Is where i am right now. My 5th day. Based on the information (or the lack thereof) on its wikitravel entry, i have managed to force myself to expect non-princess treatment during the trip.

When you downgrade your expectation to like, 20% out of the whatever 100% you imagined in the first place, you feel pretty safe about it. Surely it couldn’t be that bad, you thought to yourself. It’s like when you don’t wanna jinx something, you start to imagine something going the complete opposite direction, but hoping secretly and perhaps subconsciously that it doesn’t turn out like how you counter-imagined it. It’s a pretty twisted sick theory I know. But surely you can relate to that because surely it happened at some point in your life before?

Let’s just say that the definition of the word luxury here means having body shower cream and hair dryer in your hotel. So far, only one (satu, yat, ichi, yi) hotel has got some funny smelling shower cream and zero hotel has hair dryer. Indonesian girls like to sleep with wet hair?

I know by heart now, that I am most definitely a diva traveler. And I most deserve to be a diva traveler. I am not born in this world for mosquito nets and sunburn and splinter in the toe and out-of-order aircons and stains on bed sheets and cold showers (kill me) and soaps that make your skin feel like bricks and squat toilets with floaties on top and all the oh let’s get spiritually in touch with the trees and rocks crap.

For the past 5 days I have been using my expensive facial wash as body shower (ouch), hand cream as lip balm (yucks) because I couldn’t find a convenience store that sells the aforementioned stuff I needed and endured an inhumane lack of electronic communication activities. I must, however, give the tour guide and the officials good credit because they tried the best they could to accommodate each of us. The local people here are sooooooooooo nice. Like, nice beyond anything i can possibly show my gratitude for. Certainly not by bitching about how crap my hotels were. The people here are incredibly friendly, helpful and hospitable it makes my heart warm. In fact they are so nice they make me feel tearily guilty about feeling like crap. But that doesn’t change the fact that this place is still planets away from meeting my diva traveler standard. So it is me. It’s ME. IT IS ME.

So I have worked out that i deserve my feather pillows (and perhaps some high quality non allergic buckwheat ploh pillows) and branded shower crème and designer welcome chocolates and super speedy wireless broadband free of charge and exotic fresh fruits in front of my coffee table and canggih toilets complete with seat warmers and bidet functions and 24 hour butler service and a 7-11 within a 500 meters radius. And stay first hand, personally connected with credit cards and civilization.

I assure you that if you don’t have that diva traveler in you (like how everyone claims oh i don’t need fancy hotels i am comfortable with backpackers blah blah i don’t mind leeches in my arse, whatever), you would love this place. Really one. I will show you the good side of it i promise. But right now it’s just…

It’s me. It’s just me.

T_T

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