small and quaint village. There are yoga studios everywhere, with the most famous and popular being Yoga Barn – https://www.theyogabarn.com/. It has seven yoga shalas/studios and offers over 100 classes a day. EVERY DAY! You can find everything from traditional hatha yoga to kundalini yin, to breathwork/meditation classes to evening events such as sound healing or bhakti kirtan. Along with yoga, Ubud has many health conscious and vegan restaurants, art and cooking classes, day trips to surrounding temples, a large monkey forest, lush rice fields, waterfalls, tattoo parlors on every corner, and lots of shopping stalls with handmade souvenirs and clothing.
I came for yoga and relaxation time after many sunrise hikes and lack of sleep. My hostel had meditation and yoga each morning, followed by free breakfast, and different nightly activities to participate in (movie night, family dinners, BBQ with a band, etc.). I took full advantage. I typically took a second yoga class in the afternoon at Yoga Barn or another smaller local studio. I took a cooking class through my hostel and learned to make curry, tempeh with peanut sauce, and the Indonesian sweet rice cakes. Massages were about $7 for an hour, so I got many! In the evenings I participated in a women’s circle where we opened up about our desires, a Bhakti kirtan (a call-and-response chanting or musical conversation that focuses on India’s bhakti devotional traditions), and a sacred sound healing with the talented musician Monaxi. Dom and I also stumbled upon a Latin band and sang along to Spanish beats after a day of exploring the walking paths and quiet rice fields around the town (one of my favorite things I did in Ubud apart from yoga).
I met more Americans in Ubud than I have in all my travels. If I am honest, I prefer being the only American wherever I go. I left the US to see the world and new cultures, not to hang out with people that look and act like me (that is not to say I don’t like Americans, just that I prefer to meet people from other parts of the world). I met Emily on my first day in Ubud and we instantly clicked. Emily is from the Midwest and we bonded over our love for Chicago. We immediately booked a silver jewelry making class that was recommended to us from someone at the hostel. We got ten grams of silver to create any style of jewelry we wanted. Everyone in the class made at least two rings. We took time to design them and the many workers assisted us in the actual process of cutting, filing, forging, hammering, texturing, soldering, and sanding the silver. It was so cool to see how jewelry is made and how much work goes into each piece. Now I understand why some jewelry is so expensive, the handmade process is no joke.
Emily and I hired a private driver to take us around the next day to different locations outside of Ubud. Zeta from England joined us on our adventure. We stopped at two temples in the morning (Tirta Empul and Goa Gajah), made our way to have lunch overlooking a ravine of rice fields, tasted Kopi Luwak (AKA poop coffee – a certain animal eats the coffee beans whole and the poop/waste is then processed and used to make this coffee) at a coffee plantation, and spent a few hours at Taman Beji Griya waterfall with a temple inside where we did a cultural blessing ceremony. We hired a Balinese lady to share the cultural experience with. We walked through the caves, asked for permission to enter and receive blessings from different gods, ended with a shower in a large waterfall to let go of past troubles and cleanse yourself with peace and happiness. While I grew up Christian, I appreciated learning more about the Hindu religion and appreciated experiencing the different rituals. It was the perfect way to end the tour. We made it back to the city center in time for dinner, indulging in some pizza for a taste of home.
My last order of business in Ubud was to get a hand poked tattoo. This is a traditional style of tattooing that uses a needle attached to a long wooden stick verses a machine. I designed a tattoo with my artist Agung at the highly recommended parlor (Satapak Tattoo Studio). I have always wanted a tattoo down my spine. The design was simple yet meaningful. The phrase “be still” demonstrates my love of yoga while the lotus flower signifies overcoming adversity and rebirth. This trip around the world is a quest to discover what is next. I cannot go back to the grind of corporate America. I wasn’t happy. I desperately need a change and while I don’t know what that is quite yet, I am confident everything will work out the way that it should. I just need to be still and find more of what I love.
Ride the wave.
Komodo dragons can only be found in one area of the world, Indonesia (on five main islands). This area is a huge tourist attraction for many hoping to see these huge creatures – including me. You can fly to the eastern islands (expensive and quick) OR you can take a boat (cheaper and not quick). After hours of research, and I mean hours, I found a company (Travel Wise) to take me on a four-day/three-night boat excursion. You sleep aboard the boat, stop at many different locations along the way and pray that you like the other 30 people on the journey with you. They did not have any cabins (private or smaller shared rooms) left so I booked a deck spot…AKA sleeping on a cushion at the top of the deck. Buckle up, this was going to be a WILD ride. Now important to note before I tell you this story is that I slept on my neck wrong two nights earlier and tweaked something. The day I woke up to start the boat trip my entire body ached and I felt absolutely awful. Great, just great. I told myself to suck it up, this is a once in a lifetime experience.
I took a 7am ferry from Gili Air to Lombok where I was greeted by a Travel Wise guide. We waited an hour or so for more people to show up from a different island and drove an hour to the main office where about a hundred people congregated over the next two hours. It was a LONG morning and the one cup of coffee they gave us was not sufficient. We piled into huge coach buses that I barely fit in and made our three-hour journey to the eastern part of the island. I felt awful. I tried to sleep to avoid the pain, but we were packed in like sardines and without AC it was hotter than Hades. The other travelers that would be joining me on this journey were from all over Europe – Switzerland, Holland, Austria, England, Germany, France and a slightly older crowd (compared to the other boats that were a bit more of a younger crowd ready to party) and I was OK with that. I was the only American and the only solo traveler. This was going to be interesting!
