Vacation Summary

Walaupun jumlah cuti yang boleh saya ambil cuma 3 hari dalam sebulan, tapi berhasil juga kami berdua pergi jalan-jalan.

So, kemana saja kami pergi selama ini?

Bogor dan Jakarta tidak terlalu kami jelajahi karena minat kami memang tidak pada kedua kota ini. Terutama bagi dia yang berpendapat Jakarta tidak ada bedanya dengan kota-kota metropolitan lainnya.

Yang selalu kami kunjungi bila ke Jakarta adalah Jalan Surabaya. Berburu barang antik. Favorit kami adalah kamera dan setrikaan jadul. Modelnya antik. Tapi kalau disuruh beli, wah, entar dulu deh. Mahal dan mau ditaruh dimana? Rumah saya sudah penuh dengan barang. Jadi biar si bule aja deh yang belanja.

Muara Angke juga jadi tempat kesukaan kami karena lokasinya sebagai pasar ikan. Biar bau amis, becek, senggol kiri, senggol kanan dengan orang, berapa kali hampir ditabrak atau nabrak orang bawa keranjang isi ikan, kecipratan air.. hehe.. tapi disitu itulah serunya.

Udahannya tentu jangan lupa beli sea food dan cari warung makan yang menyediakan jasa masakin seafood yang kita beli itu. Yang kami cari adalah warung makan yang lesehan karena doi suka banget makan sambil duduk di atas tikar. Makan dengan gaya cuek, ga usah repot mikir table manner, sendok dkk pun boleh dilupakan, mau makan sambil angkat kaki sebelah juga ok. Hehe.

“I love this country” katanya “the people, the culture, the view”

Ya, pandangannya sebagai orang asing tentunya beda dengan saya yang lahir dan besar di negeri ini. Tapi saya setuju dengannya. Indonesia adalah negeri yang indah, dengan segala keragaman yang memberinya warna berbeda dari negeri-negeri asia lainnya dan tentunya menyimpan banyak potensi. Sayangnya, negeri ini juga dibuat awut-awutan oleh rakyatnya sendiri.

Kami berdua sama-sama tidak suka mall atau factory outlet. Tapi ada satu tempat belanja yang kami datangi setelah melihat foto-foto jadulnya. Tempat itu adalah Pasar Baru.

Kami berjalan menyusuri jalanan Pasar Baru yang kiri kanannya dipadati toko-toko. Tujuan utamanya bukan untuk belanja. Kami membayangkan seperti apa rupa jalanan ini 50-100-150 tahun yang lalu. Hm, seandainya ada mesin waktu..

Tapi dari semua pengalaman kami jalan-jalan, yang paling heboh adalah saat dia berhasil mengajak saya terbang paragliding di Puncak.

“You’ll be fine” dia meyakinkan saya “look, you will be flying tandem and this guy, has been flying thousand of times”. Ya, biar pun judulnya terbang tandem dengan masternya tapi gue kan takut ketinggian, bo..

“I’ll be right behind you” dia tertawa melihat saya senewen “worst scenario is you landed on a tree”. Saya ada dibelakang kamu nantinya. Hal terburuk yang mungkin terjadi ya, palingan kamu nyangkut di atas pohon.

“What??” saya melotot sementara dia ngakak “that’s a bad joke!”

“You should try this” dengan lembut dia menepuk kepala saya seakan-akan saya anak umur tiga tahun “come on, we don’t get to do this everyday”. Ayo deh, kapan lagi. Kan ga tiap hari kita bisa nyoba yang kayak gini.

“Yeah, but incase you forgot, we probably too old to do crazy stunts like this. I’m forty one and you’re forty five” Aduh, kita kan bukan anak muda lagi. Sudah ketuaan kali buat ikut-ikutan kegiatan gila kayak gini. Gue empat satu, elu empat lima. Elu lupa tuh?!

“Oh please, grandma” dia malah meledek saya. Nenek. Awas lu.. hehe…

Wups, saya pun terbang. Gimana rasanya? Sumpeh, ga bisa digambarkan dengan kata-kata. Yang pasti kagak bakal mau saya diajak ikut kegiatan model begini lagi. Hehe. Pemandangannya memang luar biasa tapi menyadari daratan jauh banget dibawah, hiii…

“You’ve made it, baby!” dia langsung berlari menghampiri saya begitu kami mendarat dilepaskan dari harness “Oh, oh, you’re shaking”. Saya memang gemetaran karena angin dingin dan karena pengaruh adrenalin masih tinggi.

“You see, everything is fine. We’re still alive” dia memeluk saya erat-erat, mengusap-usap punggung saya, menggosok-gosok telapak tangan saya kuat-kuat karena tangan itu sudah berubah warna menjadi putih kebiruan dan menciumi saya.

“You’re completely insane” rutuk saya setelah saya merasa cukup hangat dan kuat untuk bersuara. Kamu bener-bener gila.

“I know” dia nyengir.

Bali menjadi tujuan wisata kami berikutnya. Berhubung waktu kami sangat singkat, kami tidak berputar-putar. Toh sebagian besar Bali sudah pernah kami kunjungi diwaktu-waktu yang lalu. Jadi dia membooking hotel yang lokasinya ada di pantai Kuta supaya kami tidak usah jalan jauh-jauh ke pantai ini.

Kampung Sampireun di Garut jadi tujuan wisata kedua kami. Asli keren. Suasananya disengaja gaya alami pedesaan. Ada telaga dan pondok-pondok yang dibangun diatas telaga itu. Mau berkeliling telaga dengan perahu? Ada perahu. Tapi dayung sendiri ya.

