Ready for part II of the worst day of our trip ever??
It was about 1030 AM by the time we got back in the van. And I knew we had a 3-hour drive ahead of us to reach Dieng. What I did not anticipate, however, was the traffic, and I'm not talking about ordinary traffic. There was no accident or road construction or road blockage of any kind. No deer or duck crossing either. This was by far the slowest bumper-to-bumper, 5 MPH, stop-go-stop-go traffic that my family and I had ever had the misfortune to be stuck in. Here we were sitting on an unevenly narrow paved road where we could see an endless line of cars in front of us and hear a chorus of honking horns played by angry drivers. It was the worst! I completely underestimated the number of people that would be on the road during the post-Ramadan festivities. School was still out, many people were still on vacation. Why didn't I take this into account? It was so bad, my family quickly grew bored, sleepy, and disgusted with the situation. And keep in mind I had not been feeling well. Luckily my upset stomach wasn't much of an issue at Borobudur, but the constant braking, the strong smell of exhaust, and the uncertainty behind whether or not we'll ever reach our destination made me sick. I tried to keep up a conversation with our tour guide. I couldn't help but sense that he must have felt some kind of embarrassment towards us because of what was happening, but it wasn't his fault. I felt so bad for our driver too, who was a quiet man in his late 50s. He must have been super frustrated. I know I would have been. This was not what I had in mind for a full-day tour.
But frustration wasn't going to get us anywhere.
We just sat there in silence. I looked back every once in awhile to find my sisters fast asleep and my mom shifting in her seat having had trouble getting comfortable. I couldn't blame them. I too was antsy and getting all the more queasy as the hours passed. There were many occasions where I thought I might have thrown up, or worse, gone #2 on the car seat. My stomach hurt, and it would be days before I felt any better.
We passed through many small towns, saw a lot of the countryside, and watched many kids riding their bikes and mopeds without a care in the world, unaware of the trouble on the road and the fatigue within the drivers and their passengers.
By 1 PM, we decided it was time to eat. I don't remember what city we were in, but we stopped at a Chinese restaurant whose ambiance lacked personality. Not the ideal choice, but we needed to stretch our legs and refuel. We invited our tour guide and driver to join us for lunch, but because it was against company policy, they politely declined. The menu ran the gamut of the usual Chinese fare from fried rice to noodles and soups to broccoli beef and orange chicken. Seated at a round table, nothing on the menu stood out to me. I ended up ordering fried rice with egg, but only managed to eat half of it. They gave us a lot of food.
Within half an hour we were back in the van. Our tour guide was surprised we were done with lunch so soon. Well ... we really didn't want to waste any more time. We just wanted to get to Dieng already. But of course, today just wasn't our day. The road traffic was still ever so slow.
But around 2 PM, we managed to see part of what Dieng had to offer in terms of its surroundings.
The plan for tomorrow was to check out early and catch the 7:15 AM train to the city of Surabaya in East Java. The train ride would last 5 hours, where we'd arrive in Surabaya in time for lunch and spend a whole day exploring the city, strolling the large shopping mall known as Tunjungan Plaza and visiting House of Sampoerna, the historical hand-rolling cigarette factory museum and art gallery whose cafe I read was simply divine. I also wanted to ride Al Akbar Mosque's elevator to the top for marvelous city views. We'd have the time to do all this because our connecting train ride to Java's easternmost city of Banyuwangi wasn't till 9:30 PM.
The most important question then was what time does the train station close? I didn't know, but the tour guide said 8 PM. At this rate if we continued up the hill and spent the time in Dieng, we wouldn't make it back to Yogyakarta in time to get our train tickets. And we needed those tickets to continue our journey eastward. It was unanimous -- we told our guide and driver to turn around now and head back. I think they were shocked with our decision to not press forward after all this time spent on the road to get here. We were less than a mile away! But the traffic was unbearable, and the thought of losing our opportunity to get a hold of those train tickets was disturbing. We needed to get back to Yogyakarta. But the ride back wasn't easy. We faced even more traffic. It was incredible. And I felt so ashamed for having brought my family into this mess. In hindsight, I should have booked a half-day tour to Borobudur, or instead of Dieng I should have signed up for a visit to the Hindu temple of Prambanan. Sure, we would have hit traffic, but Prambanan would have been so much closer, lying only 30 minutes east of Yogyakarta. What a dummy I was! I just wanted to do something different, get off the beaten path, see another side to the region. Boy, was this a huge mistake. Below are images of what we could have seen at Dieng. What a shame!
