East & Southeast Asia Trip 2019 (Part 1)

I’m definitely on my travel journal kick right now. As well all know and experienced, 2020 put a halt on most people’s travel plans. Juan and I have been talking about the time where we get to travel and experience other countries again. But it still feel so far away from now.

I personally felt extremely trapped in the first half of pandemic quarantine 2020. I am not an American but watching the rest of the world closed their borders to United States travelers (UNDERSTANDABLY) was a source of intense frustration for me. I am an immigrant and have been treated as such (not really by people I know, but generally) over the past decade of living in United States. I have a legal status in the United States but wasn’t able to vote for a proper leader, Yet, I am still being treated by the rest of the world (including my home country) like I’m the citizen of United States because I live in the U.S. The so called “First World Country” where a lot of people in this country are denying that Covid-19 is real. They weren’t willing to wear masks because it is “taking away their freedom” and the “leaders” of this country spent their time undermining the scientific community. All the steps PERTINENT to get all of us out of this pandemic.

It is a complicated and hard feeling to digest.

I have dreamed about becoming an American ever since I moved here 13+ years ago and in the past few years I realized: The America I dreamed about was never truly real. There’s relief and gratitude in learning the truth, but there’s also intense grief that comes with it. The grief comes from being told directly and indirectly: “If you don’t like America, then go back to where you came from”. This grief came from pouring my heart into my old friendships back in Texas and being told those words. Furthermore, I am realizing that I am still an immigrant to some of them despite constantly being told otherwise. “I’m not racist, if I am, how could I be friends with you?” was one of the few hurtful comments I received. I won’t even try to elaborate that kind of statement, it is a bit of a waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I am actually one of the few fortunate ones considering the climate we are in. I have cultivated great friendships (despite the few bad ones), a great life with Juan and our Jasper. I am still making a living during the pandemic. I have so much to be grateful for, and I AM GRATEFUL. At this time, I am still trying to make sense of all my feelings and where I want to go from here. But I wanted to share this experience of going back to my home country with Juan for the first time. We were lucky we got this trip down before the pandemic, and so grateful to be able to look back during quarantine and dream of better days ahead.

Tokyo Transit

We wanted to take advantage of the transit-stop that would naturally happen when traveling to Southeast Asia. We could have stopped in South Korea or Taiwan, but honestly, we did miss Tokyo and wanted to properly explore S. Korea and Taiwan on properly dedicated trips. With that being said, we stopped in Tokyo before headed for another 10+ hours trip to Jakarta.I have not traveled home for years at the time and was very much fatigued by the time we landed in Tokyo. Juan generally doesn’t enjoy flights and especially long flights as well, so overall, it was a good call. We had dinner and then head back to the hotel to just hang out and decompress for the next day. The next day was all about Yokohama. If you read the Anniversary post, we felt like we didn’t do Yokohama justice. So we both voted for a do-over and glad for it!

Yokohama is so bright early in the morning. We couldn’t go back to sleep after 4am and ended up waking up early. Jetlag. We thought, might as well head over to Yokohama and see how much food we (ahem, I) can shove into our mouths. It was really really pleasant to be back in Tokyo again. The air, the public transportation, the people and everything about the weather that day was just lovely. I think we are also carrying anticipation for spending 10 days with my family almost 100% of the time. A little thing to point out, Jakarta (and generally anywhere in Indonesia) requires one to drive. Public transportation is a bit tough there as the city spreads out wide and traffic is maddening. Hence why we will be spending 100% of the time with my family.

Anyway, back to Yokohama for now. I had time to handletter this during our flight. After that, we mosy around town a bit before going to Juan’s favorite Ramen shop again - I did take a picture, but I’ll spare the sharing of the picture. We’ve seen that ramen before, it is still delicious as ever though. We only spent 2.5 days total in Tokyo before gearing up for Jakarta. The rest of the time we just kinda enjoyed the city as is without anything super planned.

Jakarta, here we go!

Juan has never been to Southeast Asia before. It is not dissimilar to Colombia in many aspects: weather pattern, ingredients for food, etc. Both countries lie along the equator afterall. But, Jakarta is a beast, to be honest. Sure, I was born there but I moved away to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when I was young, so it still takes getting used to going back to Jakarta. The people are nice, the weather was a bit hot, even for me. They did say November is the hottest month of the year, and I tend to believe them. I was born in Jakarta Utara (North Jakarta) which is where my parents still lives, even though they did sold our childhood home for a smaller and more manageable space. The one thing that is always a bit nerve-wracking is traffic and the way the streets work in Jakarta (or any major cities in Indonesia) No one will follow guiding lines on the streets, and if you try, boy, you’re gonna get a whole lot of honking, or worse, into accident(s). We were quite lucky that my parents are such an adept drivers from years of driving there.

