Autumn Goings On Part 2

February 2014

Chris and I worked. A lot. Nothing else. Snooze.

March - April 2014

So after spending most of February and March at work (I'm not sure Chris came home at all in Feb!) we had re-stocked the bank account (almost!) and was time to start having fun again!

March and April were very busy! In fact I think Chris and I only saw each other for 2 days in March. We both had a lot planned but I'll let Chris tell you all about his trip in another post.

My fun times started about half way through March when I headed over to Sydney to go on a wilderness medicine course. The course was 4 days in the Blue Mountains where we leant about expedition medicine. We had some really great lectures, I met some really interesting people and the final assessment was a 4 hour search and rescue exercise. It was the first time in 8 months that I had seen rain!! The main thing that I leant was that I need to travel more! There are so many amazing places that I hadn't even thought of visiting....I wonder if I can persuade Chris to go trekking in Pakistan for our honeymoon??

Prizes for anyone who can guess what this is!

Indonesia 2014

I arrived back in Perth and headed straight back to work. After my run of 5 shifts at work, I headed back to the airport and flew to Indonesia to meet with some friends from back home. I had arranged to meet Kat and Raman in Denpasar airport where we had booked transport to our hotel. We thought we were very clever arranging flights that land within 30mins of each other from different parts of the world. What we failed to plan for was that we would we arriving in different airports...oops! Once that minor set back was fixed, we finally headed to our hotel in Seminyak, Bali.

Seminyak

We spent the first day looking round Seminyak which is the really touristy part of Bali. It was nice enough but really just a typical touristy beach town. Today was also my birthday (27th!) so we headed out for a nice meal then had a walk on the beach to watch the sunset. We found a really cool place to get some cocktails on the beach front and spent the next few hours catching up. Its always nice when you feel like you've not been apart even though you haven't seen each other for 8 months!!

Cocktails on bean bags on the beach!

The next day we headed inland to Ubud. This is the 'cultural centre' of Bali and we loved it! The shops were cool, the restaurants were delicious and we spent far too much time gossiping in the bars! We had a few days in Ubud so we managed to squeeze in quite a few things. We watched a Balanese traditional dance (bit weird!), had an amazing cooking lesson (ate far too much!) and trekked up Mount Batur, an active volcano. The volcano trek was cool and we had some amazing views from the top. The trek started at 3am so by the time we reached the top we were ready for breakfast...eggs cooked by the volcano!

Coffee plantation visit after out trek! Perfect!

After the trek we headed back to our hotel and treated ourselves to a massage. The less said about that the better! #awkward

Whilst in Ubud we also travelled around to the area to visit some of the local scenery. I remember when I was at high school studying geography and there was a picture in one of my textbooks of a rice paddy in Indonesia. This image has always stayed in my memory because it looked so exotic and unlike anything I have ever seen before. I asked our driver to take me somewhere so I could see these rice paddies. He took us to a place called Jetiluwih. The views were breath-taking! I never imagined I would be seeing the picture from my textbook in real life!

After leaving Ubud we had a day free before flying over to Java. So we headed west to a beach town called Sanur. This was just really nice and relaxing. I introduced Raman and Kat to stand-up paddle boarding. Kat and I had a great time! Raman....well she survived then spent the rest of the evening recovering with cocktails!

 Lake Bratan Water Temple

Finally it was time to leave Bali and head over to Java. We started off in a city called Yogyakarta. This is a typical Asian city full of traffic, street markets and air-conditioned malls. We visited the local attractions such as the palace and water gardens, but the real reason for our trip here ws to visit the Borobudur Temple complex. This is a Buddhist temple built in the 9th century but abandoned soon after. It was only discovered again in 1814. Imagine trekking through the rain forrest then stumbling across a huge ancient monument! Amazing!

After seeing Borobudur and taking almost a million photos, we decided to go see another temple complex, this time a Hindu version. I managed to persuade Raman and Kat to hire some bikes and cycle the 25km round trip. I feel the bike ride was more of a spiritual awakening for us than the temples....afterwards I had persuaded Raman to run a marathon and Kat to take part in a Great Swim. The temples were pretty cool though!

The next day we flew to Surabaya to start one of Raman's famously dodgy tours. The flight was only an hour but I was a little unnerved to find out it was with a blacklisted airline. Fortunately we made it in one piece and met our tour guide, Jason, at the airport. Jason and our driver Tony then drove us 5 hours to God knows where! I should never have been worried about the flight...it was Tony's driving that nearly killed us! I would count the drive with Tony as probably the 2nd most scary journey I have ever been on (my top 5 scary journeys is another story for another time!).

Once we arrived at our hotel (in an area I still can't remember the name of!) we settled into our hotel rooms and had an early night because our trek the next day started at midnight! Midnight arrived and we set off up to the Ijen Crater, another active volcano. The trek up the volcano was very steep and in pitch black darkness. I found myself a little ahead which was pretty silly because Raman had the torch! I eventually decided to stop and wait which turned out to be very sensible because I was right on the edge of the crater!! The guide eventually caught up with us and made us all wear gas-masks. We then climbed down into the actual crater of the volcano. This was a very steep descent right down to where the blue flames of the sulphur were burning! It was amazing to see but even with the gas masks on, breathing was difficult so we took a few pics then headed back up to the ledge. It was only when sun came up that we saw the spectacular view of the mountain we had just climbed. The view definitely made it into my top 5 views of all time (yes I have lots of "top 5" lists!).

We descended the mountain and were picked up by Tony who took us on another long (and terrifying!) journey to Mount Bromo to see yet another volcano. Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad so we didn't get good views of Mount Bromo and besides it couldn't compare to what we had just seen on Ijen! Saw we all headed back to the hotel for a well earned Bintang and an early night.

So at last it was time to head back to the airport  for our flights home. Our rather dodgy tour guide Jason decided to take us for a walk to see a waterfall as we had a few hours to kill before our flights. In hindsight, this was probably not the best idea ever. Both Raman and Kat fell into the water but we were all soaked through by the end of the walk. Time for a soggy journey home!





Indonesia in 15 days was fantastic. We saw some amazing sights and I got to catch up with some amazing friends! So guys...where are we going next year?