…From Day 3 – Monday 26 October 2009
Heading from Yogyakarta to Purwokerto where I met my brother who joined me from Bandung. It’s a very kind of him to take over the wheel from Purwokerto,Central Java to our final destination : Bandung, West Java – knowing that Bart must be exhausted after 3 days on the road.

Purwokerto for me is a city with memory of my childhood visiting grandparents house, this means : lots of good food and laughter. I still have my aunt living in this city today. Like any other city in the country, the javanese culture moves parallel with the modernity and development. It is the capital of Banyumas Regency, Central Java region, Purwokerto is located near the base of Mount Slamet, the highest volcano in Central Java.

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I don’t like long road trip, not even in Bali, the longest car trip I’ve done about 4 years ago was around Bali, and that’s because of my job. Bart had been thinking about driving Bali-Java for a long time, and recently I had to send my Bali car to my parent’s home in Bandung, West Java, so we thought this would be a great chance to visit several cities in East and Central Java, like : Surabaya, Madiun, Solo, Yogya, Purwokerto, before we hit our final destination : BANDUNG ! – the city we (specially ME!) never get bored to be for its shopping centers and food paradise are always tempting and heaven for us. We want to see and experience in Java land, what Bali does not have.

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Bali is a big island to explore, and finding hidden stunning areas and spots such as blue pristine water in a secluded beach area are among the most fun part to discover this island of paradise.

More visitors or even local residents like me prefer avoiding touristy areas such as Kuta Beach (and Kuta Square), Dreamland Beach-who is now known as New Kuta Beach full of Jakarta and Surabaya local tourists! (how on earth those investors from Jakarta dare to change a beach name found once by a surfer in 70’s!), and would rather explore West,North,and East part of Bali.

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Located in Petanu River,Ubud,Bali, this new outdoor adventure really rushed my adrenaline & boosted up my spirit. Closer to nature, that’s what I wanted, Bayu-my ex co worker needed a model for the brochure of this new product. And Bart wants to try  being an adventure photographer on the river along with his friend, Yanson (a medical doctor whose biggest passion is IT & Photography).

December 2007. So we do this tour trial. Safety briefing is a must. I used to work at SOBEK Bali-another adventure tour operator in the island that has rafting, cycling, trekking, and 4WD adventure, and I feel like going rafting without the raft boat and paddle. It’s a fantastic mix of trekking, swimming, physical challenge !

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‘Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, covered in scars, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming ‘yahoo!’, what a ride.’
-quoted from Bear Grylls blogspot – http://beargrylls.blogspot.com/

If there was a man who inspired me the most today and made me down at the same time,that would be a TV host, motivational speaker, author – BEAR GRYLLS. It took couple of spelling mistake of his sir name (gyssll, grysll) to be able to google his blog and website.

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