We met monkeys pretty often: In Indonesia on Bali several times and on Lombok again. In Malaysia we've seen them several times, too. Especially on the Island Langkawi, but even in Kuala Lumpur we've met some wild living monkeys.
 
You can't believe how difficult it was to choose those few pictures out of hundreds of photographs I took from monkeys over the holidays.

Following, you can see some the creatures we stumbled upon while our trip:

Well not really. We wrote that we had to cancel our trip to Komodo, the island with the biggest of those creatures on earth. We thought that we won't see any of those animals now... But we are lucky! Look who we met on Langkawi:

The first two days we spent mostly relaxing at the beach. We rented a scooter and explored the island a bit, looking for some hidden beaches :)

The third day we booked another scuba dive. The boat (more like a ferry) took off in the very morning and took us to Pulau Payar, something 39 sea miles south of Langkawi.

Unfortunately we had some bad currents, which reduced our sight to 2-3meters. There were many, many fish and extraordinary corrals (the most white glowing corrals we’ve ever seen) – but mostly you were seeing shadow. Some exciting moments happened though: We met a couple of huge Snappers (+2m) which – as you can imagine – creep you out, if you see them so late, that you’re already closer than 2m.

But we did see some special fish from the boat as well. First, we were just getting into the boat from our dive - just when I took out my camera - a big whale appeared just a couple of meters away.  He introduced himself with a loud blow, showed us his full size and disappeared again. Three people on the boat had cams in their hands (2DSLR and 1 video cam) but we were all so shocked, that nobody even tried to take a picture. Wow!

Ah yes and closer to the shore, we’ve seen some cute small "Black Tip Sharks". This time I tried to take a picture but with less than good results:

This island is a nice place to relax, what do you think?

So we arrived at Langkawi and everything was fine. Weather was just perfect, the people very nice and our favorite hostel still had a very nice room available for us.

Wikipedia describes langkawi as followed: "Langkawi, officially known as Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah is an archipelago of 99 islands in the Andaman Sea, some 30 km off the mainland coast of northwestern Malaysia. [...] The name Langkawi is a combination of "Lang" and "Kawi". "Lang" comes from the local native Malay word helang which means eagle and Kawi means "red". In the past, the land was a home to innumerable red-eagles (helang Kawi)."

Well and i got some of them in front of my lens :)

Yes it is!

We arrived at the port of Mersing to take a ferry to Tioman Island and guess what? Ferries are all canceled! Since 2 weeks and at least one more week. Good to know and thanks nobody told us before, when we booked our tickets... Sad that this town has nothing (really!) to offer than this transfer port to Tioman. Now we know, that the whole east coast of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia is hit by really bad Monsoon storms and that basically all ship traffic is canceled till it gets better.

No other choice than looking for good weather places. Well the whole west coast of Malaysia is outside the wet season area but there are no nice beaches or islands. The only one is far, far in the north, directly at the border to Thailand. Pretty much the only beautiful island with good weather is just 22 hours away by bus. No joke... Fortunately there is Airasia, that offers a Flight from KL to this island for just 30€. So back into the bus - once again - and “only” 6 more hours of bus driving.

Looking forward to the sun on the island.

Chinese New Year is one day after we return home. More exactly, in the evening/night of our departure date. In the night from the 25th to the 26^th, the Chinese have one of their biggest parties of the year and we miss it just by a few hours.

What we don't miss is that they prepare theirs homes, streets and quarters since weeks to have everything done for that night. Decoration is aaaall over (especially in china town of each city) and people are exercising special dances (especially for the paper dragons, that move over the roads this night).

China Town in Malacca glows all in red and looks nearly finished:

KL was great, but after all it is an Asian capital city and no place to stay so long... But still we liked KL best of all Asian "big cities" we've already visited. Unfortunately we were told, it's not a good time to visit the Cameron Highlands and Taman Negara because of bad weather. I was looking forward to this jungle adventure, but without proper equipment we decided to skip it. So the next destination is Tioman Island.

On the way to Tioman we made one stopover in Malacca, a small town which was one of the most important Asian ports in the times, ships were only driven by sails :) then occupied by three colonial powers (Dutch, Portuguese and English) and overrun by the Japanese in the Second Word War... Well, this town can tell some stories :)

I let the pictures tell those stories:

We drove by the Bird Park just by accident. The visit was more then spontanous and even more we were surprised. Impressive how many birds they have. This huge outdoor area which has a big net all over is actually a huge bird cage and you are walking right inside of it :)

We have really many pictures from this park :)

The Petronas Towers are not the biggest towers in the world any more, but they are still huuuuge and impressive! See yourself:

We met this local guy while exploring Yogyakarta and walked quite a while the same direction together with him. He told some funny stories and gave us lots of good information. But the best thing he did was to invite us to visit the famous puppet makers of sultans family where he is just going to order one of those puppets for his family.

