Indonesia!

"What about Indonesia!!??" Yes, we spent nearly half of our honeymoon in Indonesia, so I'm finally answering that question. Indonesia, a far, far away land, approximately 8,700 miles from Montana, is the farthest we've ever been from home. The fact that it took us about 50 hours to get home from the far reaches of Indonesia is proof enough.

For those of you who aren't quite sure what or where Indonesia is, it's a country made up of an archipelago (a chain of islands) in Southeast Asia/Oceania. Surprisingly, it has over 17,000 islands and is the 4th most populous country in the world. It's capital is Jakarta. We were nowhere near there. We went first to the island of Bali, which I think would be considered a province. You may know Bali if you have read Eat, Pray, Love, it's the love section. Appropriate for a honeymoon, no? Before we went, when I thought of Bali, I imagined palm trees, rice paddies, beautiful beaches, really good coffee, and perhaps a lot of tourists. I wasn't so far off with how my mind made up Bali, however I left out a lot of what does make up Bali: third world impoverished, underdeveloped land, oh, and the coffee is terr- ahem, mostly instant.

When we arrived from Singapore the sun had just gone down, which meant we couldn't see much of anything on the way to our hotel. Our driver's name was Wayan, which I thought really funny since in Eat, Pray, Love she said it seemed everyone's name in Bali was Wayan, both male and female. Turns out it has something to do with which class you are in, and there are a few other names that are also quite popular, as in, almost every other person is named one of these names. Anyway, we made our way to Balangan Beach (southern Bali). Our first hotel was quite nice, a beautiful little enclosed garden with villas and a cute little pool. The place itself was amazing, but when we woke up in the morning we found we couldn't see the ocean, and there was pretty much nothing around us. We did venture out to the beach nearby, but it had really rough waves, which I guess was appropriate because the only thing there was a surf school, and a restaurant where we had lunch over the water. Outside of our little paradise, I was wondering where the rest of the paradise of Bali was. During our stay in Balangan we had an amazing seafood BBQ, and began to test the Balinese cuisine. We tried to venture out on a moto but knew almost immediately that we would get lost in the winding, unmarked streets. Fail. We decided to only stay there a couple nights before we headed out.

Nona's Bali, Balangan Beach

Our next destination would prove to be very entertaining: Ubud, the rice paddy center of Bali. The ride to Ubud was so interesting in itself. We hired a driver to take us there, and either he was out to impress or just felt like talking, because we got an entire history lesson on the development, religion, culture, and trades of Bali. It was fascinating, and since we weren't about to spend any time in museums, it was great to learn something about where we were. Bali is somewhat of a sad case. The tourism industry is quite a catch 22. Bali is severely underdeveloped in most of the country and cannot keep up with how their tourism industry is booming in recent years. Prices for the locals are sky high, there is horrible traffic, construction, etc. The workers have to pay about 75% of their income in taxes to the government. I immediately felt like part of the problem, however the locals insist that they are thankful for tourists, because that's how they are making money. This economic phenomenon is only happening on Bali, apparently the rest of Indonesia hasn't caught on to this extent of tourism.

Coffee tasting on the way to Ubud, here we tried Luwak Coffee, which is super expensive- guess how it's made? A mongoose eats the coffee beans and poops them out, then they use those beans to make coffee. Yep.

Back to Ubud. I liked this town a lot. It was bustling, full of tourists, shopping, restaurants from all over the world, and, of course, rice paddies. After spending some isolated days down south, it was nice to be back in civilization where we could shop and eat! We stayed in an awesome place right in the middle, yet still quiet and set back from everything, situated around a rice paddy. We had our own little villa, a nice big pool, and breakfast by a creek every day. We ended up staying 3 nights in Ubud. We exercised our bargaining skills at the markets, went to the spa twice for massages, ate some really good food, and explored the Monkey Forest, those little guys are such scavengers! We spent an afternoon exploring the rice paddies,  which are seemingly endless, and eventually got caught in a rain storm out there. We warmed up with some real coffee at Starbucks, I love Starbucks abroad, it's true. We were so disappointed with the coffee in Indonesia it was sad. Here we were thinking, the land of Sumatra! (It literally is). We were so wrong. Instant, instant, instant. Asians love instant coffee. So sad.

