i didnt really need those malaria pills

new facebook albums!! in dough knees yah, in dough knees yah too



greetings from the texas chicken mascot! but one of the many awesome western-esque encounters i had in indonesia during my trip last week. as the title of this post says, the malaria pills were useless, but i guess it was better safe than sorry...turns out on my trip to indonesia, which i will detail in a minute, we were more or less in very safe areas in terms of mosquito populations. with a very minimal application of bug spray (twice i can remember, and even those, in cities), i came out with zero mosquito bites. good deal, if you ask me.

okay, so onto the actual adventure. didnt start out on a great note, as our first flight got delayed, which pushed into the timeslot for the second flight...long story short, a little deliberation and a very costly 45-minute phone call to air asia later, we had things settled, but the best solution cut into our trip time by about four or five hours. it was okay though, at least we were still going!

the first day we spent travelling quite a bit. we took a ferry to the island of batam (part of indonesia). from there, a flight to Jakarta, the capital of indonesia. from there, another flight to surabaya, another big city in indonesia. our eventual first real destination was the city of malang, so after an overnight stay in the seemingly dead surabaya, we got to malang in the midafternoon and found a hotel for about $6 or $7 US, which is more or less an average price for hotels in these types of countries. these are more or less fully furnished rooms, mind you, with two beds and a bathroom and some furniture. dumped our stuff there and decided to explore the area a little bit, just to see what was around. we found another quite upscale hotel (with rooms starting around $70US) and spoke to the clerk for a little while. turns out she was quite instrumental in arranging the first part of our trip...i had actually called this hotel for some information before coming to indonesia and they were real helpful in finding ways to get around the area and finding hotels nearby. either way, after talking to her we booked a tour bus to take the six of us that went on the trip to Mount Bromo, an active volcano in the area. We had a grand dinner at that same hotel at night with some drinks, which ended up with oli getting on stage with the live band that was playing (for our group and another table of three lol) and singing "i feel good" along with him. we finished up, went back to the hotel to freshen up a bit, then embarked on our journey to Mount Bromo around 1AM. The drive there took a while, but we wanted to get there for a sunrise we would never see on account of the fog. after our 4AM arrival, we waited for nothing for a while then eventually got around to climbing the volcano itself, but im so glad we did. The view was simply *spectacular*. After we climbed it and looked into the smoking crater, our driver took us to the other side of the valley on another ledge to get a view of the actual volcano itself, and there i took the most breathtaking picture of the entire trip.


from there, we had the driver drive us 9 hours or so to the city of Yogyakarta, another major city in the south-central region of the island of Java. on the way, we stopped at an absolutely stunning waterfall...it literally was in the middle of nowhere, but somehow our driver knew exactly where it was lol. it was a gorgeous area, all natural. it had a small group of food stalls and a makeshift souvenir shop, but other than that, desolate all around.


on to yogyakarta! here, we stayed 2 nights. the first day, we visited two temples nearby, both of them very well known. The first one was the buddhist temple of Borobudur (wiki) and the second the hindu temple of Prambanan (wiki). both were equally grand in their own ways. they both are quite old, its incredible that they're still standing after so much time, braving the elements and whatever mother nature has to throw at them.

The Borobudur Temple

The Prambanan Temple

the next morning, after our second night in Yogyakarta, we took a drive to the nearby city of Solo to catch a flight back to Jakarta to wind up our trip. stayed in jakarta for the night, then flew home the day after. all in all, an amazing few days! its crazy how much you learn about the people youre travelling with, bc they're the only people you have sustained contact with for the entire time...this can be a good and bad thing, but by the time its over, youre just more informed, which is never a bad thing.

last but not least, the humorous tidbit for the trip...im sure there was more than this check my facebook pics for a few more, but honestly, i'd say this was the best one. i think the photo is pretty self explanatory. cheers!