Mistakes To Avoid While Traveling in Indonesia

I'm like the opposite of all of those bill memes that have been floating around the internets for a while. Instead of doing everything right, I do it all wrong.

You know, these bill memes:

Here’s mine (80's hair included free of charge):

I’ve been traveling for a long time, yet I still make mistakes.

I don’t know if it’s ADD and occasional lack of ability to pay attention to detail (yet sometimes I pay too much attention to detail haha) or just the fact that every time you go somewhere new, it’s a new set of rules.

Whatever it is, here's a list of mistakes I made so that you can avoid making the same ones! Here goes my virtual walk of shame...

The First Mistake

This one's the biggest: I overstayed my visa in Indonesia by 1 day.

I know, I know. I KNEW I had only 30 days, why would I overstay?

The thing is, I actually thought I was leaving on day 29, a day early.

Because I just think it’s good travel advice to leave on day 29 that way in case something happens, like you miss your flight, and you have to leave a day late, you’ll still be on time.

Well, I epically failed at following my own advice.

I came in on March 21 and am leaving April 20th. I was thinking I had 21- 21. But oh, you tricky month of March. You tricked me. You knew I was bad with numbers and messed me over.

Because of the 31st, I stayed one day too much. Actually, it was technically only by 5 hours. My mistake cost me $45.

But at least I didn’t get put in jail, which was my fear for some reason? Maybe PTSD from the motorbike incident lol.

This applies to traveling anywhere. Make sure you don’t overstay.

The Second Mistake

My second mistake was thinking that I needed to leave Canggu and stay in Kuta, near the airport, because I wanted to be at the airport by 4-4:30 am.

Canggu is 45 min to an hour away, and taxis definitely charge more for the middle of the night rides.

Anyway, I just liked the added security of knowing that I was close to the airport so that I’d make sure I could get there on time.

Well, if I could do it over knowing what I know now, I would’ve just stayed another night in Canggu and hired the same driver that was recommended to me to pick me up from the airport at 2 am.

Partially because Kuta really just isn’t my scene, other than this BEAUTIFUL sunset that I saw, which was amazing. Do you notice how there’s literally a rainbow of colors reflected on the water in the sand?

Seriously it looks like a rainbow. Look from left to right. Hands down the second best sunset I saw while I was in Bali!

Honestly, it ended up being WAY more stressful to leave Canggu to go to Kuta. It would have been less stressful to just deal with an hour long drive at 3 am from Canggu, honestly. Plus I would have gotten to spend another night with my friends.

Because we were leaving around 2 pm, it ended up taking over an hour to get to Kuta, but it could have been a 20-minute drive. We ended up wasting a huge chunk of our day just driving around.

I used a grab, which kind of makes a lot of Indonesians angry (not all of them…one of my friends actually said she uses it). That was cool, because it definitely saved some money.

The thing with grab is, fares will probably go up because they bought out Uber in Asia, so now there is no competition and also, a LOT of drivers will cancel on you before you can find one to even take you.

I tried to take one to the airport this morning, but 5 in a row canceled on me before I just gave up and took an overpriced taxi.

Let’s put this into perspective: I came from Canggu, which was 63k ($4.84). I stayed at a hotel 1 km from the airport. That’s 1/3 of a mile…and they charged me 50k.

I couldn’t find it for less than that, other than grab, which just kept canceling.

So I ended up paying 113k anyway, even though I assumed a taxi to the airport would be cheaper since I was so close. I should’ve known people ALWAYS charge insane rates to the airport.

I could have just paid 150k to stay in Canggu and go directly to the airport at 3 am, without going through the hassle of finding a new hotel, packing up my stuff, moving locations.

So we wasted a lot of time there.

The Third Mistake

When you look for a place on booking.com, don’t assume that just because you check the box that says “airport shuttle” that that means it’s included and it’s free. I checked the box for airport shuttle, and my hotel wanted to charge 80k, which was more than my entire ride to Canggu that took over an hour!!!

So I had to deal with the hassle of getting a taxi on the street/ getting canceled on my grabs this am.

It’s not necessarily free, and if they DO provide it, they’re going to charge you way higher rates than you can find elsewhere because that’s how they make their profit.

My Fourth Mistake

Ignoring my gut instinct. I just wrote about how listening to my gut saved my life once, so I’m not sure why I would ignore it now. And trusting an 8-star rating on booking or Agoda or any website like that.

You know that saying trust your gut? It rings true every time. Seriously. Any time I’ve trusted my gut, I’ve been thankful…and when I haven’t…let’s just say I had to learn a lesson from it.

In fact, trusting my gut actually might have saved my life once.

In this case, my driver to Kuta pulled up in front of my hotel and I immediately had a bad feeling of “I don’t want to stay here.”

It had overall good reviews. The picture looked amazing. They had a free airport shuttle.

The room was 2x the size of any room I’ve had in Asia. And all for only $15 USD.

20 minutes walking from the beach. Nice restaurant to eat at.

Sounds great, right?

Meh, not so much.

I think some people seriously just won’t write an honest review, because they’re afraid to say something bad. For me, I have to be honest, because I feel like I can spare someone else dealing with absolute crap if they don’t have to.

That’s why no hotel or restaurant would probably ever ask me to review them because if I don’t like it, I’d just say it. Although, when it comes to food, I’m pretty easy to please. If you ever hear me write a bad review on food… you should definitely take it seriously because my standards are incredibly low lol.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m not a food snob.

Anyway, I had a bad feeling about going, but I went anyway. Everything went wrong. First, there was so much construction that I couldn’t even find the entrance until I found out there was another way.

