A Perfect Morning

At least, it is, for me.

I wish it goes on forever.

Old Me Hold Me

Yesterday night I’ve made such a wrong, wrong decision. At noon I and my friends met and we switched some photo files of our trip to Yogya back then. When I rechecked them again at home, I’m checking other old photos as well, thinking that it will bring back lots of good memories but hell how I was so wrong.

Most of the photos that I managed to go through with were the photos I took back then in Japan, both when I did some traveling alone or together with my friends.

I’m just amazed that how can I laugh so sincerely, considering how shitty my days back then.

My often solo trip to One Piece Museum, which I've been eyeing for for forever. 

Strolling around Harajuku with my friend, Shelley, whom I missed so much.

Disneyland. Shelley. Argh.

Damn happy skinny bitch. Not my boyfriend fyi.

Gunma with this guy. Not my boyfriend also. At some point I wish, tho.

Korea, alone.

Hongkong, alone as well. Crayzy bithz is cray.

The more I browse some photos the more frustrated I've become.

I think I’m just missing my old, carefree self, that’s all. And I pitied myself for this.

Considering I’m gonna be in my end of 20s now, it’s just that being “carefree” comes with a lot of responsibilities afterwards.

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“I want to travel somewhere far away; however I need to save as well.”

“I want to quit my work and try to do some new things, however in my age right now I’m not in a place where I can be “explorative” anymore.”

“I’m ok with being single and carefree however somehow I need to settle down at one point, at least for the sake of my parents.”

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These excuses have never been in my head when I’m on my early 20s, however lately these thoughts start to creep in and somehow I have no power to fight them. I feel like I ran out of time.

Somehow I wonder if anyone’s feel the same…

And I Will Call You By Mine.

Watched a movie, and SUPER hooked.

Great great great movie, 10/10. How can I knew this movie just now??

Hands down, Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer successfully melt me down with their acting, and thumbs up as well for Luca Guadagnino as the director and most of all, Andre Aciman as the author of the novel (yes, it IS adapted from a novel). Genius.

Looking from the poster, you guys may have guessed, that....YES, this movie is rotating around romance between 2 guys. I'm not a pro-LGBTQ however this movie were SO GOOD that you kinda fall in love with them falling in love, with the chemistry between them, and with all the meaning they deliver. 

After the movie ended, I feel like I've just watched.. an art.

Every picture is a painting.

Is it better to speak, or to die?

Every scenario is a poetry.

I'm in love.

Pro tip though: not a with-the-whole-family watch material as there were some very awkward scenes inside.. 

But do watch them! 

I'm not gonna spill the summary here as it will be too long (do your own homework if you're interested) however here is the website that I found which explains some meanings inside some scenes in the movie; which blows me on. 

All in all, it is one of the movie which makes me feel shitty for several days, in a good way, of course.

All the pain, worth it.

Will try to get the book as well; if the movie were THAT GOOD, how will the novel be?

Super excited!

Will keep you posted and see you on the next one :)

*just a foot note that all pictures above were not mine.

H A P P Y

Just realized this morning that I’ve only had 2 posts on my 2018 blog archive, and it saddened me a bit because I remember that each week of 2018, I kept reminding myself to update my blog frequently however I seem can’t find even a just a little time to do this. I realize that my blog has not been my priority, at least until now.

Just recently I really miss writing some thoughts in my not-so-secret blog; a place to keep my memories present in a web somewhere where people can also enjoy what I’m feeling about. Being vlogger or youtuber seems to be more promising these days however blogging will always be my sanity place, where I can keep ranting and talking via keyboard and keep me mentally stable.

But now welcoming 2019, I think I will start to write again, somehow. To remind myself that my blog is all compilations of what I truly enjoy and makes me happy, and updating it makes me happy. 

Happiness even from the simplest form.

Just like this socks that I wore this morning.

