The end of Bali, and the Beginning of Java

~Pemuteran (Contd)~
We traveled to a hot springs at the Mimpi (dream) Resort. We had to get there by riding the angkottan kota, which is basically an unreliable and large van. It's really kind of a mix between a bus and a taxi because it has a designated route, but it stops anywhere along that route. Also, you can haggle the price, as my mom so often does. The hot springs was basically just a large hot tub, and it was nice, I suppose. Not really much to say about it. We left and had to walk rather far to get to the route that the bus-taxis take, and that was when I realized just how hot Pemuteran is. After about 5 minutes of walking I would just be drenched in sweat. I wipe myself on the towel my brother was using so he wouldn't get any more sun burnt (he was lobster red), then I'd be covered in sweat again soon enough.

So we walk for a while and get to the route, but the angkot doesn't come for a really long time (I said they were unreliable). This thing seats about 12, but a dude is carrying a bundle of leaves, and a few families are packed in there. We make it work, and I am crammed in the back. One of the families attempts to carry a conversation with me, and I stagger my way through a conversation with them. They gave me two oily oranges (oranges in Bali are small and green...meaning they look exactly like limes) and I thanked them out of habit. We got back to the hotel and I just tried to keep my mind off the heat. Don't let that stop you from visiting Pemuteran! It was still pretty relaxing.

That night we signed up for this special dinner and got to watch the Balinese traditional dancing. Balinese dancing isn't the most technical thing in the world, but it does involved a lot of finger, eye, and head movement. It's very interesting to watch. All the while there is the distinct sound of gamelan music playing. I have absolutely no idea how they synchronize the dancing because the music sounds exactly the same and has, to the untrained ear, almost no distinguishing patterns. Must just be because I am not very in-tune with the Balinese culture. Look it up on YouTube, "Balinese traditional gamelan dancing," you'll see what I'm talking about.

~Ubud~
We left the next day to go to Ubud, a town that's more or less in the middle of Bali in the mountains. Once again, we made a trip through the crowded, windy, and steep mountain passes. We did at least have a knowledgeable driver that knew the area and made a few stops along the way that made the drive less unbearable. We stopped at a restaurant that specialized in this thing called Kopi Lewak, which is special coffee roasted from the coffee beans that civets eat. It's not drinking their poo perse, but basically what happens is this: Civets are cute little mammals(they'll tear out your jugular) that like to eat the most ripe and sweat coffee beans. The beans pass through their digestive tracts (what gets dissolved and actually eaten is the skin or something, not entirely sure)  and harvested by humans. The beans are cleaned by being boiled a few times, then roasted and turned into coffee. We tried it and determined it wasn't half bad. It's just expensive as hell due to the intense "manufacturing" process.

We got to Ubud and checked into my favorite hotel: Tegal Sari. You gotta book this place months and months in advance to get a spot. The reasons it's so popular is because it's beautiful. It's situated within the rice fields of Ubud and just so serene and peaceful. Definitely recommend this place. Here we met up with my mom's family friends and nearly got lost as we tried to find one of our favorite places to eat. While we were getting lost, we found that Ubud had become a little more  developed since we had last visited, which has it's pros and cons. The major con was that there was a ton more traffic, which kinda took the allure of peaceful Ubud away a little bit. Just sad to see my favorite place so developed. As our family friends put it, Ubud is starting to become a Kuta :(

The next day we did some more walking (Ubud is slightly less hot than Pemuteran, but you'll still bake if you walk that many miles), saw some long tailed macaques at the monkey forest, ate the BEST suckling pig that has ever been on this earth at Ibu Oka's restaurant (seriously, if you ever find yourself in Bali, make it a point to come here for the suckling pig. It's only open for lunch though), and did some light shopping at the outdoor....marketplace thing. I am seriously in awe of my mom's haggling skills, it's almost insulting how low my mom pays.

The next day we went on a bike ride. It was myself, my brother, and the two kids from the family friends, Nayaka and Bunga. We didn't fully realize what we were getting ourselves into when we signed up for the trip....But they picked us up in the morning and drove us to some coffee plantation for some reason. There they let us sample some coffee and showed us some of those civet things I had talked about earlier. We were confused but went along with it. They then took us farther up the mountain and served us some friend bananas (a fairly common dessert in Indonesia, it's a bit weird at first...some people like it I guess though). They then put us on some mountain bikes, which, surprisingly, weren't in terrible shape, and sent us down the mountain with a guide and two Australians.

