Jakarta & Bandung 3/2/12 - 6/2/12

Singapore was a great introduction to Asia for us, but we were well aware that it was quite heavily influenced by the West and that the rest of Asia might be a little more traditional! It was with this in mind that we flew to Indonesia.

Indonesia consists of two large islands and several smaller islands. The island which we flew into was called Java and home of the capital, Jakarta. We flew with Air Asia and our 2.5 hour flight cost less than 40 pounds each!

We landed into Jakarta in the early evening and set about trying to work out the best way to get to our hotel. We had pre-booked a hotel before we arrived as we guessed that Jakarta wasn't going to be the type of city which you could just roll on up to - and we were right!

I had the name of the hotel and the address written on a piece of paper and started asking people which bus we should get. But all I got was offers of a taxi. Knowing that it was going to be a lengthy journey, we continued looking for the bus as it was bound to be a lot cheaper. I handed the piece of paper to various men in uniforms who were sat around the airport not doing a lot (a familiar sight we've found!). They in turn would pass the piece of paper onto another man in unifrom. Then would follow a period of conversation and arm waving between the officials, before the familiar shrug of the shoulders and the return of the piece of paper to me. All the while, individual taxi drivers would walk up to us and offer a taxi with the sales pitch, 'I give you good price'. It soon became apparent that the only way to get to this hotel was going to be a taxi. Whether this was a combined team effort by the entire airport to coerce us into a taxi, I don't know, but it was about 100 degrees, I was getting 'agitated' and we were just glad to be on the move!

The taxi journey was a surreal experience and worthy of the time and effort I'm about to spend tryping up about it...so here it goes! We made a slow start, pulling over several times on the dual carriageway leading away from the airport, the taxi driver still didn't have a clue where this hotel was! We think he'd finally twig and then 50 yards down the road we'd jerk to a stop, his light would come on and he'd take yet another look at my piece of paper. Then he'd nod his head and we'd pull back into the traffic without so much of an indicator or even a glance into his mirrors.

The traffic was heavy as it was a Friday night and the motorways leading into Jakarta were at near gridlock. It was raining heavily, but that didn't stop our alarmingly rapid progress! In and out of cars we weaved, as did every other car on the road. Lanes didn't appear to count for anything and god help you if you were driving a moped. Even when all three lanes were at a complete stand still, cars, including ours, would veer onto the hard shoulder to make a break for it with the hope that they could re-enter further up the road.

Drivers in Jakarta drive on the principle that providing you're beeping your horn, you can get away with anything. It's like watching bumper cars but without anyone actually bumping into each other, I can't work out whether they're actually quite skilled drivers or just really, really lucky. But Jenna and I were loving every minute, we felt invicible in the back of this taxi being driven by someone who we can only guess thought he was auditioning for the role of Stig on Top Gear. The 90 minute journey was incredible. We saw so much of the real Jakarta as we made our way through countless backstreets and along roads which I'm sure weren't even roads. We passed a cyclist by inches who had no shirt on and a plastic carrier bag on his head, I'm still unsure whether it was a make shift helmet or umbrella. We saw carts being pulled by horses on roads with three lanes of fast moving traffic, people walking in the middle of the road, mopeds with entire families hanging from every available corner - we just sat back in amazement!

The hotel was perfect and just what was needed to escape the chaos from outside. They even upgraded us from the studio we'd booked to a suite! The view of the Jakarta skyline at night from our balcony was incredible. We'd only seen the city from the window of the taxi, but from the height of our hotel room we could see the scale of the city. Jakarta city centre has a population of over 9 million people and is the 13th largest city in the world - and it certaintly looked it.

It was getting late so we asked the hotel reception where we could get some dinner. We were pointed in the direction of a nearby shopping centre which was a 10 minute walk. This walk was another experience! We'd found the whole way in which Jakarta and it's people move hiliarious from the comfort of our taxi - but now we were the pedestrians! There were no pavements and deep drain trenches run along the very edges of the road so it took a few minutes to work out exactly where to position ourselves!

That night at about 4am we were woken by the sound of prayers from a nearby mosque. Indonesia is strongly Islamic and the sound of tannoys calling Muslims to prayer is a common sound. The next evening as the sun was setting over Jakarta, I stood outside on the balcony for a few minutes and looked across the city as the sound of several nearby mosques reverberated around us, it was the most humbling moment of our trip so far.

