Long-Lat: 1.279, 103.847
Block Height: 732,298
BTC: $40,485
T hey say that ajourney of a thousand miles starts with a single step. For me it started in December 2021 when I tested positive for Covid-19 back at my mums house in the north midlands of the United Kingdom.
Preparing for the trip:
I've been an on and off motorcyclist for probably the best part of 3 decades at this point, since I was a little child.
There is a famous saying that always stuck with me, "Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul." Anyone that's ever spent time riding a motorbike will tell you just how accurate that statement is. The sense of freedom and exposure to the elements make travelling by motorcycle an entirely different experience to travelling by car or bus; being out in the open with the wind in your face.
The spark of the idea for this trip started during December last year when I was at home in the UK, isolating with covid and trapped in my mums house for 10 days. With growing cabin fever, I thought how great it would be to do a big road trip on a motorbike.
Given that I had been studying bahasa indonesian for about 9 months at that time, and had not been back to Indo for almost a year, there could be no other destination for the trip!
Bikes, Bali and Bitcoin:
Given my love of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, I also wanted to put a bitcoin/crypto spin on the trip, so I devised a few ideas for the trip to give it some Bitcoin/Crypto connection:
- Can only spend interest earned from my Bitcoin holdings
- Mint an NFT for each day of the trip
- Distribute the difference between Day 0 and Day 30 Bitcoin price to NFT holders
W ith that in mind, I drew up a list of things to get done and started preparing for the trip. From big items such as organising bike hire, to things such as PCR testing, luggage, travel insurance, etc. I soon realised that the month of Ramadan was about to start, so this gave me a full month to prepare, as I thought it would be better to do the trip outside of the month of ramadan.
Among the main things i had to arrange was how to film the trip. Given I had no experience in filming anything, I purchased two GoPro cameras from Amazon and a DJI Air 2S drone. I soon found myself buying a ton of accessories for both, and every day my doorbell rang with new deliveries from Amazon :D.
In addition to this i set about building this website and setting up my youtube channel. Fist I had the project logo designed with inspiration from Javanese and Batik design styles, and then next I mapped out a rough plan for the route and had a video graphic of this made.
The route takes me through the southern half of Java on the way out to Bali, and then returning via a northernly path, with stops in the main cities of Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Malang, Kuta, Surabaya, Semarang, Cirebon, starting and ending in the capital city of Jakarta.
The route is, however, not set in stone and nothing is booked in advance. Each day I will book that nights hotel from the road, or simply pull into a hotel and stay the night.
This allows flexibility in case of bad weather or fatigue, or anything else and prevents situations where I would have to cover ground to get to the next checkpoint in situations I'd rather not ride in.
Freshly equipped with my camera gear, I set out learning to use them, particualarly the drone. It comes with a bunch of great features such as object tracking which allows the drone to auto-track objects moving around.
I soon got the hang of it, as you can see from some of my testing footage here: Drone test footage.
Finally, I got to grips on the paperwork required for the trip. I got my international driving permit issued from the UK, and took out insurance to cover the trip.
To help with the videos, I initially tried learning video editing, but very quickly realised that this wasn't going to happen and began searching for a video editor for hire. Given that the videos will be half in Indonesian and half in English, I found an Indonesian video editor and contracted his help. We set up a dropbox for me to upload the footage into daily and set the plans in motion.
Finally I booked my flight ticket to Jakarta for the 5th May and the first night hotel in a boutique hotel called "Treehouse Suites" in south Jakarta.
As the date drew closer, the only thing left to do was double check my equipment and pack my bags!
Bags packed and ready to go. I set off at 7am on thursday the 5th May headed to Changi airport.
The journey was about to begin
