Apart from the blatantly obvious (my semester break ending and me finishing Yakuza 0 within a week), life has been pretty good. Last July I went to Indonesia as part of a summer program, which doesn't feel like summer AT ALL because it was freezing in West Java due to the winds from Australia.
The 13-day trip passed quite quickly - I brought RM300 to Indo and spent them all on food and some cloth (heard they were pretty cheap). Not to brag but I'm quite proud of my own travel-planning skills. My classmates? Not so much... They ran out of cash to spend, didn't bring important toiletries, had luggage bags full of useless shit in them, and then said bags were over the weight limit so some things happened... there's a bunch of things I could list down about their incompetence when it comes to travel planning but I'm going to stop here. No use fretting over stuff you can't control.
After visiting Indonesia, even just a small part of it, made me realize that Malaysia had nothing. The Malays has 'lost' their culture. It really says a lot when Indonesians still have dance and clothing from the small ethnic groups of the islands, but all we had were merely what used to be Indonesian. No one will call out this BS because it's an all-time controversial topic about the real origins of who we call the 'bumiputeras' aka Malays of Malaysia. We're not going to go into that shithole of arguments because our country is not as free as people think it is. Let's jsut focus on the good parts eh?
Malaysian food is quite similar to Indonesian food. For instance, what they call terang bulan is actually apam balik. The kuihs? We have most of them, just with different names. Some things that I couldn't recognize (from looks or taste) is this mofo right here:
My classmates picked this dish because it looked weird, but didn't dare eat it afterwards. So, I took it upon myself to taste test this. It's delicious! It's small fish, very salty, so I guess you can't eat it on it's own. And they thought it was maggots! There's also seblak to the left, which is one of the only few 'exotic' foods I bought for myself during the whole trip, during the last few days. I also bought lumpiah, which are apparently spring rolls, but the ones I bought look nothing like spring rolls! I guess the filling is the same... I have a confession to make. Indonesian tempeh tastes better than Malaysian tempeh! There! I said it, don't at me! In all seriousness I was not fond of local tempeh for some reason. Then Indonesia blew me away with their tempeh. Just... magnificent! Never ate that much soy in two weeks!I got my first batik in Indonesia. As a Malaysian I should've gotten one but no, my first is Indonesian batik in the form of a wrap skirt. There's also my obsession with Indomie OH GOD YOU DON'T KNOW HOW OBSESSED I WAS WITH INDOMIE. There are over 20 flavours and I only found 17, including the Kuliner Indonesia series. And now they have salted egg flavour oh god. I came back with a whole backpack of Indomie and my mother was not impressed. Neither are my classmates and friends. The looks they give me are saying 'you went to Indonesia just to come back with a bunch of instant noodles?' Yes. Yes I did.
Speaking of souvenirs, I did not buy any. The keychains I own were all given to me by the facilitators (who were amazing people). I bought a fridge magnet but that was so I could decorate the world map in the living room.
Also, I got awful sunburns and a suntan!
Coming back from my first school related overseas trip I am grateful for this experience. I caught an eel. I performed really bad silat. I played angklung. I learned some Indonesian words. But one thing I won't do is play water activities. That's a no-no. There's some unpleasant days, uncomfortable living conditions, but like PLKN, it's fun.
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