smifterbifter.com - Bifter's World Tour

NOTE: The sections below are compiled from emails sent home by me at the time and have not been edited too much. As such, it all may seem a bit disjointed. At some point I should pad this section out with excerpts from my travel journal. Until then, I'm afraid the emails will have to do.

Jakarta, Java - 18th - 20th Jan 2001

Country #7. We arrived in the Indonesian capital late in the evening and, deciding not to brave the streets at night looking for a place to stay, we booked a hotel from the airport. For 5 quid each we ended up in a business-style conference hotel with swimming pool and room service. We decided to revel in this unaccustomed luxury and spent a great deal of time watching CNN and MTV in our plush room.

Next morning we looked around the city itself. A strange mix of old and new. Massive recent investment in the city had given it good roads and the odd tall, modern building, but you could tell that it was all built in a poor infrastructure. There were very few other Westerners there (we saw only two that looked like they were travelers), obviously we were in the minority of white freaks who decided that Jakarta was a safe place to travel. That said there was no impression of tension or any signs of anything kicking off whilst we were there. Almost disappointed. Almost. This afternoon we took the 60Km train ride to...

Bogor, Java - 20th - 22nd Jan 2001

Ahh this is a bit more like it. Nice and cheap again. We are back to the realms of 1-pound-a-night rooms and 3 pound dinners (3 courses including drinks). Actually, before I go on, I must mention that there is one thing that I really do miss (other than comfy sofas, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, J.Sainsburys and having money go into my account occasionally). Good quality wine. You just can't get it, other than the shitty rice wine you can obtain for next to nothing in some places, there is not a sauvignon or Bordeaux or even a Blue Nun to be quaffed anywhere.

Bogor - I mentioned a bit about Bogor in my last mail, but to continue... We met up with a fellow traveler whom we had met in Vietnam and Cambodia. He had been traveling through Indonesia the opposite way from us and our paths had managed to intersect in Bogor. We drank a few beers, sank a few whiskeys and shot the breeze about life on the road. It was cool. Hopefully I will meet up with the silly-bearded, Canadian midget in his home town of Vancouver when I get there. [Keep in touch Dave].

With a hangover we ventured out into the early heat to wander around the, somewhat strange, botanical gardens and then the zoological museum. Then to slake our hunger we found a pizza hut and ordered enough food for 23 people between 5 of us. Apparently a large pizza can serve 4-5 people. We had one each.

After 2 nights there we exited, via a train back to Jakarta to catch a connecting one to...

Bandung, Java - 22nd - 24th Jan 2001

Our previous room had been a bit sparten and we decided that we wanted some luxury for our stay in Bandung. So we checked into the Serena Hotel and I got myself a fantastic room for about a tenner a night. This was a proper hotel and had little bits of soap, towels, mini shampoo bottles, a TV, hot power shower, bog paper with the end folded into a point, Do-Not-Disturb signs on the door handle, electronic keys, curtains on pull strings and a mini-bar. This is more like it. Sod roughing it in the roof above a bar in Thailand. This is what traveling should be about. Getting some actual sleep and being able to enjoy the day ahead.

Whilst there, we met up with some Aussies and a Dutch girl with whom we went on a bit of a trek through a gorge and a national park with. It was a good day for it and we managed to cover about 15Km before lunch. Bandung also has an area called Jean Street. We visited it. It was, shockingly, full of shops selling jeans. From there another train and a bus ride to...

Pangandaran, Java - 24th - 26th Jan 2001

The main beach resort in Java. It has volcanic, black-sanded beaches and good surf, but absolutely nobody there. It was obviously set up for a lot of people with many bars and restaurants but it appeared deserted.

