Week 32 to 33
Good bye Jordan. Hello Indonesia!
We landed in Denpasar, Bali, at 6pm - we paid $25 each for our 30 day visa and then immediately took a taxi to our hotel which was in Seminyak. We met 2 of our friends at the hotel - they had flown out to see us from the UK. After almost 8 months travelling it was emotional to see friendly faces.
We stayed in Seminyak for 2 nights. Seminyak is a trendy beach town located only 30 minutes from the airport - it has lots of nice restaurants, bars and shops.
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| Loved the pool |
Our first night was spent gossipping over a few beers and catching up on stories from the UK. The following day we chilled out at the beach and watched the sun go down while eating our first Indonesian dish of Nasi Goreng.
The neighbouring town called Kuta is where the party is, almost every night of the week. So on our second night, after a few drinkies at the hotel, we grabbed a taxi and headed down to party central. We had a lot of fun bar hopping and finished off the night dancing away at the Sky Gardens.
We left Seminyak with massive hangovers the following day and made our way to Ubud located in the middle of Bali via taxi (350 Rup). We stayed at the very lovely Tungun Mas Bungalows for 3 nights. Ubud is a really nice town to visit with lots of shops, restaurants and temples everywhere - a true Bali feel to it. We had a great time here and made the most of our short stay in the area.
During our 3 days we visited:
The Monkey Sanctuary in Ubud where the monkeys were going wild for bananas and tourists.
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| Spot the monkey |
Took a road trip to the Jatiluwih UNESCO rice Paddies which were beautiful and well worth the 2 hour trip.
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| This is what rice looks like! |
Sampled the rarest drink in the world - cat poo coffee! Also know as Luwak coffee. In the place we visited, they collected the coffee beans from the wild so no caged animals apart from the couple that were on display for visitors.
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| Sleeping Civit |
Lunched at the beautifull Mount Batur volcano - a beautiful volcano located within a larger volcano crater.
Had lovely massages - very relaxing!
Went to a Balinese Fire dance at one of the local temples - it was a scary experience - especially at the end when a man on a horse started kicking hot coals at us - as if it wasn't hot enough!
Our next destination were the Gili Islands! These are beautiful little islands located just off Lombok. Getting there was an easy 4 hour boat and bus ride from and to our hotel,s all organised by a tour operator in Ubud (250 Rup each). Our first Island stop was Gilli Trawangen which is the busiest of the 3 islands and more of a 'party' place.
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| Early morning boat ride to Gili T |
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| Walking to our hotel |
We stayed at Coconut Dream Bungalows and spent most of our days relaxing on the beach and watching the most beautiful sunsets while drinking copious amounts of Bintang!
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| Eating fish at the local night market |
The second island we visited was called Gili Air ('air' in Indonesian means water?!?), a short 20 min boat ride away. We all preferred this island as it was a lot calmer and more relaxed than Gili T. It was also smaller than Gili T - you could walk around the whole island it in less than 1 hour!
There are no cars on the Gili islands so the only way to get about is by horse and cart. As Youpy bungalows, which is where we were staying, was on the other side of the island to the harbour, we got 2 horse and carts. I loved it! One of our friends didn't - I thought he was going to tip the cart over.
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| Hahahahahaha! |
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| Where we stayed |
Again we mostly enjoyed relaxing in the sun and eating and drinking during the evening. Roland and I snorkeled on one of the days and spotted an array of pretty fishes.
We were lucky to experience a full moon party on one of the nights and danced away with the locals and other tourists, bare footed on the sandy beach. Weirdly we met other British people who were from our area in London! Small world!
The following day after the full moon party, our friends left us on Gili Air to make their way back home to the UK. We decided to stay a little longer and then make our way to Lombok ... It didn't quite work out that way!
Roland received a call from one of our friends who had just arrived back in Bali stating that we had her passport and she had his! OMG! Couldn't believe it! What are we going to do?
Well there was really no other choice but to make our way back to Bali as soon as possible to meet our friends before they were due to fly out the following day! Stressful!!!!! We woke up super early the following morning to catch the early boat. The passport exchange was completed by midday and in time for our friends to catch their flight home. Relief all round!
As we both liked Bali we decided to stay here for another 3 nights at the Sun Island Hotel in Kuta. We mainly relaxed on the beach or at the hotel's pools. The highlight for me was pampering myself at the hotel's spa. Bliss!
Week 33 and 34
Our little detour back to Bali didn't hinder our plans to visit the Komodo national park. We initially intended to travel there by boat from Lombok (a 3 day boat trip) but instead we flew from Bali into Labuan Bajo, Flores.
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| See ya later Bali |
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| Flores from a above |
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| Flores from above |
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| Hello Luan Bajo |
A few months ago, we visited the Galapagos Islands and we were both hoping that the Komodo national park would offer an Asian version of our experiences there. We wanted to see the most dangerous lizard in the world - the Komodo Dragon!
