Singapore

Singapore skyline

On the 3^rd of October we left Indonesia for the last time and flew into Singapore for a three day stopover on the way to Australia. We went to the Singapore Zoo which was great fun! Mike was first in line to feed the Rhinoceros’…there was a horrific moment when he thought some small children were trying to push in but luckily the keeper recognized that he’d been excitedly waiting behind the designated line  clutching his $5 and he was given the first bucket for the feeding. It was over slightly quicker than we were expecting but we managed to catch the proud moment on camera so it was all good J 

Feeding the Rhinos

 Mike also fed the dugongs or ‘sea cows’. They were really cute with big bristly mouths and having spent a significant amount of time in Bunaken searching and failing to find them we both loved seeing them and watching them feed! Those were the two highlights but we also saw lots of other animals and had a lot of fun! The next day Mike went to the bird park and I headed into to town to see some of the famous tourist attractions.

We also had time to do a spot of shopping and have two yummy sushi meals…one a particularly good all you can eat sushi buffet!

More all you can eat....

On our last night before heading to the airport we went to the famous Long bar in the Raffles Hotel to have a Singapore Sling cocktail. Apparently the home of the famous cocktail we were told it’s ‘the thing to do’ when visiting Singapore. The cocktails were good, despite the astronomical price we paid for them! We did also get a huge bowl of peanuts for our money though and we proceeded to shell them and throw the shells on the floor. A really unnatural thing to do, especially in spotless Singapore, but that is the tradition and the whole floor was completely covered in peanut shells.

One afternoon whilst Mike was enjoying the Singapore Zoo Bird Park I decided to take a little sight seeing tour of the harbour and the central business district. Early afternoon whilst walking around I saw an English tea shop and decided to treat myself to some proper English tea ...and some eggs benedict...and then some scones with jam and cream. It was perhaps rather indulgent but it was delicious and I felt very sophisticated sitting having my tea on my own whilst Singapore buzzed around me.

High Tea with Lady Bonsall

Getting around Singapore was really easy because of the nice air conditioned metro so from Little India where we stayed we hopped straight on the metro to the airport for our 11.30pm flight to Perth.

Leopard at Singapore Zoo

Nicobar pigeon at Singapore Zoo

The famous Raffles Hotel

Indonesia - Lombok

Kuta Beach - deserted in the off season

From Labuan Bajo we caught a plane to Lombok, via Bali. We arrived late expecting a 2 hour taxi journey to Kuta beach where we had planned to stay. Luckily since our lonely planet had been published, a new airport had been built and we were pleasantly surprised to find the journey was a fraction of the price and only 20 minutes! 

We checked into our homestay and went for dinner at a beach bar across the road. The food was yummy but we experienced what became a bit of a running theme throughout Lombok…at the end when they added up the bill they wrote down one of the meals as 5,000 rupiah more than it should have been. We let it slide as we were tired and 5,000 Rupiah is only about 35p but the same thing happened the next time we ate there. In fact almost every restaurant we went to either the waiter didn’t bring us back our change if it wasn’t a substantial amount or they tried to overcharge us by sneakily adding on money to our meals hoping we wouldn’t notice. One guy took a twenty percent tip and tried to convince us that the twenty percent he was taking was actually only ten percent…our maths may not be amazing but it’s better than that!

The chilli in Lombok was the hottest I have
experienced....WOW!!!

Lombok was very beautiful, Kuta beach where we stayed had white sand and clear water with idyllic surroundings. The beach was also completely empty most of the time as the tourist season had died down the previous month. The only thing that would put us off going back was the fact that you couldn’t sit in one of the beach bars or sunbathe on the beach for more than about 5 minutes before someone came and tried to sell you something. More often than not it was a persistent child from the next village selling bracelets. But like any beach seller despite you saying you don’t want whatever they’re selling they hang around for at least 20 minutes trying to persuade you, making you feel guilty as they get more and more annoying!

Moped with surf rack

We had chosen to go to Kuta because it has some good surf breaks for beginners. On our first full day we went in search of surf schools and arranged to be taken to one of the local breaks. Once again the breaks were over reef, only this time we didn’t have reef shoes on. Unfortunately the tide was also going out so although the surfing was fun I cut my knee open on some rocks and had some pretty painful coral cuts on my feet! Mike was happy to just get going on his own with the surfing, whilst I had another lesson with a young lad from the village. We were much more successful this time and were both standing up and riding the waves in no time! The following day we hired a moped and went back to the same spot when the tide was high so there was no chance of crashing on to the rocks! The rest of the week was spent mostly surfing and chilling out. Mike went out every morning and by the end was definitely starting to get more confident and building up his skills. With really good wifi in the homestay we also managed to get lots of admin bits sorted so it was a nice relaxing final week in Indonesia. I'll hand you over to Mike to hear about his surfing experiences :) 

I really enjoyed my time surfing in Lombok. Although surfing in Indonesia isn’t necessarily for beginners and some of the waves were pretty intimidating. The local lad who was acting as my guide decided to take me to a “local” surf spot. Obviously for someone growing up in Lombok surfing comes easily to him and I think he underestimated how tough it can be for an inexperienced surfer. The waves were up to 2 metres high and were breaking quickly over a shallow reef. I was using a shorter board than usual and although a little nervous I thought I may as well give it a go. The waves were fast and powerful and I didn’t manage to successfully catch a single one. At one point I was pulled into the shallow reef by a strong rip current. I tried unsuccessfully to duck under the approaching wave. It pulled me up inside the wave and pummeled me down onto the reef. In the process I managed to lose both my reef shoes, my t-shirt, almost my swimming shorts and I cut my legs. It felt like an eternity down there but was probably not more than 20 seconds. Upon surfacing I decided it was definitely enough for that day and limped onto the beach. I managed to retrieve my t-shirt and only one shoe and vowed to stick to the strictly “beginner” waves from then on. 

