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South-East Asia
  • Claire and Karsten

South-East Asia

A 182-day adventure by Claire Read more
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  • Trip start
    September 23, 2014
  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Brussels, Belgium

    September 23, 2014 in Belgium ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Still in Brussels, but we didn't figure out how to edit a footprint yet. Luggage for 4 months.

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Frankfurt airport

    September 24, 2014 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Our 3-months old tablet switched off while Karsten was checking some fantasy football stuff, waiting for the plane... and didn't switch on again...

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Doha airport

    September 24, 2014 in Qatar ⋅ 🌙 30 °C

    The tablet is still off... you might have less news from us than expected during the travel ;) but Doha airport has a nice internet area, so we can do some stupid stuff, waiting for the next flight.

    We had 6 hours to Qatar, we are now waiting 4 hours then 10 hours flight to Bali... Champagne and Gin tonic are keeping us awake :)    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Legian, Bali

    September 25, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    Arrived at the hotel after 30h on the road and only 2h of sleep. Nat, the best maid of honor ever, didn't stop to surprise us, a message from her was waiting for us on the bed along with some flowers and elephant towels ;) went straight to bed and slept 12h.Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
    12

    Legian, Bali

    September 27, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    We spent the last 2 days exactly as planned: doing absolutely nothing! We slept quite a bit, enjoyed our very nice hotel, went out to eat and listened to the Australians watching the grand final of aussie rules. Too bad the Swans lost. Our first restaurant in a different world built their tables and chairs out of...palettes. Who would have guessed that we stumble across such restaurant? Very nice!

    Tomorrow we'll be headed to Ubud. There the city and especially the surrounding nature should give us more than Kurta/Legian. Quite frankly, these towns don't offer much. But it was a perfect way to get acclimated a bit.

    P.S. The tablet is back! Olé! And thats a pool bar btw!    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Legian, Bali

    September 27, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    The hairdresser experience... Claire always said she would cut her hair at the beginning of the trip (easier in general, and Karsten can't say anything anymore, we are married, it's too late ;). The only problem is that this hairdresser wasn't use to cut girls hair from long to pretty short... after explanations and encouragements - "don't worry you can cut them" - the shaky young hairdresser started to cut... result: even if you want an asymmetric haircut you won't get that ;) anyways, they will grow again, pictures to follow ;)Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Ubud, Bali

    September 29, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Now that is a town worth visiting. Still a ton of tourists but a completely different atmosphere. Calm, a lot of nice restaurants and a dozen temples sprinkled in. Our hotel is a dream, with like 15 bungalows built into the slope of a valley. Just those cats living in the wall or under the roof. Those are quite annoying ;). We started our Ubud experience yesterday with a fire dance show (more dance than fire). Today we got up early and had a very nice walk through the rice fields around the city followed by a tour of the monkey forest. Then I had the famous suckling pig (almost as good as advertised) before we fled from the heat around midday. To cap off the day we'll now be having a traditional Balinese massage! After that I'll check the football results completely relaxed. They shouldn't be able to shock me then ;).Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Ubud, Bali

    September 30, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Requests: since we had requests for Claire's hair and food, here is a combo post. In the background you see the Warung that we ate in today. Fried mushrooms, fern tips with coconut and watercresson, which was excellent! Along with 2 beers for 7 Euro. But to be fair this was one of the cheaper places since we ate in a Warung - look up the difference! - and not in a restaurant. The 3rd picture is the famous suckling pig (mit Schwart)! But the basis is really nasi and mie goreng or dishes with peanuts in some form, as in the famous satay sauce. Coconut is also often somehow involved.Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Ubud, Bali

    September 30, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Today we made our first touristy trip. Some rice fields, a couple of temples and monkeys of course. In between Claire got to try the poo coffee. Delicious. We finished the day at the water temple Tanah Loth. This one is half of the day covered by water, depending on the tide. There we were able to see the sun set (beautiful), witnessed thousands of bats flying out of their cave (impressive!) the second the sun was gone, and were asked for the first time if someone could take a picture with us (awkward). After dinner we even got to see a gamelan orchestra at rehearsal. Very cool. The cats in the wall are still there, probably a mother and her newborns. Terrible. Tomorrow we'll be leaving for the Gilis. Probably no internet there, so see you in a couple of days.Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Gili Trawangan

    October 1, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Eating at the food market: it is always good to discover new stuff.
    "What is that?" "Blabla-don't-understand with peanuts" (yeah, peanuts was actually the only thing I had already recognized... rest looks like cabbage). So I am thinking, let's go for it. First bite: baaaah I don't like it! And when I looked more closely... a looot of very small fishes... beuuh. Buuut, luckily we were able to choose several different dishes and the rest was very good!Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Gili islands

