Introduction to Indonesia!

We back again! Our first stop in Indonesia was the capital, Jakarta. We landed in Jakarta late afternoon and thanks to some great planning from Ben our transfer to the apartment was waiting to greet us. It took around an hour to make it to our accommodation with the traffic in Jakarta being absolutely nuts, it was very overwhelming as we had not seen anything like this before. All being pretty knackered we headed out for some food before calling it an early night. We spent the next few days exploring the city which unfortunately was not exactly what we expected and we did not get the best vibes from the capital. It was crazy trying to walk anywhere with no pavements and hundreds of bikes trying to get past you, this combined with it being near impossible to get a taxi meant getting around was somewhat difficult. As an overall for Jakarta we ended up visiting a few malls and decided to rest up after some very busy days in Singapore.

The plan moving forward originally was to head east through Indonesia stopping off in a few places in central Java and ultimately ending the month in Bali. Looking into transport through Indonesia we quickly made the decision to jump on a flight to Bali instead and ensure we had plenty of time to explore all the Islands. The next morning we headed back to the airport to depart to Canggu which would be our first stop in Bali.

A slight delay to our flight meant we had a long time in Jakarta airport which has to be one of the worst airports we had seen summing up our time in Jakarta quite nicely. If I’m completely honest I would have preferred to sit in Stockport Railway station for 3 hours! In Canggu we had booked a 6 person dorm in a hostel called Lay Day. First impressions of the hostel was nice, a couple of pools and 15min walk to the beach was ideal. Unfortunately within 12 hours of landing in Bali Ben came down with the dreaded Bali belly putting him out of action for the next 48 hours. We decided to avoid booking any tours until Ben was feeling himself again so spent most of the time in Canggu enjoying the pool and attempting to surf on the beach, surprisingly this was very hard. Connor and I decided to also join in with the pub crawl on one of the nights which was good fun however was it worth the headache the following morning was a question we asked ourselves when we woke up. As an overall we got the impression that Canggu was very popular for people coming to Bali for a 2 week holiday and looking to go out drinking every night and spend days on the beach.

Swiftly moving on, with Ben feeling a lot better, we headed up North to Lavina where we had a few exciting activities planned. We stopped at a waterfall en route our hostel which had some cliff jumping. Starting by jumping off the 5 metre platform we quickly moved onto the 10 and 15 metre platforms. Personally, not being to fond of heights this was absolutely terrifying. Ben and Connor made it look easy whereas I decided to lean forwards on the 15 metre jump pretty much entering the water face first and hurting my neck! Ben decided to finish the waterfall excursion off with a tremendous bomb off the 5 metre platform, which he regrets now struggling to sit anywhere due to a bruised coccyx. Eventually we made it to the hostel which was very basic but had everything we needed. After some pizza for dinner, sleep was calling with the 4am start the next day in mind.

Waking up at 4am ready to start our day we were picked up and taken to the beach. All very excited we jumped onto the boat ready to set sail to go and find the dolphins. The sun rise was incredible and soon enough we were in the water being pulled along by the boat with dolphins swimming all around us. The experience was amazing however overall we did feel a little sad after seeing the amount of boats that were chasing after the dolphins and felt a little sorry for them. The rest of the day was spent chilling out, getting some rest and eventually heading out for some pizza for dinner. Again an early night was needed so we headed back to the homestay after dinner to get some sleep.

The following day we had a tour planned through the homestay. The tour included a banana boat in the morning, a beautiful temple, hot springs, a traditional massage in the afternoon, followed by heading out to sea again for sun set. We were hoping to see the bio plankton in the evening but after being told due to the time of the month we would have to wait until 8pm at the earliest so decided to head back to shore. We finished the day by heading to a bar where our tour guide and his band were playing some live music for the night. This was a great end to the day having a few beers and singing some classics. We came to the conclusion this has got to be up there with one of the best days so far in Indonesia. The next morning we woke up ready to head to our next destination Ubud!

Best memory: watching our tour guide singing in the bar!

Beer of choice: Bintang (330ml bottle), 30k Indonesian Rupiah (£1.50)i