Odyssey to the Thousand Islands - Part IV

We spent most of our time in a boat island hopping. Even though there aren't actually a thousand islands or any amount near a thousand at the so called Thousand Islands, there are a lot of islands. We spent a lot of time hopping from island to island our two day trip felt so long. 

That's the thing about vacation guys, when you're on a vacation (especially if you're the type of person that has a hard time going on a vacation) use it to the max. Don't just do one or two things on your vacation, do everything and make lots of memories. Then again if you want to spend your vacation sitting in a bar drinking and starting at the bartender it's your call, I'm just saying.

We went snorkeling, which I don't have much to say about, then on the way we witnessed something beautiful. It was the emptiness of the ocean.

Staring at infiinity

It had us amazed, gazing for a long long time to the horizon. It felt like we were staring at infinity. Have you ever had that feeling, when you're so amazed you start getting philosophical? Even though it might be nonsense/rubbish but the thought seemed cool anyhow because the view's too cool? No? Nevermind.

Amateur Sunset

So after a while we went to this island just in time for sunset. We didn't even plan to see sunset here, the sun just... set. It was nice, the lighting was beautiful, well it was actually a normal sunset in the ocean but we city people don't get to see that too often so we make a big deal out of it.

Those two little navigators I talked about in my previous posts, they're a quiet pair, but they're experts at taking care of the ship. We tried talking to them but they shy away. Judging by their skills, I'm convinced they grew up doing this.

So I had my towel on my shoulders as I took this.

We went to this island that I can't remember of simply to take a shower after our little snorkeling episode. I won't talk much about the snorkeling because we didn't have pics of the snorkeling session but yea, after being soaked in seawater we expected to find a shower to wash it off somewhere. Well we found a place to wash it off, only it wasn't necessarily a shower. To be exact, it was a well.

We had to pay the guy, the caretaker of the island (I really can't remember the name of that private island) IDR 10,000 per person, so that we may take some water with a bucket from a mossy well (the water itself had a distinctive scent that smelled like a mixture of seawater, moss, and something else I don't know) that after one pour over my body I decided that it was enough. On the bright side, we used the water very efficiently.

Of course we wouldn't think that we put good use of our tripod if we didn't use it to take a picture of ourselves. So we did. A silhouette of ourselves with a magnificent cloudy-sunset background. It felt pretty good.

Odyssey To The Thousand Islands - Part III

Have you ever had that feeling when you used to go to the gym, then you stopped for a long time, then you went to the gym again, and it hurts like hell? Doesn't have anything to do with the story, just saying.

Anyhow, we left off at the Isle of Hope!

A bit dark, I screwed up my cam a bit.

Hope island was like a small town, a community of islanders sharing similar physical appearances -they all look sunburned. Seriously, they all look dark from being too long under the sun.

There were plenty of houses there, as you can see above. Most of the houses there can be rented by tourists for resting and spending the night, some house owners even offer packages that includes complete meals, bike rents, and complete meals.

Not my proudest shot.

The pathway connecting the docking bay and the main island are surrounded by shallow waters, clear and somewhat light green shallow waters with some marine life visible from above. Heck we even managed to pick up a Mr. Crab, I regret not taking a picture of it before we put it back in the water. Some fishing boats owned by the locals are all available for rent for a relatively cheap price. If you ever plan to rent  these boats, don't hesitate to haggle  haggling is a must.

We stopped by here for around half an hour, had some instant noodles for breakfast then we got on our boat.

Our Boat

It may not seem much and even a bit cramped but once I've actually rode in these boats filled with around 20 people. After we got comfy in the boat (read: find a spot to avoid sunlight to avoid tanning (Indonesians don't like tanned skin)) we departed to our first destination: Pulau Bulat, which means Round Island.

Despite its very creative name, the island is actually quite nice.

First thing we saw when we docked

As you can see, green shallows. And it seemed pretty deserted at first, which was nice.

Caught my attention from the start.

 Now that I've thought about it, actually this bench is pretty poorly placed since it's not facing the open sea, which is something I'd love to be staring at for hours endlessly. Nonetheless, the first thing that caught my attention when we landed was this. It was so lonely, old, yet so beautiful at the same time. I just had to take a picture of it.

I looked to its opposite and noticed something, there's also a nice lonely spot for a pic.

