We rented a Citroen C2, which is roughly the size of a shopping cart, but which pleasantly surprised us with it's awesome gas mileage (roughly 65 miles to a gallon) and was plenty spacious for the two of us. We took off from Alicante and headed north through Valencia along the Mediterranean until we finally reached Barcelona-it was a much longer drive than expected because after testing out our first toll road we decided that $8 for every 5 miles of road couldn't possibly be worth the time it saved us, and so we stuck with the national highways. We spent [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Alicante after a short flight from London into the open arms of our good friend Bristol. Bristol was in my Master's program at UM and is now getting her PhD in neuroscience at a the University of Miguel Hernandez in Alicante, Spain. She took us back to her new apartment, where we made ourselves right at home eating her food and drinking her wine/beer. Her apartment is quite large and is right downtown in the small pueblo of San Juan de Alicante, with a view all the way to the ocean. She shares it with two other students, [View Full Entry]

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As we were settling into to our plush Air Asia X seats eagerly awaiting our take-off the captain came over the PA with all the usual pre-flight info: names of crew, expected altitude, weather and wind (strong head-wind) and flight time dooor to door: 14 hrs. What, 14 hrs? For some reason Meg and I had thought the flight would be in the range of 6-8hrs; perhaps because neither of us bothered to look at a map or calculate the time difference of Kuala Lampur and London (8 hrs) plus the ETD (10 AM) and ETA (4PM). Oops! After our long, [View Full Entry]

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In keeping with our decision to make our time in Indo as relaxing and chill as possible, we decided to spend our last week or so in the country close to our home base of Kuta, Bali rather than spending hours upon hours on buses and ferries trying to cram in as many sights as possible. So, we arrived in Kuta after a long day of travel from Lombok and tagged along with the Spanish/Polish couple (an odd combo you'd think, but they were awesome together) to a hotel they had stayed at previously, the Hotel Lusa. It was a bit [View Full Entry]

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As we write this blog, we are only days away from the end of our tour of SE Asia. We have been traveling for 6 months and a handful of days (about two months more than we originally predicted), but we aren't quite ready to come home yet...though we're getting awfully close (which is both a very scary and very exciting thought). In 48 hours, we leave Indo to fly to Kuala Lampur, from where we'll continue on to London. We're planning on spending 3 days in London with our friend Jamie who we met in Vietnam, then are flying to [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to the Java blog, Matt style. Meg's been doing a great job keeping you all up to date but I decided I should pitch in and help catch us up (or you guys up actually) before we start making our way home. Don't worry, this won't take long. After leaving Kota Kinabalu, Borneo we headed for Bandung, Java via the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta. We stayed one night in a hot Mosquito farm owned by an incredibly nice little man in Jakarta for $4 and caught an early train the next morning for Bandung and the sanctuary you find when [View Full Entry]

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After spending a few days in Sandakan (at the homey Winho Lodge) trying to wait out the floods at Uncle Tan's Wildlife Camp, we finally decided that it was time to get a move on and instead booked our Kinabatagan River safari through the Bilit Safari camp. Turns out this place was flooded too (I guess the week before we arrived in Borneo they had experienced some torrential downpours, and while we were lucky enough to arrive afterwards, we still came across some of the flooding aftermath), however, they had an alternate plan in place. We were picked up by some [View Full Entry]

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Ok. So, we didn't literally climb to heaven, but after 8.7km of climbing straight up (they haven't mastered switchbacks in this country yet!) it certainly felt like it. And the views couldn't have been much better either. In one of our most amazing adventures yet during our travels, Matt and I successfuly completed the summit climb to Lowe's Peak on Mt. Kinabalu, on the northern coast of Borneo Malaysia. After two days of enjoying the park scenery and relaxing at park headquaters, we began our two day summit climb. The first day consists of a 6km climb from the trailhead to [View Full Entry]

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The word Orangutan literally translates in Malay to "the people of the forest." For centuries these creatures have held a special place in the hearts of natives living throughout SE Asia, and being in their presence on our visit to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center it was easy to see why. The SORC was set up to take in orphaned orangutans or ones who have been displaced by habitat loss and introduce them to the skills they will need to live on their own in the wild. The center either prepares and/or re-releases them into a forest reserve twice the size [View Full Entry]

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THE PICTURES IN THIS BLOG ARE NOT IN ORDER WITH HOW WE TRAVELLED OR TOOK THEM...WE PUT UP TOO MANY TO GO THROUGH AND RE-ORDER...IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN TOO LONG...THEY ARE ALL LABELED SO YOU CAN CONNECT THEM WITH THE PARTS OF THE BLOG...ENJOY After two weeks in Dumaguete visiting with Wilson and family, we were back off on our own, trying to cover all the sights in the few weeks we had left. We covered almost every island in the Visayas, traversed most of Palawan and even made it to the northern mountains of Luzon for some rice terrace viewing. [View Full Entry]

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