Day 1 in Indo!!

I rose at 6.30am on Friday, the 7th of February after a sleepless night to get to Adelaide airport at 7.45am. Mum, Dad and I were soon met by Michelle and Lia who came with a very special card and bracelet (see below). At 9.50am I flew to Denpasar and landed about 6 hours later. I stepped out the plane and hopped onto a bus. I knew I was in for a crazy adventure when the driver couldn't close the bus door and the guy standing just inside of the door held on a bit tighter as we drove off. Once I got into the Denpasar airport I knew people at home were praying for me as I peacefully bypassed the NON-VISA queue of at least 2000 people and continued onto the KITAS queue where there was a queue of 1 person! I thought it was too good to be true! I then exchanged my $250 for over 2,500,000 rupiah! I'm proud to say I am now a millionaire! Woohoo!! After waiting for 3 hours I boarded my 1.15 hour flight for Jogjakarta and landed about 4pm (7.30pm Aussie time). The bird's eye view of Jogja was beautiful! I could see roads lined with black and white striped gutters, luscious, green trees everywhere, rice paddies, colourful Indonesian buildings and hills covered with green trees in the distance.

Thankyou Michelle, Lia, Laura & Jordana! <3

On the way from the plane to inside the Jogja airport I met up with 2 girls from Sydney and 1 from Melbourne doing the same ACICIS program as me. They were very good at speaking Bahasa Indonesian and booked a taxi to Universitas Gagjah Mada which cost us $1.30 each! Interestingly, the taxi driver was listening to Katy Perry and Bruno Mars which was pretty cool! The traffic was pretty crazy! I think people just made up their own rules, especially our driver! I was surprised to see some buildings fairly wealthy European-styled, buildings with two stories and huge white columns, others were very small, crowded and basic. I could see the huge inequality between the rich and poor within Jogja. There were so many stalls on the sides of the road which sold jackfruits fruits, mobiles, helmets... you name it and they probably had a stall for it!

We reached the university which is huge! It is so big that we soon realised were at the wrong uni hotel and our taxi was driving off! The porter chased him down and packed our luggage in the boot again. We then drove to the formal entrance of the uni which seemed like we're entering a new, small city! There were two, huge metal pillars on each side of the road, toll gates, manicured gardens, a huge building with an Asian-styled, red roof (it looks very important). Anyway, we finally signed in and set-up our stuff in our rooms. My room is fairly nice. It has two firm beds, an air-conditioner, a TV, a private bathroom and free wifi!

I met 3 more people in my program that night 2 girls - one from Canberra and one from Melbourne and one guy from Perth. As a group, we went on our first adventure to find some dinner! After crossing a busy road we found some food stalls and decided to go where the locals were. The soup they were eating looked delish! However, it was made up of parts of goat that I could not decipher and prefer not to eat! We autonomously decided to move on! Emma bought a fairly large meal of satay chicken and rice for $2 which was wrapped in newspaper. We soon found a small restaurant on the side of the road which was under a bamboo roof. It had wooden tables and seats and sold little parcels of food wrapped in banana leaves. I tried a vegetable stir-fry parcel, a mild tofu green curry and rice parcel, and fried vegetable patty since the meat options were not refrigerated. Remarkably, this satisfying meal on cost 70 cents! We went to bed at 9.45pm (1.15pm Aussie time) exhausted but excited for our new adventure around Jogja the next day!