10 tahun

Sudah lama saya nggak cerita di blog ini, nggak terasa kita sudah ada di akhir tahun 2019 aja! Tadinya saya sempat nulis draft kilas balik setahun kebelakang, eh tapi liat post nya Deny tentang perjalanan satu dekade, jadi tersinspirasi pengen ikutan cerita. Terima kasih ya Deny inspirasinya 🙂 Okelah, langsung aja kita mulai ceritanya…

2010 – 2013

Saya mulai dekade kemarin ini dengan optimisme tinggi. Awal tahun ada di Inggris, menyelesaikan program S2, usia saya 23. Tahun baruan di depan London Eye bareng teman – teman kuliah, bener – bener pengalaman yang nggak terlupakan sampai sekarang, termasuk pengalaman ketinggalan keluar kereta bersama seorang teman lain, hingga akhirnya harus menumpang nginap di tempat orang yang baru kenal (orang Indonesia juga) sambil nunggu kereta berikutnya di esok pagi… yaampun, hidup saya kayak kisah serial TV rasanya hahaha.

Setelah kemeriahan tahun baru 2010, saya bekerja keras mengerjakan tesis, lulus, pulang ke Indonesia, dan berjuang lagi mencari pekerjaan. Alhamdulilah dapat kerja di perusahaan yang sangat berkesan bagi saya, dan mulai bekerja di minggu pertama Januari 2011. Tapi nggak disangka, malam sebelum hari pertama kerja, saya diputusin pacar yang pada saat itu sudah pacaran lebih dari 2 tahun dan saya kira kami akan menikah di tahun 2011 itu. Hancurlah hidupkuuu.. hehehe. Setelah patah hati parah, saya berusaha untuk menata hidup kembali. Saya banyak berteman, baik dengan teman lama dan juga bertemu teman baru. Saya mencoba berbagai kegiatan baru, mulai dari olahraga hingga traveling.

Ternyata saya jatuh cinta dengan traveling. Waktu di Inggris saya sudah beberapa kali jalan – jalan sendiri, tapi nggak terlalu jauh dan lama. Di tahun 2012, saya pertama kali jalan – jalan sendiri keluar Indonesia dan ke negara yang saya nggak bisa bahasanya …. Vietnam dan Thailand. Setelah itu ketagihan, saya punya grup teman jalan yang kira – kira setahun 2x pergi liburan, mulai dari Surabaya, Bali, Karimun Jawa, Bromo, Padang, Lombok, Derawan.. seru!

2013 – 2016

Di tahun 2013, umur 26, saya pertama kali bertemu R 🙂 berawal dari iseng dan dorongan dari dalam diri saya untuk “menerima tantangan”, kami bertemu dan the rest is history. Kami sepakat menjalani hubungan jarak – jauh walau pada saat itu nggak tau arahnya kemana… tapi ada sesuatu dalam diri saya yang bilang kalau saya nggak boleh menyerah gitu aja. Well, here we are now! 🙂

Diluar percintaan, di tahun 2013 saya juga dapat promosi di kerjaan, dan akhirnya bisa jalan – jalan lebih sering hahaha. Waktu itu teman – teman di sekeliling saya banyak yang sudah mulai menikah, membeli properti, investasi, dan sebagainya… saya sibuk jalan – jalan aja hohoho. Sempet merasa “kecil” sedikit, tapi setelah saya pikir kembali sekarang ini – salah satu pelajaran hidup selama 10 tahun kebelakang adalah…. waktu orang beda – beda. Hidup orang beda – beda, jadi jangan pernah membandingkan hidup dengan orang lain.

Setelah promosi di tahun 2013 itu, saya terus membangun karir di perusahaan yang sama sampai kemudian di akhir tahun 2015 memutuskan untuk pindah perusahaan dan juga pindah industri. Awal tahun 2016 saya memulai karir di perusahaan baru, yang pada ujungnya memberikan sebuah pelajaran lagi… dan membuka mata saya tentang hal yang saya benar – benar inginkan, dan hal yang tidak saya inginkan.