The following day we made our way to Jakarta's most 'famous' land mark, 'The Monument'. We travelled there by taxi as it was cheap enough to do so. This was our first sight of Jakarta in daylight and it was just as chaotic. It was at this point that it suddenly dawned on us that there were no other Westeners. We were at the city's main tourist attraction and there were no other white faces! It was a really strange feeling and something we hadn't thought about. I started wondering whether I'd misjudged Indonesia and if it was somewhere we should really be backpacking.

It's funny how you react in situations like this, and my immediate reaction was to put my guard up! A couple of school kids no older than 14 shyly walked up to us and asked if they could take a photo of us. My first reaction was 'what are they up to?'. Why on earth would they want a photo of us? After a few minutes of chatting to them we realised that they just wanted to practice their English and Western faces were a bit of a rarity! In actual fact that they were really friendly kids - boy did I feel guilty! As we made our way towards the Monument, more and more children came up to us asking to have a photo taken with us! Jenna was in her element as she worked the various cameras.

We saw one of the world's largest mosques which can house an amazing 250,000 people at a time. There wasn't really a great deal to see or do in Jakarta so we made plans to move on to the next sizeable town, Bandung. Jakarta was such an eye opener and an amazing city, but not somewhere we would probably rush back to! It was a very poor and dirty city with very few glimpses of wealth, or even what we'd class as a 'normal' UK standard.

The following day we caught a train to Bandung. The journey took nearly 8 hours but the train was comfortable, if not quite National Rail standard! The carriage doors are left open to help ventilation, so one wrong move could result on you falling out of the train and onto the tracks! We passed some amazing countryside and also plenty of very poor looking communities. The train tracks take you right through areas that you would never travel by foot, so we saw all sorts.

Bandung itself was a dump and we stayed one night in a very grotty hotel. We checked the train timetable the next day and got out of there straight away and headed towards the more 'touristy' East Java!

Singapore 31/01/12 - 03/02/12

Our first taste of Asia was Singapore, a city and a country sort of all rolled into one since it gained independence from the UK. We flew from Cairns via Darwin and arrived a couple of hours later than planned due to stormy weather over Darwin.


It was approaching midnight by the time we landed, but we gained an appreciation of the scale of the place as we were coming into land. Singapore is only a small island but somehow has a population of over 5 million. We headed straight to our hotel which was a bit of a distance from the airport but the local underground network was easy enough to use as everything was in English. English seemed to be spoken as a 1st language by many of the people and that was reflected in the signage etc - perfect! Our first impressions of the city were good, looking back I suppose it was the calm before the storm as it's fair to say not all of Asia is as calm as Singapore.

We were due to fly out to Java in Indonesia a few days later so we only really had two full days to explore Singapore. We got up early the next day and made our way towards the business centre to take a look at some of the sky scrapers, including an amazing building which appeared to have a boat spanning across the roof of three large tower blocks (you can just make it out in the 1st photo) That was after a quick breakfast of some sort of pineapple pastry which tasted good and cost about 40p. We then walked to the Asian Civilisation Museum which was recommended by our travel book. The museum showed us a bit about Singapore's history and how the Indian, Chinese and Arabic populations make up the country. We then continued walking a bit further into the city through some nice areas called Boat Quay and Clarke Quay where there were lots of cafes, restaurants, bars etc.


We felt quite at ease in Singapore and the people seemed friendly. One monk (well someone dressed similar to a monk) was even good enough to come up to me and offer me a blessing and gave me a small piece of card with some religios text on it. It was then that he asked for a donation of something like 20 pounds for this service, needless to say I gave the monk his card back and I imagine he retracted my blessing!

We ate well in Singapore and cheaply too. We visited a large open air food market for lunch. There were plenty of Western looking office workers tucking into food there so we felt it was safe enough for our so far un-tested stomachs! I chose an Indian stall and ended up with a large platter of all sorts for about 2 pounds (by the way we write pounds as the keyboards here don't have the right symbol in case people hadn't figured!). That evening we went for dinner in Chinatown and found a street with loads of different food stalls. We picked the one with the biggest queue, probably the safest bet, and had a plate of vegetable noodles cooked up in front of us for next to nothing. The chef only had one wok on the go but seemed to work her way through the orders in no time - you wouldn't want to get in her way anyway!

