Well today we are leaving our little villa by the sea and heading across the straight to the island of Gili Trawangan where we will spend our days diving. Our time on Lombok has been great so far, we made it out golfing on Friday at the Kosaido Golf Course about 1/2 an hour away from the hotel. While neither of our scores were particularly amazing it was pretty wonderful to be able to say "my golf ball landed just below that palm tree," and "the pin is up there about 30 feet this side of the ocean." The Indonesian golf tradition is that they send a caddy out with every golfer so as we left the club house two Indonesian men hopped on the back of our cart and proceeded to hand us clubs, give us tips on the greens, and find our golf balls when we shot them into the bush. On the first hole Tim promptly sliced his ball - and there was a chorus of "too bads" and "nice tries" from the gaggle of local children surrounding the cart. I made one of 3 good shots all day off my tee shot on the first hole and got a bunch of suprised "nice shot!" and "ooohhhh-ing" from the peanut gallery followed by polite clapping. We realized fairly quickly the role of the small children was not to provide the cheering crowd noises, but was to retreive lost balls that our caddies were unable to locate, and show up at the next tee box and sell them back to us for 2000 IDR or about 20 cents. Sure enough a water hazard or two later and there were shiny white, barely used, Maxflis waiting for us at the next hole. Relalizing that 20 cents was actually a pretty good deal, we rewarded the hard work and bought a few of the balls. Our caddies quickly realized that we were not undercover PGA and LPGA players and took far to much pleasure in telling us our scores at the end of each hole. I didn't know that you could actually get a 10 on a par 4, but apparently you can. By 11 am we were thankfully finishing up and the heat of the day was upon us. It is not easy to golf in 35 degree heat, so future tee times will continue to be as early as possible.
We aren't sure what we will have for internet connection while we are on Gili Trawangan, so we may or may not be posting over the next few days - if we aren't able to our next update will be on Thursday from Bali. Talk to you soon!
And just so you know, we have been trying to upload pictures and haven't been able to. We will try again at the next internet site - hopefully with more luck!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
On an island in the sun...
We are now on Lombok, a little island just to the east of Bali. We had to get up at 3:45 AM to catch the flight which had a 2 hour layover in Sudihaya, which gave us the chance to grab a bite, then off to Lombok... well not quite. Once all of the passengers boarded the plane and we got onto the runway, we noticed that there was no A/C working on the plane, so it was back the the terminal so the mechanics could work their magic. Now, if you had 80 people jammed tight in an aluminum tube sitting on a black ashphalt tarmac in + 34 degrees heat with no AC on the plane, would you deplane them or let them raost a little longer?? We ended up roasting a little longer, but as it turned out, they had it working in about 50 minutes and we were really on our way.
Our driver met us at the airport and drove us the 30 minutes to the resort, and what a place! This is the most extravagant hotel we will be staying in for the entire trip, and likely the nicest accomodations I will ever stay in. When you walk into our little piece of heaven, you find yourself in a covered open air kitchen and living room, overlooking our own little "plunge pool", and past the pool is our enclosed air conditioned bedroom. The room (it should really be called a small compound) is very private, or at least it is meant to be... there are 10 foot walls all around with a number of trees and other plants to provide us with even more privacy... but there is a two story guest house being built just to the side of us and the workers were putting the finishing touches on the roof. I think that once one of the young lads saw Cat prancing about, the rest of the work crew decided that the roof would be a great place to take a coffee break and have a gander. While this did provide me with a bit of entertainment, Catherine reminded me that they might not all be looking at her, so we spoke with the manager, who had made arrangements that no work was to be done on the second floor, and she got us our privacy back in our little slice of heaven.
We spent the rest of the day doing a bit of a hike into town, then back to the resort for a beautiful sunset, a delicious meal and of course, a bintang or two. We tried our best to stay up past 8:30, but the travelling and the heat had beaten us into submission. Slept like a log.
