Betty Loves Blogging

From the category archives:

jakarta escapes

Welcome to Banda Aceh… and its coffee shops

May 18, 2010

Aceh.  You’ve heard of it, surely?  It’s famous for quite a few things. 1. Tsunami.  In the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, just a bit over five years ago now, some 70,000 people in Aceh province lost their lives and the capital Banda Aceh was pretty much totally trashed by the earthquake and huge wave that [...]

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Cool rooms for cheap — Indonesia and Malaysia accommodation recommendations

May 15, 2010

Zen Inn, Padangbai, Bali I’ve been backpacking around Indonesia and Malaysia for 2.5 months now, so I’ve stayed in my fair share of cheap but clean guesthouses, dirty losmen, flashpacker hostels and wherever else one can rest your head for (ideally) less than $10 a night (no airports or train stations though, like I did [...]

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Cats and kids: stories from a kitchen of good curry

May 14, 2010

I was on one of my walks through Tuk-Tuk, the town on the peninsula of the island in the middle of North Sumatra’s majestic Lake Toba, when I decided to stop for some lunch. There are so many cafes in the little town and during quiet season most of them are empty. Nearly every house [...]

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Why hello Lake Toba, you really are pretty, aren’t you?

May 14, 2010

I’ve just returned to Medan from spending three days at Danau Toba (Lake Toba) in North Sumatra, which is a five hour car trip from the city. Wow. It’s the world’s largest volcanic lake, set 900m above sea level, and in the middle of the lake is an island the size of Singapore. So I [...]

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Ion Singapore Food Court

May 10, 2010

Every visit I’ve made to Singapore in the last 1.5 years has usually involved visa runs for Indonesia. We would meet our agent at Wheelock Place, and across from there, a huge shopping mall called Ion was under construction (above). However, on this visit, it was finally open for business… and it is a rather [...]

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Depot Family Masakan Cina Warung, Surabaya

May 9, 2010

The food at this little warung right outside my hotel in Surabaya was so good, I would feel guilty if I didn’t write about it.  Depot Family Masakan Cina, on Jl Ganteng Besar, just outside the Pavilojoen Hotel (which is an excellent budget option in the city) is simple delicious. I went there on multiple [...]

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Kaaaaaaa-ching

May 9, 2010

Singapore’s new Marina Bay Sands Casino.  I went to have a look because I heard it was ‘really cool’ with ‘amazing architecture’… yeah it was alright.  But at the end of the day its just a place where people go to piss their money against the wall.  And being a Singaporean casino, there were so [...]

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Bits and bobs

May 8, 2010

Contrary to popular belief, I am doing some freelancing on the road.  It’s the type of freelancing I would class as “hardly investigative”, but it’s been keeping me occupied and badly paid, just like if I had a real journalism job. So here’s a few links to some recent writings. 1.  Remember, ages ago, I [...]

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Women’s problems

May 7, 2010

This is Ibu Herwati. I interviewed her when I went out to the site of the Sidoarjo mudflow disaster (which I will write more about later…). Ibu Herwati lost her house to the mud, is yet to receive full compensation and now works selling DVDs to disaster tourists showing the mud slowly engulfing the villages [...]

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Tea right at the source

May 6, 2010

Mount Lawu, around 30km from Solo city in Central Java, is covered with farmland and tea plantations along its plunging valleys.  Women pick the leaves that are just right from the plants, working hard long days outdoors, scrambling up and down the slopes carrying their pickings on a basket on their back. Along the roads [...]

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Birthday at Gunung Bromo

May 4, 2010

Monday was my 25th birthday, and since I’m on the road sendirian (alone), I decided I would have to do something pretty special to celebrate a quarter century of existence.  To Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park we go! So from Surabaya, I headed to Probolinggo on Sunday, copped heaps  of abuse, lies and rudeness from [...]

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A dose of colourful culture in Solo

May 2, 2010

When I was wandering around the streets of Solo in Central Java this week, I stumbled up a huge cultural and dance festival for local students.  There was some amazing rock/gamelan fusion music, traditional stories retold to the music of Michael Jackson, and lots of fantastic colourful costumes.  The pictures speak louder than words… so [...]

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Yesterday…

May 1, 2010

Yogyakarta really has a higher population of very talented street buskers than anywhere else I’ve been in Indonesia. These guys, a six piece band, wandered into Via Via Cafe when I was there a few weeks ago (not yesterday as the title implies, that was one of their songs…) and started playing lively renditions of [...]

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Mt Merapi National Park in black and white

April 29, 2010

I went to Mount Merapi National Park this week… just to Kaliurang. I didn’t have time to climb the active volcano, and I also rolled my ankle walking around Yogya last week, so that probably wouldn’t have worked well. Not to mention I feel horribly unfit at the moment, even though I have been walking [...]

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Wayang kulit

April 21, 2010

Men at work making wayang kulit, or traditional Javanese leather shadow puppets, in Yogyakarta. Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble

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