Island hopping in Thailand

Yes we know it has been more than 2 weeks since we last posted. But hey, we are still on holidays and the days just seem to roll into one.


Since we last left you, we were in happily staying in Kuching. Our last 2 days there were spent at the Semmigoh Orang a tan park, where a few of the animals entertained us for an hour or two with their fruit eating. Enjoyed a steamboat meal (cook your meal at your own table) with the local chinese Malay's. Cheap and good fresh food, however the only issue was the food labels, all written in Chinese. Constantly guessing what animal that meat is from.

The last day in Kuching, we spent at the Timber Museum and Airport. The timber museum was rivetting stuff, we now know how wood veneer is made and etc. At the airport, as usual Air Asia (Asia's cheapest budget airline) was running behind schedule. So we had to wait an extra hour at Kuching airport again. Anyway the flight to KL made up for that. You see Air Asia basis its fares on the slogan "Now everyone can fly", so on every single flight we have been on, one of our games is to spot the first time flyers. On this particular flight, a boy, say 10 years decided to get up from his sit just as the pilot had alined the plan up for take-off. Everyone in the cabin except the boys parents, were wondering why is this person standing up when the pilot is about to take-off. All of a sudden over the intercom, you hear one of the flight attendants yell "Sit down boy!" This boy managed just in time to find a sit before the pilot let the plane rip. We are still laughing over that incident to this day.

Anyway arrived in KL at night, caught the bullet train into the city, and checked into hotel. Went for a walk around KL, and discovered that like Bangkok, they too do have a thriving sex industry. Pros on the street all throughout the city and the majority of hotels offering rooms by the hour. In the morning our first stop was the Petronas Twin Towers, where luckily we scored 9:15am tickets for the viewing platform. Rode up the elevator, looked out the window from the skydeck at the smog covering KL and went back down to ground level. Spent the remainder of our time in KL window shopping.

Since KL did not interest us that much, we caught a bus that afternoon to the Cameron Highlands. A small mountain range in the middle of the Malay pennisula. The area's specialty is tea plantation and fruit/vegetable farms that cannot be grown anywhere in the Malay pennisula because of the climate. We had to wear our jumpers.

So we did the touristy thing, our first tour for our holiday. A tour to a tea plantation and tea factory. We now know the ins and outs of tea processing. Enjoyed some good south Indian food in the highlands (since the tea workers are all Indian descendants). Quite cheap and one of our favourite dishes was fruit filled roti (Indian version of a crepe).









Climbed another mountain, this time only 1800m high for a spectacular view of the main town in the highlands. Lots of monkeys in this forest, crashing through the trees as we tried to navigate the animal trail and mud slide areas, via carefully though of ropes to climb down valleys. We again thanked God for our hiking boots. Caught a Mercedes taxi (1970's model) to a strawberry self plucking farm. Where we paid for half a kilo. In fact we walked out with a punnet that weighed 700gms plus the strawberries that were disgesting in our stomachs. These strawsberries were small, sweet, and juicey. Just like the way strawberries should be.

Departed the Cameron Highlands for Penang. After a 6 hour bus journey, half of it down twisting mountain roads, with the local showing us their fragile stomachs we arrived at Butterworth just in time to catch the 11pm ferry to Georgetown. Checked in to our hotel and went out to find a midnight dinner. Found a 24hour Indian Restaurant, which was busy and the feed looked fresh in the baymaries. Ordered a chicken curry and a lamb curry.The chicken curry was a maryland piece of chicken. Cooked well. The lamb, was Lamb's tongue. Which we did not realise until after we were half way through the dish, asking each other what type of meat it was. Let me just say, tongue has a funny texture. Hard on the outside and soft and squeamish on the inside. We did not finish the dish after that.

Spent a day in Georgetown. We were quite spoilt, because of the large amount of chinese in the community, pig meat was plentiful. We were able to have bacon for breakfast. Walked around town admiring colonnial bulildings, visited Fort Cornmallis, climbed the walls even though we weren't meant to. Purchased our ticket to Palau Langkawi.

After another highspeed ferry ride, we arrived in Langkawi. Langkawi is supposedly a tax free island, and also a muslim island. So Alcohol is extremely cheap (40cents AUS for a beer) if you can find it and you can only drink it in your hotel room and some restaurants. Our hotel was bungalows situated on the main tourist beachfront, that was runned by a muslim family. Anyhow we found a mini-mart selling cheap beer and a chinese restaurant that made good chicken cashew nut stir fry and plum duck, that allowed byo alcohol.

