When the plane landed into Yogyakarta Indonesia, I was starting to get insanely excited. You know that craze when the pilot has literally just turned off the engine and everyone suddenly stands up, impatiently ready to open all lockers, rushing to get out .. but “wait a second, they need to open the doors first?”. Well, this time one of those ludicrous people was me! But hey, apart from the name of the city, I literally knew nothing about this place so I couldn’t wait to get out of the airport and find out what exactly I had just gotten myself into 😀 ! I was speed walking along the corridors with an almost stupidly addictive smile on my face, eager to get out there and dive right into the real juicy part of this journey!
As I was walking out of the airport, I was trying to order a Grab to take me to my hostel but a couple of smiley Indonesian guys helpfully told me that it ain’t gonna happen 😀 … unless I walk up to the main road. Who would have thought that Grab which is the Uber equivalent isn’t very welcomed in most cities in Indo and a lot of areas, like this airport, don’t allow Grabs to get in at all. Anyway, with a slight worry that my roaming was gonna die, I headed towards the main road hoping I wouldn’t have to walk all 11 kilometers to the hostel 😀
Honestly though, as I was making my first steps into the city, I could feel the culture shock coming at me as fierce as a crowd on Black Friday trying to break into a store 😀 “What the hell is this mad traffic?, “What’s that smell? Why is it so dirty” … WTF”. I’m telling you, it came crashing. Talk about not having any idea of where you’re going 😀 I had this image in my head of beautiful scenery with fresh air and volcanic tops peaking out from all sides but the scooter chaos of this place literally kicked me off my fluffy dreamy cloud! I was rushing to get to this main road allowing my lungs to fill up with “fresh”, or should I say “petrol infused” air.
Luckily, I got my Grab and within a few minutes, I was on my way. My driver, as sweet as he seemed, spoke no English so I just stared out the window trying to figure out how exactly people could drive so close to each other, and we’re talking scooter next to scooter next to scooter, without ever crashing! A few times people were getting so close to my back window that I even felt I had to turn around so make them less uncomfortable, but Gosh! could they possibly care less 😀 . It was totally mad and kinda funny! I could swear no one followed any rules. You wanna go left? – Just go! Wanna turn right? – No need to signal, just turn already 😀 I had never seen anything like this! But what really fascinated me was how perfectly relaxed people seemed. Not a single pissed off face. No manic beeping or lines and lines of swear words filling up the air 😀 It was the definition of a perfect chaos and I kinda liked it!
The taxi dropped me in this tiny tiny alley, right in front of my hostel (the legendary Mango Tree Dipudjo), waved me goodbye and was on his way! The service sure was on point! But Gosh! Was this a hostel or a total shhhhole? The place had a lovely looking garden and tiny but super pretty rooms, on Booking.com, but sadly not in reality 😀 As I was just about to step in, the owner who seemed like a nice man, asked me super kindly if I can take my shoes off! Immediately I thought to myself “You gotta be kidding me, my soles are surely cleaner than your floor”. But as every well mannered traveler would do, I showed respect and took my shoes off 😀
The place was so dirty I felt grossed out just standing there, not to mention sleeping in or taking a shower. Mold was covering most corners of the house and it had sure taken over the entire bathroom! The breakfast bar or should I say the little cupboard top, was “perfectly” layered with grease whilst bread crumbles were leisurely flying all over the few things they had put out for next day’s breakfast. So you can say that I was pretty damn shocked 😀 But it was getting dark so I had to suck it up!
I couldn’t kick out all the thoughts that were coming to my head though!
– “Is this what the next 3 months will be like”
– “Shhhhole after shhhole?, Sleeping in moldy dorms and having a questionable toast for breakfast?”
– “I can’t possibly do this!!!”
– “The whole point of this solo trip is to meet people so how the hell am I gonna meet them if I can’t stay in shitty dorms like this, what if all dorms in Asia are like this”
– “So fkkkk’d”
I needed to get out of the house! It was dark and I had no internet so I couldn’t exactly venture out a lot! After passing a few meat only street food stalls and spending good few minutes trying to cross the road, what a pure luck that was! 😀 , I gave up and picked the only vegetarian thing I could find. There was the sweetest woman making all kinds of pastries, who not only gave me the warmest smile when she greeted me but even tried to explain what the various things were. I chose a couple of freshly baked banana and chocolate pastries (yum), handed over my few coins, wished the lady good night and headed back full of gratitude and weirdly already feeling much happier.
I got back to the hostel to what was now a much fuller house with another 3 travelers sitting in the garden in the company of the hostel owner who was actually an incredibly helpful guy. Sure I can’t give him much points on the house cleaning front 😀 but regardless, he was nice. I was desperate to talk to some people so I immediately joined them and we talked and talked until we were all so exhausted that we went to bed!
As I was falling asleep, I was thinking that regardless of how shit the dorms were, it’s the connections with the people that really made my day. For the few hours I had spent in Yogyakarta, I exchanged stories and travel plans, bonded and linked up with people so we can stay in touch and was starting to adjust, or at least I was getting there haha ! That’s when I realised that no matter the dorms, no matter the traffic, no matter everything else that I’ll come across, I’ll bond with people and that was the only reassurance I really needed on that first day!
The next morning I had some of that questionable toast, packed my bag and got the hell of out that hostel 😀 As soon as I walked out, all of a sudden I saw the same alley now full of … chickens 😀 ! YES, I mean actual chickens … you know, the kinda birds we only see in farms and our grannies’ village homes in Europe, not the Asian ones running around on the streets, playing it the European equivalent of stray dogs 😀 For a minute there I thought someone must have lost his chickens. I mean how else could you explain the amount of chickens that were casually walking about 😀
Then I realised these chickens ruled on the streets 😀 I giggled so much! The pure craziness of having chickens, making their way in between the people was so insane, so comical and so Asian … and yet, I loved it! I knew that was just one funny, crazy weirdness of many that I’ll come across in Indonesia and that I absolutely loved and couldn’t wait for more! That’s what the first few hours in Indonesia were like – crazy, weird, dirty, smiley, funny, mouldy and chicken-ey 😀 and I couldn’t wait for more!
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