They Paved Paradise

I slept in a bed last night. For 11 hours (minus that one hour in the middle). Joni Mitchell wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” I needed that sleep so badly! The best travel decisions we made was booking this hotel and having this long layover to explore.

Before bed, at 4 pm, I took my first malaria pill per doctor’s instructions. Whether it was the pill, the diverse buffet, exhaustion or stress, I did wake up nauseous around 10:00. I also had a nosebleed around that time, probably from using my CPAP without the humidifier on because I couldn’t find distilled water. I decided to proceed for the rest of the night without the CPAP and it worked out fine. I tried the concierge, a convenience store, and a pharmacy, but nobody had heard of distilled water here. “Still water?” was the reply I got from each of them. If I ever move here, I plan to open a distilled water store for travelers with sleep apnea, selling bottles that are 20 oz so they are about the right size for one night.

I don’t know if the bed was super comfortable or that it was so welcomed, but when I did sleep I slept soundly. We normally sleep with a white noise machine running at home, but there was no bathroom fan to run. However, they did have a volume knob on the wall, that when we turned it up it made white noise to cover bathroom sounds. The bathroom also had two motorized blinds that retract into the ceiling – one is translucent and the other is room-darkening.

We woke up at 3:30 am, which will give us lot of time to shower and pack before the free hotel breakfast at 6 and boarding at 7:30. Our itinerary has us on a 2-hour flight to Yogyakarta, clearing customs and getting a ride from Ary’s sister for 3 hours to Wonosobo.

One odd thing about our trip is that I can’t get cellular services to work for data. I was told by Verizon that we should be able to do that for $10 per day per line and use our unlimited plan, but I’ll have to contact them about it.

No photos to share of us sleeping. Until next time, Zaìjiàn!