I'm a millionaire!

I am now the proud owner of 2.6 million rupiahs. Stackinnn. The currency here is spent in the thousands. For example, a nice traditional fried rice with spices, coconut milk, and chicken (Nasi goreng) costs 25,000 rupiahs at a sit-down restaurant. Which is equivalent to less than $2 USD. So the fact that I'm walking around with stacks of cash doesn't mean much :p.

When I arrived at the Yogyakarta train station at 2 am, I was immediately followed by taxi and ojek drivers trying to rip me off. I stood my ground and walked away from many of them, until finally I successfully haggled an ojek driver down to 50,000. But when i found out what an ojek here was, I felt terrible - I was riding in this carriage seat thing, and the nice man Sunardi was pedaling furiously behind me to move me and my giant bag along. I felt really guilty and uncomfortable, having a person physically transport me, after just talking him into taking only 3.50$, at 2 am in the morning....

Sunardi and I tried to have a conversation the entire way, it was a struggle since I only knew how to say "thank you" and "chicken" in Indonesian, and he had very broken English. But it was all good. I had actually ran into him every day since, and I would tell him the new Indonesian words I learned. It's always a happy moment! :)

I won't go into detail about my first night at the hostel here. Let's just say there was a lot of sleep moaning, snoring, 5:30am light-turning-ons, and 5:30am loud conversations. So the next day, I was feeling cranky, tired, and kind of lonely for the first time this trip.

I dragged myself out of bed and went on my way to explore the city - what was I going to do for 4 whole days here??

I wandered into nearby tour agencies, and learned about the plethora of temple tours available daily, and in there met a British guy, Jinder. The two of us arranged to go on an adventure to a nearby village with a volcano in a few days. Wee!

When life gets lonely, make friends.

Because it was still Eid (or Idul Fitri as they call it here, it's a very Muslim Island), which is like their Christmas, tons of people were home for the holidays, so the city was very crowded and festive. Also everything was closed. I thought I was going to have a plain day, but I was so wrong - I got to know the people of Indonesia.

If you get past the surface with the locals get, you'll find that they are the nicest, must hardworking and humble people. On the surface, it goes something like this -

Man: "hello hello, ojek?"
Me: "no, thank you :)"
Man: "Singapura? Japan? Malaysia? Where you from? "

In general on this trip people get very confused and very interested because I look just like them, but dare to wear shorts and don't speak Indonesian. So anyway, I slowly adapted and started ignoring them, or saying "no thank you" before they even offer a ride.

Until I realized that, they would very gladly offer advice like "that's closed, you should head that way to main street.", "oh you're looking for the art studio? Let me walk you there". They offered me advice on how to cheaply get to temples, and told me about local shows. One artist whose traditional batik art I purchased (more on this later), offered to take me back to my hotel when I realized i didn't carry enough money with me (this might sound sketchy to you but if you heard the whole story it won't be). They're constantly recommending their friends for things tourists could use, always looking out for each other. They're just honest people trying hard to earn a living, and I really respect that.

I started this walk not knowing what to do for 4 days, but now I think I'll stay for 6!

So, I'm really behind on my posts, and something really awesome just happened, so I'm going to skip a day right now and write a post about my adventures just now!