Indo 4: Motorcycle Wrecks, "Lobster," and Puppies

When we arrived in Medan, it was getting close to dusk. We caught a bus to the center of the city, as instructed by our AirBnB. Once we got there, we found a tuktuk who would take us, but he seemed confused by the address. We told him the address, but when he asked if we meant a certain hotel, we said no because the only info we got was the name of whoever runs their AirBnB process.

The driver took us to within a few blocks, but our map said the place was still over the river. He was driving on the wrong side of the road trying to find it and dodging out onto the sidewalk when cars came. There was no turn-around to get on the correct side of the road for quite a ways back, so we said thank you and got out. He seemed relieved. We were a bit frustrated.

We walked across the bridge and had people stare at us the whole way. Oh the staring, the bane of my existence as an introverted traveler. We went over a walking overpass, but we had made it to the industrial side of town, which was obviously not it. We backtracked. Then we backtracked again. Then we went down an alley just as the street lights were coming on, but not helping. Finally someone pointed us in the right direction. It was in fact the hotel the driver had mentioned when we were discussing the tuktuk.

The room was definitely the cleanest room we had been in since the States. We never really stayed in hotels in New Zealand and Australia, unless they were cheap and not razor clean. Then again, I worked at Mantra and Peppers Resorts, which were way more expensive than we would have made room for in our budget, and I can tell you right now that there are rugs with the dirt swept under them, literally and figuratively.

We were waiting for the overwhelming hit of Islam in Medan and all of Sumatra, like we were told there would be. And yeah, nearly every woman wore a head scarf. But I was envisioning something much more intense. I think that comes from the fear-mongering words of the backwards xenophobic population in the world, but especially in the States.

I don’t know how to say this, so maybe I’ll try it simply. In a year and a half we have seen both sides of a number of stories, and we have represented a number of stories of old and new friends. And this is what I see: there are a very finite and small number of Muslims who would do damage to people of other religions. This finite group should be detested, but the rest should be treated as humanly as anyone else. On the other side, there are a very finite and small number of heavily conservative people back at home that would do damage to people who don’t meet their list of criteria. There are gun-loving, ammunition-hoarding, “freedom-loving” martyrs who think the world would be saved by their special brand of cowboy justice. You know what that equates to? Sharia law.

I don’t want to put either side down, I just wish people could see that they’re proclaiming a group of people to be radical, when they’re a bit far on the spectrum themselves. Just have a little perspective, wouldja?

Rant aside, Medan was conservative and there were a good number of Muslims in the area, but I felt as safe in Medan as I did in Bali.

We stayed in Medan for one or two nights while we got our feet under us. While we were there, we got to discover a couple things with food. First was the Chinese restaurant where they bring like twenty little dishes of things to your table. You eat what you want and then anything that has been touched, they charge you for. This was very confusing for newbies, so we tasted a few things and ended up paying more than we would have liked, even though we didn’t finish the things we started. They take all the stuff that isn’t touched and put it right back in the bowl or pot with everything else. Not my favorite sanitary thought.

The other thing was avocado ice cream and an avocado chocolate shake. There are a few flip-flops on this side of the world. For instance, Aussies can’t picture the idea of mixing the “savoury” peanut with the sweet jam, where it is sometimes hard for us to think of savoury dishes like Phad Thai would contain peanut butter, which is more often paired with sweet.

Avocado is one of those things, but especially at this kick-ass restaurant where between the two of us we chose avocado ice cream split and an avocado chocolate shake, which was absolutely to die for. Sounds weird, I know. But somehow it works.

We took another day to laze around Medan (we’ve become professionals at lazing around) and then we decided to head to Lake Toba, which was an island in the middle of the lake, and supposedly very beautiful. On the day we were to leave, we were told that we could leave right away if we really wanted, but that if we waited for noon, there was someone else going that way and it would be a bit easier. We waited, since we really aren’t useful doing anything else.

The other couple finally showed up (they were late and seemingly entirely unaware) and we loaded up. We had seen them before—we had commented on his totally enviable grasp of the Indonesian language. Our intent in coming to Indonesia was to learn the language, but when we found out we only had a month-long visa, we decided it was more important to see the country. They were pretty cool and relaxed, but more like marijuana relaxed. Not that they were that obvious, but it wasn’t far-fetched to say they definitely smoked pot.

