Blogs from Indonesia, Asia - page 526

With only 2 weeks left of travelling....we decided to head back down to south Bali and start accumulating some new clothes and stuff for our move to Oz. We headed down to Sanur, after a recommendation from people we met in the Gili islands, and ended up in this weird homestay lodge. Instead of the usual room and bathroom, we had a room and open air bathroom/kitchen..........which was kinda cool as we could abuse the local supermarket and have a more normal life for a while. Sanur as a place was a bit of a non event........full of tourists and swanky hotels so we left after just 3 days to sample the delights of Kuta once again. We arrived back at the cheap hotel we’d been staying in before (8 quid for a decent room, pool, ... read more

18-21 Oct 2007What can I say? It is Bali... the world famous Bali and I was very lucky to have a full expense paid trip and stayed in a small luxury resort - SPA VILLAGE RESORT TEMBOK BALI.The scenaries were heaven. The services were first class. The staff is extremely friendly. The downsides are the foods need some improvisation and the journey from airport to the resort is too far and very exhausting. The 80 min massages feels like 20 min only, way too nice.... read more

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 a hotel with two $25 rooms still available, in the seaside city of Sanur. We snatched up one of the rooms, and recruited another hotel-less couple to take the other. The four of crowded into ... read more

Hi, Sorry I haven't updated this for a while. I've spent a few weeks visiting some of Pattiro's offices in Central Java and so had not much internet access and then have just had a nice little holiday in bali for two weeks too!! After spending a very lovely week with Widi and his family in Limbangan I went to Solo (a city within Surakarta). Solo is def not quite as pretty as Limbangan, but a quite nice city. I stayed there with someone from Pattiro, Latri, in her boarding house. We went to the traditional market near her home to buy breakfast every morning (Nasi Liwet (rice with some kind of coconut, egg +other random things sauce)) and she took me to some nice local places to eat in the evening too. The food was ... read more

After Lake Toba we caught a crammed bus back up to Medan, then flew to Jakarta. As soon as we landed in Jakarta we decided not to stay long. It's another busy, noisey sprawl so after squeezing in a few hours sleep we booked a minivan to take us to Yogyakarta further south. We were told by the agent that we wold have a lovely spacious, air con minivan, which we did, but we were also told that the trip would only take 9 hours, which it didn't - more like 20! At this time of year the muslim community celebrate the end of their fasting season (Hari Raya) and everyone goes home to be with friends and family so all the main roads were heaving with traffic! It didn't help that we had a blown ... read more