This snake was in our room 

Tokay gecko eating a frog

Indonesia - Flores, Komodo National Park

Part of the Komodo Archipeligo

After a couple of days in Lembongan it was time to move on again and this time to Flores and Luaban Bajo. We had arranged to do a three day diving liveaboard trip around the island of Komodo. We arrived a couple of days early however so checked into a nice hostel set on a hill that overlooked the harbour. Labuan Bajo  itself was tiny and instead of doing any day trips we decided to save the pennies and just have a couple of days chilling out. We found a nice treetop bar that overlooked the sea and had a shaded roof terrace and free wifi! We went for lunch and after a long chat on skype to my parents, lots of internet browsing and lots of reading we left 10 hours later!!

Our livaboard boat

The day of the trip arrived and we excitedly went down to the harbour to meet our crew and the two dutch girls who would be joining us on the boat. Unsure about what the boat would be like we were very pleasantly surprised – it was much bigger than we were expecting with a whole section at the back for all the dive equipment, a little kitchen, dining room and all the cabins down below. There were also two big sun decks J There were 5 crew members, all local Indonesians, to run the boat plus our dive master who was also from Flores. Over the course of the trip we were completely spoilt, the food was fantastic and we had pretty much everything done for us – all our dive tanks changed and equipment washed for us, they even made our beds! The first day we did three dives, the second we did four including a dawn and a night dive and the final day we visited Komodo National park to see the Komodo dragons and then did a further three dives. I won’t go into each dive in detail but I will say overall the diving was phenomenal!!

Our two favourite dives were ‘Manta Point’ and ‘Castle Rock’. Obviously we went to Manta Point in search of manta rays and at first we thought we might not see any! We swam around for about 15 minutes and saw absolutely nothing but dead coral, to make matters worse our dive master was swimming so quickly through the current we had to swim as fast as we could just to keep up! We weren’t disheartened for long though as we saw in the distance four schooling Manta Rays swimming towards us. They were so beautiful and graceful it was incredible. We sat on the ocean floor and just watched them for about 10 minutes. They were quite inquisitive and swam really close to us whilst we sat really still trying not to scare them with our bubbles. In total we saw about 10 Rays that dive, all varying in size but the largest of which was about 4m across.

The best dive by far though was ‘Castle Rock’. We jumped off the boat and went straight down rather than waiting for each other on the surface because the currents were really strong. I do not exaggerate when I say it was like jumping into one of those aquarium tunnels. The water was crystal clear and there were fish everywhere! Huge schools of fish of all different colours and sizes. Straight away we could see turtles and about 5 reef sharks in amongst the fish. We stayed in one place for about 25 minutes just watching the insane amounts of marine life coming and going and then started making our way around the rock. We were just coming around the side of the rock, swimming quite hard against the strong current when I looked up and saw two dolphins! A mother and a baby dolphin swimming side by side and heading off into the blue!! I couldn’t believe it. I turned around to make sure Mike had seen the dolphins only to find him frantically (and silently) banging his tank trying to get my attention…apparently the dolphins had been there for about 2 minutes and too engrossed with the small fish I had been bumbling along unaware whilst everyone else was going ballistic trying to get my attention. When we finished the dive none of us could believe quite how amazing it was – Sipadan was brilliant but I think this probably topped it!

White-tip reef sharks

Dolphin and baby

As well as all the diving we also visited Komodo National Park in search of Komodo dragons. We got the little speed boat from our big boat to the island and went to meet our guide. Within 5 minutes we had seen our first dragon…he was sleeping underneath the guide hut and had two broken legs, apparently the result of fighting with one of the other males (over a female). He looked half dead to be honest and we all hoped that he wouldn’t be the only dragon we saw. We also hoped that the story was true and that he hadn’t had his legs purposefully 

broken to guarantee the tourists a sighting!! We moved on and started walking around the island, we walked up a hill to see a nice view of the surrounding waters and then straight back down to the guide huts. Although the walk was pretty short (!) we did manage to see three more dragons along the way.  On the way out we also met a girl waiting by the gate, she hadn’t been allowed into the park because she was menstruating. Apparently dragons have a very keen sense of smell and they are attracted to the smell of blood. One woman got attacked and killed in the park a couple of months ago because the dragons could smell blood on her! Difficult to believe when you see them lazing in the sun or strolling at snails pace around the park but they can actually run about 20km an hour and can be really vicious.

When the three day trip was over none of us wanted to get off the boat! We’d had such a good time…unbelievable diving, amazing food, fantastic weather and great company! The final day was also my 26^th birthday so when we got back to Labuan Bajo Mike and I went out for a yummy meal at a really nice Italian restaurant. Then we met up with the girls and some of the crew from the boat for cocktails. All in all an awesome birthday!!