A Wedding!

Today I was invited to attend a wedding with my friend Qodri. It was his cousin's wedding, a big affair, apparently over two thousand people were invited, so I had to go and experience an Indonesian wedding.

Qodri gave me a traditional dress to wear and we drove together to the venue, a hall about 40 minutes drive from Palembang centre. As we walked in I shook many many people's hands, Qodri seems to have a never ending amount of family members. They all seemed happy to meet me and their outfits were all so colourful and vibrant.

We sat down to watch the ceremony. There was gold everywhere. The bride and groom wore extremely ornate golden outfits with elaborate headdresses and sat on a bench on the stage, their parents on either side. We were treated to some traditional dance, then there was some kind of blessing, passing the title on to the son or something. After that we ate some food, had some pictures taken and congratulated the couple. I've not been to many weddings in the UK but this one seemed more cultural and I like that there are more colours, and GOLD!

 Here are the pictures I took, of my dress and the wedding stage.

Jogja

Unfortunate events occured to my two remaining housemates while they were on holiday. Both must have been bitten by a mosquito before leaving Palembang and Beth and Sarita both caught Dengue Fever and had to spend some time in hospital, as I understand, close to death! Very scary, but luckily both are now on the mend. However, this meant that mine and Beth's plan to meet in Jogjakarta before returning to work was somewhat disrupted.

Despite this I decided I would still have a good time. I managed to find a new friend, Calvin, to join me on my trip and be a stand-in Beth. We had booked a tour for our time in Jogja so most things were sorted out for us already. I met Calvin and our driver at the airport and we were taken to our hotel. One of the nicest I've stayed in! There were beautiful little ponds everywhere, all complete with big goldfish swimming around. That evening I started to feel a little bit under the weather, and this continued for the rest of the trip. I tried to ignore it but I did feel very ill! That evening we walked around in search of cheap food and stumbled across a locals area with what seemed like hundreds of little peddle-vehicles all decorated in bright neon lights and playing loud music.

Our hotel room

The bathroom was kind of outdoors, complete with fish pond.

The coloured lights in Jogja

The next day we were picked up at 8am and we went to the two temples that the Jogja area is famous for - Prambanan and Borobudur, Hindu and Buddhist respectively I believe. Both were very impressive despite the intense heat.

Me infront of Prambanan temple

Taken from inside Borobudur

On the second day of the tour we drove far into the mountains among the rice fields, which dare I say were more impressive than the ones in Bali! And went on for miles and miles. Up there it was actually quite cold, which we were not really prepared for. That day I had many bad toilet experiences due to my illness. We also went to a sulphur crater. Luckily we were given very fetching face masks to wear. Then the last stop on the tour was the Colour Lake, very pretty.

The sulphur crater

Colour Lake

The next day we went to the airport and flew back to Palembang/Bali for Calvin. My illness continued for about a week so I had my first doctors experience. They prodded me a bit and told me where I was sick, then gave me a load of medicine. All better now!

All my medicines!

Bali - The Next Bit

So, I've been back in Palembang for a week now. Sorry about that, I'll try to make whatever I write now interesting for you.

On Boxing Day I made my way to my next destination, Sanur. This is a town on the coast. I arrived at my hostel, Cafe Locca at about ten in the morning, checked in and checked out the bed! I was in a dorm with eight beds and it was pretty comfy. After a nap I went for a walk and to find some lunch, which I decided to have in one of the beachside restaurants. On the way I stopped in a shop, just to have a look. All shopkeepers in Bali are very chatty and I discovered that this lady had a similar name to me - Mega. And her husband was a driver did I need a driver? Because I had nothing to do tomorrow I thought I would find out about prices. After a quick phonecall to her husband we arranged for Wayan to take me around the next day. As I walked along the seafront I discovered that there are a lot of very VERY expensive hotels in this town. As I walked many Indonesian men tried to talk to me, so when I felt like it I would reply and try to practise my Indonesian skillz. I met Wayan in the restaurant, Miko, who gave me a free bracelet for taking part in a lucky dip, and a security man who told me the hotel he worked for cost 8 million a night to stay there. That's about £400. Wow. I found a nice place to sit on the beach and admire the view under a big tree for shade.

Jimbaran Beach, in an amazing fish restaurant.

Delicious food from the night market!

