vroooooooooom!

Mom, dad, don't be mad, and yes, we both wore helmets!
We've spent the past 2 days motorcycling thru Bali Indonesia, and it is absolutely incredible!
To be on a 5 foot wide piece of quasi concrete on top of a mountain top in a cloud/rain storm, with pea sized water droplets falling on your fore head from the palm trees overhead, flying by chickens..and more chickens....
AWESOME!
For $2.50/day, you can rent a motor bike in Bali...gas?  $1.50 for 8 hours worth.
It's the norm in this country for a reason.  It's the easiest way to get places on small difficult roads, and you can rely on it to get you anywhere...unlike the almost non existent transit system.

We are currently considering to rent them for the next week until we leave and scoot around Bali in style!
We'll decide tomorrow after a nice leisurely visit to the "hot springs" (volcanic natural hot water spring) tomorrow morning.

We are currently averaging about a $40/day budget here in Bali which includes hotel, food, and fun activities like dolphin watching and motorcycle scooting.

Today's highlight was wandering into a Bali sport activity that I can't really define and being invited to women's house for Mangus...nope.  not Mango, Mangus...so after a 20 minute cycle with our new Dutch and German friends we met at our hotel, we sat in her backyard and ate fruit with her family...incredible experience.  Her son explained to us that she has cancer and is undergoiing chemo therapy, so our crazy little visit to her home meant even more to her then we realized...I have to say, the honor was ours...the fruit was incredible and I will never forget the experience of meeting her/a complete stranger letting me into her home.  (she asked me quietly women to women about Rodolfo  "you lovers with him, yes?"  "Yes!  He's my husband!"  I think she liked Rodolfo a lot...or she wanted to be his lover?  I'm not quite sure....???)
Oh!  Other women sighting of the day!  A 70 year old topless toothless women chopping down a small tree with a machete!  INCREDIBLE!!!! Bali inspires me in so many ways...one thing I can definitely say, the women here are strong in every sense!   

More Pictures! Mas Fotos!

Sultan's Palace, Prambanan Temple, Mount Bromo (Volcano!!) and the first day in Lovina (Bali).
Click here!

transported to Bali!

After an insane 9 hour mini bus, a more insane 3 hour van ride up a mountain side, 10 hours on a public leaking giant bus, 2 hours on a ferry and yet another 3 hours on yet another mini bus...2 days and one Mount Bromo trek later, we've made it to Lovina Bali!!!!!!!  YAY!

Things are now a little more laid back for us!  Less hussle, bussle, cars, people asking if we'd like transport, etc., yay!  The ocean is beautiful, the food is delicious!  and we just bought a melon for .70 cents off the street and are excited to eat it...perhaps a jump in the pool after that!

We walked up Mount Bromo in Java Indonesia yesterday morning at 3 am to see the sunrise and it was incredible!  In true Indonesian fashion, we purshased a tour package that would take us all the way to the city we are in now...unfortunately we got slightly skammed and the very extremely long bus ride ended at the ferry port....not bad though for Indonesia.

We're learning a lot!
Terimah kasi is thankyou!
Never pay full price for anything without a price tag
Everyone tips their drivers using Marlboro cigarettes (we're thinking to purchase them for such cases)
Sate is absolutely fabulous, and ramen noodles are turned into a delicacy of homemade broth and fresh veggies at most family run restaurants (a bowl of noodles costs about .60-$1, sate with rice: .80 cents)
It's best to avoid mid day sunshine if you don't want to look like a raccoon for 3 days after (yup, I do)
Live volcanoes are AWESOME!  (and slightly scary for cowardly Minnesotans)
Every day is an adventure, and you have no idea what may come next!!!!  Like, melons!
Pics to come!  We are now near internet again!  YAY!

Sarah

Boroburdur

Traveling, leaving home, micro-homes

So, 10 days or so in the road, we've been finally getting into a something somehow called vacation, in the sense of you arrive in a place, be there for a few (>3) days, don't look for the next hotel/worry about checkout times... you get the idea. The place? Jogjakarta aka Jogja by the locals. We arrived a few days ago, as Sarah has previously written. The plan is to be around, look at the big'ol temples, stupas, palaces, markets and whatever else you might wanna see around. So far, the trip has been great, which doesn't mean that we haven't been ripped off, or only Iloveyous flow between Sarah's beautiful lips and my mouth's enclosures... we believe we're learning to travel, taking this as metaphorically or straightforward as you want... I know, travel must rank #2 in the biggest commonplace metaphors after love, followed by water, moon and day/night (cycles in general).... but there might be a reason why there's a bunch of people, including yours truly, who still write about those things after Shakespeare.

Back to the travel learning, these are things that we learned how to deal with, or that's why we want to believe at least:
-Figuring out ways to cope with unrequested offerings
-Find the way back to our room.
-Listening 1,000 times per day 'hello mister'
-Did I talk about the kids who knows what they say to you as they laugh after saying "hello mister" or "tourist"?
Regardless, I hope to not to loose the ability of smiling back 2,000 times to those
lovely old ladies whose wrinkles can't hide a cocktail of laughter, charm and awkwardness upon seeing us walking in otherwise tourist-free backstreets.

So, we made our room in Jogja our micro-home, our temporary homey place where we feel comfy to be. The hope: extend this feeling to everywhere, regardless the place, country or duration of stay. Would that be possible? I hope so. We'll try, for a good bunch of this year at the least.

Finally, thank you all for those wonderful goodbye parties. We miss you all. Hope to see you again in 2010. Madison was our home, and you are part of it. Cheesy but true.

Happy year of the tiger!
RP

Finally... we uploaded photos!

