Alex & Lizzy's (Travel) Blog

From Medan, we ventured further north into the province of Aceh, via the 10 hour quite-comfortable-but-nowhere-near-as-good-as-a-bed night bus. Aceh and its main town Banda Aceh became famous when somewhere in the region of 150,000 people died in 3 minutes when the tsunami hit a few years back. As you stand in the low-lying city, it’s hard to imagine a wave washing over it, but at the same time easy to understand how it was so vulnerable – it is very flat and only just above sea level. Thanks to all the foreign aid, much of the city has been rebuilt and it feels like one of the nicer cities we’ve gone to – at least in terms of quality of roads, buildings etc.

We passed through Banda Aceh on our way to catch the ferry to the island of Pulau Weh which is a speedy 45-minute boat trip off the northern coast of Sumatra. The attraction for us, once more, was the beaches and the diving – and both lived up to expectations – the worst thing about the place was that we couldn’t stay more than 2 nights!

We did 2 more dives, which were both really good – loads of fish (most noteworthy one was a 1.5m long Napoleon wrasse) and lovely colourful coral (including some impressively large fans). On the last dive, Lizzy stayed down longer than me (she always uses less air) and was helping our dive master collect a huge fishing line with large hooks on it (a shark line we later found out). After it was all collected, the dive master told her to ascend on her own, which is a bit weird since you’re not meant to do that. He then stayed down for a further 20 mins whilst everyone in the boat wondered what he was up to. We never did find out, but Lizzy found it rather exciting

The rest of the time we spent relaxing on the beach and waiting for food to arrive – the restaurants on the beach were really slow and quite often confused. One morning we ordered a pancake, a fruit salad and a coffee. What we got was 2 fruit salads, 2 coffees and a pancake (although I think the pancake they thought was for someone else)… then later they brought out 2 more fruit salads! I don’t think anyone had a clue what was going on. Having said that, the food we had here, when it eventually turned up, was some of the best we’d had in Indonesia.

Unfortunately, no sooner had we settled in than we had to pack our bags and start the big trek to Perth, via a carefully-coordinated series of taxis, becaks, night buses, flights and a quick stop-over in a hotel in Singapore… We have 20 hours to explore Singapore, so we’d best get going!

A few more photos @ Picasa

After a memorable visit to Salatiga, we decided to continue the reminiscing and head to Kopeng, where Lizzy had been on holiday with her family when she lived in Java. It was just a short local bus journey up into the mountains and we found ourselves there before lunchtime and looking for accommodation. We’d expected it to be a bit more foreign-tourist-friendly, but we got strange looks as we walked through town examining the different hotels on offer. After visiting a few less-than-desirable options, I finally discovered a nice little place down a little track and we booked in for the night.

We had 2 things on the agenda for Kopeng – firstly to find the “Shangri La” guesthouse where Lizzy had stayed with her family 20+ years ago, and secondly to find our way the next morning to Ketep Pass for views of Gunung Merapi and Merbabu.

Finding Shangri La was relatively easy (the locals fortunately understood the name of the place combined with our basic Bahasa Indonesia for ‘where is:’ “Di mana Shangri La?”).  Unfortunately though, it seemed to have closed a long time ago – the gates were padlocked and the gardens overgrown. We could only catch glimpses of the house itself through the gate and gaps in the fence as we looked around. Nice to find the place, but a shame that was where it ended – it was always going to be a let-down after our incredible success in Salatiga!

Our second mission proved somewhat harder. After having asked the only english-speaking person in the town (who promptly drove off with his small french tour group) about getting to Ketep Pass, he suggested we get a car to take us for $50 (!) or hire a motorbike and drive there ourselves for about $10. Neither seemed appealing – the former was way too expensive for a 40km round-trip and the latter seemed a little too ambitious considering the distance and state of the roads. However, we looked into both options and couldn’t progress either of them given the language barrier. We decided we’d just get up early the next morning and see if we could figure out a way there… and we were glad we did!

Getting up before 6am, we meandered out of our room with no idea how we’d get to the pass. Fortunately one of the owners was up already and told us we could get a public bus and then hire a motorbike nearer the pass. After 20 minutes waiting for such a bus, we were embarassed that the owner was still waiting with us on the road and he seemed to sense this and stopped a passing bemo (tiny minivan-come-bus) which we chartered for a few hours. After dropping his whole family at the market with their goods to sell for the day, we headed up to the pass.

When we arrived at the pass, the surrounding landscape was shrouded in cloud and we thought perhaps the trip hadn’t been quite worth it (another few hours’ sleep wouldn’t have gone amiss!). The whole place – museum, restaurant, terraces etc – was deserted and we figured everyone else knew better than us! However, as we stood there, the clouds cleared and we got amazing views over the valleys and across to Gunung Merapi (Indonesia’s most active volcano) which was spewing brown smoke and also to Merbabu. Well worth the early start and expense in the end!

