Bali for Christmas

Again, I'm late...

Last year (...), we decided to celebrate Christmas in Bali. With all our visitors, it was the easiest place to rent a house and have all sorts of activities. Unfortunately it was also the rainy season...

We had a lovely house in Seminiak where we could reach restaurants, bars and the beach by foot (and by stroller as baby A goes everywhere with us!).

First part of the week was rather poor, weather wise, it rained a lot! Anyway, Parents managed to go to the usual highlights of Bali: Ubud, Tanah lot temple etc

Like a miracle, on Christmas Day when the full family was there (all 8 of us!), the sun turned up and after a lovely baby gulling we spent the afternoon surfing and jumping in the waves!

Here are a few shots of the week visits, including the monkey- earring theft, some beautiful temples and the coffee and tea tasting menu of the plantations with their local bat... (No particular reason for the bat. As far as I know!)

 

 

 

 

Seminyak,Bali

3rd trip to Bali in over 3 years in Singapore, not bad!
And this is a new place we are exploring, one we had carefully avoided the last couple of times: Seminyak and Kuta area. It's well known for hordes of Australian tourists coming to the Indonesian paradise for surfing and partying.

We had rented a beautiful house with its private pool with a few friends and our WE was organised around surfing, drinking and eating! (The eating part is how you tell the French apart from the Aussies ;-)

And here are the best shots:

This month's photo: Ras du sol (From floor level)

The camera nearly took a bath for this month's photo! I made an attempt at taking photos on the beach and I wanted to see the waves coming towards me with surfers in the background.

I'm not sure the result is there yet but it was anyway a wonderful WE in Bali!

And here is where to see more photos from ground level:



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Bali rev 2 and cross over to Kawah Ijen (late, very late)

 

This post is really old, we are definitely talking over a year or may be just a year, I think it was in May 2012!

C and S were visiting us for the second time (that's to put to shame the ones who haven't made it yet to Singapore or SE Asia!;-) and this time we were going to Bali and East Java. (because Bali is the easiest way of accessing east Java)

First, Lovina, northern Bali, a part we hadn't been to in our previous visits to the island. It's famous for being a very volcanic area, the sand is black and the Gunung Batur can be seen from everywhere.

 

We still managed to make it a cultural tour by visiting a few of the local temples and introducing C and S to the concept of 3 people on a motorbike (not sure C is convinced after badly burning her leg on the exhaust...)

The temple was beautiful, a little reminder of Borobudur (if you fancy a walk down memory lane, the article is in the Indonesia section with Yogyakarta and another hindu temple I have forgoten the name of, P... something)

As 3 on a motorbike is not that comfortable (despite what the locals can say), we hired lovely pink little scooters that the boys enjoyed showing off..

Next step was to cross over the narrow channel to Java by ferry to climb the Gunung Kawah Ijen. This volcano is not a big climb (just over 1h), but it's famous for the sulfur. Some guys climb the volcano everyday, go down in the crater, collect huge yellow rocks which weight a ton and then make it back up and down.

 

Obviously, on the day we went, things did not exactly happenend as planned... After an early pick up, our 4*4 starting the climb on a very (very) rough road. an hour or so later when it was still dark, we heard a big noise, the driver stopped and with the light of the useful Nokia checked under the car, he then took one of the boy out to conclude: broken!

Despite 4 engineers and 3 phD (note that there were only 4 of us in that car), I'm not sure anyone was completly sure of what was wrong but anyway it was wrong.

A few words of english later and our driver (and the car) were abandoning us in the middle of nowhere, apparently someone would come and pick us up... mmh

We stopped a few cars before one accepted to take us to the start of the hike, but we finally made it!

(Note that this is not really a trip for pregnant women, thanks C and little M for having survived this one...)

 

So now, here are the photos to show that it was worth all these troubles!

Sulfur comes out of the ground on a liquid form and becomes solid pretty much instantly. It also gives an incredible color to the lake at the bottom of the crater .

The boys made an attempt at carrying the baskets and could barely master standing-up, another incredible job being done there!
On our way down, we met our driver who was waiting for us with another car, we did wonder for a while if he was going to be there...

 

Manado, Sulawesi

(back in October last year...)
It started as a diving trip but obviously, we had to extend it a bit to a trip in a nearby national park.
As the underwater camera had recently died (no panic, it has since been replaced by a cute new Go Pro!), there are no photos from under water...
It was a while ago, but the most memorable thing from diving in Manado was mandarin fish having wild sex (right in front of us!!!!) at dusk. A very unsual dive, departure around 5pm, just a couple of meters under the surface and no swimming, just holding in place (helped by a very long stick!), watching what is happening on a tiny reef below: mandarin fish, urchins laying eggs, beautiful lion fish coming by
but I had to capture some shots of the stunning landscape coming back by boat from the diving place:

On our return to dry land, we were taken to the Tangkoko national park, a quite unknown national park which doesn't seem to see more than 4 visitors a day! We are now on their website as are probably every other tourists who ever came there before!
Tangkoko park is one of the rare place where tarsiers can be observed, there are absolutely tiny little monkeys looking very much like the gremlins! (back to childhood!)
we went for a jungle trip at dusk to observe them when they come out to feed.

