It’s part of our Round-the-World Travelling with Diabetes journey, and essentially what it is is a wee bit of inspiration for all of us… Obviously my chronic condition is diabetes, because that’s what we’ve had to live with, but what we want to say is that no matter what your condition - whether it’s something emotional or mental or physical – no matter what’s holding you back, you can take heart in the fact that it is possible to follow your dreams.
As an illustration of this, we’ve had a handmade heart made in every country we’ve visited. The end of Vietnam was such a whirlwind that I didn’t have a chance to post our Take Heart Vietnam video, but here it is now:
And then here’s the one from Indonesia:
Which do you prefer? (I love them both – you know how I feel about hearts!!)
Our latest video shows our most eventful two weeks so far…
As Mark puts it, “After flying in to Jakarta, Indonesia, we travel to Yogyakarta to see the Hindu temple of Borobudur. A diversion to the Bromo region to see the active volcano Gunung Bromo and then off to Bali. Add to this the drama of failing insulin due to exposure to heat while traveling and the past week or so has been a roller-coaster of highs and lows.”
I mentioned this fleetingly in my blog post about what we’ve learned in the last couple of months on the road, but I’d like to elaborate on it a bit… Only because I’ve suddenly had great insight into how much where you are affects how you are, and I want to unpick it a bit.
Let me set the scene:
We’re in Ubud, in central Bali, cultural heart of the island and home to endless rice fields, palm trees, red-roofed traditional houses and stone carvings of weird and wonderful creatures. Also home to a heck of a lot of tourist shops. The main drag is ridiculously touristy – it could be any main street in any country, in fact. But step just a little off this main street and it feels as if you’re in the country: roosters, birds, nature on all sides. The plan was to stay here for 4 days, but we couldn’t decide where to stay, and left it rather late. We eventually decided on Hotel 1, which got great reviews on TripAdvisor, and sounded lovely. Looked lovely, too, when we arrived, set in a tropical orchid garden and with really friendly staff. The problem came when we wanted to go to sleep, around 11pm, and our neighbours, a pair of long-stay women, decided to crank up the cheesy girl tunes (From a Distance and Forever Young, I ask you with tears in my eyes!) and cackle and chatter late into the night… I went out to ask them to keep quiet, but they were actually inside their room. It didn’t sound like it – the walls were made of bamboo, the windows had no glass.
We left early the next morning to find somewhere else to stay.
Hotel 2 seemed far better than Hotel 1. Much bigger room, great little balcony looking out over a rice paddy, free internet. We were really rather happy there till we were woken at 2am by noisy neighbours who had just arrived and wanted to talk (loudly) for an hour or so… I eventually asked them to keep it down, but they were up at 7am again, chattering away. Who was it who said hell is other people?
Again, though, we’d foolishly chosen bamboo walls and no glass in the windows. We wanted to experience ‘authentic’ Balinese life by staying in a home stay, i.e. you essentially stayed in someone’s home. We quickly realised we’re not cut out for communal Balinese life.
So finally, yesterday we found Blessed Hotel 3. Perched in the middle of rice paddies on all sides (take a look at the view from our balcony!) with a huge balcony, massive room and best of all, brick walls! We had the best sleep ever last night, entirely uninterrupted.
What it made me realise, though, is what a profound impact where you are has to how you feel. Yesterday morning I was exhausted, irritable, headachey and fed up. Yes, lack of sleep two nights in a row will do that to you, but so will being somewhere that feels wrong. The manager at Hotel 2 was awful, our shower stopped working (first thing in the morning) and he couldn’t be bothered to apologise for it, he didn’t seem to care that we were checking out 2 days early, we kind of felt like we were in the way. And I’m sure that contributed to how we felt: it was my first real day of travel fatigue.
But today I woke up to a cool breeze blowing through the room, in the middle of gorgeous views on all sides, and walked out to my balcony where the lovely manager brought us a delicious breakfast, with a smile. And I feel happy. Really happy. So pleased to be here, experiencing Bali, so eager to continue exploring and travelling for the next few months. I suppose I never realised how important where you are is to how you feel. Now that I have, I’m going to make sure (as much as I can) that we rest our heads in lovely spots.
PS – It makes me wonder, too, how important a lovely home is to our levels of happiness. Something to think about, hey?
