A little piece of paradise

Is what this bungalow is. Our own bamboo house in a yard full of bamboos and flowers, with a semi open bathroom, dining room, and mosquito net covered tent-bed.

 (These open during the day and close at night! Cool!)

Big flat screen TV with hundreds of movies and albums, infinity pool facing the ocean, the most delicious and healthy breakfast I've had yet. All ours privately. For 62$ per person for two nights.

We spent our days relaxing by the pool, with fresh fruit shakes, and our nights watching movies (with Cameron Diaz. We both love her lol).

We went to the beach once (on a motorbike with Julia on my back again! She trusted me again even though I told her the story of me falling ><). We were such bad influences on each other and did a LOT of shopping...for Indonesian beach gear. We had both thought that we'd have leftover Indonesian rupiahs at the airport, but both ended up having to take money out of the atm....oops. #overbudget.

The beach we visited was a world famous surfer beach, and we watched the waves and surfers for a while from a cliff side restaurant, while having burgers (finally caved!), during the sunset.

 (Our new sarongs. Even though we really didn't need any more...:p)

Today, because it was cloudy, we brought our breakfast in and watched 12 Years A Slave while eating. It was Julia's first slavery movie, and she was very struck by it. This is the life. Can't ask for a better pre-med school couple of days.

Right now, we're both stationed facing our balcony ocean view, and writing down the last of our travel experiences (Julia in her journal and me on this blog).

We have a Buddhist mantra CD on. It's very calming. We found out that we both are people who agree with Buddhist teachings but don't actively practice the religion.

Anyway, after this, it's food, pack, shower, and off to the airport for both of us! Thankfully, my flight to Sydney is not canceled so far - I had a scare because the Mt. Raung eruption and corrosive ashes have caused cancelations of this Sydney flight for 3 days in a row now. But apparently the winds are changing directions today, lucky me!

Julia is hungry, better go!

Living on a boat

Was awesome.

Let me explain. I started scuba diving this past April, when I got my PADI open water certificate (1st level) in Honduras.

And since
1) Indonesia has some of the world's best diving and untouched reefs; I wasn't going to miss it!
2) I've been hearing lots of great things about "liveaboards" where divers live on a boat for a few days and get taken to cool places in the ocean for daily dives.
3) I wanted to continue my diving education by getting an Advanced Open water certificate (2nd level)
4) Komodo national park, which consists of mainly 2 islands west of Flores, is the world's only home to the legendary komodo dragons - the largest lizards in the world!

I put all those things together, and headed to Flores for a 4 day 3 night liveaboard trip in the Komodo islands, to get my advanced diving certification with my instructor Tom!

It was really not a difficult life to get used to:
Wake up, have toast breakfast, amazing dive see some turtles, have hot breakfast served, chill on boat, 2nd amazing dive see some sharks, have lunch served, chill on boat, 3rd amazing dive see some mantas, have delicious snack, chill, see beautiful sunset, night dive see octapus and sleeping turtles and fish, come up to a sky of beautiful stars and milky way, delicious dinner served, chill and talk, sleep, rinse, repeat.

All with hilarious and fantastic company from all around the world.

With unlimited soft drinks and chips.

Amazing experience! It was quite a pricey trip (it cost the same as my entire rest of the trip combined, including airfare) but I'm going to medical school so I decided to treat myself before getting down to some serious studying!

Here were some special highlights of the trip, with pictures when above water!

1. My personal cabin with a hot shower and everything! It was like living in luxury after dorming for so many nights!

2. There was a doctor on board! (Yves from Switzerland was hilarious. His friend Phil as well.) Lol this is random, but since my motorbike accident had happened only the day before, I was kind of worried about soaking my wounds in water for hours at a time. Adil had told me it would be okay as long as I kept it clean, and I was glad there was someone else on board who had painless antiseptics (I had been using 70% alcohol. Not the funnest).

3. The NIGHT DIVES! Seeing the colorful corals light up under the light of my torch, the bright polyps extend out to feed at night, and the hundreds of sleeping fish hiding in cracks - so awesome. I also saw turtles sleeping with their "cleaner" remoras on top of their shells, and a giant pink octapus squirm around - they really move weirdly! Also it's always cool to wave your hand in the dark to see the bioluminescent plankton sparkle like fireflies.

