Blogs from Indonesia, Asia - page 612

After a comfortable late morning noodling in my room I meet up with Vanessa over at the Sarinah Busway platform and we head towards the National Museum, a stone throw from the MONAS monument (well, a pretty exhausting throw, considering the size of the MONAS compound...) to inspect the latest announced additions to the collection. Being the cartography nerd that I am I find the gigantic relief maps exhibiting the country's topography and population the most interesting, while the rest of the collected historical items leave the same bland impression I get from visiting Bronze Age exhibitions back home (it's been a while). Seeing all the imposing volcanos strewn across the islands I feel a bit bad about not having scheduled some time to see at least one. If I could pick one though, it will ... read more

After the best sleep I've had in quite some time I slowly drag myself out of bed. I have arranged to meet with my friend Vanessa in the afternoon and spend the time up until then by doing the laundry and catching up on my journal. I cast an eye at the traffic below from time to time, at one point I see a funeral cortege led by a yellow truck with blaring loudspeakers pass by. The regular calls to prayer from the many nearby mosques also add to the exotic flavour. As Vanessa arrives at the hotel around 2 pm she asks me where to go. For some reason I always seem to be attracted by a city's waterfront so we get in a taxi and head north towards Ancol and the Sea World aquarium. ... read more

We are in Sanur right now and have spent a lot of time making arrangements, both for the wedding and for the days surrounding it. We are still working on both but will send an e-mail very soon once everything is finalized. I have heard that some more people are coming. My friend Michelle, who I met in Japan, and her friend mark are coming. They are from New Zealand, which means we have people from four countries now! (England, America, Australia and New Zealand). About Sanur...to be honest, we were a little disappointed with the beach as it doesn't look like we expected from the pictures. However, we have been visiting a lot of other beaches in the area. Nusa Dua has a nice white sand beach, with good water for swimming around high tide. ... read more

There's something about morning flights. Specifically, there's the feeling of anguish as you go to bed the night before wondering if you will doze off and sleep through the buzz of the alarm clock. And having to get up at five sure adds to the tension. All is well though, I check out in good order and after a nervous short wait in the street manage to flag down a taxi. Today's haul is a mere four hours, and it feels good knowing they will be spent in the hands of a respectable airline, even though the added comfort comes at the price of being far from exotic. The wide body is mainly filled with western tourists, and upon landing at Ngurah Rai we are herded into two lots, those qualifying for a Visa on Arrival, ... read more

The island of Flores stretches over 350 km east to west, but by road it makes easily the double, Labuanbajo is 528 km from Maumere, which is not yet the island's most eastern limit. Flores is crossed by a mountain range from west to east, and by rivers and valleys, which result in extraordinary landscape but also makes the roads more difficult to travel. But once we were lucky concerning transport. Last evening, when Stephan had gone to the Tourist Information enquiring about bus connections, he met a couple of young Danes who had already hired a car for tomorrow morning (there was also a Dutch guy on board) and they were glad to reduce the costs by sharing the price with two more travellers. This car was empty and the driver had to reach Maumere ... read more