A Journey to Well Known Places

Gili Meno was everything as person looks for in an isolated tropical paradise. We rented a bamboo cottage with an outdoor bathroom off a bit from the beach. It had a fresh water shower and 24 hour electricity so it was actually pretty upscale. We spent four glorious days sitting in various cabanas or on the beach reading and staring idly at the splendor around us. The island was so beautiful. The water was clear and blue. I went snorkeling off the coast, but came back in after I passed two feet over a 4 foot sea snake. The area is a breeding ground for sea turtles. One man started a conservation project to save the eggs and hatch them in captivity because the locals go looking for the eggs and make omelets with them. Pretty sad. He did say about 90% of the eggs he saves end up in eight month old turtles that he releases back into the wild. He had a whole bunch of little turtles swimming in plastic kiddie pools. We met another couple and spent most of the evenings socializing with them. The rest of the time we did almost nothing. We went diving again. It was alright, but not the best diving we have experienced. Erica went again, but I abstained and spent the time reading on the beach. As I type we are in the Mataram airport on Lombok waiting for our flight to Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia. Time to go to the big island of Java.

Amed was just what we needed. We arrived a little weary from our public transport experience and we shuffled to a hotel, not the hotel we asked the driver to take us to, near the start of town. The manager came out and invited us to take a look. Stuff like this happens all the time. The rooms turned out to be two story cottages set in a lush garden with a fresh water pool. After a little haggling we got the price down to a comfortable $8 a night and settled in with a coffee before exploring the town. The ‘exploration’ took about 15 minutes. Amed is about 9 km long, but the main town is three streets with a general store and a few restaurants. Our hotel was across the street from quiet a black sand beach lined with little fishing boats. We spent three nights in Amed and went diving again one of the days. One of the dives was in the American freighter Liberty; sunk by the Japanese in WWII. It was covered in coral and packed with bright fish and other wild life. It was nice to sit around and do nothing for a while. We have gotten pretty spoiled with that. Anyway, after a few days we were ready to move on and took an 11 hour trip to Gili Meno off shore of Lombok.

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We took a bimo (Balinese semi-public transport) to the city of Ubud and found a nice room overlooking some rice fields. Our experience with the bimo has been so so at best. It seems that while these green and blue ... [Continue reading this entry]

We arrived in Bali very tired after a night in the airport and after some confusion checked into our vastly overpriced hotel in Sanur for a nap. The near by beach was a little disappointing after all the hype, but ... [Continue reading this entry]

After the disappointing trip to Mount Kinabalu we headed to Semporna to learn how to dive. This was the cheapest place in Asia we had found to get our PADI open water certifications, which may make it the cheapest place ... [Continue reading this entry]