Today we told ourselves we were gonna do nothing but relax, suntan (burn), dip into the ocean, send a few emails and make a few skype calls. For those that have never tried this, and that included me until a week ago, this is a free internet video messaging system. Basically, you get a web camera, plug it into your computer, download the skype program, and start looking up your friends who have it and start chatting. David and Elaine mentioned that this is how they contact their families when they are on vacation, so we thought we would give it a try. We sent out a few emails and set it up so others would be online for 10:00 AM our time here. There were a few glitches as the internet signal here fluxuates depending on where you stand, but we were able to talk with Cat's mom, Ken and Noreen, and we could see David and Elaine, but they couldnt hear us... we will be trying again soon to get it working proper. All in all, it is pretty amazing that I can sit here by the pool on the other side of the planet and have a face to face conversation with someone back home.
Anyways, after the skype calls, we accomplished what we set out to do ... nothing. We snorkeled, ate, had a beer, made a tee time (golfing tomorrow), felt sad about the Oilers, and got a sunburn. Pretty full day really :)
Well time to go have some dinner... chat soon!
Tim
Our driver met us at the airport and drove us the 30 minutes to the resort, and what a place! This is the most extravagant hotel we will be staying in for the entire trip, and likely the nicest accomodations I will ever stay in. When you walk into our little piece of heaven, you find yourself in a covered open air kitchen and living room, overlooking our own little "plunge pool", and past the pool is our enclosed air conditioned bedroom. The room (it should really be called a small compound) is very private, or at least it is meant to be... there are 10 foot walls all around with a number of trees and other plants to provide us with even more privacy... but there is a two story guest house being built just to the side of us and the workers were putting the finishing touches on the roof. I think that once one of the young lads saw Cat prancing about, the rest of the work crew decided that the roof would be a great place to take a coffee break and have a gander. While this did provide me with a bit of entertainment, Catherine reminded me that they might not all be looking at her, so we spoke with the manager, who had made arrangements that no work was to be done on the second floor, and she got us our privacy back in our little slice of heaven.
We spent the rest of the day doing a bit of a hike into town, then back to the resort for a beautiful sunset, a delicious meal and of course, a bintang or two. We tried our best to stay up past 8:30, but the travelling and the heat had beaten us into submission. Slept like a log.
Today we told ourselves we were gonna do nothing but relax, suntan (burn), dip into the ocean, send a few emails and make a few skype calls. For those that have never tried this, and that included me until a week ago, this is a free internet video messaging system. Basically, you get a web camera, plug it into your computer, download the skype program, and start looking up your friends who have it and start chatting. David and Elaine mentioned that this is how they contact their families when they are on vacation, so we thought we would give it a try. We sent out a few emails and set it up so others would be online for 10:00 AM our time here. There were a few glitches as the internet signal here fluxuates depending on where you stand, but we were able to talk with Cat's mom, Ken and Noreen, and we could see David and Elaine, but they couldnt hear us... we will be trying again soon to get it working proper. All in all, it is pretty amazing that I can sit here by the pool on the other side of the planet and have a face to face conversation with someone back home.
Anyways, after the skype calls, we accomplished what we set out to do ... nothing. We snorkeled, ate, had a beer, made a tee time (golfing tomorrow), felt sad about the Oilers, and got a sunburn. Pretty full day really :)
Well time to go have some dinner... chat soon!
Tim
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Made it to Indonesia!
Hey all, well after having a great start to things in Bangkok, we left the beautiful Pullman hotel behind us and headed to the airport to fly to Yogyajakarta, on the island of Java in Indonesia. We arrived at the airport and quickly realized that we were overweight... well our luggage was overweight, not us. So we had to donate a little more money to the airline, but even though we packed lightly, the stuff we did bring with us we really do need, so we bit the bullet, paid the nice people and hopped on their plane.
We flew into Kuala Lampur airport and stayed there for about 1.5 hours, then carried on to Yogyajakarta and arrived at 1700 hours on the 5th. the temp was about 30 degrees and it had to be 100% humidity... awesome! We grabbed a cab and went to the hotel, which is the "sister" hotel to the one where we got engaged at in Havana. This hotel is every bit as beautiful as the one in Havana, and if you have about 3 minutes to kill, I decided to shoot a little walkthrough of the place...
We flew into Kuala Lampur airport and stayed there for about 1.5 hours, then carried on to Yogyajakarta and arrived at 1700 hours on the 5th. the temp was about 30 degrees and it had to be 100% humidity... awesome! We grabbed a cab and went to the hotel, which is the "sister" hotel to the one where we got engaged at in Havana. This hotel is every bit as beautiful as the one in Havana, and if you have about 3 minutes to kill, I decided to shoot a little walkthrough of the place...
