Grrrl Gang - CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the indie/punk band, Grrrl Gang, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story below:

Back in 2018 back when we’re still in college (Those super exciting years of our life), we pulled a one and a half month tour across South East Asia for our album release. We went to Bangkok, Singapore, played in a city we had never been before across Indonesia, ate a lot of good food, got drunk everyday and relied on merch sales on that night just to survive the next day. But there is this one specific city that we will always remember till the rest of our lives, and that city is Bone, South Sulawesi.

For context, we lived in Yogyakarta, which is located in the center of Java Island and Bone is located in the southern part of the island of Sulawesi. It is so rare for bands from our city to play in Bone because it is kinda hard to access, but we have a really good friend that lived there, one of the early supporters for Grrrl Gang too, so we HAVE to be there to celebrate our album release. To get to Bone, it's a two hours flight to Makassar, the capital city of South Sulawesi, followed by a 5 hours drive through forest and ravines (Indiana Jones style). The journey is super exhausting and bear in mind it was the 20th city of the tour so we don’t have much energy left and no money too.

However, upon arrival, the long ass journey is worth it. We enter the city at 10 AM in the morning, picked up by our friends with his pickup truck, go straight to the lunch spot where we were invited and it is LEGIT in the middle of a jungle.. with a hammock and bonfire setted up in the middle. Our friends cooked a super, duper fresh fish and chicken. The best part is they brought a local, hand made alcohol, fermented from Banana that tastes really nice (Don’t ask what's in it because we don’t know). It was 10 AM, in the middle of a jungle, drinking an unlimited amount of local alcohol. All is good and we know that tonight's show will be different.

And it was something else. We played in a club right on top of the hotel where we stayed, where NO ONE knows what Grrrl Gang is except our group of friends who organize the show. Some people think we are a cover band (We do cover Blink 182 in that show tho) and with confidence I can say that no one ever heard of our songs. Although, it was one of the greatest gigs in our band’s tour experience. So it turns out, the club belongs to our friend and that night it was free-flowing alcohol for EVERYONE who pulls up to our show. We got drunk pretty quick, obviously, played 10 songs in like 15 minutes and you know what? We end the night singing to our favorite pop songs that are performed by a cover band that happens to be in the venue that night. Our camera guy slept in the toilet (he forgot to flush). Our soundman puked everywhere and picked up a fight with…a wall, while we discussed something in our room, and it ended up pretty bad because Akbar is sleeping on the floor. The rest is history.

We can’t remember anything in the morning. Our manager told us what happened and we needed to go back to Makassar to catch a flight to Yogya. We had a chance to eat in this classic Nyonya cuisine (A mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian ingredients and cooking) restaurant and it feels like we’re in the middle of an 80s movie. Continue to check out from our hotel and here in Indonesia, we have a culture for the host to provide the visitor with food/drinks to bring back home after staying, and yes, they gave us tons of that locally fermented alcohol to bring back to Yogyakarta. Such a wonderful experience and we can’t wait to go back to Bone for our next tour.

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