We rode on the side of rather unbusy roads for about an hour before we stopped for a bit. The ride was...fun? There wasn't really a whole lot going on. The only thing that was noticeable was that my ass was getting more and more sore on the bike seat and that my bike was woefully small for myself. Then we rode a while till we got to stop and take a tour of a traditional Balinese house. I was just damn thankful to be off the bike. The house was...interesting. It's broken up into parts with a yard, a temple, a kitchen, and bedrooms for different ages. As they age, they move up in the housing levels. They also had a pig pen where they kept a few pigs (gasp), which they keep as currency and sell off to pay for food and supplies.

We got back on the bikes, much to my chagrin, and rode some more. Luckily it started raining, so we got to get wet too. Eventually our tour guide said that we had made it half way! Some more riding occurred and we were led through some rice fields, which were actually quite beautiful but also tricky to traverse with the Bali Bikes. We finally got to the end of the ride after about 4 hours of mostly sitting on that uncomfortable small bike saddle. I was just glad to be done with it....Umm I cant say that I would terribly recommend it unless you really like biking. I don't think my mom would have been able to make the trip due to the physical demands, and I was quite sore afterwards. Yeah. They did give us the food we paid for at the end though.

I spent the rest of the day recuperating and we spent our last night at some rather fancy restaurant called Ibu Rai's or something along those lines. The next day we had to leave our family friends and Ubud and Bali to get to the main Island of Java.

~Surabaya~
We flew Garuda Indonesia from Bali to Surabaya, which is on the East part of Java. I think Garuda has the least amount of planes lost of all the Indonesian airlines, so take them when you travel, as opposed to Lion and Adam Air, which lose planes apparently. We got to our hotel and then went to visit one of my moms college friends. It took so long to get anywhere in Surabaya due to the crazy amount of traffic that just seemed to always be there. We went over some new bridge that connected Java to the small island of Madura. We then met with some of my family relatives that lived five hours away but came all the way to see us cuz my mom said they had to. And so began the parade of cousins that we met.

So, as far as I know, this is the story of my family in Indonesia. My great grandfather came to Indonesia from China with his dad and two brothers. He had a few kids, as did his brothers, and those kids also had kids. It's actually quite a net of people I am related to. So far we meet about 4 people I had never heard of before every day.

Anyways, the day after we get to Surabaya we meet up with cousins I do know, the ones that I had stayed with the previous time I was in Indonesia. I got to see my two little nieces, Neva (7) and Felicia (4) and the 9 of us (my mom, stepdad, brother, me, great aunt, second cousin, her husband, and the two kids) bussed out to a little town in the mountains called Batu.

~Batu~
Batu is actually really nice. It's cold here, as in upper 60's lower 70's cold. We continue to keep meeting cousins and our bus driver gets lost all the time as he is not even from near around here. It's fun taking care of the two kids though...at least when they aren't fighting.

Today we got to go to the Batu secret zoo, which was freaking huge. For a scant 12 USD each, we got to see a ton of exotic birds, monkeys, plants, fishies, tigers, lions, small mammals, and just everything. Also, halfway through the zoo was a theme park with rides and stuff. We barely made through the whole thing in the 7 hours that we stayed there and we were way too pooped to do anything else. Ill try to upload some pictures to this thingy somehow....

And we stay in Batu till tomorrow, when we will go back to Surabaya, then go to Semarang the next day. So much traveling, I think I may die.

~General  Comments~
So we totally forgot to get me a special Visa to stay in Indonesia for as long as we had planned my stay...so we have been doing the best we can to find out ways to extend my Visa. We have had to do a number of sketchy things, including giving my passport to some guy to delliver to some place and just hope he brings it back, which he did. Hopefully we will find a way to extend it a second time, which is kind of what this whole go to the hospital thing is riding on...haha...ha...

The bugs are freeeeeaking huge here. I have probably said that before at some point, but jesus I just have to make that comment again. The ants are the size of my fingernail, flying things are the size of fingers, and the lizards are just everywhere. Girls like swarms of things right? I counted about 10 lizards on my ceiling the other day. Luckily they eat all the malaria and denguefever carrying mosquitos.

Well, thats all for now. Stay tuned!