Flores to Bali via Komodo and Gili T.

We spent our last couple of weeks in Indonesia in Nusa Tenggara, travelling from Flores to Lombok and then back to Bali before flying to Perth.

We flew to Labuan Bajo, a town in western Flores, Nusa Tenggara. This is one of the main gateways to the Komodo National Park, where you can find some of the best diving in the world. Only problem is, the diving here is not easy due to strong currents and requires it a lot of experience, which we obviously do not have. One diver we met described it very good when he said that a mountain climber would not think about climbing Everest as one of the first climbs. 

But even if you are not diving, the western tip of the island of Flores and the islands of Komodo and Rinca have a lot to offer. The most obvious attraction would be the Komodo dragon, the largest lizard in the world.

Lucky as we were, we met Céline and Sébastien a really nice French couple at the airport and shared the ride in to Labuan Bajo with them. Upon arrival in the harbour town, we went straight to the jetty to hire a local boat for a two-day trip to Komodo and Rinca. It didn't take very long to find a boat and the price was really ok in the end, 1,8 million for all four of us after negotiations. The asking price was just over 2 million Rp, which is roughly 180 €.

We set off early the following morning, or that was the plan. Arrivng at the boat at 6:45, the boatman told us that we had to wait for his friend to come from church before we could go. That's how Indonesia works though, you can never be sure that any kind of transport will leave on time. After a while you get used to it. At eight o'clock, the friend arrived with the food and we were ready to go.

First stop was Rinca, one of the two larger islands in the Komodo National Park and home to 1,300 Komodo dragons. It was almost midday and really hot, so we didn't expect seeing any of the famous Komodo dragons in the wild. Luckily for us, a deer had died close to the camp that very morning and a little dragon had been seen eating it. The dragon was still eating when we arrived there. Even though it was just a small one, this was not an animal that you would go too close to. It is difficult to describe, but just the sight of a Komodo dragon kind of freaked me out. They look very vicious and their claws are long. Knowing that their bites are very bacterious does not really help either or maybe it is a good thing to know that Komodo dragons do not kill you instantly. They bite you and then wait for the bacteria infection to do the job for them. It can take up to three weeks for a water buffalo to die. Luckily, they don't hunt humans that often and the adult dragons only have to eat once a month. And if you should be unfortunate enough and get bitten, antibiotics and cleaning the wound with alcohol will prevent you from dying.

Breakfast, yummy...

The little dragon was the only one we saw in the forest, but we did come across a water buffalo and some megapods (funny looking birds) on our one hour trek. On the way back to the boat, we saw four or five quite large dragons sleeping by the camp kitchen.

On the way from Rinca to Komodo, we did some snorkelling and we went past Batman Island, a small island inhabitated by loads and loads of large bats. When the boat passed by, the boat men started clapping and cheering to get the bats out of the trees. It was really impressive to see the air fill up with bats. After Batman Island, we moored at Komodo fishing village, where we spent the night on the boat.


Next day, we got up early and left for Komodo National Park at seven. We decided to take a two hour trek here and were hoping to see some dragons in the wild. The Komodo dragon is cold blooded and need the sun to warm up, so they leave their sleeping pits in the morning to seek a sunny spot. This is one of the best times to spot them, since they are moving. Later in the day, they will just lay around and be lazy.It proved to be a good choice getting up early, we saw eight dragons that morning, nine if you count the one in the camp as well.

Mr. Latif, our ranger in Komodo was very happy to see so many dragons.

Komodo dragon male

On the way back to Labuan Bajo, we did some more snorkelling (well, the others did. I had an ear infection that didn´t want to go away, so I gave up). At Manta Point, the others got into the water and spotted at least eight manta rays floating in the current. The largest one was around five meters across. Gigantic and very elegant creatures.

Back in Labuan Bajo, we opted out for a couple of days Robinson Crusoe style on Seraya Island, one hour off the coast of Flores. We spent three amazing days here on a beach with nothing more than a couple of basic beach huts and a restaurant. The island had electricity and running water between 6 pm and 10 am, the rest of the time you had to cope with sea water. We had amazing neighbours (Steffen and Regina from Germany/Austria and Thomas and Tony from Germany/US) and spent hours sitting in the restaurant talking with them after each meal. Between the meals, we chilled, read books or snorkelled.