They were really cool though. And I say that slightly judgmentally, but also slightly admiringly. He seemed to be genuinely cool, where she seemed to be trying a little harder to impress you with her coolness. They had pretty awesome tattoos and the most laid-back attitude. She had an awesome skirt with drawstrings to bunch it up in the back, which seems weird, but actually ended up looking great.

Anyway, we had plenty of conversation with them. Which is to say that I said a few things, but the extroverts out-talked me, as always. I worry sometimes about being with Joe in social situations, because I’m not sure if his extroversion is good for me (by getting me to partake in conversations because he is able to keep the conversations going) or bad for me (by allowing me to be quiet because he fills all the empty conversational space because he gets uncomfortable very quickly with silence). Whether it is good or bad though, I rarely get bored listening to him ask some of the best questions. He’s really good at that.

When we rounded the ridge that went down and met the lake, we gasped. It was so beautiful and green! Maybe I am more drawn to lakes than other people in the world because we’re from a land-locked state, so we played in lakes as kids, rather than an ocean.

When the driver dropped us at a little café, Joe and I sussed out the price of the ferry to get over and back, bought tickets, grabbed some quick lunch at the café, shopped for some fruit in the little market stalls they had probably just for the tourists, and within a few minutes we were on the ferry and headed over.

The sunset over the villages on Lake Toba

We booked online ahead of time (I think through Booking.com, but I don’t remember now). I wanted to book this other place on the island (have I said that this was an island in the middle of a lake left by a volcano?) but the place was booked until the last couple of days before we left the island. So we got this place that cost us more to get to by the ferry, since it was farther than the ferry typically goes. Plus, as I imagined, we were getting cheaper deals now that we were close, but we hadn’t known. Our cool friends got a place for very cheap. We were a little bummed that ours was so far from what seemed to be more of the town center, but it wasn’t that far, and it ended up being nice and quiet. That was a major plus, as the town center often had loud motorcycles and trucks blaring through with their horns, as well as bars pumping their music to stupid levels.

Have I talked about music levels before? It is my experience that many places in the rest of the world, they want to break their speakers. I found it in Ecuador and Spain when I lived in those places, and many of the other countries I have visited. And now all of South East Asia does it too! When local politics start ramping up here before an election, their method of campaigning is to get a farm truck, load speakers and megaphones to the back, and play music and propaganda as loud as possible. To the extent that you have to plug your ears if walking on the sidewalk as they pass. I know that I am a Type A personality and I don’t do well with high volumes, but the rest of the world can be absolutely absurd about it sometimes.

Anyway, so our little place was separated from the hoppin part, but I sort of liked this. The “chalet” we stayed in was simple, but had hot showers and a killer view, with the small front lawn ending in a wall that was lapped with little waves in the lake. Actually, Joe and I remember realizing how big and consistently spaced the waves were, which was confusing because it was a lake… not an ocean.

A photo by Joe of our lovely batak lakeside room

So we stayed at the somewhat more expensive, but nice place for the first two nights. We got to watch them install a new section of sidewalk there and their process impressed us. We had noticed the rest of their cement work had beautiful designs in them with small pebbles, which is what they were doing more of. They had the whole family helping, from the grandfather down to the 8 year old boy and they worked in the shade doing this project together and took their time doing it. It was so beautiful, especially because it seemed to bring them together and they said they had been building a bit more to their business each year—a sidewalk here, a new room there, and a shed to eat under.

 

The family adds new cement work

The day after we arrived, we walked towards the town. I imagine some people would find this to be too hot and too much work, but it felt awesome for us because it was slow and measured, and brought us closer to the people who lived and worked around us. We talked to a few kids passing by on their way home from school. Interestingly, one of them tried a sales pitch on us to try to get us to stay at his family’s guest house.

We asked about a few motorcycles to rent on the way past and finally settled on one that we bargained the price down enough that we felt like we were getting a reasonable deal. We agreed on renting it for three days, which you would naturally assume would mean 72 hour, meaning we would return it by noon on the 30th of August, if we picked it up around noon on the 27th. But she wanted us returning it the night of the 29th. We had been just about to hand her the money, but this was a deal-breaker because we knew we would get better the closer to town we got, so we almost walked. She caved and grudgingly said we could keep it until the next morning. We agreed to have it to her by at least 9:00 so she could have it to rent out early enough. 

Checking out the new wheels

Scooting around was so amazing! The thing was little, meaning it wouldn’t have been great on a highway, but for the little streets of Lake Toba, it was perfect! 

