Learning Indonesia

My mindset when I arrived on Soekarno-Hatta, the Jakarta International Airport, was as follows: I am an experienced globetrotter, having travelled numerous countries in the West and now proceeding to the realm of the oriental to learn its ways and ethos of travelling. I did not have a notion of what was to be expected when I entered Indonesia and I was not mentally prepared for everything that I encountered. In other words, Indonesia struck me down and humbled me, telling me that I knew nothing of travelling in the Third World.

Now that I have spent a month in the country I do have some insights for people who will be entering Indonesia for the first time on their travels.

• Firstly, it is recommended to have a reservation at least for the first night or two, so you will have a specific destination when you arrive in the country. Even if you do not have a destination, try not to look lost as this will attract harassers.
• Secondly, use the taxis, ojeks and becaks the locals are oh-so-eager to offer at your disposal. The worst that can happen when walking around by foot is to get robbed.
• Thirdly, be careful with food and water, tap-water is not safe to drink and Western foods are more likely to carry harmful bacteria than local ones.
• Fourthly, have a plan for the harassers that you will encounter. It helps to say that you already have a hotel reservation even if you wouldn't, or that you'll just walk around the corner if somebody's eagerly offering you transportation. Most of the harassers will leave you alone if you do not look at them but the most annoying ones will tag along and demand to know where you're going. Remember to never shout or lose your temper in public because in Asia this means losing your face in the eyes of others.
• Fifthly, learn at least the numerals, greetings and how to say thanks in the local language. This way you will get a much more positive reaction from the people you are dealing with and avoid misunderstandings.

All of the previous points come from experience, as during my month in Indonesia I experienced two stomach infections, had my wallet stolen and got ripped off by several harassers. I encountered much poverty, got shaken on bad roads and frustrated by the language barrier, but also saw some of the greatest sights of my entire trip. Not the entirety of my Indonesian experience was thus positive, but it definitely taught me a lot about what travelling in Southeast Asia consists of. The next entry will handle one of the highlights on the Indonesian leg of my trip, the Gili islands.

The ubiquitous gecko

A view from Yogyakarta

I've been through the desert with a horse... I mean a train!

From Melbourne I departed for Adelaide, where I spent a couple of days researching the best way to get to Perth. No backpackers seemed to be arranging rideshares so I had to turn to public transportation, which did not exactly present a wide variety of options. The only chances to cross the desert proved to be by train and by plane, both costing around $200AU. Because I by far prefer overland travel over flying, I booked a trip on the Indian-Pacific railway, taking about 40 hours and costing $219AU.  This was the cheapest fare available and secured me a rather comfortable day-nighter seat in the Red (third) Class. The train departed from Adelaide after dark, and arrived two days later in the morning to Perth. 

As the 700-meter, 25-car long train slowly chugged across the vast emptiness of the Nullarbor plains, a thousand-kilometer slab of limestone covered by low scrub lying between Southern and Western Australia, I marveled from the carriage window the monotonous landscape of low-lying bush and sand. It stopped on the way in the deserted railway workers' town of Cook, and in the Australian goldmining capital, Kalgoorlie. During the stop in Kalgoorlie yours truly and some of the other backpackers from the train sought out a local pub and spent the three-hour stop comfortably listening to music from the local country-version of MTV and filling our bellies, as the food on board the train was, as was to be expected, rather dear. 

Sunset from a bus window on the way from Melbourne to Adelaide.

The Indian Pacific refueling at Cook.

A typical view from the train window.

A Cook town signpost. 

Arriving in Australia

From Oamaru I took an Intercity bus over to Christchurch, from where my flight departed for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It's really hard for me to write me about Melbourne because in the five nights I spent over there I barely scratched the surface of the metropolis. I stayed at Home Backpackers in a fashionable South-Melburnian suburb of St. Kilda. The hostel itself was affordable (I won't say no to dorm beds at $19 a night!) but a bit scruffy so I wouldn't really recommend it if you can afford better.

Melbourne is said to be the cultural capital of Australia and as such it has enough museums, theatres, sport stadiums, parks, cafés, bars and night clubs to surely keep you entertained through your stay. National Gallery of Victoria and Melbourne Museum are just some of the various free attractions around the city (the latter only free to students). Other cool places to check out are the beach in St. Kilda and the Galleon Café on St. Kilda boulevard. Many bars have live music on every night. There's also a cool little rooftop cider bar in the city centre across from Flinders Street station but you'll need some luck to find it.

As a country Australia is currently a lot more expensive than New Zealand (Australian dollar is around 0,80€ while the kiwi dollar rate is somewhere around 0,60€). A dorm bed from a hostel for the same price I paid in New Zealand (12-18€ a night) seems to be really hard to find. On top of this the very cheapest hostels in Australia can be very scruffy so in order to find as high a standard as in New Zealand you will have to pay more. To compensate for the high prices, local wages are a lot higher than in New Zealand but for your average backpacker that is not a big comfort. The good wages are the main reason why Australia is a more popular working holiday destination than New Zealand.

Picnic lunching at one of Melbourne's parks.

Melbourne CBD's skyline. 

Cheeky Rascal Raspberry, a very decent cider!

The Modern Age at one of the local bars.

