Hunting surfboard

I had a nice birthday party on friday. Got 2 cakes and was offered quite many birthday drinks, yay! It seems that I've got to get used to eat different sort of cakes and sweet things here. We usually have a piece of chocolate cake or other bakings as a dessert in our dinner. My friend Pete (aka. Pistis-Pulla) would be in heaven.

I woke up 10:30 in the Saturday morning, feeling fresh of course. I soon headed towards city to check out the surf shops. I wanted to buy a surfboard, preferable 2nd hand 8foot longboard. After 3 hours and all major 4 surf shops I was a little bit hopeless. It's really difficult to find a 2nd hand longboard because they are usually immediately sold away. I found one 2nd hand longboard with a price 500$ but I think I can get a new one with 600$(~370euros). Why, oh why I didn't buy a surfboard from Bali. Could have gotten one around 100-200euros.

I'm thinking about taking few surf lessons. It's 45aud for 2 hours in redhead mobile surf school. The school owner also offered me a force 8 foot softboard, board bag and legrope. Cost is $600.00 for the package. That might be the best offer I can get.

Guys are playing music at the pool and that's where I'm now heading to. Oh, I might have forgotten to mention that it's 10meters from my apartment to the pool.

Student life

I have succesfully started my schoolwork in Australia. I have classes from monday to thursday, so I have an extended weekend. So far the classes seem similar to ones we had back in Finland and perhaps the only bigger difference is the interaction between the professor and the students. On all my 3 courses the prof usually asks lots of questions/opinions from us students and it seems that the aussies are quite keen to answer. In Finland the lecturer usually has to bribe the audience (with chocolate/alcohol...) to get some kind of conversation.

My courses are:
International business and finance: Concentrating in international affairs, multinational companies etc. The lecturer has a strong mid-eastern/indian accent and it really takes a strong effort to follow. Apu the shopkeeper in Simpsons has the similar accent.


Macroeconomics II: Gets a little bit deeper in the macroeconomics than the basic course I had back in Finland. There are 2 lecturers, the first one is an american guy whose english is really easy to understand and the second one is a woman who speaks with an african accent. The latter is hard to understand, but I think I'm gonna get it after few classes.

Machine intelligence: I'm trying to get this part of my major degree in software engineering. It's a course containing more than just the artificial intelligence. Course consists of machine learning, automated reasoning and logic, search and prediction in games, evolutionary algorithms, adaptive robotics and there's also some topics about neural networks and brain mechanisms. It seems that course puts lots of weight into mathematical issues. The professor is easy to follow, but the topic always isn't :)

It's my birthday today. I had few beers when the day changed with my blockmates and there's going to be a bigger party in the evening. That's one of the best reasons to live in campus, there's always something happening. For example one peaceful evening I was sitting in front of our house and chatting with a japanese girl Akari. The surroundings were totally quiet excluding the normal surring of cricquets(don't know how to spell this one). Anyways, this campus security officer arrives from nowhere and askes us if we've seen a naked guy running around. Due to my strong respect towards the authority, I didn't have guts to say that in Finland it's one of our national sports to run around naked and do somersaults into the snow.

Moving in Australia

I have now been a week in Australia and what a great country it seems to be. People are actually as friendly as they are said to be, which I found a little bit confusing because I have used to the silent finnish atmosphere. Here you will constantly hear things like "hello mate" "how's it going" etc. when walking along the streets. An australian phrase "no worries" was also a little bit surprising to me in the beginning but now I've even using it myself.

I'm living in the international house, which is located at university of newcastle's campus area. I have my own room but the kitchen and bathroom are shared. No worries though, because my 5 roommates seem to be really nice. I have 2 korean girls, a guy from Singapore, a guy from Hong Kong and a local Australian guy living in the same unit. It's a great way to experience about different cultures.

The campus seems to be in the middle of forest/jungle and there's lots of animal life around. Criquets start their "buzzing" in the evening and different kinds of birds make noise during the morning and day. Since I'm not an environmentalist and don't know much about species I won't probably recognize all the animals. Anyways, I think I've seen an owl, a kakadu(white parrot), budgies and of course spiders.

I just finished my orientation week. We had a great opportunity to make new friends in the campus and our school during the whole week. Last saturday I was on a dolphin cruise trip in Nelson Bay and was actually lucky to see some of the beautiful mammals. Temperature has been over 30 during the last days and the humidity is really high. It feels quite hot even after 6 weeks travelling in Asia.

Last evening when we were sweating like hell in the humid weather meanwhile trying to cool us down with cold beer, we found 3 redback spiders under our terrace chairs.
Redback bite symptoms: "Common early symptoms are pain (which can become severe), sweating (always including local sweating at bite site), muscular weakness, nausea and vomiting. Antivenom is available. No deaths have occurred since its introduction."

