Indonesia - Bali, Flores, Lombok and the Gili Islands

---

Unfortunately no photos on this one folks, as the camera is apparently past it :-( We managed to get some final underwater shots in on our last day on the Gilis though, so just Taiwan to go, relying on Eoin's photography skills alone.

We landed in Bali in the middle of the night, and were promptly picked up by our hotel to drive the hour to Ubud. We were both shattered when we arrived so a huge relief to move into an enormous room with a four poster bed, mosquito net curtains, a beautiful outdoor-style bathroom (but without the actual bugs that outdoors brings!) and a balcony overlooking a pretty little garden. We definitely felt like we had arrived in paradise, and that didn't really end for most of our time in Indonesia.

The hotel was on a quiet street in a village area, away from the main busy town centre. We walked into town on the first day, via the monkey forest, where monkeys came over to everyone, from everywhere, in the hope of being fed bananas, sweet potatoes and other snacks. There were so many of them, so we ended up spending a good hour or so just watching them all. The town centre itself is full of temples, clothes shops, restaurants and cafes. We went to the handicraft market, and went to see a show in the evening, put on at one of the temples. We hired a driver for the day on one day (feeling a little like royalty again!) to take us out to see the many temples and other historic sites out of town. On another day, we walked through the rice paddies and around the local villages, which were full of little art shops and lots of different types of paintings lined the streets. The countryside is beautiful, and we saw lots of the local children fishing between rice paddies, or flying kites. Everywhere we looked there were huge bird shaped kites in the sky. We really liked Ubud, and felt like we had seen a lot of Bali cultural history. We also ate some great food, most of which was similar to Malaysian, made up of rice and sauce, satay sticks, giant prawn crackers, curried meats and coconut stewed vegetables.

From Ubud, we got a car (in the absence of any long distance public transport!) to the North to stay in Pemuteran for a few days. We had heard there was good snorkelling, which unfortunately turned out to be expensive, so we went for one long day, travelling out to the national park, and snorkelling around two spots near the big volcano island. The snorkelling was amazing. The water was crystal clear, there were fish everywhere, and we had great weather so could see all the brightly coloured fish really well. One beach that we stopped at was covered in massive starfish - about 12 inches/30cm across - blue, orange, grey, white, brown. Had to be careful not to tread on them! We stayed at another beautiful hotel, in a traditional style wooden bungalow with an amazingly clean outdoor bathroom, flowers on the bed every day, and a resident frog (plus several lizards) living in the little garden next to the shower! We spent a lot of the rest of our time walking along the black sand beach and chilling by the pool. We ate delicious fresh fish bbq and a lot of ice cream. There was also a turtle sanctuary next door that raised the babies from egg until 3 months, then released them into the sea, so we went to visit the tiny ones while they were being fed tiny fish that were bigger than them!

From Pemuteran, we travelled back to the airport to fly to Labuan Bajo on Flores. We stayed in a new hotel with a pool (being the main attraction) that seemed to have forgotten to buy sunbeds. We were also quite out of town, so astonished the hotel staff by walking into town everyday for dinner (only about 25 minutes, but clearly unheard of in their guests!). The town was nothing to really go for, we were there with everyone else, waiting for a boat to travel to the nearby islands. There were some nice restaurants serving surprisingly great pizza and pasta, and the people were very friendly, but it was a very local town, with a lot of traffic and bustling harbour business. We did a lot of poolside reading and chilling before catching our 2 day boat trip to Rinca and then Lombok. Rinca is next to Komodo Island and part of Komodo National Park, so our stop there included trekking to look for the komodo dragons. We walked quite a way in the heat, concerned we might not see any, while our guides waved their sticks warning us to beware in case we did. Then we saw a huge male, lying in the grass just off the path. We were very chuffed to see one, then for the rest of our 2hr walk, they seemed to be everywhere! We saw 9 in total, including a much smaller juvenile, but the adults were enormous. Some of them were moving around a lot, which appeared to concern our guides a bit, so we gave them a wide berth!

From Rinca, we went on to a couple of other sites for snorkelling and swimming, which were good for seeing fish, but not great - mainly because the coral had been completely destroyed so no real reef remained. It was quite sad to see what could have been, but good to see the fish are still there, and the reef is slowly making a comeback. We went on to a small island to swim in a waterfall - and the more daring in the group to canyon swing over it (Eoin - well it was his birthday). All the local children came running to wave and shout hello as we walked across the island, and several of them joined in the swimming, jumping off mini cliffs into the freezing water about 10ft below!

The rest of the boat trip was a bit slow, and more like a journey than a trip, but we made it to Lombok late on the last night, and checked into our first rough and ready place in Indonesia. We were both pretty glad to be staying on dry land, so it was ok, just a bit run down - and I had got a bit used to paradise. Senggigi was a little touristy for us, but the beach was nice and we got some great food, if a little pricier than previous places. It was a good place to stop, but we were very glad this wasn't our only beach stop. We got a boat over to the Gili Islands next, for 6 nights in total. First we went to Gili Meno, the smallest of the three, and stayed in some beautiful little wooden bungalows, with another fancy, clean and beautifully decorated outdoor bathroom. The shower, the mirror and the sink were all made of bamboo, and so was the screen around the toilet. Again we had a little garden in the bathroom, and a nice porch to sit on in the evening. The island is so small, we walked around it in a couple of hours one day. We ate delicious fresh fish every night and did some awesome snorkelling, seeing loads of fish and even a turtle or two. We moved islands to Gili Air next, and stayed in a slightly less traditional, but equally lovely room, did more awesome snorkelling, ate more fresh fish, including the most enormous prawns I have ever seen, and drank large quantities of fruit smoothie! On my birthday we saw three turtles, one of which swam right up to my face for a closer look then nearly crashed into me! We both had an awesome time, and while we did get stung by some more jellyfish, they were tiny and it didn't last (unlike my big scar from the last encounter!), although they did put us off going in the water on the last day when there were hundreds of them and they were more like 6inches in diameter rather than 1.

We stayed one more night in Bali, in Sanur, before flying to Taiwan, and again proved that we had chosen the right places to spend our time. Nothing special, just a beach resort with lots of western restaurants, but a nice place with a couple of Balinese places where we managed to have a delicious last Indonesian meal.

---