We had decided to go to Lombok by boat to avoid the tedious transportation over the island of Sumbawa, so we booked a boat tour which included a stop in Rinca to see the Komodo dragons, one stop on Mayo Island to go to a waterfall and several snorkelling stops. All in all, the trip to Lombok would take two days. We had a great time on the boat as well and had really nice company.

Going by boat was certainly more relaxing than the shuttle bus/ferry option, which takes only 24 hours from Labuan Bajo in Flores to Sengiggi or Mataram in Lombok, but includes over ten hours bus ride across Sumbawa.

We did not stay in Lombok long though, but went straight for Gili Trawangan, the largest of the Gili Islands, to finally dive again. Because I had caught a light cold on the boat, we did not dive until our third day on the island. The diving was nice, we saw quite a lot of fish and some nice coral, but it was not as good as the Liberty wreck in Tulamben. Somehow, Matthias' mask squeezed on the way up, and a blood vessel in his left eye burst and he looked as if he had been in quite the fight. We decided that this was the sign, we were not supposed to be diving, so we took it to snorkelling instead and spent the last days on the island on the beach. Some of the people from the Flores-Lombok boat trip went to the Gilis as well, so we spent some nice evenings in their company.

How to get a visa extension in Bali

1. Find the nearest Immigration Office (Kantor Immigrasi).
2. Go to one man behind a counter to get the documents and forms you need to apply for a VOA extension and a red cover for them. This will cost you a small fee, 10,000 rupiah to be precise.
3. Fill in the forms.
4. Go to a lady behind a desk who will check if you have attached everything they need. This would be:
   A copy of your passport, a copy of the passport page showing your visa on arrival, a copy of your ticket out of the country.
5. You will get a number from the lady and be told to wait until "her friend" will tell you it is your turn.
6. You sit down to wait, wondering why you are waiting when nobody is standing in front of the counter.
7. You wait a bit more and so does the other tourists.
8. A nice French girl who is in to pay for her visa tells you that you do not have to wait, nobody will call your number.
9. You give the man behind the counter the filled in paperwork and your passport and he tells you to sit down and wait again.
10. Your name is called and you get a slip with your visa application number and are told to come back in two working days to pay the Application Fee of 250,000 Rp.
11. You come back two working days later to pay at the cashier. This produces a pink paper for the cashier, a yellow paper for her colleagues behind the Visa Application Counter and a white copy for you. They all say that you have paid the Application Fee.
12. You are told to go to the Visa Application Counter to hand them your reciept.
13. They have a look at it and write down the date when you can pick your visa and passport up. This date will be two working days later.
14. Two working days later, you arrive to pick up your passport. The immigration office is full of other foreigners also waiting for their passports.
15. You wait, wait and wait a bit more until your name is called and you get your passport at the counter.

The funny thing is that the stamp is from the day you paid, which means your passport has been sitting in the immigrations office for at least one day before you were allowed to pick it up.
You can avoid the going back and forth to the Immigrations Office by paying your hotel or one of all the local travel agencies, shop keepers (or who ever offers to do it for you) the neat sum of 800,000 Rp. If you need an extension in Bali, it might actually be worth paying them to do it. Best thing is, in Jakarta it will take one day at the most to go through that same procedure. Our suspicion is that this is all done to boost the economy in Kuta and South Bali.

For a person living in Vienna, this felt almost like dealing with the authorities back home though. Maybe the Viennese administration was the role model used in Indonesia after independence from the Netherlands?

No offence, but...

...here are a couple of things we would do differently if we were Bali hawkers.

 

Bali, especially Kuta beach, would be pretty close to perfect if it wasn't for the masses of people trying to sell you things. The same things over and over again...

 

Here are our tips to the hawkers:

• If somebody is wearing a motorcycle helmet, it is probably not a fashion statement. The chance is very high that they actually rented a motorbike to go with it. So don't bother asking if they need transportation.
• When a tourist walk past you, chances are slim that this person would want to buy petrol from you. You should probably think twice before trying to sell them a bottle of petrol if there is no vehicle to put it in.
• If you really need to pee, try not wading out until the water is knee high and then squat down right in front of the tourists. It doesn't look good...
• Yes, boss? is not a way to start a conversation with a stranger.
• As a taxi driver, you should not stop in front of a restaurant and wave at the people still eating asking if they need a ride. This will only cause irritation since you are blocking the road and distrubing people while eating.
• If we did not want your massage/manicure/pedicure/temporary tattoo/sarong sticks/ice cream/wood carvings and what not five minutes ago, we have probably not changed our minds because you try to wake us up when we just fell asleep on the beach. If you wake a sleeping person up, they will most probably not feel like buying anything from you.
• Having a USP (unique selling proposition - for those who have not studied business administration and therefore bothered with it all the time) is definetly a good thing, e.g. the icecream man called Harry had his name written on his hat and screamed "Harry is back again" instead of " iiiii-screeeeaammm" to sell his ice-cream. Definetly a better way to attract customers!