It seems that you always need to check under the armrests and other dark places if there's a venomonous beast waiting...

Last days in Kuta

We surely spoiled ourselves in Kuta. After too many days with nasi goreng(fried rice with vegetables) we ordered a nice big pepper steaks and soon after that had a dessert big mac. Well this was too much for my stomach and I decided to leave Matti enjoy his healthy dessert and headed to our hotel which was around 200meters from this international eating place. Unfortunately I just started walking 180 degrees in the wrong direction. I was getting a little bit nervous when I didn't find my hotel and there was a growing pressure in my stomach. Well I decided to make a master move and took a taxi. I wasn't clever enough to notice that we were on a 1-way road. So the hotel was 200 meters behind me and taxi had to drive around the entire block to get me to the hotel. It took 1.5euros and 15 minutes in a traffic but it was a cheap price for seeing the astonished face of Matti when I stopped next to him with a taxi.
Yes, and I made it in time.

We also took our first surf lessons. Needless to say that it's fun. The waves were quite small when we took the lessons so it was quite easy to ride them with a longboard. With high self-confidence I rented a shorter board during the next day and I really experienced that it's not going to be an easy task to become the expert surfer. The waves were much bigger and I was actually totally exhausted after half an hour fight in the washing machine of collapsing waves. Now day after all my muscles are very sore and I feel like beaten.

Well I'm looking forward for the waves of Newcastle and I'm surely not going to let them beat me...4 hours for departure towards Sydney.

Gunung Batur

We headed towards Toya Bungah which is a small base camp for trekkers going up to Gunung Batur and other nearby mountains. First we headed north from Tulamben towards Singaraja and bought a charter bemo from north to the central mountains and Toya Bungah. The driver was a guy around our age and was driving a public bemo for his job.

We were stopped by the police. The driver was a long way away from his usual bemo route and was now scratching his head and explaining to the police where he was taking us. Well it is illegal to take the bemo out of your registered route but with 30k rupiah(~2.5euros) the police seemed to be happy and we got onwards. Things just seem to work a little bit different here than in Finland...

After usual hassle with touts we managed to find a nice place just under the volcano. We had to take a guide to go up to the volcano and it cost ridiculous ~20euros for us and included breakfast. We were trekking around 5-6 hours and the first one and half hours were the most exhausting with the climbing of 700m elevation to the summit which stands at 1717m. It was a little bit cloudy but later on the clouds vanished and we managed to enjoy the superb scenery. We left towards Kuta on the same day. Our first plan was to go to Bukit Peninsula in the southernmost Bali but after normal arguing started with the drivers we just couldn't stand it no more and decided just head to Kuta and spoil ourselves in luxury accomodation of Masa inn.

USAT Liberty Ship Wreck, Tulamben, Bali

I took one dive to the liberty ship wreck in Tulamben. 1 dive was 25usd and you could get two dives for 40usd.

We started our dive with the local dive master around 8:30am. The visibility in the shallow was around 5 meters so it wasn't ideal time for snorkelling. We descended to 25meters where the visibility got much better. One reason for this was that the cold current brought some fresh water from depths and took away the plankton. The marine life around wreck wasn't anything spectacular at the moment. However I managed to see some garden eels and pipefish for the first time.

The wreck was really massive and you could get inside it. It was amazing to see old ladders and hatches now being rusty and swallowed by coral. I heard a rumor afterwards that toilet in the ship is really clean and not worn out like the other parts of the wreck but unfortunately I didn't manage to check if it's true.

We went snorkelling with Matti after my dive. I just wore my boarshorts and collided with some kind of jellyfish, tangling to it's burning tentacle. It hurt. The marks in my neck, left hand, stomach and right leg remained for 3 days.

Getting from Ubud to Tulamben in Bali

I haven't laptop with me so it's quite difficult to update my blog realtime. Luckily Matti had a laptop with him and he was able to make entrys to his blog while we were travelling. You can find finnish version of our journey from his blog.

From Ubud we took a Bemo(a public transport, pickup, minivan, bus) to Gianyar and it was not a problem. 10k for two persons. The bemo towards Semarapura left from the same place where we were dropped off in Gianyar and the price was again 10k(87 euro cents) for 2 persons.

Things went a little more difficult beyond Semarapura. We wanted to take a mountain road which goes from Rendan to Amlapura instead of going a straight road from Semarapura to Amlapura. So we had to take a 1 stop more in the north near volcano gunung agung. According to lonely planet there is a bemo connection from Semarapura to Selat and from there to Amlapura but we didn't found that. Instead of that we went from Semarapura to Rendang and hitchhiked a truck from Rendang to Selat. We paid 2k (15-20 euro cents) to the truck driver for a 10km drive.