The following day we caught a train out of the city to Changi Prison. The prison is used as a Woman's prison today I think. We wanted to visit the prison as we'd read that it was used as a prisoner of war camp during the 2nd world war, housing mainly British prisoners. It was interesting to learn how Japan invaded Singapore and how the country changed during the occupation. While we were there we met a retired couple from Kent who kindly bought us lunch in the museum restaurant. Their sons had done a bit of travelling a few years back so I think they were interested to hear what we'd been up to!

Once back in the centre, we visited the Arab Quarter and chilled out on a street corner with some Turkish tea and watched Singapore go by. We then walked to Little India to find somewhere to try some Indian food.


We took a photo of this sign on the outside of a government buidling near our hotel as it made us laugh. We then carried on walking a few meters and saw another sign which said 'Strictly no photos'. We didn't hang around after that in case the first sign came to life! The Singaporian police used to be well known for not messing about apparently!

Mission Beach and Cairns 26/01/12-31/01/12

Hello everyone!!

So, our last two destinations in Australia were Mission Beach and Cairns before we flew to Singapore. After the hectic week or so we had had visiting Fraser Island and Whitsundays we wanted to chill out an relax a bit so we headed for Mission beach.

We stayed at Absolute Backpackers and it is definitely one of the nicest hostels we have stayed in. The rooms were really clean and there was a swimming pool which was a bonus. We had a relaxing few days which included a mini beach and rain forest walk where I was told I would see loads of turtles, but did I? No!! I think they just don't want to be seen by me!!We also had a resident frog outside our room which would appear at night and freak me out because I thought he was going to jump on me when I went to the toilet. Needless to say he didn't though! Another bonus to the hostel was that they did a free BBQ on the Saturday night which was nice as it meant we got speaking to quite a few people and free food when you are a backpacker is always a good thing. One of the days we went for a walk along the 15k beach and saw a baby shark washed up on the shore and also a lifeguard had caught a box jelly fish (one of the most poisonous jellyfish in the world) and he let me touch it, obviously not his tentacles!, so this was quite cool! We were  also told by the hostel where we could see wild wallabies nearby, so we went on the hunt and managed to find some!

Our last stop in Australia was Cairns and after we had enjoyed the snorkeling on Whitsundays so much we could hardly come here and not snorkel on the great barrier reef! We went with a boat called Passion and there was probably about another 50 people on the boat with us but you can't really find a smaller boat to take you there as so many people visit the reef it is not cost effective for the tour companies! We chose to pay a little more for our trip and go to some of areas of the reef that were less visited as the coral is supposedly less damaged and you are likely to see more fish! We were also going to one of the parts of the reef that you are most likely to see a turtle and I was sure that the Great Barrier Reef was not going to let me down!

Once again we had to slip into some lovely stinger suits and this time to make it worse they were bright blue so you look like a smurf!! The first area we went to was known as Paradise Reef and to be honest when we arrived there, it did live up to the name. The water looked so inviting, even if you are literally in the middle of the ocean, a fact that James was well aware of! I'm still sure he thought he was going to be eaten by a shark!

We had to get a smaller boat to take us out to the island and then from the island you could get in the water. I think James was relieved that there was a bit of land there which meant if there was a shark in the water he could quickly jump out!! He kept saying that as long as there was other people in the water it was okay because it meant that the shark had plenty of people to chose from! It was literally like a postcard setting, white sandy beach island and crystal clear water. Underwater was even more amazing with loads of fish and great colourful coral. It sounds really naff but it really is like being in another world and if you have never snorkeled before then give it a go if you can!  Paradise Reef was the place where I was almost guaranteed to see a turtle but yep you have guessed it, not today! I couldn't believe it, I was gutted!