 

Ok, Indonesia is a poor country and people try to do everything to make a living, but that is not an excuse to be a pain in the ass. Actually, we spent more money on the countryside where we were not hassled all the time than we did at Kuta beach when someone was constantly trying to catch our attention and sell us something. Simply offering tourists help in any case they need WHEN THEY ASK FOR IT would do the trick!

Bali

We have spent the last two and a half weeks on Bali and have seen quite a lot of the island. I can understand why people fall in love with this place, but at the same time I really look forward to going to Lombok and Flores.

The only reason we are still here is our visa extension, but that is a story on it's own...

Since our stay in Lovina, we have been staying in Ubud, Sanur and Kuta.
Let's start with Ubud. If you go to Bali without visiting Ubud, you will miss out on a great spot. I absolutely loved the place!
The town is just oozing with creativity. Yes, it is touristy and busy, but there are oases and these makes Ubud worth a trip. And for shopaholics, this place is heaven!! There are so many nice shops selling beautiful things, jewellery, clothes, decoration items... You name it. I could have bought nearly everything! Sometimes it is hard to be a backpacker.
Ubud has wonderful places to stay as well, we spent three nights at Nick's Homestay, which is very nice and pretty central on Jalan Hanoman. The double rooms are very big and the bathroom was great. The rain shower has a pebbles flooring, which makes you feel as if you are showering outside. It was by far the best bathroom we have had!
The last couple of nights were spent at Ubud View, where we had the pleasure of waking up to the quacking of ducks on the rice field behind our room.


The duck parade out the back of Ubud View

There are tons of nice restaurants in Ubud, my absolute favorite was a very stylish one called The Bollero. It is on Jalan Dewi Sri, should you ever want to go there.

What proved out to be a tourist trap though was Bebek Bengil, the Dirty Duck Diner. It is expensive, you have the feeling the waiters are just waiting to see you finish up and leave so that they can give your table to the Japanese tourists who arrive one busload at the time. The garden is really nice though and if you reserve a table there, I guess it could be a nice experience. But the garden doesn't change the fact that the food is overpriced.


To see as much of the surroundings as possible, we rented a moped to get around. The highlight for me was a 50 km trip to Jatiluwih and the marvelous rice terraces there. But the trip through Bedulu to Tampaksiring and Gunung Kawi was really nice as well. And of course we visited the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud itself.

Here are some pictures from and around Ubud:

Macaque family

Macaque mum and baby in the Monkey Forest, Ubud



Rice terraces, Tampaksiring

Goa Gajah, Elephant Cave

Rice terraces, Jatiluwih

And yet another impossibly green rice terrace

Our next stop was Sanur, a sleepy little fishing village in the south of Bali. Most tourists here are middle-aged couples from Australia or pensionists living here for several months at the time.
The beach in Sanur is quite nice, but we were not here to lay on the beach. We were here to dive. Or rather learn to dive.
After four intense days of manual reading, quiz-taking, pool diving and finally diving in the ocean, we were certified PADI Open Water Divers.

For the last two open water dives, we went up to Tulamben on the north coast and dove the site of the Liberty wreck. The wreck does not lie deep and is full of beautiful coral and wonderful fish. Apparently, this is one of the best dive sites in Bali and many of the dive instructors told us that the Liberty is their favorite diving spot.

Balinese fishing boat on Sanur beach

It is a kite and it actually flies very well

As we had to get our 30 day visa on arrival extended, we decided to go to stay in Kuta and apply for the visa extension at the airport. Since a visa extension takes five working days, we are still here.
Kuta is not at all bad, the beach is nice (even though a bit crowded and full of people trying to sell you stuff), accommodation and food are both real cheap for Bali, so it can be worse. ;)

One really nice surprise was the weekend visitor we had. It proved that one of Matthias' former colleagues was in Kuala Lumpur for three weeks of work, so he flew down to join us here in Kuta for two days on the beach. It was great to hear about how things are back home and to see a familiar face. So if you feel like coming by, we will be in Lombok and Flores area for the next three weeks. Feel free to drop by, visits are appreciated!