My Sanctuary

Hi guys! A little while ago I posted about my trip home to Indonesia and holiday to China, along with my family. It was a good trip and I really enjoyed it. I needed to go back to Indonesia for the police and character check for applying for permanent residency in Australia. Of course, as I have stated in my previous post, I can do it in two ways, the official or unofficial way, by going back to Indonesia and take care of it, or having it done from here with some “help” from fellow Indonesians. It was a no-brainer to me, as I didn’t want to violate the law.

So I went back to Indonesia for taking care of that, and for holiday. My family planned to go to China, but you can see all those in the previous post. In this post, however, I will focus on the Indonesian trip, albeit with minimal pictures displayed.

I arrived in Medan, Indonesia, which is my hometown. A small, yet modern city, which is currently (as of 2011, I believe) the fourth largest city in Indonesia after Jakarta, Surabaya and Bandung. Now, despite the title of being the fourth largest, it is still a small town where you can go from one place to another with only 30 minutes maximum (unless you get caught in a mild traffic jam).

Telling the truth, I don’t quite like my hometown. It’s not as orderly as Australia, or even Surabaya and Jogja, and the humidity just soar through the roof. I had to change shirts every two hours or so. And not mentioning the people, so judgmental and not yet modernised. And both my parents know the fact that I don’t quite like being in Medan. The things that make me going back to Medan, are the fact that my family and my girlfriend’s family live there.

This time in Medan, I had the chance to meet two of my best mates, one of them currently live in Medan (he studied in the UK, though), and one of them studying in Kuala Lumpur. We hadn’t met for years, and it was such a pleasure to be able to meet them. I also asked my other friends to come by, but they couldn’t (with their obviously obvious reasons). I guess that’s what separates best mates from friends, huh?

I also had the chance to go to Surabaya and Jogja. Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia. It’s a mix of highly modern Jakarta, with some of the rural areas. It’s a very nice city to live in, and the people are very welcoming, much better than Medan. Unfortunately, though, I only had two days in Surabaya, as I had to go to Jogja.

Jogja is one of the largest cities in Indonesia, dubbed as the student’s city. Jogja is actually even smaller than Medan, as I can still remember most of the streets in Jogja, but the people in Jogja are very, very, very polite. Its traditional values are still kicking in, and they are given a status as a special administrative region called the Kesultanan (literally, kingdom).

My girlfriend and I planned to meet in Jogja for just 3 (yep, you read that right, THREE) days, along with my family, since my younger sister currently lives in Jogja along with my grandparents. We (me and my girlfriend) had a great time in Jogja as we went to Prambanan Temple. Here’s the picture of one of the Prambanan temples (and I believe this is the only picture I got from my Indonesian trip):

One of the temples in the Prambanan complex

I always find Jogjakarta (the longer name of Jogja) fascinating, as it manages to keep its traditional values in the midst of the modern world. We tried to go to the Keraton (which literally translates to palace), but it was closed because there were going to be a traditional ceremony called sekaten the next day. For you tourists, I would advise you to not only go to Bali when you go to Indonesia, but Jogja as well. It’s only roughly 2-hours flight from Bali anyways (and besides, it’s way cheaper than Bali).

So, all in all, my trip back home to Indonesia (and to China) was very enjoyable, to say the least. I had the chance to see my girlfriend, my family, and also made some trips I’ve never done before. My only regret was I didn’t take enough pictures to show it to you guys.

But anyways, I am currently playing Pokemon White version, as it was just released a week ago. Now, hopefully by next post I am able to post a review of this game. So until then, see you next post…!

jovee~

It’s been some time since I last post here. Well, I was actually overseas for several weeks and had been back in Melbourne for few weeks as well. I’ve been looking for a job as well, and so far I only landed being a part-time employee in Swinburne University (which is great, in my opinion).

So today’s post is only a catch-up post on what’s been happening to me in the last few months. Obviously, I graduated at the end of 2010, and since I love living in Australia, the next logical step to do is to apply for permanent residency. For those who don’t know (or don’t even bother about it, or even didn’t know that it exist), it is a very time consuming (and money consuming, ya know, since time is money) process. There are a lot of legal documents to submit, and of course administration fees in the process. And they still could reject your residency if you were seen as unsuitable.

