[30 Sep 19] We had French language assessment exam today and I’m laughing now at how I did my essay. The topic was the protection of children in armed conflict–and I’m like how am I gonna write this in French?? I just French-ed a lot of English words — société! éducation! service médicale!
[01 Oct 19] In the morning, I attended the foreign students introduction with university officials at Université Paris 2 (Assas). I’m struggling with my French. All speeches were in French. Sink or swim, and swim I will.
[02 Oct 19] Backed out from an 11pm-5am college party coz I was like, what? It just starts at 11pm (on a Wednesday night at that)? I didn’t have class today so I had the whole day to do errands, walk around the neighborhood in Surenes, and take a stroll at La Défense two tram stations away. I took some photos while I was at the Place de la Défense at sunset.
[03 Oct 19] There was a recruitment fair at the university today, and I was contemplating on signing up for something. But I hesitated, and kind of regret it now. Also, apparently Thursday night-outs are a thing among many university students. (And I was like, wasn’t there a party the night before?) I ended up going out with some new friends–fellow Filipino scholars in France who were visiting Paris. We had dinner and some drinks at a bar near Montparnasse.
[05 Oct 19] Despite it being a Saturday, I spent the entire afternoon at the Cujas library to do some school work. I really love staying in the library because I can feast my eyes on so many wonderful… books and readings in one big chamber. Ugh. Lord, am I in heaven.
Later that evening, I joined my Filipino housemates along Rue de Rivoli to watch the one of the weirdest parades I’ve seen. It’s the Blanche Nuit parade in Paris. There were Scottish men with bagpipes, a floating snake, mariachi bands, an Illuminati hand, a float w naked tattooed men and women, robots, then–a parade float spewing out fresh cotton candy?! Di ko nagets yung theme.
Later on that evening we had good authentic pizza nearby.
[06 Oct 19] It was the day of the Philippine Food Festival in Paris. It was such a hit, you’d wonder why there’s barely any Filipino restaurants in the city. The venue was packed to the brim and the lines extended for half a kilometer, I think? Kare-kare was gone by the first hour. Since it was the first event of its kind, the organizers and volunteers seemed to have been extremely overwhelmed and was severely understaffed. I invited some LLM classmates who came and enjoyed some food, but I was a bit embarrassed because of the inconveniences of queuing up for so long and then there weren’t a lot of food choices left once we got in.
June 9, 2019. We had originally planned on a whole day excursion to Nusa Penida, an island east of Bali known for its picturesque beaches and cliffs. However, considering that we were still exhausted and that a trip to the offshore island would take an entire day, we decided to change our plan and opted for a more relaxed day at a beach club near our hotel in Seminyak and explore some of the nearer towns.
That morning, we skipped hotel breakfast and asked Joe to bring us to a place where locals love to eat. He decided to bring us to another “babi” (pork) place called Pak Malen where they serve babi guling (see photos below). True enough, even though we were there a good half hour before opening time, a horde of customers and Grab delivery riders were already waiting. Apparently, in Muslim-dominant Indonesia, Bali is one of those places with a big fascination with otherwise haram (forbidden food) pork.
How was it? The dish was hella spicy for me and it turned my face into a giant waterfall of sweat. It’s like lechon kawali, Bali-style, but make it tongue- burning with chilis and spicy sidings. Halfway into trying to finish my food, my tongue had numbed I couldn’t really decipher the other flavors anymore. I would, later on, learn upon further inquiry that it was possible to get a non-spicy version of the dish.
After breakfast, we decided to go to Canggu, Bali’s hipster and laidback surf town north of Seminyak.
June 8, 2019. My friends and I only had four whole days to spend in Bali, so we decided to do just some of the “essential” destinations for first-time vacationers on the island. Two ticks in the checklist were sites in Ubud, a town in central Bali, regarded as the island’s cultural heartland and a temple in Manukaya right next to Ubud.
I had previously followed the referral of another friend who recommended a local driver to take us around our desired destinations for a flat fee per day. His name was Joe. It is essential to have someone drive you around Bali since there doesn’t appear to be any mode of public transportation convenient enough for tourists to go about the island on their own. The only other way is to rent scooters or motorbikes. None of us knew how, so that was not an option. I coordinated with Joe days before the trip and agreed on an itinerary.
From our hotel in Seminyak, Joe drove us an hour to the interior of the island along rural sceneries typical of tropical Southeast Asia–meaning, nothing too unfamiliar to Filipinos like us–rolling hills, rice paddies, terraces and vegetable gardens flanked by towering coconut trees and clusters of village homes.
But first, breakfast! Joe drove us to an obviously tourist restaurant called Bebek Joni. It was your typical tourist trap, but hey, whatever–we were hungry. We were there for breakfast, so the chartered tourist groups have not arrived for lunch, and we were the only guests around. Set in the middle of rice paddies and duck ponds, it had a very peaceful and provincial ambiance. I had a combination plate of satay, fried chicken, and some morsels of scrambled egg with my nasi. It came with Bali coffee and some rice crackers.
After breakfast, we drove a few more kilometers to Tegalalang, still in Ubud, for its famed rice terraces. We dropped by the Instagram-essential Alas Harum agro-tourism site. It was a privately-owned resort with perfectly-manicured rice terraces running along a small valley with a freshwater stream in the middle. The basic entrance ticket allows you to roam around the garden for as long as you please, but for some additional rupiahs, you can avail of their other activities such as luwak coffee tasting, the sky bike, and the Instagram-famous swing. It is what it is–a beautiful garden with plenty of spots to take great vacation photos.