From the book that I’ve read: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, she said that one way to make yourself happy is to spend – money-wise, can be - but more of like, use all the cute notes that you keep tucking away for collections, all the nice accessories that you saved for “later”, postcards which were usually kept on the folder, and so on.

Those things make you happy, so why not use it?

- and so I’ve thought this morning.

So I decided to use my Totoro socks that my brother gave me months ago – which I’ve been saving for “later”.

To a happier me, and no more "later", in 2019.

What to Eat in Disneysea (or What WE Eat in Disneysea)

Just so you know that last month I have this amazing chance to go to Disneysea again!! It’s not a big surprise really, as maybe this was already my 5^th or 6^th trip there however this is kinda more special as it was the first time I went there with my brother! It was quite an achievement at least for me, as this year, I managed to bring one family member to my most favorite place on earth (currently) and hopefully I can bring my mom and dad too. Hopefully next year?

However! This time I would like to focus on what kind of stuffs we ate there. Disneysea is quite famous for their food, either heavy foods or finger foods, and bringing my brother definitely gave me chances to try them all especially some of the famous one, as we can share some of the foods together (and a growing lil boy’s stomach is bigger means more variety of food that we can try).

So here we go!

The 1^st food that we tried is this 3 Little Green Men Mochi from Toy Story.

Price: 380 yen
Location: not fixed, around Toy Story area until Barnacle Bill’s (still inside American Waterfront Area)

*At the same time, introducing my lil bro, which will be the model for some of the photos.

You know that usually cute stuff didn’t follow with good taste; however this is the best dessert mocha that I have ever had in Japan! 3 pieces of soft and cute green mochi with generous vanilla, strawberry and chocolate filling. The trickiest part of this cute mocha is that the wagon location is somewhat keep changing. I usually found it in front of Toy Story area (around  2 times), and most of the times I didn’t find it at all (maybe sold out), but this time we found it in the front of Barnacle Bill’s wagon, it was right before the big bridge to Port Discovery area. We were lucky enough to notice a long queue in front of a wagon and bam! We saw that the green men was being sold was and directly queuing for it. Yumyum.

Finished with The Green Man, we went for a wagon called Seaside Snack to hunt for our 2^nd food called Ukiwah Bun.

Price: 500 yen

Location: Seaside Snack Wagon in Port Discovery

This is a swim-ring shaped shrimp filling bun that wrapped in a cute swimming Donald wrapper. The filling is quite a lot, and the bun is very soft. I read good reviews about this, and we can't deny it. It was pleasant and fulfilling. However me and my bro agreed that this was not the best food that we had here. There are some seats available around the wagon, allowing you to enjoy the bun and the pleasant view from this area.

After this, we didn’t find so much good stuffs around Lost River Delta, so we just continued our way for lunch in Arabian Coast, as we were quite starving at that time.

Our 3^rd food is our lunch, which is Curry Sets. If I remember correctly, it was available in Chicken, Fish, Beef and Combination of those 3.

Price: varies from 600-800 yen.

Location: Casbah Food Court in Arabian Coast

We ordered 2 Chicken Curry Sets (780 yen each), Salad (350 yen) and Original Lassi (350 yen), totaling 2,260 yen. We notice that the chicken cut was quite big, and the curry was delicious. What we curious about is the double carbs in one set as it have both rice and roti prata altogether (What’s wrong with Japanese and double carb, they eat ramen with rice too...).  Apologize for not taking proper photos, as we were both ravenous at that time we just remembered to take photos when our food was already damaged haha.

That lunch last for a good 2 hours more or less, and we continued to our 4^th food, which is Potato Churros, since my bro asked for one.

Price: 380 yen

Location: Churros Wagon in Mysterious Island

The least food that we liked here. As it was potato churros, the taste resembles French fries however this is like the big version of it, and the texture is softer than regular churros. However since it was quite a unique kind of churros, this is worth to try too. Maybe some of you will like it?

