I had to leave Surabaya for Tegal today. After thinking about it over and over again, I made a decision to move out of this city I’ve always lived in, for although Tegal is a much smaller town, it pays better salary than the companies in Surabaya. I have never been too materialistic in the old days, but I need a lot of cash (or digits in my bank account) at the moment. SO… I decided (half-willingly) to move and sacrifice my good life for a big saving in the end of the contract.

It was hard to leave. But in another sense, it was good to leave.

It was hard to get into the taxi with Michelle crying before the fence. She was in her mother’s arms, who apparently finally came back from Jakarta after three months. But she (Michelle) has been so close to me lately. It broke my heart that I almost cried.

It was hard to leave my lovely mother. It was hard to leave so many good friends in Surabaya: Rina, Veve, Tina, Nyoh etc. It was hard to leave my brother, though he didn’t seem to really care about it J (my family is so used to me traveling, but hey… I leave to LIVE in another city).

It was good to leave, however, because after two months wandering around Tunjungan Plaza and home, back and forth, back and forth, without any specific useful reasons, it was good to leave to WORK. My life is so lame when I don’t have anything to do, but babysitting Michelle. Not that I didn’t like that, but it is just absolutely not a dream job. Especially that I didn’t make any money out of it (hehe).

It was good to leave since I felt that my life was surrounded by so many fake things lately. All the fancy restaurants, clubs, coffee shops and department stores didn’t interest me anymore. Especially when I didn’t have the money to enjoy them all.

It was good to leave for one of my close friends, Jun, was avoiding me for some reason that she never told me about. I guessed the reason, with the help of Rina’s hints, but I truly expected her to tell it right off to my face. Get angry if she wants, but she didn’t do it. I was disappointed at her, and she was disappointed at me. The walls between us were getting higher and higher when a big misunderstanding happened in one evening, when she and Rina texted Dimitri, an American friend who was staying in Surabaya, to go out to Tavern Lounge and Pub, and asked him to take ME with him there.
I was like… huh? Shouldn’t they invite me first and take Dimitri with me there? Where did I stand in this friendship thingie?
I hated the fact that it happened 2 days before I left. But in a way, I’m glad I can get rid of these things.. though my heart doesn’t rest, for never in my life I can think of losing best friends like Jun or Rina.
I’ve been thinking of a way to get this right. But for now, being so far away from where they live, it’s not that easy.

All of those thoughts haunted me during my forever journey from Surabaya to Tegal. I decided to take a bus instead of a train because I always believed that buses took us faster to a place than trains.

Well not in this journey.

First, they needed to get the bus full. So although I arrived at the bus terminal at 11, my bus left at 1 (urgh…). Second, there was a bridge falling down in Rembang, a city in the border of East Java and Central Java, so we had to take a MUCH MUCH MUCH longer turn and a big traffic jam was delaying us even more to get to our destination. We were stuck there for about 3 or 4 hours only in REMBANG! Gggggrrrrrrr!!!!!

The result was I arrived in Tegal at 2 in the morning! So a total of 16 hour-journey! Dang! Even worse than a 7-hour train. But a lesson is a lesson. Next time, I’ll surely take a train!

Now I understand why people invented the word “WORSE”. Because there are always worse things coming up after the bad things you’ve had.
Well, I arrived in Tegal long after midnight, weary, physically and emotionally tired, to find that I couldn’t contact one of the teacher’s cellphone (the only number that I know!) to open the door for me! I tried a thousand times to call her, but the network (HER network) was always busy. I called a friend in Surabaya and I managed to get through. But nothing could be done from there. So I tried and tried (also tried to call the office but it directly connected me to the fax machine, so no use) and after 30 MINUTES, I could get her pick up my phone. *sob*

I went to bed at 3 that day (spent about 30 minutes to wash my face and brush my teeth and so on and so on). But hey, I was there anyway. That was better than waiting for the office to open at 7. I just hoped that it was all worth the effort. :-~

4:04 pm

y wheel of life had turned again. Shortly there will be an explanation why I quit blogging my travel journey for quite some time.

The five-week-South-East-Asia travel that I had been waiting for turned out to be a great lesson in my 26-year life. It was only five weeks, but I learnt so much. I met a lot of people of different characters, backgrounds, countries and cultures. I met some extreme people who would waste a four-hour-should-be-relaxing breakfast to an incredibly annoying, undebatable debate about religions. I met people who would use the others for their own sake. I met people who would willingly help a complete stranger without asking for a returned favour. I met people who cheated. I met people who smiled all the time at you, without you knowing if the smile was an honest one. I met people who knew how to have fun. I met people who were fair. I met people who were wise. And I also met people who were shallow.

