Days trips overseas

I have just returned from another trip out the country and I went to Singapore for the day. I did not really do anything as I had a very short time there, however it was nice to fly and visit somewhere different for a change.

As many people know, Singapore is currently suffering from the haze and smoke from Indonesia, where land is being burned to make way for more palm nut trees or something. So I was expecting lots of smog and grey skies. I am sure it was there. As I said it was a short trip out and I really could not be bothered to leave the airport. There is enough to do there, so I never really saw any smog or haze.

Actually, I have been to Singapore at least 20 times since 2006 and I have seen most of the sights to see and visited most of the city at some point. I have flown in and out of it. Took the train to Kuala Lumpur from it and had many a cold beer say waiting for visas etc so unless I am there for a weekend then I am not really fussed. I know there is a lot to do when you get there but my budget often wont allow me to do everything.  So this time I sat about the airport.

Flying at 8am in the morning gave me a on time, third full Lion Air flight which was predictably non eventful and there were no issues with immigration on the trip out both here and there.  Changi was emptier than I have ever seen it, maybe because of the low season, maybe because of the smog but it was quiet.

Plenty of empty seats on this flight

 

My plane was the same as that one

   

So, wandering around time to eat at McD (they do 1/4 pounders) and then surf the world through the free wifi. However, McD and BK at the airport stop serving breakfast at 12 so it was McMuffins and coffee instead.

Changi Airport Saturday Morning

Shiny floors are the order of the day

Changi Airport offers many things and in Terminal 3, it offers loads of things. Quiet areas for sleeping,showers,  a Cinema, A pool, a butterfly enclosure, bars and shops and free Wifi. You can get access to the free wifi in Arrivals by going to an information desk and the helpful people will type in your passport details and then give you a slip of paper. You follow the instructions and you have pretty good connection all around the airport. Once you have checked in, then you need to do the same thing again. Find a customer service desk and ask for free wifi. They will also give you a piece of paper with instructions and ask how many devices you need it for and then again, follow the instructions and you are off.

Departure lounge T3

Place was pretty empty for a Saturday

Now, what else was there? Oh nothing. I didn't anything else. I took a plane back at 5pm and was  home with the wife and kids by 8pm. A small adventure even if it was not the most exciting of one, but not many can say that they popped to Singapore for a few hours for something do.

Old Friends

Another week gone and more or less as tired as normal. I am currently teaching mornings and then doing my day job later in the day. The early morning teaching is still hard work but not as bad as last year because I am now used to being awake and moving about from 5.30am so being ready to teach at 8.30am is not so bad.

I am still there at St.Ursula, in the middle of the city but I have changed from elementary school to senior high school and this is for girls only aged from 15 to 18. Its a new challenge for me and less noisy so thats a good thing.  The views of the school as well are good. I am sure to post more pictures over the weeks of my time there but here are some shots from last week.

In the corridor outside a class

Looking towards the Cathedral

The class rooms themselves are still very traditional wooden desks and chairs and the most alarming the floor tiles (photos to come) remind me of the floors at Safeway where I once worked, as it they are I believe, the same pattern.

However much fun it is there, when my classes are cancelled its equally as great as I found out on Friday and as luck would have it, this allowed me to meet an old friend and colleague.

Back in the day when I first started with EF I was a teacher and I lived in a teachers house with everyone else. It was fun. The number of teachers grew and so a second house was called on and so I moved. It was far nicer. Teachers come and go and you have fun along the way. From the original western teachers that I worked with between 2007 and 2008 in Cengkareng; 5 of us remain in Jakarta as far as I know. Everyone else either moved on to somewhere new or went home after doing their year.  Keeping in touch with those I worked with is probably almost the same in number, be it through Instragram, Facebook, Whatsapp but some you still keep in contact with and some I still meet on occasion.

Class of 2008 EF Cenkareng Kartini Day

So hearing that an old colleague was returning for a holiday as part of his honeymoon was great news, especially as he was coming from Canada.

Dagan with my then girlfriend, now wife, Yovita

Just a typical day in West Jakarta

It was good to meet Dagan and his wife and we spent some time catching up over coffee and cake on Friday morning. Its good to see people move and develop and know that life goes on. Sadly Dagan lost his hair along the way, but his vests are the building blocks of legends!

Now Married

I forgot how short he is, but still just in a vest

Hopefully before he returns west again we can meet up and he can say hi to Yovita and Jeremy as we could not do that Friday. If not then again in another 7 or 8 years!

No Internet

I have been in Indonesia now for many years and for a few of them I had an Internet connection to the place I was staying. Since 2000 I have been connected to the web and probably at some point became hugely dependent on it for entertainment and knowledge, so much so, sleep and getting things done became harder to achieve. Then I moved to Indonesia.

For the past 8 years an Internet connection in my home has been a dream. I did have internet at the apartment I was in but it was slow and limited but I could open things like HTML pages and maybe browse the web early morning or late at night, otherwise it was not great. Apart from than that I have made use of free WiFi and the crappy inconsistent 3G signal the country has to offer.