Then, I walked up the stairs to check in, and there was no one around to be found, so I just had to wait there.

I rang the bell and nothing.

Silence.

I went back downstairs to look around to see if there was somewhere else to go, or if I could eat at that “Restaurant” but there was nothing to be found at all except for construction and a gas station.

I see a worker just smoking right outside the rooms, completely ignoring me, even when I tried to grab his attention.

Finally, I get someone. I check in.

I go to the room.

Always ask to see the room first!

It smelled SO bad I had to hold my breath.

It didn’t look like the pictures. The picture of the bathtub must have been taken 20 years ago BEFORE there was brown mold growing all over it.

I’m not kidding.

I typically spend about $10/night on accommodation and ALL of it has been WAY nicer than this. I can’t complain about any place I’ve stayed in Asia so far. Everywhere has been good pretty much.

The sheets had stains all over them and I just couldn’t stop thinking how bad it was that I didn’t even need to do a black light test to know what was soiling them.

They were full of holes.

That's not really a big deal though, honestly, about the sheets and stuff because that's just how it is sometimes when you travel. You gotta go with the flow.

But the main thing is the internet didn’t work. At ALL. That's where the flow stops dead in it's tracks. I couldn’t even connect, which is bad news bears, because obviously, I have to post on steemit every day haha (and work as well).

Anyway, I had to waste a lot of time arguing with the guy trying to get my money back. A LOT of time. Like an hour. I wasted SO much time it was horrible. But, finally, he agreed.

But since I didn’t have internet, and couldn’t call a grab which I knew wouldn’t overcharge me, I had to deal with standing on the side of the road waiting for a taxi to take me 1km down the street to take us to another hotel.

It took 3 tries before I got someone to agree to 12k vs. 50 or something ridiculously higher when I had JUST gone so much further for only 63.

I tipped the 12k guy a lot just for being an honest guy who didn’t try to rip me off.

He took us to another hotel that I’d seen on booking.

Which Is Mistake Number 5

At least make a reservation on booking or something in advance. You don’t have to pay, which is nice, because when you arrive at your accommodation, you can ask to look around and make sure you don’t end up in a room with a smelly bathtub full of mold.

But if you book in advance, you get WAY cheaper rates. I had booked in advance online but canceled because they didn’t have a free shuttle, and went to the other place (bad choice).

So, they told me I had to pay 500k($38) for the same room that would have been $23 USD.

I couldn’t believe the ridiculous price jump. I ended up getting the security guard outside to connect me to wifi I could just “reserve” a spot at the lower price and then walk it in and show it to the lady.

It still ended up being 26, a little more than when I had originally booked, but whatever.

It’s just…this place wasn’t good either. The AC was broken. The elevator was broken. The wifi also BARELY worked.

It broke the records for being the worst WIFI I’ve had since coming to Asia 4 months ago.

Literally, the download speed was .12 and upload speed was .71

I was absolutely shocked at the fact that $26/ night got such low quality as well. I stayed in Canggu for $10/ night for a month and never once had a problem!

Well, maybe only one night with the internet, but for 30 days, it was perfect. So was the AC. In Asia, you can get almost luxury things for $26 so it was a disappointment because at night it’s so hot, that I would have at least liked to have a fan in the room since the AC wasn’t working.

My Last Mistake. For Now, Anyway…

I’ve never traveled throughout Asia before. I guess I went to India, and the Asian side of Turkey, but I didn’t have to take budget airlines for either of those flights.

I tried to be prepared ahead of time. I figured I might not wanna carry around my hiking backpack on so many flights, so I opted for a small, 20-inch standard carry-on size suitcase, smugly thinking that I would never be charged for luggage during my however-long journey in Asia.

I’ve taken about 8 flights in the past 4 months, and it really adds up if you have to check a bag each time!

Well…I found out the hard way that size isn’t all that matters :(

That was a shock to me.

You can only take 7kg on an Air Asia flight of carry on baggage. Total. I bet my laptop alone weights at least 1.

I weighed my empty suitcase the other day and found out it weighs a shocking total of 6kg!!! No wonder even when I put on literally almost every piece of clothing I had it STILL was overweight.

Plus, forget weighing your bags, ‘cause the scales at the airports are never consistent.

I literally weighed my bag 4 times in a row on the same scale, and got everywhere from 9kg to 13 kg.

Same on a different scale. Weighed it today again and got 8.0 on one scale and 9.7 on the other.

It’s a scam.

The “low budget’ flights suddenly don’t become so low-budget anymore once all the add-ons are complete. You don’t even get a free glass of water if you’re thirsty, so don’t expect it.

So, a hiking backpack is the better way to go because the bag itself isn’t going to weigh 6kg so you have a lot better chance of getting within the weight limit.

Air Asia also charges you $20 something per way, so I ended up paying $45 to fly my bag from Bali to Hanoi. I got charged twice just because I have a layover in KL :(

So, if you haven’t left yet, this advice is still the best:

Pack half of what you think you need and bring double the money.

I’ve found some amazing deals in Bali and I bet you’ll want to buy stuff. So, maybe pack some clothes that you were going to donate to Goodwill anyway, and then along your journey, you can give them away to friends you meet or locals who need them instead.

THEN you’ll have more room in your bag to bring home a few cool things from your trip without going over the weight limit.

Lucky for you, I’m a hot mess who makes a lot of mistakes 😆. So now YOU know what to do and what not to do! I did manage to do one thing right, which I'll let ya know about soon!!