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Published: October 30th 2009
Sumatra
Isn't she georgeous?Ok, this is going to be a bit of a long one. Sorry...hope you bare with me for one more time. Because as you know we are already home for quite some time now and I'm hopelessly behind with our stories. So I will end our entry's with a bit of a summery of everything that happened after we left Australia.
First we flew into Singapore, which came as a bit of a surprise to us. After thinking during our entire trip that we will fly into Jakarta, we found out 5 days before the flight that this was wrong. Oops! Aah well, the beauty of travelling is the unknown. So with a complete open mind we started our trip through south east asia. Singapore is a great way to ease back into the Asian lifestyle. A very clean, very organised city, but still with the Asian flavors and culture. And if you ever end up there for a couple of days, don't miss out on the excellent zoo! Even if you don't like zoo's, you will agree that this must be one of the best in the world.
As there are so many great places to go diving in
this part of the world we decided to put our focus on this and after finding a cheap flight we set of to explore the Malaysian part of Borneo (Sabah). Divers from all over the world gather here on the eastcoast to dive Sipadan. You're nowadays not longer able to stay overnight on the Island as it has become a national park, but with a permit a certain number of divers are allowed in every day to dive it's famous drop offs. After arranging this permit as soon as we arrived in Sabah, we first travelled for a week overland towards Semporna (the jumping off point for Sipadan) We had a great week where we spent a day rafting through the rainforest (with amazingly fast rapids and a surprising number of times where we found ourselves flipped out of our boat trying to keep afloat) and joint a couple of Urangutans during there feedingtimes in one of the only three rehabilitationcentres for these beautiful creatures in the world. And then we arrived in Semporna. Although you can chose to stay on one of the other Island close to sipadan, we decided to stay in semporna and go on divingtrips from
there. We ended up with a very nice, professional dive centre and bought a 5 day divepackage with them. This ment 5 days, 3 dives a day of which 2 days on sipadan itself. It turned out to be an experience we still on a regular base talk about...aaaaaaahhhhh Sipadan
All the dives were absolutely amazing.. there was just too much to see, from tiny colourfull weird looking shrimps, to huge groupers, massive morey eels, lazy turtles and gracefull sharks. At one moment we even ended up in the middle of a twirl of hundreds of barracuda's. And the feeling of joining all these animals whilst gliding next to a huge coralwall, the sun above you and looking into a big infinity underneath.
Being completely hooked after 5 days, we started thinking about our next stop. And as some of the flights in this continent our so ridiculously cheap, a couple of days later we were sitting on the beach in the Phillipines. How I love travelling :-) We spent a week in this country and left with mixed feelings. It is an absolutely beautifull country with an amazing underwaterworld and very friendly people. But on a budget, you
do tend to get somewhat stuck in the big city's, which are not the most relaxed places to be. Very hectic, dirty and unfortunatly all the hotels seem to be full with old western men looking for a young phillipinan girl. But we couldn't complain, as the diving again was fabulous and we even snuck a quick visit in to see the cute little Tarsier. The tinest primate on this planet.
And again, back in the plane (I know not very environmentally friendly, but too tempting after so many busjourney's, especially when you find out the price is only 10 pounds more then a daylong ferry)
This time we ended up (after a quick day stopover in Kuala Lumpur) in Bandah Aceh, on the northern tip of the Indonesian island Sumatra. Most of you must have heard about it as it has been in the news a lot, unfortunatly mainly in a negative way. As a strict moslim state it has been fighting for independence for years and it used to be an unsafe place to visit. But then everything changed when the Tsunami hit. The state of Bandah Aceh was hit hardest and in some villages only 1
in 5 people survived. In the main city the population was halfened and because of all the troubles it had before this disaster, it took a long time before help reached this area. One good thing came out of this, and that is that the war seem to have ended. Everyone came together to build this place up again and. although there are still villages that are hard to reach, most of it's life is currently back to normal.
For us, the main reason to visit this place was the Island of Palau weh. Again another place with a beautiful underwater world. The Island is gorgeous and has a special community feel that makes you want to stay forever. A lot of travellers still avoid this area, which makes it quite special. The locals are therefore also still happy to see you and everyone is willing to talk to you.
After our visit here, we made our way down on an exceptional long journey in a night bus towards Sumatra. About 20 hours later we finally arrived in Bukit Lawang. Known for one of the other Urangutan centres. We decided not to visit the centre this time and tried
our luck in the wild. This turned out to be one of our best wildlife experiences. It was a real Attinbourgh moment when during a break of our walk a wild Urangutan came to check us out. It was amazing to see this huge animal come swinging through the branches towards us and after our guide told us to sit still, this beautiful Urangutan joint us from only a metre away. The 4 of us sat together like this for about half an hour before our friend decided he saw enough and disappeard again into the rainforest.
Ok, swiftly moving on :-) we spent another week in Sumatra, mainly enjoying some relaxing time at Lake Toba, before we travelled to Thailand. We flew into Georgetown, Malaysia, which is great for some bike exploring and filling your belly's with lovely Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian or Thai food! From there we made our way over the border of Thailand and, as the visa regulations changed two days before, we only had two weeks before we had to leave the country.
Thailand was mainly a nice trip back through memory lane, as this is the place we met about 4 years ago.
Bandah Aceh
Our little hut We enjoyed some nice Thai beaches, fantastic food and an amazing bike trip around the area of Nan, close to the border of Laos.
And so we arrived after a flight from Bangkok at our final stop. INDIA.
I can probably go on for pages about this fascinating country, but it is one of those places you will have to visit for yourself to know what the Indian life means. It can be an absolutely exhausting and frustrating place to travel independently, but once I managed to look past all the noice, the busy streets, the unorganised transport, the dirt and chaos, I found a place of smiles, togetherness and beauty. Even after so many cultures and travel we experienced in the last year it meant somewhat of a culture shock, but it mainly put a smile on our face and during our travel we both realised how much we enjoyed it.
The local families we met on our long train journeys, a friendly man trying to get us to come and have a chai with him, some students who love to hear about our life in the UK, the beautifull fords, castles and temples with their fascinating
history, the ability to find a freshly prepared curry at every street corner, sunset in the desert, watching devotees wash themselves in the spiritual water of the ganges at sunrise and cleaning our bodies (inside and out) at the himalayan clinic as a final preparation for our return home.
The last 12 months have been more then we could have ever imagined and to anyone who ever thought about doing something similar, I can only say, if you have even the slightest possibility, GO. Just do it! It will be amazing, at the very least an unreplaceble experience.
Being back in England has been strange, especially the feeling of staying still again, but after a year it has also been great to meet up with our families and friends. And new exciting things will always be on the horizon. For us a wedding, because even after being together for 24 hours a day for the past 12 months, I recieved the most romantic marriage proposal I could have wished for, with the Taj Mahal in the back ground!
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