CS

Over the past few weeks we’ve travelled from Melbourne to Adelaide, then through the outback to Coober Pedy (such a strange but unique place in the middle of nowhere), onto Perth to visit some of Vicki’s family and then to Indonesia. It’s been a hell of a few weeks with a lot of long journeys but we’ve seen so much and we’re continuing that into South East Asia. So here’s a bit about what I’ve observed so far in this amazing country..

Indonesia is a nation of scooters. Without them they would be lost and their roads even more clogged up. Riders and drivers actually manage to find new lanes where it would have otherwise been impossible to pass, which doesn’t help the traffic situation in the country. Suddenly a one lane road becomes a three lane motorway, with scooters, 4x4s and trucks all fighting for the same piece of road. Mental. And the overtaking is insane. They are fearless. They find overtaking space in the smallest of gaps, and if they don’t quite time it right then the vehicle coming in the opposite direction is the one to be run out of road, diving to the dirt track at the side and barely missing someone’s makeshift shop that they’ve set up on the side of the road. Our taxi driver actually crossed to the path on the other side of the road then ran a red light to skip traffic. Oh and that’s another point, the shops are sometimes in the middle of nowhere… Who goes there to buy their watermelon or a couple of bananas? Someone must.

They utilise pretty much every bit of space, either for farming, selling something or property. The sides of hills are carved out for farming and people put shops made from old bits of wood everywhere. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been asked if I want to buy stuff from someone’s wooden shack. They tend to sell the same stuff on the same road too, so if there’s one shop selling mattresses then there’s at least another five! It seems to be really random too, no idea why they would sell mattresses in a certain area (I saw this is Probolinggo). I don’t think they quite know either. Oh and there’s random fires on the side of the road, what the heck?!

The money is also pretty crazy here; £1 is worth around 20,000 Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) so I’m taking a million out of the cash point at a time. I think their smallest coin is 500 IDR, worth about 2.5 pence. Maybe I should get a few million out in cash and roll around in it, just so I can say I’ve rolled in millions. Doesn’t matter what currency it is 😉

The food here is so good. There’s a lot of rice and noodle dishes but they manage to use few ingredients to make very different tastes. My favourite so far is Nasi Campur. It’s a variety of rice, satay, chicken, crackers and egg, with peanut sauce. If you get chance to try it don’t miss the opportunity. It’s just amazing.

So that’s some of our experience so far. There’s so much more to this country than what I’ve written but I simply can’t put everything into words. Hopefully some of the photos also give an idea of what it’s like. Now to keep heading through the island of Java, let’s see where else this amazing country takes us.