Pelan tapi pasti hubungan saya dan R juga berjalan ke arah yang positif. Akhirnya, di tahun 2016 R melamar dan kami melakukan prosesi lamaran dengan keluarga dan teman terdekat di Jakarta, tanggalnya pas di hari ulang tahun mama 🙂

2017 – 2019

Saya memulai awal 2017 dengan melakukan perubahan di karir saya, memutuskan untuk berhenti kerja full-time dan memulai bekerja freelance. Sebuah keputusan yang cukup berani tapi pada saat itu saya harus mementingkan kesehatan fisik dan mental daripada jabatan dan karir.

Setelah berhenti kerja, saya melakukan perjalanan solo “terakhir” sebagai wanita lajang ke Shanghai dan juga mengunjungi Disneyland Shanghai. Sambil bekerja freelance di sebuah advertising agency di Jakarta Selatan, saya juga mengambil beberapa project online dan sempat kena tipu sekitar $500! Saya sudah mengerjakan tugas yang diminta tapi orangnya habis itu kabur… huhuhu. Ya sudahlah.

Di akhir 2017 saya menikah dengan R, lalu nggak lama kemudian saya pindah ke Amerika Serikat, memulai hidup baru. Pindah ke negara baru dengan status baru sama sekali nggak mudah, tapi alhamdulilah kami baik – baik aja sampai sekarang, dan hidup kami juga terus diberkati dan dibimbing ke arah yang baik.

Tahun 2018 saya kehilangan tante saya secara mendadak, kedatangan mama selama sebulan, berjuang melawan anxiety karena proses kepindahan dan perubahan yang terjadi… tahun 2019 saya mulai sekolah lagi, kedatangan adik selama 2 minggu, sambil tetap menunggu kabar baik yang belum tiba. Nggak apa – apa, semua akan terjadi di saat yang tepat 🙂

2020?

Nggak kerasa ya 10 tahun sudah berlalu dan benar – benar nggak nyangka perubahan yang terjadi dari awal dekade hingga akhir dekade. Nggak pernah kebayang kalau jodoh saya bakal ketemu di belahan dunia lain apalagi pindah ke negara lain ikut suami…

Jadi, harapan saya buat dekade berikutnya, apa ya… yang pasti saya kepengen banget sih mudah2an kabar baik nya bisa segera tiba, semoga semua rencana kami diberkati Allah dan dilancarkan, semoga keluarga di Indonesia baik – baik saja dan dapat rejeki mengunjungi kami disini kembali… dan juga untuk teman – teman semua, semoga lancar ya semua rencananya! ❤

P.S: Post kali ini nggak pakai foto soalnya kapasitas wordpress gratisan saya udah mau abis… hahaha… jadi dipilih – pilih deh upload fotonya 😉

P.P.S: Selamat hari raya Natal dan Tahun Baru untuk teman semua yang merayakan, untuk yang nggak merayakan selamat menikmati hari liburnya, untuk yang nggak merayakan dan nggak mau ngucapin yaudah nggak apa – apa, untuk yang nggak merayakan dan nggak mau ngucapin tapi ngelarang – larang ngucapin…… ya nggak apa-apa juga tapi nggak usah ikutan hari liburnya kali yaa.. biar adil gitu 😉 *peace out*

Days of Part-Time Job

This is the eighth post in the “Christa in the UK” series – stories from the year 2009 and 2010 during my time living, studying, working and traveling in a small beach town called Bournemouth in South West England.

As a broke student student with limited funding, I was challenged to work part – time during my time in the UK. My student visa allowed me to work maximum 20 hours per week part – time, so I began searching for a part – time job after I considered myself settled in, approximately soon after my second term started. I figured it was the perfect activity to actually immerse myself in student life. Okay I was being subtle, truth is I desperately needed the job because I spent all my money traveling throughout the UK on my Christmas break … hahaha :p

Continue reading “Days of Part-Time Job”

A Hollywood Experience

Back in 2013, when I was visiting LA – me, my boyfriend, and our friends went to downtown LA for a late night snack. We chose Fred 62 near East Hollywood – a 24 hours diner.