The best part about the night dive? Surfacing to the brightest sky of stars and a mystical haze that is the milky way.

4. The most mind blowing dive: I held on to a rock in a strong current, at a place where all the schools of fish were being pushed to by the current. There, I watched an army of 15+ sharks in action as they hunted, sending the schools of fish in synchronized scatters. Then, I let the current carry me through the most beautiful soft coral garden roaming with colorful fish, like an aquarium gallery ride. To finish off, I watched a giant green sea turtle chomp away at some corals (I love turtles), and he later ascended all the way up to the surface with us for some reason! Amazing, amazing, amazing.

5. We went to see komodo dragons! Was refreshing to be on land for a while, with all my fellow dive geeks - we made so many diving references while hiking it was great. We also saw FOUR dragons! Including a pregnant one! Apparently it was mating season for these giant lizards, which is usually a difficult time to find them. Lucky us! :)

6. The foooood. Four meals a day, plus a delicious snack (like fried bananas or fresh baked bread with chili salsa), and unlimited sodas and chips, on a boat. Need I say more? 

7. During deep diving training (as a part of my advanced training), Tom brought down with us a chocolate Bang Bang bar to show me the effect of pressure on the packaging. I saw it get all crinkled up. Then I ate the Bang Bang. Underwater. It was saltylicious.

8. Did I mention I was living on a boat? Just being there, seeing the view around us every day was phenomenal. 

The 4 days flew by. And here I am, enjoying my last sunset in Flores, on land again.

To be honest, I am so glad that this trip is coming to an end. Maybe I've found my limit to solo travel - perhaps a month. Or perhaps it has to do with the location and circumstance. I feel that I'm becoming less easily.... awe-struck. That it is starting to take more to excite and amaze me. I'm being saturated by all these wonderful experiences that I've stopped trying to capture each moment and being amazed by them.

I find myself thinking a lot about orientation, and what I have to get done before then (I barely have any time - I have to move in 14 hours after I land in NYC, and have to immediately go off on a first-year camping trip, which I'm super excited about!)

Anyhow, I cannot be more glad I (with some help from my dear friends Paige and Adam) made the decision to take this trip. I am now more ready than ever for medical school! Come at me :)

Except I have a bajillion things to do before it starts that I can't do right now on the other side of the world. 

But I'll worry about that after I land. 

Right now I'm looking forward to spending my last two days in Bali with Julia, the German girl I met back in Yogya. We both leave on the night of 8/11, and we both need a break from traveling (vacation from vacationing... call us spoiled!), so we booked our private little house together on a hill in the south of Bali as a treat to ourselves. We plan to spend our last two days relaxing and getting ready to go back to our real lives! 

The Golden Rule

What happened on this day will be one of those "This one time I was in Indonesia, and...oh man you won't BELIEVE this" kinda stories.

So it all started with this. Remember this? The guide to how to ride a scooter. Just follow the golden rule - stay alive. Well, we tried to follow it.

So. In the morning we woke up to pouring rain. We decided to wait it out a bit, but when it did not subside, we put on our ponchos and headed north on our way to Mt.Batur, a gorgeous volcano. 

It was still pitch black when I left the hostel, and it was really special to see the villages of Ubud wake up - locals getting ready for another day of haggling with tourists, preparing their shop fronts, women bringing baskets of food on their heads, stray dogs doing their upward dog poses as they wake up for another day of food hunting.

The mountain was about an hour and a half drive away, and we passed through many charming little villages with temple-like houses lined with penjors (big bamboo stick decorations). Village people were burning their morning incense for the gods, uniformed children were walking to school, some lucky ones got a ride on daddy's scooter, and zoomed by us.

We stopped for a quick breakfast at a convenience store - coconut oreo cookies! So good. I bought a whole bunch to bring back home.

During our break, Adil pulled out his handy guidebook and read the descriptions and warnings for Mt.Batur. It is a must-go gorgeous hike, it says, but beware - the village people there are not the most friendly. They will lie and say you "must get a guide, national law" (not true) and will get aggressive if tourists decline.