So this blogpost is a long time coming… I apologise. It’s been a crazy eventful week – as you’ll soon see.
Interestingly, though, it hasn’t been all good or all bad. I suppose that’s like life – some highs, some lows.
First off, to set the scene: When I last blogged we were in Jakarta, the capital of Java, in Indonesia. Mark had a bad cold and we were both exhausted from our long travels to get to Indo and the hectic pace of our last week in Vietnam. From there we went to Yogyakarta, the ‘cultural heart of Java’, on a delightful train (seriously, the best train we’ve been on in South-East Asia). It took about 8 hours, but it was so comfortable the time flew by. We stayed in Yogya for 3 nights, spending a day at the incredible temple of Borobodur – the largest Buddhist temple in Indonesia. For some reason, all the local tourists kept asking Mark and I to be in photos with them! We managed to catch it on film, here:
We spent all day exploring Borobodur (we chose to take the local bus instead of a tour, so we had 2 hours each way sitting next to and chatting with the locals, which was waaay more interesting than sitting in a sterile tour bus). By the time we got back that night we were exhausted, though, so we went for dinner just down the road, and I ordered ‘comfort food’ – fillet of chicken, which I thought would be sauteed, but turned up fried. And dangerous. I woke up in the middle of the night with a nasty case of food poisoning and spent all of the next day unable to move from my bed except to crawl to the toilet, and with honestly the worst headache I’ve ever had. Food poisoning is the devil! I had no idea how vicious it was. It’s the worst of both worlds – headache and nausea. Eeuch.
The next morning we had a bus to catch, at 7.30am. I woke up feeling better, but still weak and now with Mark’s cold (obviously my immune system had taken a hit from the food poisoning). We spent 11 hours in a minibus that day, a minibus with only the vaguest sense of air conditioning and a driver who knew no fear – he quite happily overtook other cars even if it meant bearing down on the wrong side of the road towards a bus! Yikes. Still, we got to see a lot of stunning Javanese landscape (endless rice paddies, lots of farmers, interesting small towns) and actually sitting down all day probably did my cold some good. We eventually arrived in Cemoro Lawang, a small mountainous village near the famous Gunung Bromo volcano, around 7pm that night, and were lucky enough to be booked into the delightful Java Banana hotel. What a treat.
Most people, believe it or not, make this arduous 11 hour journey for just one night. Gunung Bromo is still active (but only smoking) and the thing to do while in Cemoro Lawang is take the sunrise tour:
You wake up at 3am, take a jeep for an hour to the lookout point at Mount Penanjakan, where you can watch the sun rise over the volcano. Then you take the jeep down to the foot of the volcano and walk up to the crater itself. Awesome!
Here’s how Java Banana describe the sunrise:
“Little by little, from a state of darkness, minute by minute, the sun unveils the dawn in Bromo-Tengger-Semeru, in its incomparable beauty. Mount Bromo stands in the middle of the Tengger caldera and greets the morning, welcoming it with its periodic puffing of smoke. Bromo is visibly the most active and the most prominent on the stage of the theatre of Bromo-Tengger-Semeru.”
How could we resist? So the morning after our day of minibussing, we woke up at 3am to the freezing cold, and set off in the darkness to watch the sunrise. It was really exciting, actually, heading off into the great unknown, about to see our first volcano. And the sunrise was beautiful, illuminating the scene from total darkness to total light in a subtle but spectacular way… Mark will post pics soon, I promise.
It was also FREEZING, unbelievable seeing as we were so boiling hot the day before! From the sunrise vantage point we headed down to the base of the crater, and walked right up the rim, so we could look inside the volcano belching sulphurous smoke. Pretty darn incredible. Take a look:
We spent the rest of that day resting and recovering, and trying to find an alternative route to Bali, so that we wouldn’t have to do another 11 hour minibus trek! We ended up taking the train for most of the way, but it still took us over 11 hours… You can read all about it here, it was a really difficult day.
So there you have it! Our most eventful week ever. We had ancient temples and volcanoes, food poisoning and colds, all-day minibus journeys and diabetic drama. What more could anyone ask for in a week?
Well, some peace would be nice. I’m feeling worn out, to be honest. This week we plan on taking it easy. Having some down time in Sanur, where we are now (on the coast) and then heading inland to Ubud. I’ll keep you posted, I promise.