We sat outside, ordered some light meals and drinks, and just hung out. What started as an ordinary event, turned out to be extraordinary because of what happened next.

Continue reading “A Hollywood Experience”

Around Dorset

This is the sixth post in the “Christa in the UK” series – stories from the year 2009 and 2010 during my time living, studying, working and traveling in a small beach town called Bournemouth in South West England.

How many of you know, or at least have heard about Dorset? Well I never heard about it until I set foot in England and learned that it’s a county where Bournemouth is at. To the world, Dorset may not be as famous as other places in England but while I lived there, I could not help but fall in love with the area, as turns out it has wonderful nature + tourist spots. Now, come and have a little tour around Dorset with me! 🙂

New Forest

To be honest I was not much of a nature person prior to living in England. Lucky me when I lived in Bournemouth there was not much to do (refer to this post to know why), except exploring the nature.

New Forest is a national park in South West England – a place widely known for its parkland and wildlife activities. There you can do all sorts of activities in the wild. For example, I took a walk with my friend and her host parents. You can also do horse riding, biking, camping, and there’s also a variety of attractions to see within the area.

New Forest is not far from Bournemouth at all, it’s only around 30 minutes drive from the town centre. So it’s easily accessible. Unfortunately since I went with my friends, I am not too aware of the public transportation to get there. But have a look at this page if you are interested to go!

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New Forest

 Swanage Beach

Swanage – a coastal town, is around 50 minutes drive from Bournemouth. It’s known for a weekend/holiday destination of people living in South of England (other than Bournemouth, of course hehe). It is home to Jurassic Coast which  I am going to explain just after this, and also a lovely beach.

Personally, Bournemouth beach is still better than Swanage. Hahaha. I might be biased… :p. Anyway the beach is still not bad at all! Plus there’s a variety of cute local shops next to the beach, something that Bournemouth Beach does not have.

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Swanage Beach

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Beach Shop at Swanage

Jurassic Coast

Now this is definitely one of the best places I’ve been in this world! Just look at the images first and I’ll tell you why…

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Durdle Door

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Jurassic Coast

 Jurrasic Coast is located very close to Swanage beach. In fact,  tours from Bournemouth usually involves going to bost places, plus Lulworth Cove and Corfe Castle (explained next) because they are located close to each other, all within an hour-ish drive from Bournemouth.

To get to the coast and see the amazing view (note that the pictures were taken with my pocket camera and using no filter – really pretty, right?!), you have to do a little bit of hiking. But, trust me, it’ll be worth it.

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On our way to see THE Jurassic Coast

Best time to visit will be in May-June because based on my experience that’s when you will get to have sunshine and can even jump into the water like myself! Not so much in late August/Early September because it can get very windy and foggy, like this picture, taken during my second visit in Early September (!!!)

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Very Foggy!

But then even during that kind of weather, my friends successfully dragged me to go on a hike all the way until the peak! That is, one of my greatest achievements so far hahaha. I was so scared because it was showering and the wind was very strong, but I managed to hiked up to the top. Yay me!

I hiked all the way to the top!

Lulworth Village and Lulworth Cove

Within the area of Jurassic Coat is Lulworth Village. It’s a small village with a cove that has a very clear water. I did not remember doing much there but it’s still very interesting to do a little bit of sightseeing and enjoy the atmosphere of British coastal village.

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Pretty building at Lulworth Village

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Lulworth Cove

 Corfe Castle

How often do you get to see a Castle? (remains, in this case). To me – I have never seen, yet been to one prior to living in England and that’s why I was so excited to go to Corfe Castle!

The castle is a survivor of the historic English Civil War and I wish I can tell you more about it but I’m lacking the historical knowledge. However, for ordinary tourist like me, the castle is still very magical and interesting to see.

