Jogjakarta is like a sneaky little person with a lot of tricks up its sleeve. At first glance, it could barely call itself a city. With an international airport that just about works and a city so small that it spans around 32 square km, I really did not expect much out of it save the legendary Borobudur Temple.
The terminal building, which was just 50 steps away from our plane.Cue chaos.
A closer look, however, will reveal that there is so much more to the place than a mere small town behind its time. The city may not be massive, but the province stretched far and therein lies a historic place with rich culture and lively art scene.
As is customary in most of my posts, I will start my praises of any place from its food.
Some others go hysterical, or even come up with interesting theories surrounding a crisis.
For me, as long as the unexpected situations do not manifest themselves in the form of cockroaches, flying prawns (there really are such insects, I swear), lightning or someone tickling me from the back, I generally remain calm and composed.
Until the next day, when the reality of the situations start sinking in – I spent pretty much the whole day thinking of the events that happened over last weekend and playing every scene in my head. I think this is what psychologists would have analysed as a case of delayed shock (or in layman’s terms: v e r y s l o w ).
Before you jump into conclusions, nothing disastrously bad happened to me nor someone I know personally. But one thing was for sure: it was a very bizarre weekend.
I wrote in my previous post that I was going to have a weekend trip to KL for Future Music Festival Asia 2014. It was meant to be straightforward – reach KL early in the afternoon, get changed, head to the festival and take a bus ride back to Singapore the next day.
But of course nothing in travelling is ever that straightforward.
We reached KL two hours later than expected due to the traffic, and the moment I had access to WiFi from our hostel, I was greeted by a text from a friend informing me that the festival had been cancelled.
Cancelled. The festival we took a 5-hour bus journey for. The festival where Pharrell Williams was supposed to play! Poof. No more.
In our disbelief, we searched the net for more news and found a few articles confirming our news and when the official website finally released some sort of confirmation, we knew that it was time for Plan B. Except that we did not have a plan B, so we had to come up with something on the spot.
Apparently this A4 piece of paper is the only sign that could be found at the venue. Photo courtesy to ST Communities.
So I think it is of utmost importance that I write a guide of what you can do, should you find yourself stranded in Kuala Lumpur for 23 hours because the festival you came all the way for was cancelled at the last minute:
It is funny that ever since I started this blog in December, I haven’t actually been travelling. The only place I have visited since Christmas day was my hometown, Jakarta. Under normal circumstances, I would not count such as travelling. However, my latest trip back home was far from normal. Five friends of three different nationalities came along with me to spend a long weekend in Jakarta, which certainly had to count for something. Hence, this is my first real post-travel blog post ever since this blog was set up, and I am pleased that I am writing about my own hometown.
I remember fretting for a few weeks leading up to the trip, trying to plan a perfect getaway for my friends. Living in Jakarta for 17 years as a rather antisocial person meant that I was practically clueless about cool hangout places and interesting things to do. So it was really down to a bit of online research, asking some more experienced friends for tips and outsourcing the tour guide service to two of my friends that I managed to pull the weekend through, very successfully if I may say so.
As a reminder for myself, I have listed down the below of what I deem to be the winning recipe for my fantastic weekend in Jakarta.
Food, glorious food. Always fill the trip with good food. From artery-clogging sweet martabak, to a goat’s eye in milky soup to crispy curly fish – when every single meal is to be remembered, even if all else fails, the food will always be fond memories. After all, the closest way to a person’s heart is through the stomach.
Crispy, curly fish.An eye for an eye.Ingredients: flour, sugar, butter (loads of them), chocolate, cheese, condensed milk, more butter.
Aaand I did it – the 50 km cycle around Singapore. Something I have dreaded and looked forward to at the same time.
Tour de Singapore has been an exhausting journey, both physically and emotionally. While the physical tiredness from having to attend weekly spinning classes in preparation was very much expected, the emotional part came as a surprise. The pressure only came in much later, closer to the race – I was growing nervous and restless, unsure about the road safety and whether I would be fit enough to complete the distance. It was amplified by the fact that one of my friends who was joining the ride with me was no longer joining. It felt like I lost a bit of emotional support. It also did not help that half of the time I was wishing I had decided to forget about this whole cycling thing and join my friend on a 3-day football charity trip to Cambodia from 14th-16th Feb. (The title of this post at one point in time was dangerously close to be “Cambodia: Of Football, Happy Pizza and Fried Tarantulas” had I chosen to go.) But I had too much of a sense of commitment in me to quit halfway as tempting as the Cambodia trip sounded.
And I’m really I happy I went through with it. It was a well-spent 5 hours of my journey and looking back at all the preparation that I had done, it was the only right thing to do, really.
(Although after hearing the exciting stories from Cambodia, I did have a sliight regret, but hey, you can’t have everything).
So read on, if you want to find out more about what happened before, during and some observations that I reflected upon completing.
Last weekend was meant to be productive. I had it all planned out so well. In order to get enough rest post Chinese New Year, I cleared out the weekend for myself, and my laptop. It was supposed to happen this way: I would have come home on Friday, cooked a healthy dinner for myself, watched a few episodes of ‘A Game of Thrones’, slept for good eight hours, exercised the next morning, written a blog post, researched about my upcoming trips, watched a few more episodes of ‘A Game of Thrones’, uploaded Myanmar pictures on Facebook and so on. Basically a very productive weekend in terms of resting, researching and writing.
But I got home on Friday evening and got as far as cooking my dinner before my plan was shattered into pieces. I tried to switch my computer on and this appeared.
The blue screen of terror.
I like blue in general, but when it appeared on my computer screen and was just stuck there, it was the colour of a nightmare.
And that basically rendered my whole weekend plan useless.
I love Singapore, particularly because of how easy it is to get from a place to another. The country is small enough that you can get from one end to another in less than two hours by the train. This feature is especially important since we only have one Saturday and one Sunday – weekends should comprise of more days in a week!
It came especially handy today when I felt like I had so many things to do and that many people to see. I had a friend to meet for brunch, two friends to meet for tea and a bunch more to meet for dinner. The amazing thing was that even with such a packed schedule in a day, I’m glad that I managed to sneak in some time to check out the Aliwal Urban Art Festival, thanks to Singapore’s small size and efficient transport system.
I wouldn’t say I understand much about art and music, but they have always sparked my curiosity. In Singapore, the art scene seems to sprawl in the underground known only by a handful and appreciated by even fewer people, which makes it even more intriguing.
Although I didn’t get to spend much time at the Arts Festival, it definitely was one of the highlights of my day. When I reached the Aliwal Arts Centre, I was greeted by the loud music of ‘I am David Sparkle’. Definitely not my staple kind of music, but it grew on me with every song they played.
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