Okay. So being the independent, adventurous rebels we are, we decided that we will not pay to park in their "official parking lots" and we will not get a "mandatory guide". DIY. Just like we had done at Bromo and Ijen.

It was still pouring pretty heavily, and as we approached the mountain the roads got more narrow, windy, and hilly. The view opened up though:

So I turned on my gopro and held it with my left hand (my hand was still holding the handle bar!) because I wanted to document this beautiful ride!

Then, right before a sharp left turn, a particularly gorgeous view of the mountains and lake opened up. I looked up at it. A huge patch of sandy road approached, along with the curve. I reacted by breaking with my right hand slightly (turns out that was the front break, oops), and everything just happened so fast - the bike slid on the sand and fell to the right, I fell off and slid all the way downhill on my side, arm outstretched.

Don't worry, I was wearing a helmet, and I didn't break anything. Other than my gopro. Which actually caught the entire fall on tape. But moral of the story is:

Buy a gopro helmet strap, or DON'T use it while you're doing anything that requires your hands. That's what those mounts are for. Also, learn your breaks before driving.

But anyway, lucky me - Adil is a doctor. He looked at my wounds (little rocks kind of dug chunks of my arm and knee out. Ouch) and helped me clean and wrap them up with the tissues Corentin was carrying. Thanks guys!

It would definitely leave some scars, which I found out later are called "Bali tattoos" (like Thai tattoos) - tourist motorbike accidents are way too common.

And off we went to the mountain. Gopro-free and at half the speed.

When we got to the base of the mountain we saw the "official parking lot", and zoomed by it. We wanted to find the entrance for the locals. But after some asking around, it seemed to us that the most convenient hiking trail would actually start back at the "official parking lot" we saw. But little did we know, the parking lot boss (Mafia boss, we were pretty sure) was already angry at us for not entering the first time we drove past.

So this is what I saw happen, because I was in the back a little ways behind them:
Corentin took the lead and made a lap in the parking lot, and decided that we could leave, and park by the trail instead. So we followed him to the exit. A BIG scary looking Indonesian man arrived and stood right in front of Corentin.

Mafia boss: "WHERE you going? You park there!" He pointed to an area behind us.

Corentin: "No we want to park closer to the trail."

Mafia boss: "YOU PARK HERE! Who you think you are?"

Corentin: "We don't want to park here, we will park closer to the trail. "

Mafia boss: "THIS IS MY AREA. YOU PARK HERE. WHERE ARE YOU FROM? THIS IS MY COUNTRY. "

Corentin: "We don't to park here, we know this is not officially required. "

Adil: "Hey let's all be friendly now!"

The mafia boss' s face was right up against Corentin's. He looked deadly. "YOU WANT TO SEE MY CERTIFICATION? THIS IS MY AREA! WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE? FUCK YOU! YOU WANT TO GET KILLED HERE? "

I couldn't hear what Corentin was saying at this point, but I saw him turn on his ignition and get ready to roll out. But the mafia boss grabbed him, pushed him and his motorbike down, and turned off the engine. There was a struggle, and immediately 5 or 6 men approached to the mafia boss' s aid.

Mafia boss "I WILL MAKE SATAY OUT OF YOU. FUCK YOU. THIS IS MY AREA" spit hitting Corentin's face.

Adil: "Hey let's all be friendly now, we want to leave."

At this point a group of 10 Indonesian men were ready at the boss's command.

Mafia boss "I AM MORE FRIENDLY THAN YOU. THIS IS MY COUNTRY, FUCK YOU! I WILL KILL YOU"

The men got closer and circled us. I was frozen...

Then one man from the group said "you go?" and spoke to the mafia boss in Indonesian. This seemed to calm the big guy down a little.

"GO!" The mafia boss hollered. "GO!!!!" Apparently we weren't moving fast enough. The crowd of men immediately parted a gap, and out we went. The boys, especially Corentin, were in shock. I felt useless and cowardly - I had done and said nothing :/ just a timid woman hanging in the back. I still don't know what I could have/should have done...

When we were (what we thought) a safe distance away, we stopped and looked at each other. Corentin was still shocked. For good reason; he was at the direct end of the spear. "What do we do now? " he said.

"I don't want to go back there." Adil spoke for all of us.

"Want to at least drive around the lake for a look? " I suggested.