Sunset at St. Kilda Beach.

Night at St. Kilda. 

Chilling a while at Oamaru

The small Victorian town of Oamaru lies north of Dunedin, on the eastern coast of New Zealand's South Island. Despite its small size it is a relatively busy tourist destination, being one of the best and most easily accessible places in all of New Zealand to witness the landing of the penguin populations. Oamaru's centre has a small historic precinct with beutiful architechture which also rightfully promotes the town's popularity among travellers.

I spent my Oamaru time in a hostel called Chillawhile, near the northern edge of town. The hostel had a really unique creative arts vibe with art on every single piece of available wall and musical instruments dotting the grand living room. I happened to fall ill with a sinus infection as soon as I arrived in the town so I had to spend a couple of days in bed recovering before I could start working to cover for my accommodation, just as I had done in Invercargill.

The weather in the middle of winter on the South Island can be highly unpredictable, a testament to which during the first couple of days snow kept on falling from a wholly black sky. The locals told me that it was the first time it had snowed in 32 years. During the following couple of days the weather luckily brightened up though and reached highs of 15-16°C at noon.

Within a walking distance from centre of town exist two penguin colonies, one for the blue ”fairy” penguins and another for the more rare yellow-eyed penguin species. For $20 tourists can enter the blue penguin colony around sunset (in late August around 6PM) to watch the penguins make their way back to the colony after a couple of weeks of fishing out at sea. The yellow-eyed penguin colony farther from town center is free of charge.

I had too many good photos in Oamaru but here's a selection of the best ones:

Apparently they don't look left and right!

The town movie theatre.

Bird life is really abundant near the harbour.

This guy kept muttering something about buckets...

A view of the pier.

Whatever you do, don't use a flash if you see a penguin!

Dunedin: An encounter with the Scarfies

Dunedin is a student town of about 150,000 people, 25,000 of which study more or less actively (the numbers vary according to the source but that's a rough estimate). The city's biggest employer is the University of Otago, students of which are known as Scarfies. While I was making beds in Invercargill, I met a girl of the said denomination, who invited me to sleep on their student flat couch during my stay in Dunedin. Any chance to get immersed in student culture was more than welcome so I gladly accepted the offer.

During the five days I spent in Dunedin, I really began to feel like I had been there before. This is probably due to the fact that the town is about the size of Jyväskylä, my hometown in Finland, and also possesses a similar student-to-inhabitant-ratio. Massive parties are not unheard of and in fact on almost any night you can find students populating one or the other bar at the center of town, an area which is known as the Octagon (sinister, I know!). Dunedin is also home to the Speight's brewery, of which I took a small tour, and the allegedly world's steepest street; Baldwin Street.

Some views from the Catlins on the way to Dunedin.

More from the Catlins.

A view from the top of Baldwin Street.

Even the notorious Scarfies gaped at my choice of drink.

Somebody else's choice was the local brew.

N

NZ lager was the inferior choice. I should've had Speight's!

Invercargill - the arsehole of the world?

Even if the Rolling Stones don't like Invercargill, for me it felt like a welcome return to reality after all the made-upness of Queenstown. Here was a 50,000-inhabitant rural town at the end of the world that wasn't pretending that it was particularly interesting nor exhilirating. After arriving in Invercargill I hired a car with two of my friends and drove down to Bluff, which is the southernmost town in mainland New Zealand, the only more southern one being Oban (Halfmoon Bay) on Stewart Island. It was an experience to stand at the lookout, swept by the Antarctic winds and looking out to the ocean, behind which somewhere lay that the most forgotten of continents. After a some hearty fish and chips we took the car back to Invercargill and returned to the hostel.

In Invercargill I hopped off the Stray-bus for a longer time for the first time, planning to do Help Exchange. It is a website and a community where travellers can find people who need a little help around their house or business. The volunteers then work for their employers 2-3 hours a day in exchange for housing and sometimes meals. It is a type of hospitality exchange akin to couchsurfing and wwoofing. The place at where I worked for two weeks was a small backpacker hostel called Sparky's Backpackers. The experience acted as a welcome breather from my fast-paced travel and a change to work on my further itinerary.

Here's a couple of photos from Invercargill:

Yes, I usually support local businesses but this was too much to pass up!

A view from Queen's Park, one of Invercargill's few attractions.

 

Queenstown - An activity junkie's Mecca

If you're into activities such as bungee jumping, skydiving, kayaking, whitewater rafting, skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating or any other activity that can be imagined, you'll be sure to find it in Queenstown. Situated in Central Otago, in the middle of the mountains on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown is New Zealand's current ”the place to be” for travellers. The place reminded me a bit of the towns in the Alps, in which great numbers of ski tourists congregate to spend their days skiing on the mountains and their evenings in the bars getting hammered. 

I do not have any photos from Queenstown since my camera battery was empty all the while. Me and my friends hopped off the Stray bus here for about five days, which we filled with alternating days of being either drunk or hungover. My friends went skiing a couple of times but I decided to stay at the hostel since my budget will have to be stretched in order last all the way back to Finland. As a popular tourist destination Queenstown is not cheap, but at least you can find some pretty good deals for activities online from bookme.co.nz. Accommodation is also more expensive than in less populated destinations.