Bali Bound

Day 14 It's the final day in Bali now.  It's a slightly challenging day as it's an evening flight but the latest checkout we could get was 1 pm.  And our shuttle to the airport leaves around 3:30pm, as it is still a longer drive to get back to Denpasar in the rush hour traffic.  But the grounds are lovely so the plan for everyone seems to be to chill by the pool until it's time to leave. random shot of Ubud It was a bit of a lazy day for us today.  We took the shuttle into Ubud town for a bit of a walk around during the day.  We wandered around town a bit.  It's an odd tourist location to visit.  There isn't really too much around here and the closest beach is a few hours away.  But the place is filled with a lot of young backpacking Australians so perhaps the low prices and plentiful bars and restaurants are the big draw.  There are also a lot of tourist shops and they all seem to sell the same things.  Every market or shop had...

Day 13 We have had a lot of time in Ubud with 2 full days and an evening and another morning to explore.  It feels like a lot more time than is necessary for what the area seems to have to offer.  We opted to do our own tour today and hire a driver for a day rather than take a taxi.  grounds at the Bali museum We headed back down to Denpasar as our plan was to visit the Hard Rock café for a pin for Terry and to see some of the sights along the way.  Our first stop was at the Bali Museum.  It was fairly small with 4 small buildings to tour around.  There were a lot of ceremonial knives and coins on display.  And some lovely grounds with a few couples getting wedding pictures done.  We were trapped in a courtyard for a few minutes waiting for them to finish up.  And of course the people trying to sell some of their junk to the tourists.  fabric stores all along, on both sides! The big markets in downtown Denpasar were c...

Day 12 rice terraces Today was a busy touring day in the Ubud area.  We headed north for a volcano hike around the Batur caldera.  It last erupted in 1999 for 4 months so there is still a big ring of lava from the eruption.  We went for a hour and a half hike around the caldera at the base of the volcano.  Indonesia has a large amount of volcanos for such a small country.  They also have the most active volcanoes in the world right now.  This one still has activity ongoing as you could see the small smoke plume still coming out. On the way we stopped to see some of the rice terraces.  They do have a lot of them in the area.  They are interesting to see.  You are able to wander up and down both sides but we didn't have that much time.  And it was a lot of irregularly sized stairs to go up and down. What the tour company called a gentle hike turned into a fairly intense trek down the hillside.  As the bus was meeting us at ...

Day 11 Today is another travel day, heading back to Bali for our second visit.  We are heading to Ubud in the middle of Bali for our final 3 nights. hotel in Labuan Bajo, view from the balcony We did try to sit on the beach this morning, but left as the giant bee seemed to think they were his chairs and we were in the way.  It was huge.  And close to the size of my thumb.  And on the way back we spotted a tiny bird that looked not much bigger than the bee.  The grounds here seemed to be really good for bird watching as there were a couple guys on the tour that were really into the birds and they spent most of the morning wandering around looking at birds. Now it's just waiting for the flight, which is now #8 for me of this trip.  I feel very well traveled this vacation.  Typically my holidays include more bus time than airplane time.  The Komodo airport is small on the departure side as well.  But it feels like there are more staff...

Day 9 We survived our first day and night on the boat.  It was another busy day of hiking with the komodo and snorkeling.  We did get a very early wake up call as they turn the engines on at 5 am.  And you can't sleep through that very well.  The one catch with the cabin on the boat is that we are underneath so it is pretty hot and stuffy.  We could have air conditioning but it involves a loud generator all night.  So nobody really fought for it.  After our early wake up we had a 2 hour travel to the next animal hike. Our second hike was on Komodo Island.  Which funnily enough has less komodo than Rinca.  As usual the komodo are all around the buildings at the entrance of the park.  But we had a nice hike through the jungle.  We didn't see too much this time going through.  There were a lot more open spaces here to feel the hot sun coming down on us.  We did see a boar as we started our hike.  All these other ani...

