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  • The Little One
    Day 106

    Dubai

    April 24, 2023 in the United Arab Emirates ⋅ ☁️ 33 °C

    The last stop on our mini adventure , we're visiting our good friends Rizwan and Sameera in Dubai!

    For the uninitiated, Dubiay is a massive adult playground. Everything is clean, pristine and either the tallest, longest, widest or best in the world. While we were here we hit a water park and raced down the world's longest dual racer water slide. Went to the incredible IMG and Motiongate theme parks and ride the world's largest indoor roller coaster, and we had drink in the Burj Khalifa, in the world's highest bar, on floor 123 and we got up there in the world fastest elevator. We did some shopping in the works biggest shopping mall, Mall of Dubai and checked out the aquarium which has the world biggest pane of glass. We hit all the accolades and it was incredible.

    We had an absolutely wonderful time, Dubai is a very interesting place, the playground for the rich and famous, and our hosts gave us the full VIP experience. The best way end to an amazing trip.

    Thank you all for joining us on our little adventure. We're at the airport waiting for our flight back home and hopefully we'll see you all soon. x    Read more

  • The Little One
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    Day 102

    Anda

    April 20, 2023 on the Philippines ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    Our final spot in Asia before we start making our way home, we headed north along the coast to the small town of Anda. We are staying on the white beach just outside of town in a small resort to really relax before our journey comes to an end.

    We have picked a resort which has a decent pool, deck chairs on the beach and even an on site dive shop so we can get in one more underwater fix. The diving here isn't as impressive as Balicasag but we still saw an abundance of incredible fish and crustaceans.

    We took the time to go and see a local Cave pool, similar to the Cenotes in Mexico but with a little less health and safety. The jumping spot looked safe enough so we both took the plunge, not realising how cold the water would be. Very cool when in the shade of the afternoon sun.

    We really didn't do much else other than relax and reflect on our trip. We have really enjoyed the Philippines, it is odd to see a lot of Churches combined with the. Asian culture but it works quite well. The people, food and beaches have all been incredible and I definitely think we'll be back here one day.    Read more

  • The Little One
    1111121
    Day 97

    Alona beach

    April 15, 2023 on the Philippines ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    Philippines has more than 7000 islands and they pretty much all look stunning. It was hard to decide which one we should visit but we had a few criteria: good diving for beginners, nice beach to relax and easy to get to from Manila. We still had quite a few to choose from, but in the end we picked Bohol.
    Our first stop is actually on an another island, Panglao, just off Bohol but connected via two bridges, one of which is a man made land bridge.

    We booked a few nights at Alona Beach. Not on the beach itself (someone booked the wrong hotel) but in the town of the same name.

    This town is very touristy catering mainly for divers, who flock here for the dive site just off the coast on Balicasag Island (yes, another island!) There are some many dive shops here, maybe more than there are restaurants! We chose one called Sierra Madre, they sounded very chill and had a great name for their boat: Normandy.
    Balicasag is a short 30min boat ride from Alona beach, we loved our first two dives so much that we came back the next day for two more. Luckily the first day we dove with Gerald, a very good diver who also had a GoPro and was kind enough to share his footage with us. Hence the video gives us an opportunity to share what we can see underwater. Bear in mind that the colours on camera are different under 18m of water and the red and yellow don't come out 😔.

    After two days of diving it was time for some relaxing by the pool. It gets very hot here. The restaurants on the main street are quite good and we also enjoyed nice ice creams.

    Last day in Alona and we venture inland a bit to see some Tarsiers. They are little creatures, the size of our hand roughly, with big eyes. They're so cute! They are nocturnal so we tried to be as quiet as possible but with their big ears they spotted us. We didn't stay long to not bother them too much but it was cool to see them!