Since my and my bro were not satisfied enough with this churros, we went straight for our 5^th food, which is Cotton Candy Churros.

*Last photo so blur, forgive me

Price: 380 yen

Location: Open Sesame Wagon, in front of Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage attraction.

This churros is better than the potato version, and it was saluted with purplish sugar which taste like cotton candy (they said). This version of Churros is limited as it was part of the 35^th year celebration of Disneysea at that time. I assume that the wagon will be selling original churros when there’s no event of it. This was nice and we liked it!

Nearby the wagon is the Sultan Oasis area, which is like a small cafeteria that sells some snack. That’s where we buy our 6^th and 7^th food at the same time:

Easter 2018 version of Chandu’s Tail

Price: 500 yen

Location: Sultan Oasis Cafeteria

Chandu’s tail is one of the infamous foods in Disneysea, and this time they serve it Easter Special with pink ribbons (I can’t figure out what’s the form actually, rabbit?) and curry fillings. The normal version one has chicken cream fillings and orange in color with black stripes, but I liked the curry version as well. Should be considered one of the best food in Disneysea.

Vanilla Smoothie and Coffee Jelly Drink

Price: 500 yen

Location: Sultan Oasis Cafeteria

The vanilla smoothie taste like regular milk shake with coffee jelly toppings and choco powder. What I like is that it was not as sweet as I expected, and it balances well with the Chandu’s Tail. Perfect for hot summer weather. Oh, and this is the specials for 35^th Celebration Food too!

Not stopping there, before we went for our final show in Mediterranian Harbor, we went for snacks that will accompany us to watch the show:

8^th food: Garlic Shrimp Popcorn

Oh helloooo, Nemo!

Price: 350 yen

Location: Mermaid Lagoon

We are tempted to buy this because of the MSG aroma that lingers around Mermaid Lagoon, which area we have to pass in order to go to the Mediterranian Harbor. Couldn’t complain anything about the taste as it was good! Just FYI, the Curry Popcorn in Arabian Coast is much more famous compared to this one, however this time I’d prefer this one to try.

9^th Food: Gyoza Dog

Price: 500 yen

Location: Nautillus Galley

This one, I think, was the best bun that Disneysea’s have. It was a looong bun with lotsa gyoza filling, and most of the people hunted this bun a lot that they decided to move the selling place to a bigger area which is the Nautillus Galley. Since it IS big, I think this should be enough for dinner for most of the people.They have a lot of signage of this Gyoza Dog around Mysterious Island so I think it will be hardly missed. Nautillus Galley itself are quite hidden, as you need to go downstairs to get to the café.

Aaaaand that Gyoza Dog became our closing food that we ate in Disneysea. Since we are NOT like most people, in the end we went to convenience store around our hotel too to grab a very proper late dinner which was around 23.30.

Like I said before, I never had the chance to eat THIS MUCH before as usually I went there with my girl friends, which usually were not a good foodies. However, with my brother and his deep stomach pit, it was glorious! We got the chance to eat most of it and realize we spent 6,130 yen or around IDR 800.000 for all of this. Expensive, indeed, but all in all it was worth the experience! And taste, of course.

I can proudly say that most of the stuff that we ate here are some of the top items that people usually hunting for, so feel free to note them, hunt them on your next trip to Disneysea and share your thoughts!

Tips: don’t forget to take Entertainment & Information called “Today” Brochure when you take the Guide Map in front of the gate, as it has all of the information especially limited edition goods, foods, and special parade according to the event during your visit.

See you on the next post!

Climbing Mount Ijen and Bromo (part 3) - The Road to Bromo

After long waiting for updates (6 month of postponement again, Yolanda) I'll go through my 3rd and final day of trip, which is the main trip, which is to Bromo.

Yes, Bromo is the star of the trip however sad to say it was not as enjoyable and satisfying as Mount Ijen, the one that I went to the previous day. Maybe mainly because we feel that the path to Bromo were made easy because of the amount of tourist that went there; thus that "sense of achievement" of climbing is lost. Not to mention the sickening crowd of the whole area.