More photos @ Picasa (with the Salatiga ones)

Our Boxing Day arrival on Gili Trawangan was a slight shock to the system – mostly in a good way! After cities full of cars, trucks and motorbikes, here the only forms of land transport are bikes and horse & carts! Also after a lifetime of freshwater showers, here the only ones available (in our budget) are salt-water!

Seeing dolphins en route here was a treat, although we have very little photo evidence of this encounter as they don’t stay still at all and move incredibly fast. We’ve seen lots of other wildlife here – although mainly under the water doing our advanced SCUBA diving course. We have seen lots of turtles (including one massive one – about 1.5m long), some white-tip reef sharks (well, Alex did, Lizzy managed to miss them!), octopuses, cuttlefish, clown fish (aka Nemo) and loads of other fish & coral. Despite diving at “Manta Point”, we haven’t yet seen manta rays, just their younger cousins sting rays. Visibility is amazing – mostly 20-30m and the water is 28-30 degrees – WOW! We’ve done 4 dives so far and have another 2 planned, including a deep Nitrox dive, on which Lizzy hopes to see the sharks this time.

We’re staying another 4 nights here, until after New Year… although it is tempting to live out here for a few years and work as dive instructors (After doing our rescue & dive master qualificatioons – about 8 weeks’ training and about $750 – not bad for all the dives you can handle and learning a new profession in the mean time!). So if we’re not heard of again, this is probably the best place to look. Internet (and electricity) isn’t great here though, so can’t upload photos… will endeavour to do that somewhere in Java.

After a Christmas morning lie-in and some carols sung in bed (!) to get us in the Christmas spirit, we went out to explore around Ubud. We hired a motorbike (sorry parentals – we know we promised we wouldn’t do that again, but it’s very cheap and the roads aren’t too crazy here!) and buzzed off to see the nearby sights. The countryside here is much more lush than anywhere else we’ve been so far, mainly because it’s Bali’s wet season, so everything is growing – including rice paddy after rice paddy! Rice paddies and terraces do make for beautiful scenery, especially when filled with beautiful bright green rice shoots.

Then it was time for lunch! The day before, we had spotted a restaurant offering Christmas dinner, so we sought this out and gave it a go. We had the traditional turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, but all with a unique twist and accompanied by some new bits like sharon fruit and purple potatoes (we think!). For dessert, we just couldn’t choose, so we had one of everything on the menu – each! 5 puddings later (green tea ice crean, apple & cinamon crumble, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and black sticky rice pudding *) and we were ready to roll back to our hotel for a nap.

We managed to speak to both our families and watch them open a few presents that we’d managed to send them from Vietnam and Amazon – it was really lovely to be able to share a bit of their Christmas

In the evening, we decided we would pamper ourselves with a Royal Javanese Massage – a wonderufl 2-hour indulgence! We had a long oil massage, followed by a salt body scrub which was left to dry out on our skin. Once this had been brushed off, we had another new experience – being covered head to toe in yoghurt! (We assume this was to rehydrate our skin after the salt). Finally we showered off and stepped into a warm bath with a complete layer of fresh flowers floating on the top. We came out feeling very lovely indeed.

What a lovely way to experience Christmas – not as good as being with family, but a strong second

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* -OK, so the 5 desserts were a selection platter and they were all really tiny

After weeks of moving on every few days, we decided a whole 7 nights should be spent on, or near the beach. We chose Koh Chang (translates as “Elephant Island”) in Thailand for this and, after a rather long and tiring journey (including a bus breaking down and missing the last ferry), we arrived at Lonely Beach on the island just before midnight. A couple of nights later, we finally found some accommodation that was clean and cheap enough for us and settle there for the remaining 5 nights. It also came with a pretty nice view of sunset over the sea – for free!

We spent 5 days on the beach, working our way through the books we’re carrying, building our tans and swimming in the sea. The remaining day we went scuba diving and snorkeling. The scuba diving was infinitely better than Phu Quoc where we last dived, both in terms of visibility and interesting things to see (this time the new things we saw were a Lion Fish and a puffer fish – last time it was just nudibranchs which aren’t so amazing). We took the underwater camera snorkelling after our dives…

We have a flight from Bangkok to Bali on Christmas Eve, so we leave Koh Chang on the 23^rd and travel for 10 hours back to Bangkok, ready for our flight the next morning. Koh Chang is a lovely place – here’s some more photos so you can see for yourselves:

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We made a whistle-stop tour of Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. HCMC or Saigon) – a one day trip on foot around as many sights as we could squeeze in. We saw a couple of museums, a palace, a few markets and various other significant landmarks – all thanks to the Lonely Planet’s walking tour that we followed.