One of the legal documents that I need to submit, is a police clearance statement from every country that I’ve been living in the last 10 years. Obviously, my home country Indonesia is one of those countries. A little background to Indonesian bureaucracy culture, when there’s money there’s a way. Therefore I had two choices, to go the unofficial way by trying to arrange for my Indonesian police clearance to be sent here. Or I could go the official way by going back to Indonesia and take care of it. It’s a no brainer, really. I’m living at another country, and the last you would want is not to abide the law.

At any rate, my family also wanted me to go back, so there I was, going back to Indonesia. Although I won’t comment on the police clearance, there are a lot of things that I’ve gained during my short trip in Indonesia. So this is my trip home, back to my home country, my home town, and to some extent, my ancestor’s home in China (I’m a third-generation Chinese Indonesian).

My family planned a family holiday to Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Macau. Of course for me, I’ve never set foot outside Indonesia, Singapore, Penang (Malaysia) and Australia, and it would be great! I really wanted to see what’s happening in China, and see things for myself, since it was always my girlfriend who told me how things are going there.

So we went to Hong Kong for our first stop. If I could explain it, Hong Kong is a metropolitan city, much like Sydney, but it’s busier, more crowded, noisier, and of course, dirtier. I’m not saying that their air quality is bad, it’s still superior compared to Indonesia. But the streets are dirty, and well, in some places you could smell foul stench as well.

We didn’t get the chance to go to Disneyland Hong Kong, but we did go to Madame Tussaud’s Museum. Madame Tussaud’s Museum is a museum dedicated for wax figurines of many (and when I say many, there are LOTS) of public figures, both from eastern and western world. From Lady GaGa (yes, she’s there as well) to Ayumi Hamasaki, from Obama to Jackie Chan, they’re all there (at least their wax figurine are). I didn’t take a lot of pictures though, since my sister did almost all the photo-taking.

Wax figurine of Yao Ming, the tallest Chinese basketball athlete
at more than 2 metres height

Guess who? It’s William Shakespeare

The next destination was Shenzhen. Now a bit of geography, Shenzhen is located in southern China mainland, therefore it was not that cold when I got there (it was winter in the northern hemisphere). However, we went to a place called OCT East resort. It is a resort built on top of hills, with overall area of 9 kilometres. Yep, 9 kilometres of fun. And I have to tell you, it IS a beautiful and soothing place. I did take a lot of picture here because I like the scenery and the soothing nature of the place.

Believe it or not, this is already on top of a hill

This is the largest pumpkin in the world, weighing roughly 250kg

Unlike most resorts though, OCT is divided into several sections. From the two pictures above, it was the main entrance hill section, and the botanical gardens. There are also other sections themed individually such as wetlands, where you can see tropical fish, Christmas town, where everything is covered by (fake) snow, and some others. There’s even a fantasy-themed town, making you feel like you’re in Traverse Town or something.

The aforementioned fantasy-themed town, called Interlaken

On the back is the Interlaken Hotel, which will cost you
like probably HK$10,000 per night (unconfirmed)

To tell the truth, there’s so much you can do in only ONE day exploring OCT. In the end we didn’t get to explore all the three mountains (yes, it spanned across 9 km on top of hills, what do you expect?), but I can guarantee you that, should you have the chance to go to Shenzhen, by all means you have to drop by to OCT East. You won’t regret it.

Our next destination was Macau. For those of you who never heard of Macau, let me put it in a simple way: it’s the Las Vegas of the Asian world. People would come to Macau solely for gambling (not me and my family, though), and there are several big casinos in here like the MGM Grand, the Sands, and some other casino franchises. The biggest one is, the Venetian. Boasting more than 3000 rooms (at least that was what the tour guide said), this sort of mega-casino-mall-hotel combination is the main attraction in Macau. And their interior is designed like Venice, complete with the canal and waterways!

Attention: this is NOT Venice, this is the Venetian in Macau

The interior is decorated even with faux sky

Overall, I really enjoyed my trip home. It was pleasurable, enjoyable, and although I did get some rashes on my scalp (my girlfriend said China’s water is not that clean, so yeah), it was amazing. But my trip did not end there, for sure. I still had some time in Indonesia before I went back to Melbourne. However, considering this post is quite long now, I think I’ll have to postpone it, until the next post…!

jovee~