I was loved. I was mad. I was praised. I came close to a fight. I partied. I had fun. I was lonely. I was not lonely.
In five-week time I felt so many different emotions.

I enjoyed everything, nevertheless. And though at some point I think my travel was a mistake, I learnt a lot from it. No regrets.

But my wheel of life has decided for me to start all over again from the very beginning. It was a hard fall but it didn't hurn that much.

I'm broke now. But I know for sure I'll be up again.

Welcome me again in this blogging world. :)

8:56 pm

I certainly can't go to Malaysia today! It's been raining so fucking hard the WHOLE day!

As usual, Roy woke up at 12 on his days off, but this time because I woke him up. I felt a bit lonely.

We had breakfast (the leftover from last night and some instant noodle) and I watched Roy play golf on the playstation afterwards.

Then he slept again (that lazy dork) while I was chatting and browsing for the alternatives of the best way to go to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore.
Got a lot of emails from the backpackers who would travel to Thailand this month so I tried to sort them out one by one. One of them, called Brian Murphy, would arrive this evening in Singapore. I thought if I could meet him tomorrow (Monday) then I'd leave for Malaysia on Tuesday. I figured out that he was still on the plane then, so I'd wait until tonight for the decision.

20:00 Singapore time: to Plaza Singapura. Had a lot of snacks:

• Taiwanese food (I forget the name). The soup was ok, but the oyster was YUKKY! The fried chicken was yummy, though.
• Takochiro - Japanese snack. I couldn't eat one of it, for it burnt my mouth when the hot cheese inside the snack melted in my tongue. Grrr...
• Bacon (Roy sure knows great food around. They're pretty fatty, though. But I decided to pamper myself that evening)
• Bread with kaya jam and tea.

I went back to Roy's apartment with a stomach too full of snack I thought Roy'd need to drag me back home. :P

I checked my email then and found out that I got a reply from Brian. Will meet him tomorrow at Starbucks, Plaza Singapura. That means I'm leaving on Tuesday. Told Roy I was gonna bug him another day.

He shrugged his shoulders and said cooly, "Sure."

Ha... ha.. ha... What a holiday.

5:38 pm

I woke up early. 10:00 o'clock but I considered that early for I slept at about 3 last night (King Kong ended at 2). Then I got online and watched some DVDs.

Roy woke up at exactly 12 o'clock. He made some instant noodle and we ate it as our brunch. Then we were out to Plaza Singapura.
After some minutes looking around, we took an MRT to the famous Orchard road.
There was a group of street dancers at one corner of the street and I stopped there watching them.
Roy had been receiving a lot of phone calls from his friend and it seemed like they planned to meet up. He didn't tell me about it, though (sometimes I just don't understand this guy).

In the middle of the street dance performance, Roy grabbed my left arm and said, "Let's go."
I followed him while wondering why a cute-looking guy in front of me was looking back at me intensely. I knew why a short moment later on. He's the one Roy had been speaking on the phone to. They were talking by themselves and this guy kept glancing at me. Maybe he, as well as I, was wondering why we were not introduced yet.

We were, finally. After a while.

His name is Andrew. 33 years old (I swear he doesn't look like in his thirtieth!). An illustrator at a design company. SO... we share the same interest!
He and I talked a lot and Roy was eventually raising one of his eyebrows, for he and I didn't really do talking ever since I got here. I don't know why. But things were a bit different. I don't think it was me. It should be Roy. He's the one who hardly smiled and there were always frowns between his eyes. Probably it was his work that stressed him out, but he refused to say that. He enjoys and likes his work, he says.
Anyway, it was just different. I was in my holiday mood while he was not. :P

Marijn was actually suggesting me to visit the art museums and Andrew did the same thing. But since Roy wouldn't enjoy that, we went to one of the malls to a bookstore called Kinokuniya on Orchard Road. It's not a museum, it's just a plain bookstore. But I've got to see a lot of COOL design/advertising/photography books there. Unsealed.
It was such a heaven! I wish I could buy one of those books. But they're so fucking expensive. I had the money to buy one but I wouldn't just bother to spend that much and leave the rest of my holiday, lacking money. :P

Roy was at the comic section and Andrew at the illustration centre.
About an hour later we split up. It was still raining hard outside and I was horribly thirsty and tired. Andrew asked me to go to his church the next morning but I don't know. I didn't feel like it.