However, before all that, the night we arrived 2 interesting things happened. Firstly, Vietnam had won a football match that night against Malaysia in the SEA (South East Asia) Games in Vientiane. This meant that pretty much the whole city was on the streets riding their motorbikes and waving Vietnamese flags – mad & noisy! They’re obviously big football fans here! Secondly, I almost got into a fight with our taxi driver, who, after getting lost, wanted extra money. The exchange ended with him throwing some stuff on the ground and storming off. Not a great start.

However the rest of HCMC was actually really nice – less manic than Hanoi and with more friendly people (from what we experienced anyway). The place we spent most time was Reunification Palace, where we took advantage of one of the free tours, which very much helped in having an appreciation of the history of the palace and also the country. The two are rather intertwined – the North Vietnamese army stormed the palace to relieve the American-supported South Vietnamese president from power (“The American puppet regime” as they like to call it). My favourite quote from that day goes something like this: Southern President “I have been waiting to hand over power since morning”, Northern Commander “You can’t hand over, what you don’t have, but we’ll accept your unconditional surrender.” – CRUNCH!

After a few other stops, we headed, along with a hoard of other backpackers (there must have been at least 20 other people doing the same – just on one day) to the bar at the top of the Sheraton hotel, floor 23. The view was lovely as we watched the sun descend over the city, sipping expensive-but-worth-it cocktails, nibbling the free snacks and giving our tired feet a rest.

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Once Lizzy had recovered, we set out on a three-day tour of Halong Bay on a junk (a Vietnamese boat – hence the title of this entry). First stop was the “Amazing Cave”, which was pretty amazing Views were stunning most of the time from the boat, from the cave entrance and from pretty much anywhere!

Later, we kayaked near one of the 2,000 islands that are dotted around Halong Bay (they’ve only got as far as naming 928 of them apparently!). The best bits were gliding underneath a rock archway into an almost-entirely-enclosed expanse of water – very impressive but no photo would do it justice – and watching the sun begin to set – hopefully this photo gives an idea:

After a quick swim (for me, but not Lizzy), it was time for dinner and the evening entertainment – KARAOKE! Generally, Asians take their karaoke VERY seriously and they don’t care at all how they sound. Our guides belted out lots of “tunes” with absolute sincerity & commitment and required us to follow suit. Lizzy & I ended up being volunteered to sing “Heal the world”, which we only knew the chorus to, but with a couple of drinks inside us, we did our best to pick it up as we went along! Some other westerners put in more committed performances than us with numbers such as “Ice ice baby” and “Back for good”

After a good night’s sleep on the boat and a simple breakfast, we headed to Cat Ba island and to the national park of the same name. After a strenuous and hot 1-hour ascent we reached the top of one of the highest points on the island with a panoramic view. Not satisfied with this, I climbed up the 20-metre rather rickety observation tower to get a better look. Fortunately it didn’t collapse under my weight and I got a few extra photos and feelings of vertigo for my effort.

Once we’d made our way back down and cooled off with an ice cream (which has some kind of seeds in it – rather weird) it was off to our various hotels for lunch. We’d opted for a nicer-than-standard hotel as part of the ongoing celebrations for the start of my 4th decade and were amazed at what the extra money bought us – a 4* resort with 3 pools, several bars, a private beach and stunning views of the sunrise! Also the resort was all but deserted which was rather eerie, but we certainly didn’t have to worry about crowds of karaoke-singing locals keeping us awake at night. (For this part of north Vietnam December is the low season, the opposite is true in the south).

We were disappointed the water slides weren’t open and that we had to negotiate not to have yet another complete seafood platter for our evening meal (there’s only so much of it we can take), but we had a lovely stay, albeit for only 1 night… and the sunrise in the morning was breath-taking:

The third day we sailed back to Halong City and caught the bus back to Hanoi… fortunately in enough time to get to the airport for our flight to Danang, from where we’d go to Hoi An.

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We arrived in Hanoi at the ungodly hour of 4.20am and had to find ways to pass the time until somewhere opened for breakfast (at about 6am in the end). Saw lots of people out exercising, doing individual and group tai chi in the semi-darkness, which was rather surreal.

Tom & Jules were still with us, and after quick showers in our hostel, they took us on a little exploration of Hanoi. The most striking part was walking through the markets where they were selling all kinds of very fresh animals for eating. We saw bags of frogs very much still jumping and sliding over each other. We saw buckets of worms and eels in slithering masses. Then we saw a fish being cut up and skinned whilst still flapping and moving its mouth. Needless to say we all chose a “safe” vegetarian lunch.

Unfortunately the lunch may not have been so “safe” after all – as Lizzy spent the rest of the day emitting the previous few days’ food and I had to have dinner on my own…

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