Blog Posts, SE Asia Blog Posts

Weeks 148-156: Settling in to life in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia

It has been a long time since I posted on here, that is partly because I haven’t been doing anything particularly exciting travel-wise, but also because I have been busy settling in to life in Yogyakarta. When I last posted I was about to head to Malaysia so that I could renew my visa and return to Java, after arriving here I decided that I would stay for a while and found a job in an English Language Centre called EF. I work Monday to Friday afternoons and teach up to 6 hours a day for a wage of around $650 a month, which is pretty good for Indonesia.

I’m living with Jess in her house in the north of the city and we have got ourselves lots of pets, firstly a large tropical fish tank (110cmx40cm and 50cm deep). Then we visited Yogyakarta bird market where we saw some Slow Loris for sale, which was very tempting until I did a little research and found that it is illegal to buy, sell or own them. So we ended up with 3 Lovebirds and several Canaries. The latest addition to the house is Jack, a Yorkshire Terrier.

Borobudur

It has been 3 years since I left Sheffield on my motorbike, since then I have travelled around 63,000Km and visited 42 different countries to end up on the other side of the world, here in Indonesia. Yogyakarta isn’t the greatest place to live, but it isn’t bad for a city, there are lots of nice places within a few hours car journey, so I will add pictures of the beaches, mountains and temples that I see over the next few months. I won’t be blogging very regularly but I will continue to add pictures and videos, as well as improving the content of my website and working on my book.

Blog Posts, SE Asia Blog Posts

Weeks 146 & 147: Balikpapan and Changing Plans Again

Just a short post this time. After spending two weeks in Jess’ home town of Balikpapan, fixing up her mothers fish pond and looking after her dogs, my Indonesian visa is almost finished. But in a last minute change of plans, I have decided to get a new visa and return to Java for a while and see some of central Java (which I skipped on the way through due to visa limitations). I will probably hang around in Java until I can claim my Tax and Superannuation payments back from the Australian government. In the meantime I will see what I missed in Java the first time.

Borobudur

Blog Posts, SE Asia Blog Posts

Weeks 144 & 145: Kuala Lumpur & Back to Borneo

From Kota Kinabalu we headed back to Balikpapan, where my bicycle was waiting for me, but the cheapest flights go through Kuala Lumpur. As we would be stopping in Kuala Lumpur anyway, I figured it would be better to stay there for a couple of nights so that we can explore the city a little. I will fly back there with my bicycle soon, but Jessica had never been there and I don’t like to stop over in a place for just a few hours, it seems like a waste. So we arranged a Couchsurfing host in Kuala Lumpur and spent a day seeing a few of the tourist destinations, basically Batu Caves, the Petronas towers and a walk in the city. Batu caves are a couple of caves, one of which is home to a Hindu temple, the other is a nature reserve area for the study of bats and cave insects. After a tour of the caves we took the train back into the city and headed to the Petronas towers and asked about the tour to go up to the sky bridge. I was shocked to find that it was more expensive than the ticket to Borobudur temple (80 Ringit), I wasn’t too interested in paying to go, but the decision was made for me as the tickets were all sold out.

Petronas Towers

We flew from Kuala Lumpur back to Jessica’s home town of Balikpapan and stayed at her parents house for a few days before we flew to Central Borneo to visit her sister. There wasn’t a lot to do in her sisters city, Palangkaraya, we visited a few Dayak holy sites and spent the rest of the time relaxing at the hotel that her sister works in. Lots of time spent swimming, eating buffet breakfasts and using fast Wifi. On our way back to Balikpapan we stayed a night in Banjarmasin, a city 4 hours from Palangkaraya which is where we need to get our plane. This morning we got up at 4am and took a boat out onto the river to see the floating market. We got there before sunrise and had an awesome view of the locals arriving to sell food from their boats, it was worth the early morning and the ride back down the river was really nice too, seeing the locals waking up and washing in the river, starting their daily routine.

Lok Baintan Floating Market

Blog Posts, SE Asia Blog Posts

Week 143: East Malaysia and Brunei

This week seems to have lasted at least two weeks, probably because we have squeezed so much into the last seven days. We arrived in Tarakan with our guide from Derawan and visited an area of mangrove that is home to a group of proboscis monkeys. We only stayed in Tarakan for one day and then headed over the border into Malaysia, in another ferry, to a town called Tawau. We couchsurfed with an English expat who runs a language centre in the city, we sat in on a few lessons and talked with his students. The next day we visited a nearby national park with an area of forest and waterfall, then went back to the language centre.

