Best’s and Worst’s of Indonesia, arguably the world’s most spectacular country

Admittedly, calling Indonesia the most spectacular country is quite bold. We visited four islands (not counting the ones in Komodo National Park) out of 17,000+ islands in this remarkable archipelago, and are awestruck by its diversity. Java, Flores, Bali, and Gili Trawangan are all so different that they might as well constitute four countries in and of themselves. Between these islands differences in culture, way and pace of life, religion, food, landscape, and natural beauty are striking and easily noticeable. We have constantly found ourselves thinking about the other 16,996+ islands we didn’t have a chance to visit. One could easily spend years exploring Indonesia and barely scratch the surface. It is hard to imagine another country with such splendid diversity.

That said, travel in Indonesia is not without its frustrations. The constant touting, bargaining, hard-selling, and the feeling of being ripped off made us want to pull our hair out from time to time. At various instances, each of us became so frustrated that we felt like we didn’t have the will to continue traveling. At other times we were so overwhelmed by the generosity of the Indonesian people and intensity of the natural beauty that we wanted to move there. Perhaps, it is this bittersweet element that makes Indonesia such an enchanting travel destination. We know that we will soon forget the challenges and we will be left with only shining memories of this nation of islands.

Leaving Indonesia marks a real transition in our journey. We have now been on the road for a little over three months (seven more to go), and, following a brief stop in Singapore, we will leave Southeast Asia. Over the next few months we will explore India and Nepal. First on the agenda is a month-long trek in the Everest Region. I have been fantasizing about hiking in the Himalayas for more than 10 years now. In a way, visiting the Nepal Himalaya as part of this trip is like fulfilling a dream within a dream.

Saying goodbye to Indonesia, we hope you enjoy these stats and a few of our highlights and lowlights.

By the numbers

Days in Indonesia: 56

National Parks/Natural Areas Visited: 5

World Heritage Sites Visited: 4

Stomach Illnesses: 1 (a bug caught Rachel on OUR LAST DAY)

Flights: 2

Train Rides: 0

Boat Trips: 4

Bus/Shared Taxi Rides: 18

Average $ Spent per Day (excluding flights): $82

Cheapest Hotel Room: $15 a night (at 4 places along the way)

Cheapest Dinner (for 2): $5.40 (at Hotel Silverin in Bajawa, Flores)

Photos Taken: 4,253 (an average of 76/day-yikes!)

Best’s

Best Day

Nick: Seeing our first Komodo dragons then snorkeling over the absolutely pristine coral at Pink Beach. All of this was topped off by watching a splendid sunset on top of our boat.

Rachel: The day we walked around the Sidemen Valley and came home just in time stay dry and enjoy a huge thunderstorm from our balcony

Best City/Town

Nick: Sidemen Valley, Bali (I want to live there someday)

Rachel: Sidemen Valley, Bali

Best National Park

Nick: Komodo National Park

Rachel: Komodo National Park (Bromo is a close 2^nd)

Best Meal

Nick: Tomato, garlic, chili pasta we cooked for ourselves in Ubud (I just loved cooking for the 1^st time in more than 2 months)

Rachel: The first time I had Gado-Gado in Java- boiled vegetables, tofu, tempeh, and a boiled egg all smothered with gingery peanut sauce, and of course rice crackers on the side!!!

Best Wildlife Experience

Nick: Stalking Komodo dragons and then being pursued by said dragons while taking photos (Snorkeling in Komodo National Park is a close second)

Rachel: Watching a large turtle sleep on a dive in Gili T

Best View

Nick: Bromo National Park from Gunung Penanjakan (the best view of my life, so far)

Rachel: Sunrise over Bromo National Park from Gunung Penanjakan (tied for best view with the Fitz Roy Range in El Chalten, Argentina)

Best Surprise

Nick: Trekking to Belaragi Village, Flores (runner-up: Sidemen Valley, Bali)

Rachel: How good the food is in Indonesia

Best Hotel/Hostel

Nick: Sawah Indah, Sidemen Valley, Bali

Rachel: tied between Sawah Indah in Sidemen Valley and our villa on Gili T

Place to which we’d most like to return

Nick: Bromo National Park in Java

Rachel: Sidemen Valley, Bali

Most Fun

Nick: Partying on Gili T with Kyle

Rachel: Ditto, Kyle put the fun in Indonesia!!