The view on the bike

Almost immediately after we picked the scooter up we saw our “cool” new friends walking. We stopped to chat with them. They were staying at one of the more well-known hotels on the island and invited us to come over for a “lobster feast,” which we said we would be in for maybe a kilo to share.  Joe and I thought that might be fun, especially because it would get us into something social. We thought it could be our splurge. We agreed on a time and they told us the place. We said see you later and headed off.

We grabbed a bite to eat in one of the little active strips, then headed off into the hills. It was so beautiful. And it felt so great to be puttering around and exploring on our own without having to barter for transportation. It was very freeing. 

A schoolboy flashes the peace sign on his way past

We rode up pretty high into the hills. Joe drove for most of it, but part way through the way down, I took over driving. It was really hard for me, especially with a second person on the back. Driving by myself was easy as, but with Joe on the back, I didn’t have enough weight to throw around for balance. I took it very easy. We were rounding a corner and I was a little close to the edge. I felt the balance shaking, but made the split second decision that it would be worse to over-correct than to just ease off onto the side of the road. I was wrong.

We were lucky. We were going really slow when it happened, though supposedly Joe said that as we were getting sucked off the edge, I accidentally gave it more gas, which made the crash a bit worse. Joe got his pants scuffed up and had a tiny scratch on his leg. The scooter had luckily been in an accident before on the same side and already had pretty serious scratches and a cracked mirror from it.

I had it the worst, but even then I was lucky. I had small scratches on my hands, a couple of cuts on my toes and one knee, and then a larger chunk of road rash on my right knee. My pants, sadly, were done for. I had been wearing my new favorite pants, which were like Aladdin’s Jasmine’s green ones, only these were a bright blue color with big circular motifs every so often. I loved them unexpectedly, probably because they fit me surprisingly well, especially considering I didn’t know I could wear that color successfully. They were pretty shredded.

The minor but painful road rash

And sadly, after I checked that Joe was okay, the pants were my first lament. Haha. Joe also seemed to be annoyed that I wanted us to pick the scooter up and pretend like nothing had happened when other motorcycles passed. Maybe that was weird of me that I cared too much what other people thought, but I wasn’t ready yet. I was still trying to deal with the stinging knee, my sadness at having endangered us, and the shock of the crash. Trying to have social exchange with a stranger seemed impossible. Joe was kind and acted as if all was okay when a couple of locals drove past on their scooters.

I didn’t hit my head and was wearing a helmet, but I now can’t remember much of the crash, honestly. I am actually frequently worried about my memory these days, but maybe I only recently noticed a difference just because I have had someone around me basically all the time who remembers conversations I have no recollection of. So it isn’t out of the ordinary for me to not remember something. I would imagine the shock didn’t help my old brain cells to function normally.

We went back to the hotel to clean up. I was sooooo thankful Joe wasn’t hurt. I would have felt like such a shithead of he had gotten more hurt than the small scratch. I already felt like a shithead, but his having escaped most of the damage helped a bit.

We didn’t have any rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to disinfect, so I had to use soap. It stung, let me tell you, but I knew that cleaning the wound out really well as soon as possible would be the best thing for it, so I clenched my teeth and scrubbed as carefully and thoroughly as I dared. I got out the first aid kit that we have been carrying with us since we left home. We had sent a lot of it home when we had sent our packs home in Bali, so I didn’t have as many supplies as would have been convenient, but I had had the foresight to leave in plenty of small Band-Aids and a couple of the large ones. I put anti-biotic ointment on, a large bandage, and then tied a scrap of my now dead pants around the knee to keep it really protected. Though it was hot enough to wear shorts to our “lobster feast,” I put on my long pants. I wasn’t ready to talk about the embarrassing crash!

The night hanging out with them was a little strange. We had a hard time finding the place, but finally did. Our cool friends were nowhere to be see, but there was a German couple that had been on the ferry with us on the way over. They were short-term travelers, which we have come to see as very different from us. I don’t mean to create a divide, but we were finding frequently that the people we were meeting who were just on a month-long holiday (and yes, basically all of the rest of the world takes holidays in terms of a month or more, which is wildly different from the pitiful handful of days most Americans get) liked to stay in nicer hotels, eat more and fancier food, and spend more on beer and a good time. We on the other hand, know that our time out and about is governed by our bank accounts, so we focus on that more.

The Indonesian man running the barbecue night was busy washing and preparing the lobster. And when I say lobster, I don’t mean the huge kind you would see in restaurants. These looked more like crayfish, or crawdads. Still our cool friends were nowhere to be seen. Finally the German guy went to knock on their hotel room door. They were sleeping, blissfully unaware of the time or the fact that they had people waiting on them.

