Fio's Travel Blogs, Travel Reviews, Travel Profile

English (the American kind, although it's become significantly internationalized over the past 10 months), plus formerly near-fluent German which is now passable, and formerly passable Italian which is now not very good at all.

My first full-on Indonesian bemo ride, hurtling down the mountainside from the small town of Sempol in East Java. It was already full when I climbed in, and we continued to pick up more and more passengers on the way, with me in greater disbelief at every stop (of course the driver was getting paid for each passenger, so it was in his interest to take on as many people as possible). I tried at least twice to get a proper headcount and failed each time, but I swear that at one point there were at least 20 women, 8 men, 10 children, everyone's luggage, 5 bundles of wood, 2 bundles of grass, and a bicycle in, on, or hanging off of a vehicle not much bigger than a normal minivan. It was basically a clown car packed to the gills with Indonesians ... and me. After giving up my seat (itself a stool barely a foot wide positioned right next to the open door) so 2 old ladies could sit down, I spent the next 45 minutes hanging out the door, fighting for a toehold with both the elderly man standing behind me and a 20kg bag of rice (needless to say the bag of rice wasn't giving way, and the old man also held his ground pretty damn well). I had an ear-to-ear grin on my face the whole time, except for the frequent occasions when I was fervently praying that we wouldn't roll going around one of the hairpin turns or after hitting one of the crater-sized potholes...

after an eye-opening, mind-boggling, 15-month+ jaunt around the world, I'm now in Norwich, England doing an MA in Development Studies. once that's finished: who knows (but it's a safe bet that it'll include more traveling)...