Thursday – Our hotel offered us some free classes in the Indonesian (indo) language and we thought, “what the hell that could be fun”.  We were a little sceptical though why would they be giving us something for free. We were expecting some sort of catch but there actually wasn’t, it was just all about fun. So after a leisurely breakfast we gathered with another 7 of our fellow hotel guests for the class. Our teachers Miss Bianca and Miss Novia were lovely young girls probably in their early twenties. Although it hard to tell how old anyone is over there they either look really young or really old and the younger ones are older than they look and the older ones are younger than they look. Hope that makes sense. All the other students of the indo class (old people like us) were Aussies.

Some of the men were a bit hard core and were asking the girls how to say inappropriate things in Indonesian like ‘‘Piss off” to the hawkers’. The girls didn’t pay any attention to them though and there wives gave their husbands the evil eye. One looked particularly embarrassed so I think her husband would have come off second best when they got back to their room!. Bloody Aussie wankers Robbie and I  were horrified.  We can take a joke but this was just poor taste and bad manners.

You will be happy to know Robbie and I behaved ourselves as we really wanted to learn and there is no way I want to tell some one to piss off in their country after all we are the intruders “how rude” .  Bianca and Novia loved Robbie (Mr Robbie they called him)  he made them laugh. I especially wanted to know how to say no thank you so I could say I didn’t want to buy with good manners. Robbie was interested in the things like see ya later.

We had the girls in stitches when we were trying to pronounce their words, it was hilarious.

So we learnt the correct way to greet people , as they have different greetings for the time of day . The day is broken into 4 greetings:-

  • In the morning it’s Selamat Pagi
  • From 11am -4pm Selamat Siang
  • From 4-till sundown Selamat Sorray
  • After sundown Selamat Mallam

There you go, you just had your first Indonesian lesson now off you go to Bali for your own adventure! I asked the girls what happens if you say the wrong one at a particular time of the day and they just giggled and said it doesn’t matter . I was worried that I would insult someone but they said “No don’t worry, Miss Linda”!

Next thing they taught us was how to buy stuff. They gave us all the important  questions and responses;

  • How to ask how much?
  • How to say too much!
  • Yes I would like to buy.
  • No thank you, too expensive.
  • I don’t wish to buy.

Tidak terima Kasih was my favourite (No thank you) and I used this a lot once I had that under my belt, I was happy.

The girls  also told us that haggling over the price of an item is expected. They told us that  the correct way to do it is ask the price the seller will give a price, you make a counter offer usually about 1/3 of the price the vendor has said  but you should expect to pay about ½ of the original price when you reach a consensus . They suggested good humour is a good way to haggle and Robbie already does this which is probably why he is so good at it. I am too straight laced I think to offer up the humour, my head is all caught up in trying to work the money out as you are negotiating in the 100 of thousands.  $5 Aus = 50,000 Rp roughly.  My brain is busily taking off 4 zeros so I can get in my head how much that roughly is in our terms. Anyway. I forget where I am up to and my second offer can sometimes be more than they asked, .hehehehehe. Yeap it’s safe to say I am hopeless,.hehehehehe. Robbie saved me a couple of times from the killer offers I made.

The girls also taught us to count and a short basic conversation. Then they snuck a test in on us.  We weren’t expecting that … hehehehe   Miss Novia was deadly serious with this too, no cheating . The Aussie wankers didn’t go very well as they were just obnoxious throughout the lesson making jokes that weren’t funny &  just showed them to be idiots I think. Glad I wasn’t married to one of them I have a good husband!

Mr Robbie and Miss Linda both got 97.5% out of 100% a couple of ladies got 100%.

I got in trouble ‘cos I spelt something like it sounded ( fun trouble not bad trouble)… bit like I do with English really  LOL.  We all laughed about it .

It was all good fun and the girls took lots of photos of us all.  We were also invited the next day to go to the Markets and to a cooking class again for free (‘gratis’ in Indonesian) see I did learn something hehehehe.

One thing to note which I will discuss in tomorrows episode, was I should have taken more notice of the counting and numbers as it will be important at the markets hehehe there was a surprise waiting in that area the following day that I wasn’t aware of now.

After the indo class I didn’t feel like doing too much so Robbie  set off  looking for photo opps  and shopping on his own. I just stayed back at the unit watching TV and reading and generally just having a bit of a bludge. He came home with the Coolest T-shirt from the Hard Rock hotel.

Robbie went for a wander around Kuta taking photos at the beach and on the streets. He ran into what looked like a professional photo shoot and there were people running around getting snapped left right and centre so he got all caught up in the action/ hype of that . God knows what the hell they were advertising but I think the shoes and socks might be a bit of a give a way  What do you think?  Any ideas?

This day is short and sweet as it was a chill out sort of day.