    October 2, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    So this is how paradise feels like. After 2h in a bus + 2h on a boat we arrived on Gili Trawangan, the "party" island. On the three Gilis, cars or motorcycles are prohibited; only horse carriages, pedestrians and bikers. Yesterday we had one relaxed day at the beach and moved to Gili Air today. We are now on for 2 days chillax, finally starting to read and enjoying the turquoise sea with white beaches which we only thought existed in movies. We found a cheap bungalow with a hammock (Karsten's only request) and outside bathroom. We are now enjoying to do nothing ;). Like today, when we spent all day in a cafe at the beach drinking fresh fruit juices, mango lassi and fresh coconut juice. Awesome!Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Gili Air

    October 4, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Sea turtles. SEA TURTLES! We went on a snorkeling trip round the 3 Gilis yesterday and had turtles swimming next to us at arms length. Amazing. Also we saw a ton of tropical fish like parrot fish, clown fish, Moorish idol (Gill in Nemo), Angelfish, and many many more in a beautiful corral environment. Now go ahead and Google those yourself, cause we did not have a camera down there ;). The evening we spent for the first time together with a fellow traveler couple from... Germany of course. Now we are on our way back to Kuta to start the next trip from there tomorrow.Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Flight to Labuan Bajo, Flores

    October 5, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Our flight from Denpasar to Flores was quite interesting. We had never been on a so small plane before. But it came equipped with an invocation card in bahasa and English for all major religions. Quite handy ;). The flight itself was actually very smooth, basically without any turbulences - the puking Indonesian guy notwithstanding. Just the landing got a bit rough. Maybe that is why the airline is on the EU's blacklist ;). But the plane flew pretty low so we had a great view on all the islands between Bali and Flores. Labuan Bajo as a town is not extraordinarily interesting from what we saw. Hotels, diving schools and travel agencies. But we found a nice "hostel" (actually a camp) where we met plenty of nice people so we did have a pretty good time here.Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Komodo

    October 7, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Lion fish, cuttlefish, and Komodo fucking Dragons is what we saw the last 2 days. We went on a 2 day one night boat trip to different snorkeling places and to Rinca and Komodo island which form Komodo national park and are home to the famous reptiles. Most of the visible dragons sit round the ranger stations where they probably get fed regularly. But we were lucky enough to see one out in the open at a local watering hole, actually moving and not attacking us in the same time. Pretty impressive, huge and scary animals.

    After that, we went snorkeling on pink beach, where red corals give the sand its redish colour. Final spot was Kanuwa island, an amazing snorkeling spot where we saw the aforementioned fishes.

    The night on the boat we spent drinking with a British couple we met the day before in our hostel and an Irish/Australian couple we met on the boat. Everybody else probably hated us cause we weren't exactly quiet playing "heads up" (hint: check your app stores) till AFTER midnight (!) - which is actually quite late when you sleep on deck and will be woken up by the sunrise at 5.30 am. But we left the boat in Komodo to head back to Labuan Bajo while they continued their cruise to Lombok. So all in all it was a great trip to Flores and well worth the money we spent. Now we'll get back on a plane heading back for a last night on Bali. Then: Java!    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Cemoro Lawang, Java

    October 9, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ☀️ 35 °C

    We successfully left Bali behind and arrived on Java today (time difference is only 5 hours now). We hopped on a minibus, rode on the slowest ferry ever built between the two islands and roughly 11 hours and a couple of scares due to interesting maneuvers in traffic later we arrived here. Now we'll try to get a couple of hours of sleep, before climbing Mount Bromo. The picture shows the first glimpse of Java we got - in style with a couple of volcanoes.

    In unrelated news, we achieved a first milestone. We did not overpay for a taxi ride. We respectfully declined a gentleman's offer to drive us from the airport to our hotel for the outrageous amount of FIVE Euros. We then walked blindly along the road for a while to find a taxi with a meter and thus paid only half!    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Bromo, Java

    October 10, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌙 20 °C

    We got up at 3.30 am this morning to climb the still partly active volcano Gunung Bromo. Equipped with our torches and all warm clothes we could wear - interesting feeling this "cold" as you Europeans call it - and started our way first through the vast, pitch black plateau toward the volcano where no path or anything resembling that marked our way. We had to get rid of a couple of motorcycle drivers who wanted to make us believe that there was no way at all we would make it to the top in time for sunrise. One would only leave after we made more than clear that he couldn't expect any money from us.

