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(pic: was on the little deck at the back of the boat to Flores)

Our Trip! Micha and Mika 2013

We started on the 15th March a day before my 30th birthday. A teary goodbye to mum and dad and we were through the gates to Customs.

Landing in Denpassar Bali round midnight, paying an extra $20US to get through quickly we found our driver holding a sign "MR MICHAEL".

Mum and dad had given me as a 30th present a few nights to stay somewhere nice to relax and recover. Micha had chosen Sanjany's Retreat, about a 2hr drive from the airport, the place was beautiful, high up surrounded by rice patty fields.

Waking up on the 16th after a great long sleep, skyping mum and dad for my 30th having a delicious breakfast. We migrated to the pool and hang out there most of the day.

Micha in the pool at Sanjany's

View from our room at Sanjany's

That night for dinner Micha had organised a cake, which was brought out with all the staff singing Happy Birthday was very touching.

17th of March we had hired a scooter for the day $5, best money ever spent for so much fun and fuel in Indonesia is so cheap, we rode through the hills and got back at about 6pm after visiting Tanalot the temple on the ocean, which was lovely.

We had booked 3 nights but come the third day we were keen to stay one more night and I was trying to finish my TELF course, which I finally completed at 9pm on the last night.

Leaving Sanjany's was sad as the place was great, but we had to keep moving and I had organised to meet up with an old friend who I had not seen for 5 years. We were meeting near Kuta that night. So we had to organise a driver and after they're being some miscommunication we arrived in Seminyak (near Kuta). We were instantly bombarded with Aussies wearing Bintang singlets, short shorts and big beer bellies, honestly its kind of embarrassing and even the locals find it hilarious. If I was not meeting up with Ebony and Mitch I could have easily skipped Kuta.

We found a place to stay got ripped off, but we were hot and bothered and just wanted to dump our bags and head to the beach, Micha went for a swim while I just sat and chilled under the trees. We headed back to get ready to meet Eb and Mitch, meeting at the corner 66 pub, was a awesome reunion and was great to touch base again everyone had a brilliant time. The next morning we just wanted to get out of this tourist hole, so we headed to UBUD where we found a lovely home stay with a very peaceful garden, we went wondering all day, through the city, the monkey forest and finally at Bintang time we sat out the rain under a little shop shelter where we started chatting to 2 guys who had been doing a lot of travelling so we had a few question's to ask and ended up all having dinner together. The next day we hired another scooter, and had another day sight-seeing, drinking Lowak coffee which is the coffee made from the coffee beans that are eaten by the lowak animal and poohed out then grinded down, a lot of hype around it but to be fair Indonesian coffee I preferred.

We stayed there for 2 nights leaving early on the 3rd morning to get the boat to Lombok, we chose the slow boat took 5 hours but was awesome, great seats and ac and meet 2 nice locals that had some useful information. After the boat trip we were picked up and taken to the local town where we tired to organise a trek but it was looking at costing us $300 US for 2 nights as in Indo you need a guide, porter, who supply all your equipment and food, which was not really up our ally as we were happy to do it our selves but National park rules don't allow this, feeling a little let down we went to find somewhere to sleep that night and contemplate our next move as we needed to island hop ending in Bima to catch the boat to Sulawesi.

However on the way to find accommodation we went past another tour place and this guy had a boat trip which was decent in price and got us across all the islands also enabling us to see the islands and it was going to be more pleasant by boat, so we decided to do this booked it found somewhere to stay that night, and we were set to leave the next morning the boat trip went as follows by the map.

The boat trip started with a bus ride, 13 other passengers ranging in age. The bus broke down when we were about 30min away from the boat, tensions were rising a little as people just wanted to get on the boat, so when the tour guide told us there was no beer on the boat things got a lot more heated and slowly everyone discovers that they were told a different story about the boat and what was offered and the stories just got better and better.

Ruth and Diane 2 friends from Canada

But for the next 4 nights and days we made the most of it and had a good laugh at the same time.

Our sleeping area

early moring photo taken by Ruth

We came of the boat in Flores, where we got together with Ruth, Diane, Ash, Victor, Micha and myself and we organised a road trip around Flores as we all had till the 31st of March before we were going our separate ways.

We spent the next 4 days 3 nights doing a road trip that normally takes 6 days to do, we had an awesome driver called Berto who drove pretty much between 8-12hrs a day along narrow windy roads, no one got car sick, but I think after spending 8 days in close proximity to people you need a break, we got back to Flores early on the 30th time for me to run around and try to organise Micha a cake for an early birthday dinner with our friends, as it was Easter we were hand pushed to find something open for dinner as well, but luckily the corner(another bar called the corner) was open and I booked a table for 6 of us to have his birthday dinner. Running round and finally picking up the cake and keeping this all from Micha, I rushed up to the restaurant to ask them if they could please put the ice cream in the freezer and the cake in the fridge…… dinner was so yummy I really felt like a steak and they seemed to serve up a good one so we both decided on steak. We had a lovely last night with our friends and finally for the cake. Which posed a little bit of a problem as the cake had been put in the freezer and was frozen solid and the ice cream was completely melted, so watching Micha cut the cake was very entertaining and it will definitely be a birthday cake that will be remembered.

Rising early the morning of the 31st Micha's birthday and Victor and him had organised to do a dive, I went along for the boat ride. So we meet outside Divine Diving, which is owned and run by a Dutch woman call Marji quite the character I would say and we made our way to the boat. The boys got 2 good dives in, we had a nice lunch then it was back to land and waiting for the boat to take us to Sulawesi. A few birthday beers and waited.

On the dive boat

Micha stepping off

The boat was packed we had economy tickets it was moored from 6pm and taking off at 9pm we made it till 8:18 and then upgraded to 2nd class, ideally we should have found a good spot on the deck and made base camp, but there were so man people we had not chance. We finally got to sleep after me causing a scene as we were LIED to and told we had AC but there was none so I managed to get us a fan. At about 4.30 our cabin became unbearable we lasted till 6am then got up and went for a walk round the outside of the boat, cooled off, went down the breakfast room. Victor seems to have gotten sunstroke and as I write this down I am sitting outside our room in the hall way where there is a breeze keeping an eye on our room while the boys rest.

Our cabin on the Pelni

SULAWESI

So we arrived in Makassar on the 1st of April after a pretty long journey we were all pretty exhausted. But we needed to find somewhere to stay and also information about extending our visas, we found our best room yet in a little place in town. And just next door was a lovely lady who had a nice little restaurant, spoke English and knew the information that we needed about the immigration. So the info in the planet was incorrect the immigration had moved near the airport so we organised a car to take us there the next morning and from there we just had to see what happened. We arrived by 8.45am were seen pretty quickly and advised that if we helped out the immigration officer then he would help us out and get us our visas that day so we did and walked out of there at nearly 4pm. We left Makassar and heading north we got to a place called from there we pretty much wanted to leave straight away and get to Ta , this the place where the Sulawesi people having amazing funeral ceremonies so the next pictures are pretty full on it is tradition for animal sacrificing to be done and lucky us we got to see to water buffalos and a pig be killed. It is also traditional for the bodies to be buried in a cave on a cliff front the following photos will explain.

We are now relaxing on an Island after a gruelling 24hr journey so am looking forward to spending a few days in the one place before we get on the road again. We have just learnt that the ferry we were going to catch no longer runs weekly so we are needing to work out what to do.