What we learned in Indonesia

We only got a small glimpse of the huge country Indonesia during the month we spent in this country. Indonesia is a country consisting of 1000ands of islands and we only visited two of them: Lombok and Bali. But definitely we got a good impression what Indonesian life can be on this two islands and also how different it can be to our habits.

Here some Indonesian curiosity we came across:

How to fill up petrol on Lombok?
This is very simple on Lombok but you have to find out first how it works. In every small village you find lots of wooden racks with some bottles with yellow liquid in it. First we thought they are selling some kind of own brewed liquor but as we once asked it turned out to be petrol. They keep the petrol in one liter glass bottles so that they can measure the quantity when you buy it and they empty the bottles into your tank. Very simple and a good income for the people therefore you can find them everywhere. Petrol stations as we know them from home are only in the main town so you are very happy to find this small stalls.

What to do when you are sunburned after surfing?
We used two bottles of sun blocker with 50plus SPF during our two weeks surfing but as the sun is very strong near the equator and we couldn't go surfing early morning because of the tide we couldn't prevent to get some sunburns. But what to do when the legs are red and it hurts sitting down but there is no store around to buy aftersunburnlotion? We got innovative and asked the locals and they showed me how to us fresh aloe vera which actually grew in front of our bungalow. It is very easy as long as you know the plant. You take a leave open, the skin and rub the slurry, jelly inside onto your burned skin and let it try on your skin. It was like a miracle. It cooled down perfectly and the next day the sunburn was nearly away. Fresh aloe vera was definitely the best thing I ever used for my sunburn and it was for free.

What to do with dry skin?
After two weeks surfing my body lotion was already finished so nothing easier than that I thought go and buy a new one. But this turned out to be a problem because I forgot that here in Asia people love to have white skin (not tanned as we do) and all body lotions, creams, body soaps have whitening detergents inside. So I had to wait until Singapore where we found a Carrefoure with imported products and there they sold small bottles of Nivea body lotion without whitening. Thanks to Carrefoure and Nivea my skin is now not dry anymore but it costed me a fortune (double the price as a whitening cream)

What to do on a island with no freshwater?
On the small Gili islands they don't have freshwater on the island and they are too small and far away to pump freshwater from the neighbour island. So no freshwater can be a problem but luckily they had lots of stores where they sold bottles of freshwater to drink. But all the rest was done with salty water from the sea. So in the hotels you had to shower your salt water away after your day at the beach with salt water out of the shower. And our clothes got washed also with salt water. This sound more horrible than it was. After a day you got used to it and after the week we spent on the Gilis and went to Bali I missed the burning feeling in the eyes while showering.

What to do when no electricity is there?
On Bali and Lombok no electricity is a daily event because they don't have enough power plants on the islands. So at peak times during the evenings normally there was a blackout. So the restaurants cooked either with wood (on Lombok) or they cook with gas (Bali). And for the light they had candles (Lombok) or a gas generator in the back (Bali) which made some electricity to generate the lamps and fans to cool down a bit. So we had romantic dinners over candle lights on a regular basis already.

Booking a flight from Bali to Lombok?
Yeah booking was easy. We went to a small agency and booked our flight from Bali to Lombok. He handed us a small paper with some handwriting scribbles on it as a receipt. And this was it no ticket, no print-out, no E-ticket number. We argued with him that we need something more official but he told us we will be fine at the airport. So we had to go with this scribbles to the checking counter and with no problem they checked us in and we flew safely to Lombok. We never thought it will work but things can also we handled very simple.

What to do when hungry on the airplane?
On the small airplane we had to go from Bali to Lombok they didn't serve food but some small snack and it was a snack the Indonesians love as we could see from the faces around us. It was peanuts covered with garlic past. For us it sounded very odd but as we were hungry we tried them out. Definitely you have to be a garlic addict when you like this things but as everything smelled of garlic we ate them to have the same smell as our surrounding

Pics from Indonesia

Finally we could upload our pics from Indonesia. See below our surfing and wedding pics and here are some more...

Beaches at the south coast of Lombok


Relaxing at the beach after surfing

Gili Island the paradise in the tropic


Green Bali


Rice fields in Bali

Sunset growd at Kuta Bali

Better late than never... Shanghai pix

We left Shanghai already a couple of weeks ago but here are some pictures.


To the left the Shanghai World Financial Center (yes the one that looks like a bottle opener)

A view from 492m heigt to Shanghai

Sunset at the Bund in Shanghai

The girls

Muscle pain and a wedding

Early surfing at 6 in the morning

Blogging is truly made difficult here in Lombok. The internet connections are so slow, it's a fight. So pictures will have to wait for now. But what happened since our last post:

Ready to surf

We just finished now two weeks of everyday surfing in the waves off the beach of Gerupuk in Lombok. As total beginners of course we had no idea that Lombok has one of the world's top surf spots. It's called Desert Point and the huge barrel waves are so intimidating we were happy that our surf spot was rather calm and the 2 meter waves we tried to surf were just ok.

The first week was a bit painful, since we had to paddle like crazy and did not catch so many waves (but swallowed even more water...).

Ralph on the waves and waiting for it

Luckily our super guides helped a lot pushing us into the waves so we could slowly learn to balance a bit on the board.

Then after one week of daily surfing, our muscles were aching, but stronger. This meant we could paddle quicker to catch bigger waves and started to stand more and more on the board. It was great fun and we hope that during our further travels we can find more surf spots to keep up with the waves. But for now we are just glad to relax our muscles for a day. Tomorrow we will head out to the Gili Islands, a couple of small islands just of the coast of Lombok.

Internet connection probably will be still slow there...

Apart from surfing we were lucky to get invited into a local wedding here on Lombok. Since it was our first Muslim wedding, we had no clue what was awaiting us. We were just told, that we have to wear Sarongs (long towels) bound around our waist. We then drove packed together with 15 other guests in a micro small bus on bumpy roads for about an hour to the groom's place.

Here we got served tasty local dincluding beef curry, banana tree slices and jack fruit all eaten only with the right hand because the left one is dirty and the asian toilet paper.

Then we learnt a bit on how the wedding goes:

The groom abducted the bride and took her to his home for a while. Then his family holds the ceremony which is the actual wedding. Only then, the bride's family is informed and the price for the bride is negotiated. Once the deal is clear the groom's family has to pay the agreed price (often old Chinese coins, food and cattle) and the official part with the guests starts.

So here we were eating with the other guests, when suddenly a strange car appeared that was actually a set of huge speakers on four wheels. From then on it was rather difficult to talk to each other, since the enormous speaker boxes sent loud music around and kicked off the march. All the guests then walked with the groom and the bride (both somehow looking bored) from the groom's place to the bride's house.

As soon as we arrived on the bride's place everything seemed to be over in a split second. The music stopped and all the guest just went away and that was it. Interesting approach... The wedding however will go on for the two families of the bride and the groom: the next day will be an introduction from the two families to each other. Since they have not really met so far they will have a whole day together of eating and getting to know each other. Since all the weddings are following this procedure, everyone knew what was going on apart from us... but it was a great experience, though we somehow did not fit into the crowd:

The bride's place was a small village that was not used to people from Europe. The local women somehow got crazy about Evelyne. They all wanted to touch her like she was from another planet. And since Evelyne was such an attraction they dragged her 'on stage' to dance with the music. Luckily no one was interested in me...