So many networks, so many deals, but all suffer from coverage issues

I have bought into Bolt the 4G/3G OTA provider and its actually very good as there is a constant signal in the house. 3G on all networks where I am is patchy and unhelpful and frustrating. Real connected Internet is not possible currently due to the place I live and the distance from the nearest connection box. If I rented a telephone line then I could have the Internet via that option, but the service is lacklustre and not reliable. Our laptops remain closed and not able to be used, which is a great shame to me.

My phone and tab both are therefore used heavily to help meet the needs of the family for searching and browsing. Jeremy uses my tab for watching stuff on YouTube and I like to browse and chat and read through the net. If I had a real connection then I am sure that I would not even want to watch TV (which I dont really want to do now) instead use the net for shows and things as it is more preferred. As it is I have Indovision with extra channels and of the 200+ I watch about 10 (3 of them are for children under 6).

Happily/Luckily work is a wifi zone and the internet is great as it works most of the time so I can, should I choose to, connect and browse when not researching materials from there. The places I eat and visit with the wife and kids are always WiFi areas so that is also good, but that does not help at home. Bolt is as I have said a great provider and has good speeds but it is overall expensive especially for a family which are on line a lot.

100k (rupiah) gets you 5gb and 8gb free. The free stuff is used between 1am and 8am, which however stupid that sounds is great as I am awake before 6 most days and so all browsing and time Jeremy spent watching videos, should want that, is done for free. So is downloading offline YouTube content for viewing later, another useful idea for spending the free allowance. But then at 8am things have to be shut down so that the data is not all gone in a day otherwise the data cost will be too high. 

Network Tri (3) is pretty good at 30,000 for 1.25gb but I dont have a signal but outside the house, it is often very good.

But again it needs to be controlled.

Gone are the days of SMS whereby should you send 4 SMS to the same number on the same network as yours you would get another 20 free, nope we are all using Whatsapp or Line or something that needs to have at least Edge as the carrier.

Living out in Jakarta has its high points and its plus points but the Internet is definitely not one of them. However, the fact remains that without a decent signal I cant just sit there and scroll through the pages of the world all day, I can actually do things I enjoy more and spend time in conversation with those around me. Something in this day and age which is getting harder to do.

A few weeks

Its been a while that I have posted anything. The reason is that I have as usual been busy with work or with Jeremy and so not much has really been happening.

Its August now and there has been no rain for a few weeks and this is causing problems with the houses plumbing for some reason because the pipes are filling up with green algae stuff quicker than before and so that means currently I have 4 taps, 1 shower and 1 toilet out of action in the house and we are waiting for the landlady to send a man round to fix them. The AC also seems to be less energetic again so I guess that means it needs cleaning as the filters will be full of dust. That is something I could do if I could reach the thing but its so high up I would need a ladder, and that is something I don't have. What I do have is a magic stick which allows me to change light bulbs which are high up with the need of a ladder. Its awesome.

Recently, We had a new teacher arrive which was nice and she arrived in the middle of the night. The flight was supposed to land at 10pm but due to reasons at Dubai she landed at 12.40am. I went to meet her, after going home and it took less than 40 minutes to drive through the city at 11.30pm as there was no traffic to be seen and it was good because I had forgotten how lit up the place is after dark.

Outside the airport was not busy, inside was

The Airport itself was still fairly busy with those waiting for the delayed flight or flights lying on the floor or outside sleeping, that or they were homeless. Happily the teacher arrived and by 2am we had got her to her place to sleep and by 2.30am (seriously) I was home.  So fast we went.

Last week I was again fortunate enough to stay the Mulia hotel in the city and enjoy the 5 luxury it offers. The AC was too cold but again it was great and Jeremy certainly enjoyed his bath time as the bath was big enough for him to swim in. Having a corner room, allowed us to see the city and being on the 35th floor the view was as ever amazing.

Some Views

Then it was Indonesia's Independence day on Monday. A national holiday so no need to work. The locals played games for around 7 hours outside. I never took photos. I was asleep for some of it and during a break in the events Yovita and I snuck out of the area for food. However coming back into our neighbourhood was a lot harder. 8 possible ways in were blocked by the amount of games being played everywhere and so we had to park the bike away from the house and walk back. Everything stopped at the call to prayer at 5.50 and by 6.10pm everything was gone, the street washed down and the people back home. They all clearly had a great day.

Jeremy seemed not to be bothered by the noise and commotion rather he wanted to play and watch YouTube videos all day long. He is big now and weighs 16.5 kg. He eats everything and has the beginnings of a great grasp of English and hopefully Indonesian. He can sing songs, knows the actions to Wheels on the Bus, can name colours, vehicles, animals, some shapes,  some numbers and people by name so its all fun at our house. Oh and he can run fast and far without falling over (too much) and has developed a laugh and has learnt to laugh at Donald Duck cartoons, again something fantastic to watch.

Road trip

So the other weekend I went with the brother in law and some of his friends for a trip to the west coast of Java and to the area know as Tanjung Lesung, which according to Google maps is around 180km from my house and would take about 5.5 hours. As we were all riding, there was the talk of staying over for the night and then returning the next day because the trip was a long one.