We found a place to stay at the even quieter end of the main beachfront strip in Yuli Bungalows. Now this place needs some explaining as they were probably the oddest rooms we had stayed in all of Asia. The entire complex of bungalows was amidst a forest of otherworldly, concrete sculptures of trees and other vegetation. It had about 5 small swimming pools of various weird designs and peppered with concrete gargoyles. Overall it looked like an H.R.Giger painting (the Swiss surrealist). It was also proprietor also appeared to be involved with various voodoo practices and we suspected that she was a witch. This was confirmed after hearing her wail like a banshee on a karaoke machine.

But we made it through the night and we used the first day to rent out some motorbikes to explore the peninsular. We discovered a cave full of huge bats and an illusive porcupine, a deserted, cut-off beach (accessible through the cave), where the only other person was a local, recently out of prison where he had done a prison stretch after being convicted of smuggling Heroin. We had a look around the very littered national park there and also drove up to a huge, and desolate, stretch of beach to gawp at a fantastic sunset.

That night we met up again with the Aussies we had met in Bandung and drunk too many beers and consumed a huge quantity of barbequed fresh fish. Greig went a bit caveman on us and even gnawed at the heads. On our second morning there we arose frightfully early (05:15) to get a boat and then a bus to the cultural seat of Java….

Yogakarta, Java - 26th - 28th Jan 2001

We managed to find a normal hotel with a nice swimming pool at a reasonable price and we chilled out for our 2 days here. We went on an organized tour to the Buddhist temple complex of Borobudur. It was in the same style as the ones we had seen in Angkor, Cambodia, but it didn't even nearly match up to it. Yogakarta was full of people trying to sell their services and products under the guise of being just helpful people. It wore us down a bit having to be rude to them all the time to get them to leave us alone, but I really didn't want to buy a handcrafted blow-pipe with an assortment of poison tipped darts whilst eating my breakfast. From there we organized a 2-day trip to get us to Bali via the volcano of Mt Bromo. It was only about a 500 mile trip but it took an age. Here is the journey….

Mt. Bromo, Java - 28th - 30th Jan 2001

The trip from Yogakarta to Mt Bromo and over the sea to Bali started badly as the air-conned luxury coach we were promised turned out to be a packed minibus with a 'quaint' AC system. Namely windows. We wouldn't have minded so much if it hadn't been so extremely hot. Even with the wind blasting in my faces, sweat was poring off our bodies and collecting in an uncomfortable pool between my butt cheeks. The seats were as uncomfortable as possible and mine had a particularly nasty metal rod sticking up in the middle of it. It was a case of finding a position marginal less tortuous than the last every couple of minutes or so.

This was then compounded by an unexpected rogue element. The last person that the minibus picked up was Matt. Our first impressions of him were not good as he appeared to have actually purchased an aforementioned handcrafted blow-pipe with an assortment of poison tipped darts. He shoved this into the back with us and then proceeded to intensely annoy the entire bus for the duration of the 10hr trip to Mt Bromo. My hatred for him knows no bounds. He is possibly the most obnoxious, intolerant, bigoted, arrogant and foul-mouthed tosser I have ever had the misfortune to meet. He was also English. An unwelcome blight on the people of our beautiful motherland. Darth Vader has more charm. I spent most of the journey trying to find excuses not to break his nose. I managed to restrain myself but went over violent confrontations with him in my head a thousand times.

Irritated and burning up, we arrived at Mt Bromo and were checked into a guest house. We endured a meal and a few drinks sitting around the table with Evil Matt, listening to him pontificate about all the inane things he though were important. I discussed several things with him but found it so easy to invalidate any argument he came up with that I tried to ignore him as much as possible. To such an extent that we went to bed at 9pm. There was another reason for this wussy turning in time, in that we had to be up at 3am for the trip to the top of Mt Bromo.

We were herded into a Ex-Soviet jeep and driven across the dusty, moon-like volcanic cauldra to a viewpoint on the rim on the far side of the volcano to watch the sun rise. It really was quite an ethereal alien landscape in the starlight before dawn. The sun came up, the millions of Japanese tourists snapped and digitally filmed away and the volcano dutifully puffed a bit. Matt didn't like it one little bit.

