See It Do It Live It

Oct.29
1

Where the Wild Things Are

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

With only a few days left of our Asian adventure, we had the option of staying in Jakarta for several days or blowing the budget and travelling to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to search for wild orangutans. It was a pretty easy decision to make! Its quite tricky to buy flight tickets for Indonesian airlines – they either don’t have a website or they require an Indonesian credit card. Perseverance paid off though, and armed with two tickets we headed to Jakarta airport very early on Monday morning. This particular budget…read more

Oct.26
0

Bandung

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

We spent two nights in Bandung, the city where my family lived for 4 years when I was a kid. Its a big, smelly, crowded city so not much of a tourist trap. We decided not to attempt the convoluted public transport trip to see the hugely overpriced volcano or hot springs just  north of town and opted to go shopping instead!

Oct.24
1

Yogyakarta

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

The first thing we saw in Yogyakarta was a half naked lady, squatting in the middle of a busy bridge, doing a poo into a plastic bag. Things could only get better! Fortunately, they did. We managed to negotiate the local transport system and get ourselves to Borobudur, a ninth century Buddhist temple. The temple lay forgotten, buried under a layer of ash and jungle for hundreds of years, before being rediscovered by Thomas Stamford Raffles. Now, it has been restored to its former glory. We spent an hour exploring…read more

Oct.23
0

Mount Bromo

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

With two backpacks and two passports in our possession, we were ready for our trip through Java. Our minibus left Kuta at 10 am and then we spent the next 5 hours driving to the north of Bali. We passed through some nice countryside and past lots of beaches, confirming our suspiscion that Kuta is not the best bit of Bali! It was comfortable, newish bus and there was only us two and two Indonesian ladies on it, giving us plenty of room to stretch out. We then had to…read more

The story of calamity Kylie and a bungling boat company

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

It should have been so straightforward: a boat transfer from Gili Air to Padang Bai (Bali) and then a minibus transfer to Kuta. This is the reverse of the journey we had taken a week previously, which went very smoothly. The return trip was slightly more eventful…. When our boat arrived at Gili Air, they loaded everyones bags into the hold first before boarding the passengers. We watched Graham’s bag go on first and mine a short while later. We then got onto our rather busy boat and sat on…read more

Oct.18
0
Oct.17
3

Bali and the Gili Islands

Posted by in Asia, Indonesia, Trip

Bali Our first stop in Indonesia was Bali. We landed in the evening and found ourselves in one of the most overcrowded and pointlessly bureaucratic airports of our trip so far. We had to line up in no fewer than four separate long, and infuriatingly slow, queues to get a visa, go through immigration, hand in a customs form and get our luggage scanned. We were lucky and avoided the baggage collection queue as we had flown with just hand luggage. We then found a taxi, but apparently our driver…read more