Blogs from West Papua, Indonesia, Asia

The past few months have been ‘busy’. We did quite a lot of travelling, trying but often failing to travel slowly and most of it not in any way efficiently. Since our last blog post we have travelled from Alor to West-Timor (the Indonesian part of the island Timor) and then to Timor Leste (an independent country). From there with a lot of boats, busses and some planes via Nusa Penida, Bali, Singapore, Berlin and Brussels to The Netherlands. Here we have spent four weeks with our family and friends, trying to catch up with their lives and just spending quality time with the people we miss during our travelling. We then flew back to Indonesia, via KL and Jakarta to Ambon, from where we travelled across part of Maluku, visiting the Banda Islands and Kei ... read more

I’ve reached the islands that have got travellers mouth wagging for the last few years, the place to be, the name you casually throw in the conversation to show how cool you are, to see others salivating at the thought, wanting to be you, to be there, to have seen what you have seen: Raja Ampat! So Raja Ampat is a hype, but is it also as good as people make it out to be? Is it worth spending your scarce money on it? Is it worth the inflated prices? That’s a difficult question to answer, because it depends on the person you talk to. Let’s start with the facts. The fact is that the prices are not at all in line with what you get. The price for sleeping in a simple hut with a ... read more

I never thought, that I could fly in my life by a small plane. All my life I thouht that the small jets are only for people with money. But, the day when I had this opportunity came. And I really can say, that it worth the money to try. We had booked the small Jet for the trip in West Papua to the tribe living in a small village in the deep jungles. This tribe became famous after a Book of Sabina Kugler "Jungle Kind" and after the book the Movie with the same name came to the World. The tribe where we went - Fayu tribe. They live in Memberamo Velley on the Deru River. Deru has a simple translation - River. So, they live in the river with the name River. About village ... read more

We travelled from Bali to Sorong, via a connecting flight through Makassar, followed by a local ferry to Waisai, located off the West coast of Papua in the far East of Indonesia. Our final destination being the remote archipelago of Raja Ampat comprising one thousand five hundred small islands and part of the tropical coral triangle linking Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, The Solomon Islands, and The Phillipines. With little information on the internet and having travelled such a distance we were curious about what these remote islands would reveal. Due to cost and time restrictions we picked one of the islands to visit. Based on a brief description on the internet and a few pictures, we chose the island of Kri because of its accessible coral reef. The only contact we had when booking our stay ... read more

Most days while on the island of Kri we followed the same routine, breakfast , snorkel, shower, walk along the jetty, lunch, laze on the beach, more snorkelling, shower , dinner ..... You get the idea. There was a boat trip planned for Friday to visit the Fam islands and viewpoint from where you get the view that everyone associates with Raja Ampat. The day started grey and cloudy as we jumped on the boat at 7.30am, a bit of a disappointment as we'd hoped to get the perfect picture also the snorkelling isn't so good with a cloudy sky. Soon after setting off one of the boat's engines failed so we limped along on the other while an attempt was made to fix it. Finally we were off but then the first engine broke down. ... read more