That evening I went for some cheap food at a local place, then went to the hostel common area by the kitchen and pool. There I met Calvin from England and Hungarian Robert, also Parima, an Iranian now living in Sweden, amazing lady. We chatted and drank a beer, and I invited them to join me on my tour with Wayan in the morning. Calvin was free and we had a good day driving around.

The rest of the time was mainly spent relaxing on the beach and visiting the night market to live like the locals and eat good, cheap food. On my last day Parima, Robert and I were all headed for Kuta so we all shared a taxi together.

Kuta is the crazy busy town where most of the tourists from Australia and other parts of Indonesia gather. The beach was very dirty with rubbish in big piles all over the beach. I am told that this is as a result of the rainy season. If it wasn't for this the beach would be really beautiful, so you can see why the tourism has built up here. And the sunset was beauuuuuutiful!

Holding the Sun on Kuta Beach

Funny things that happened to me in Kuta - having my photo taken by Indonesians (a common occurence in Palembang where there are hardly any Western people) on Kuta Beach where there are white people everywhere. This family was from Sulawesi, and again I tried to practise my Bahasa which was fun. Also on the beach, I was approached by a guy with a microphone and his friend and they interviewed me for his Youtube channel (flowluxia if you're interested!). After this we chatted for a while and I gave them my phone number as I think it's cool to have local friends. On my last night I met up with Jazz for a beer and we talked about Bali and England and that, very nice.

For New Years Eve the Sanur crew came together again: Me, Parima, Calvin, Chris (Chinese-Italian) and Swiss Nadja. We went to a club called Sky Garden, renowned for its high frequency of spiked drinks. Nonetheless we had a nice evening, which started with a buffet dinner with lots of delicious food and two free drinks. After this we explored the many different rooms and the rooftop bar with a view over Kuta. We danced around and prepared ourselves for the New Year countdown. A very nice night spent with good friends. I was the hardcore last one to be back in my dorm, which surprised me because my roommates were all very loud and seemed like typical party animals.

NYE: Parima, Nadja, Chris, Me and Calvin

So that's Bali, next stop Java Island, Yogyakarta aka. Jogja!

Christmas!

Hallo. It's now the first of January, Happy New Year! But now I am going to tell you about Christmas, back in Ubud, feels like ages ago now.

In the daytime I didn't really do anything that special, just had a Christmas Starbucks (it reminds me of England!) and went to the markets to practise my haggling and Indonesian skillz. At 8pm Koko came to my hotel with his brother, I didn't really know what was in store apart from that we were going to some Hindu holy place. He told me that I needed to bring a change of clothes, hmmm. We drove for about 40 minutes and arrived at the holy springs. I was put in a sarong and we walked into the temple. First you have to pray by sitting on the ground and taking a flower in your hands. You do this three times. It felt weird being that I've never been a religious person, but I always think its good to experience new things.

The first time I saw the holy water I could see a large pool with a number of fountains lined up along the far length of the rectangle. So basically you have to fully get into the water, it was very cold. Koko went first and I had to copy what he did. And what happens is you go under each of the fountains, after each one move along to the next one. There were maybe about 10 fountains in this pool, but two are used only for special purposes, like if there has been a death, or to cure bad dreams. We got out of this pool and moved across to another, smaller one. We repeated the process in a similar fashion. This pool also had little flowers and petals floating around in it. Whilst waiting in line to go under we had a little languages session in English and Indonesian as Koko's brother didn't speak much English. Vocab exchange bringing people together, lovely.

After this we put on some dry clothes, including a new sarong and went to another part of the temple. We had to pray in a similar fashion to at the beginning, but this time with incense. Throughout the trip Koko's brother had been carrying a woven box containing the offereings - flowers and leaves and lots of food. After the praying part we eat the offerings. This was fun as we sat at the edge of the temple and some old Balinese men came to say hello and to talk to me, probably wondered why I was there. It was all a very nice experience, it was very peaceful and even if you're not religious it allows you to contemplate.

So overall it was a Christmas so different to any other that it helped me not to miss home tooooo much. A lovely cultural experience finding out how real people live in Bali. I'll write again soon, the next locations have been a bit more chilled but I'm sure I'll still have a bit to say. Belated Merry Christmas, byeeee!

Me with Koko's brother Maday, stylin' the sarong I think.

Koko!