We started to realize right about now that we weren’t just going to be able to be like, oh, we want just one kilo. Nope. We were in for a third of the eight kilos they had gotten, meaning we were going to owe something like $40-50. And at this point, there was little we could do. So we feasted on our fair share and pretended like nothing was wrong.

I wasn’t drinking much, partially because I knew my mood was too unstable to really support it. Maybe I’m learning. :) But anyway, the more everyone else drank, the less I really wanted to be there. I got more and more uncomfortable as it got later and the Indonesians seemed to fade, sticking around just to let us “party.” The girl kept pestering me to play ping-pong and pool, but I was feeling particularly self-conscious and the more she demanded I join them, the more intimidating it was. I was being a sour puss, for sure.

And to make matters worse, the poor Indonesian man who had been doing our barbecue felt like he had to stick around as host. He was obviously exhausted. The other Indonesians were finding couches and benches to lay down on. This would be really weird back home if people did that, but it is sort of part of life here. No one really seems to mind where they sleep and frequently it’s on benches, bricks, or weaved mats laid out just about anywhere. So it wasn’t that big of a deal when the Indonesians started getting horizontal.

But it was still a bit rude. You could tell that the guy just wanted the evening to be over so he could go home. When the girl couldn’t prevail upon me to play ping pong or pool, she suggested cards. I wasn’t interested in playing cards either, but I followed obediently. She asked one of the Indonesians for another beer. He went to grab one from the fridge, but the fridge was locked. He lightly knocked on a small door to the left of the bar area, but when no one answered, he came to report to this girl. She looked right at him and said she still wanted the beer and that he should wake the woman in the back room up.

I’ve come to realize after being with Joe that I have a very different view of sleep than maybe most people would. My dad when we were growing up was stressed basically all the time, and since he was a light sleeper, it was an accepted rule that if you wake dad, you’re going to get yelled at, so we learned how to be very quiet. And I wasn’t a great sleeper as a kid either, so I respected other people trying to get sleep and did my best not to wake them. Joe’s family, on the other hand, had the reigning rule of, it’s your own responsibility to get sleep, so if you can’t sleep through noise, then too bad.

Anyway, so maybe I have a drastically different view of sleep than most people, but I think even still it is super rude. She was demanding that someone be woken up just so she could have another beer. I did not want to be associated with the group anymore.

Thankfully, we didn’t last much longer together. There were a few attempts at games, but I think we all realized how painfully unfunctional the social group was. Joe handed over enough money to cover our share of the lobster and beer, which was a lot, and we said goodnight.

After a couple of nights at our first hotel, we were to change to another place that was cheaper and looked pretty nice online. It was a ways away, so Joe took our backpacks there first, while I stayed at our first hotel drinking a coffee. When he came back to get me, we got on the motorbike and headed towards the new place, stopping at a little tiny road-side restaurant called Rohanna’s Restaurant.

The place was dinky—basically just one room with a couple of bare tables inside and a couple more out on her back deck. There was a tiny little back room that she no doubt slept in, along with a tiny squat toilet bathroom, and a small closet-sized kitchen with a single burner and a tiny bit of counter-space. It all looked so clean and yet so basic.

I was lucky she had a bathroom in such a small place. Not only did I have a big wound on one of my legs, but I had also gotten the ol’ Montezuma’s Revenge. I had been taking pills for a couple of days using just a tiny bit of tap water (I couldn’t be bothered going to the top of the stairs to buy water), so I thought, huh, maybe I have been getting used to it. So the night before I had drunk just a bit more of the water. Nope, my body was definitely not getting used to the water. Let me tell you, having to use a squat toilet with no toilet paper and no bidet, just a faucet, bucket, and my hand… that shit’s unpleasant, pun definitely intended.

I liked the look of the fruit salad, which included avocado among other things. It was topped with passion fruit and freshly grated coconut. It was amazing. I ordered it and just plain rice, since I was so nauseated and wasn’t sure I would be able to eat anything else. As my momma says, BRAT diet when you’re sick—Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast. :) The fruit salad was a stretch, but it was sooooo good and I ended up being able to keep it down. 