Worst’s

Worst City/Town

Nick: Labuan Bajo, Flores (oppressively hot and humid with prolific trash everywhere and the stench of rotting fish mixed with the smell of garbage)

Rachel: Labuan Bajo, Flores; rotting fish and trash leave a lasting impression

Worst Meal

Nick: Fruit Salad in Maumere, Flores (you’re probably thinking, how bad fruit salad can be? The answer is, pretty bad when it is heavily salted and seasoned with white pepper.)

Rachel: Dinner at Arabika at the Ijen Plateau. Just exactly how does it take one and a half hours to make noodle soup from a package (think Ramen)?

Biggest Waste of Money

Nick: The trek to Belaragi was a pretty poor value for the S

Rachel: $5 I paid for an offering basket that should have been $0.50, my bargaining sense was absent at that moment.

Most Disappointing Moment

Nick: Our boat for the Komodo National Park trip

Rachel: Three minutes into a shower and the water turned black with mud. Hidayah Homestay, Moni, Flores

Worst Hotel/Hostel:

Nick: Hotel Bintang Wisata, Bajawa, Flores

Rachel: Hotel Bintang Wisata, Bajawa, Flores (I think there was a mouse living in the mattress)

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“Thunder Struck” in the Sidemen Valley

20-28 September 2010

“It looks like its letting up” Nick repeats for the 3^rd or maybe 10^th time today. It has been raining for almost three days and Nick is pacing from balcony to balcony, across the beautiful hardwood floors of our glass enclosed room overlooking the Sidemen Valley. I am comfortably reading my 13^th book of the trip under a batik quilt, reveling at the novelty of being chilly, and peeking out from time to time to enjoy the view through the open sliding glass doors that comprise two of the four walls of our room. Being marooned here in this villa, tucked serenely in the Sidemen Valley, couldn’t be more relaxing for me or more frustrating for Nick. While I contemplate taking yet another bath in our giant black stone bathtub, Nick exclaims that he must go on a walk before dinner. I accompany him and it actually does not rain for a full thirty minutes, allowing us to enjoy the indescribably green landscape of the now misty and soggy countryside.

After a night of lightning and thunder, we awoke to clearing skies and great expectations for a day outdoors. After breakfast, we put on our running shoes and hit the road for a long run across the rolling green valley. On this and other runs during our stay, we ran up and down hills, through small villages, encountered many friendly children, drying peanuts and cloves, an impromptu roadside cock fight, eight year olds riding motorbikes, disinterested dogs, and a rain swollen river. In the afternoons it usually rained and as such we read, ate lunch, napped, did yoga, waited for the clouds to clear for a good view of Gunung Agung, took additional walks, and used the internet while drinking banana lassi’s. We originally planned to stay here three days, three turned to six, six turned into nine. We love this valley.

The next few days were spent doing much of the same. We soaked up the bright green calm of the terraced rice fields. I repeatedly tried and failed to count the number of terraces visible from our balcony-there are just too many. The intermittent bursts of thunder became almost comical as they repeatedly caused me to scream or for Nick to literally restrain me from jumping out of bed in the middle of the night (some of you may be familiar with my easy to scare nature). One day, in between rain storms, we climbed innumerable slick-as-ice stairs up a nearby ridge to visit a beautiful spire-like temple visible from the valley floor below. After our exhausting hike, we made it back to Sawah Indah (our hotel) just as the rain started to fall, fat raindrops threatened to soak us in the seconds it took to climb the stairs to our patio entrance.