This is paradise” dia menggumam begitu kami sampai di lokasi. Perjalanan panjang yang melelahkan rasanya sepadan deh.

Rencananya kami akan ke Lembang tapi saya ambruk. Badan panas, sakit semua, ngilu rasanya dan saya batuk sampai termuntah-muntah. Mana mungkin saya pergi berwisata dalam keadaan seperti itu. Ada hampir 2 hari saya tepar. Sampai diantar-jemput sama dia kemana-mana karenanya dan saya memilih menginap ditempatnya karena lokasinya lebih dekat dengan tempat kerja.

Saya mendoping diri dengan vitamin, obat batuk, obat demam, air jeruk, susu, banyak makan dan banyak istirahat. Hari Rabu kemarin ini misalnya, saya tidur dari jam 6 sore sampai jam 8 malam. Bangun cuma karena dia membangunkan saya. Disuruh makan dan minum obat. Jam 10 malam tidur lagi sampai jam 6 pagi keesokan harinya.

Untunglah kekuatan badan saya cepat pulih. Tinggal batuknya saja. Sukur deh. Masa ya hari-hari terakhir dia disini di isi dengan ngurusin saya yang sakit. Duh, jadi sedih mikir dia bentar lagi mau balik ke negerinya. Kalau aja dia bisa kerja disini atau kalau aja saya bisa pindah ke sana…

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Eventhough I can only take 3 leave days in a month but we actually managed to make some travelling.

So where did we go?

We didn’t touring Bogor and Jakarta. We really don’t have the interest to do so especially my dear friend who thinks Jakarta is just like any other metropolitant city.

When we did visit Jakarta, it definitely to go to Surabaya street. The street has many antique shops. Our favourites are the antique camera and iron. I never buy any since it’s expensive and I don’t know where to put them at home. So let my ‘dear’ friend did the shopping.

Muara Angke is another place that we like to visit. It is a fish market. Though the place is smell, wet, sometimes muddy, you get bump by or bump yourself into fish baskets or get splash but that’s the fun part of the place.

Whenever we go here we buy some seafood and find a food stall that provide service of cooking the customer’s seafood. His favourite food stall is the one that allows us to sit on the mattress on the floor. Here, you can forget about table manner as you eat your meals while sitting crosslegged on the floor, no spoon, fork or knife required.

“I love this country” katanya “the people, the culture, the view”

His point of view is certainly different with my own who’s born and raised in this country though I agree that it is a beautiful country with it’s various cultures, making it different with other Asian countries. It is a country that have many potentials. Unfortunately, its own people are the ones held responsible for making damage, loss and ruin.

Anyway, both of us dislike malls and factory outlets. However, there is one shopping place that we visited after we saw its old photos. That place is Pasar Baru.

The place is well known for its textile stores but as we walked through it we were imagining what it was like 50-100-150 years ago. If there were time machine..

But of all of our travelling experiences, the time when we did paragliding in Puncak was the most memorable one.

“You’ll be fine” he tried to convince me that it is perfectly safe “look, you will be flying tandem and this guy, has been flying thousand of times”. Oh yeah, sure, you may call it fly tandem with the most experienced tandem master but I am afraid of height.

“I’ll be right behind you” he laughed to see me nervous “worst scenario is you landed on a tree”.

“What??” I snapped while he laughed it out loud “that’s a bad joke!”

“You should try this” he gently stroke my head as if I were a three year old kid “come on, we don’t get to do this everyday”.

“Yeah, but incase you forgot, we probably too old to do crazy stunts like this. I’m forty one and you’re forty five”.

“Oh please, grandma” he winked. Who do you call grandma? ?.. I’m gonna get you after this..

And off I went to the sky. How did it feel? Incredible. The view is definitely spectacular but I will never do this again. Seeing the ground was so far down there gave me the chill.

“You’ve made it, baby!” he quickly ran to me once we landed and freed from the harness “Oh, oh, you’re shaking”. I was shaking out of the freezing wind of the mountain and of adrenaline rush.

“You see, everything is fine. We’re still alive” he hold me close, caressed my back, rubbed my hands hard as their colors have turned to white and blue, and kissed me again and again.

“You’re completely insane” I grumbled after I felt warm and strong enough to speak.

“I know” he grinned broadly.

Bali became our next destination. Since we didn’t have enough time we decided that we needed not to tour it, we have done that in the past. He booked us a room at a hotel  located at Kuta Beach so it would spare us the time to get to the beach.

The bathroom in our room

Kampung Sampireun or Sampireun Village in Garut was another place that we visited. It is a beautiful place. Designed like a village, surrounded by the trees, plants, rice fields and some of the cabbanas (hut) are build on the lake. There are boats that you can take to row around the lake.

“This is paradise” he held his breath seeing the place once we got there. It is worth the long ride.

We planned to go to Lembang but I had fever, my body was in pain and I coughed so hard that I threw up. There was no way we could go travelling with that kind of condition. It lasted for 2 days. He didn’t let me go anywhere by myself. He drove me to and from work. I even stayed at his hotel as it is near the office.

I took vitamin, cough medicine, aspirin, fever medicine, orange juice, milk, eat well and lots of rest. Last Wednesday for example, I went to bed from 6 to 8 pm. He woke me up so I could have dinner and take some medicine before I went back to bed at 10 pm to 6 am the next day.

Glad that my body recovers in short time. I don’t want him spending his last days before he goes back home, taking care his sick girlfriend. Geez, it feels kind a sad to have to let him go. If only he can get a job here or I can move there..