INDONESIA

We've spent one month in Indonesia between Java, Bali and Nusa Lembongan islands.

JAVA

Jakarta

We were about to have our second couchsurfing experience in Jakarta.

We were supposed to sleep at an Indonesian couchsurfer host's. That was the theory... As soons as we landed in Jakarta, we were picked up by Uta, one of our host's employee. When we got into the car, we met the famous traffic jam of Jakarta, what a nightmare! It took about 2 hours to do 50kms. Anyway, once arrived, we did not understand where we were... We came into a house which actually was one of our couchsurfer's company office.
To be clearer, Mr Y. is a life coach, a psychologist and a researcher in cognition. He seemed like a very intersting person that everybody would like to meet, didn't he?
Well...We wish we didn't meet him. Instead of being the open-minded person we expected, he was the most manipulative and interested person we've ever met! He started by interviewing us like we were applying to a job offer and he finally asked to work for him for free!

Aurore had to "coach" a young lady who had some problems due to a rare disease, by telling her about our trip and our past experiences. It didn't seem like a bad idea at first except we had no clue what was really going on with her. She seemed like she could burst into tears every time someone spoke to her or about her... The job seemed difficult especially because the young lady did not speak a good English!...
To sum up, having no education or experience in the field of psychology, Aurore did not understand why she was asked to do something so subtle and important for this teenager who was completly lost and scared by the idea that a foreigner tries fixing her life.

On the other hand, the manipulative man asked Etienne to give a presentation in front of 100 or 200 teachers in an International school in Jakarta. The speech he was supposed to give was a criticism of the Indonesian education system and then was to discuss the solutions that Mr Y. has. To sum up, Etienne who doesn't know anything about psychology and the Indonesian education system, had to criticize the teachers' work and was to give the impression that he knew everything about it... yeah, you're right... We first laughed at the request but he insisted and Etienne accepted, Aurore kept a mouth shut...

The afternoon went by and we went to have dinner with our host, Uta and his driver who was eating a table next to us... (we had the impression that his boss was about to thow the duck bones at him, like a dog... We didn't like the way he treated his employees...) Anyway, the dinner was not a pleasant moment, the Couchsurfer keeps on talking only to Etienne and only about his presentation...
Aurore started to ask when we would meet his family and his answer "NEVER" made the blond lady react... so she asked: "where are we going to sleep?" and he replied: "in one of my offices". But there was no mattress or blanket or carpet in this office and this got Miss Alexandre really angry!!!
She started with a "WTF!?!" and then explained the man he had not understood anything about couchsurfing! If he wanted to look for English speaking staff then he should use LinkedIn! Anyway, Aurore asked him if we could leave now but he did no accept, she finally said to him: "ok, ok, we'll do whatever you ask us!" but her toughts were: "You can put your presentation up your a**, we're taking the first train tomorrow...". This made us think about this movie extract :

N.B.: If you don't understand the video, watch this movie: L'Auberge Espagnole.

We were finally saved by Uta, one of his employee who kindly hosted us for the night. She even lied to her parents who are muslims and said we were married so that we could sleep together! After a good night, they cooked breakfast for us and we spent a good time with all her family. It was short but magic! (Aurore even cried when we left...) Thanks to Uta, we could take a train to Yogyakarta the same day. Thank you Uta for your help and for being the interesting, extremely kind, funny and generous person you are. Despite the "I-do-couchsurfing-for-profit-because-I-m-an-asshole", we keep an unbelievably good memory of Jakarta thanks to Uta and her family!

Yogyakarta

This city is much more welcoming, prettier and more interesting than the previous one. We were welcomed to Maarten, Siti and their kids Aurora and Xylon in their nice home. We spent a good time in Yogya thanks to their good avices. They even lent us one of their motorbikes! Etienne had to learn how to zigzag between cars and to have to eyes behind his head at each moment!

The Kraton, Yogyakarta sultan's palace.

We saw the local handicrafts: shadow puppets and Batik paintings

We saw quite a lot of different animals at this Bird market

The water palace... had no water when we went there!

Wall painting found at random when wandering in the old town

We went on a day trip on motorbikes with our hosts to see the Mount Merapi, a volcano that erupted a little over a year ago.

M. Merapi

Maarten, Siti et Aurora posing for us

The same day, we also visited the bouddhist temple of Borobudur. It's really worth the motorbike trip but not the price... 20$ for "bule" and 4$ for locals. "Bule" means white skin people in Indonesian but it's funny for French people as it's pronounced the exact same way as "boulet" which you can use to call someone who is a pain in the a**. :D

Borobudur

We also celebrated Etienne's 28th birthday and Xylon 1st one with our hosts as they're born the same day. What a coincidence! :-)

Xylon & Etienne, kings of the day!

Thank you for these nice few days in your home, Maarten and Siti, and thanks for the coffee too, it was excellent!

Probolinggo

Then, we went to Probolinggo in a minivan. By the way, we thought we would die on the road as the driver was speeding and overtaking by driving on the side of the road...
We went to Probolinggo to see the mount Bromo which is well known for its beautiful landscape on the summit at sunrise. Let's go then!

In Probolinggo, we were hosted by Indra and his parents. His family was so kind and they did everything for us to feel comfortable. Indra's father even helped us to rent a motorbike to one of his friend in order to save some money and not have to rent a jeep with driver to go up there.

After a short night, we left at 2.30am on the motorbike to reach the summit for the sunrise. The motorbike trip went fine but it felt cold, for the 1st time in months!
When we arrived at the view point, we bought two kopi (coffee in Indonesian) to warm us up and we ate our breakfast Aurore waited for dawn (pun intended) :)

It was worth getting up early, the lanscape was beautiful!

