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Published: October 18th 2009
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oftewel : "Toe kom mee naar snorkelland" voor onze allerliefste Belgskes!
For some memories of good old times, click the video at the bottom. Its a hint at what we have been doing the last weeks and We have been humming this song quite a lot :-)
We are now back in Asia and more precisely Indonesia. Yes, again Indonesia! We allready visited Java, Sulawesi and Papua earlier on our trip. Now we explored some smaller islands. Our quest after two months travelling on a tight shedule: relaxing, doing absolutely nothing worth mentioning here, island hopping, snorkelling and beach spotting. The result: succeeded!
If you want to go island hopping, there is probably no better place then Indonesia.
Indonesians like to refer to their country as "the land of a thousand islands" and yes, they even have a popular cocktail sauce here which they lovingly call "thousand islands sauce".
We started our second trip through Indonesia in busy Bali, where we dived into the nightlife drinking very cheap fishbowl sized cocktails. Thrust me, the cocktails they serve are BIG and you can have enough with just one for the whole evening. Or perhaps not:-)
We didn want to stay for too long on Bali as other travellers had told us that some other islands were much nicer. And every Balinees is trying to sell you things you don need, lots of people and traffic....
On the other hand: you got great food (oh my god, delicious cheesecakes, quiches, cakes,.... They even have Chaumes-cheese here!!!), a fantastic nightlife, great shopping and off course fishbowl sized cocktails!
Its great to spend some time on Bali after eating the same nasi goring or noodles again and again.
Because we wanted some relaxing after Australia and before we take on the rest of our trip, we quickly moved on to some quiter corners in Indonesia and left Bali.
We started on the small Gili islands were Raf did his first dive. We spend 5 days on Gili Trawangan, an ideal place to relax, have dinner in the many cosy restaurants along the beach and enjoy an international DJ from time to time. Apart from that we snorkelled a lot around the Gilis and the underwater life is just beautiful.
As a matter of fact, snorkelling turned out to be the main theme
on our second trip through Indonesia. As we said above, we have been humming the song "toe kom mee naar snorkelland" quite frequently the last few weeks!
After that we went to the island of Lombok. Its right next to Bali and in the next 10 or 20 years it will probably become the next "Bali", as a new international airport will open soon there. We think lombok was much more beautifull then Bali as it is still unspoiled by the mass tourism that Bali has.
On Lombok we rented two motorcycles for a few days and just drove around the island. It is thé ideal place for motorcycling: good roads, not too much traffic and with superb views of pristine beaches, rice fields and mountains.
After Lombok we took a 4 day cruise to the island of Flores, enncountering many more smaller islands and beaches on the way.
We took the cheapest cruise there is. It was a local boat where you just sleep on the deck, get very simple and basic meals and where theres no shower and only a very basic toilet (read: a hole in the floor). We were mostly worried about the
safety of this local boat. Especially because the night before our departure we experienced a tropic rainstorm on Lombok. You really don want to be in such a storm, stuck on a chabby boat in the middle of the sea.
But in the end we had no choice as all the other etter boats were fully booked. It turned out really well and the sea wasn very rough. We also had some nice fellow travellers on the boat and that always helps. Most of them were German, but there were also a few Dutch and American adventurers.
Sleeping on a hard wooden floor with a loud roaring engine next to your ears turned out to be the real challenge. The first night we almost didn sleep, but I guess you can get used to sleeping on the ground in a 100 decibel location, and the next nights we slept much better.
On this cruise we also visited the islands of Rinca and Komodo. They are World heritage sites because its the only place in the world were you can still see the komodo dragon (komodovaraan).
They are like huge lizzards, except that they don eat bugs but go
for the big stuff such as wild dear, pigs and their own children!. They also like to eat tasty humans and some tourists have been eaten or mysteriously dissapeared in the past. Of one guy they only found his camera and sunglasses, the rest of him was probably resting in the stomach of one of the dragons.
These days, you can only walk around on the islands with a local ranger. The rangers carry wooden sticks as protection and if a dragon comes to close they push them away with the stick. To us, it seemed little protection for such a big dinosaure-like animal!
During these 4 days, from the boat, we spotted a lot of dolphins, some mantas, turtles and flying fish : you never get bored looking at the ocean here! While spotting a group of dolphins, hunting fish in group, Raf jumped into the water with his snorkeling gear, and really got close to them.
We are now typing this text in one of our last stops in Indonesia, another small island near Flores, sitting on our balcony of our private bungalow, with a Bintang (local beer) in the hand, right next to the
beach and with a superb view across the sea and all the little islands scattered around ;-))). We hope to enjoy the same stunning sunset as yesterday...
Tomorrow we fly to bali where we will spend our last night in Indonesia, closing this chapter in a fine Belgian restaurant in Seminyak. And...last chance to drink some more fishbowl cocktails before we head on to Thailand (first Phuket, then Bangkok).
Speaking of Thailand: Has anybody been in Bangkok before and happens to know a good but not toooooooo expensive hotel???? Drop us a line if you have a good tip please!!!
See you later and euhm....don be embarassed, nobody is hearing you: just sing along with the Snorks like we do!
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Heyla
Dag jongens ! Fijn om jullie avonturen zo te kunnen volgen hoor. Mooie foto's !! Geniet er nog maar volop van. Leuk melodietje.. Greetz, x