Nick's Pension, our home for three days

Rice paddies for days

Entering the Sacred Monkey Forest!

After Ubud, we decided to head to Lombok (the next island/province east from Bali). We got there by "fast" boat, which broke down for about 30-40 minutes. There goes our 1-hour trip, good thing we paid for the "fast" boat. If there weren't a big black storm coming and had we not been stuck out in rather big waves on the ocean, fearing a whale tipping us over (we saw one a ways off), I might not have minded so much, but that was not the case. I think that helped our decision to stay in the NICEST place on Gili Trawangan once we got there. Gili T is one of three small islands just off the western coast of Lombok. Our place was called Vila Ombak. It had multiple pools with swim up bars, and ours (the one closest to our room) had a little waterfall too. We were just across the street from the beach, lined with chairs and umbrellas, with a view of Lombok. It was a beautiful place to spend three days. Nate went diving twice, saw sea turtles, sharks, you know, the usual (eeek!), and I happily lounged by the pool and read two books. It was the most relaxing time of our honeymoon and I loved every minute of it. We ate lots of fresh seafood, and even got to have beer other than Bintang (Indonesian beer- tastes like Heineken- yuck!) The weirdest thing about the island was the salt water, everywhere. There were no fresh water taps. Even our bathroom sink was salt water (quite a surprise on our toothbrushes the first time). The shower was an outdoor shower, but you just can't really feel clean with salt water, so we took advantage of the afternoon rainstorms ;)

Swim up bar fun

Yes, this really exists.

I think Gili T was my favorite stop on our honeymoon, because of where we stayed and how relaxing it was. We were ready to leave after three days though. So we took another "fast" boat (these are supposed to be one-hour trips) that pulled into Lombok for almost an hour and then broke down for about 15 minutes in the middle of the ocean again. I really don't want to know what the slow boat is like. We headed back to Bali and made our way down to Jimbaran Bay. I have already mentioned that there is a lot of poverty and underdevelopment in Bali, and I learned something else in Jimbaran Bay. This place is famous for dinner, because its huge bay faces the sunset and is lined with restaurants right on the water. What we didn't know is that you're not supposed to stay in Jimbaran Bay, you just go there for dinner from whatever beach you are staying at nearby. Jimbaran Bay was a great example of what is so weird about Bali. Bali has pockets of tourism, and outside of those pockets, you are smack in the middle of 3rd world Indonesia. It is so strange. It seems there are only a few places you should go as a tourist (and apparently, some of them have a time of day). Jimbaran Bay during the day was definitely NOT where we wanted to be. We made the most of our one night there and had an amazing dinner on the beach, complete with choosing our fresh seafood, watching the amazing sunset, and enjoying a Balinese dance. Then it was time to get out of there. Everyone had warned us against staying in Kuta, because it is a "super touristy trashy place." However, that's exactly where we decided to go after Jimbaran and it was exactly what we wanted. It was our last night in Bali, so we stayed at a nice place with a nice pool, right next to some great shopping (we still had souvenir shopping to do), and there was a really cool boardwalk along the ocean where we had dinner. We started calling Kuta "Balifornia" which should give you an idea of what it was like, while just down the street it felt like 3rd world Latin America. Strange. Obviously I have nothing against 3rd world Latin America, but there was just something weird about Bali, and since we were on our honeymoon, we wanted to spoil ourselves!

Amazing Jimbaran Bay sunset dinner on the beach!

Drinks on the boardwalk in Kuta, in a pool! 

We were able to to that in Kuta, and we enjoyed one last good sleep in a bed before making the long trip back to the US. We started at 9:30am on Jan 24th with a flight from Bali to Bangkok. One more night in Bangkok, well not quite. We had about 10 hours. This was actually a really fun layover. We went straight to Rambuttri Village and Khao San Road, left our backpacks at a hostel we had visited previously (when you walk in like you own the place, no one questions you, they didn't even charge us ;) We strolled the streets of Bangkok again, enjoying a couple more Thai dishes, foot massages, and the best people watching possibly anywhere in the world- Khao San Road. We posted up at two street bars to pass the time, which works wonderfully. The second bar was actually a converted VW bus, with psychedelic paint and a soccer game on TV. Oh Bangkok.