The day after, we were back in the jungle to observe a huge family of black macaque, we followed them from the trees they sleep in to the beach where they go to have breakfast and pick lice from each other (their favourite hobby apparently...). It was an incredible experience, they came very close to us, sometimes they even thought we were fighting for the same fruits! An exceptional moment with nature!

Toba express

We had only been to Sumatra once before (See orang utans post), and last time we had spent a night in Medan. We have learnt from our mistake, this WE, our driver picked us up directly at the airport and we drive for 4h to reach Parapat, a town on the shore of Lake Toba. No fun evening in Medan!!! (according to a home made survey accross the expat population of Singapore, Medan is officially the worst city of Asia!)

At 8.30 am on Saturday morning, after a rough night in the car and in a sort of a hotel, we were in the boat crossing to Samosir island.
Now is time for a quick geography lesson. Lake Toba is actually a caldera now filled with fresh water, in the middle of it stands an island which is quite considerable in size.
It's actually the largest volcanic lake in the world.

Crossing the lake to the island is quite a pleasant trip, it barely takes 30min but we are going to the last stop (at least that's what we have understood) and the boat is also being used for delivery so each stop sees dozens of eggs, piles of herbs and various bags of tofu and tomatoes being unloaded.

 

Anyway, it's more like 10am when we make it to our hotel and what we need is a big breakfast, bacon (beef bacon, it's Indonesia!), eggs, pancakes!
After that we are ready to tackle the tour of the island on a motorbike. There was an initial debate between automatic/semi automatic and chrome/glitter, we finally all get on our bikes (4 of us this WE as N and D have joined us)
We have been informed that the tour should take 4 to 5 h (we will find out later that this is a lie! The lonely planet says 9h and we will never know...)
It's indeed quite pretty, it feels really remote, more like the Philippines than Indonesia actually, it's not crowded, there are buffaloes, chicken and kids everywhere.

We stop frequently to see Batak houses with their famous pointy roofs.

There is also an incredible concentration of churches, sometimes even 2 built next to each other.

After a couple of hours driving we realise where we are and conclude that there is no way we will make it around the island in 4h. We still continue our tour and head towards the dry patch on the mountain that we assume (rightly) are the hot springs.

 

Sulfur seems to have killed local vegetation. We have a dip in hot water at a specially made "foreign pool" (meaning ladies and gents in the same bath)
After a swim, we have to go back as it is really obvious that we will never go around the island. Going back the same way seems boring so we decide to cut through the centre. According to our map (given by the hotel), the roads seem ok, they are not even dotted line!
So we start going up the hill, the views are beautiful, enjoy them, they are the last photos we have of that day...

From going up, the road then becomes quite bumpy, luckily D and R are very good pilots so despite N and I being shaken constantly and quite worried we continue. We soon reach the internal lake (that's the story of the lake on the island on the lake on the island;-). It's the end of the day, just before dinner, all families are outside, waving at us and saying hello(and probably thinking stupid foreigners!)
Continuing our way, the road splits in 2, we ask 4 different people (not our first visit to indonesia!) and they all agree on the fact we should go right and that's when the real fun begins ( the rocks until now were just warm up!)
First, it starts raining, then we realise that the road is getting greener and greener, meaning we are in the middle of the forest and we feel really lonely...
It's now quite flat and with the rain, some serious swimming pool are starting to form. R and D are carefully avoiding them (for now...)
D has serious doubts about his jumper colour choice... Isn't white suitable for motor crossing in the jungle?
And that's when the best announcement comes, N and D are short of petrol (or benzen as they call it overthere)...
The only human we meet tells us we are 20km away from the town, I nearly fell off my bike hearing that, but the good news is that we only have 7km left of this nightmare!
The next 7km will be done with D pushing with his feet to get the bike going, free wheel as soon as there is a bit of slope and by the end everyone had put his feet in the water, R and I had visited the ditch once and the white jumper had 1 spot (miraculously!)
Finally the road!!!!!
At the 3rd stop, we even find petrol! We also wash the bikes as we do not think the owner will appreciate our decoration job...
The road is now nice and flat, like a dream and suddently out of nowhere back to rocks! It's like they do the road by sections: 5km done, 5km rocks, 5 done 5 rocks!
The bikes are dirty again by the time we get to the main circular loop around the island. The road is nearly normal but that's when we have our second accident of the day! Nothing major, a bruise, a cut and a burnt! (special note for C: I now have a matching mark to yours on my calf... Why are exhaust pipe so hot????)
By 7pm we are back to the hotel, we are pretty much in one piece, the bikes are pretty much in one piece (the clutch doesn't want to change gear on the way down anymore but R found a way...) and more importantly the white jumper has 1 tiny little brown spot!
The evening is more relaxing, drinks, food and local music.
We only have Sunday morning on the island so we spend it in the lake enjoying the diving platform.

 

PS: you only got the lake/island story correctly if you understood the last island was Sumatra

 

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