STRADDLING THOUSANDS OF KILOMETERS OF SEA AND VOLCANIC PEAKS ON THE EDGE OF ASIA, INDONESIA IS ...
When I came to Japan a couple of years ago, I decided to take a slow leisurely route, and one of the places I paused at was Sumatra, Indonesia. I was on the ferry from Singapore to Medan, and I was feeling uneasy about being an Australian only a year after Australia had virtually declared war on Indonesia and stolen East Timor from the Indonesian Empire. And the ferry was huge -- level after level of families sleeping on communal bunks ,it was easy to get lost in the place. I was worried at the beginning that I was going to get lynched because I was a white Australian, but in the end, as usual in East Asia, I became a mini celebrity. Nobody cared about the war in East Timor, or the pro-American stance of the Australian government. People were easy to fogive that. The only thing they cared about, was enjoying the strrangeness of the exotic stranger.
Anyway (approaching the point of my story) while I was on this Indonesian ship, I met a man who proudly pronoucned: "I have had sex with 1000 women!" Initally, I thought he was ssuper stud. But, gradually, I realised, that in Indonesia, his statement had a different connotation. Indoensian women don't have sex before they are married, unless they are prostitutes. So, he was saying he had sex with 1000 prostitutes, which is a totally different thing from saying that he had 1000 girlfriends.
Picking up Coke bottles helped me get across Australia. What vagabondist hacks await me in Indonesia!
Catch the Taksaka Pagi around Java... only 100,000 Rupiah from, say, Yogyakarta to Jakarta.
But I can do it a lot cheaper if I ride ekonomi class: http://www.biglittleplanet.com/indonesia/javas-ekonomi-train/.
See https://icharana.wordpress.com/category/a-traveller/.
Ferry from Java to Bali only 6000 Rupiah ($0.60!)
Naik mobil ke Bali: Read this: http://tethapevylia.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/keliling-jawa-bali-jalur-darat-part-2.html!
PLACES TO VISIT
LONG A HAUNT FOR SURFERS AND MARAUDING AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS, BALI HAS SO MUCH MORE TO OFFER THAN BUDS, BEER, BREAKS AND BEACH BABES... (For an alternative guide to the beautiful island of Bali, click here).
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