    We enjoyed our stay in Alona beach, busier than we expected but the diving was worth it!    Read more

  • The Little One
    11111
    Day 91

    Manila

    April 9, 2023 on the Philippines ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    The chaotic streets of Bali seem almost tranquil compared to the big city of Manila, at around 16 million people, this is by far the biggest city we'll visit this trip. We started our stay with a happy surprise. Two of Armelle's friends from university were in Manila on the same day and we managed to meet up for a drink! They had just landed from Copenhagen so we didn't go crazy but it was very nice to share a beer or two and catch up.

    We arrived on Easter weekend, and it was maybe not the best time to visit Manila. It was good because it was quiet as people go celebrate Easter with their families, but most museums were shut. Luckily we had an interesting swimming pool to relax in and our hotel had a spa that was very much open. It is a Japanese Onsen Spa and we were able to relax in some mineral pools. We had to separate as Japanese custom is fully respected here so no swimming costume allowed! 🍆

    Next day and we walked to Makati neighborhood. It is just up our road but the changes are drastic. In our neighborhood of Población, there is a lot of life in the streets, a lot of rubbish, and crazy mess of electric wires. In Makati everything is clean and tidy, electric wires aren't seen. This is the business neighborhood so it is quiet on a Sunday. We walked to a shopping mall, huge complex where we go from building to building walking on bridges above the road. It is all very nice. You can find shops ranging from H&M to Hermes and a church in the middle with a mass said in English. We were quite surprised to see so much English written everywhere, on ads, on street signs for cars etc. We learnt that English is the second official language with Filipino (or Tagalog) and even when we hear people talk there are sometimes a mix of the two languages. Philippines was not only under Spanish rule but also was under American ruling just before the second world war. The signs are both are quite prevelent.

    Last day and we dive into more of the country's history by visiting the Intramuros neighborhood. This is where the Spanish settled. Manila was a big place of commerce at that time and stayed an important city until it was bombed to rubbled in the second world war. The only building standing from the original Spanish time is the St Augustin church. It was interesting to see some architecture that we thought of limited to Spain and South America in Asia. After this very hot day we were happy to have dinner on the rooftop of our hotel and have a nice view of the city by night.
    Overall we found Manila to be an interesting city with nice neighborhoods but with also open poverty mainly seen out of the car window when going to and from the city center. It has a lot to offer if you're ready to be hot!    Read more

  • The Little One
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    1111
    Day 87

    Suberkima hill and Canggu

    April 5, 2023 in Indonesia ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    Because one swimming pool is not enough for us anymore, we moved to the mountains just up the road for a couple of nights. The real reason was to see the region from a different angle, but the hotel did have two swimming pools big enough to swim laps and more importantly... Instagramable! This is a retreat hotel and most of the sleeping arrangements are villas. They were a bit big for us so we stayed in the main building and had to share the swimming pools...with the birds mainly because we didn't see many other guests! It looks more relaxing on the pictures than in reality, they were doing construction work so it was a bit noisy. Not what we wanted but it may be a good transition to our next destination, Canggu.

    When we asked for advice on where to go in Bali, Canggu was mentioned every time. It's described as a beach tourist town with a lot of bars, restaurants and surfing, but mainly having a chill vibe. We found a good hotel by the beach, the process of booking it was quite cumbersome as there are so many of them! The drive there was long and the closer we got to the beach the less cars we saw and the more scooters they were.

    Our first evening in Canggu we walked down to the beach and saw a lot of surfers and a little religious ceremony going on. It is definitely more lively than the north West, good for people watching. We found a very good restaurant to eat and the street reminded us of Ubud, the first place we stayed at.

    The second day we took a grab (equivalent of Uber) to go and visit the Bali museum in the 'Capital' of Bali Denpasar, effectively the same metropolis as Canggu. We had a lot of traffic, but the museum was cute and afterwards we went to a neighborhood where Armelle was able to buy some fabric for future sewing projects. We used mototaxi to go back to our hotel and even if the journey may have been shorten by 5min it seemed a lot quicker, probably because we spent most of it overtaking the cars from on the pavement! Traffic laws here are more of a suggestion tha. Anything else.

    The following day we're back at the beach. This coastline runs for most of the island and is pretty much continuous beach the entire western side of the island. The original development started in the south and has been spreading up the coastline ever since. We took a long walk down the beach to see the towns of Seminyak and Kuta where it all began for the Bali Tourism scene. These days they have been taken over by the massive resort hotels, some up to £700 a night, right on the beach with multiple Pools. We had lunch in one of them then jumped on a bike back up to our little chilled area. Some home we manged to walk 4km on the back in just about an hour, the moto taxi ride home took nearly the same amount of time, the roads here really are crazy.

    We would have liked to stay longer in Indonesia and visit other islands and try to get off the beaten track, however we heard that is wasn't always easy to travel during Ramadan so that's why we concentrated our visit on Bali, who's population is mainly Hindu. Overall we really enjoyed our time in Bali, there is beautiful scenery, interesting culture and cool animals! What we didn't expect is how long it takes to go from one place to another or you need to love scooter traffic! We were also struck by how fancy the touristy spots are here. In Canggu there are more high end shops than little markets, we ate some good croissants and they even had Kouign Aman! For those who don't know, it is a patisserie from Brittany. It feels that some of local culture is replaced by what tourists. In a way is nice to eat a good pizza but in another it looses the charm a little when you go so far from home to find the same stuff but but with nicer weather.    Read more

  • The Little One
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    111
    Day 82

    Diving in Manjangan

    March 31, 2023 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

    We've now realised that it is less than a month before we head back to London...so we've decided that more relaxation was on the agenda! 😂

    We booked a hotel in North West Bali as it has some of the best diving in Bali and it is a lot more quiet. It was a long journey to go from Gili Meno to Manjangan. Because one of the harbour was closed, it took us 3hours of boat and 4h by car to reach our destination! Lucky that we are staying more than a couple of nights to make the journey worth it. We chose a hotel that had a diving centre attached to it and it turned out to be glamping. We had our own 'tent', it still has glass doors so not sure we can properly call it a tent! James did a little video tour to show you! Not for everyone taste but for us it was perfect!

    For once we chose a pretty good day to go diving! Sun was shining and the sea was calm. We did two dives on the nearby island Menjangan. The name of this island means deer, they used to migrate from mainland every spring to stay on this island. It looks like now they've settled for good. Very strange to see a deer in the sea. The diving was very nice, we had 20m of visibility. Compared to our last dives where the visibility was never above 8m it seemed that we were in another world! We dove along side a coral wall for the first dive. The colours of the corals and the fishes everywhere was beautiful and we saw coral fans that were so big that we could have curled in them. Second dive and it was also a coral wall but we also so an underwater cave. Pretty cool to chill in the cave and look up to some fishes.

    A part from the diving we really enjoyed our time in this hotel that has a very nice swimming pool and a spa where we treated ourselves to a little massage.    Read more

  • The Little One
    111111
    Day 76

    Relaxing in Gili Meno

    March 25, 2023 in Indonesia ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    It's been a little while since we have sat on a beach and done nothing all day, that's all about to change! We have booked ourselves into a small resort right on the beach on the tiny island of Gili Meno. The middle island in a chain of three, each a tiny slice of paradise with varying degrees of human activity.

    The smallest and quietest of the three Gilis, Meno is a haven of tranquillity. Just 5km in circumference, you can walk the entire island in around an hour, slightly more if you stop for cocktails and a little swim along way. Free from the noise of motorised transport, you can truly unwind on Meno, listening to the sound of waves and the horses ferrying the few tourist that make it out here to their lodgings.

    We divide our days pretty evenly between reading on the beach, taking a dip in the pool, snorkeling in the sea and deciding which happy hour drink we should get. The snorkeling just off the beach is outstanding. There is a small section of plants and sea grasses which attract Turtles before the ground drops away and the Coral and exotic fish take over. We have seen Moray Eels, trigger fish, angel fish, parrot fish, trumpet fish, lion fish and even a lobster, as well as varying sizes of both hawksbill and green Turtles, all within 100m of our hotel (er included some pictures from the Internet to give an idea of what we saw) . We saw so many turtles that we learnt to recognise the two types! Quite the island paradise and a well deserved rest for us to recharge before we get back on the road.    Read more

  • The Little One
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    Day 73

    Nyepi day

    March 22, 2023 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌩️ 29 °C

    As avid readers of Lonely planet, Nyepi day didn't come totally as a surprise to us. This is the first day into the New Year and is Bali's biggest purification festival designed to clean out all the bad spirits and begin the year anew. The whole island shuts down for 24hours. No planes, no vehicles and no power sources (including mobile networks down and TV signal as well). The cultural reasoning behind Nyepi is too fool evil spirits into thinking Bali has been abandoned so they will go elsewhere.

    The night before this day of silence, there are a lot of ceremonies taking place in every village and town. They parade the Ogoh Ogoh through town, Ogoh Ogoh are huge statues made of paper mache, they are all meant to be scary to let out all the negativity. Apparently it takes around 2 months to build each of them! There are some that are made by children and some by adults but all look very good! We joined the mass of tourists in the main square to wait for the procession. It's mayhem, no one knows really what's going on and what's the plan but everyone is joyful and excited! Around 18h30 when it starts to cool down the first Ogoh Ogoh is lifted up, a marching band follows it and that is how this hour long procession starts!
    Some of them are very tall and when you add the humans carrying it, it will be higher than the numerous low electric cables that are hanging across the roads. For every problem there is a solution and it's not the first time this happened. They have dedicated people in the team that lift the electric cables with a stick so that the Ogoh Ogoh can pass. Safety is a distant concept here 🤭
    We follow the crowds for a bit longer and then decide to try to find a place to have dinner, but 90% of the restaurant are closed and the other 10% are full, so it will be pot noodles!

    We had a nice quiet night and so should be our day. As we are tourists we are not held to the strict rules of the local population, we are allowed to use the hotel pool and use the lights as long as the curtains are drawn, they also fed us 3 square meals, which was nice of them. Lots of reading by the pool and enjoying the view from our balcony is the order of the day.
    However, apparently the memo that it was Nyepi day didn't hit the monkey forest.... All the monkeys (that were probably not being fed) came out of the forest on the hunt for anything edible in the hotels. Let's say that the pool wasn't a tranquil spot when a monkey jumped on Armelle (maybe more on the lounge chair) to try and grab a bag we had. All our attempts to scare the monkey didn't really pay off until the security came with their catapults! More scare than hurt though. Anyway, we still managed to enjoy the pool and then after lunch retreated to our balcony for some more reading.

    Unfortunately the monkeys managed to outsmart us, maybe not that difficult to do, we were sat on the lounger and had left a packet of cashew nuts on the table, not half a meter from us. A cheeky monkey managed to sneak up on us, out of our peripheral vision we spot some movement but it was too late. As we shriek at the shock the monkey, which was probably half a meter of pure muscle, very calmly, looked us in the eye, acknowledged that we we're being outsmarted, grabbed the packet of nuts and nonchalantly strolled off,happy with his haul. Monkey 1 - Tourists 0.

    Silent day was definitely more eventful than we thought it would be, but also a good interlude to enjoy on our last day in Ubud.    Read more

  • The Little One
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    Day 70

    Ubud

    March 19, 2023 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌧 31 °C

    Our first few days in Bali exceeded all our expectations. Encounters with monkeys - some fun, some more aggressive - beautiful temples everywhere we looked, chaotic streets, participating in a religious events, swimming in a massive waterfall and of course Instagram queens at every corner! Bali, a very welcomed culture shock.

