Our last week in Bangkok was bittersweet. We had spent a total of three months in Thailand with almost half of that time in Bangkok, and it had become a very comfortable southeast Asian home away from home. We did some Christmas shopping at the mall, which was surprisingly decked out in red and green decorations. We went to the Chatuchak weekend market, ate at our favorite restaurants, saw a movie in "VIP" seats with blankets and reclining chairs, wandered through a local market in search of a giant clay mortar and pestle to take home, and helped Joey decorate his [View Full Entry]

---

---

During our flight from Bali to Bangkok we had a four-hour layover in Brunei. Realizing we might never have another chance to visit the tiny country, we decided to leave the airport to see the city and get some lunch before our flight back to Bangkok. We flagged a taxi driver willing to drop us off downtown and pick us up two and a half hours later. We had no idea what to expect from the tiny Muslim island. The drive from the airport took us through a sparse, bright, wealthy city with wide open spaces and perfectly manicured gardens. Slick [View Full Entry]

---

---

Back in Bali, we spent the first few days in the obscenely touristy city of Kuta, soaking up the air conditioned shops and thrilled by the wide array of food options. Kuta is Bali's most popular tourist vacation, particularly as a surfing destination for Australians and Europeans looking for a beach vacation. The streets are packed with surf shops, trinket stands, bars, nightclubs, coffee shops and relatively expensive tourist restaurants. If there is any Indonesian authenticity remaining in Kuta, it is hiding far from the swarming city center. After a few days of gorging on the thrilling [View Full Entry]

---

---

The bus from Ruteng to Labuanbajo took about four hours, and Jeff and I sat near the front, constantly readjusting our feet so as not to burn them on the hot engine that churned beneath the metal bus floor. A woman nursed a week-old baby in the seat in front of us, apparently traveling back home after a trip to the hospital in Ruteng for a C-section. (We learned this from her husband, who was clearly very proud of the fact, and made elaborate tummy-slicing motions on his own stomach by way of demonstration.) Nearby, a couple held onto their two [View Full Entry]

---

---

The bus from Bajawa to Ruteng took over seven hours, and by the time we tumbled out of it in Ruteng we were tired and ready to eat something and go to bed. First, of course, we had to find a bed. We took moto taxis through town to our chosen hotel, and found it completely full. So we went to our second choice, and the owner informed us that he too was full, as was every single hotel in town. Apparently there was a local festival going on, and all the people from surrounding areas were in Ruteng to celebrate. [View Full Entry]

---

---

The bus from Ende to Bajawa was the same jam-packed insanity as always, although we did manage to get seats inside this time. It took six hours of bouncing and jostling and blaring music and screeching breaks and puking passengers and clucking chickens in the bus aisles pecking at our feet and other people's babies sleeping on our shoulders and and suffocating clouds of clove cigarette smoke filling the bus to reach Bajawa, but we finally did, in the late afternoon of October 25th. We checked into Edelweis Hotel, which, despite its name, was run by a group of ever-changing Indonesian [View Full Entry]

---

---

After waiting on the side of the road in Moni for about an hour, a rattling minibus finally came lurching up the hill past us. We flagged it down and glanced inside, finding it even more packed full than the bus we'd taken to Moni. We could wait another couple hours for another bus, and hope it would have more space, or we could ride on top of this one. We climbed on top, settling ourselves and our bags into the luggage rack next to the guy in charge of luggage, who had himself squished into a crevice between bags, his [View Full Entry]

---

---

We took a small plane from Bali to Ende, a city in the center of Flores island. The views of the Indonesian archipelago from the air were stunning: impossibly blue water, countless tiny lush green islands rimmed with perfect white sand. We were the only foreigners on the flight, a fact that would set the tone for the rest of our time in Flores. We chose Flores as a destination mainly because of Keli Mutu, a famous volcano with three crater lakes of different colors, and because it was well off the usual tourist track. This latter reason was confirmed as [View Full Entry]

---

---

We flew from Singapore to Denpasar airport in Bali on October 16th. We learned from another passenger on the flight that nearly all hotels in Bali were booked due to the Muslim holiday Hari Raya, since many Indonesians were spending their holiday in Bali. Our usual method of taking a taxi to a hotel-filled area and wandering until we found one might not work this time, it seemed. After getting our luggage we began visiting tourist counters at the airport, a practice we generally avoid. One after another had nothing available except for posh $60 plus hotel rooms. We finally found [View Full Entry]

---

---

We flew into Singapore’s shiny modern airport in the late afternoon on October 12th. We’d made reservations at Bugis Backpackers Hotel, the cheapest hotel we could find, which was still a whopping $50 a night for a room without a bathroom. We were able to take the MRT (Singapore’s mass transit system, an above and below-ground subway) directly from the airport to the Bugis stop, which was less than a block from our hotel. Bugis neighborhood is known for its cheap “street” shopping, with countless covered stalls selling plastic watches, printed T-shirts and clot [View Full Entry]

---

---