The expedition across Java continued. Vic, Sietske and I, alongside a German backpacker we'd befriended and our Indonesian tour guide, Zee, who claimed he was meeting friends in the next town, boarded a mini bus in coastal town Pangandaran and arrived in Yogyakarta at 3am after only a few hours of semi-sleep on the bus due to the fact that Zee insisted on sitting next to me, taking up all my space and putting his hand on my leg more than once which he claimed was an accident; the unsociable hour of our arrival meant that it was too early/late to find a guesthouse and so we were stranded in the quiet streets of the city without a place to go. Zee insisted that he had a solution for our problem so we all bundled into a taxi, bleary eyed and sleepy, without a clue what was going on whilst he gave mysterious instructions to the driver in Indonesian. We got out of the taxi at the side of a pitch black forest where a old, bearded man appeared out of the shadows and silently led us through the trees until we came to a clearing; the old man shone his torch on what appeared to be a tree-house which we laboriously climbed up and then we were instructed to wait. The tree-house was home to some bizarre objects including some hanging, dried gourds, a phallic-shaped ash tray, giant wooden animals and some trippy masks that we kept bumping into whilst we waited in the dark; thirty minutes later we realised what we'd been brought there for when the sky suddenly burst into life from the pink glow of the sun that emerged from behind a mountain. Myself and the two girls I was travelling with stayed one night in Yogyakarta and all crammed into one small double bed like sardines to save a bit of money - Zee was still with us, setting up camp alone in the room next door, despite him claiming that he had travelled eight hours with us to meet friends...something was a little fishy. That evening we went to a bar and met some other travellers; Zee followed us there and became extremely jealous that we weren't talking to him as much as he'd have liked and turned very nasty, resorting to writing vulgar things about us on our Facebook walls. We'd been so impressed with how safe we felt with him when we met him four days before but he became possessive and pretty scary if I'm honest. We blocked him and swiftly made plans to move on.
The pink sunrise as seen from the tree-house
Once the sun was up we couldn't leave without trying on the masks!
The streets of Yogyakarta.
We literally had to feet our way along a track before the sun peeked over the horizon and we were able to see the silhouettes of the mountains around us.
Mt Bromo, an active volcano, is the smoking crater on the left.
Sulfur clouds!
I'm standing at the mouth of an active volcano whilst pointing at another nearby volcano...just a normal Wednesday morning then!
Bali was our next destination. The beaches in Bali are as beautiful as you'd expect but what really stays in my memory are the volcanic mountains draped in vibrant green forests and the streets of brightly painted houses and shops, shrines adorned with lotus flowers around every corner, trees and plants sneaking on to pavements in myriad shades of intense greens and a multitude of carved teak statues draped with multicoloured garlands all illuminated by the Balinese sunshine and the cobalt blue sky. We spent the day at the beach in Seminyak and then travelled by bus to Ubud; our hostel, called In Da Lodge, is a palm tree-peppered complex of dorm buildings in-keeping with the Balinese style with a swimming pool right next to a lush rice paddy. When I walked into our thirty-person dorm a guy said to me that he was worried about falling out of bed because the ridiculously-high top bunks didn't have any sides to them and I replied, "Don't be silly! You don't fall out of a regular bed without sides do you?!". Little did I know that in about ten hours time I'd be eating my words. Vic and I joined a group of Americans to drink around the pool and we went for a night out in Ubud; the next thing I know I'm suddenly awake in the middle of the night groaning in pain with my face squashed up against the cold tile floor - I'd fallen out of the top bunk, body slammed the floor and woken up twenty-nine sleeping backpackers in the process. The next morning I had excruciating pain all down my left arm, left leg and, weirdly, my right pinky finger which had turned a worrying shade of black. Three guys had to lift me out of bed, one of them being the very same guy who had pointed out the bunk bed hazard in the first place, and I insisted that the hostel find me some crutches. Hobbling around on crooked Asian pavements, hungover, in thirty-five degree heat with crutches that are too small for me is NOT the one. Poor Vic had been terrorized by mutant mosquitoes during the night so both of us were a pretty sorry sight. A girl at the hostel saw me struggling with my crutches and we got talking about how difficult it is backpacking with an injury and it turned out she had been on Koh Tao in Thailand a few weeks ago at the same time as me; not only that but she had met the very same guy on crutches with a gammy leg who I'd befriended on the way to the ferry port! It's a small world: a small world full of idiot backpackers with an array of preventable injuries.
Bali. Even the name evokes a sense of paradise and I've been dying to go since before I came to Asia.
In Da Lodge hostel as seen from the poolside chair where I was stranded for hours waiting for crutches.
This night was the start of amazing friendships and the end my ability to walk!
Somethingabout...navigating through a forest of monkeys whilst on crutches.
