Indonesia: Epilogue

So I've finally traveled out of Singapore and into another country. I've always been talking about travelling, but I've never had the money, time, opportunity, travelling mates, or a combination of factors. Ugh, how I wish I had all of those.

I found a piece of writing that I wrote sometime in my polytechnic days, about 2 years ago:

As a traveller, I would love to immense myself into the culture. Lose myself in the streets, you know? I don't want to be following a flag that says "Joyful Tours", eat tourist food and stuff. I want to feel what the locals feel, eat what they eat, experience their culture. Travel. God, I love this earth of yours. The continents, the foreign languages are yours, Creator of all things. How nice it would be to watch the sun set in another country while the sun rises in yours.

So it isn't exactly a piece of writing, but more of random brain vomit during some engineering class, I'm sure. But yea, that pretty much sums up how I've felt and feel about travelling. Travelling with a group, that includes your pastor has taught me alot. Namely, travelling in team. You can't just walk off whenever you want. And this paticular trip wasn't a holiday or sight seeing one. It has taught me alot about accountability.
I did have a window of opportunity, and I took it to visit a local traditional market in Semarang. I climbed into a angkot (it's public transport in a form of a van) and asked the driver if he was headed to Pasar Johar. Without even looking at me, he nodded and started chugging down the busy street. He finally stopped and told me we've arrived. After a show of fingers by the driver, I paid six thousand rupiah for the trip. That's about $1.20 singapore dollars. I spent the next two hours navigating the narrow paths of the market. It's nothing like your supermarkets that many of us are familiar with. Here you have seafood, lying in a pool of stale water, cows head and organs laying all over the table. Flies resting on anything fleshy. It was more of a cesspit. But this is it. This is how the locals lived.
I had a blast hanging out with some of the people and I've made many friends. I can't wait till Novemeber, where I'll see some of them in Johor Bahru at a Leadership Training Time and more of them back in Indonesia in December, where I hope to go again for another LTT. That is of course, if I haven't been called up for National Service.