Day 8 So today was boat day!  This was the random part of the tour where the trip notes were a bit vague so we weren't quite sure what the full experience would be like.  A bit like the homestay in Peru, where it sounds a bit odd but turned out well. We had a decent start to the day.  We didn't have to be up really early today and we had a lovely breakfast at the hotel.  No country music for breakfast though.  We headed back to the harbour to board and found our boat.  It's a sizeable boat.  Where the description made it sound like we were all sleeping on the decks under the stars it was actually a mix of cabins and mattresses on deck.  There were 5 cabins so it ended up being a choice between the 3 single male travellers on who slept on the twin beds in the cabin and who ended up on deck.  We managed to snag the larger room and there are really only a few people sleeping up on deck. We do have a fair amount of people on the boat. ...

Day 6 Hindu Temple from the gate You can tell that we are back in tourist central as the taxis here honk as they go by to see if we need a ride.  And amusingly the taxis here are Bluebirds and are all this light blue color.  Which is still distinctive.  But we have gotten honked at a lot here.  We do stand out a bit here in Sanur so they are all eager.  They also sit along the sidewalks with their laminateD signs looking to find customers.  At first with the accents it sounded like they were trying to sell us passports.  Until we realized it was transport they were muttering as we went by. Today is a full free day for us to do what we like.  We don't leave until late afternoon tomorrow so the plan is to enjoy the beach then.  So we opted for one of the optional excursions for a half day temple tour.  Nobody else expressed any interest so it was just Terry and I for the trip. Buddhist temple We visited 3 locations and had a...

Day 5 We've survived our early start.  Someone thinks it's very early but I'm used to it.  On the plus side the roads are very quiet and the city feels very deserted compared to the previous night. The Medan Kuala Namu airport is new and modern.  Terry tells me it's only a few years old.  Which might explain why the tourism isn't as big in the north.  The town had a fair amount of tourists but nothing huge.  But you know that you are a bit off the beaten trail when the tour guide tells you it's an honor you've travelled so far to visit.  Never had that comment before.  As well the kids were all really eager to wave and shout hello to us which makes us feel like a bit more of a novelty. We are flying south to Denpasar, Bali via Palemback in southern Sumatra.  It's a another new airline for me to fly internally to Denpasar.  We went with Garuda Indonesia.  The Indonesian airlines can be a bit dodgy and many are are banned from ...

I hope you enjoy my ghetto map a bit.  It was faster to print one and add to it than do it online.  But as a little bit of a helper this is where we visited in Indonesia.   Australia is south and Thailand and India are north of Indonesia.  As you can see we did visit quite a few places but there are so many other places we didn't even get close to!

Day 4 Today we've said goodbye to the jungle to visit the village again.  We braved our crazy bridge one last time.  I must say it was getting easier to navigate each time but I do enjoy going places without crazy bridges. us at school We walked along the canals again and had a visit at an elementary school.  The company I traveled with seems to have a feel good aspect about trying to improve the places we visit.  So we left them with a gift of writing books.  Which they were incredibly grateful for.  But then later we found out it was a private school to a degree so maybe they were the only place okay with disrupting class to let the white people sit at a desk for 10 minutes. They kept telling us that the kids were excited to see us but it was the teachers that were far more excited to see us.  They kept chatting with us all after our visit peppering us with questions about where we were from, and what have we seen and where are we going. ...

Day 3 Today was a switch up for breakfast.  Instead of our usual "American" breakfast of eggs and toast with fruit we could choose pancakes.  They were fairly good but not the pancakes of home.  We did get some chocolate sauce with them as well.  Most amusingly is that everything in this restaurant is served on banana leaves.  Every meal we eat here has a banana leaf liner.  Which amuses me.  I suppose it's far less dishes with doing it this way. Since the primary reason of visiting Indonesia was for the orangutans and komodo dragons we did get the chance for a  second hike today.  It was longer and deeper into the jungle.  It was a 6 hour trek with a bit of a loop and starting and finishing on the same trail as yesterday. The rain from the previous afternoon made things a bit more slick.  The longer trail is just an offshoot of the main trail we took yesterday.  The main trail goes to the old feeding platform which we d...