Our next destination after lunch was literally in the middle of the ocean with no land to be seen for miles! Again we saw some great fish and coral and this was also really good because you could see the ledge where the reef ended and it just disappears into darkness. That was a bit weird and eerie actually but I still managed to swim over the ledge (only a bit though). The best bit about this snorkel was that I swan with a turtle. I had finally found one!! They are so graceful in the water and I was mesmerized by it! I must have followed it for about 20 minutes! That definitely made my day and because of the turtle I would have to say that I preferred the snorkeling at the Barrier Reef to the Whitsundays although they were both incredible and one of the best things we have both done so far! When we had got back out of the water and were on the boat I also saw another turtle come up for air so now I was just being spoilt!

On the boat on the way back James and I tried crocodile meat for the first time. One of the crew offered it to us but we thought it was just chicken and he was winding us up. Turns out it was crocodile though as we saw the packet afterwards, we only tried a little, but don't tell Steve Irwin! It doesn't really taste of much and I don't think they should be killed for their meat so I won't be eating it again!

Our last night in Australia was a good one and we spent it with some of the lovely people we had met over the last couple of weeks! We really enjoyed our time in Australia, we did some great things and met some great people. If I ever go there again I would like to head a little further inland to see some of what the rest of Australia has to offer. The only slightly negative thing I would say about Australia at the moment is that it is just soo expensive, especially for a traveler!

Airlie Beach & Whitsundays 20/1/12-26/1/12

The next destination for us was Airlie Beach - home of the famous Whitsundays. We were dreading the 16

hour overnight coach which would take us up the coast, but thankfully Amanda and Laurence the 'honeymoon' couple from our Fraser Island tour offered us a couple of seats in their car. This reduced the journey by 6 hours and gave us the chance to stop off when we wanted etc so we were grateful for the offer.

We arrived into Airlie Beach late in the evening and managed to get ourselves checked into a Nomads hostel. We were a bit dubious about this as we'd stayed in a couple of rubbish Nomads previously, but this hostel was great. Loads of large bungalow type buildings spread out around a pool. We started off in New Zealand staying in private rooms and have gradually worked our way to staying in larger dorms - I think the largest we stayed in was a 10 bed dorm, which to be honest hasn't produced any horror stories as we probably feared!

The following day we enjoyed the weather by the pool and spent the evening with a small group from Fraser Island cooking a BBQ at one of the various free outdoor BBQ's by the sea front. We went for a couple of drinks at Magnums, the largest club there. Two of the girls we were with got involved with the jelly wrestling while being egged on by quite a big crowd. One of the girls lost in the final which would have won her a couple hundred pounds.

The second day the same group of us drove out to a waterfall that had been recommended. It was an amazing site and something we wouldn't have been able to see if we hadn't been with people who had a car. Airlie Beach was actually a really good place, the only downside was that you were not allowed in the sea due to jellyfish. It was back down to Magnums that night, this time for the slightly more adventurous wet t-shirt competition. Jenna once again chose to sit this one out!

All of the boat trips to the Whitsundays start off from Airlie Beach. The Whitsundays are a number of 'continental islands' just off the East coast of Australia - they really are special. Think white sand and turquoise water.We booked ourselves on a 3day/2 night trip as part of our Fraser Island package. The trip isn't cheap though and probably the most expensive thing we'd be doing on our travels. The night before the trip we changed hostels as we had already pre booked and got roped into doing the hostel quiz. The quiz involved only 3 teams and a total of 7 people - hardly anything to get excited about. Particularly as we came last.

We boarded our boat at 2pm on the 1st day of our trip. The boat was called New Horizon and was about 30 foot long with 30 people on board. The boat was easily big enough for all of us, with a large outdoor deck that everyone just sat out on and beds below deck. The 3 crew on board were really good and we were fortunate that the 30 others were a good laugh.

 By the time we'd sailed out of the harbour and away from land towards the islands it was late afternoon, so we anchored up for the night by Hook Island. They set up the 'plank' and we took it in turns jumping off into the sea. We had to wear stinger suits whenever we entered the water due to it being jellyfish season and as you can imagine Jenna was delighted by this! To be fair I don't really think any one can pull off an all in one tight Lycra looking suit so she was just being paranoid! The current took you several meters in seconds, so it was a case of jump in and then climb straight back out. We had a really good dinner and then just spent the evening sitting under the stars chatting to the other 30 on board. Everyone took their own drinks on board so that was easy and cheap enough.

