Posted today on my other project, Daily Beeswax, we’re flashing back to the lovely location of our first Ikat purchase: That place looks fake, right? Well, fake it is not. It’s a village on the Indonesian island of Flores. We were there in late August 2009, four months into our recent round the world tour. [...]
Just over a year ago we were sitting on the summit of Gunung Sinabung – a docile, extinct volcano in northern Sumatra. It took us three hours to climb from base to summit – not the hardest volcano we’ve climbed, but well worth the work. Shrouded in mist we celebrated summiting with a photo [...]
We’re still on our Annapurna trek in Nepal, which is a little too off the beaten track to access the internet. While we’re busy trekking and are off-line, we’ve put together some of our past favorite posts/locations to keep you busy. Enjoy! Indonesia: Indonesia is spread over a huge area and it was some of [...]
We had a day to kill here in Bali, so we set up a mini self-guided walking tour of Denpasar. On the itinerary was the Bali Museum. It was just OK. We did find two, um, interesting pieces. The first was a painting of an ecstatic woman who is just a little too into her [...]
The number one specialty of Balinese cooking is Babi Guling: roasted suckling pig. Having led a mostly vegetarian existence the last couple of weeks, we had a powerful urge to seek out the best Babi Guling we could find. We were told that the Denpasar Night Market would be the place to enjoy the dish [...]
The beach scene in Bali is a sun and surf seeker’s paradise. Since Martin and I aren’t pumped about either of these things (I’ve had melanoma and Martin doesn’t like to swim), we’ve opted to explore Denpesar, which is a typical Indonesian mid-size city. On yesterday’s walk around the city, we ran across a [...]
This is the plane that took us from Maumere, Flores, to our present location: Denpasar, Bali. It is a battered old Fokker F100. I remember flying in them in the early 1980s, thinking that geez these planes are old school. Around here, Merpati is known as the airline that never retires their planes, they [...]
We struck up a conversation with a German mother and daughter the other night. They told us they’d spent the day at the local clinic. The mother had contracted malaria two weeks prior and needed more medication. Malaria? Really? It turns out that she contracted it in Labuanbajo, a town we stayed in around [...]
Merokok is Indonesian for ‘smoke’, and smoke is what Indonesians do all the time, everywhere; in buses, cars, trains, restaurants, bedrooms, ferries and bars. It’s gone so far that today after lunch I felt like having a cigarette. This is just from exposure to secondary smoke. Worry not. I’m not about to start smoking [...]
Our departure date for this round the world trip was April 29th, which is just over 4 months ago. We need to be in New York, to see my incredible sister Kheli graduate from Vet school in June 2010. This makes our time on the road around 13 months. We may, depending on how well [...]
While we’re chipping away at our projects here on eastern Flores, our medium term travel plans are beginning to crystallize. The immediate future sees us flying to Bali on the 7th, where we’re set to spend three days. At the moment, Bali is chock full of tourists, but we’re hoping to make [...]
Just a quick note to those of you who see a headline saying that there has been a big quake in Indonesia and are thinking of us: it struck nowhere near us. We’re a thousand miles away. No tsunami would get us, as we have several mountainous islands in between us and the quake; as [...]
These are a series of true conversations that took place over the last few months. That it happened once was odd. That it’s happened three times is blog worthy. Vietnam, circa two months ago: Hmong woman: “Hello! You buy from me! I give you good price! You have beautiful nose!” Indonesia, two weeks [...]
I grew up in San Diego, a Southern California city just north of Mexico. Think Baywatch, minus the Hoff. The community is rather beach-centric. Not surprising, given the climate and its miles of beaches. Indonesia, as we all know by now, has its fair share of beach. We came across one yesterday while hunting [...]
As part of our tour around Moni, a small hillside village at the foot of the Kelimutu volcano, we were driven to a local chief’s house. I am more or less certain that he no longer uses the house, but it was certainly interesting to visit. The locals replace the roof and floor material every [...]
You know the saying, “to fly by the seat of your pants?” Well, that's been our philosophy for most of our adult lives – before and after meeting, falling in love and marrying. We're now taking that idea on an extended round-the-world trip. Follow us as we share the good, the bad and the downright nasty of life on the road.