After being told to be ready at 3.15am, I was and so we headed to meet the friends and spent 20 minutes sat about outside a 711 and then we moved on again through the city to a petrol filling station where we sat about waining for an hour for the other riders to appear because they overslept. so by 5ish we were on our way. It being the week of Idul Fitry we did not anticipate too much traffic on the way or the way back but never discussed what it would be like at the coast.

Map of trip down to Tanjung Lesung.

We rode out of Jakarta, into Tangerang and kept going as the sun came up and headed into Serang which is around halfway to Merak, the port for ferries to Sumatra and then headed south. We came to a railway crossing and sat there eating Indomie and drinking coffee for a while until it was time to move off again. This was around 7.30.

From there we went through hills and valleys and just kept going stopping for fuel once until we could see the sea. Happily I thought we were heading straight to the main beaches of Tanjung Lesung and so I never noticed when everyone turned left and headed up a hill. It took my brother in law 20 minutes to catch up with me and turn around. He was going to see a friend up in the mountains somewhere. This took about 30 minutes or 20km going up and it got hotter and hotter. Once we were in no where, we sat outside someones house and drank some water. I was entertained by fighting off the ants that seemed happy enough to crawl on me and then bite me. Having sat there for about 45 minutes, we left. His friend was not there. So back down the mountain we went. By now everyone except me wanted to go Carita because the beaches are better. So I never saw Tanjung Lesung or the sea. We stopped at a restaurant for overpriced BBQ chicken and rice and then headed off again. 

Then we met traffic. Jakarta style in the rain at 6pm Friday night traffic. Everything had ground to a stop. We inched forward for about an hour getting no where fast until we stopped to decide what to do. It was decided to find somewhere to stay (there was me thinking that was sorted already) and so we ended up at some dodgy hotel where they wanted 480,000 for a single room with AC and 280 for a single room with fan, so 3 rooms for a million, which no one really wanted to pay as that was expensive. 

So again, everyone agreed that we should keep looking. It was 3pm by now. We had stopped to bitten by ants and to eat once. No time on the beach, nothing. I said we should give up and go home. This seemed to be met with approval and so we stopped for more fuel and headed towards Anyer to get the bigger roads home. 

However, this was met with even more traffic and after one hour we really were not any further on. Then to our delight (!) the police had shut the road and sent us up a tsunami escape route, which was a narrow broken road chock a block with cars and again at a complete standstill. Someone, I presume to be a local rode his bike around a house, to which every bike waiting did the same and this little path took us to a 60cm drop where we had to lift down the bikes to get back to another broken road. Carrying on up into the hills, we then met by more traffic snarl ups and so the bikes were directed through a load of banana trees for a while until we hit a T junction.

Slightly longer with more twists and turns on the way home

From there it was  a matter of riding over a few mountains, and keeping up with the brother in law who deemed it necessary to go a little quicker through the s bends and pot holed road. Happily by 5.45pm we were in Serang, drinking water and eating. That was one hell of a journey from the sea.

The next part of the trip home involved riding in the dark one a 2 way hole filled road being shaken and shook by the sheer bumpiness of it all until we reached a good road near somewhere called Balaraja where you could see the airplanes coming to land at Jakarta airport, however, we were still another 2 hours from home and it was 7pm by now.  The last part of the journey was far nicer because we reached streetlamps and big and in comparison well maintained roads going into Jakarta. Being more familiar with these we sped up and by 9pm, covered in soot, dirt, sweat and very hungry I arrived home. 

It was a long day. It was a long trip. It was a trip to the coast that never allowed me to see the sea, sit by it or even take a photo. It was a road trip. I spent at least 12 hours riding through the day. The bike seemed to cope OK and only used 9 litres of fuel for the 400km or so trip we did and only now does it need a service as it is making some noises. Friday will sort that out. 

Would I do it again? Yes but with somewhere booked first so that I could relax and explore while there and take it easier on the way home. But as bike trips go, it was great. 

Please feel free to comment and I will reply as soon as I can. Thank you

Bali Airport

I have been to Bali Airport (Ngurah Rai International Airport) many times. Never through International but domestic and since 2007 it has change completely and is still doing so and for the better.

I have just come back from a holiday in Bali with the family and here are some photos of the Airport.

 

There are 6 gates to leave from. Gate 1 is Garuda, 4 is Air Asia, 5 and 6 Lion. The other gates I don't know. 

Getting to departures you can have the taxi or car drop you outside and its a short walk into the terminal. The Major Airlines have their own set of counters, Air Asia being 37-43 or something similar and there are plenty of ATMs around. Then you need to go upstairs and through the security checks, taking off belts and watches and anything metal before going through into the lounge area. Unlike the old terminal this one is now light and bright with many modern shops and big seating area restaurants. There are several coffee shops, 2 or 3 WH Smiths and other places to shop for highly expensive last minute gifts.

It is now a bigger terminal and I would say apart from the lack of seats considering the size and the AC fighting against the heat of the sun through amount of glass it is rather a nice place to fly from. Its far nicer than it used to be anyway.