What a great experience! The backyard of the Sultans Palace (the whole district) is called “Kitchen of the Sultans Palace”. An area where the employees of the sultan are working. That includes the family business we were just invited to see. A family which makes special puppets since generations.

The guy in the picture did speak English well enough to explain all the details, backgrounds and history necessary to understand the meaning of them. Every color, every sign and form has a special and deep meaning... Full of religion, beliefs and myth.

Borobudur is the biggest Buddhist Temple in Indonesia and one of the biggest in the world. After a nice and sunny day exploring Yogyakarta we were heading there to experience this incredible Temple in the warm setting of a sunset.

See yourself the result:

After nearly a week of cold, saltwater only showers, we were so happy about our first fresh water shower :-) Did we mention, that the beautiful Gili Islands don't have fresh water?

We left the rainy Lombok and arrived in Surabaya on Java in the evening. We found the local bus terminal and managed to find the right night-bus to Yogyakarta. Though it was an exiting quest because English is rare here due to the lack of tourists.

Now the fun part:

in the middle of the night, around 2:30am we - sleeping in the bus like babies – were pulled out of our beautiful dreams as rude as it could be. Why? Because we have to EAT! No joke! In the ticket (around 4 €/Person) there was a meal included. Thankfully we declined and wanted to continue sleeping but no... We actually had to leave the bus. The meal is not optional. Still thinking we are in kind of a bad dream we left the bus, sitting down and got some very spicy Malay meals which we could not identify :)

Fun part number 2:

We arrived “near” Yogyakarte at around 4:30am – still dark as night. In the middle of nowhere, around 20 minutes by car away from our final destination. This was the closest the bus got on its route, so they dropped us at the crossroad where we could continue our trip :)

Lucky us, not one minute after the bus left, a taxi drove by and picked us up, taking us to a “homestay” where everybody slept already and we were the rude ones this time.

We definitely love to travel – and those days are the best to get closer to the people, the culture and the local habits. And they are the ones you remember later :)

While waiting for our plane we went back in the city to find an internetcafe. In the two hours we were there it rained sooo hard, that even the prepared indonesian rain drainage system was over capacity. Just so everybody understands what a "prepared drainage system" is: they have a lot of rain all the time here, so their roads have under the sidewalk rainwater tunnels of about 1m x 1m size or bigger on both sides. Big enough to transport away a lot of water... in theory made specially for monsun rain...

But this time, in just two hours, it rained sooo crazy much, that the roads where flooded by 30cm or more, big trees where broken and lying on the roads, power outages in the city, flights delayed and so on.

Mother nature is really powerfull! Impressive!

And as sudden the rain beginns, it stops. And just 2 hours delayed we got on our plane to Java.

Two days later everything is back to normal :)

We canceled the the boat trip successfully, got our deposit back, took a horse-drawn carriage to the next crossroads, waited successfully for the next "public bus" and went straight back where we came from, to the west side of the island. There is the capital of the island, some internet cafes and -important- an airport :)

12am and after 5 hours we arrived in the airport. The whole trip, including the carriage, the bus and the final taxi to the airport were 3€ per person...

Since we droped the far eastern part of Indonesia (Komodo and Flores) we decided to make a stopover in Western Indonesia and visiting the biggest Buddhist Temple Borobudur near Yogiyagarta (Java) before finally flying to Malaysia.

This is going to be a long article...because it's a looong story. Till now everything went pretty well. Some small things here and there but nothing big or ugly. We always trusted our different source like books, guides, Internet, chat with people while traveling or just our feeling. It never went wrong. Till now.

Today it all strated with a small boat which took us from Gili Meno to Lombok. The waves were big, the boat small and the Ingo was as expected green in the face...

Finally arrived, we met our driver, a guy which was organized by the owner of the last hut we lived. He didn't speak a word English. He should bring us to the other side of the island, to a nice dive resort. It should consist of a few nice huts at the beach and it should be run by a German couple which both are dive masters. Four hours of driving later and after asking some locals we found out, the place is closed since three years. We are in the middle of nowhere, not exactly a touristy place. The only place to sleep is a “homestay” with a really strange looking guy. No way!