On the beaches of Langkawi, whilst deciding when to catch the ferry to Satun in Thailand, we met the eccentric, friendly Theo. A captain of the yacht Double M, who runs sailing charters to Thailand at backpacker prices. Evan was interested so we accompanied Theo to his yacht to have a look. Theo has been spending the last 4 years sailing around the world, offering charters at numerous ports to make some money. He has been sailing the Langkawi-Phuket?Krabi run for 5 months. So we felt we could trust him. After agreeing on a price for 7 days sailing with full board we were due to sailout the next day.

First day's sailing was long, about 8 hours it took to reach our First Thai Island (just on the Thai Malay border) The Ko Bitung Group (Ko is Thai for island). On our way sailing in stormy weather, we learnt it was OK to sail on a 10 degree angle. However when the yacht first tipped in the 1m seas, it was scary and hard to get your balance. Anyway arrived at the island group around 5pm, where we went snorkelling.

Second day's sailing was a lot better than the first. We just casually made our way through the Ko Bitung Group. Spent the day snorkelling and sailing in pristine reefs that are rarely reached by the tourist hordes.

Third days sailing was another long days sail to Ko Rok Nok, where again we were met with big swells and rain. Arrived at Rok Nok in the late afternoon and moored for the night. Went for a quick snorkel. Got an eye opener into Thai corruption. As Ko Rok Nok is part of a national park, and the rangers approached us in the afternoon for our permit fees. Theo paid by a carton of cigarettes, instead of Thai Baht. Since the snorkelling was so good at Rok Nok, we decided to spend the four day there. And with Theo's small Zodiac, that we could take and go exploring around the island. Evan even caught a fish with watermelon scraps.

Fifth day we sailed to a major tourist destination, some cave (can't remeber the name), where you can swim through the caves chambers, to a saltwater lake in the middle of the island. We only went as far as the first chamber, as without an underwater flashlight and rising tide, we could not find the tunnel entrance. So we went exploring/ snorkelling in a nearby bay, where we found a sting-ray and decided to annoy it. The sting-ray did not mind for awhile, until it tired of us and showed us his stinger. We thought it was smart at that stage to leave the animal alone at that moment.

Sailed onto Ko Nagi in the afternoon, and anchored for the night. Ko Nagi is an island that has one very nice looking resort on it. Definitely out of a backpacker's budget. We spent the afternoon snorkelling.

Sixth day we sailed to Ko Phi Phi Don, arrived at the tsunami hit island in the late afternoon. When you walked around town, you can see where the tsunami hit. As evidence from the trees and new hotels / buildings are being built. Sa the place where we had that cocktail does not exist anymore. In fact you can see where the tsunami aid money went too. To buying new speedboats with 3 x 200hp Yamaha engines on board! Anyway we decided to give Theo the night off from entertaining us. So we had dinner on Phi Phi. One thing the tsunami money did not go towards, was raising the quality of the local restaurants. That meal was one of the worst meals of our trip. That's one of the problems, eating all your meals in restaurants, our success rate with good food is not soo good.

Seventh day we sailed to Ko Phi Phi Leh (where the movie "The Beach" was filmed). Arrived early to avoid the tourist hoardes and was able to have a morning snorkel and breakfast in peace. We then puttered along to Chicken Island, where we spent the afternoon relaxing in the shade and walking along the beach. One thing we have noticed with Thailand, is that the coral and fish biodiversity in the waters decreased as one got closer to the heavy tourist areas.

Eighth and last final day, we puttered into Ao Nang (Ao means beach in Thai). Krabi's principle beach town. After immigration we departed from Theo and went in search of a hotel. Found one that serves bacon for breakfast.

Krabi does not have a big muslim population, actually we haven't seen any since we have been here. So for dinner, we ordered a Hawaiian pizza, with pig ham. Not any of this beef bacon or turkey ham that was floating around Malaysia. In Thai touristy towns, you can find any type of food you generally want. And that is what we were after, pig products.

We have decided to stay in Ao Nang for a couple of days. We will hopefully be meeting up with Kate Masters in a couple of days. Then onto Bangkok and Cambodia.

