When I tell people I live in Indonesia, they picture me living in a cute beachside bungalow in Bali, spending my carefree days working on my tan and sipping fruity cocktails. Guys, I hate to break it to you, but that’s most definitely not my life. Jakarta is a gray, sprawling, traffic-snarled metropolis. And though a…
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…
When most budget travelers think of Bali, the first thing that pops into their mind is, “It’s too expensive!” As a long-term, frugal-minded traveler I came close to skipping Bali altogether during my two-month trip to Indonesia. Guidebooks and friends alike warned me that this world-famous island would be way too pricy for my $40-a-day…
The first time I rode a motorbike I was terrified. I was vacationing in Hawaii when my family peer pressured me into renting a scooter. Though my family views me as both a laid-back hippie and an adventurous traveler, I am actually a pretty anxious person. So I was petrified as I swerved my scooter onto the highway and…
By the time we arrived on Nusa Lembongan my boyfriend, Aaron, and I had traveled through Southeast Asia for exactly 203 days. For nearly seven months we’d lived out of backpacks, cohabitated in tiny (and often grimy) hotel rooms, and spent virtually 24 hours a day together. We’d proved that we rock not only as…
I kicked off my flip-flops, waded into the warm Balinese water, and clumsily hoisted myself onto a rickety 20-foot boat. The motor grumbled as we forged into the deep-blue ocean, the small vessel bobbing up and down on the ocean’s rounded swells. The journey would take nearly two hours, but despite my slight nausea I…
If you’re a vegetarian, eating in Southeast Asia can be frustrating to say the least. In Vietnam, I can’t even convey how many times I repeated the phrase “no fish sauce” just to smell the overwhelming aroma of nước mắm (fermented fish sauce) wafting from my bowl of vegetarian phở (Vietnamese noodle soup). In Thailand my requests for “no…