After that, we were driven up to the crater itself and, avoiding the manky looking donkeys, we hiked up to the rim. Below us was a 200 meter hole in the ground, puffing sulfurous steam and looking pretty much like a volcano. Matt didn't like the smell or the donkey sellers.

Back at the hostel for breakfast at 9am, then back into our minibus for another 9hr trip to the ferry port on the eastern tip of Java for the ferry to Bali. From there a change of bus to get us to…

Kuta, Bali - 30th Jan - 1st Feb 2001

THE beach resort in Indonesia. Full of surfer-dudes and surf-related clothes shops. We got off the coach sat in a bar, racking our brains to think of a way to get rid of Matt, who was still hanging around like a bad smell and trying to angle his way into a room with us. We decided to wait him out. After about an hour, our refusal to talk to him seemed to seep into his tiny brain and he wandered off to find a room of his own. The relief was immense and we celebrated by exceedingly drunk in two bars and a nightclub to celebrate. Seeing as we had been up since 3am this was a pretty adventurous move and we were eventually forced to hit the sack in our nice hotel 26 hours after we had arisen.

The next day was, understandably, a bit of a wash out. We swam in our pool and checked out the beach and the shops. The beach was a nice to llok at but a bit full of hawkers and messy, which was a shame. For me, the most memorable evening in Kuta was when Greig and I ordered the worlds largest (and seemingly strongest) cocktails. They were so huge that they were served in goldfish bowls. I remember very little of the proceedings after drinking it other that that Gerig fell off a wall into a ditch.

We decided that Kuta was a bit hectic to we charted a transport to the quieter…

Lovina, Bali - 1st - 7th Feb 2001

Lovina is on the north side of Bali and where I'm writing this from. A very laid back place with beautiful hotels. A lot of traveling in an unseasonal heat wave has taken it's toll and we have arrived now in Lovina, Bali, where my expensive air-conned suite is a haven in which to rest my tired bones for a bit.

I have opted to stay in the most expensive room of my tour yet (13 pounds). It's beautiful. I have my own garden. A chance to relax. It is our third day here and this morning we took a boat out and watched the dolphins come in to the shallower coral-reefed waters to feed. Pretty cool. Might try and fit in some reef diving tomorrow.

some time later....

Christ, it really does seem like years ago I was sitting in my posh hotel sipping G&Ts by the pool, wasting the days, catching rays. I seem to remember some outlandish nights though. One in particular stands out from the rest. That evening I had been to an internet cafe to discover one of their PCs was misbehaving and not talking to the LAN, so, being nice, I fixed it for them and received free internet from the gaffer for a week. This chap looked exactly like Billy Connelly, had the same mannerisms, but was Australian. The reason I mention this incident is because we met him in a bar later on that evening and proceeded to get exceedingly hammered on a drink called Arak. It's a kind of tequila made locally on the island by a Chinese fella, operating his moonshine business illegally from his home. He is the worlds only producer of Arak and it appears to be only available on Bali. That night, the bar we were in was celebrating eluding the police raid that was sent to confiscate the illegal Arak stocks the bar had. Araks all round. It tastes like shit, but kicks your head harder than any other known alcohol. The evening was a whitewash. I remember hardly any of it except the 'see how long you can hold your breath underwater' competition that we held in a nearby hotels swimming pool. Ahh, the heady joys of unrestrained alcoholic stupor.

We spent a whole week in Lovina, the longest we had stayed in one place during the entire time in S.E Asia. It was nice though and we did need a rest after blasting through Java. Paul and Ruth, our intrepid travelling companions returned from their trip to Burma to meet us in Lovina where we celebrated Paul's birthday in style.