Until next time

Dom and Evan

All meats all sauces on my Kebab please!

Yes it has been a while but blah, blah, we are really lazy and so on and so on.

We had our first real kebab in over 68 days. It wasn't the same really because we were at a Lebanese restaurant with tablecloths and silver cutlery, but beer and kebabs go well together so what else could we do but enjoy our choices of kebab animal with no traces of fish or rice.

Kuching is where we are at. It's our last stop on Borneo before we fly to Kuala Lumpur. The town smells nice and there really aren't to many hawkers. The locals only try and run you down with their cars if you step off the footpath as opposed to the rest of asia where you are always fair game.

Since we last posted we have travelled from Sandakan through Brunei and to the end of Sarawak.

We vistited some of the war memorials along the way and some of the death march stuff is pretty nasty. All the more so when you walk through a field of tomb stones that have no names and are only identified as "An Australian Soldier".





Brunei was a change from the rest of asia as heaps of people are driving around in X5's and Mercedes'. We should have planned a bit better because we turned up on 'Mohammad's' birthday and pretty much everything was closed. The Bruneians take their public holiday's seriously.

Brunei has heaps of oil stuff and you can see all the oil rigs from the coast line. Not surprisingly petrol is cheap at around 50cents per litre. We visited some cool museums that hold a lot of the Sultan's aretefacts some back to the 7th century. The Sultan's palace is really really big. I think it is about the size of the olympic complex at homebush.

If you can't afford a car in Brunei (The government subsidises them) then you don't count and so all they provide you with is some old buses like the one's from MASH. But hey we're poor too so we caught the bus out of Brunei. There is no air-conditioning on the buses just door-conditioning as they leave the door open to keep the place cool. It was not suprising that it took 4 buses and a river crossing in a boat about as big as a bathtub to get out of Brunei.

After Brunei we visited Miri an oil town that is still ruled by the mighty lancer. We had a few days of R&R from our stressful holiday at a very nice hotel. In fact the hotel was so nice it had a telephone next to the toilet, so we used it to order room service with.

We visited the Niah caves national park where there was a cave that was so big it shitted all over Jenolan cave's. The cave had a boardwalk (extremely slippery in parts) all the way through it (1km) and there wasn't even the slightest chance of a squeeze.
The locals collect the bird's nests from the cave so that it can be made into soup. Because there are so many birds and bats there is heaps of guano and as you'd expect the place stinks of it.

The next stop was Similajau National park where we did a 15km hike to a secluded beach. We saw lots of wildlife on the way including a crocodile, a monkey, lots of frogs and a really big squirrel about the size of a beagle.

We were almost the only guests at the place, so they gave us a 72 bed hostel to stay in for ourselves for 2 nights. But we really weren't alone, as at night we were visited by the biggest,baddest,mofo cicadas you have ever seen. If they weren't trying to take off your head in a flyby they were engaging in a very noisy orgy with any other cicadas they could find. One of the cicadas was so big we thought it was a bird until it did the cicada thing and flew into the wall at full speed with a big THUMP. But as I said these guys were bad and so he got up and flew into another wall with another bug THUMP.

The national park was just up the road from an oil refinery so we thought it quite amusing to have an oil refinery and oil rigs filling the skyline from the national park.








From there we caught an overnight bus to Kuching. I don't know if all of you have heard Evan snore but that is nothing compared to the guy in front of us on the bus and it didn't matter how much you kicked the seat in front or spoke overly loudly about how loud the snoring was he just wouldn't shut up.

So we have been in Kuching for the last 3 days and we have seen a cool crocodile farm, markets that sell anything you want or rather don't want, museums about the locals and the best food in Malaysia so far.

We are staying at a hostel and our room has a loft with an attached fireman's pole so we had to try it at least once.

Off to see the Orangutans tomorrow then off to KL on Monday




Cheers Evan and Dom

Very sore legs!

Well we did it, it was hard and it hurt a lot but we made it to the top of Mt Kinabalu.










We left Kota Kinabalu and spent three days on Manukan Island whilst waiting to get a bed on the mountain. The island is a tourist trap for Japanese tourists which proved to be a very amusing way to pass the time watching people snorkel with life jackets on in knee deep water.

The view from our room was very nice however the restaurant food was not as one night we received an uncooked beef burger.

