Lizzy's Travel Blog

Novie, on why you can’t translate phrases directly from one language to another.

I seem to have entered an alternate universe where grown men can openly like One Direction and nobody makes sarcastic comments about their sexuality.

I find having a maid really strange. I don’t know if it’s just British reserve but it’s hard to have no privacy whatsoever. Pretty much everyone I work with had been into my house, the office boys go in all the time to deliver stuff and fix things and whatever, which is nice of course, but just a little odd.

This weekend was fun, we went out on Friday night which was an experience. We went to the hotel bar, then we went to AM PM which as the name suggests is somewhere you can go if you want a beer or some vodka at any time of day. Then we went to North Food, which is a hostess bar. Which was where it all went a bit odd. The creepy men who go to hostess bars kept buying me shots (which I spat out in the toilets) and wanting to dance with me, and James and Michael were everywhere at once in the way a person can be when they’ve been drinking for 5 hours already.

Fun though.

Sunday we went out with one of my colleagues. Update on that another time. Photos on Facebook when I can upload them.

I would think someone regularly pretended to ride a horse past my house in the middle of the night with two halves of a coconut

So I’ve been in Solo for 2 months now, if you don’t count the couple of weeks I spent in Singapore. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t count that though.

I like it here, for the most part. It’s hot and the people are generally pretty nice. I’m having the food problem again though, in Korea everything I ate managed to be both bland and spicy. Here it’s all sweet and spicy.  I think it’s a British thing to want your savoury food not to contain sugar.

I’ve only picked up a couple of stalkers, which is a vast improvement on being back home.

My colleague is teaching me Indonesian a couple of times a week, which is nice because it’s getting a bit ridiculous not being able to talk to people. And it’s not the kind of expat community I could make loads of friends it, they’re generally middle-aged men with Indonesian wives. I’m not all that enthusiastic to have a friendship group which consists mainly of middle-aged men, and wives tend to object to that kind of thing anyway.

So where I’m working there’s me, 3 “native speaker” teachers (all guys, all older than me) who live next door to me and in the next house up. It’s a good arrangement. It doesn’t feel like a hostage situation like Korea, but it’s a bit unnerving because you feel like you’re always at work. Then there are the 4 Indonesian teachers (I mean, they’re English teachers, but they’re Indonesian humans). Then there are 2 women who work in the office, with us, who are lovely, and I think 5 who work on the front desk, then the office boys who pick up our lunch and clean stuff and go get the photocopying. I’ve tried to count them a few times but every time I think I’ve got it I spot another one I’ve never seen before.

Wow, the traffic here is pretty scary. I’ve ridden a motorbike (as a passenger) here more times than I’d ever done before. Which was none, so I guess that’s not saying much. They do the thing they do in Bali of treating the motorbike as if it were a family car, with the mum, dad, 3 kids all squished on. But they drive relatively slowly, which I guess is how they’re not all dead.

I think our maid must wonder why we all brush our teeth in the kitchen. The answer is simple. There aren’t sinks in the bathrooms.

This of course leaves many more questions.

Apparently the woman who was meant to be my roommate went into culture shock and left after less than a week. So I live all alone. Which is nice in a way, but I find it odd after living with my family for so long.

There are SO MANY mosquitoes here. I’m covered in bites.

That’s not what’s stopping me from sleeping though. At about 2am every night until about 6, there’s non-stop chanting from the mosques. And then after a few hours a cockerel always joins in. When the novelty wears off I imagine that will be quite irritating, but my colleague says that after a while it becomes soothing background noise.

It’s definitely the place which is least like England I’ve ever been to. Which makes me happy.

On Friday my boss asked Liam “What’s your relationship to Elizabeth? Boyfriend?”.

This wouldn’t be all that surprising except that she rents our flat for us. She knows we only have one bed. Weird.