Mie goreng or me goreng?

Hello hello, selemat datang, welcome to Indonesia!
I've been trying to get time to write for a while now, but time is rubber here, haha. But I'd like to tell you about all I have seen and experienced during the last couple of weeks in Java, Karimunjawa, Bali, Gili and Lombok. First of all it's important to note that I feel incredibely at home, which, for a great part, is because of the warmest welcome ever by my friends (or should I call them family?) Emma, Nadiya, Afra, Rahma, Ofa and their family and friends. When Anna and I landed in Jakarta, we went to Emma's uni campus (so pretty and spacious!) and home in Depok. She made us feel at home immediately and gave us everything we asked for and way more. As we got a train to Cirebon, to the rest of the fam, we already felt as if we were there for weeks instead of days and it felt great! We were shown around and shown off, followed around neighbourhoods by many kids and given gifts. It was funny how I was expecting this as I remembered it from four years ago, but Anna was not at al. Sometimes it was not too funny, especially as we were barely allowed to give anything back, as we were the guests. I do not miss my family and friends half as bad as I did in Madrid, but this, obviously, is not necessarily a bad thing for me as it would make me enjoy my trip less. Neither do I miss proper privacy, hygiene, toilets and showers, nor the rain and cold weather at home. I felt the same warmth as I got to Yogya and reunited with friends there, who were just as hilarious as always (I miss you guys..). I had been on my own in Pangandaran for a couple of days, surfing and joking around with some cool people, but was more pleased to see my friends again. Especially their giggles and jokes. Squeeze me instead of excuse me, me goreng instead of mie goreng, nasty goreng or nasi boring and for breakfast: pannenkoek of billenkoek (pancake or slap on your ass haha).

All of this is very funny as on one side it is not weird or different at all to see my friends from four years ago, but on the other side I see things have changed, most of the time in a bad way because of tourism. An example of this is our next stop: Karimunjawa. It's still paradise, my god, it's beautiful, but I remember being pointed at four years ago as we were one of the first westerners people there ever saw. This was definitely not the case anymore, which is also because of modernisation I guess.. There was even an ATM haha! Had a conversation about all that with my dear friend Luppa, who started the amazing Coconut hostel there. He agreed that on one side it would be a bad thing if Karimunjawa would become as Bali or the Gili's, but on the other side it makes sense that the inhabitants still see it as a good thing.

Speaking of Bali and the Gili's, our next stops, I got into my old feelings of disliking places full of tourists again. Anna had been very fond of the idea of going to Bali, especially because of Nyepi, the Balinese New Year. That, luckily, was indeed a very nice experience. As we got a homestay there, we already saw inhabitants getting all dressed up and getting dragons for the parade ready. Once everybody got together and the parade started with sunset, there were almost more tourists than Indonesians though and I wanted to give up on Bali again. So after a while we got dinner somewhere and wanted to go back to the homestay. Though, on our way back, we saw that most of the tourists had given up, but the Indonesians hadn't and were getting more and more into the spirit of Nyepi. The idea is to scare away the bad spirits with dragons, and therefore the Balinese people started growling and bumping into the crowd with the dragons, which made everyone scream as they got scared, which then again was the whole idea. This was way cooler and more impressive than before and I loved it. Bali therefore needs a bit of patience and perseverance, which on the one hand I am glad to have found out, as this means tourism does not kill the whole culture, but on the other hand, tourism (and modernisation/globalisation) do indeed no good. The same goes for the next day, which is called Silence Day. During this day everybody is supposed to contemplate and not work, but, as I could've expected, this does not count for the tourists. We were made to stay in and once I tried to go out for a bit about ten Indonesians stopped me, but all day delicious food was prepared for us and therefore they were working. But hey, I won't complain about that ;)

Next were the Gili's, which is how we got to Karimunjawa four years ago, as we were looking for paradise. So I kinda still expected to find this on Gili, but I, again, saw what tourism can do. But as I said, it makes sense that inhabitants want tourism and modernisation, who can blame them? And I am one of the people ruining Indonesia a bit by being a tourist myself. This does kinda feel as a struggle for me, as I do not want to ruin anything, but I do wanna travel around, see the world from other perspectives and hopefully bring a bit of joy with me as well. Therefore, as I keep on travelling around and am surfing, relaxing and scootering around Lombok at the moment, I try to find the balance as much as possible and try to be as loving and respectful as possible. And that, overall, is easy, as I love it here!