Waterpark is a fun place to be when it’s the weekend and especially when it’s pretty hot outside. After going to the gym, my friend and I decided to swim at the city's best and largest waterpark, Waterboom Jogja. This place in the past was called “Pirate Bay Adventure” but changed its name recently as I found on their instagram page. This waterpark is quite massive and offering various sliders overlooking the mountain and also a wave pool experience that mimics the south beach experience, a beach that’s located two hours drive from the center of the city.

I personally have only been to a few, one in Bali and this one, in Jogja. I think this is an underrated place to go as many visitors when visiting the province focus on heritage experience and also natural experiences. This Waterpark isn’t only for children, in fact many of its slides are for adults especially the slides that are higher, longer, and even extreme ones. They were all quite adrenaline pumping.

The map of the waterpark

My friend and I started the journey at 9 AM. The sun was high and the traffic was busy. There are many fun things to do in this small province so it’s no wonder that almost every weekend, especially on Sunday the traffic is quite busy. Once we reached the outskirts, it got less busier and we started to get excited about the experience. We went there by motorbike and after a 15 minutes drive, we arrived at the place. Apparently the parking lot for the motorbike was a 5 minutes walk to the main entrance. It’s really best to just use a Grab car to reach this place so you don’t have to walk too far to the main entrance.

Here are some tips that I learned the hard way before going to a waterpark

1. • Just bring necessary things, do not bring too many things especially if you go alone.
2. • Make sure your devices are waterproof, if you want to record your experience, bring a go-pro or similar instead of your phone.
3. • If you have ear plugs and nose plugs, wear them at all times especially when you are in the water.
4. • Apply sunscreen, re-apply when needed, unless you want to be a boiled crab.

The entrance to this waterpark is filled with the country’s flag as in about 2 weeks, it will be an independence day celebration. So, red and white themes are all around the waterpark.

As you can see below, there is still a remnant of the previous theme with the ship being the exit from this waterpark. In contrast, now the place is renamed as Waterboom with a more colorful and cheerful theme than the previous pirate theme. The staff are also friendly and it’s quite a standard in this city that everyone is almost friendly or “too friendly” as the province also relies heavily on the hospitality industry.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t as crowded as I expected. In fact, for a Sunday the place was rather empty. There were no queues around the place and I redeemed my ticket quite easily. In this park, you can buy the ticket either through online services or offline. The prices are different and if you buy online, you get free drinks from them.

We had to walk down through the ramp to get into the locker and the shower room. In this place, you still have to pay for the locker and also rent the double ring inflatable if you want to. But you still can experience the place without renting the inflatable. Basically, you can use inflatables to swim through the “wild rivers” and also experience the “south ocean wave”. The river is the most interesting experience to me as I get to be on the floaty and relaxing while surrounded by greenery and the blue sky. Unfortunately, the martini wasn’t in the picture and nor did they sell any alcoholic beverages.

After circling around the long wild river, we decided to try the slides. There are more than 5 slides in this place with different heights and lengths.

My friend tried the slide race which seemed very fun. I just waited because this slide wasn’t for me. Meanwhile, we both tried the tallest slide in this waterpark. I forgot its name but the slide was high up so that we could see the mountain and the hills surrounding the province. We had to wait for about 10 minutes and then, we slid through for 10 minutes before reaching the pool. It was all fun and I had my phone on a waterproof ziplock the whole time.

At that point, I still did not notice the horror that I was about to experience.

After getting off the slides, we went to experience the south wave which was located at an artificial beach-like pool. It’s just unfortunate there wasn't any sand around it. The staff turned out very loud music, it was some random EDM and started the wave. The wave was strong enough that I saw some people collide and the water got really high. It was 0-1.6m without the wave but after the wave, it rose up to 2 Meters. We stayed there for 30 minutes and I was just on the shoreline enjoying the sun and the wave that's crashing on my feet.

After the wave, we still wanted to swim around the river before we returned the inflatables. At that point, I took out my phone wanting to record the scenery. I noticed that my phone started flickering and the screen dimmed down. I tried turning it on a few times but it was pitch black. I was a bit panicked but stayed calm. “ maybe it’s just a response issue”.

After we got off from the inflatable and back to the locker place, I noticed my phone won’t turn on. It was practically unusable. I shaked the phone and noticed that there was water coming from inside of it. That moment was scary. I turned pale and noticed that apparently my zip lock was torn a bit that made the water get inside of it. The money that I stored inside was also extremely wet. I tried opening the phone and wiped down as much as I could.

We stopped by a meatball soup place to salvage the phone. I managed to open the phone and the inside was slightly wet. At that point, the flickering didn’t stop and I started seeing small stripes over it. I even had to tear down my screen guard just to clean up the LCD. I tried browsing and asking around, apparently putting them into uncooked rice could help. So, I did what I could and tried to put the phone inside the rice for more than 10 hours. I turned it back on and it was working. Only the other issue was, there was still some moisture from inside the phone and it wouldn’t be charging. I tried putting it back on into the rice for another couple of hours and now the charging works again.

It’s quite an expensive lesson that if I ever go to any waterpark, I wouldn’t be having my phone around me. Maybe you should too and just stick to waterproof go-pro or similar device if you want to record your experience at the park. It’s better to be safe than sorry later!

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	𝘔𝘢𝘤 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘫𝘢. 𝘈 𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴, 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺, 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭, 𝘯𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦, 𝘤𝘺𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴. 𝘐𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘰𝘺𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘶𝘱𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦, 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. 𝘈 𝘳𝘦-𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥.