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South-East Asia

september 2014 - marts 2015
Et 182-dags eventyr af Claire Læs mere
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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    1
    14
    Dag 22

    Borobudur and Prambanan, Java

    14. oktober 2014, Indonesien ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

    We got up early again today (read 3.30 am) to see the sunrise above the famous Buddhist temple of Borobudur. We weren't as successful as last time since it was pretty cloudy. But it wasn't quite as cold as last time, relaxing 25℃ at 4 which turned into 32℃ by noon with the sun pretty much at its zenith.

    The view from Borobudur (built round 780 and abandoned not long thereafter) was still quite spectacular. You look from between the Buddha statues hidden in stupas on to the surrounding landscape - mountains and the valley - still veiled in mist. Great atmosphere, especially with the audible roosters from the surrounding villages! Don't know if the pics can really capture that - obviously not the sound.

    After that and a really spicy breakfast for 1 Euro per person our group of 4, us 2 and the Dutch couple from cooking class yesterday, moved on to the Hindu temple of Prambanan. Built around 900 to overshadow Borobudur in its greatness. Didn't quite workout if you ask us, but still pretty great. Also, it was heavily damaged by the massive earthquake in 2006. They are still rebuilding as you can see.

    Now, to get cap off our time in Yogjakarta, we are going to have Yoga class. Let's test Karsten's flexibility!

    P.S. We are hopping on a plane to go to Sumatra tomorrow. We are landing in Medan and will go straight to the village of Bukkit Lawang, which is basically in the jungle. So we don't know how the internet connection will be. So you might have to wait to read our posts until we are in Kuala Lumpur. We apologize for any inconvenience.

    P.P.S. 3rd picture upon request.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    34
    Dag 25

    Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra

    17. oktober 2014, Indonesien ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    What do you do when you are close to the jungle? You damn sure go into it! And so we went on a 2 days one night trek. Overall, it was sweaty, wet, muddy, exhausting, and not free from dangers.
    In other words: it was awesome. The thought "yeah, we should not have done that" crossed our minds several times, but we had a good guide and made it through the trip unscathed.

    We started from our guesthouse - where we have a room with a hammock and jungle view - at 8.30 in the morning. We were a group of 6 + 2 guides. It took us roughly 10 minutes until we encountered the endemic Thomas Leaf Monkey (Claire's favourites). After maybe an hour we already came across the highlight of every jungle trek in Sumatra: Orang Utans! Several trekking groups found the spot where about 10 of the apes had gathered. Most groups took some pictures and went their way but we lingered for almost 2 hours and so we could see the Orang Utans from really close, like 5 meters away! Absolutely amazing! Later on we also saw big ass ants, tons of insects, a giant spider, white handed Gibbons which are the absolut best (says Karsten), monitor lizards, no snakes. We went up and down through the jungle. It wasn't raining but we were absolutely drenched

    - While I am writing this a group of like 20 smaller monkeys came through the scattered bungalows here and we had to defend our territory -

    from sweating so much due to the high humidity. Especially the last descend from a view point to our camp was quite a challenge. At the camp we had a delicious meal - among other things we had the best pineapple ever - played some games and solved some riddles. We even got proper air mattresses to sleep, pure luxury. Middle of the night we had to scramble from beneath our plastic roof because a giant rainfall was threatening our clothes that we left out to dry. Same in the morning during breakfast. The strong rain caused the nearby river to swell up which made both our hike to a nearby waterfall and the rafting tour back to the village more challenging than they needed to be ;).
    It was great, great fun overall.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    5
    1
    Dag 25

    Gunug Leuser National Park, Sumatra

    17. oktober 2014, Indonesien ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    Orang Utans Post!

    Now some general information about these red haired animals. You can find wild orang utans only in Sumatra (Indonesia) and Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia). On each island there are around 7000 specimens, the number is now slightly increasing since the rules about poaching have been strengthened and enforced. In Sumatra you will see the orang utans only up on trees (protecting themselves from predators like tigers) while Borneo's are also coming down from the trees for finding food.
    There is also a sanctuary here with semi wild orang utans that they reintegrate in the wild step by step.

    There is one special orang utan which we were lucky enough not to meet: Mina. A towards humans overly aggressive ape which our guide already had to fight twice. She had some bad experiences with humans. Go ahead and Google her, you will find quite a lot of stories and even videos online.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    1
    2
    Dag 26

    Bukit Lawang, Sumatra

    18. oktober 2014, Indonesien ⋅ ☀️ 1 °C

    The original plan for today was to do nothing. Instead we walked and climbed quite a bit again by visiting the bat cave. Fun to see the sleeping bats reacting exactly as humans when woken up: ‘just five more minutes‘ while trying to cover their eyes. Karsten actually fell in the cave and smashed a stone (actually limestone) under him. He shall henceforth be known as Stonebreaker. His rear end came into play later again, when a bat tried to find the way outside but only found his ass!

    We were also quite lucky to have gone trekking the last two days since major rainfall hit the area everyday since we are here, this is a rainforest after all. But they have grown more fierce, the river more wild and the ground more slippery. So, pretty good timing for us.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    Dag 28

    Indonesia Wrap-up from Medan

    20. oktober 2014, Indonesien ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Just some unconnected thoughts/observations from our 25 days in Indonesia:

    - they drive on the left side although the main colonial influence was Dutch

    - traffic rules are mere guidelines. For example red lights apparently do not apply to scooters, becaks or to anyone between midnight and 6 am. Then you just dart into the crossing honking and hope for the best.

    - people are mostly really nice and helpful, although an overall feeling persists that everybody wants to sell you something. street merchants and taxi drivers generally leave you alone though once you made clear that you are not interested.

    - Claire insists that papaya tastes like a kiwi, but sweeter. Karsten does not agree.

    - men will let grow the nail of their thumb or pinkie. This shows that they don't have to do manual work

    - you are terrible quizzers (except Nat). The 6 official religions are Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In most of those, local beliefs and customs are woven into, especially into Islam who is - generally speaking - less strict.

    - they have no problem printing something in English, even large ads, without having anybody proofread it. So on a menu you might find 3 different writings of scrambled or wrap for example.

    - we were asked several times to take pictures with locals. Friendly curiosity and a beauty ideal of a white skin is what leads to those requests. So far we happily obliged.

    - the food is overall pretty darn good although people say Indonesian cuisine is not among the best in southeast Asia. They are definitely not shy with garlic! Fried rice or noodles are the most popular dishes. Stuff that we particularly liked usually included water spinach.

    - prices: in most places a double room in an acceptable hotel or guest house costs between 7 and 15 EUR per night, often including a small breakfast. Food is also pretty cheap, main indonesian dishes are between 80 cents and 3 euros. Western food is more expensive. We only had one shared pizza so far. The great, fresh fruit juices are around 1 EUR, tea 30 cents, coffee with the ground coffee just thrown in the cup is 60 cents. The only expensive thing is beer, easily around 2 euros for large bottle (630ml) even in a shop. So we basically stopped drinking. The same applies to Malaysia, so we have to wait till Vietnam for cheap beer.

    - language: 1500 words of Dutch are incorporated into bahasa. And they are busy including English words aswell. For those, they just adjust the writing to the english pronunciation, like bas, teksi or imigresen. Then, everything is "finished". Whether the bus reached its final destination or you finished your meal.

    - and a lot of other stuff which we forgot about right now...    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    1
    3
    Dag 30

    Kuala Lumpur

    22. oktober 2014, Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    One thing we forgot on the wrap-up: Maroon 5 are still pretty big here. "She will be loved" is being played all over Indonesia!

    We flew to Kuala Lumpur on the 20th, so already a couple of days ago but we were quite busy. Just imagine this announcement on the plane in a cheerful voice. "Be aware that the possession or smuggling of drugs is punishable by law and carries the maximum sentence: Death! Thank you."

    Arriving here after indonesia is quite the cultural shock. There are sidewalks (!), an excellent public transport system and this is a very modern, western city with the behavior coming with it. The second thing you notice is that the americanization is in full effect. There is a ton of shopping malls. Once you get out of a tram or monorail stop you often get ushered into a mall. Once we seeked shelter from the rain in an underground parking and were suddenly standing in an underground mall. In another one there is an amusement park with a rollercoaster!

    After arriving we went to check out the petronas towers, the park next to it and the malls and shopping streets in the areas called KLCC and Bukit Bintang. And god, is the beer expensive here. 2 euros for a small bottle in a shop, 12 euros for a pitcher in a bar.

    The next day we saw Lake gardens, the Merdaka (independence) square and China town. We also tried traditional malayan cuisine which is pretty close to Indonesian. But there are other parts of the national cuisine with stronger Chinese influence. We'll get to try this later.

    Today we went into Little India because it is Deepawali, basically the Hindu new year. Lot's of women in Saris and men with marks on their forehead. After that we went to the Batu Caves, a cave system which is a giant Hindu temple.

    Considering the price for beer and restaurants, public transport is really cheap. To get to these caves (30 minutes away from the city) and back we paid 2 euros. In trains there are also coaches reserved for women only. Not a bad idea.

    The afternoons and evenings we have mostly spent indoors cause of the severe rainfalls hitting the city every day (and all the malls suddenly do make a lot of sense when you have to wait for 2 hours that the crazy rain stops).

    Today we tasted some fruits including dragon fruit (this one was strangely red instead of the expected white), yellow mango (yep, there was 4 different sorts of mango to choose from at this market). We also had a glimpse of durian taste ("stinky fruit" when literally translated from German), we bought an ice cream with durian taste and... we found out that it taste as bad as it smells ;)

    Also remarkable is the difference between rush hour and rest of the day. While cars don't move and it is hard to get into a monorail car, the rest of the day is easy ridin'.

    Tomorrow we are heading towards the Cameron Highlands. Turned out to be harder than we thought to find accommodation there because today is a public holiday and a lot of people took the rest of the week off.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    2
    1
    Dag 33

    Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands

    25. oktober 2014, Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    We came to the cameron highlands 2 days ago but didn't do much because Karsten was a little bit sick. So we put in an organisational day.

    But today we finally did what we came here for. Trekking! We went on a four hour hike into the rainforest. This time we didn't see any animals though, except for leeches. Since it being the raining season those little worms are everywhere in the jungle and are quite funny. Once they smell sweat they lift their heads and rotate towards the source like a periscope in a submarine. And then they can move quite fast once they locked in on you. But we didn't go to find leeches but set out to see the giant Rafflesia. Advertised as a huge flower it is basically a giant, red, flowery mushroom. Banana for scale. Very interesting to see was the red soil which is typical for the tropics. Ask the next geographer you can find what this is about.

    The cameron highlands as such are basically a hilly version of the netherlands. Greenhouses everywhere in which they grow strawberries, lettuce, flowers, cactusses and all kinds of vegetables. Without greenhouses they grow mostly tea. You can visit strawberry farms, butterfly farms and tea plantations. We made it to a strawberry farm today where the main attraction is definitely the attached cafe. There you can find beauties like the strawberry sundae, strawberry milkshake, fried ice cream or a hot chocolate with fries (wtf?).    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    1
    11
    Dag 34

    Cameron highlands

    26. oktober 2014, Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Today Karsten was still a bit sick, so I went alone on the trek that we booked earlier this week (being together with one guide and 4 other tourists you don't feel so alone actually, except maybe for couple's pictures ;))

    The trek was uphill, into the rainforest and then down to a tea plantation. Again, no animal watching there (although we saw a snake; good to learn that my allergy to wasp and bee stings turns a mildly venomous snake into a potential killer to me!) but a lot of flora to be discovered. The guide was excellent and showed us dozens of plants and trees and explained what they were used for. He also explained about ecology, politics and so on. We passed through a part of the forest called mossy or cloud forest so you can guess that it was full of moss and we basically walked through a cloud. Pretty cool! The tea plantation was really impressive and beautiful and I got to understand better the differences between teas. In summary, a great day (although it would definitely have been better with my dear husb#~*)    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    51
    Dag 37

    Melaka

    29. oktober 2014, Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

    Aaaaaand it's hot again. While in the Cameron Highlands it was a nice 18-25 degrees and you had to wear a sweater in the evening we are now back to humid 31℃ in Melaka.

    The city itself is pretty different from most cities we've seen so far. It is cute, calm and the traffic is bearable! We came here on Monday and spent the first day relaxing and eating great street food. The next morning we got a free guided tour to most of the tourist attractions in the city which include Dutch colonial architecture (the houses are long and narrow as tax was imposed based in the frontage of the house), the remains of a Portuguese fort, a wooden sultans palace built without a single nail, Chinatown and an old trading ship which is now a museum. After more delicious street food (chicken rice ball) we continued by ourselves to little India, the sea front, the biggest Chinese cemetery outside of China - Melaka was an important port for spice trade and attracted many Chinese merchants - and malls for air condition. Did we mention that it is really hot here? In the evening we took a bike (yes, Claire rode a bike) to more tasty street food (Laksa, a kind of curry) and other parts of the city. This bike tour was organised by the hostel and we met some nice people with whom we decided to continue the evening, treating ourselves to one beer each (yes, just one: 1,5euro for a small can. We can't wait to have cheap beers! ;)

    Today we wanted to do a cooking class but the only hotel offering it is a bit stupid so that isn't going to happen. So, no Malay food when we come back. And we'll probably leave a day early and head to Singapore tomorrow.    Læs mere

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  • RejsendeSouth-East Asia
    1
    1
    Dag 38

    Singapore

    30. oktober 2014, Singapore ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Just a short post with pictures for you to dwell on. We arrived in Singapore today. Immigration and bus ride went pretty smooth. After arrival in our hostel where we sleep in a 12 people dorm, we went out to see the Bay area by night and went to eat in a hawker centre. That is like a food court in a mall, without the mall. And SO MUCH food!

    Singapore is pretty nice so far. Impressive, interesting mix of architecture, clean and most surprisingly very calm for such a city. Tomorrow we'll see how that looks with daylight.

    Fun thing: in the subway they play little cartoon video about how to properly use public transportation - give up you seat for the elderly, get in line, move to the back of the bus etc. - starring hushhushhanna and bagdownbenny.    Læs mere

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