On September 23rd, we walked the perimeter of the valley (the first of many such walks) and in the process were able to enjoy the preparations and processions of the bi-annual full moon festival to honor temple guards. We saw young girls and women dressed in lace and batik sarongs, balancing tall pyramids of fruit, beautiful flower arrangements, mirrors, and rattan-woven baskets on their heads while they headed in and out of temples. Later that day, one of the biggest rains in our 28 year old hotel managers memory bulleted through the valley, resulting in landslides and roads sloughing off the hillsides. We watched from our terrace as the neighboring farmers braved the rain and cleared out the drainage systems that keep their terraces from flooding over and sliding down the steep incline. It was likely the hardest sustained (three hours or more) rain Nick and I had ever witnessed. Ah, the tropics!

On another day, we purchased beautiful handmade tiles (about $0.80 apiece) from the same tile maker who makes the beautiful tiles that cover the floors and bathrooms at Sawah Indah. Nick kept me about my senses as I considered buying enough tiles to fill an imaginary kitchen floor in a home we do not own. Talk about the potential for buyer’s remorse.

In the evenings, we drank beer, and arak cocktails, watched the sunset, and anticipated the rain as it moved across the valley. We learned the joys of watching it head straight for us, a million pin pricks in each of the hundreds of terraced rice fields. Watching weather arrive is a strangely fulfilling experience when you have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

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Uber-relaxed in Ubud

12-17 September
We arrived back in Bali from Flores and almost immediately got into an argument with some taxi drivers. To be honest, we were not excited to be back in Bali. Our four days in beautiful Sanur a few weeks ago made us weary of touts and budget busting prices. Weary is actually a word we have started to use more often than we should.

We made our way to Ubud from the airport (about a 1.5 hour drive) and lucked out at Shanti Homestay with a beautiful bungalow with attached kitchen for about $25 a night! Attached kitchen!! I write this post from our back garden patio where we just enjoyed lunch and a coffee. After two and a half months of eating out, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to self-cater and cook some meals of our own. In addition, our hosts cook us the best breakfasts, usually a scramble or pineapple pancake with a large plate of fruit, we have had on the entire trip. After one night we decided to stay a week.


Ubud is a pleasant town and has more shops than even the most dedicated shopper could handle. There are also some beautiful countryside walks to enjoy, a forest full of monkeys, and plenty of transit touts to avoid on the streets. We spent the first few days literally wondering through the hillside enjoying the never-ending rice fields and river canyon views. We've exchanged books in used bookstores, Nick cooked us some delicious pasta, I've bought more jewelry than I should, and I enjoyed a great yoga class.

The highlight for both of us was a Kecak performance -monkey chant dance - we attended in one of the local temples. Kecak is hard to explain, but it sounds to us like the word "kecak" (pronounced "kechack") repeated over and over by sections of performers at different tones, at different speeds, in whispers, and in screams. The leaders of the group yell loudly to change the speed or intonation of the sound. All the while the performers are sitting cross-legged in a circle and swaying side to side, back and forth, hands up, hands down, laying down, etc. etc. etc. This seems like chaos, but it is expertly performed and is something that we will never forget. This particular performance molded kecak and the ramayana story together. At the end of the performance a man came out and danced wildly through a pile of burning coconuts, kicking husks this way and that, some practically landing on tourists laps. This was quite amusing.

We will spend a few more relaxing days in Ubud - more hiking and yoga - before heading northsouth to the Sideman Valley and then north to Lovina. We have lost our weariness and have fallen in love with Bali after all.

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Bali beckons on the rough road across Java.

26-30 August 2010

Weary from the multiple full day bus rides across Java from Yogyakarta to Bromo and then again from Bromo to Ijen, we decided to “get it over with” and leave Java two days early for the 12 hour trek to Bali.