The gorgeous fruit salad at Rohanna's Restaurant

It took the lady longer than it would have in a fancier restaurant, but the quality was amazing—so fresh. We promised to add her to TripAdvisor or Google Reviews. Sadly, I don’t know how to find her on the map (mailing addresses or physical addresses mean little in Indonesia), so I haven’t figured out how to leave her a five-star recommend. So for lack of that, I’ll tell my readers—if you happen to make it to Lake Toba, look for a small blue sign on the shore-front road that says Rohanna’s Restaurant. We highly recommend it.

Joe had told me the new place we were staying at (since he had seen it and I hadn’t) was okay, but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up too much. He did say he had a surprise for me there. So I was expecting a grungy room, but I had no idea what the surprise could be. When we rocked up and Joe took me down the stairs of the property towards our room and a little schmumpkin of a puppy came around the corner with a wiggly bottom and a tiny face, I got so excited! Puppy! Actually, I rounded the corner and there were five more little wiggly bums! Six puppies! Yay! 

Oh, hello human friend, we'd like to crawl in your lap
and kill you with cute.

Just look at that face!

Daw!

They would line up at the top of the stairs when I walked up

We went back to Rohanna’s Restaurant while we still had the bike, since it was quite a ways from where the new place was. I ordered the same fruit salad that included avocados. It was so amazing. As our food was coming out, our cool friends drove up and we waved. I was eager to repair the friendly atmosphere between us, because I knew Joe was mad that I had been out of sorts the night of the lobster. They sat down with us and eyed our fruit salad jealously and tried to order some as well, but she was out of avocados! They ordered something else rather disappointed.

We were able to talk and laugh a bit, which made me glad that they weren’t holding my hermit attitude against me. I felt good knowing I could repair it a bit. They were leaving the next day, so we didn’t think we would be seeing them again. We were a little sad to see them go, but at the same time, not totally. We wished them well.  They sent us to a recommended ice cream shot, where we looked out over the gardens that were so well-kept. 

Eating beautiful ice cream

We scooted around a bit and Joe was sure to give me the chance to “get back on the horse” and drive again. He’s such a sweetie like that, urging me to do things that are good for me. We actually are alike in that respect. For instance, we both challenge ourselves to spicy hot-ness in order to get used to it and we know it’s good for the body.

We witnessed the traditional houses of the people on the island. These were called batak houses, which looked a little like those Chinese junk ships (I think that’s what you call them). These batak houses were raised off the ground by four or five feet, had a ladder leading to the door, which was only about four feet by four feet that you crawl into. I’ve never seen the inside of the houses, but I imagine there isn’t much furniture, since the door is so small. The ends of the peak of the roof were exaggeratedly drawn up and out, like a cartoon almost. I assume this gives a high point for the smoke to escape, but then again, that assumes they have a fire or stove, something I don’t actually know.

 

An example of batak houses

We would drive past tiny little villages with the ancient faces of grandmothers, sitting on the front steps of the houses and looking out on their grandchildren running around. The contrast between the rat race of back home and the contentedness of a place like Lake Toba was amazingly clear.

The views at Lake Toba are pretty amazing, though admittedly it was very grey while we were there. In fact, Joe had noticed without noticing that he markedly missed the blue sky. Every day was grey and on the island was no different. You couldn’t see to the other shore almost the whole time, even though it was only a reasonable distance away.

And actually, this turned out to be a country-wide problem. Joe’s mood felt it in all of Indonesia and as we are learning now, the wildfires and the pollution are at a majorly dangerous level right now back in Indonesia and the government is having to consider evacuation for citizens. It’s getting that bad.

But maybe that is a good thing. I don’t mean to wish harm on the Indonesian people, but I noticed that there was almost zero education about the environment. The place doesn’t have enough infrastructure, meaning that they burn their garbage every day—including plastics and Styrofoam! Every river and stream is an odd opaque of some hue, usually a flat green or dark grey, and the shores are entirely full of rubbish. You buy something at a dinky little shop that is already wrapped in plastic, and the store owner puts that into another plastic bag without even asking if you want plastic. In fact, we had to ask every time for no bag. They would put single items in plastic bags—things you could easily carry. And every drink came with a plastic straw even though cans and bottles are designed to be easy to drink out of.

I saw every age of Indonesian unwrap things, and throw the wrapping to the ground, without even thinking about it. This isn’t just the older people who had ingrained habits for many years! These were 6-year-olds who would unwrap a pastry and let the plastic drop to the ground. It’s wild to me. Just downright strange that no one even thinks twice about it.