And just recovering from the trip here. Well, the busy week leading up to the trip here, and then the actual trip itself.
I foolishly thought that because we were flying (from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh at 2pm and then from Ho Chi Minh to Jakarta at 8pm, arriving at 11.30pm) that it would be easier than a land border crossing. Well, no. Yes and no – the actual travel was easier, but finding real food (at a semi-reasonable price) in an international airport is a nightmare, and all the waiting around in queues is pretty exhausting.
And, of course, as is now common, my blood sugar was crazy all day. I think I might be allergic to border crossings.
Actually, I started a new insulin pen the night before, and realised when my sugar went through the roof at breakfast (17! One of the highest readings I’ve ever had!) that it wasn’t working. At all. Of course, seeing as I was high and not thinking straight I’d already given myself a come-down shot by the time I figured this out, and seeing as insulin on its own is usually pretty powerful (even if it’s not working 100%), I didn’t want to jab twice and risk going low on the plane.
Turns out the bad pen wasn’t working at all, so I stayed high for hours until I could test again after lunch. Bleerurgh. By now I was feeling truly rotten. Emotional, irrational, cotton wooly, hot and cold, all kinds of horrible.
I had taken a new pen from my luggage before we checked it in (thank goodness!) and the moment the insulin started to work I felt instantly better – like a fog lifting.
So we arrived in Jakarta at about half past midnight and woke up exhausted yesterday. Mark had a cold, I had a whole heap of tiredness, and we’ve spent the interleding day and a bit catching our breath and aiming for somewhere halfway human. We’re staying at the very comfortable, extremely stylish Alila Jakarta (a lovely business hotel) which is the perfect place to gather our energies. Feeling a LOT better today (both of us), and we’re off travelling and finally seeing a bit of Java in Indonesia tomorrow.
We’ve actually recorded a new video diary, too, but we still have to process it so it’ll be a tad delayed. I think we need a slight break from all the constant uploads too, so if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be taking it easy for the next couple of days!
In the meantime, any tips about Indonesia (on here, on Twitter, or on Facebook) are, as always, appreciated…
Leg 2 of our journey begins in INDONESIA, or, more specifically, BALI. We’ll land on the 30th of September 2009, and explore Bali’s palaces, temples, rice terraces and beaches for a couple of days, before heading off to PEMUTERAN in the far North. Apparently there’s very little English spoken there, but it’s unspoilt and lovely, and you can catch a bus to the port and take a ferry to JAVA for the day, which would be great.
We also want to experience MUNDUK, an incredibly beautiful area with one of the highest waterfalls and a lot of small homesteads to stay in. The more ‘real’ Bali we can see, the better!
The 16th of October will see us jetting off to CHINA, where we’ll land in BEIJING. We have no idea what to expect from China, but we’re very curious to see what it’s like. Mao Zedong said that, “He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man” so we’ll definitely do a tour of the Great Wall. And we want to visit the Forbidden City in Beijing, the best preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China, off-limits to the world for 500 years. We’ll no doubt spend a few days exploring the city and eating lots of Chinese food!
We’ve been told, though, that SHANGHAI is the place to go in China, the most dynamic city in the world’s fastest-changing nation. We’ll be able to catch a train between the two cities, which is pretty handy. It’s apparently a city of stunning contrasts between old and new, and they have some great museums and galleries. It’s also home to the Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar, a haven of shaded alcoves, glittering pools, pavilions and bamboo forests. Sounds stunning!
We haven’t decided yet if we want to fly into JAPAN on the 2nd of November, or take the ferry to OSAKA and then the bullet train to TOKYO. The ferry takes two nights, but it might be an intriguing journey… Once we’re in Japan, we want to explore Tokyo in depth. Supposedly one of the most fascinating cities on earth, with Zen temples rubbing shoulders with sci-fi cityscapes. Although we miss cherry blossom season, we’ve been told that autumn is the second-best, with dramatic orange and red foliage.
While we’re in Tokyo we’ll take a day trip to MOUNT FUJI, the highest mountain in Japan, at 3776m, and an icon in many Japanese pictures.
We’ll spend the second half of our time in Japan in KYOTO, home to 17 World Heritage sites, more than 1600 Buddhist temples, and over 400 Shinto shrines. Bamboo groves, geisha, temples and traditional restaurants are the norm in Kyoto, I can’t wait!