ET et Aurore wearing coats for the 1st time in months but happy!

We also climbed up to the very top to see the crater but no lava could be seen. :(

The path made of ashes was quite perillous on the motorbike... but we think we've become a bit masochists since the start of our trip since we enjoy this kind of stuff :)))

We're not even scared of volcanoes!

Another volcano seemed to have some smoke coming out of its crater...

On our way back, we stopped at Indra's grand mother's place. It wasn't planned but enjoy this kind of surprise :) We've been welcomed like king and queen over there! Indra wasn't there but his grand mother, his aunt and his parents were there to welcome us. We also got the neighbours curious and quite a lot of people stopped by to meet us ;)
Indra's family and also his friends took care of us like we were their friends and family since forever. We have seldom seen such a warm welcome! Everybody was fasting for Ramadan but they insisted all day long to see us taste everything they had! And the funniest thing is that we could not communicate :-) Our Indonesian was limited to "chicken rice", "it's good" and "thank you" and no one else than Indra could speak English. We lived some special moments! :D

Group picture with Indra's family and friend and 3 other couchsurfers who arrived in the afternoon.

Etienne and his coconut, it's a long story...

When Indra came back, we went for a walk in the local gardens and we harvested some cachaca for dinner, excellent. They even gave us a doggy bag full of cachaca for ous bus trip, so kind!

Everyone's busy: some using the spade, others preparing a coconut, Aurore preparing corn (she even had blisters! We swear it's true!) and others cooked cachaca while some others were just fooling around... Right, Etienne ?!? ;P

BALI

We took a night bus from Probolinggo to Denpasar, on Bali island. The trip was not the most relaxing ever, as there was nowhere to lie down and it was very noisy (espically some guitarists who wake you up a 3am to beg some money) but we still managed to sleep! Well, it's certainly due to the fact we woke up at 2am the morning before! When we opened our eyes, we were on a boat between Java and Bali island but still in the bus, it surprised us and we were really wondering if we were still dreaming or if the bus did a Go-Go-Gadget-o-boat :P

From Denpasar to Ubud

When we arrived in Denpasar, our mission was to find a car to rent... We wanted to give some rest to our bottoms after so much motorbike on Java island! :P
We walked for quite some time before we decided that Aurore should stay and keep the bags while Etienne go and look for a car... What happened that day showed us that you don't necessarily need couchsurfing to meet exceptionnal people! It's simply when Aurore asked for a lighter in the street (yeah, smoking can be helpful sometimes...) that she met Otta, a man with a big heart, who suggested he and his wife Dewi could bring us to Kuta where it would be easier to find what we want.
Dewi and Otta are two angels! They brought us to their home, offered us lunch and gave us a lift to Kuta. We stayed in Kuta for only one night, just the time needed to recover from our night in the bus with the Gipsy Kings :) and to rent a car.
@ Dewi & Otta: Thank you for your spontaneous kindness and generosity, you're models (examples) everybody should follow!

Dewi & Otta
 
Thanks to the mobility given by the car, we saw most of the South part of Bali island.

We visited a temple on a cliff, near Ulu Watu

We went up to Ubud where we could see the famous rice terraces, some nice temples and the cute (but very touristic...) streets of Ubud.

It was like in Eat, Pray, Love... but without Julia Roberts!

Ubud landscapes must be one of the nicest of the island. On the top right hand corner, here's an example of the daily offerings that we can see everywhere in the streets.

Offerings, Balineses spend a lot of time doing them!

Ken & Barbie at the swimming pool

Gu nung Kawi temple with its sculptures in the cliff, a beautiful place! We could see women preparing offerings.

We went on a day trip with Naomi and Dave, an English couple we met in Laos a few month earlier. We went to the East coast of Bali, near Amed.

Naomi, Dave and us.

The Water Palace

One of the beautiful landscape seen during that day.

NUSA LEMBONGAN

We spent one week on the small Nusa Lembongan island to get some rest and celebrate our 6 months travelling. Already half of it is gone! It's hard to believe, it went by so quickly for us but at the same time we realise we've done a lot!
Anyway, that week was fairly quiet, we had aprivate villa with our own plunge pool, the breakfast and dinner were served on our terrace... it was like PARADISE!!! We also had a motorbike provided to go around the two small islands where we were. It felt good to slow down for a week! :)
The week went by very very quickly...

Our little paradise

The sceneries on the island

Aurore is not scared of driving anymore! yeehaa! :D

Bali is a famous surfing spot too

Sanur

We took the boat back to Sanur because we booked some yoga classes there! Yeah, we try something weird and new again. :) We took 5 classes and we liked it. It's quite physical and we had muscle soreness all week long!

Zen attitude

We met Dewi and Otta again to celebrate Galungan day with them. It's an importante day for Balinese which marks the start of the Balinese year (210 days). We first went to Otta's friend's family, then we went to Utami and her family's place. We had a really nice and warmhearted moments with them.

Utami's family, Andreas, Dewi et Otta

Decorations created specially for Galungan day and Utami's son playing the gamelan (a kind of xylophon). On the top, Utamis's family members praying, and on the right, some people we met in the street

We even were lucky enough to see a religious march in the main street of the town we were in, here are a few pictures and a video of the event:

Indonesia has been one of the top destination of our trip. Java island was quite adventurous and we experienced a lot of generosity from our couchsurfing hosts. Bali islands was more relaxing, cultural, spiritual and also full of surprises through the people we met: Dewi, Otta and their friends.