The Gili Islands

It took us a couple of days to get from where we were on Bali over to Gili Air, our first island stop. We arrived within a few days of the end of Ramadan, Islam's 30 day annual fast, so things were not exactly normal. These islands, much like Lombok are basically totally Muslim, unlike the Balinese Hinduism found on Bali. We rather enjoyed talking with the locals on the island and learning more about Ramadan and Islam in general. Steff was not a big fan of the seemingly never ending stream of prayers and singing (raher make that whaling) being pumped out of the Mosques loud speaker. Also, it was not like we could get away, these islands are tiny little things, we could even hear it snorkeling with the fish, what do they make of all this?. We have heard Muslim singing/prayers in other places and to be honest, these guys were far from the next auditions for X Factor, they were awful.

The singing was really a very minor thing, everything else was super and the snorkeling and diving were out of this world, amazing. These islands have a far greater variety of underwater life than we've ever seen anywhere, there is something like 3500 different types of fish here. Plus there were the Turtles, we had several wonderful encounters with Hawksbill turtles which are amazing creatures. Lots and lots of fish, everywhere you look underwater. One of the reasons that the underwater life is so interesting here is because of the strong currents that move through these islands, these currents can also make being in the water a bit humbling. Most of our time in the water would be planned to go along with a current. This usually meant dropping in the water on the North end of the island(s) and drifting south with the current, very nice once you get used to it. But once you try and swim into the current you quickly appreciate its strength. The beautifully coloured waters around these islands were the main attraction, the accommodation was simple, as was the food.

In total we spent 6 days on Gili Air, an afternoon on Meno (which was plenty given its reputation for Malaria and Dengue Fever) and 3 days on Trawangan before making the long day trip back to Bali, via Lombok Island, where we made our way to the Town of Ubud, Bali's artistic and cultural heart.

Southern Bali

We left Singapore for a relatively quick flight to Bali where we arrived at night time. We sorted out a hotel on a part of the island that was supposed to be good for kitesurfing. We spent 4 nights in a lovely garden bungalow on the East coast of Bali, waited for some wind (which sadly didn't arrive) and rode around on a motorcycle we rented.

We did a bit of surfing over on the West coast. We found a good sand break with some forgiving waves and had a few nice rides there. We did also head down to Uluwatu one day to look at some of the big wave surfers do their thing. Uluwatu was particularly good because you can stand up on a cliff and look down on the surfers ripping it up in the beautifully coloured water above the reef. These were super waves complete with barrels, much more amazing to watch for real than on a surf film. We enjoyed lunch at a little surfer restaurant on the cliff while we watched surfers down below, some having some incredible rides and others getting eaten alive by the liquid beasts.

After our afternoon of surf watching we went to a nearby temple to watch a Kecak dance. This is a traditional type of Balinese singing/dancing that is pretty amazing (for those of you who have seen the film 'Baraka' you will have seen a little bit of this already). The dance features an a cappella chorus of around fifty men, often making fantastic sounds accompanied by unified movements of their upper bodies and arms. The setting for this was really beautiful, while looking at the 'stage' you could see the sun setting behind over the ocean, we were at the top of a sheer cliff a few hundred meters above the water. The performance was timed to coincide with the setting sun and take us from light to darkness, very dramatic. It was well worth watching and after an ever increasing list of lame 'traditional' songs and dances in other countries this was refreshing.

Realizing that this was not a great place for Kitesurfing we decided to change things up a bit and get off Bali. We did enjoy Bali but in actual fact it wasn't as good as we were expecting. It is overpopulated (2.1 Million plus many thousands of tourists), busy, dirty, overly commercial and in places feels like a burnt out tourist destination of years gone by. This is how things are on the main Southern half of the island. Where was this lovely tropical and exotic island we were expecting? It certainly wasn't Bali. Fortunately it can be found not too far away. We made a break for the Gili Islands of Air, Meno and Trawangan. These tiny little islands off the coast of the bigger island of Lombok turned out to be just what we were looking for, three tropical, laid back islands ringed by coral reefs, perfect.

Singapore...For One Day

Singapore made for a nice 2 day stopover on our way to Bali, Indonesia. As everyone seems to say, Singapore is incredibly clean and tidy, everything seems new, well made and stylish. It has a weird sort of Disneyland perfection to it that makes it seem almost surreal. We really enjoyed it. It was however, expensive. So it's probably a good thing that we made a short stopover here and not much more.

Chiang Mai to Pai, Thailand

After leaving Laos, we headed to Chiang Mai, a bustling and friendly city in northern Thailand. Here Steff took a cooking course and learned to make several tasty Thai dishes from a man who was part chef/part comedian, so she laughed a lot despite being bombarded with too many chillis in the cooking. We also took in a few matches of Thai Boxing with our Irish friends from the Gibbon experience. We explored the cities very large and well known night market area, sadly the vendors in Chiang Mai are not very interested in bargaining, a sport we quite enjoy (especially Justin) while in Asia.