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Corfe Castle

And Corfe Castle wraps up my tour around Dorset. Now you know why I love Bournemouth so much. Not only that I got to study, but also have the chance to go on day trips to amazing places during my holidays! 🙂

It was my birthday and we were in the middle of nowhere..

This is the fourth post in the “Christa in the UK” series – stories from the year 2009 and 2010 during my time living, studying, working and traveling in a small beach town called Bournemouth in South West England. 

After dealing with homesickness, I started to love my new life as a student. Of course there were sleepless nights – those nights before the deadline of an assignment. But there were also other fun days, filled with the excitement of exploring a new place and making new friends from all over the world!

As we were approaching year end and the end of our first term, plans started to come up. Most of our European friends has made plans to come home for Christmas and New Year, basically leaving us Asians with no plans (yet). With a group of other Indonesians, I decided to plan a road trip throughout the UK during our term break/year end holiday. In between assignments deadline we began to build our plan – cities to go, places to visit, modes of transportation, budget, and all that. We also asked a group of friends to join us. In the end, there were 10 of us. 5 Indonesians, 2 Taiwanese, 1 Chinese, and 2 Thai. So fun! I had written the travel experience as a guest post in my friend Aggy’s blog and you can read it here.. what I haven’t shared there is the fact that I had my birthday during that trip! Yay!

We started the trip on the eve of Christmas. We decided to have a road trip and rented two cars for 10 of us. Our first destination was Bath – a small town up north of Bournemouth, less than 2 hours drive away. It was already dark when we arrived, and we were very much surprised to find out that the town was like a dead town! Our destination was the town centre but we saw almost no one on the streets. The shops were all closed, even though it’s only around 6PM. No restaurants nor pubs were open.. except a restaurant called Market, where we ended up having our Christmas Eve dinner!

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Christmas Eve dinner at Bath

After dinner, we spent some time wandering around Bath’s empty city centre, just having fun with each other because really, we felt like the town was ours! Hahaha. And then we left for our next destination, Bristol. Of course, everything was closed as well there. Being international students, we were not aware of the fact that during Christmas eve, British people tend to spend time at home and all shops would be closed. It will continue to be like that until Christmas day.. and then everything will start to go back normal on Boxing day which is the 26th of December. So yeah, we did not get to do much in Bristol except strolling around the empty town centre. We probably spent only a couple hours there before we left to our next destination… Liverpool!

It would normally take us around 3 hours from Bristol to Liverpool but somewhere along the way my friend in the other car called and asked to stop at the nearest motorway service areas. Because I was driving previously, I failed to realise that it was some time past midnight already, which meant it’s the 25th of December and I turned 23 already! That’s why I was so surprised when everyone gathered around me and sang me happy birthday. They gave me some nice presents as well 🙂

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Surprise!!!

It was definitely a moment to remember, It’s not every year I got to spend my birthday so far away from home, in the middle of nowhere, but surrounded with good friends and warm attention!

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With my birthday presents 🙂

After the quick birthday surprise, we continued our journey and reached Liverpool early in the morning. As predicted, everything was closed as well but we managed to find a Chinese Restaurant so we could have a nice dinner to celebrate Christmas and… my birthday. It was a very memorable day 🙂

Why I think Ho Chi Minh City is not for me

Back in fall 2011, I found an online promo for Air Asia which gave very good deal. Without thinking carefully, I bought one return plane ticket from Jakarta to Ho Chi Minh City for Spring 2012, simply because that destination was the cheapest I could find for that time frame. If I’m not mistaken, it cost me IDR 800,000 for that ticket. Not bad, right? I was scheduled to spend a 5 days 4 nights vacation there. Time passed and on early 2012 I realized that I was scheduled to go soon.