OK, we need internet, asking the driver to bring us to an internet place. He and the local: “not possible here, no Internet here!” next Internet-Cafe is 1 hour away by car. Not an option! We have to improvise: let's skip this island and move to Sumbawa, the next big island to the east. Problem, we never planed on staying there, just to move through it on our way to Komodo. So we don't have proper information nor a proper guide or map. We were told, the more to the east we go, the less infrastructure exists and from now on till Flores (even after Komodo) is no internet at all... great! So no research, no booking or our flights back from Flores to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur... no nothing...

more improvising: there is a domestic travel company which is specialized in backpacker tourism: Perama. They make many bus connections, even boat connections between to typical destinations. We traveled with them already several times and so we thought this might be our last chance. Finding their office wasn't easy but we did it. Their solutions sounded cool: 5 days/4nights boat round trip to 6 Islands including Komodo, Sumbawa, Rinca, Flores and two other small ones. It was expensive but despite our limited choices we agreed for that trip.

I agreed to a 5 days trip on a boat even though I had very bad experience this morning... I was really looking forward to it, already planing if my sea sickness pills are enough...

The boat leaves the next day at 2pm and they agreed that we can stay on the boat from today including a cabin for tonight. Cool! The crew is nice and we had a nice welcome. Lying on deck, eating fruits, enjoying the sunset and writing the blog...everything cool. Then one of the crew members came to us for a little chat. He introduced himself, that he is usually not part of this crew but he jumps in because one member of this crew doesn't want to go out on the sea because it is too wild. WOW! When a sailor prefers to stay home... we digged deeper:

• In the wet season the sea is usually very rough here, its windy and many storms.

• The coast guard was shutting down all trips since 01.01. because of too bad weather.

• “We are making the trip anyway because the boss say so.” (state)

• “no money no cigarettes”

• There are only 4 persons who booked this trip including us (perhaps everybody else is clever enough not to do this?)

It's now 9pm, I am sitting on deck, we have booked the trip and paid a deposit. We don't know if we can cancel the trip and/or if we get our deposit back. But we both know for sure, we are not doing this trip...

...to be continued

finally our first dive on Gili Air. We found a nice Padi Dive Center and booked a so called “Tune-Up-Dive”. We didn't dive since 4 years so we wanted to refresh our diving knowledge before jumping into the open water...

Tony, half British half from Trinidad was our dive master and did a really good job. We had a lot of fun with him in the pool practicing our skills and going through the theory. With a very good and secure feeling, we finally did our first dive in the Indonesian Sea. The water at Air Reef was 29°C at the deepest point and the sight was - because of the wet season - “only” around 12-15m (which is pretty good). Compared to the 40+m sight in Thailand this was a lot worse, but 15m is still a lot and enough to see many many beautiful creatures underwater.

We've seen 2 (in words TWO!!!) huuuge sea turtles, a 1,5m gigantic sea-worm, cube-fish, 2 morays, several scorpion fish and hundrets or thousands other fish and coral species... amazing!!

So sad we don't have an underwater camera to share those incredible moments.

The next big island east of Bali is Lombok. North-West of this island are three little “dream-islands” called: Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan. They all don't have cars or any other transport vehicle with a machine. The only transport there is by “cedimo” something like horse taxis :) Not even fresh water is available for shower etc. But for a few days we accept those little inconveniences and move to Gili Air. Two days later we took a boat to the smallest of the three: Gili Meno and stayed for 2 nights there. Enjoy the pictures: (coming reeeeally soon :-)

Exploring Bali by bike sounded interesting. But the advertisement made us nearly back off. They were writing about a “Downhill Tour” and “down the volcano”. Caro and I had a very clear picture of “downhill” in mind: crazy steep trials, full suspension bike, crazy guys etc...

Good that we asked... it was not that kind of “downhill”. The trial is just mostly going “down the hill”, starting at the top of the mountain and then going down nearly 80km on very quiet roads, passing some small villages and lots and lots of plantations.

Well it was an awesome trip. Again we were so lucky! We were the only two for that day and so the guide was just for the two of us :) He showed us how the  pepper-, vanilla-, pineapple-, black rice-, coffee- and peanut-plant, the mahogany-, teak- and cinnamon trees and many many others look like, how they grow best and when you can harvest them.

And yes it was exhausting :) At least for our arms, which had to break all the time, hour for hour... hehe. Don't think we were going up more then some hundred meters.

let the pictures speak for themselves:

We met Adi not far from our bungalow. We talked about the nice places in the area. After some chat we found out, that most of these are more or less on the way to our next destination Ubud. He offered to drive us and to show us around... and we accepted the fair offer.

The trip was really nice with some spectacular stops in between. We asked Adi many, many questions about the Hinduism, the ceremonies, the art of living in Bali and so on. Very interesting.

Our first stop was an amazing Buddhist Temple with a great view all over the north of Bali. Adi explained the design of the temple with all the symbols and figures – at least as far as he could explain and remember. Second stop:  Hot springs. Third stop: crazy monkeys. And finally: the Twin Lakes.

