NOODLE NONSENSE: April 2012 - Friend Visit and INDONESIA!

My two highlights from the month of April......

Brandon came to visit! One of my closest friends from my time studying abroad in Sydney came over for a visit wooooooo Though he was only here briefly, it was so nice to see a familiar face from another part of my life. Spent time at Laem Sing Beach and Kamala Beach and of course I had to bring him down to Bangla Road….I swear that road has taken ten years off of my life...

Brandon and I on Kamala Beach

Lunch in Ubud

Indonesia…Dana Pool, what happened to the blog post that you were going to write for Noodle Nonsense?? My best friend Dana flew over from Utah and met me in Bali in April for the two weeks that I had off after summer school ended. We had said in years ago that we were going to explore Southeast Asia two years after college when we “had money” and who would have thought that it would have come true! (well not the having money part) We spent 15 wonderful days in Indo and started by exploring Bali – we surfed and shopped in Kuta and spent a day in the rice patties of UBUD - love you Ubud. Then we took a boat over to Nusa Lembognan to hang out on the stunning beaches, hide on top of a hill “waiting out” the tsunami warning with some crazy Swedes and cliff jump in a secret spot on Nusa Ceninigan. We stayed for a few wonderful days and then took a boat over to the Gili Islands. Gili T. is unlike any place I've ever been and people come for a few days and literally stay for months. No cars, no motorbikes, just horsedraw carts and rickety bicycles. It totally reminded me of the society from the movie The Beach. We fully explored Gili T and spent a day snorkeling the other two Gili Islands. We said goodbye to Nancy as she was headed back to Thailand to meet some friends up north.

Rice Patties in Ubud

Welcome to SouthEast Asia best friend!

View of Bali from Nusa Lembognan

15 meter cliff jump, so fun!!

Sunset on Nusa Cenigan

Snorkling the Gili Islands

Dsaur and I took a boat back to mainland Bali and hung out for the night at the little coastal town of Padang Bai as we prepped for our trip inland to the volcanoes. Next morning, we hired a taxi to take us up to the little village of Toya Bungkah at the base of Mt. Batur. Most tourists who hike Mt Batur stay in Ubud or somewhere else the night before and take a bus/taxi to Toya Bungkah the morning of the hike. We decided to be a little adventurous and go to Mt Batur the day before, hope to heaven that there was lodging available in this random little lake town we had read about in a Lonely Planet book, go directly to the Trekking Guide place to find an available guide (you have to have a guide in order to hike), bargain/flirt our way to the best deal we could get and hope for the best. I am pretty against organized tours if at all possible. Anyways, we found an awesome and extremely handsome guide who called in a favor to his boss to get ahead on the rotating guide list so he could take us, somehow found us at dinner to hang out because he was bored, tried to feed us his moonshine and then picked us up with his two dogs at 3 am and put us on the back of his motorbike. He was a beast! We hiked that volcano in double time and brought the dogs with us. Saw the most amazing sunrise in the entire world, cooked our breakfast in a hole in the side of the volcano and took the long way down to see all the old lava fields. I wish wish wish I remembered our guide's name!! He was so awesome and I kind of wanted to marry him on the spot. We tried for days to find him on Facebook because we promised we would friend him but whatever his name was, there were 500 guys with the same name. Needless to say, one of the best experiences of my life.

Toya Bungkah - Us and our guide the day before the hike

Toya Bungkah - Relaxing outside our litte room overlooking the lake

Sunrise on Mt Batur

View of the other peak of the volcano

Uluwatu, Bali - spot the tiny surfers

We headed back down to Kuta and hired a motorbike to head to the southern tip of Bali to Uluwatu to watch the pro surfers for an afternoon and relax on the beach. Next, we said goodbye to Bali and flew over to Java to Yogyakarta. We definitely walked our feet off around the unique city and happened to meet a local man at the market who apparently loved us and took us to his brother's spice stand where we got to test and buy so many different spices. We spent a day at the ancient ruins of Prambanan (AMAZING), saw an interesting (not really, I feel asleep) Indonesian ballet at night and explored Borobudur at sunrise the next morning. Somehow we managed to stay at a hostel that did not have real toilets, yet had a great swimming pool we took advantage of...You never know what you're going to get when you just show up somewhere. Took an overnight train to our last stop, the modern city of Jakarta. Jakarta was not my favorite place due to the constant harassment we got but we spent some serious best friend time shopping in the huge malls, talking our faces off, eating ice cream and going to the movies. Seriously, Indonesia is amazing and I look forward to going back and spending an extended period of time there. A country filled with so many different cultures, extremely nice people and UNBELIEVABLE food…and they love Americans because they are so proud that Obama lived there years ago..."Are you from Obama??" "You know Obama!?!" "OBAMAAAAA!" will be echoing in my head for a long time to come