The next morning, we found ourselves standing at the security checkpoint outside the Arabika coffee plantation waiting for a bemo (mini-bus) at 6am. We promised ourselves that as long as we made it onto the ferry that transports passengers between Java and Bali before 1pm (6 hours later) we would continue onto Bali (5 more hours) and not stay in Java that night. We were ready for a long day of transport. In total, we rode five buses that day. Five. The first bemo took us from Ijen down a steep, partially paved road to a crossing where we picked up another bemo. After another hour or so on this clownish like transport (the bus was lacking its higher gears and at full speed traveled at about 40 miles an hour) we hopped onto a bus headed for Denpasar, Bali.

As we munched on peanuts and listened to the onboard street band, I avoided eye contact with the kid who was trying to get me to give him my sunglasses or at least a kiss on the cheek. After successfully retaining my sunglasses and my honor, an hour and a half later on a deserted stretch of road one of the back tires blew out. This was, in fact, our second flat tire on our journey across Java, so like the locals we were unimpressed and patiently waited for the tire to be changed. After about 10 minutes it was clear that we had been driving on the spare as the tire that appeared from under the bus was totally mutilated. Ten minutes more and we were generously picked up by a passing bus, cramming ourselves and our bags into the already full bus. Indonesians are very generous people and an elderly woman offered for me to share a spot on her seat with her husband and granddaughter, squishing four people into a seat meant for two. I could not refuse her kind gesture and repeatedly smiled a thanked her “terima kasih”.

Arriving into the bus terminal in the coastal town of Banyuwangi, it became clear that we had lost our transport into Bali as they handed us 50,000 rupiah (about $5) and almost pushed us off the overflowing bus. In the terminal, the bemo drivers did not want to take us to the ferry station (about a five minute drive away) because they thought that the other bus company should pay. A few of the other passengers who had been pushed off the bus went to security to complain as we languished and pleaded to be taken anyway. Finally, after about a half an hour of this nonsense, the driver showed us a 50,000 rupiah note and pointed in the direction of the exit. Nick handed him the cash and we were off. All they wanted was five lousy dollars. We arrived at the ferry terminal and were greeted by men yelling “Denpasar!, Denpasar!”. We jumped onto a ferry, paid the fee, and checked our watch. It was 1:03pm. While we still had five hours or more ahead of us in a non-air conditioned, smoking permitted bus and we had had little food since our 5am breakfast (and stopping for lunch was out of the question) we were happy.

We arrived, exhausted, into the beach town of Sanur, Bali just a quick bemo ride from Denpasar around 6:30pm. After checking into our hotel we went to a nearby restaurant. We were greeted by traditionally dressed women, handed a free welcome cocktail, and finally the waitress gently placed plumerias behind our ears. All I could do was laugh. I embarrassed myself by giggling at the waitress. After almost two months of budget travel and a very long, hot, stinky, day behind us, we were suddenly deposited into a tourist haven, surrounded by Europeans on fancy vacations.

Being in Sanur, we could be anywhere. The difference between here and beach town X? Maybe it’s the beautiful and calming architecture, maybe the incense drenched Hinduism, or maybe it’s just the price? Maybe I’m just jaded. As humans we love places like this and we make them comfortable, including the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner. What made me giggle in that restaurant was how uncomfortable it made me to accept such a disingenuous gesture of hospitality that is practically required in so many of our vacation “destinations”. I almost wanted to lean over and whisper to the waitress “its ok, you can act normal now”.

The last few days we have enjoyed our budget $30 a night cottage three minutes from the beach, our outdoor shower, our front and back patios, and the koi pond that sits below our giant bay windows. Dodging the flower, incense, and food (rice or sometimes a Ritz cracker) offerings to the Hindu gods, we’ve taken long evening walks on the boardwalk that runs along the beach and enjoyed watching local kids fly kites and the views of neighboring islands. I’ve gone to a yoga class, we’ve both enjoyed drinking good coffee, and who can forget the chocolate cheesecake we had for dessert last night! Bali is so pleasant that it feels like a vacation from our vacation.

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