peaks and valleys of indonesia and malaysia.

For the past three weeks, Stephan and I have been having the most wonderful travel adventures through mostly Indonesia and a bit of Malaysia. I am sweating just thinking about how I can include every single picture and every single detail of our amazing trip (but also it is really hot in my room). Anyways, over the next few days (HOPEFULLY!), I am going to try and fill you in on our trip. It is going to come in through multiple blog posts. There are some things that I have learned through travelling, that are just too hard to express through words and pictures. It’s just something that you know will stay a memory forever, and that no one else will understand or care to understand.  Hopefully what I say and the pictures you see will help you see a tidbit into our excursions and help you see the beauty of this world and what keeps me wanting to see more. 

For this first post about our trip, I wanted to just do an overview of the peaks (best parts of the trip) and the valleys (worst parts). So here you go…

Peaks:

-Only having to be in Phuket for a short night before heading out to Bali the next morning. 

-Finding a Starbucks as we walked out of the airport. We needed some brain food to come up with a plan of action.

-Not having a plan. Stephan and I had no plan whatsoever—no places to stay, no maps, no guide books, nothing! and this made for such a great time. We had our tickets booked to fly out of the neighboring island, Lombok, so we had to eventually get there, but having three weeks with no plan really allowed us to enjoy the things that we really liked and scurry out of the places we seemed to not enjoy so much. 

-Finding Greek falafels and salad for lunch our first day in Kuta, Bali. We were in dire need of healthy food that had rice nowhere in or around it. 

-A day trip to the Bukit Peninsula (the Eastern most point of Bali) turning into a three day trip with the most amazing five beaches I have ever been to. 

-Having a safe driver drive me on a motor bike aka Stephan.

-Stephan surviving surfing in the most biggest waves I have ever seen. 

-Cheap Italian food, with the best atmosphere. Felt like I was on a fancy date. Big change from the restaurants in Thailand that include rats, dogs, cats, flies, ants, etc. 

-Blue bird taxi. The taxi company that does not try to take all of your money.

-UBUD. I will do a whole post on this place. Everything was perfect. From the food, the atmosphere, the people, the smells. Everything. 

-Going to monkey forest in Ubud and NOT getting attacked by monkeys. Oh yeah! Success!

-Taking our time in the Bukit Peninsula and Ubud.

-Sweet Indonesian people.

-Not being targeted or stared at because we are white tourists. 

-Balconies. 

-Complimentary breakfasts.

-Clean smelling clothes.

-Sarongs. 

-Healthy food—mostly in Ubud.

-The safety of Bali. 

-Learning that group tours are not our thing. 

-Seeing a million different colors of green and a million different colors of blue. Rice fields to oceans. I didn’t think that so many variations of one color could exist.

-Surviving the fast boat to the Gili Islands. 

-Snorkeling at the Gili Islands. So many beautiful fish right as you walked into the water. NO SHARKS!

-Bicycle rides around all of Gili Trawangan. 

-Banana shakes.

-Sunsets.

-Being at the right place at the right time. 

-Having an ipod that takes pictures, because my camera died three days into the trip and I forgot my charger. A new charger was almost $50. Nosir!

-Having a personal spider killer aka Stephan.

-Surviving the public boat from Gili Air to Lombok. Our engine fell off into the water. 

-Only staying in Senggiggi, Lombok for one night.

-The beaches around Kuta, Lombok. 

-Taking a boat to a surfing wave in Lombok and getting to watch Stephan surf. So cool!

-Our new friends Adi and Kania, who we met in Lombok. They were both locals and they both gave us a sense of security after hearing some horror stories about the locals around there. 

-Getting to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after spending so much time at the beach. It was such a nice contrast.

-Cable TV.

-Knowing that KL, Malaysia is close by and that Stephan and I can redo that part of the trip pretty easily.

-Having the best travel buddy and having someone to share these adventures with. Someone who I easily get along with and who wants to do the same things as me. Stephan kept me safe the whole time and travelling through these countries was so much fun with him!

-Making it home to Nakhon safely. 

-Knowing that I still have more travelling adventures ahead. 

Valleys:

-Spiders—of the biggest kind. Still having nightmares. 

-Leaving Bali. 

-The motor falling off our boat on the way to Lombok. 

-Scary stories of locals in Lombok with machetes (not only used to hack coconuts). UGH.

-Buying coconuts, pineapples, and mangoes from every single person selling them (which is a lot) because we do not want them to come after us with a machete. 

-Drinking the weirdest coffee in Senggigi. 

-Spending too much money taking the fast boat to the Gili Islands.

-People harassing us to buy anything from fruit to sarongs to soda to eating at their restaurant to taking transport. They took this to the extreme in Lombok. 

-Tours. We went on a day tour around northern Bali. Mistake. Stephan and I like to move at our own pace and the last destination—hot springs—was a gross looking swimming pool with warm water and people swimming around in their skivvies. Stephan and  I passed on that. Hot springs sounded way more exotic on paper.

-The bumpiest/scariest flight from Lombok to Malaysia.

-Eating the wrong food in Lombok or Malaysia.

-Being sick the majority of the time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Stephan and I both got extremely sick our last days of travel. I had a fever and we both had the worst stomach aches and well you know how that goes. We were both having to use the bathroom way too frequently. 

Sunset over Uluwatu—one of the beaches at the Bukit Peninsula

Cruising through the rice padis of Ubud.