By the time we got to the boat, it was lunch time. Chicken soup – it’s like the cook knew I needed that. We found our “beds”, which was a bit chaotic as the company oversold the deck and had extra spaces in the private air-conditioned rooms. The good news for me is that there was an empty bed in a tiny room with three Swiss lads. JACKPOT. I had an actual bed in an actual room (more like a closet because it was so small, but better than sleeping on the deck). Thank you, Jesus. We sailed for a few hours to a small island where we hiked up a hill to see the sun set behind Mount Rinjani (the second highest active volcano in Indonesia). They served us dinner and warned us the next leg of the trip would be the longest and toughest. We would be sailing for 24 hours straight with one stop to swim the next morning. The water was so rough. People were vomiting all day. The night was the worst, it was something I cannot even explain and I got maybe three hours of sleep.
We woke up the next morning at 6:30am to swim with whale sharks. This was incredible. These animals are stunning, huge, and so calm. They still scared the crap out of me. Whale sharks are not threatening to humans as they have no teeth and eat plankton, shrimp, and smaller animals. There was a German who had a very fancy camera that could go underwater, and he took incredible photos of the underwater world and sent to the group WhatsApp seen here. We continued to our next destination, Komodo National Park! We saw about seven or eight dragons, snapped photos, learned about their eating and sleeping habits as we walked around the park. Our next stop was a pink sand beach. The water was sparkling turquoise, the sky was crystal blue, and the sand was light pink. It was so beautiful. We snorkeled around the nearby coral and enjoyed some cold beverages on the beach. Next up we headed to Padar Island, a famous spot for sunset that is a must see when in the area. It was packed with tourists waiting their turn to capture the best photo with the stunning backdrop.
Our last day on the boat we snorkeled around some remote islands that had some of the best snorkeling I have ever seen. I know I have said this before, but it was filled with rainbow coral, exotic and colorful fish and huge schools of swordfish. We stayed there for hours, soaking in the last few hours on the boat and jumping off the side of the boat. On our way to Labuan Bajo I asked the captain if I could drive the boat, as you know I love to do, and he obliged!! I managed to not crash the giant boat. While the views and stops were incredible…it turns out I was pretty sick, my fever broke the second night on the boat. I had no energy, no appetite, chills, aches, etc. I went to bed every night before 8pm while the others stayed up late enjoying beer and dancing on the deck. I think I gave off an introverted vibe because I didn’t tell anyone I was sick and usually stayed away from others. I powered through and am so glad that I did. Would I do that trip again? Absolutely not. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
After the boat trip, I knew I would need some time to decompress. I booked three night at a bougie hostel in Labuan Bajo. I slept ten hours a night, binge watched Love Island Australia, avoided Asian food (I was so sick of it after many months in Asia), got massages every day, and met up with Tiziana and Jesse again. We rented motorbikes and explored the remote parts of the island, visiting a small village, a waterfall in caves, and enjoying each other’s company. My last night we went to the fish market where we bought tons of seafood that was grilled to taste and reminisced over beers about our time together in three different locations (Java, Gili, and Labuan Bajo). I will miss their company, but have so many amazing memories.
The jen essentials for indonesia.
- Warm clothes (it is cold and windy while waiting for the sunrise at the top of mountains)
- A warm smile (Indonesians are so welcoming and always smiling)
- Massages (how can you pass up a $7 massage?)
- Ability to avoid monkeys (don’t make eye contact or show your teeth – that is a sign of aggression and most importantly do not have food visible – they are hostile animals)
- Seasickness medicine (the small boat traveling over 350 miles in the ocean is ROUGH)
- JOMO (this is the joy of missing out – in which I have come to appreciate in my older years – I skipped the busy, party scenes and loved every minute of it)
- Reputable tour companies (research and watch for red flags when booking tours)
- Beach cover up (a must for beach hopping)
- The ability to drive a motor bike (if you want to get out of the craziness)
- A hand poked tattoo (sorry mom)
Wrap it up jen.
I could write a novel on my adventures (foreshadow??); in fact, one of my favorite pastimes during my travels is reading memoirs of wanderers on a similar journey to mine. They inspire and comfort me. What I find the hardest is to summarize my trip when people I haven’t talked to in a while ask me about it. I don’t even know where to start. But if I break it down by regions, it seems more approachable.
As I reflect on my Asian adventures, I have so many fond memories. It was not all rainbows and butterflies though. I had some really challenging days, standard mediocre days, but most importantly some incredible days. My favorite experience was climbing Ky Quan San in Sapa, Vietnam (see https://thejenessentials.com/cam-on-vietnam/). My most memorable experience was the full moon party on Koh Phangan Island in Thailand (see https://thejenessentials.com/thailand-is-my-thaipe-of-country/). My least favorite was my time spent on Langkawi Island in Malaysia (see https://thejenessentials.com/makanan-my-way-through-malaysia/). However, I wouldn’t change a single thing!
Indonesia wrapped all my Asian memories into ONE. From yoga in Ubud, to hiking volcanos in Java and Bli, to working on my “tan” in Uluwatu, to enjoying cold beer while watching the sunset in Gili Air. I am so grateful for my time in Asia, but I am ready for a change. I can’t eat any more noodles or fried rice, I want to communicate with locals more than just hello and thank you, I am exhausted from trying to connect with friends/family with the huge time differences and bad wifi connection. Most importantly, I am excited for what adventures lie ahead!
Up next: Brisbane, Australia to see my girl CAROLYN MALTBY!
Signing off for now,
Jennifer