From Chiang Mai we decided to hire a proper motorbike and drive further north to an arty town of Pai, close to the Chinese border. The road to get there is very well known as an excellent road for motorcycling; it is relentlessly fun in its bends, twists and turns and we had the luck of it being freshly paved!! We absolutely loved riding the bike along the scenic, smooth and twisty road. To get to Pai, we had to ride over a mountain pass, where the weather became a bit cooler and at the highest point there was even a mixed vegetation of pine-trees and banana trees in the same area! A bit of an odd sight to see.

Pai itself is a lovely, laid back, arty town located in a lush green valley alongside a river. Normally there are bamboo foot-bridges that connect the town of Pai to the other side of the river, but those have all been washed away because of high river water, and well, no one has really got around to rebuilding them in the last two years!!!

The next day we headed back to Chiang Mai and had that great motorbike ride again in reverse. That evening we took an overnight sleeper train back to Bangkok for a few days, before flying to Singapore.

New Photos for this post are located in the Thailand gallery for photos for you to enjoy.

Having Some Seriously Fun Monkey Business, Laos

The whole Gibbon Ecotourism Experience is an interesting project aimed at providing local village people with a means of income in the hopes of creating a sustainable forest region that generates money not by cutting down forests and destroying Gibbon habitat, and it is working very well. It is a beautiful area, the tree we were in was over 600 years old, it would be so sad to see this area destroyed which is why the Gibbon Experience is working hard to make sure that doesn't happen. The 'Experience' has hired over 60 local villagers to patrol almost 20% of the Reserve and to maintain the tree houses, cook food for guests and so on. The money that the guests pay for staying in the reserve pays all the cost of running the business. All the money made is right now put back into the project, which is nice to know. The tree houses themselves have minimal impact on the area, right now there are 5 of them and each is far away from the others (sometimes several valleys separating them) so guests get a real wilderness jungle experience.

Before we began to live out every kids tree-house fantasy we would have to get to our destination first. We were told that the tree-houses were deep inside the 130 000 hectare Bokeo National Reserve and that we may have to hike for up to 10 hours to arrive if we couldn't make it in a 4x4. Fortunately for us we hadn't had much rain in the last few days so things might be alright. Our Toyota Land Cruiser got us to within an hours walk of the first tree house, the drive in was far from ordinary. We drove from Huay Xai for about an hour on perfectly normal roads until we turned off abruptly and started down a steep dirt track that led us straight into a fast flowing river, this was nuts. The snorkel equipped 4x4 beast of a truck now made clear sense to us. We made it across the river with ease and then slid, bounced and climbed our way along 40 minutes of rugged off-road terrain until we arrived at a small idillic village. The village looked as it probably did hundreds of years ago, no signs of modernity, except for us and a bunch of Irish tourists getting out of our dirt eating truck (in case you haven't picked up on it yet, we thought this 4x4 was one seriously cool machine, a tank of a vehicle ready to take on anything, even fully loaded with passengers, luggage and food).

We headed into the woods until we arrived at a wooden shack with a bunch of rock climbing harnesses hanging on a line strung across the porch. These were much like rock climbing harness', but with one key difference; a small double wheeled transport pulley that was clipped to the front of the harness, this little guy was to become the source of some serious fun. We each grabbed a harness and walked a further 5 minutes into the woods, but not before being accosted by a monkey that liked to terrorize Steff by jumping on her head and a small black bear who was obviously comfortable with us around.

We arrived at our first zip line, a long steel cable that would take us straight into Tree House number one. Most of the group would stay there but we stayed at tree house number three with a lovely Irish couple, a further 40 minutes away, involving 3 zip lines and a 20 minute walk. When we finally zipped into our tree house we arrived to find ourselves 45 meters of the ground in a tree house complete with a kitchen (including a stove), bathroom with shower and running water, this was amazing! The tree house was basically open concept (no walls, just wooden railings) allowing for fantastic views over the trees and valley below

We spent the next three days zipping around the forests, covering 15 of the zip lines in all, some over 450 meters long. We also did some hiking through the jungle with the hope of seeing Gibbons, a once thought extinct monkey that makes some of the most incredible sounds we've ever heard. Sadly we did not see the monkeys (or tigers, or elephants, or anymore black bears), but it didn't matter. Living in these tree houses and transporting ourselves the way we did was just so much fun, it is astonishing how many valleys and how much terrain you can cover on these zip lines in no time at all. We were truly kids again.

What a truly fun time we had. Sure there were many leeches and the biggest spiders we've EVER seen, but heck it IS the jungle.

Check out some of the pics and video of us zipping to get a better idea of what it was like.

Video1: Morning Mist

Video2: 400m Zip Line with Justin