After Manukan, we went directly to Mt Kinabalu National Park. Where we went for a few walks around the headquarters, to try and acclimatise to the change in altitude (Approximately 1800m above sea level). The lodge where we stayed at, called Mesilau, reminded us of being in the Blue Mountains in winter. It was cold, and foggy. We didn't realise when we booked in at the national park (NP) that this resort was 20km around the NP headquarters. Thus meant two things, one less tourists and two the trail to the summit was longer and significantly more difficult.

Anyway we spent a night at Mesilau, and at 8:30am we met up with our guide Junno (Junno in Malaysian means a guide who wears thongs during the climb and does not break into a sweat), and started our ascent. The trail from Mesilau, was far more challenging the alternate trail from the np headquarters and instead of climbing 900m over 5.5km, we ended up climbing twice that amount, as the trail meandered up and down several valleys. 1km into the walk Junno, informed us we were coming into a snake area and to be careful. A minute later, whilst taking a rest stop, Junno pointed out a snake that was sitting next to the trail.

After seven hours of walking, we ended up at our overnight stop, called Laban Rata, where we immediately indulged in hot milo. With an early dinner, we were in bed by 6.00pm, and tried to get some sleep. The next morning we left Laban Rata at 2.30am, in order to reach the summit by sunrise. The journey to the summit was a gruelling 31/2hrs in the dark, in single file in order to reach the summit by sunrise (at 4096.2m a.s.l). As you can see in the photo we are all rugged up, with beanies, socks as mittens and our rain jackets on.


The descent down was a lot easy than up, and after leaving the summit at 7am, we had reached the NP headquarters by 11.30am. This however came at the cost of very sore legs, due to the need to descend 2500 steps. In total, over two days we walked 20km in 16hrs. We should note, that the mountain climbing and lack of Hungry Jacks, has helped Evan to reduce his girth by several centimetres.

Our next stop was Poring Hot Springs (still in the NP, about 40km away). Where we soaked our tired bodies in the hot springs. At the hot springs, there was a canopy walk, that 41m above the ground. It was a bit scary, as it was just composed of ropes and ladders. We must say we were concerned as to the structural integrity of the walkway, as it was swaying all over the place.

Presently we are in Sandakan still suffering from sore legs, where tomorrow we will be going to a WW2 memorial that commemorates the Sandakan Death Marches. From then on we don't know, as we are still deciding.

Cheers

Dom And Evan

Diving in Sulawesi

Sorry for not posting earlier but it is really hard to stay motivated while you are on holidays and tropical islands often don't have internet access. The photo to the left was taken with Evan's new camera of a plate coral.






When we last left you we were in Bali deciding what to do next. We never made it to the Volcano, however we did enjoy a good Aussie Steak before we left.

From Bali we flew directly to Manado (North Sulawesi) to go diving. This flight was over an hour late just like all our other flights. It was lucky we had arranged transport because it was midnight before we arrived and the local taxi drivers looked like they out for a scam.

The next day we went to Bunaken Island (marine park) and stayed at 2 fishies resort. The photo to the right is the view from our hotel in Manado.






In total we did 11 Dives on Bunaken Island over 7 days. The diving was fantastic and we saw Sharks, turtles, eels, dolphins, tunas, barracudas, puffer fish, Trevally, Giant clams, Mantis shrimps, Octopi, nudibranchs, fan corals, hard corals, soft corals and heaps of other cool stuff. The cost of the resort included all meals, unfortunately the chef liked to cook fish. This meant out of a total of 14 meals 12 were fish. I think we have overdosed on Fish and rice because the sight of them now make us cringe. (Pitty we are here in the rice capital of the world for another month or two).

One of the dives we did was on the change of tides and from the start we realised that the currents were going to be quite strong. At one stage our dive master (Vanis) was trying to get us to ascend. Dom and Vanis started to go up and then they entered a down current and we witnessed a very interesting sight of our bubbles going down as opposed to up. This was quickly followed by Dom and Vanis being sucked down the coral wall.
Luckily it didn't last long, however before the end of the dive we got caught in another current that was like Finding Nemo and we ended up ages away from where we started. Dom had a very interesting look on her face as we got sucked along in the current.




