I’ve officially lived in Jakarta for six months. It’s unbelievable that six months have come and gone. At times it has felt unbelievably fast, at other times it has been painfully slow. My time in Jakarta has been thrilling, emotional, difficult and amazing – pretty much take any emotion and chances are I’ve experienced it….
Let’s be honest, Jakarta isn’t exactly a huge travel destination. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be included in your Indonesia travel itinerary (because in my opinion Jakarta is worth a visit) but the reality is that most travelers simply don’t venture here. And if they do it’s for a brief 24 hours. A side effect…
A funny thing happened when the calendar flipped from 2014 to 2015: I realized that my time in Indonesia is finite. I have eight more months here. And while some days that feels like an eternity, I know time will fly by. For the first time, I started to panic that I haven’t made the most…
Is it bad that I almost forgot it was Christmas? I suppose that’s what happens when you live across the world from home. This is actually the second consecutive year I’ll be spending the holidays abroad, and being away from my family for a second year in a row is a little bit of a bummer….
For Aaron and I, one of the toughest parts of traveling is that we are vegetarian. We both stopped eating meat in high school (long before we ever met) and we’ve both stayed true to our herbivorous ways for the past 14 years. Neither of us eats meat or fish and we have to be wary…
There a lot of quirky things about living in Jakarta but the one thing that I cannot get used to is Indonesia’s trash problem. To be specific, the overuse of plastic bags is the number one thing that drives me crazy about living here. I’m from California and I am, admittedly, a bit of a hippie. But as…
As I wrote in a previous post I was a bundle of nerves about my first ever solo trip to Penang. As it turns out, solo travel is pretty fantastic. And I was ecstatic that my three-day jaunt to Malaysia went off without a hitch – well, it almost went off without a hitch. I…
After I found out I was moving to Jakarta, I only had three weeks to fly “home” to California, pack my life into two suitcases, and get to Indonesia’s capital city. I didn’t have time to prepare or do the proper research about what to bring. I didn’t do much shopping back in the US because…
When I say I’m obsessed with all things travel, I mean it. I’m the type of person who will watch any movie or any TV show as long as it has something to do with travel. A bad horror movie that’s set in Colombia? Count me in. Andrew Zimmern is eating something bizarre in Peru? Hell…
My recent move to Jakarta, Indonesia, was a sudden one. I literally had three weeks’ notice to move across the world. My few weeks back home in California were spent shopping for hard-to-find items, freaking out about what to pack and cramming in visits with family and friends. Time flew by and I barely had…