Something like exactly 12 months ago I started a thread about travelling to Asia, and I went and did it and done it, and I said I'd write a big thing when I had the time, and I'm off work ill today so this seems as good a time as any.
I'd have titled it with the hashtag we did for our blogs, #threedudesinasia, but when you google that it brings you a shitload of porn. I think we're the second one on the search and everything else is just fucking porn.
I'd never been out of Europe before, and although I wasn't shitting one or anything, I didn't realise how much extra planning goes into a 5 month trip. Sourcing dirt cheap malaria pills, getting dodgy insurance and risking a Malaysia Airlines flight. That was the only thing I was slightly bricking, actually. I didn't wanna die on MH3 and find my life explored by the scourges of the underworld that is Daily Mail journalism, explaining how my belief in climate change and occasional recreational drug use was the reason for the integral structural collapse of the flight.
Anyways, we got to Kuala Lumpur 12 hours after leaving Heathrow, and added on another 7 hours of latitude just to confuse us, before we sleepily boarded another flight to Bali. The second I walked out of that airport could have been another planet. We did all of the visa hassle and exited as you would any airport, to find yourself mobbed like the Beatles stepping off a plane in the 60s, except these were all taxi drivers. I'd looked it up before and it was only a 20 minute walk to the hostel but it was something exceptionally like 35°c and the humidity hit me like a freight train. We were trying to get our bearings, but all these taxi drivers were trying to grab our bags off us, and drag us into their taxis like a really polite kidnap. After screaming at at least 6 of these dudes and them all telling me to suck my mum in Bahasa, we walked off in some direction or other. I regretted it within seconds. All of the suncream I put on ran off my forehead and into my eyes almost instantly, it was like when you accidentally get perfume in your eye but for a solid 30 minutes I could barely see, and there's hawkers fucking everywhere trying to lump me with their shit fedoras. I got one with Ronaldinho on the front, just to look edgy. I think someone pressed an extra few 0s on the order once and ended up with a couple trillion so they brought them all to Bali.
Anyway, Bali is a totally weird one. Almost completely different to the rest of Indonesia, which is mostly reserved and friendly, good swathes of this one are so in your face it's hard to keep patient. Kuta is like the party capital but since the bombings in 2004 (?), it hasn't massively picked up. Ubud is a mad little art hipster spiritual hippie massage live band thing which is great, and a lot more chill. This is where we met David, a dude from Barcelona who somehow suspiciously ran into us another 10-20 times across Indonesia. He had a voice that goes up and down 'lyeeeek theeeeeeeece'. I think we spent the next week hiding in weird places just to see how long it would take him to turn up and pretend it was a surprise he found us. We moved on to a little island called Gili Trawangan next, which is fucking beautiful. Just an island full of mushrooms and indonesians raving, which is always excellent news. Some crazy Australian girl fell in love with me and kept giving me free shit so I won't complain. We partied for a few days and loaded up on beach sunsets before trading the madness for Java which is almost unrelated to Bali despite being next to it.
We had a lovely 24 hour journey to Yogyakarta where we all started to get the shits. Somehow though, we decided to climb mount Merapi that night, since we hadn't slept and our bodies would acclimatise better that way. Fucking stupid idea. Anyway, we start the climb and 5 minutes in I'm throwing up everywhere but I carry on cos I've paid £20 for the privilege and I hate wasting money. Another hour in and i'm retching like John Prescott over a sheer drop, watching purple-red lightning flash up the sky in the distance as thunder rumbles on. My legs are shaking like Tony Blair before a non-redacted Chilcot report and I realise I gotta go back down. Tom's already pussied out 10 mins before and he wasn't even throwing up. I wanna carry on but there's no chance I'm making it for sunrise. I'd get lost and eaten by vultures if I went on my own too slow so I think fuck it and head back. Luke made it up all the way though, the healthy bastard. Probably my only regret of the trip, that one.