I did not realised how dangerous this so called dragon was until Roland was doing a spot of research on the Internet and started to reel off a few things we should check before we went on a trip to see them - basically they like humans and once they catch a whiff of you (especially the smell of blood or perfume) they can charge up to 18km/hour to catch you!
Our hotel, Sylvia Hotel & Resort (£26 per night), was nestled in the middle of a beautiful bay on Flores Island. Getting here was 30 minute ride on a bumpy road from the airport and as usual, we paid far too much for the taxi ride - 150,000R! Grrrrrr! Doubly annoying this time as we didn't realise that the hotel offered free pick up! The bay was lovely and the beach was gorgeous. Once settled in we headed straight for the sea and were one of the few people there splashing about with the fishes.
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| We stayed here |
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| Amazing sunsets! |
We booked a trip to visit the Komodo National park with one of the hotel staff. There are various options to travel over to the islands but as we were poor backpackers we chose the cheapest option - a slow boat and sleeping on the deck (£125 for both of us).
As soon as the boat approached the dock, I wished that we had not been so tight! It was a clapped out banger of a boat with the noisiest engine in the world! 2 days stuck on this boat was certainly an interesting experience! At least it wasn't crowded - there was only Roland and I along with the 'captain' and his helper.
It took us 5 hours to reach Komodo Island (70 minutes in a speed boat). The Komodo Dragon was named one of the 7 natural wonders of the world in 2012 and because of this, tourism in the area has bloomed in recent years. Once we paid all the park fees we were assigned a ranger (armed with a large stick to protect us from any aggressive Komodos!) and began our trek around the island. You are not always guaranteed a sighting of the Dragons so we were delighted when the ranger spotted a 3 year old sunning himself on the path in front of us, after 20 minutes of walking!
Our next sighting was a 25 year old female dragon who was relaxing on top of a hill we had climbed. The ranger was very happy about this and was excited to take photos of us with it. I was a little worried how near he told us to next to the 2.5m long dragon, especially after hearing the story about how a dragon in recently killed a little boy by biting him on the bum when he was having a poo (just 1 bite of the lizard can kill you due to poison contained in their saliva, if it isn't treated ASAP).
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| Flying lizard |
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| Top of the hill |
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| Massive! |
Our next sighting was when we neared the end of the trek - there were a couple of lazy dragons waiting for scraps of food from the locals.
Back on the boat, we sailed over to Pink Beach for a spot of snorkeling. This was the best snorkeling we had experienced so far during our 8 months travelling. There was an array of live coral and tonnes of different coloured exotic fishes swimming about.
Back on the boat and it was another 2 hours to Rinca Island to see some more dragons! We arrived quite late in the afternoon so we couldn't walk for too long. However that didn't stop us from seeing more dragons. This time 5 big dragons were all relaxing in the grass in the middle of the small island village!
I got a shock when I emerged from the toilet to find a rather big one had followed me and was just waiting outside my cubicle door! Roland and the ranger was nowhere in sight!
'Ahhhh, there is one here' I shouted.
'Its only a bat Emma' replied Roland.
'No, there is a Komodo in here!
Roland and the ranger quickly came over to where I was and when I saw an opportunity to escape, I jumped over its tail and ran towards the ranger who was armed with his protective stick!
We stayed overnight at Rinca Island and anchored just off the main entrance. The captain had prepared us a nice dinner and got our 'bed' ready. We went to sleep really early! Well there was no choice really, the boat's lamp wasn't working so we couldn't see a thing once the sun disappeared!
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| The light lasted for about 10 minutes |
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| I had such a great sleep .... NOT! |
The following day we headed back toward Luan Bajo stopping at 2 more snorkeling sites. Again the snorkeling was great and we both saw loads of fishes and a reef shark! After lunch we went back to the hotel. We couldn't wait to get off the boat!
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| Sunrise |
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| Good morning! |
Our next adventure was probably the worst 4 day trip we have done during our 8 month adventure!! We wanted to go and see the 3 colour lakes of Kalimutu and were advised that a great way to see the Island would be a take a 4 day trip in a car to get there - 2 days there and 2 days back. I wouldn't recommend the itinerary we did and in hindsight it would have been better to have flown back from Maumere or Ende.
Each day was spent rocking and rolling in the back of a Toyota for about 10 hours each day, stopping to take some photos every so often.
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Our car and driver who spoke no English!
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| 5 minute photo stop ... |
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| another one ... |
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another one (blue stone beach)
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| and another one |
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| How petrol is sold in the rain ... |
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| ... and how the locals move homes! |
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| Standard loo along the way |
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| Lunch is served - immediately from the window shelves! |
Our favourite stops though were:
The spider web rice terraces of Manggarai
Visiting a very traditional! Village called Bena
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