Never before we had such a nice and friendly driver with such incredible tourist guide skills. Thanks Adi :)

A very quiet and lazy day. The only thing we´ve done is to move to a better place – this time with swimming pool ;) We chilled, had a great dinner and started drinking. We were at the beach at midnight and participated an original Balinese New Years Party. With now tourists in our region we were lucky and  unlucky the same time. On the one hand it was authentic and real but on the other hand, they didn't make so much party this night. All the Balinese people were on their motorbikes at 00:15 am on their way home. Not that funny as we imagined, but nevertheless: we´re looking forward to 2009!

It turned out, that we got our room only because the people who booked it didn't show up yet and that most hotels were actually really booked out since over 2 months ago. But it also turned out that when everybody was saying “Bali is booked out” they actually meant the city of Kuta and 10km around. We never planned on staying in the main tourist place of the island so  there was plenty of space for the two of us on this island :)

So why “Transport”?

Because this is the word you here from every second guy asking you, if you need “Transport?” We did but we decided to take the public bus instead of a random guy ;) And then again, this day was dedicated to “Transport” because the traffic on the island collapsed under the mass of incoming tourists for New Year. 6 hours later (instead of 3h) we arrived in Lovina, at the North coast of Bali.

The flight to Bali was full of insights. We met a local guy which flooded us with information about Bali. GREAT! Well... almost... until he asked, where we stay and we told him, we are going to find out... You should have seen his shocked face – speechless – before he began convincing us for at least 10 minutes, that Bali is completely booked out mostly from domestic tourists, and that even he has to stay with a friend, because he couldn't get anything. And he looked for a bed 6 weeks ago... FUCK, this guy was really good in turning our mood to absolute zero. Interesting side note: we are going to arrive in Bali at past midnight :(

Kind of desperate and with the worst expectations, seeing ourselves sleeping at the beach, we approached the tourist information which just backed up this guy of the plane: “Everything booked out!” ... “well, everything but some of the expensive 5star hotels”. So now we can choose between beach or a hotel way beyond our budget.

Call us insane or call us optimistic, but we gave a shit to all those negative people. We took a taxi to Kuta - the closest city from the airport which is famous as the main tourist center of the island – and lucky us, found an hotel in our budget at second(!!) try. Just for one night though, but enough to figure out something else the next day.

After changing our hostel for different reasons (smallest room ever, expensive after all) we visited the Botanical Garden with its Orchid Park located within. It became some sort of tradition, that we visit the botanical gardens in all the places we visit, so we've seen quite a lot of them already. Despite our preference for tropical vegetation, this botanical garden is one of the most amazing of its kind. Impressively huge, impressively well maintained, impressively well visited and impressive how many tropical plants they show there. Not only that Singapore made this amazing botanical garden without entrance fee but on top they are so relaxed in the way people can use this park. Many people and families just hang out in the park and lie on the many grass areas all over. Singapore just gained sooo many points...

Day three and still not recovered from the jetlag. Therefore change in plans: No more sightseeing in Singapore but relaxing at a beautiful beach. A quick weather check for Malaysia – our next destination in our plan – revealed worst monsoon conditions, 6 days of only rain. Well not exactly what we're looking for. This made our decision actually obsolete, because this meant we are going directly to Indonesia as next step. We really liked the idea of New Year on the beautiful island of Bali.   

As our first hostel – the G4station – happened to be located close to Little India, we decided to explore this area first and hunt down some delicious Indian food, too.

How many times did we eat in Indian restaurants back home in Germany? Way too often to count and still there was such a big difference in the food and especially in the way they eat their meals. We've seen it before but never tried it ourselves: eating a full diner including salad with our hands – correcting: with one hand. For those who – like us – didn't know about the background of this tradition: you eat your meal from a banana leaf instead of a plate and instead of fork and knife you use your right hand and nothing else. There is a big difference which hand is used for which task. Left hand for dirty tasks, right hand for clean, nice things. Therefore your left hand is practically always under the table while eating, never touching the food directly. In the beginning it was a very strange feeling, but in the end it was an exciting experience.

Our first destination is one of the primary cultural and economic hubs in South East Asia: Singapore. After reading a lot about this special country and town, our expectations were huge: extreme clean city, mixed cultures and religions, thriving economy, very friendly people, best Asian food, no language barrier and much more...

Most of our expectations seem to be fulfilled right away. People here are so nice and friendly, always trying to help even if not really necessary. When it comes to conversation you can communicate most of the time very well in English here. The city made a very good first impression. Let's wait a little longer before judging more :)

Viele unserer Freunde und Bekannte sprechen kein Deutsch aber praktisch alle sprechen Englisch. Deswegen werden wir den Blog ab jetzt auf Englisch schreiben.

Many of our friends don't speak German but they do speak English. For that reason we decided to write this blog in English from now on.

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