The next 3 days I spend on the bog or running out to the shop, and smoking cheap cigarettes. The first time you get exposed to new bacteria is always the worst. There's a point where the three of us are running in and out of different restaurants, none of them speaking English, begging for a hole to squat over. There's pretty much no booze in Java though, so this was the perfect time to be ill. We then spent a night in Bandung, which has a sick night market full of amazing food, and went to Jakarta for a day whilst we waited for a flight to Colombo. It's the second most populated city in the world, and it's so full of cars I'm half choking. There's no point in getting a taxi anywhere, we had to get a tuk tuk dude to drive on pavements so we didn't miss our bus to the airport.
So we arrive in Soekarno Hatta airport in plenty of time, whizz our way through security and get to the desk to check in. This is a Malaysia Airlines flight, remember, as it goes to Kuala Lumpur. We get to the desk and say hello. The woman there is confused as to why we're here and asks us what we're doing here. We point to the TV screen above here that details the flight at 22.00. She just carries on unarsed, and, I quote 'oh, the flight is disappeared'. We start that nervous smile like you do when you figure you're about to hear ridiculous news. It breaks into a laugh, and she joins in. By this point we're really fucking confused. Her colleagues join in. We get even more weirded out. Eventually it turns out, some long minutes later, that they cancelled our flight because not enough people were on it, and they shunt us on to a 4am flight the next day, which is pushing it as our flight from KL to Colombo is at 7. To our surprise, they then put us up in a 4* resort for the night. We're absolutely loving it by this point, I wish it could have been cancelled for a couple of days. Free spa, pool, gym, sauna, jacuzzi, steam room and unlimited food. I merked that food menu like I hadn't eaten for days, eating ridiculous shit and drinking avocado coffees like they were about to go extinct. The fun ended when we had to leave at 2am to get the flight, but it was totally worth it. Literally the swankiest thing I've ever done in my life, and we were there in unwashed shorts and dirty tops. Indonesia: 6.75/10 - a bit too dirty and everything closes well early but it's all cheap and the noodles are the best thing ever. Plus the people are super friendly
I'd have titled it with the hashtag we did for our blogs, #threedudesinasia, but when you google that it brings you a shitload of porn. I think we're the second one on the search and everything else is just fucking porn.
I'd never been out of Europe before, and although I wasn't shitting one or anything, I didn't realise how much extra planning goes into a 5 month trip. Sourcing dirt cheap malaria pills, getting dodgy insurance and risking a Malaysia Airlines flight. That was the only thing I was slightly bricking, actually. I didn't wanna die on MH3 and find my life explored by the scourges of the underworld that is Daily Mail journalism, explaining how my belief in climate change and occasional recreational drug use was the reason for the integral structural collapse of the flight.
Anyways, we got to Kuala Lumpur 12 hours after leaving Heathrow, and added on another 7 hours of latitude just to confuse us, before we sleepily boarded another flight to Bali. The second I walked out of that airport could have been another planet. We did all of the visa hassle and exited as you would any airport, to find yourself mobbed like the Beatles stepping off a plane in the 60s, except these were all taxi drivers. I'd looked it up before and it was only a 20 minute walk to the hostel but it was something exceptionally like 35°c and the humidity hit me like a freight train. We were trying to get our bearings, but all these taxi drivers were trying to grab our bags off us, and drag us into their taxis like a really polite kidnap. After screaming at at least 6 of these dudes and them all telling me to suck my mum in Bahasa, we walked off in some direction or other. I regretted it within seconds. All of the suncream I put on ran off my forehead and into my eyes almost instantly, it was like when you accidentally get perfume in your eye but for a solid 30 minutes I could barely see, and there's hawkers fucking everywhere trying to lump me with their shit fedoras. I got one with Ronaldinho on the front, just to look edgy. I think someone pressed an extra few 0s on the order once and ended up with a couple trillion so they brought them all to Bali.
