Pagi di Jakarta

"Selamat Datang di Jakarta," the billboard greets you as you scramble out of the plane. Welcome to Jakarta. The arrival hall was spacious and homely - I always like that Indonesia injects its culture in forms of batik or wood carvings around instead of modernizing too much into the wonted aesthetics of an International airport. Out of the hall, the sultry weather hits you. Much like the heavy humidity of nearby cities.

Head over to the queue for Bluebird taxis, climb into one, and off you'll leave Tangerang.

We stayed in a quiet neighbourhood the subdistrict of Kelapa Gading, right across of Mal Kelapa Gading. Navigation in a taksi is uncomplicated - lurus, lurus, lurus, kiri ini, kanan itu. When traffic slows, the taksi pak looks up into the rear-view mirror, smiles, and says, "macet". When you get off, he stops his meter, he counts the bills and we all go "terima kasih" before closing the door.

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This is the first of a story series of my time in the cities of Jakarta & Yogyakarta over the past weeks. Some times were sleepy, some times were fun - in the various categories of fully unadulterated fun, panicky spur of the moment thrills, and completely horrifying experiences that didn't go wrong. I'm not a consistent writer and I know that, but as much as I can, I want to keep my eternize my adventures through an amalgamation of words and pictures.

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lurus: straight
kiri: left
kanan: right
ini: here
itu: there
macet: traffic jam
terima kasih: thank you

Vid'o Vancouver

Music: British Columbia by The Elected

If you're looking to gain a Wilderness Explorer badge, I would highly recommend Vancouver for a head start in the finest boy scout trails. With the luxury of having friends from the city, we went further north up of Vancouver and were spared the supposed horror of taking public transport (from what we had heard, at least!) during our time in the city. Though... it wasn't like we were within Vancouver city itself, or did much exploring of the downtown region. We were close to nature at all times, even staying opposite a baseball park and blowing the seeds off all of its daffodils.

If you like to drink water off a stream, learn about native history, marvel at the many shades of mountain blue and start daffodil-destruction wars with a pal, we explored Squamish mountain, beautiful Whistler, and took an accidental 2 hour hike around the Simon Fraser University campus.  If you're very game for extreme sports like mountain biking and kayak down a waterfall (or if you're really just there to check out hot people do thrilling stuff) - head to Whistler and Squamish again.