The next morning we were up and about by 6.30am and we sailed to the famous Whitehaven beach. We were fortunate with the weather as we arrived in glorious sunshine and this does make the beach and water look that little bit more amazing. We were taken to shore by a small speedboat and had a couple of hours to ourselves on the beach. We swam in the water, once again in our stinger suits, and saw a couple of decent sized stingray and several lemon sharks which were about 2 foot long. We'd been told beforehand that these sharks were harmless, otherwise I would have been straight out of the water! Once I knew they were harmless I wanted to get up close to them but they would swim off if you got too close.

We then sailed on to Maureen Cove to have out first go at snorkelling. I was a bit apprehensive as the previous night someone thought they had seen a shark by the side of the boat, but we just had to get on with it! The snorkelling was incredible. The coral we swam over was so spectacular and the tropical fish we saw were like nothing we had ever seen before. Every colour, pattern and shape you could ever imagine - the only thing missing was a David Attenborough commentary! We were in the water over two hours but both of us could have stayed there for longer. Somebody said they saw a turtle, which Jenna was extremely jealous of. From this point onwards all she wanted was to see a turtle and she pretty much had the whole boat on look out, including the skipper who would shout 'Turtle, Turtle' over the side of the boat!

We had a good evening with the rest of the group and then we were up bright and early again for our final snorkel. This time however it was tipping it down! The snorkeling was still good although I think the visibility wasn't as great due to the rain. We saw some amazing fish again, including a huge flat fish with massive rubber looking lips called Elvis who apparently is there everyday. He was a really tame fish and even let Jenna touch him. He was huge, probably about 4 foot long and 2 foot in height. Type into Google, 'Elvis Whitsundays' and you'll see loads of photos of him! Unfortunately Jenna didn't see a turtle though.

We headed back to Airlie beach for lunchtime. It was an amazing trip and I definitely preferred it to Fraser Island, I think this probably had something to do with the weather though. We met up with a few of the group in the evening as they were doing a cheap pizza deal in one of the bars for us. A good few days!

Rainbow Beach, Hervey Bay and Fraser Island 16/01/2012-19/01/2012

Sorry it has been so long again, believe me when I say we have tried to write this numerous times but Indonesia doesn't exactly have the faste internet connection and this makes writing a blog literally impossible!

So, after Noosa Heads we went to Rainbow Beach for a couple of nights. More for the name to be honest as it sounds like a pretty cool place, doesn't it? However,  it is not really quite exciting as it sounds!! We did have a nice walk along the black and gold beach though with the 'colourful' cliff edges as the back drop. We also walked over some big sand dunes which were pretty cool and saw lots of weird shaped black rocks and jelly fish. We had a quiet few days here as James wasn't feeling too great and we knew the next few days were going to be a bit manic on Fraser and the Whitsunday islands.

The thing that stands out for me here though was that one night we went out for a really nice cheap pizza in a local restaurant and I could not eat all mine so I took it back to the hostel with me. I came downstairs the next day with a big smile on my face ready to tuck into my nice, delicious pizza to find out some little git had stolen it. GET YOUR OWN PIZZA YOU THIEF!!! I nearly reported it to the Police as theft I was that annoyed but thought that might be taking it a little too far!

So the next place we visited was Hervey Bay ready for our Fraser Island trip. Now, possibly the funniest moment of the trip so far happened here and it involved James and a flipflop or shall we say 'thong' as they call them in Australia! Basically we had just got off the coach at the coach terminal in torrential rain, got our bags from the luggage holder, and had began to make our way across the car park to our hostel shuttle bus when it happened! (Imagine James with a huge backpack on his back and one on his front with another bag over his shoulder) He slipped on the wet car park and fell forward onto his stomach on all fours in front of the whole coach load of people! But the bit that made it so funny was that he couldn't get up because he had too many bags everywhere and the big,heavy backpack that he had on his back was weighing him down so every time he went to get up, he would fall back down again. He looked like a turtle as his head just kept poking out of a mass of bags every so often as he tried to make it up!! All his weight was on his elbows as that was what he had fallen on and he didn't have enough strength in his elbows to push himself fully up. Therefore he had no choice but to let himself completely flop down to the ground so that his hands were flat to the ground so he could then push himself back up! To be fair on him he laughed it off but he and I both know that wouldn't have been the case if we were at home! He said he could hardly look really pissed off because there was a coach load of people watching him! Instead he had to casually laugh it off and anyone who knows James will know that this absolutely killed him!!  