Anyway, Bali is a totally weird one. Almost completely different to the rest of Indonesia, which is mostly reserved and friendly, good swathes of this one are so in your face it's hard to keep patient. Kuta is like the party capital but since the bombings in 2004 (?), it hasn't massively picked up. Ubud is a mad little art hipster spiritual hippie massage live band thing which is great, and a lot more chill. This is where we met David, a dude from Barcelona who somehow suspiciously ran into us another 10-20 times across Indonesia. He had a voice that goes up and down 'lyeeeek theeeeeeeece'. I think we spent the next week hiding in weird places just to see how long it would take him to turn up and pretend it was a surprise he found us. We moved on to a little island called Gili Trawangan next, which is fucking beautiful. Just an island full of mushrooms and indonesians raving, which is always excellent news. Some crazy Australian girl fell in love with me and kept giving me free shit so I won't complain. We partied for a few days and loaded up on beach sunsets before trading the madness for Java which is almost unrelated to Bali despite being next to it.
We had a lovely 24 hour journey to Yogyakarta where we all started to get the shits. Somehow though, we decided to climb mount Merapi that night, since we hadn't slept and our bodies would acclimatise better that way. Fucking stupid idea. Anyway, we start the climb and 5 minutes in I'm throwing up everywhere but I carry on cos I've paid £20 for the privilege and I hate wasting money. Another hour in and i'm retching like John Prescott over a sheer drop, watching purple-red lightning flash up the sky in the distance as thunder rumbles on. My legs are shaking like Tony Blair before a non-redacted Chilcot report and I realise I gotta go back down. Tom's already pussied out 10 mins before and he wasn't even throwing up. I wanna carry on but there's no chance I'm making it for sunrise. I'd get lost and eaten by vultures if I went on my own too slow so I think fuck it and head back. Luke made it up all the way though, the healthy bastard. Probably my only regret of the trip, that one.
The next 3 days I spend on the bog or running out to the shop, and smoking cheap cigarettes. The first time you get exposed to new bacteria is always the worst. There's a point where the three of us are running in and out of different restaurants, none of them speaking English, begging for a hole to squat over. There's pretty much no booze in Java though, so this was the perfect time to be ill. We then spent a night in Bandung, which has a sick night market full of amazing food, and went to Jakarta for a day whilst we waited for a flight to Colombo. It's the second most populated city in the world, and it's so full of cars I'm half choking. There's no point in getting a taxi anywhere, we had to get a tuk tuk dude to drive on pavements so we didn't miss our bus to the airport.
So we arrive in Soekarno Hatta airport in plenty of time, whizz our way through security and get to the desk to check in. This is a Malaysia Airlines flight, remember, as it goes to Kuala Lumpur. We get to the desk and say hello. The woman there is confused as to why we're here and asks us what we're doing here. We point to the TV screen above here that details the flight at 22.00. She just carries on unarsed, and, I quote 'oh, the flight is disappeared'. We start that nervous smile like you do when you figure you're about to hear ridiculous news. It breaks into a laugh, and she joins in. By this point we're really fucking confused. Her colleagues join in. We get even more weirded out. Eventually it turns out, some long minutes later, that they cancelled our flight because not enough people were on it, and they shunt us on to a 4am flight the next day, which is pushing it as our flight from KL to Colombo is at 7. To our surprise, they then put us up in a 4* resort for the night. We're absolutely loving it by this point, I wish it could have been cancelled for a couple of days. Free spa, pool, gym, sauna, jacuzzi, steam room and unlimited food. I merked that food menu like I hadn't eaten for days, eating ridiculous shit and drinking avocado coffees like they were about to go extinct. The fun ended when we had to leave at 2am to get the flight, but it was totally worth it. Literally the swankiest thing I've ever done in my life, and we were there in unwashed shorts and dirty tops. Indonesia: 6.75/10 - a bit too dirty and everything closes well early but it's all cheap and the noodles are the best thing ever. Plus the people are super friendly