    But after finding our way across the plateau and pretty much running up the really steep, sandy (in fact the ground was covered in ashes) climb including 250 steps we made it and were rewarded with a magnificent view on the sunset, the plateau still veiled in mist, and the great surrounding landscape. Totally worth it!

    After, we hopped back on a minibus for 12 hours - with 4 passengers for 12 seats pretty bearable - and are now in Yogjakarta, the cultural centre of Java.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Yogjakarta, Java

    October 11, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Yesterday it was very hot, so we seized the opportunity to go for a 7 hour walk through the city of yogjakarta. We saw a bird market (on which they actually sell animals of all kind: birds, lizards, snakes, cats, dogs, fish and other animals in small cages which are definitely not fitting European standards), the Kraton (the Sultan's palace) and the water palace, took a stroll along Malioboro street which is basically a big market and went to 2 batik galleries. One for scamming tourists and a real one. Price difference was remarkable. 100.000 or 900.000 rupiah for a piece of comparable size. What is nice in this otherwise pretty loud and dirty city, is that lot of walls are covered with paintings or graffiti. We later also took a so called becak. A bike with 2 seats in front. Quite the adventure in this traffic. And with the 2 of us not being the thinnest persons also not super comfortable ;).

    Now we'll change location into a guest house we will absolutely love. Viavia comes with a restaurant using organic food where possible, having a fair trade shop and offsetting carbon emissions for the trips they sell you. We will go for another walk this afternoon and will see yogja - as the locals call it - from a different side.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Yogjakarta, Java

    October 12, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌙 26 °C

    Now that was interesting. We went for a walk again today to discover a different side of yogjakarta. We went on the guided "Kali Code walk". The Code (pronounced tshode) is the river that runs through the city from north to south. On its shores live lot of people. It is the most densely populated area of this big city. The population in this quarter is generally from a lower social class. They make up for it with strong solidarity within their community. Every neighborhood forms a so called RT. Several of those form a RW. Within those units - mostly in the smaller ones - people organise their social lives themselves. That entails for example paying hospital bills for members of the community, free aerobic classes, the access to information through free newspapers, a neighbourhood watch and a community centre in which children can get help with the homework, children and older people get a free basic healthcare and food packages get prepared for those in need. All of this is possible through the daily collection of the smallest amounts of money. Every family can decide for themselves how much they want to give. This way, everyone in the community is taken care of.

    They also get some help from the outside with for example groups of students going into these communities and teaching about not to throw trash in the river which through fishing is an important part of their livelihood.

    Walking through this neighborhood felt like being in a small village. Everybody was super friendly, offered us some food, wanted to take pictures with us, etc.

    We also learnt a lot about religions. for example that every Indonesian has to declare his belonging to one of the 6 official religions. This information is also stated in your passport. But at the moment all 6 religions manage to coexist peacefully. Quiz of the day: what are the 6 religions?

    We capped of this great tour with some great street food. Fried Tofu balls with vegetables inside, rice with sambol and Quail eggs. Delicious!    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Yogjakarta, Java

    October 13, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ 🌙 25 °C

    Cut it, smash it, roll it, steam it! is how Daft Punk would have described our day: cooking class!

    We set out to do a cooking class in every country we would visit and today we did our Indonesian one.

    In the morning our group of 4 and our teacher went to the market. Loud, full, chicken heads and livers, fish, tons of known and unknown vegetables. Just great! And if you have a local with you also very cheap ;).
    We started the cooking with having some cake. Excellent way to start working on something! Green cake to be precise. Looked strange, tasted normal. Then we started making the 2 recipes we chose plus a ton of side dishes. We chose Pepes Tahu Jamur, tofu and mushrooms in a paste of spices, chili, and eggs steamed in a banana leave, and Ayam Kemangi, a chicken curry with coconut milk. Among the side dishes was fried Tempe, water spinach and of course sambol. For dessert we got to try jackfruit. Everything was super delicious and we can't even think of eating anything else 7 hours later.

    In the evening Claire went for a silver workshop and made herself a ring! Just in time for our 1 month anniversary today! Woop Woop!    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Borobudur and Prambanan, Java

    October 14, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 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.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra

    October 17, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 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.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Gunug Leuser National Park, Sumatra

    October 17, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 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.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler
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    Bukit Lawang, Sumatra

    October 18, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ☀️ 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.    Read more

  • Claire and KarstenSouth-East AsiaTraveler

    Indonesia Wrap-up from Medan

    October 20, 2014 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 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...    Read more

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