I had no idea what I was posing as or what I was going for at the start but it's something. And it's not really that bad... Right?

There were some other nice spots for pictures but we were on a tight schedule. Everyone started to move in the island so eventually we followed.

Something was interesting about that island, and most of the other islands we visited, it's that there were plenty of abandoned houses and lots of wild trees growing. There were some pavings on the pathways and there were some old rusted buildings but that was it, there weren't much people or signs of life. Then again maybe the other tourists haven't reached the island yet, maybe we're a bit early.










You know, I used to imagine islands being filled with only coconut trees and palm trees, but I found this interesting Christmas shaped tree somewhere in the middle of all the other coconut trees.

It was like a welcoming sign

Of course I know that it's actually dying, I'm just trying to be romantically dramatic here.

I remember I was starving

From the picture above you can see there's a house, that's pretty much abandoned -or so the tour guide said. So we waled deep into the trees and found ourselves some nice spot under a big tree.

Tree seemed pretty old.

Had ourselves some food the tour guide brought for us. It was pretty nice because right in front of us was the ocean.

I imagine it to be pretty creepy at night though...

We had some iced tea (we brought the ice, don't expect to find anyone selling ice around here) and just relaxed under the tree. Eventually we got up to take pics cause, you know, vacation nowadays is about 40% enjoying the trip and 60% taking pics.

Shores of Round Island. Because the Island is round.

After some pics and some splashing around we moved on to Pulau Perak (translated to Silver Island. Despite the name we found no traces of silver, anything silver, silver mines, or anything to do with silver) We stopped there, solely to take pictures.

Caption. I don't know.

The island was much more crowded compared to Pulau Bulat a.k.a Round Island. There were more activities, more people, more boats going to and fro.

Pulau Perak was much livelier

There were some more of those wooden swings tied to a tree at Pulau Perak, just like those at Pulau Bulat, only the ones at Pulau Perak were much less creepier. In fact it was the contrary, it was so good I had to take this awesome pic.

Best. Pic. Ever. Not really but it's pretty nice.

So yea Pulau Perak was pretty nice. Had some spots to take some decent pics. We didn't spend too much time there though, less than an hour.

Gotta love memories.

So yea, next islands are Pulau Panjang, which means Long Island, then that one Island that's privately owned that we just stopped by to take some sunset pics and take a shower, but I'll leave that for the next post. So, ciao!

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Odyssey To The Thousand Islands - Part II

I didn't get to write as much on my last post about the trip to the Thousand Island, which makes it look like the post started out bad and the ending worse. Actually things started to get better once me and Heru arrived at the docks. I tried to hold it in and rather stabilize my stomach but I ended up gagging anyhow.

Mr. Yahya, the milkman, had the generosity to bring us some if his fresh milk wrapped in small plastics. It wasn't much of a breakfast but it was something. Anyhow, I lost my appetite after seeing this those horrendous piles of hell-on-earths.

Horrendous pile of hell-on-earths

Seriously, if you're planning to go to the Thousand Islands via boat, docking from Muara Angke or Kali Adem especially via motorcycle, I strongly suggest you carry with you a thick breathing mask or even a gas mask, it'll save your sanity. Last time wasn't the first time I've been to Angke and Kali Adem port but it sure was the first time I went there using a motorcycle.

A hell of a ride.

So, moving on. We boarded our boat not long after we arrived at the Muara Angke docks. The docks itself was packed with people going to the Thousand Islands for vacation, and it was a regular Saturday. A little kind advice, don't wear any shoes that you love very much or is very hard to clean, the port is far from clean.

If in airline terms economy class is the budget flight, it's safe to call our boat the at-least-we're-not-sinking class. It's made of wood. Cramped. Crowded. Low ceiling. Hot of course, also humid.

Forgive the image quality.

Basically on this type of boat ride there aren't many ways to enjoy the ride. Either you bring some sort of carpet with you to sit and eventually sleep on, or you go outside and embrace the wind imagining you're some sort of pirate/admiral -which was exactly what I did.

Mr. Nurdin that is either posing or seeing something on the horizon.

So to kill time we played a game of cards that got boring too soon. Before no time, everyone fell asleep. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find a place to lie down, so I decided to go on deck and enjoy the sea breeze which for some reason gave me back pain that hasn't cure until this very day.