The weird thing about Lovina was the lack of tourists. We were told that it was just the off season and this seemed to be the case. The lack of tourists meant that we were able to get to know the locals a bit better which was a nice change from what we had experienced in Kuta and other parts of Indonesia. A lot of the locals were ex-pats who were good to go out drinking with and the true locals were fun to just sit down with during the heat of the day and talk about Balinese life (which appears to be amongst the best life in the world).

Eventually our time ran out and we had to leave. Ben and Greig needed to catch their flight to Sydney and Paul, Ruth and I fancied a change of scene. So we arranged for a minibus to take us to.....

Sanur, Bali - 7th - 10th Feb 2001

...The minibus was unusual in that it was a kind on nightclub on goodyears. The exterior was blacked out and it looked a bit like BA Baracus' van. The interior, however, was a gaudy mix of primary colours and every square inch was a speaker or an amplifier. It managed to produce a frightening amount of sound, but it appeared to be detrimental to the performance of the engine considering that we never topped 40mph. Greig introduced us to the delights of eminem's controversial lyrics in said vehicle. At indescribable decibels The Real Slim Shady screamed his particular brand of profanic hate-rap to the world around us.

On arrival at Sanur, our driver (like all Indonesian transport drivers) refused to take us to the place of our choice, instead insisting that his wife's brothers place was far superior. This practice is normally endured, with resignation, at first but after he has started on the brothers ex-wife's cousins places then it's time to get tough. So, after finding a suitable place, Paul, Ruth and I got out and said our goodbyes to Ben & Greig. For me, an emotional moment. Ben, Greig and I had travelled far and long with each other and now they were off to Oz, their S.E Asia experience at an end. I still had a week of Indonesian beach left for me.

Anyway, Sanur, to quote a mad Irishman living in Malaysia, is "Full of the Newly Weds and the Nearly Deads". Too true unfortunately. Nice enough place, but a bit thin on the excitement side. We were only really there so that Paul and Ruth could go to the Quantas office to rearrange their flights. I was tagging along for the ride. Not all bad though, after 3 nights there we arranged a boat to take us to an island just off the South East coast of Bali, namely....

Nusa Lembongan - 10th - 13th Feb 2001

This place was a paradise. An island 5kms long by 2.5km wide. No motorised vehicles. No phones. Erratic electricity. Cheap everything. Beautiful beaches. Hardly any bugger there. Like the Gili Islands for those that know them. We had intended to stay only one night, but we knew on arrival that this would not end up to be the case. I only stayed 3 nights in the end, Paul and Ruth stayed 7. I would have stayed as long as them but I had to get back to Bali to catch my flight to Oz. We stayed in the Baruna Beach Bungalows (not the cheapest, but the best value room I have ever had). One of only six rooms, right on the beach, behind a little sea defence wall (which proved to be somewhat inadequate one night during a tropical storm). The view from my room was of the gently lapping Balinese Sea, dotted with dozens of brightly coloured little seaweed farming boats. I could sit on my balcony just looking for hours on end, and still feel like I had accomplished something.

There was a dive centre on the island run by 2 Brits and we decided to have a go. We opted for a one day introductory course and within half an hour we were in the sea with full SCUBA gear practicing emergency stuff. Within an hour we were doing that falling off the boat backwards stuff and on a 40 minute dive down to the coral reef with all the colourful fishies and rays and stuff. I couldn't believe we would do so much on our first half day. I reckoned we would be doing it all in a swimming pool.

Later that day we hired mountain bikes and did a tour of the island. We found a 'hidden' beach in a rock surrounded cove and got nice and sunburnt on the deserted white sands.

We were all smitten with the dive we had done and Paul and Ruth upgraded to the full 5-Day Open Water course. Unfortunately, because of my need to catch my flight to Oz, I had to make my way back to Kuta - I ended up in the same hotel I had stayed at when we first arrived on Bali. I was only there for one night and it was pretty boring on my own. The next morning I had to spend the entire day waiting until I could realistically go to the airport to catch the flight south east.

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