Hello Everyone! I'm happy to finally have the opportunity to share my story in this community again after a long hiatus. This time, I will share my experience with my friends visiting Carnival or better known as Pasar Malam in Indonesia. Here we go for my entry for the #MarketFriday by @dswigle
To start the story, my friends and I actually planned to visit the elephant sanctuary, which takes 1.5 hours. However, after considering the road conditions and the fact that we were leaving quite late from the set schedule, we decided to cancel the visit and replace it with going to a nearby cafe and having a friendly chit-chat. In the middle of the conversation, one of my friends asked if we wanted to visit the carnival. Actually, my house and the friend who made the suggestion were located close to the night market, so we decided to go there.
We arrived at the carnival location at 8 pm and the location was already crowded with visitors who came from various places. Generally, carnivals like this stay around for 1-2 months and only operate from 7 pm to 12 pm. There is no special fee to enter the carnival area, visitors are only charged if they board the facilities or play the games provided by the carnival manager.
While walking through the carnival area, one of my friends, who is known to be quite calm, asked us to ride the Kora-Kora (Swinging Ship) attraction. The queue for this ride was already quite snaking, and we had to wait for 2 trips before we could finally get on the ride. While waiting in the queue, my friend asked us to choose the seats at the top, to make it more challenging, she said. We were quite surprised because he seems to be an adrenaline junkie and this is contrary to the daily life that we know.
and it took 10 minutes per trip
By the way, I forgot to mention that there were 4 of us in total, and all three of my friends were girls. Another fact that was quite funny to me was, there was another friend who was known as an adventurer because he often visited the forest and the sea. But when we were on this ride, his face looked worried and a little pale. Seeing these two anomalies from my friend, whom I know quite well, was like a direct illustration of the term life is full of surprises.
All passengers boarded and the attraction started to move. As a start, of course, the swing is still very slow and I can see the faces of the passengers of this ride are still very relaxed. But after entering the fifth swing, the swing feels faster and higher. At this point, the passengers start to look pale and some even start screaming. I won't say that I wasn't scared at all, but to reduce the fear, I let it go by laughing out loud instead of screaming like the others. Unfortunately, there was no documentation that I could take while on this attraction. This is because the attraction has no safety belts and both of my hands had to hold onto the horizontal pole in front of us to keep from falling off. We were probably on the attraction for about 10 minutes until it finally came to a complete stop. After getting off the attraction, everyone looked relieved and weak, including the four of us.
We continued wandering around the carnival and decided to try the Ferris wheel. The queue for this attraction was even longer than the previous Swinging Ship ride. While queuing, we saw a stand selling ice cream and finally two of us decided to buy ice cream while the rest of us kept the queue. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes while enjoying the ice cream we bought earlier, we finally got our turn to ride this attraction.
If the previous Swinging Ship ride was very adrenaline-pumping, for us this Ferris wheel ride gives a sense of calmness because the movement is relatively slow and we can enjoy the view of the entire carnival area from a high altitude. The ticket price for this attraction is also like the previous attraction. It seems like for every ride there is the same ticket price.
After spending about 15 minutes on the Ferris wheel, we decided to just walk around and not continue with the other rides as it was getting late. While wandering around, we passed by many other attractions such as the giant slide, ball pool, Whack-a-Mole, and the one that actually caught my attention the most was Tong Setan. I didn't know the term in English, even after I looked up references on the internet I wasn't quite sure what it meant. The attraction is a giant chamber, in which several bikers will spin around the chamber walls while performing freestyle stunts. If you know the name of this attraction, please let us know in the comments.
In between the various attractions and games, we also passed by a place that provided coloring on paper. Not only children but some adults have also seen coloring. To be able to enjoy this facility, the price charged is also the same as the ticket price which is 10,000 IDR (~0.67 USD) and the colored paper can also be taken home when finished.
The last section we visited was the game stand. I don't know if there is a special term for this game or not. The way to play is that visitors must be able to close a red circle with the 3 round plates of metal that are given to them perfectly.
We didn't buy tickets for this game, just watched the other visitors. The tickets are also cheaper, for 3 tries it only costs about 5,000 IDR (~0.34 USD). Personally, I think the chances of closing the circle perfectly are slim. This is because I noticed at first glance that the diameter of the disk is smaller than the circle that needs to be closed. I'm also sure that the visitors who played the game were aware of this, but the curiosity and desire to take home a sizable prize certainly aroused their desire to give it a try, especially at such a low cost.
After watching others play the game for a while, we couldn't find anyone who managed to close the circle perfectly. We then decided to head back home as it was already 11 pm. While walking out of the area, I also took a picture of the bowling stand, which was also crowded with visitors.
Finally, we come to the end of the story. Overall, I found the tickets for the rides to be reasonably priced (10,000 IDR/ ~0.67 USD). That's quite a bargain here, and I think that's one of the highlights of the attraction, as it can be enjoyed by people from various classes of society. However, the safety factor also seems to be one of the considerations (a low price does not cover a good safety factor, CMIIW). Even so, I certainly still enjoyed the moments we spent at this carnival and will certainly return to visit it on another occasion.
Through this story, I also became curious, what about the carnivals out there? if you are willing to tell it through the comments column, I would be very happy to hear it. Thank you for visiting this post. I hope you like it and don't forget to support by upvoting, reblogging, and sharing this post. Thanks again, and see you next time everyone!