After a welcome meeting  the night before, we headed down to the meeting place at 6.45am to pack the jeeps up for our trip to Fraser Island. It literally rained for the whole three days and two nights that we were on the island!! Driving on the sand was so much fun, but you are flung around a lot! This makes the journey's much more exciting though. I felt comfortable driving as well because Laurence who was in our jeep had done the trip before and owns a farm so he knows exactly how to drive on four wheel drive on sand! He was on the island with his wife Amanda and they were on their honeymoon which I thought was pretty cool!!

 Anyway, James and I both drove the jeeps at different points over the trip and neither of us managed to get stuck in the sand so that was good! Unfortunately the island and the places we visited on the island didn't look as pretty as it should have done due to the weather which was a bit annoying, but after we had all got over the fact that it was going to rain the whole time we still had a really good trip, met loads of good people and made the most of the trip anyway! I did moan about the weather a bit though because being continually wet for three days gets a little bit boring after a while!! Having said that we were lucky as we had booked to stay in an actual camp on the island that is permanent and because we knew it was going to rain we were all able to upgrade to a bed. We spoke to a few people that had gone with a tour where you had to put your own tent up, go to the toilet on the beach, have no warm shower etc... and they said they had a pretty bad time of it so we didn't really have anything to moan about!!

So, our first stop on the island was Tony our guides favorite lake on the island and it was pretty special, we all just jumped into the lake in the rain and played volleyball. You can also use the sand at the bottom of the lake to clean you're jewellery and it really is a good cleaner so all of us girls had a good clean. We then drove to a second lake that had really steep sand dunes leading down to it. This was also very picturesque but again it was raining. After this we went back to camp, ate spag bowl cooked by Jens (which was really good) considering how little ingredients he had and then had a few drinks and played cards all evening with the group! Suprise suprise we played ring of fire group and guess who lost, yes that right I did so I had to drink the 'ming' juice and my god it was hideous, I did it and took one for the team though!

The next day we went to Indian Head viewing point and the champagne pools first! We actually had sunshine while we were in the pools so this was good! Although it was very windy so the sea kept smashing into the rocks but this made it great to watch! We then went back to camp for lunch before visiting Eli Creek, the shipwreck on the island and the famous black lake which had small little turtles poking their heads out of the water before we got in! Very cute! We then spent the evening having a bbq, playing cards and again having a few drinks! I forgot to mention that Fraser Island is where you find Dingoes which if you don't know are wild dogs and they tell you to stay away from them as they can be very dangerous. We had a family of them that lived in the camp so every time you went to the toilet or somewhere when it was dark you had to take a torch and a stick to bat them away with. Well, on the last night I needed the toilet at about 3am in the morning so I woke James up, as you weren't allowed to go on your own, and we headed for the 2 minute walk to the toilet! We went without a stick and a torch as we couldn't find one, well that was a silly idea as we ended up getting cornered by a bloody Dingo!! I panicked and started to run and they say this is the worst thing you can do as the dog will chase you thinking you are playing a game!!  James shouted to me to stop running so I slowed down and jumped into someone else's camp! It was looking at us as if to say 'come on then' so James and I just briskly walked passed him making lots if noise (as that is supposed to scare them) to the toilet checking over our shoulder to make sure it wasn't following us!! I grabbed a mop from the toilet thinking I was going to have to bat it away on our return to the bed but he had obviously got bored and wandered off! Stupid blooming Dingo scared the life out of me!!

On the last morning we went to Lake Mackenzie and did a rainforest walk. Lake Mackenzie was very pretty but it just wasn't quite what we had expected due to the weather!! It was still a great place to take some really nice photographs though! We then got the ferry back and I am not even joking when I say the minute we got on the ferry the sun came out!!

All in all though we had a great trip, the island is truly a beautiful place we just didn't see it at its best! The driving on the island was amazing though and the whole experience was a great one. We had a really nice group of people and have kept in touch with a lot of them so this was a bonus!! The evening that we returned to Hervey Bay,  we all went to the pub for something to eat to have a little reunion, even though we had only left each other about 2 hours before!!