Just to make it short, as usual we start the trip around 4 at dawn, and we rode the Jeep to the first area to see the sunrise. We were brought to a hill called Love Hill, which were quite recommended to see the sunrise on. There's a little climb here, not a climb actually, more of passing about 50-70 stairs and that's it. After that anticlimax moment, we just took space for waiting and we wait around 1 hour until the sun came.

It's not the best photo, I told you, where most of them were taken with a mind to avoid people in the picture as best as we can.

The twilight were pretty awesome even though it's quite foggy that day. After a while the Bromo can be seen clearly once the fog cleared a bit and the day is getting brighter.

The down-climbing were a lot of homework, passing through the crowd like this..

However we managed to snap picture together on the other side of the hill before we climb down.

Satisfied and done with the Sunrise and Love Hill, we went straight to the next main attraction which is visiting the active volcano of Bromo. Its around 30 minutes by the same jeep, which brought us to nearest spot of Bromo's bottom parking area. 

From there it's another 30 minutes until 1 hour of walk to the infamous "Stairway to Hell".

Even though its was not that hilly, what makes the walk difficult is that the ground were mostly sand; thus make it harder to walk, not to mention the sand dust always catch our eyes, and the more we go near the feet of the volcano, the more rocky it is.

Soo, locals gave us solution!! Why not use horse to go to the bottom of the stairs??

It was quite expensive actually; unfortunately I kinda forgot how much that was but I think it's around IDR 50k-150k round trip depends on wheres your checkpoint when picking the horse). We're quite hesitant at first however since there's quite a lot of horse-user making crazy sand dust with their horse, rather be a victim of the sand-dust itself; we decide why bother walking and inhale all of the dust and just use horse instead, for health reasons..

So here my and my friends, taking horse..

Moreover, save time! 15 minutes only for maybe an hour trip.

And once we reached the stairway, we just patiently queue..

Managed to took several good photos too while queuing.

Once we reached the top, we saw the hole immediately. The volcanic hole were amazing and both quite scary. Not only emits sulphuric smoke yet the sound of whatever inside is very loud. 

After we're satisfied taking photos and awe-ing the volcano, we went down asap since there's still a lot of people queuing for the view. We use the horse again to go down the rocky hill and straight to the jeep parking area, which took us to the other two additional spots, which is Teletubbies Hill and Whispering Sand area.

Teletubbies Hill were actually quite ordinary. It was named that way as it consists of several sized hill that formed in a way that resembles the hill on Teletubbies movie. It was not that obvious but recognizable. We took several group photo as well since there's space to it.

As the day is getting brighter, hotter, and sandier, we just take off to the final location which is Whispering Sand area.

We didn't find any extraordinary thing on this area that day, where we think it was just a big flat plain sand area. However this area were famous since the release of Indonesian movie called "Pasir Berbisik" "Whispering Sands" (literally) which tells story about refugees making their ways across sand dunes, and there's this moment where the protagonist have a habit to "hear the sound of sands" in this ares.  And its is true since the locals say that during calmer days, you can hear the sound of the sand's friction that resembles 'whispers', which explain its name. Unlucky for us that it was quite windy that day we can't hear a thing.. 

Since this is our final spot and maybe marked as the end of our trip in Bromo, me and my other 2 friends took one last photo before we went back to our hotel and get cleaned.

All in all, it was such a mind blowing trip!!

Outside of how pain-in-the-ass hard cleaning all the sands from our clothes and shoes, this is just a perfect trip to stay away from the busy days of Jakarta even though it was only for several days. It is our reminder to keep exploring nature in some ways, as there are a lot more to be seen outside, aside from what we're doing on daily basis in Jakarta.

That's all guys for the consecutive posts about Bromo (which took me half of a year to finish it off, ffs) and see you on my next post!