Travellin to Indonesia

[calmlife]

Hello everyone, I'm in the process of planning a trip to Indonesia for November and wanted to get some recommendations from those who may have traveled there before. What places would you suggest adding to my itinerary? I'd also love to hear about any local foods I must try while visiting. and any general tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[kangarunner]

Indonesia is huge. so many islands. I don't have any interest in going back to Bali. The women are just not up to my standard.

[calmlife]

Yes, I was reading an article about Indonesia from this site https://gowithguide.com/blog/indonesia- ... -know-5383 it says that it has the largest coastline coverage at 54.72 kilometers, which was pretty huge! That's why it has so many Islands.

Bali is on my Itinerary, I wanna know.. what's wrong about Bali? is it bad?

[kangarunner]

Bali is on my Itinerary, I wanna know.. what's wrong about Bali? is it bad?

Bali is overhyped on the internet. They make the photos look much better than it actually is. Too many tourists for me. If I went back to Indonesia, I would go to Lombok.

I'm not a gallivanting person anymore because I did it already and got all that shit out of my system.

[zacb]

Bali is on my Itinerary, I wanna know.. what's wrong about Bali? is it bad?

Bali is overhyped on the internet. They make the photos look much better than it actually is. Too many tourists for me. If I went back to Indonesia, I would go to Lombok.

I'm not a gallivanting person anymore because I did it already and got all that shit out of my system.

I know this probably does not fascinate you but I was able to get two girls to date me. I hope once I move to China I will be able to spend time with these lovely ladies.

[my life is trash]

Bali is on my Itinerary, I wanna know.. what's wrong about Bali? is it bad?

Bali is overhyped on the internet. They make the photos look much better than it actually is. Too many tourists for me. If I went back to Indonesia, I would go to Lombok.

I'm not a gallivanting person anymore because I did it already and got all that shit out of my system.

I know this probably does not fascinate you but I was able to get two girls to date me. I hope once I move to China I will be able to spend time with these lovely ladies.

I never went on a date. I tried but just got rejected. I’ve tried enough to know it’s over. All I feel is apathy.

[MrMan]

Indonesia is huge. so many islands. I don't have any interest in going back to Bali. The women are just not up to my standard.

It looks like I missed this one. I'll post for posterity.

If I wanted to go to Indonesia for a beach vacation, I might go to Bali or something like that, but more likely I'd want to go to somewhere I haven't been like Raja Ampat on Papua or one of those beaches in Ambon. I liked Lombok, right next to Bali. I had a short stop there before taking a puddle jumper to Sumbawa. Lombok had this smooth micropebbles for sand on the beach I was at. It wasn't as cool for waves as Legian, right next to Kuta, where I stayed when I went to Bali that one time.

If you are on the southern side of Sumatera, I have heard Kalianda is a beach in that area and that it's nice. I've been to the beach in Merak, which is a close beach (2 hours) from Jakarta that doesn't have water that is basically black. But i did see a turd floating in the water near a stream that let out in the ocean. Swim far from the stream if you go. Apparently, that stream was where the fishing was. There were lots of Sundanese, presumably, young people fishing there. One of them was in an innertube. Fish like turds I hear. Then they ate the fish. The circle of life.

If you give some more specifics about where you are going in Indonesia, that might help (or where you might want to go next time.) On Sumatera, I kind of liked seeing Padang. I went to the beach from the Maling Kundang legend, about the kid that became a sailor as a kid, and returned to the beach as a rich merchant, but when his mother wanted to talk to him, he pretended not to know her. (I can't remember if she cursed him) but after that he turns to stone in the story. There is a stone maling kundang there with his ship (a university art project.) It's a famous story. There are lots of vendors there, or were, and a tiny island nice off the coast. But when I was there, the beach was full of trash, sadly. They are missing out on a serious tourism opportunity there. That's not right in Padang, but near. Padang/Minang/Minangkabau food is definitely worth trying, one of the favorite cuisines across Indonesia. Manado has another interesting cuisine. Javanese food is all right. The really good sate is sate Madura, with the sweet soy sauce and peanut sauce. Sundanese places might be good for fish.

It's poor man's food, but if you get a chance, try kangkung cooked with tauco, that is water spinach with fermented soybean. That's a side to eat with rice and fried chicken or fried fish. They might serve some tempeh-- fried soybean rectangles or fried tofu with it. Their tempeh is better than tempeh in America. They cook it with coriander, usually, I think, or crunchy with batter as a road-side snack.

In Sumatera, if you like hiking in the mountains, you could go to the Bukit Tinggi area. Visiting a little Batak village near Lake Toba is interesting. If you go there, ride the nice fairy that is open on top and more expensive rather than the transportation boat if you want to go to Samosir. The open-top boat is a lot more expensive (still cheap). There is a big market area with old style houses up on stilts as a part of it. They want to chart you to see the Srigaligali puppet show with a story about that wooden man being used to cheer a king up after his death. I think I went up in one of those houses. They are similar to Torajah houses if you make it out that way.

I went to a village right on lake Toba that had these cool trees connected by what looked like horizontal tree limbs. But when I went to climb it, I got odd looks from villagers who thought a spirit in the tree guarded the village. I was going to climb anyway because I thought that's stupid, but it wasn't my tree, so I realized I probably shouldn't. I didn't want to start an incident with the group I went with. This wasn't a tourist attraction, just I trip I took with people off a boat we rented from Muara (over 20 years ago.) If you know someone, you could go to a village in Toba and see a coffee plantation and water buffalo walking around. I don't know of any paid tourist trips like that. If you flew in, probably it's probably from Silanggit. I took an obnoxiously long trip by road from Medan. I took an obnoxiously long bus trip to Padang from Jakarta (bus on a ferry from Merak to Bakahuni, and a bus from Padang to Bukkit Tinggi. I also went to Pekanbaru and Riau on that trip. This wasn't a 'touristy' thing.

I haven't done a lot of touristy stuff outside of Bali. Bukit Tinggi had some stuff, like the Japanese Caves, actually Tunnels, a historical tore of a plus-shaped bunker dug underground during WWII. Someone told me about an overnight hike to a lake on top of a mountain. I suggested it to my wife, and she declined, back before the kids.

Bali has a lot of stuff for tourists to do, prepacked, where you get a seat on a van and drive up to see the terraced rice paddies, stop in the monkey forest, that kind of thing. Avoid the shopping tour unless that's your thing. I lost a day on that. There were people renting boogie boards on the beach, a zoo, hotsprings.

If they still have those Lonely Planet country guides, you can read that and come up with your own cheap vacation going to local parks and attractions in a lot of places.

Balinese women not up to your standard? Well, they are there own ethnic group. You might like ethnic variation elsewhere, but they look similar to Javanese, IMO. Manado people tend to look a little more Chinese, and some are mixed a bit with Spanish. But they look more Chinese. There are ethnic Chinese on some of the island.

I ended up with a really good-looking Indonesian woman whose pretty face and thin frame are holding up well as she gets close to 50 (a milestone I passed.) Honestly, though, among thin young women, I'd probably find more lookers in a group of American girls or Chinese or Korean girls. American girls tend to be fat so there may be more pretty girls in Indonesia because of that. Indonesian girls seem a bit curvier than some of their north Asian counterparts (e.g. almost no butt or whatever.) But then some of them have that kind of stout frame even when they are thin, but they also have thinner-framed ones. It's not that different from the US in that regard. But you don't end up with a whole country of pole bean shaped women.