Roy and I dropped by at Carrefour for some dinner's shopping and based upon my request, he bought this particular kind of mushrooms, which later tasted SOOOOOOO GOOD! And Roy is such a good cook as well.

We ended up having dinner in the apartment (good dinner, I must say). Sweet corn + mushrooms+ butter, beansprouts, fish and beef. Oh, and rice with some flavour. We ate them while watching DVDs. I can't remember which movie I watched at which time, but if you asked me how I spent my precious holiday in Singapore... the answer is: Mostly watching DVDs. :P

---

The conversations with Roy was still plain and garing. I don't know... He was just alive when he was talking about his work. Other than that he was just sarcastic all the time. Sometimes he didn't even answer my questions.

Screw it.
Our friendship was probably already over. I just can't wait to get out of Singapore.

5:12 pm

Roy was preparing for work when I woke up. I checked my email and chatted for a while with my friends back home. Roy suggested me to visit the Little India nearby as there are some temples over there.

After having my Sedap instant noodle, I set off for Little India.

It's only one stop away from Farrer Park. I should have walked. But again, maybe not.

I got lost several times since the map in my Rough Guide book was not very updated and a bit confusing (I bought it 3 years ago). And the people were not very helpful either.

• Me: Hi, excuse me. Do you know the way to Farrer Park?
  Him: No.
  Me: No, you don't know?
  Him: No.. no English.
  
  
• A woman sat beside me in the bus halt. As soon as she sat down I greeted her and asked, "Hello.. Can you tell me..."
  "No no no, I don't know."
  She stood up and left.
  "Huh?"
  So much for expecting a hospitality.
  
  
• I came across a Chinese woman and her little boy on the street and asked her where Farrer Park was. The answer was:
  "Oh, I didn't know. I'm lost myself. I'm gonna take a cab."
  Ealah.
  
  
• In an intersection I thought I'd just look for the MRT station. People might not know the Farrer Park, but they should know where the MRT station is, right?
  Yet, I still got another "I don't know" answer until I got the right one.

But it was still nice anyway. The weather was quite nice. It was raining a little bit but that was just it. I wish I brought my hat, though.

I went around Little India and saw some temples.

The Chinese New Year is coming so they have a fair along the street near Bugis street. The decoration was dominated by red and there were some cute things sold there. I didn't buy anything, though.

A sales lady saw me taking pictures of some working men. She told me that it was a nice camera and asked me how much I bought it. I told her and she started to view me as a valuable customer and offfer her merchandise, a service more likely: a facial.

She was touching my face and nexk and cleavage and telling me how badly I needed a facial. I normally DISLIKE people, other than my boyfriends, touch my face and body. But I let her.. just to satisfy my curiousity of how Singaporean people tried to sell.

She was talking and talking in Singlish and I was smiling all the time at her accent and eagerness in selling the product.
It took half an hour until I decided to firmly say no for the products. She was disappointed and finally let me go somewhere else.
Poor girl. I didn't mean to be mean. But that's the risk of trying to sell something expensive to a budget traveller like me. It absolutely doesn't mean I'm rich that I have a nice camera (which I haven't even finished paying) and that I'm traveling to Singapore. :)

---

The Lesson of the Day:

"Do not walk in your leather pointed shoes if you mean to look around in a place you don't know."

My feet hurt as hell and I was forced to buy a pair of slippers (ugly ones, but I had no choice) of S$ 2.50 at 7Eleven. When I finally let go my leather shoes, I actually found out that both my feet and toes were swollen. Yikesss...

---

Evening:
To Golden Village (Dhoby Ghaut, Plaza Singapura) with Roy.
Dinner: Duck and soup.
Watching: King Kong. (Do you believe that I actually cried when Kong died? Huuuu... But it was indeed sweet)

4:13 pm

My whole body hurt when I woke up at fucking 5 o'clock in the morning (slept at 3). The airport was already very very crowded that early. The people seem to want to catch the earliest planes and they were noisy as hell.

Can't blame them. It's a public place.

I waited for a few more hours until I decided to get inside the check-in area, wash my face, and brush my teeth in one of the airport toilets. Then I slept again in the waiting room.