One day we went for a walk around the Island but when we tried to take a shortcut back to our resort it started to rain, it was getting dark, the track was really muddy and hard to find, of course we were only wearing thongs and had left our raincoats and torches back at the resort.Luckily a nice local farmer realised we were a bit offtrack and guided us back through the rain and mud to our hotel.

Most of the days we had a dive in the morning and afternoon with a chillout session inbetween. Here is Dom enjoying a nice cup of tea between dives.




After Bunaken we moved to the other side of Sulawesi where we dived in the Lembeh strait. The diving was really cool as the ground was covered in a dark volcanic silt but every couple of metres you would come across some sort of critter living on the bottom.
We saw Frog fish, moray eels, coral shrimp, octupi, hermit crabs, decorator crabs, peacock fish, flounders and clown fish.
In fact Nemo and his mates have one hell of a temper and will bite if you try and take their photo. (Evan got bitten twice by the little bastards).

We did a wreck dive at Lembeh of an old WWII Japanese Navy ship it was a big change from all the diving we have done to date. The last dive we did at Lembeh was a night dive and there were heaps of things in the water, it was a bit claustrophobic at first because while you are descending you are in complete darkess except for your torch beam, however when you reach the bottom all the critters that are usually asleep are moving around and having a party down there.

Dom and I now have our Advanced Open Water Diving Licences. With our new skills we can hover in the water instead of going up and down all over the place.

It was a hassel organising to get to Sabah from Manado but after 3 flights over 2 days we have arrived in Kota Kinabalu. Malaysia and Singapore are very different to Indonesia. Here is a summary of our 40 days in Indonesia.

1. It takes 5 Indonesians to do the job of 1
2. Most locals work between 1-2 hrs per day.
3. The Balinese are very happy as long as you are paying them.
4. Indonesia time and Western time are two completely different things. Don't expect anything to be done in a hurry. (Unless you are in Bali and you are paying $USD).
5. Fish, Fish, Fish, Fish
6. Guess where all the planes that are too old to fly in Australia are?
7. The hawkers are very good at their job even if they only work 1-2hrs per day.
8. Traffic rules are as follows. If it is bigger than you get out of its way otherwise do what you want.
9. In some curries you cannot tell if you are eating chicken, beef, lamb, fish, goat, dog, cat, rat, donkey, dolphin, endangered white rhino etc..
10. Refer to points 1-9 as to why Indonesia is so cheap.

We were in Singapore for a day and it is a cultural shock as it is so organised and clean. Also the trains run on time and are really good. City rail is not!

We are now in Sabah and relaxing with good food and nice people. We have just purchased some creature comforts to help with the homesickness (Apricot Jam and Vegimite).

Cheers

Evan and Dom

Back in Civilisation (By Bali standards)

Well it has been awhile since our last blog, we have sooo... much to tell you of our travels and disappointments through Eastern Indonesia.

When we left you, we were at Gili Trawengan, "marooned in paradise". Well paradise left us soon after, as the weather turned to rain and wind, the powersource for the island stopped working, and our camera went for a swim. However we made the best of it. Evan taught me how to play backgammon and rummy (Ideal for killing time, when there is no electricity and its raining. Power issues on Gili must be frequent, as all the bars have boardgames for you to play!)

We left Gili, in search of a replacement camera, and decided to go to Mataram (capital of Lombok). Unfortunately the digital camera world has not hit Nusa Tengara yet, and we had to settle for a $4.00Aus film camera. Its performance is in line with its cost.

We were picked up the following day by Perama our tour company. To go on a three day scenic voyage to Flores. The journey started with a bus trip across Lombok, where the first stop, was a pottery store. It didn't matter how much Evan tried, there is no way you can fit a 30kg flower pot into a travellers backpack. The tour included full board, so our refreshments at this stop was this sticky rice thing with a red banana in it. Apparently its a Lombok delicacy. We thought it sucked!

Second stop on the bus journey, was to see a traditional village dance. You can see Dom boggying on down with the locals. Evan starred on local Lombok TV, explaining why more tourists should come to Lombok and enjoy banana and rice delicacies.

We made it to the Perama boat by late afternoon, where a late lunch was served, a chicken dish that was significantly better than the rice shit. Set sail for Perama Island, where snorkelling, coral replantation and dinner occurred. See Evan afixing acopora to a concrete slab.