Ok heres the deal with the walkthrough video... it is a little bigger than the kickboxing one and the connection we have here in our hotel is a littel slow, so as of right now, I havent been able to upload it to share it with you all... but take my word for it, it is beautiful, and we will have either pics or videos up shortly :)
Well, yesterday, we headed out into the throng of activity on the main market streets, and found a great little place for lunch... rice for me and noodles for Catherine, and a couple of beers for each of us for about 6 bucks... yummy! After lunch, we booked ourselves a tour of the nearby temples for tomorrow, and then headed to our hotel to cool off in the pool. It was another 30+ degrees and 80+% humidity and the pool felt great!
Well now it is a new day, and I started this post yesterday, but because of the slow download issue, I will tell you of our tour of the Barabradur temple today. I have seen a few temples in my life (Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras, as well as some great temples in Japan) but I have to say that this one takes the cake. Barabradur is a Bhuddist temple built in 750AD and after it was built, the area became largely Muslim, so the temple was not put to much use. Aside from alot of Bhuddas missing their heads (likely at the hands of the local Muslim faithful) this temple was in spectacular shape. It is a worldwide heratige site so it is constantly being upkept, and the grounds around it are spectacular as well. Here is a quick link if you wanna see a little more... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur
We arrived just after dawn and started the 5 km trek to the summit, 5 km if you do a clockwise ring around each level, which we did. If you walk up the temple in this fashion, you will be able to view every one of the hundreds of hand carved wall pieces, each depicting a piece of the story of how the Bhudda reached enlightenment. While we kinda lost the plot of the story, we did see some awesome stone work, cool skinks and geckos, and lots of neat bugs. Our timing couldn't have been better, because as we reached the top, we were greeted by many school kids out on a "greet the english speaking person" tour. They were all very polite and giggled at our repsonses to their questions. We made the climb down and took in a early lunch at the bottom in the market... have you ever had pinapple pancakes?? Yummy!!
Right now we are back in our room, having another Bintang and working on getting some pictures up on this blog so you can get a sense of how things are going for us here. Till we get that figured out, I am gonna put this post up so you all know we are doing great and having a great time.
Lastly, just a note on the beer situation here... the people on Java can not only make fantastic coffee (ever wonder why we call coffee Java?) but they brew a pretty fine Pilsener call Bintang. This beer far exceeds any of the yuck in Bangkok (like Singha which we did sample often) and I would say its on par with most of the good Canadian brands like Kokanee. No, really, its good!
Ok time to wake Catherine from her afternoon siesta and head out for supper.
Chat soon, Tim
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Well it has been a couple of fun nights here in Bangkok. We went to the Muay Thai kickboxing matches last night and watched some tiny little tough guys kick the crap outta each other.
To finish off the night we went down to Phat Pong road and had a few beers. This is a pretty popular place for tourists, lots of fake name brand merchandise and lots of "bars" with every kind of entertainment you could think of. We played it pretty safe and went to watch a Thai cover band.
We got up early today and went to the weekend market. It was amazing how much stuff was for sale in a one block area, and how many people come to buy there. We stayed till about 1400hrs, then back to the hotel. We planned to go out again tonight but our late afternoon nap kinda drifted into the evening, so we are gonna just start packing up and get ready for our flight to Yogjakarta tomorrow.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Pullman Bangkok King Power Hotel
Well we have settled in and are working on acclimating to both the time change and the temperature change. Its 3pm here right now, which means it is 2am at home, and its 36 degrees outside right now. There had been a little bit of rain, but it doesn't really cool things off, more like standing in a warm shower. Our hotel is wonderful, definately a change from the thin-walled guest house we stayed in last time Tim and I were in Bangkok in that it actually has air conditioning and walls, rather than screens, separating our room from the others. We are planning to spend the rest of the afternoon at the pool bar before heading off to Lumphini Stadium to watch the Muay Thai kickboxing matches Then its off to the infamous Patpong night market for some shopping and free entertainment.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
We made it
30 hours from the time we left the house to getting into the room in Bangkok, but here we are. Its 2 am, and we're tired, but very happy to be here.
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