11:00 - My plane was boarding. But you know what I found (I mean I didn't find) there? No airport lounge for the citibank gold card holder in that terminal. That means I couldn't get a free fresh breakfast. :(( So I had to be happy with my bread and sambel pecel.

13:00 - Arrived in Batam island. Found out that the only way to the harbour was by taxi only and the fixed price was Rp 70,000 (dammit). Not to mention that the taxi driver was eventually trying to cheat another R[ 10,000 from me when he claimed that he only had 20,000 change for my Rp 100,000 note. I insisted to stay in the cab and asked him to change the money to someone else. But instead of doing that, he took out Rp 30,000 from his wallet and gave it to me. He had it!!! Tsk tsk tsk.

Funny story: An agent and some Indonesian girls, who seemed to be TKWs (were standing about the elevator after passing by the custom. They were joking around so loudly and I smiled a little to hear them. But my smile froze when I saw one of them eventually fell and she hit the other girls, which cause them all fell. They kept laughing while rolling and rolling on the floor while their manager asked them to behave.

17:30 - Arrived in Singapore. Roy Huang texted me before I crossed the sea that he'd pick me up at the Starbucks at the Harbour Front at 5, so I went straight to Starbucks and waited for him with a capuccino.
An hour passed and he still hadn't showed up. I began to worry and was looking for a public phone to call him. But eventually there were only card phones there and it'd really take me too long to find a phone card, so I went back to Starbucks.
It was only then when I saw him in his working suit and serious stressed look.

"You're Okay?" I asked after hugging him.
He said, "Yeah, just tired."
"I can see," I told him.

He brought me to his apartment, while taking my backpack on to his shoulder. He commented, "Are you moving your whole house here?" while eyeing at my bags.
I grinned and ignored him.

That night we stayed in, cause the weather was not really good and I was too tired and sleepy from my trip. So Roy started to collect whatever food he had in his fridge and cooked us a dinner. Dunno what it's called. But there were oxtail and noodles and some soup.

Next: Watched DVD and slept.

11:37 pm

Hi People!!!!!!! I'm in Singapore right now. Yoohooooo!!!!
In case you don't know, I'm having my South East Asia trip for about 5 weeks from now. Hope it's a good thing to start this year. :)

I'm soooo excited, though extremely tired because of the long trip.
I just arrived in gloomy Singapore this afternoon. Why gloomy? Cause it was raining and dark when I came. :P Look at these clouds over the so many tall buildings in this small country. I took this from the ferry before we came close to the harbour.

Anyway, so far I've had fun through all the discomforts. I met some people and had new adventurous experiences. If you call the sleeping-on-the-airport-bench an experience. Hardly an enjoyable one. But it was the cheapest.

---

Details:
Air Asia has given out very competitive plane fares lately. To get to Batam island from Surabaya I only needed to pay Rp 250.000 (transit in Jakarta). The direct plane from Surabaya to Kuala Lumpur is also inexpensive, but the fiscal tax is not. :P

Though cheap, the arrival time of my Surabaya-Jakarta trip sucks. Plus Air Asia always has delays, so I got in the Cengkareng airport past midnight.


Denni has suggested to stay the night at the airport instead of going to the city that late. Besides... it's quite money-saving that way.

The strange thing when I arrived in Cengkareng airport was when I had to pick up my luggage. Everybody had gotten their things but I still couldn't see my blue backpack. Until 45 minutes later, I found it lying under the big flat TV screen in the middle of the airport! What the hell.. Who ever has put it there??

Anyway, I was too tired and hungry to fuss about it. So I went out, refused all taxi offers, walked my way straight to the domestic departure area and saw some people lie down on the benches there.

That must be it.

The thing is... almost all benches were occupied by men.
"Alright, so I'm gonna be the only girl, alone, sleeping out here," I thought. "Ok, I'll buy that chance."

I chose one of the empty benches when a family approached me. After some chit chat, I learnt that the family -- one father, one mother and two daughters -- also had the same flight to Batam tomorrow morning; and like me, they were reluctant to go to the city and find a hotel. There is indeed a hotel at the airport but it's too expensive. So I suggested them to take a bench next to me (this way I feel safer).

Well not only that, cause later 2 Bataknese girls were asking me if I was staying the night, too, there. I told them yes. They were happy they had got a companion, and I was happy for the same reason. Problem solved.

See? I know I'm always lucky in traveling.

One of the Bataknese girls - Meldy Sibuea, 24 years old. If you see the background, that's how we slept that night. :)
Click to full-view.

11:14 pm