More or less this be what our boat looks like

A little image on how the inside looks like.

To be honest I was pretty pessimistic. Rainy season just arrived in Jakarta and the sky is so cloudy the sun barely shows itself so we were much worried that it was going to rain. 

There was no rain throughout the 3-hour boat ride, and no rain the whole time we were there. Actually, it got sunnier and sunnier. I fell asleep after a while, the breeze and the boat rocking was just too nice.

So after approximately 3 hours we arrived at Harapan Island.

For those of you that aren't familiar, Harapan Island is one of the many transit islands of Thousand Islands, other transit island include Pramuka island and the like. If you take the budget route, as in taking the boat ships like we did, you'll probably end up in transit in one of those islands.

Harapan Island was pretty tight. First of all its name is Harapan, Harapan means hope, and after that hellhole we had to go through to the docks it sure did gave us hope all right. The waters weren't brownish black like the ones at the docks, it was blue and clear green. There were no corals there but don't hope too much, at least there were some crabs underwater.

It's not bad.

So you see the main reason we went to Harapan Island was to transit into a smaller boat, a fisherman's boat, that we chartered for the trip to take us island hopping. We had to wait a while for the boat to get ready so we grabbed some chow. Ate some instant noodles, others ate some meatballs, it's good to know that the price there wasn't too overpriced and is still within the reasonable threshold.

Here's a little map to show our destinations:

Yes I know, it's not very specific.

So after hope Island the route was to Bulat (Round) Island, Perak (Silver) Island, Panjang (Long) Island, and Dolphin Island. I can't show them on the map because Google map hasn't registered them yet and I don't remember which island's which.

This post's starting to get pretty long and my back's aching much, I'll tell you guys more about on the next post. Ciao!

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Odyssey To The Thousand Islands - Part I

So school, or university, is over -we finally passed and it's time for celebration. After a whole lot of consideration and great ideas that hasn't come to realization we finally decided a destination, Kepulauan Seribu which translates to Thousand Islands. (Even though it shares the same name as the salad dressing, it actually sounds nice)

Heru came to sleep over at my place because my place is a lot closer to the docks compared to his. We got up early, around 5-6 am, and ordered a couple motorcycle taxi (it's a thing in Indonesia, especially Jakarta) to take us there.

To reach the docks of our ship, we needed to pass a series of fish market, a couple hills of public waste and dead fishes, and a couple ponds of thick black water from the depths of hell. Oh, did I mention there was traffic? Had to spent around 15 minutes there.

Needless to say, the ride to the docks was enjoyable and fantastic.

Enjoyable

And Fantastic.

If the pictures and captions didn't give you a hint, I was being sarcastic. The moment I went down the motorcycle I bend forward and gagged -thankfully I hadn't ate anything so there was nothing to throw up.

Everyone else was there there already, only me and Heru were late -as usual. The first thing they noticed about me (other than me gaining tons of weight) was how red my face and eyes looked from the enjoyable and fantastic bike ride to the docks.

Things you find at... 'Those sites'

So I was in the middle of a 'research', if you get my drift, and came a cross this gem.

For those of you that knows what I'm talking about, you should be able to recognize the colors.

Online Shop Photo Run, This Week

Just had another photo run for my girlfriend's online shop. So basically we go somewhere and take pictures of the products so that she can post it on Instagram and eventually sell it. Her account is @F.Y.MENFASHION (I admit that FOR NOW it is a rather shitty name, we're working on it.)

Location of the shots are in Jakarta's Old Town at around 4 o'clock.

Here are the pics I took last run.

This one in particular's my favorite. Love the lighting and the background

We sell pants. Not the shoes. The pants.

Since it's a flannel, I tried to make the guy make a west coast finger sign. He can't. Thus, the alternative.

In case you're wondering, I used a Canon 60D with a standard 50mm F/1.8 (it's like the only lens I have right now)

Intense Sigh-ing

A good picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. A laptop that has that picture and loses it in format, is worth zilch. The owner of the laptop and the picture, is more or less a dumbass. That dumbass, happens to be me.

It really, really, really,  REALLY, is sad when you took a great picture and you uploaded it somewhere, and you lost the original picture, so that you can only see it on the web or you can download the rather shittier lower resolution of it. Like this one. 