Lake Batur is at the base of the mountain, and we decided to drive down toward it for a bit. So we turned around and started on the path down, but:

A white car was rolling down the path toward us, and instead of keeping to his left side, the driver made a sharp right turn and stopped abruptly right in front of the boys. Apparently he motioned angrily for us to turn around and go. Definitely sent by the mafia boss.

At this point, we were not going back no matter what happened. Hiking the mountain would've been cool, but this makes for a good story too.

The guidebook tried to warn us, after all.

We made our way out of the village, but not before stopping for a Selfie on the way. That's Mt.Batur in the back. The black part is from where the lava hit a decade ago. Corentin's face is from where the shock of the mafia boss hit a moment ago.

Once out of the village we stopped to come up with a new plan - it was only 9am! The day just started, and we weren't going to let this stop us from having a good adventure.

We planned to head to the south coast of Bali to a place caled Padangbai - there were supposed to be nice beaches there. And on the way we would stop at the mother temple of Besakih - the biggest and main temple complex in Bali! The boys had already gone, but they were nice and said they'd make the detour so I could see it too.

So off we went! Did I mention I love the freedom of having a motorbike?

I won't go into detail about how they tried to scam me at this temple. I already had a short fuse from the morning mafia boss encounter, so when all these women came and told me I "had to rent a sarong from them", and when this guy came and told me "I can't go in that area of the temple without a guide" I just said "okay then I'm not going there" and walked away. Guess what, I walked in from around just fine, and nobody stopped to charge me or tell me I needed a guide.

It was a beautiful temple, but I didn't really enjoy it fully because, again, of the tourist scammers. And I was extra cranky so did not have the patience to deal with them.

This is the unfortunate thing about tourism in these places - I'm sure many Balinese people are fantastic, but I will never easily trust anyone, because of those exceptions who too aggressively take advantage of tourists.

Unfortunately, I've had a pretty bad impression of the people in Indonesia over all; they have definitely detracted from my overall enjoyment of the country :(.

The boys were so kind to wait for me in the parking lot!

Then we continued on our way to Padangbai, passing by some beautiful scenery!

Iron man Corentin:

It was around a 2-3 hour ride. Mostly through mountainous/windy roads. Then, suddenly, we came out onto a sunny, smooth, 4-lane highway, lined with beautiful lush mountains and rice paddies. There were barely any cars, just motorbikes, and I took mine up to 80km/hr!

We turned a corner, and BAM, ocean.

Beautiful deep blue water turned into white waves as they crashed into black, volcanic rocks. Nothing could have been more rewarding to see after such a long and eventful morning.

Then we found a beach! "White Sand beach". Biggest waves I've ever seen, simply could not be more perfect :)
We all went down and took in this moment in our own ways.

Here, I unwrapped my toilet paper bandaging (very painful ordeal, as everything was stuck into the wounds and I had to soak it in sea water to rub it off), and a local told me too rub these leaves on it. Might have been all in my head but it definitely lessened the pain.

We had a delicious lunch facing the waves.

With this cute chick running around our feet. I taught the Belgian boys the real meaning of "chick". They had only learned the other meaning of chick before this. Lol.

Delicious coconut:

So here it is. Our crazy adventure!
On the way back I finally understood why boys like racing/video games so much. It was the most exhilarating thing I've ever felt, speeding down the highway on my motor bike, on a flat, wide, open stretch with the ocean on one side and mountainous rice paddies on the other. There were no rules. I weaved between other motor bikes, speeding past them Mario kart style. Whenever we had to stop for a light, all the bikes would be lined up at the white line. The red light always turned yellow before turning green, counting down for us to shoot out the first second we could. It was fucking awesome.

Except now I know 100% percent if I have a kid I will never, EVER let them near a motorcycle. Nuh uh. Sorry mom and dad.

I said goodbye to Adil and Corentin that night. But Adil very kindly told me how to care for my wounds before they headed off to Munduk, another village in Bali.

It's hard to believe all this happened in one day. I couldn't have asked for better company for this adventure. I kind of miss them already! This is one of the greatest and worst things about backpacking - meeting great friends you otherwise wouldn't from all around the world, but knowing that it'll probably be a very very long time before you get to see them again.