We flew out of Bangkok at about 1am and by this time it was Friday, January 25th, to Seoul, South Korea for another 10 hour layover. Unfortunately, there is no sleeping involved in overnight flights for this girl, however, we pulled it together and jumped on a city tour of Seoul within an hour of arriving. Before I say anything else, I must say, we failed to check the weather in Seoul before leaving the US. We had no idea that it would be normal winter weather there, normal as in Montana normal, as in it was 10 degrees outside (Fahrenheit) and there was still snow to be seen. We had just been at the beach for 3 weeks! We were not prepared, and that is an understatement. Luckily the tour company provided us with big thick jackets to borrow. A bus took us from the airport to a few points of interest around the city. One was the Tower of Seoul. It sorta looks like a mini Eiffel Tower with some sort of antenna purpose. In my flip flops, I could only manage to stay outside for a few minutes at a time, and we kept having to go in and literally hold my poor feet to warm them up, no I didn't have any sort of close-toed shoe. Nate did, and he gave me his socks, which I rocked with my flippys. I was already wearing two scarves I had purchased for friends in Bali, and leggings, a skirt, and both long sleeved layers that I had. It wasn't nearly enough for 10 degrees. The view was gorgeous, Seoul is a HUGE city, but there are snowy mountains and trees, skiing must be near, it was really pretty. Our next stop was more in the center, a shopping street where I bought a hat, another scarf and some awesome ear muffs (which Nate wore). We almost bought shoes and gloves, but instead went to Starbucks to warm up. We tried some fried dough sugary peanuty thing too which was really yummy. The little stand on the street had a bit of a line, that's when you know something is good! That's really all we saw in town, and when we returned to the airport we were more than excited to find an area of "rest and relax" with lazy boys and some Bruce Willis movie on. HORIZONTAL!!!! We got to lay down, but of course I couldn't sleep. It was a nice relax though.

Seoul (well, part of it)

Inside Starbucks warming up in our awesome outfits!

 Our flight didn't leave Seoul until about 7pm or so (on the 25th), and by this time we could hardly keep ourselves functioning. I think I watched 4 movies on the 10 hr flight back to Seattle. Somehow when we arrived, it was like 11am on Friday the 25th. How does that even happen? We were about to live the same day over again. We had yet another 10 hour layover in Seattle. At least we got to see Amanda and Kevin and hang out with them for the afternoon/evening. When we finally made it home to Bozeman at 11pm, it was still Friday the 25th. It had been about 50 hours since we left Bali, and we could not WAIT to sleep, I think we slept until noon the next day, with our puppy in our arms. Nothing beats your own comfy bed with a cuddly 100 lb puppy.

I know this is long already, but I still have some thoughts to share. I loved our honeymoon, the travel was easy, we didn't have any major problems, hardly even any minor ones, it was hot and beautiful and new, but in the end, I definitely didn't get the "Southeast Asia Bug" that I'd been warned about. I think I'm too in love with Latin America to let somewhere else take its place. Southeast Asia is very similar to the tropics of Latin America, but with different food and culture of course. I much prefer Latin America. And it's much more accessible for us in the US. I'm glad we experienced Southeast Asia (finally), but we probably won't go back for a while.

Okay, one more thing I have to add for fellow football fans. Remember the Green Bay cab in Bangkok? Well, when we landed in Bangkok again on the way home, we decided to let the color of our cab once again determine the ending of a football game, this time the Superbowl. I was thrilled to pieces when it came and low and behold, it was RED. I just knew the 49ers would win! (By the way this was a week before the Superbowl). Well, as you can imagine, I was SuperBummed when the Ravens pulled off the win. Then I thought back to the cab, and realized I had read it all wrong. You see, the bottom half of the cab was red, the top half was blue. When you put them together...

Alright, signing off for now, but as you may remember, I vowed to make up for lost travel of 2012 in 2013, so I'll be back in just over a month to tell you about NICARAGUA! That's right :)