And so I met up with Nicolas the French CSer who has been travelling/working/living in a few countries. He's such an amazing person and by default, another fellow CSer who inspires me to travel the world even more. I met him at Farrer Park MRT and we walked towards Kampong Glam. We had beef murtabak at ZamZam. Walked towards City Hall and gave the standard commentary. LOL. Nicolas had another appointment with another CSer at Harbour Front MRT so we made our way there. Since we were 15 min early, I decided to show him my favourite shop in the whole of Singapore-The National Geographic shop at Vivocity. Our jaws dropped a few times whenever we looked at the price tags.

'Original price:$25 000
Sale: $19 000'

Like who the TOOT would buy them. Ok maybe the super rich.

Anyways, the decision to go Java was quite last min. Although I did have like 2-3 months to plan for a backpacking trip. So far everything is settled. I wrote in to the Indonesian Group forum to ask for tips/suggestions and replies were all positive. I'm looking forward to meet Teguh and his family, and also the rest of the CSers. And not forgetting Ijen Crater-I've fallen in love with you. Haha!

Oh, I'm thankful I managed to find a CSer who can host me in Bondowoso. Bondowoso is basically a town that is close to Ijen Crater. And little did I know that he had a huge house with a large swimming pool that comes together with maids and a driver (probably a garderner or two) until after I sent him the request and looked through his pictures,thoroughly. Gosh, I need to mentally prepare myself.