Tina's wanderings around the world

When did I first learn about jamu? Eat Pray Love? Was it when we got married in Bali? My curiosity was piqued then. In the intervening years my interest in plant medicine has soared, and since we moved to SG where there's a significant population from Indonesia, and my proximity to jamu became imminently closer, I've been even more curious about jamu.  I stumbled across a jamu workshop as I searched online for things to do during a solo workcation to Yogyakarta. In amongst the batik and silver jewelry making workshops (is this place up my alley or what) was a jamu making workshop. Booked it quicksmart. Naturally I was the only student in my class today, made all the more significant as I discovered that mine was the very first tour these folks have done since the pandemic began! It's just two people, former tour guides at a company that went out of business, now starting their own business.  Resti met me at the entrance to Beringharjo Market, a hub for all things batik. Bur...

For my second visit to Indonesia, it feels right that it was Yogyakarta. Bali is almost in a world of its own, with its Hindu majority and temples and influx of tourists. Yogyakarta is an altogether different feel,  as an arts and culture hub of Indonesia, and with UNESCO listed Buddhist and Hindu temples, it calls. I mean, the city itself is not the attraction. It's the third largest city in Indonesia with a constant hum of motorcycles and it's not exactly an easy place to wander. Some cities, you can walk for miles but this one...I don't find myself wanting to walk all that much, and as Marcus says, when you're in a city full of motorcycles, walking is not a default mode of transportation. Which I find to be true here. Not many walkers around, and as a tall white lady walker, I attract attention. Which is not unfamiliar to me, but I never love it. There aren't many tourists that have found there way here yet, as in a lot of southeast Asia. And I may be even more a...

  This was the start of our transit from Hanoi to Hoi An. Across many travels in many countries, this fog thing is not something I've encountered before, and I found it disconcerting. Extra so as the plane felt like it was 30+ years old. On one of our most recent flights, streams of water came down from the overhead bins during take off and landing. These things may or may not be related to the pandemic, but air travel is feeling a lot weirder as we emerge from the last few isolated, non-traveling years.  To complete the scene, picture a thunderstorm overhead and rain pouring down outside. Imagine sitting in outdated plane seats with the row in front of you uncomfortably close, so close you have to either choose to point your knees in one direction or splay your legs out. Then imagine the worst waiting music you've ever heard which consists of only two songs, playing over and over again, the worst kind of earworm that gets stuck in your head for days. Then picture being stuck ...

When we were traveling through southeast Asia nine years ago ( nine years ago! ), one of the highlights of our trip was Vietnam. The punchiness of the coffee. Drinking bia hoi out on the streets in tiny plastic chairs along with hundreds of other people. The banh mis. It's a place we've been eager to travel back to. So after getting back from our trip to Italy, we talked about where we should go next and Vietnam was at the top of the list. With my birthday just around the corner, we figured that was as good an excuse as any for a trip. As a serial contract worker, my vacation days are limited. And as a fully fledged corporate executive, Marcus doesn't really get proper vacation despite having an overwhelming amount of vacation days. But given that my job is fully remote anyway, and that Marcus still frequently works from home, we decided to do the travel + work thing. And so commenced our first workcation of 2022. We flew into Hanoi on a Friday night, a fairly casual three-...

We've been on this assignment for over a year and a half now--at least halfway through. Thinking about day-to-day life right now, a lot has changed since we first got here.  Covid. Two weeks of quarantine on arrival. There were zero cases in the country on some days, and there were things we could do in Singapore that we hadn't been able to do back home. We could go to the movies, the theater, mini golfing!! There were other restrictions, though--signing in and out on the Trace Together app, our temperature had to be taken when we went inside buildings, we had to mask  everywhere , and there were caps on group sizes. A few freedoms in exchange for a lot of restrictions. And a constant barrage of changing rules and restrictions. You can only go out in groups of 2. Then 4. Then back to 2. Eating out allowed. Eating out not allowed. Eating out allowed in groups of 2. You're allowed 2 people over to your house a day. Now 3. Now 5. Spikes up to cases of 10,000-20,000. PCRs requi...