    After a short flight from Brisbane we land at Denpasar airport, everyone on our plane was in a holiday mood, this is definitely a tourist mekka. Our arrival at the airport was very efficient and in no time and especially no hassle, we were in a taxi to our first destination: Ubud. It should be only a short hour drive but it took us a bit longer due to traffic. Some roads were totally blocked due to religious processions. It wasn't too bad to watch them from the aircon car. Ubud is a small town just north of Denpasar, surrounded by hills and rice fields. We can't see much of this from the car though, it feels like one continuous built up area the whole way. We could tell we arrived in the town center by the increasing amount of tourists in the streets and a lot of nice coffee shops. Our hotel is in the middle of this touristy street with buzzing scooters everywhere and we're a bit worried that we made a wrong decision. The hotel stretches for nearly 500m back from the road and the rooms are quite remote from the street and we found ourselves in front of a little rice field with no noise at all. Could almost be paradise.

    After a quick jump in the swimming pool to try and get cooler we brave the streets in the search of a restaurant, or more precisely a good restaurant as there are restaurants everywhere. We found ourselves in a cute little restaurant that turned out to be quite high end cuisine and very delicious! Good start. Next day, we wake up early thanks to the 2 hour jetlag and we decide to visit the monkey forest. As per its name it is full of monkeys but they are fed so not agressive. It is also a place with amazing banyan trees. As we couldn't get more sweatier we decided to walk further down the road to a museum. It is an art collection of a rich Balinese and shows traditional as well as modern Balinese art. Quite interesting! Back at the hotel we go for another refreshing jump in the pool and go out to discover the local temples. The stone carving are impressive and remind us sometimes of the temples in Angkor. We buy ourselves tickets for a dance from one of the temples and it's time for an early dinner. Another really good restaurant. Just in time for the start of the dance, we settle ourselves on small plastic chairs for an hour show.

    Dance has long been a part of religious ceremonies here and the show we opted for gives a taste of the traditional, performed on the temple grounds with the traditional instruments and outfits. It was interesting to see the colours and hear the music, but I'm not sure these ladies are going to be winning many followers on Tiktok anytime soon.

    Next day and we decided to explore the surrounding of Ubud. We are not comfortable on motor bikes yet and seeing how they drive here we would probably have an accident almost immediately, so we hired a driver for a few hours. We were really happy with this decision because tonight there is a big event for Nyepi day (we will tell you all about it in the next post!) so some of the roads were closed with crazy diversions enforced, and as there are no signs anywhere it was helpful to have someone that know the area! We managed to make it all the way out to a remote temple. From our experience the temples are usually built by the river so there is always a lot of steps to get down to the them and then worse, back up again to the road. Quite an exercise in this heat! 🥵 There wasn't a lot of explanations on the temples but they are stunning rock carving and it was a serene environment. Our last stop of the day was a waterfall good way to finally get cooler. It also had a lot of Instagram frames to get some pictures. There weren't any Instagrammers today so we managed to get a picture of Armelle in a nest. Let us know if you want more of these 😂

    Finally we got back just in time in our hotel to relax a little before the big event tonight!    Read more

  • The Little One
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    Day 68

    Brissy

    March 17, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 35 °C

    Flights out of New Zealand can be pretty expensive to everywhere except Australia, that's as good excuse as any to visit our friends in Brisbane for a few days before we head off to Indonesia. We have been to, and explored Brisbane on our last trip so we took the opportunity to relax some more, enjoy some excellent company, great food and a few too many drinks 🍻

    Chris and Jess did take us to their local Koala sanctuary where we also got to feed some roos again, very cute and we went for a wander around the city Botanical gardens in town before we got to hot and had to seek aircon in the Holey Moley indoor mini golf. Armelle won, although no one is quite sure how, maybe its because she was keeping score 🤣.

    Was nice to have someone to talk to that isn't the two of us for a few days and enjoy some hot weather again, NZ was starting to get a bit cold.    Read more

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