Back in Bali
Trip Start
Oct 13, 2010
1
48
77
Trip End
Feb 22, 2012
Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia
Friday, June 24, 2011
to leave! I've already moved my flight a few times (STA travel just love
me!) and basically can’t afford to stay any longer if I want to finish
this world trip. I have absolutely loved the last few months here, and
this part of Asia is one of my favourite places in the world. Things
have totally changed since I landed in Bangkok and hated it! Once I got
to Vietnam things I was loving it, and by the time I reached Singapore I
had decided to go for it and visit Borneo, a long time dream of mine.
Then came the chance to go to Indonesia, another that I couldn’t pass
up. So here I am, three months later than planned, saying goodbye to
Asia and heading to Australia and New Zealand …
After our boat
cruise to see the Komodo dragons, our group spend some time at Labuan
Bajo on the island of Flores. This is authentic South East Asia – we
considered renting motorbikes for the day but nobody dared tackle the
gears on these roads. I remember the days when I signed a petition for
the 'terrible’ roads in St Albans – seems absolutely ridiculous now!! We
had a really lovely hotel with the rooms up high on the hill,
overlooking the bay which was always full of boats coming in and out,
with the most beautiful sunsets just outside our door. Every restaurant
seemed to be up a set of steps which were inevitably falling apart, or
sometimes there weren’t even any steps, just wooden planks balanced
precariously on rocks, and sometimes just a few rocks strategically
placed in the mud. Can just imagine coming out of these places when
you’ve had a few beers. It reminds me how ridiculous the whole suing
culture is in the Western world – these people would have a field day
here!!
As soon as you step out on to the street, a barrage of
local men offer everything from transport to magic mushrooms. The calls
of ‘Transport? Transport?’ became hilarious in the end, when you say no
thank you they respond ‘Tomorrow? Yes Yes?’. We all decided to hire a
Bemo (local minibus transport) for the day, for about a fiver each we
got a driver to take us around the local sights. The driver, who spoke
no English at all, was quite puzzled at first as to what we wanted to
see. First we went to some caves, which were pretty cool - I faced my two fears of wasps and spiders just by going inside! But I did have to stand in the corner facing the wall while the rest of the group went to look at a giant spider, I had to try and ignore the gasps of 'oh my god it's huge, arggh!!'. Then he took us to the beach, to a look out point,and then to a very
local market which we loved. Inspired, he took us to a bar called
Paradise which has pretty perfect views over the ocean. We loved this
even more. The next day Carina and I decided to go to the beach, so we
simply stepped outside the hotel and shouted ‘Transport!!!’ – a few
seconds and transport appeared :) There are very few tourists here on
Flores, once you venture away from the main street with the guesthouses.
Sadly we had to fly back to Bali the next day, to enjoy our last few
days in Indonesia with some more beach time before we both headed to
Singapore to catch different onward flights.
Back in Bali, we
avoided the Australian holiday town of Kuta which has gained a pretty
poor reputation amongst travelers now although it's really nowhere near
as bad as it's portrayed, and went to the more upmarket Seminyak
instead. Our hotel was pure luxury - the hotel man looked at us like we
were mad when we were jumping up and down over the duvets and TV and hot
shower! Interesting that the beach had black volcanic sand and waves
so big that swimming is prohibited ... we negotiated a few pounds to
hire sunbeds and that was us set for the next two days, lazing in the
sun whilst local women come and sell you fresh pineapple and mango and
local men are on hand with coolers of drinks - bliss!!
On our
final day in Indonesia, we moved to Kuta and I went a bit more mad and
got myself a tattoo!! Something I’ve been thinking about for a while now
so I wanted to get it in Asia as the whole point was to signify the
amazing time I’ve spent here and all the things that I have done. We
were going to have a night out on the town in Kuta (if you can’t beat
them join them right?) but made the fatal mistake of going back to our
room and lying down for a few minutes … unfortunately we didn’t wake up
and missed our night of partying completely.
The next day we
caught a flight together to Singapore, had a last supper in Little India
then headed our separate ways (boohoo!!) as I left for Sydney and
Carina left for Kuala Lumpar.
Few more photos at the end of this album:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150226243557454.339693.515642453&l=1f9e21baa4