I started to do some research about the city. Where to stay, what to see, and whether it’s safe for female solo traveler. Based on my research I found that it’s sort of  a waste of time to spend 5 days just in Ho Chi Minh. It’s very advisable to use the time I had to travel to other cities. However, as it was going to be my first time traveling solo in Asia, I was kind of afraid to travel to other cities and after some considerations I decided to travel to Bangkok instead. The plan was to stay in Ho Chi Minh for 2 nights and Bangkok for the remaining 2 nights. I had to spend an extra IDR 2,00,000 for Ho Chi Minh – Bangkok round trip airplane ticket so the trip was not that cheap anymore, but in total was still within my budget. Lucky I have some good friends from the university living in Bangkok and one of them offered me a place to stay so that helped my budget 🙂

Then came the time to go. I was excited! I did travel solo several times while I was in the UK, but never too far (mostly day trips). Plus, it’s the first time in Asia and first time in a non-English speaking country. I booked a hostel in Pham Ngu Lao street – a popular tourist area. The hostel is called Saigon Backpackers Hostel and it has 8.0 ratings on Agoda.com.

The hostel's lobby
The hostel’s lobby

Just because I was trying to be careful, I opted for a female only dorm and surprisingly stayed in the same room with another Indonesian female solo traveler! She lives in Australia though, and she seems like a very pro backpacker compared to me 🙂 We got along well and went for a meal together, had nice conversations and happened to leave our hostel at the same time – she was continuing her journey to north of Vietnam while I was departing for Bangkok.

So what else did I do in Ho Chi Minh? Why I think it’s not for me?

Well.. the reason is simple. I think the city is just like a much older version of Jakarta. It’s crowded (but not as crowded), it got traffic here and there (but not as much), and humid as well. Let me elaborate further…

I spent my first night exploring Pham Ngu Lao street with a local I knew from Couchsurfing. He was very nice and polite,  and based on my request took me to eat Phở. The restaurant’s atmosphere and service was questionable, but definitely not the food. It was the best Phở I had in my life! No joke.

Enjoying the best Pho I've ever had!
Enjoying the best Pho I’ve ever had!

However, that night I began to realize Ho Chi Minh’s similarities to Jakarta. Because it’s Friday night, many youngsters were seen hanging out and there were many tourists as well, mostly Caucasian. They travel in groups and seemed to be having fun.

The next day, I went for a day tour. It’s easy to book one – most hostels would be able to arrange it but I remember that it’s cheaper (forgot how much it cost me though, oops!) if you use the local travel agents found mushrooming on Pham Ngu Lao street. My travel agent had two day trip options – one was to explore the Mekong river and one was to go to Cu Chi Tunnel. Without knowing much of the latter, I chose it because I thought was more interesting than seeing just a river.

It turned out to be a mistake. It was a war memorial, and I’m not much of a war history person. Our funny and lovely tour guide explained about the war and despite his sense of humor I was feeling sort of depressed when imagining the war. Really.

Cu Chi Tunnel
Cu Chi Tunnel

Lucky me the tour only took me half day and I got time to explore more parts of Ho Chi Minh after I came back to the hotel. I spent my last night with another local I met from Couchsurfing and she took me to see other tourist attractions like Notre Dame Cathedral and Saigon Opera House. I think they were pretty but not new for me as the sort of architecture can also be found in Jakarta.

Notre Dame Cathedral
Notre Dame Cathedral

The next day I managed to go to Ben Thanh Market in the morning and had brunch with my Indonesian friend mentioned previously before leaving for Bangkok. Again, the market is interesting but not something new. It looks like Indonesia’s traditional market although I agree that the products sold can be very cheap if you master the art of bargaining!

Ben Than Market
Ben Than Market

To end my story, I understand that Ho Chi Minh can be very interesting to those from Western countries as it’s cheap and exotic – something that can’t be found in where they came from. But to me, it failed to offer me something new. Yes it’s safe, yes it’s cheap, yes the food were delicious and the people I met were nice, but it did not give me enough reasons to come back again.

Motorcycles everywhere!
Motorcycles everywhere! Just like Jakarta :p

Have you been to Ho Chi Minh? what did you think?