After a very tasty dinner of BBQ Tuna, we began our journey east in calm waters. About an hour after leaving anchor, the storm that harrassed us for the entire journey set in. I don't think anyone slept at all on the first night, with the boat rocking about all over the place, waves crashing over the bow constantly. And taking the sea sickness pills, put your body off balance, and Evan kept on thinking that the boat was on a 45 deg. angle ready to sink.

On the second day of our boat trip, the rain and wind did not stop. Check out the photo of Evan looking slightly green. Anyway our first stop for the day was Satadona Island, where we swam in a warm brackish volcanic lake, where the locals believe it rejuvenates you. Of cause it rejuvenates you, as from lack of sleep from the night before incombination with the wind and rain, I felt a lot better after our swim. Did more snorkelling at this stop, saw some awesome Emperor Angels, however the current was really strong and it took forever for us to get back to the boat.

Off we were motoring along, again in rough seas for a little isalnd called Donga Island. However because of the rough weather, the crew decided to moor at another island where we were sheltered. Any forms of water sports was not happening here, as there was a landslide on the mountain, and we watched from the boat as all this mud swallowed the reef up. So we set sail again, on our way to Komodo.

Arrived at Komodo Island early in morning, as the dragons tend to hide during the day. See Evan outside the park headquarters wearing his cowboy Marlboro hat. Paid our 25,000rp camera fee and went for a walk through the forest in search of dragons with a guide. Well we were lucky as the tour group behind saw none, we saw three dragons. And then our cheap camera stopped working for the first time. We saw cashew nut trees, now I know way they are so expensive, as each nut has to be shelled by hand and the tree does not bare many pods.

Back on board the boat, we went to Red Beach, still on Komodo Island. Where we did some snorkelling. The beach is red from all the red coral skeletons. The water was really cold, so didn't snorkel for long, however because of the current, it was easier to swim back to the boat this time. Everyone on board, and we motored on to Labuanbajo (LBJ,) on Flores Island, we passed lots of whirlpools in the water from the mixing of the hot and cold seawater. Our sea captain said lots of small boats get sucked down every year due to their force.

Arrived at LBJ in the early afternoon, where we found the Gardena hotel, with views over the harbour of LBJ. See inserted photo from our hotel balcony. We went for a walk all over town, in the pouring rain, looking for the airline offices. Finally found one that was open, and we booked on the next available flight out of LBJ for Bali, which was five days away. So we went back to our hotel, where Evan had an awesome chicken and cashew nut curry. Even though LBJ is small, the noise is incredible. We were woken up early in the morning by the mosques, the boats going through the harbour and the construction work. The decision was made to go to Seraya Island, a little island leased by our hotel.

When we got to Seraya in the late morning, via public boat (as Gardena's boat was broken) we were shown to our bungalow. And realised that we had to share the bungalow with a nest of wasps. Dom got stung pretty soon, so Evan spent the afternoon playing rambo with my hairbrush. Gardena managed to fix their boat, as we brought the part with us from LBJ, and the only other guests departed the island. So Evan and I were the only westerners on the island.

What else is there to do on an isolated tropical island except snorkel. We saw two huge lobsters on the reef, eels, lion fish, sting rays and all other reef dwellers. At 6pm, the generator was turned on, which meant dinner time. Unfortunately the menu was detailed however the only thing they had was fish and rice. So guess what we ate? We figured out, that the menu was quite good, as long as you ordered your food a day before. So the next night we booked in the Indonesian version of garlic prawns. The next night's meal after that was chicken curry. They had to kill the chicken for us.

Well we stayed on Seraya for a total of four nights, and the first two nights, we were by ourselves. Then the Italian couple from our boat trip turned up (we later found out that this couple was on the same flight as us from Oz, and on Gili with us) and an American couple. So our Island paradise was lost. But it rained again, but much harder this time, so at least the new comers did not get to enjoy the island as we had.
Check out the photo of the sunset we never had! On the fourth day, we left Seraya in the howling wind, pouring rain and huge seas, in Gardena's tiny weeny wooden boat. However the regular boat captain was replaced with a crusty sea dog "The Admiral" who got us back to LBJ in one piece. Arrived at LBJ, and went straight to the airline office to pay for our ticket, and was promptly informed that flying out today was 'not possible'. Dom piped up in her usual manner and we were back on the flight. Therefore we spent the whole morning sitting at the airport ensuring we could get our bums on the plane.

