Blogs from Labuanbajo, Flores, Indonesia, Asia

We're currently at the Gardana Hotel in Maumere awaiting our flight tomorrow morning back to Bali. Karate Kid 3 is on TV and Will Smith's son is currently tied with the China man 1-1. We have finished a whirlwind tour of Flores in a little over a week. This is absolutely not enough time to do the island justice, but we were here mainly for the diving, so seeing bits and pieces of the rest of the island was purely a bonus. After the dive trip ended, we spent a night in Labuanbajo on which we had a very romantic Italian dinner. The rule for eating Western food was broken as Crab had a rough stomach for most of the boat ride and we were craving a taste of something not fried...plus, the place had a ... read more

I. I'm not lost...I'm...discovering! A few months ago, something de-magnetized the strip in my passport, which now annoyingly ceases to scan. Now imagine that the same thing happened to me, still in the womb...I'm convinced that somehow, the polarity got switched. So it's not that I don't have a sense of direction, it's just that it's completely and utterly wrong, every time. But really, you always find stuff when you get lost. Don't believe me? Look at the "great" explorers of history...Columbus...Magellan...Vespuccio...think these idiots had a clue where they were going? Hell no they didn't! Maybe women are bad drivers, but we all know men never ask directions! For one girl on a rented motorbike with a dwindling amount of fuel, the result of getting lost during a mission to find the secluded spots of Bali...was, ... read more

Surviving the Komodo Adventure. I flew to Labuan Bajo with the notoriously precarious Maparti Airline. While the staff were pleasant and the flight mostly smooth I couldn’t help feeling faintly anxious throughout much of the journey. This was until my attention was snatched away from their tainted flight record and onto the captivating sight below. As the plane neared its destination I was presented with one of the most glorious views I have ever seen from an aircraft window. Hundreds of lush, volcanic atolls girt by the most magnificent turquoise water. The visibility was so obviously clear I could make out the shapes of coral below, weaving its way around the islands. Like almost all tourists visiting the area I was here to trek around the nearby islands of Komodo and Rinca. Both famous for being ... read more

(M) After bidding a very sad farewell to Lombok, the time had come to enter the very last leg of our epic journey - to Flores, one of the country’s eastern-most islands. In the end we decided to take overland public transport via the island of Sumbawa, which consisted of a gruelling 36-hour bus-ferry-overnight bus-ferry combination. So we gritted our teeth and mentally prepared ourselves for our last uncomfortable journey, backpacker style. The journey itself was pretty uneventful although we did make friends with two awesome couples from Spain and Argentina, and needless to say we had lots to talk about! Their company and deck of Uno cards went along way to passing the time, and the final nine hour ferry journey in the glorious sunshine, cruising past some of the country’s most idyllic scenery, was ... read more

It was a 36 hour journey from Senggigi to Flores, by far the longest journey I have ever taken, so I was actually quite excited. We booked the bus through a tour agent in Senggigi and it cost us about 300,000Rp I think. We were picked up from our hotel in a luxury air-conditioned car and driven to the bus terminal about half an hour away. From here, there was a lovely guy who had been assigned to getting us on the bus. He warned us immediately that we’d get hassled and we would be told we need to pay again or pay extra, so we just walked straight through the station with our heads down and tried to ignore the shouts and the smutty grins we got from the men. We were safely settled on ... read more