I wish there were something I could do. Sometimes I feel like Joe is a better person than me because he still ramps up his enthusiasm and positivity. I don’t. I see Indonesia and other places in the world as completely hopeless. I think if you got every single Indonesian together one day and they each picked up garbage for 8 hours, it wouldn’t even make a dent. And then there is the issue that even if you were able to round up part of the garbage, where would you put it? It’s laying in the fields and on roads and piled up in sweating masses on sidewalks partially because there is nowhere else for it to go. Joe still sees the possibility for change, but when I see a six year old unwrap a Popsicle and let the shiny plastic fall to the ground without even a side glance, I don’t have as much hope.

I don’t condemn them though. The whole situation for them is self-perpetuating—public education is not exactly all-encompassing, there is no infrastructure for garbage collection, and the country is so full to bursting of people that I can see where it would be easy to not have a passion for saving the environment. I would feel like I was just a number (actually, I am just a number already, but a number with more space and access to resources than the people of Indonesia) and I think I would have a really hard time not feeling disillusioned. I would sure like to think that I would still be environmentally conscious, but I say that with a good education under my belt, and in the end, I think I would be very nearly in the same camp if I had the same circumstances as an Indonesian.

We notice a lot of babies while we travel in this area, and it makes me wonder why people are having them. And yet, at the same time, I know why they are. I think babies give meaning to people’s lives (though they are far from the only thing to give you meaning), and so I would imagine that it is the logical next step for the men and women who otherwise don’t have much here.

So we rode around the island, which was mostly quite a bit cleaner than other places in Indonesia. I wonder if that was because they consciously decided on clean, or if it just had to do with fewer people, less crowded, and therefore less strain on the environment.

Joe took the bike back one morning, early enough as to give them plenty of time to rent it out for the day. Our last day we spent in the area around our hostel since we had no motorcycle. It was really pretty pleasant to just take it easy. Joe loved doing his Duolingo, so he went to the café to get coffee and internet. I did a few things back at the hostel, like some reading and writing.

I went to see the puppies at least four or five times a day and they soon got really happy to see me each time. They would all come out of their little nests back in amongst the glass beer bottles and scrap wood, and would wag and wiggle up to me. I think that much cute could be deadly!

The next morning we were up at a decent hour (meaning it wasn’t 5am but it wasn’t noon) and were ready to leave Lake Toba. The stay had been very nice—puppies, lake views, scootering around, trying new foods, seeing the batak houses, and even crashing on a motorcycle was really part of the experience. We got on the ferry back to the other side feeling as though more than four days had passed.

The way back to Medan was fine, uneventful. This time we looked for a place a little closer to the airport. There was a very good hotel on Booking.com that was getting very good reviews, so we walked towards where it plotted it on the map. They had room, and it included breakfast and hot drinks, which was just lovely. When Joe went up to check out the room, he asked to open the curtain and the guy seemed hesitant, but Joe saw that it overlooked a military cemetery. This didn’t really bother us—rather, it looked very green and clean and was almost a pleasant site. The aircon was great, as well as the wifi. We went out shopping for a couple of things, but didn’t find much. We walked around the town a little, went to the golden arches for a treat, and took some photos of the Grand Mosque. Back at the room we washed a few clothes, had some coffees, ate some dinner, and then went to bed.

 

Back in Muslim territory where I put an extra shirt on for modesty

In the morning we packed and ran out the door, as we were just about to miss the bus that would take us to the airport. It hadn’t helped though. We missed the bus. Or at least someone told us we had, though that isn’t always the case in South East Asia, because taxis want to get your business. No matter though, we found someone who would take us straight to the airport for a good price. We hopped in his taxi and headed towards the airport.

Once we got there, we used the restroom, where we found some funny signs. Above the toilet is a sign with a picture that instructs users not to stand on the seat of the Western toilet. This was indicative of how differently Indonesia does it. Many Indonesians know nothing except squat toilets and if they saw a Western toilet for the first time, I would imagine their thoughts would be something like, “Oh gross, I have to sit on that seat where a thousand other dirty asses have sat?” I’ve come to appreciate a good squat toilet myself. Don’t get me wrong, I would still prefer a Western toilet, but there are some benefits to the squatting. Joe and I both think it’s probably better for your knees to have to squat so low every day.

Please don't stand on the toilet seat.

After checking in, passing security, and grabbing a quick bite to eat, we got on our plane and were headed to Singapore for four days! We felt very worldly just jumping on a plane to Singapore, despite the fact that it was only like a one hour flight.

Check in soon for the little blip about Singapore. Thanks for stopping by. Please be sure to comment and tell me something about your own story. Xx Emily