Indonesia: Arrival

Well, hello. I don’t quite know how to begin this blog post, but I am in Indonesia at the moment and even though the time on my laptop says it’s 2:44am, that’s back-home time, ie. Sydney time, and right now it’s actually three hours behind Sydney time in Jakarta, Indonesia, making it 11:44pm the night before - so it’s still Saturday here.

Of course, I’m confused and mildly jet-lagged. XD

I’m here with my family visiting my extended family and relatives. My cousin Ronald is getting married on the 8th July, and we’re here for that - mainly - but as a family holiday too, of course. I’m staying at my cousin Ricky’s house (he is Ronald’s youngest brother) with my aunt. Awesomely enough, he has wireless, and I’m being the internet-addicted freak I am, blogging on my laptop.

Yes, I sneaked in my laptop.

It wasn’t so much a sneak in from the people at the airport as it was from my mum. I pulled it out in the taxi on the way to the airport as I needed to respond to an email, and she was like, “You brought your laptop?!” :O She got all worried that it wouldn’t make it past security, hah. But here he is, Fin is all fine. /eee

Last night - Friday night - I saw James after not seeing him for a whole week. He was sick, and I think he caught a cold and a sore throat from me. /um At least he’s all better now - the six days I didn’t see him, he sure needed it to heal. I couldn’t tell he was sick. Evil James, not letting me see him sick. :P He wasn’t going to miss Friday for the world though - I’m in Indonesia for 21 days, and we had dinner booked on that night at a Greek restaurant. We had a gift voucher for a seven course meal, but we didn’t know what to expect.

It was a lot fancier than we expected, and it was really nice. The setting was gorgeous, and it was pretty much a romantic dinner by candlelight minus the wine (didn’t really want to drink, haha). The first few dishes were tiny though, and wouldn’t really count as a course. There were some really lovely homemade dips and some awesome cheese. /drool There was also lasagna, and lamb, and potatoes… oh, and I loved the Greek salad entree.

It was a wonderful dinner and even though it was free, we felt like we had to give a tip, so we did. :)

I had a Greek salad on the plane today - gosh I love the olives and feta cheese! /love The flight to Jakarta from Sydney was about eight hours. It wasn’t enjoyable and I didn’t sleep until the last thirty minutes. I got a bit nauseous. I did start reading The Hunger Games on my iPad though. My copy of it in eBook has ridiculously large text that I couldn’t resize, so I had some 700 pages of it to read. I managed to finish the book by the end of the flight. I really liked the book, though the ending wasn’t as great as I thought it would be. I am looking forward to reading the other two books in the series though.

We were in economy class as usual, but we still got blankets and a pillow. I’m glad we did, because decked out in jeans and a hoodie and closed shoes, I was feeling so cold.

That all changed when we hopped out of the plane and met Ricky and my aunt. It was boiling outside, compared to the cold air of Sydney. It’s not hard getting used to, and I don’t like summer as much as winter, but I’m so glad I get to wear skirts and dresses and the summer clothes I love. (Autumn’s really my favourite season.)

When we pulled out our baggage, they marked any suitcases with chalk if they sensed something suspicious in it. My mum had already slyly packed a damp handkerchief to rub any chalk off. One of our suitcases did, and she casually rubbed it off. Before we got a hold of that suitcase, I saw a man doing the same thing. Looks like we weren’t the only one with the idea. ;) Unfortunately some people had a sticker placed on their marked cases by staff. We didn’t want anyone searching our luggage, and we had already declared that we’d taken in nothing prohibited. Customs is annoying, don’t you think? @_@

That was definitely the least of our worries. It was relieving getting to walk through without being checked over and over. I know it’ll be hell when we’re on our way back and take lots of food (ahahha) home - but after emptying so many suitcases and taking out so much stuff, and weighing things up and home and realising we were 80 kilograms over - it was lovely just to have a swift walk out of the airport at our destination. Yeah, 80 kilograms overweight is ridiculous, that’s like nearly two of me.

The reason our suitcases were so heavy was because of the stuff we brought for our relatives. This included a lot of perfume, chocolate, macadamia nuts (dude those are expensive) and clothes. Crazy, crazy. I could go on… but I’m really quite dazed. I did manage to sleep in the car on the way back from the airport, and at home (let’s just call Ricky’s house “home” until I return home home) I had meatballs and noodles waiting for me. Oh. My. God. There is a noodle chain in Indonesia called Bakmi GM. I fucking love it.

Perhaps this won’t turn out bad at all.

Mosquitoes though. They’re going to be a bother. Don’t scratch, don’t scratch. 😰

Keep posted with my travels! I’ll attempt to start each post with “Indonesia”. :)