Are these photos breath-taking or what? What a shame, what a shame!
I think the next time if I'm ever back in Yogyakarta and want to see Dieng, I'd stay in one of the surrounding towns nearby, come up the day before making the trek to the Plateau. This way it wouldn't be so exhausting.
Anyway, the traffic back to Yogyakarta was terrible. Narrow roads, incessant honking, endless stops -- we were moving at a snail's pace, and I was getting impatient by the minute. My mom, however, made the road trip back bearable. She entertained us all with stories of her childhood, her life as a working woman in Jakarta, her relatives, the responsibilities of being an American citizen in the U.S., and our first experience watching the Wayang Kulit show the night before. She related to both guide and driver how we didn't understand a single word nor what was happening during the entire shadow puppet performance, and how just when we thought the evil character was dead he'd suddenly reappear to duel with the good guy. It was very repetitive. She even imitated the voice of the man behind the screen, and sounded just like him, monotone and all! It was hilarious. Our guide was very amused. We almost laughed all the way home when suddenly I had to go pee so bad!
Had I been holding my urge to go for some time? I think so. But suddenly I had to go, and it came to the point where it felt like if I didn't go now my bladder was going to burst. Sitting there with my knees shaking, squeezing it all in, I couldn't bear it. I told everyone in the car, and begged the guide and driver to pull over somewhere, anywhere, before I have an accident. It was serious. Never in my life have I had to urinate so bad! I was so desperate, it was such an awful feeling. And it felt like all the red lights held us captive forever. It was torture.
FINALLY, we found a restaurant the guide was familiar with, one where I was able to hop out and use its facilities. Oh my God, the washrooms were disgusting. They were rooms used by both men and women. Thankfully the lock on the door did its job. In Indonesia, most washrooms are nothing more than a tiled room with a hole or drain in the ground and a concrete water basin as big as a bathtub that you would use to wash yourself. There is no sink, no mirror, and NO toilet paper!!! You do your business and you zip up wet and all. Ugh, that is just so wrong. And, what an assault on the olfactory sense! It smelled so bad. But I was so relieved, you have no idea. What a bittersweet moment.
We continued forward and by 7:45 PM, reality set in. After all that work, all that stress, and all that time, the irony was we didn't make it to the train station after all. We literally arrived at our hotel at 9 PM. Having only seen Borobudur and horrendous traffic all day, it was the worse vacation day ever. We essentially spent our entire day behind closed windows. And we still had to cough up Rp. 900.000, or about $100 USD for the four of us, which I guess really isn't a huge deal. Looking back now, perhaps we should have just kept on the road towards Dieng. Had we known we wouldn't have made it to the train station on time, I would have felt better had we actually seen all of what Dieng has to offer even if it meant getting back to the hotel late. But this is all part of travel. Things don't go as planned, and you just never know what bumps in the road lie ahead. It's a total gamble. Do we go with option A or option B? Should we keep going or turn around now? Do we turn left or right? Every choice has its consequences. We made the decision to turn around on the belief that we'd make it to the station in time. We failed, but it wasn't the end of the world, and I wasn't about to make my family get up at the crack of dawn the next day.
The silver lining? I realized just before getting back to the hotel that if we missed the 715 AM train, there would be another one. You must be thinking well duh. But the question was what time? I remembered reading during my research of train travel through SE Asia that there would be a 2 PM train to Surabaya. With five hours on the track, we'd still make it in time to catch the 9:30 PM trip to Banyuwangi, and that's the most important connection of all because that's how we were going to get to Bali in two days. The only sacrifice was we wouldn't spend any leisure time to explore Surabaya -- in this case, it was a very small compromise.
So that was it, plan B and it was going to work. I was determined, and I'd find out tomorrow. It also meant that we could all sleep in after such a physically exhausting day. And sleep was what we all desperately needed. Tune in next time for our journey to Bali!
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| Views of Batur Lake on the drive from Pemuteran to Ubud, Bali |
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