People,
We have enough pics already to fill pages and pages, or making you spend a bunch of time in front of the computer. We did a selection of pics, please comment and let us know your favs. Or the worst ones.
YAYYY!
Follow the links below (click on the country names or the thumbnail):

Indonesia (so far, as of today)

Japan:

Tokyo story

Singapore

Jogja

Today, we got to relax, and it's starting to feel like a vacation rather then a rat race!

We are staying in a very nice Hotel ($15 per night with AC) and thoroughly enjoying it!
The place has free breakfast (papaya, a crepe like pancake with chocolate sprinkles and a coffee with lots and lots of sugar added to it)

Then we did some laundry (purchased scrub brush and detergent at the local mall grocery store basement ** it seems that every asian mall we've been to so far has an upscale grocery store/food market in the basement! It's awesome!**)

They let us hang our laundry on the rooftop garden after we unsucessfully tried drying them in our room...
It's kind of silly, but the little things like doing dishes and laundry and putting things away....those are the things I miss the most right now...feeling homey. 

When Indonesian children see us, they are instructed by their mothers to say "Hello Mister." and I'm beginning to notice, most of the attention and comments go to Rodolfo as the "man"...not sure why really!

Every day around sunrise, noon and sunset, their is a loud crying throughout the streets....like really long moaning/singing...there is nothing like hearing the sound of hundreds of voices chanting while the sun goes down.   Incredible! 

Odd moments of the day:
a crazy looking carrier pigeon named gigolo, eating noodles in a restaurant covered in calendars, watching Rodolfo argue prices with street venders, and having 6 different men come up and start a conversation randomly. 

OH!  I ate snake fruit! 
Off to find some chicken sate!

We will stay in Java for a week and then we've decided to head to Bali instead of Sumatra.  It wasn't in the plans, but as they say here a lot: "don't worry, be happy!"

We survived Jakarta!

We survived Jakarta and took a train to Jogjakarta...because Jakarta sucks.
Very trafficy and polluted...so far....we've had a blast anyways!

Still no way to downloan photos...
so.
little notes for you:
don't walk in jakarta.  big mistake
traffic sucks
men are very smiley and friendly
it's hot here
if you like fried rice, this is your spot!
fresh squeezed juice everywhere!!
drunk Australians too!
lots and lots of rice fields!!!!

That's it for now! 

Chinese New Year

Last night, we took a trip to China Town and with Chinese New Year a couple weeks away, things were hopping!

Lots of dried meat and mushrooms being sold, and lots of decorations, special shoes, special pink flowers and a feeling of happiness in the air.  Very cool!  We got lost in the crowd for a while and then found a less crazy corner to eat a bit of dim sum with some purple dragon fruit juice for dessert.  yum!

The food in this city is incredible! 
We also tried our first taste of durian via ice cream sandwich. 
Get this:
multi colored wonder bread with a large slice of durian ice cream in between.  (Not what I call a western ice cream sandwich myself)

I have to say it smells of a strong funky spice and tastes a little bit like a funky cheese (skanky smelling sweat sock meets brie type deal)  I loved it, and Rodolfo wanted to yak.

Tonight it is off to Jakarta Indonesia via Tiger airlines...roar!

Nature!!

Today we have spent a relaxed morning roaming the streets of Singapore!
We took a bus to a nature area (bit o' rainforest) and saw ...NATURE!  Palm trees, crazy birds who sound like they speak Cantonese and MONKEYS!  MONKEYS!  better yet, MONKEYS HAVING SEX!  It was awesome!  Kind of cute actually!

Last night we went out with Rodolfo's engineering conference buddy Gary who took us to an incredible indian curry restaurant!  The kind where you eat off of a palm tree leaf and the scoop curry out of buckets onto your leaf.  AWESOME! 

So the real big news:

Potties! 
I  have successfully used a floor potty 3 times now!  Without peeing on myself!  T.P. however is to be carried on your person at all times in case of emergency.  For those potentially some day going to Japan...press the little buttons!  it's awesome!  It does everything and more!  At one department store, the seat was even heated!

Singapore is non flogging!  No canes of any kind have been witnessed and to our disapointment, everyone J walks.  The only cop I've seen was eating an ice cream cone at the time and smiled at me!

We are off to Indonesia (Jakarta) tomorrow night.  The plan is to visit China town tonight and Little India here in Singapore and then we will have successfully fulfilled our tourist needs! 

We are in Singapore!

We had an incredible time in Tokyo!

Highlights:
coffee in little cans that come out hot from vending machines
Getting to eat sushi with our old friend Tomo!
cranky old men who growl
Shinjuku - crazy hip side of town with lots of lights!
Eating: noodles, sushi, japanese yogurt, squash tempura, giant shrimp, and deep fried balls of fish paste and onion wrapped in bacon!  AWESOME!
We got to see the fish market in Ginza!!!  Incredible and insane!  Both Rodolfo almost got ran over multiple times by crazy little carts!
 We also loved staying in our little Ryokan on little mats drinking green tea and sneaking wifi with R mans I phone!

I love Tokyo.  Now I completely understand why people go gaga over Japan!  It's totally unique and incredible in so many ways!  Expensive but awesome!  We've decided to move there when we become millionaires...til then we stare longingly at the plastic food in the windows.  It was a great time!

pics to come some time...we'll keep it to a minimum....but they are AWESOME!!!!!  Once we figure out a way to post them! 

Two more days in Singapore and then we are off to Indonesia.
Did I mention it's 80 degrees here?  Had to rub it in.

We miss everyone...it's weird being on our own, but extremely exciting!
more to come soon!

Culture shock? Definitely!  Food shock?  Yes.