We noticed that there was some kind of hindu festival going on somewhere near and all the bemos were full. It was actually impossible to get a public transport from Selat to Amlapura and we decided to do a little more hitchiking. We managed to get a drive from a family who was going to temple. It was quite bizarre to sit in the same car with an indonesian family who didn't spoke any english and who were dressed in sarongs and other temple 'costumes'. We tipped 10k for the driver for driving us from Selat to Amlapura.

Amlapura was one of a shithole. Everybody asking for money and even one good place to eat. We went to a one restaurant that was on a lonely planet's map and this is what happened: The waitress was sleeping when we got in. After she got awake we got our menus but when we were still looking the menus one guy from the street brought cold satay(beef on a stick), soup and rice in front of us. Well menu was taken away and that was our lunch. Well we didn't eat the cold meat, tasted the soup and finally just ended up eating the plain rice. The whole set cost almost 2 euros which was ridiculous. Everybody should avoid Amlapura!

From Amlapura we had to pay around 2 euros to get to Tulamben. Even when we asked to be dropped in front of our hotel the driver dropped us out in front of his friend's hotel and we had to walk a little bit to find our place. Very nice with 30+ degrees and 20kgs on your back.

Well we actually found our way to Tulamben and booked a bungalow just next to the famous liberty ship wreck. The twin room was around 6 euros. The place was really quiet. There was only 1 family and like 1-2 tourist more than us. The 'advantages' of the off-season.

I decided to go diving next day and see what's that wreck all about...

Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia

Nusa Lembongan is just a small island eastern side of the Bali. You can get there by boat from Sanur in Bali and the trip takes around one and half hours. It's really calm place without too much traffic and there's some great diving and surfing to be done.

I did 2 dives with World Diving and experienced my first drift dive(around 3 knots). It was a drift strong enough that you couldn't swim against it. Only you could do is to control your bouyancy and go with the flow. Diving in Lembongan usually includes atleast mediocre currents.
During the dives I saw a turtle and napoleon wrasse among the many other fishes. Unfortunately it wasn't the season for the famous sunfish(mola mola).

During my stay I went trekking around the island and it took around 6 hours with a lunch break and all the wandering around. I had lunch in the dream beach at sunset villa resort where I could enjoy a wonderful view of waves hitting against the high cliffs. I also went to nusa ceningan which is very tiny island next to nusa lembongan and they're connected with a small bridge. There was not much but angry dogs at Nusa Ceningan, trying to scare me, because they probably though me as an imperialist invader. The invader I surely was, truly superior with my trekking boots which could take me anywhere I wanted, and overcome any barrier.

I met Matti today and now we are in Ubud. Went to see the local lekong dance which was nice. However tomorrow we leave to east coast of Bali, because not much to see in Ubud either. Atleast if you're not into arts.

Kuta, Bali

I travelled from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore by public bus and it was painless and cheap. I had a full booked australian airlines flight from Singapore to Denpasar in Bali. First I headed to Kuta, because I wanted to see what's the center of the tourism in Bali is all about. Well I didn't have to seek the answer for long...

Kuta during this off-season is what you get when you have a massive tourism industry and no tourists. The local people are trying to make their best to win the world championship title in bullshitting tourists and they are doing very well. Neither Thailand or Malaysia is any comparison to Indonesia in this game. Here's some samples you're likely to hear many many times: "Transport!", "Motobike, cheap, only for you my friend", "Massage! Foot, shoulder, good", "Hello sir/boss, You want some?", "Why do you buy from there? They are japanese, I am from bali. 21 years in bali!", "You can't walk, roads closed, ceremony, motobike only", "You can't walk, too hot, your legs burn, motobike, transport?", "You can't walk, police will stop, only with local, transport?" .....

Well I still stayed 4 nights in Masa Inn, Kuta, because I have some traveller problems with my stomach. However I managed to go to see the famous nightlife in Seminyak which is a bit north from Kuta. There was a club with bungee tower, pool and big video screens. The club was called double six it was completely empty at 1 am but at 3 am there was lots of people. The reason for this was that the double six was open till 6 am and the other clubs were closed at 4 am. The prices were quite high in Indonesian standards. Beer around 2 euros, drinks around 4 euros and entry a bit less than 5 euros. The tourism industry was seen also in the club. Lots of ladyboys and girls from Jakarta(Java) and other parts of Indonesia having a "holiday" and buzzing around the white guys.

I think nobody should spend their vacation in Kuta even if the beach and waves are nice. It's just ruined by all the bullshitters and big tourism industry. And there's always chance for another big bang.