Proboscis Monkey

From Tawau we headed north on a 10 hour bus ride to Kota Kinabalu to stay with another couchsurfing host. Kota Kinabalu is a really nice little city, clean and quiet, but not very much to see. The best places to visit are the islands, which are a short boat journey from the city, and the night market where you can get lots of really great food. After a couple of days in KK we took a boat to another island called Labuan, which is a place for people to buy duty-free, then another ferry to Brunei. I had heard about Brunei and it always sounded kind of interesting, but I wouldn’t really recommend it as a main destination for a trip. There are a few nice places to visit but a few days is enough to see everything. We visited the royal regalia museum, which started out fun and a little interesting, but by the time we were maybe half way through the museum I was fed up of it, to the point where I was planning to have a huge rant in this blog post about how we shouldn’t still have monarchy in the modern world. The only reason I am not doing that is because I met a couple of people who live in Brunei and they really like having the sultan ruling their country. He gives them all great benefits and very cheap petrol, I have heard before that the best type of government is to have a benevolent dictator, but the obvious problem with that situation is that dictators aren’t always benevolent. I still believe that monarchy should be abolished but I’m not going to moan about it like I was planning to.

Brunei

From Brunei we headed back to Kota Kinabalu by boat, stopping off in Labuan again on the way and having more food in the night market before heading back to our hosts place. This whole week stemmed from a spur of the moment decision, originally we were just crossing the border to renew my visa, but I thought it could be a good opportunity to see some of East Malaysia and Brunei. It hasn’t been an amazing week, but it was definitely better than a simple visa run to the border. Plus I guess it would be hard to improve on the week before this, in Derawan.

Blog Posts, SE Asia Blog Posts

Week 142: Derawan

What a great week! It started out in Balikpapan spending some time in the city, going to the cinema and eating out in the evening with Jessica’s family. Then on Wednesday, while we were out using some free Wifi at the shopping mall, my bicycle arrived from Jakarta two days earlier than I had been promised by DBM Cargo, the bike was securely packaged, nothing damaged or missing and everything just as I left it with them. Perfect timing too, because the very next morning we headed to Derawan, a small island off the east coast of Borneo which is a great destination for snorkelling and diving, and I needed a few things that I had left packed on the bike.

Bike packed from shipping

To get to Derawan we took a short flight to Berau, then took a two hour ride in a car to the harbour and another hour or so in a boat out to the island. Derawan itself is a very small island, it takes less than an hour to walk all the way around it, there is the village on one side and the tourist area on the other. The next morning we started our activities by taking a boat out to a neighbouring island called Maratua, a larger island with a much more expensive beach resort. We were taken there to take pictures on the beach, but I couldn’t resist swimming in the crystal clear water around the resort, which is on legs above the sea. From there it was a short boat ride to Kakaban, for some pretty decent shallow snorkelling in the bay, followed by the attraction that makes Kakaban famous. The island has a lake on it which is home to thousands of jellyfish which don’t sting, tourists can swim with them and take pictures and videos. I managed to spot three out of the four species of jellyfish in the lake, the forth is much smaller than the others and is also present in much smaller numbers.

Manta Ray

The next stop was by far my favourite activity of the trip, we took the boat to Sangalaki island and snorkelled with Manta Rays. I have seen Mantas while scuba diving in South Africa, but it was only from a distance and only one at a time (two in total), but here in Sangalaki I swam with six or seven mantas. One smaller manta which was only a little under 2 meters in wingspan, one slightly larger and the other four or five were huge, about 4 or 5 meter wingspan. To swim with them was amazing, seeing them ‘fly’ through the water and feeling a little panicked when they would come straight towards me with their huge mouths open. One of the larger mantas had a school of small yellow fish swimming right in front of its open mouth, stealing the plankton from the water just as it was about to be scooped up by the manta. After the mantas we headed onto Sangalaki island itself to see a turtle conservation station which was set up by the Indonesian government. They had about 200 baby green turtles which had hatched the previous day, they collected them up and were preparing to release them that evening, so we had a chance to take pictures and hold the babies.

Baby Turtle

The next day we stayed closer to Derawan island to do some of the best snorkelling I have experienced. The water was pretty deep, but on the sea floor was a beautiful and diverse coral garden, me and our guide would dive down to the bottom to collect starfish and shells for the group to look at, and also to take pictures and videos. It is a shame that we could only stay for three nights (because of the price, but also because of my looming visa deadline), I really loved the island and could have happily stayed there a couple of weeks or more without getting bored. This morning we headed back to the mainland and headed north to another island called Tarakan, but tomorrow we will take another boat out of Indonesia and into Malaysia. I will compile a video of my Derawan experiences soon and get that uploaded when I have access to a decent internet connection.

Coral Reef