Indonesia

Indonesia. So far it has had trouble making an impression on us, but it is slowly starting to get better. We were not impressed by Kuta, the very touristy, chaotic city in Bali everyone seems to end up in for the first day (or some people, poor buggers, spend two weeks there!). After one mandatory night in Kuta we found an escape to a more pleasant town on the east coast, Padangbai. From here we took a ferry across to Lombok.

Padangbai was nice and quaint and we had some lovely food from a street stall, which we haven’t been able to find since. It took us a whole day to get from Padangbai to a little island just off the coast of Lombok, Gili Trawangan. This island also failed to impress us. But we did have some fantastic views of Lombok. Lombok is just a gorgious lush and mountainous island. We’re back in Lombok now and starting to enjoy ourselves a bit more. We’ve just had a lovely swim at one of the great beaches and rode around on a little scooter. We also booked a trip to Flores by sailing boat, which will also bring us to Komodo to see the Komodo dragons. We’re very excited about that!

Accommodation here has been fantastic. We haven’t had to go to a dodgy hotel just yet and it’s all quite cheap. We haven’t found great food yet and that really is disappointing. If we want burgers and pasta, we’ll go to a Western country. We’re hanging out for a good Indonesian meal. Surely it will happen sooner or later.

The people here are very friendly and we only get hassled a little bit around town (except Kuta). Traffic around Kuta in Bali is absolutely mad. There are so many scooters and little 125cc motorbikes there and they’re all in each others way! But somehow it seems to work and we’ve not seen anyone come off. The slow pace must have something to do with this. These scooters carry up to four people at once!

We have seen a lot of little baskets on the streets with offerings for the gods. These baskets include bits of fruit and flowers, which the rats gladly take. We’ve seen some fat ones running around! And of course there is an abundance of geckos, cockroaches and other little creatures you’d rather not see in your bathroom. The streets are full of stray cats and dogs, kittens and puppies and cats are going for it in the streets! We also see chickens running around everywhere. But apart from the little creatures, stray pets and rats, Bali and Lombok are relatively clean. Especially the bungalows we stay in. As soon as we step onto the porch, the tiles are nice and clean and the place is generally quite nice and tidy (a few exceptions of course).

We really hope Indonesia will have impressed us after the sailing trip to Komodo and Flores. If not, there’s still Sumatra to check out before we move on to Malaysia.

We can't include photos yet, because we have only taken photos with Jenny's camera and she forgot to bring the USB cord! Photos coming soon.