For the record, it took me around 30 minutes for me to stand at the zoo, bending forward sticking my camera on the space between the cage, but I thought it was worth it because I loved this picture. 

Oh well. OH WELL.

Laptop had amnesia.

You never know the true importance of a file backup until... it ends up all gone for a reason you don't really understand.

Well, to be fair, I did do a backup of my whole system image about a day before my laptop decided to not want to start up. What's the problem? No clue. One day it froze (hanged, I can't tell the difference) while downloading Windows 10 so I had to force restart it. When it's back on, BOOM, no explosion, it just had a black screen of death.

At least it's nothing like this. 

I tried everything starting from getting in to safe mode, trying to restore my system image (that I backed up a day ago) and it didn't work, and I even tried talking to it asking what's wrong with her and prayed that it's just a nightmare that'll go away. And no it didn't work, no miracles here.

Long story short I brought it to Dell, paid a decent sum of money so they can restore my laptop to factory settings (which I actually could've done by myself. Genius). I asked the repair guy to restore my laptop from the system image I made. He said it's not possible. Which raises the question, 'why?' Which was then met with the reply, 'because it's hard.' To add to that, he told me to do it myself. Eventually I found a way to and was successful until the step that said my system image was corrupted. Thanks Obama.

So I lost all my files. I thought to myself  'oh well, maybe it's time to move on to WINDOWS 10 WOHOO!' which I successfully installed but for some reason it was met with the pitch dark black screen of despair. So I had to go back to the Dell shop again. And pay. Again.

What saddens me, other than the fact that I spent a whole lot of money for this baby and that I feel different about her now, is that I lost all my files. My pictures, my nonsense writing, my music that I obtained by questionable methods. Surprisingly my porn survived. Even more surprising, I'm not even the least happy about that...

Well maybe just the least... OKAY I ADMIT IT WAS SOMEWHAT A SILVER LINING.

So yeah. Back up your stuff, seriously. Seriously seriously, nowadays for most of you your laptop is like, your life. A little effort in backups would really mean dodging a bullet in case a similar thing happen.

The World Is a Book...

"The world is a book and those who do not travel... Only reads one page" -Saint Augustine.

Travelling is my life. It runs in my family, my father with his family and my mother with hers, and somehow it became a habit of us to move from one place to another. At first it wasn't a hobby, it was a necessity. My family happens to be in a condition where we're needed to move from one place to another. No, we're not running away from anything, it's just a way for us to survive.

My first distant travelling experience at 1997 was bizarre and exciting at the same time. It was the first time I ever flew in a plane and the trip took a couple days, which isn't surprising since we went from one end of the world to another with several stops along the way. We stopped at Taiwan, transit at LAX, and finally arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. We lived there for a couple years until the 9/11 incident, which was just a couple months away from our green card. Afterwards things were tough for immigrants and we decided to return to Jakarta. Ironically, coming back to our hometown felt more alien than coming to the US. 

We stayed there for a while and even then we did a lot of moving around from one place to another. I remember it felt rather unpleasant for me, I envied people that could grow up together with their neighborhood friends. On the other hand, deep inside I hoped to live abroad again.

At the end of 2010, we moved to Singapore. It was the very first time I ever been to that city-state. Things were pretty different over there compared to Jakarta and as any newcomer in a foreign land I had to do some adjusting with the environment around me. It was strange at first but feeling that very feeling again gets me excited, I felt alive. Things weren't doing so well at that time, so it was hope.

Life has its ups and downs they say and those times I felt like going on a roller coaster, we went up as fast as we went down. By the end of 2012 we went back to Jakarta. It was... something. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my family decided to move again, and this time the place was very unfamiliar, in fact if we weren't planning to move there I wouldn't even know that country exists. I decided to stay in Jakarta, at least until I get my university degree, while they packed up and went on to The Kingdom of Bahrain.

Around a year later I finally had the chance to see them again. I don't usually travel alone by plane, especially to a middle eastern country that I know nothing about. I transit at Dubai, you can guess the airline I'm flying on. 

Bahrain was nice but that's a story for another day. 

The time I got back to Jakarta all that was on my mind was travelling. There's so many things to see, so many places to visit, so many people to meet in this world! It's my passion. It's who I am. 

And here is where I'll share my stories.