Arrived in Bali in the afternoon, and decided to find a hotel that had some mod cons, such as a flushing toilet, shower and hot water. We then went walking all aroung Kuta region, in search of a new digital camera. Had a bad mexican meal, found the cheapest Bintang so far in Indonesia, and now have two replacement cameras and a hard case underwater housing for one of them.

The next night we decided to go have drinks at Ke De Ta (swanky restaurant/ bar in Seminyak) to watch the sunset. The drinks are the same price as back home. For example we paid 25,000rp for a small beer, as opposed to the "Secret Garden's" price of 9,000rp for a large beer. Still the sunset was worth it, as this was our first proper sunset in three weeks of living on islands!



Currently we are thinking about doing a hike up to Garung Agung, Bali's highest mountain at 3000m, and are going to book our flight to Manado (in Sulawesi). Evan is not feeling to well, complaining of a sharp head ache, so we may lay low for a few days by our pool in the hotel.

Cheers

Dom and Evan

Marooned in Paradise

Well we finally left Germany and ended up in the Gili Islands.

Unfortunately we are stuck here for another four days until our komodo tour starts. But I am sure we will survive.

The beaches at Gili are very beautiful, there are bungalows on the beach that you can sit on all day and drink Bintang. There are lots of travellers here so the evenings are quite colourful. The other travellers have been quite helpful in finding out the best places to go while we are in SE Asia.

We went snorkelling yesterday, however Dom freaked out when we saw a Sea Snake in the water. Not that I blame her cause the're meant to be quite poisonous. However they can only inject their venom if they bite you between your fingers.




We had some hassles on our trip to the Gili's. Our tour operator decided that we should stay overnight on Lombok at a friend's hotel that offered "reasonable rates". It was only when our bus revolted that he decided to leave the ferry port and take us closer to the Gili's. We ended up aborting our tour and caught a more reputable ferry to the Island.



We wanted to catch the fast boat across to Lombok rather than the ferry pictured above with Evan in it.(This boat took 5 hours to travel 20km). It appears that the fast boat had some minor issues with buoyancy and sank (picture to the left after being refloated)


Dom and I continue our obsession with Bintang and here is a picture of Dom after a couple.



We are still having lots of fun but Dom is missing her four legged companion, I tried to introduce her to one of the many manky cats on Gili but she won't put up with an animal that has a higher IQ than me.


We will update the blog as soon as possible but i don't think there is any internet access in Flores, so it may be some time.

Cheers

Evan & Dom

Another Day in Germany

Well after a couple of days in the luxury of Sanur we have moved on to Padangbai (East Coast) and commenced our budget holiday. Room prices are significantly cheaper with $A80 per night in Sanur compared to $A10 in Padangbai.

We caught the tourist bus on Saturday and joined all the other budget travellers. The trip was reasonably quick however our driver enjoyed playing chicken with trucks, buses, cars, stray dogs or anything else that would get in his way, actually the only thing he would give way to was a small temple parading as a traffic cop.

It appears that we are still in the wet season or at least the end of it. For the last two days there has been rain and storms in the afternoon. At least we didn't pack our swanky raincoats for nothing.

We have also started to try new meals and to verge away from the safety of a club sandwich. Last night Dom tried special fried rice and asked for "a little bit of chilli", the chef must have misheard her and thought she said "please give me a plate of your hottest chilli and throw in a couple of bits of rice". Maybe we will go back to club sandwiches for a couple of days or at least wait until after the ring sting has subsided.

The snorkleing in Padangbai is fantastic and there is a little bay that is only a 5 minute walk from town that has a very impressive coral reef.

We sat at the little cafe on the bay (photo was taken from our table) yesterday and drank Bintang in between snokelling adventures. It is amazing how little you can achieve in a day when you are lazy Australians on holiday with no job, no home and no specific destination to go to.

One little bit of advise for snorkellers in Indonesia. There is heaps of garbage floating in the water and with that garbage is the ichiest little bastard sea lice you can find. Therefore avoid at all costs swimming through garbage.

The Germans still control this place and there is one using the computer next to me, I think he wants me to star is one of his home made videos, so I better go now

Cheers Evan

P.S Evan wrote this blog because Dom has a headache caused by last nights excessive Bintang consumption.

P.S.S Excessive Bintang helps reduce the effect of chilli overindugence.