Anyway, we spent a bit of time in Jakarta seeing some of my extended family, visiting my grandfathers’ resting places and spending time with my grandmother-my mother’s side. She is pictured here. She has the greenest of thumbs, I swear. All her plants wrapped around her beautiful home. While on the other hand… I’m just so horrible with plants. 😭

Needless to say though, spending time with family means food. Lots and lots of food. Maybe I should also casually mention that my dad has 15 siblings. Yes, you read that right. 15, more impressively, one mother, my late grandmother. We got to see only a fraction of my extended family from my dad’s side before we head over to Yogyakarta and then Bali. Bonus pic: Juan eating soft-serve ice cream at one of the malls. I swear he is incorrigible, and I say this tenderly.

A cute thing to mention, Juan loves this dish (pictured below) called “Mie Kriting” which directly translates to Curly Noodles. You can kinda see the curliness of this type of noodles. He spent a lot of his time looking at my parents - they speak a little english - and saying “Mie Kriting, like. Mie Kriting, eat eat!” It was, very very cute to see them interact with each other.

Yogyakarta or “Jogja”,

We took an hour flight to get here. A little back story about my childhood in Indonesia. All throughout my childhood (up until 11), every school summer breaks we would road trip from Jakarta Utara to Kuta, Bali. Jogja was one of the stops we would make because of Candi Borobudur. Candi Borobudur marked a lot of beautiful moments in my childhood. I got the travel bug quite early in life, and I remember running up and down the stairs of Borobudur (which, is frowned upon if you are an actual adult, but i was a kid so I didn’t know lol) even as a child, there’s magic attached to the place. So, going back to this trip, we are stopping here just so I can share that moment in time with Juan.

We also stayed in a really sweet hotel in Yogyakarta, Hotel Tentrem. I am swelling with pride as I’m writing this because my country, Indonesia, is a beautiful country. Rich in culture, arts and beautiful, kind and warm people. No country is perfect, but I do find myself appreciating Indonesia more and more as I grow older.

We even went to a spot where we ALWAYS stop during our road trip when I was a kid. Juan really enjoyed the food there as well. After food, we walked around Malioboro street where all the street vendors congregate. It was a good way to end the night. Forgive me, we ate so eagerly that I didn’t take pictures of the food we ate. haha.

Unfortunately, day 2 in Jogja consists of Juan feeling awful. We weren’t sure why, but the poor guy just had to stay in bed not feeling the greatest. We had food delivered into the room and they are thankfully good food. We just hunker down and hope for his sickness to not last for a long time. We did have to cancel Candi Borobudur, which was disappointing in a way that he won’t probably get to see this spot unless we made it a point to come back here. But, things like sickness happens during travel, and at the end of the day, we have to roll with the punches of life. The poor guy though, he felt bad, i felt bad.

The next day we had a few hours in the morning before catching a 3pm flight to Bali. Juan is fortunately feeling MUCH better and ready to explore the bit of the city before we had to leave. So we decided to head to Candi Prambanan*. When we were there, they are going through a bit of reconstruction after an earthquake few months back. It feels so good that Juan got to see what is magical about some of these old beautiful temples in Indonesia.

*Candi Prambanan is a 9th-century Hindu temple compound in Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, dedicated to the Trimūrti, the expression of God as the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer.

We walked around the temple and ran into this man who sold sets of whistles: each one sounded different and one of them sound like an actual duck. So, if you know Juan, Sound Designer man that he is, he is so ecstatic to buy many sets of these for himself and all his sound people to record and play with. It was really cool to watch him interact with this man trying to figure out how it all works. Just like that, our days in Yogyakarta is over and we head to Bali!

Bali, Indonesia

The haze of sweet childhood summers! That is what Bali feels like to me. It was pretty darn hot but it didn’t bother me because here I am two decades later. I am bringing my favorite person in the entire world to see where I spent my childhood running around on the beach making magnificent sand-castles and swimming in the ocean. Writing this, I can smell the ocean smell and the warmth on my skin. This was a happy place for me as a child.

We spent the first three days of Bali in my cousin’s Airbnb located in Ubud. My cousin was there for a bit as they are building a new resort that recently (as of late 2020) opened. We enjoyed a morning swim on the private pool and he brought us some food from local place he frequented. It was so delicious. After early lunch, we decided to head over to Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud. I’ll share pictures here. I have mentioned monkeys in Indonesia in my previous journal post. It is true, the people who works at the Sanctuary would tell you to pay attention and not leave things hanging off your bag, or head (like your sunglasses) because these monkeys are MISCHIEVOUS! They are really cute though and it was lovely to see them freely roam the grounds.

If you didn’t notice, there is a picture^ of penis bottle openers hanging on MANY of the shops in Bali. I wonder if they’re a thing there ever since my childhood or if it is new? haha. But, yeah, I saw them and was chuckling a little bit. Anyway, we closed the day out with reading by the pool and enjoying the relaxing weather.

The next day, we were invited to go enjoy breakfast at a resort nearby. My cousin is getting himself familiar with the resorts around town. And this particular one is really really lovely. I’ll share some pictures down here. They have all kinds of amenities, private pools room and also those flower baths… they’re so so so beautiful.

Mrs. Simmons was one lucky lady. 😍

We then packed up and said goodbye to Ubud because we are now headed to Dreamland Beach, Bali area. Along the way there we stopped at Kintamani, Bali, but I’ll write the experience on Part 2. Stay tuned!