we left jakarta en route to bali on march 9. we made a couple stops along the way, 3 nights in semarang, and another night in surabaya. we heard a lot of stories before we left about how bad the road condition is and how everybody was worried that we won’t make it to bali safely. negative people. we knew they meant well but for some reason most indos got everything backwards. when they hope for something good they would instead wish for something bad not to happen. anyway, moving on, in semarang we met with our friend yanto and wahyu. yanto was supposed to drive with us to surabaya and then to bali but his piece of crap church bureaucracy prevented him from going. God bless those idiots.
we had a pretty great time in semarang. we loved the city, people were friendly and there were a lot of cool things to see and experience there. one of which was the old dutch railway office dubbed the lawang sewu. it means thousand windows for it had many. now it stands abandoned and it quickly became a tourist attraction because of its ghost stories. we went there on our second day in semarang and found no ghosts. the guide tried to trick us by telling us to shoot this hallway with our cameraphones. then he showed a white flying face on the phone, which turned out to be light flare from the windows at the end of the corridor. bastard. you know you only see ghosts when you believe in them.
then we went down to the dungeons. the guide didn’t want to go with us, he said there’s another guide at the entrance that can show us around, but i figured he was just chicken. so we went down to see this old water prison where the dutch and the japanese used to leave prisoners there half sunk in the water with steel grates above their heads spaced out just enough for them to stick their heads out for a breath of air. i thought it was pretty cool, not the cruelty, the place all dark and all, and how they built the small corridors and these little cubicles where they kept the prisoners. there was one cubicle where they chopped people heads off, and i swear i could almost still smell the blood.
we left semarang on the 12th. heading to surabaya was cake even though there were minor disturbances along the way. the roads were bad but they weren’t 1/10th as bad as these negative friends told us. they should just fuck themselves and stay where they are until they die. and that’s prolly what they’re gonna do anyway. people here just don’t have the word “traveling” in their vocabulary. they like to live where they were born until the day they die. sound familiar?
surabaya was horrible. bad traffic, bad structure, bad people, bad atmosphere, bad everything. there’s nothing to love about this city. even the hotel was bad and it was accor managed. we even got diarrhea there.
we left first thing in the morning. driving to banyuwangi (where to harbor is at the east end of the java island) was a long drive, but it was a beautiful drive. we especially enjoyed this area called sluke. they had green beaches spread along the coastway and it was pretty fucking amazing. there’s also this steam powered power plant and it was humongous. having this thing for massive man made structures i had a pretty great time passing that by.
the ferry ride from banyuwangi to gilimanuk was pretty much transient. vie didn’t want to get out of the car and we were surrounded by other cars and big buses so i was getting a bit claustrophobic but we were there before i knew it. didn’t see much along the way tho, just the butt of the car in front of us.
it was around 5pm when we hit gilimanuk. still another 3 hour drive to kuta after a long 7 hour drive from surabaya but at least we’re in bali already! i almost fell asleep in the ferry but as soon as we got out i was all into getting our asses to kuta. so after a 3 hour drive and getting lost in the way a little here and there, we hit kuta. we stopped by warung italia to feed our growling tummies and had what seemed like the best italian we had so far. then we spent another half an hour driving around kuta/denpasar trying to find the townhouse where we’re staying.
that sums our trip here, we’ll write more about life in bali in a few…