Initially we were quite daunted by the prospect of Indonesia – India had been such a trial for us we weren’t looking forward to another third world country. We were horrified to hear that as many as 90% of Indonesians carry some form of parasite – in fact our guidebook […]
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By the time we reached Bali we realised that we would have to depart Indonesia from here, as our visa would expire in the next 7 days and the ferry frequency would leave us ‘visa-less’ in either Flores or en-route to Timor. We had heard that there was a cyclone […]
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Our appetites whetted for volcanoes in Krakatau, we next headed towards the sulphur-spitting Mount Bromo – a ‘must-see’ in Java, and in fact all of Indonesia. The entire Bromo region is like a prehistoric scene – one almost expects to see dinosaurs walking around… It consists of a vast volcanic […]
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Hugging the north coast and then swinging down south into central Java, we arrived in the city of Yogyakarta (or Jogja, as the locals call it). It is a popular tourist destination that is considered to be the very heart of Javanese culture and handcrafts. All classical Javanese arts (batik […]
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For us in Europe when you speak of Indonesia most people think of aromatic coffee, the resort island of Bali, and the loudest ‘bang’ in the history of the mankind – Krakatau. It had been a childhood dream of Nic’s to one day visit world’s most famous volcano – ever […]
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We spent a day in Pekanbaru, deliberating over the difficult dilemma of how to cross Indonesia. The facts were: 1. We had to cover 4000kms2. We had to do a minimum of 6 ferry crossings from island to island to get to Timor (some ferries only running once a week […]
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We caught the highly efficient Singapore ferry from the World Trade Centre, to the Indonesian island of Karimun – a slightly unconventional jumping-off point for Sumatra, but much nicer than the traditional stop-by island of Batam, just off the coast of Singapore. In true Singaporean style our departure at the […]
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Singapore…as all the tourist t-shirts put it: “A fine city”. It is indeed a city of ‘fines’ – one for almost every conceivable public offence. Some quite expected, but some really obscure… There is for example a hefty fine for not flushing a public toilet, for chewing gum (anywhere in […]
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We were on the cusp of leaving Singapore – though some of our admin was still incomplete – when Sedef got in touch with Andrew T., an old boss back in the UK, who now lives in Singapore. It was rather unlikely that we would hear from him since he […]
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We arrived in Singapore a day later than we expected, on the 23rd of March. It had taken us 2 weeks to cover Malaysia, no mean feat considering we covered over 1000kms and a whopping great mountain in the middle. We were tired but happy to know that we were […]
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