WARNING: THIS BLOG POST MAY TURN YOUR EYES SQUARE Apologies in advance for the length of this next post, but to fully convey our experiences in Kalimantan I didn't want to miss anything out. I advise you print out and read over a cuppa / your commute home, and hopefully it will be worth it! From what we had heard, Kalimantan looked like it would provide us with some genuine off-the-beaten-track adventure and a chance to see a very different side of Indonesia to...

Our adventures on the boat ended the following day in Labuanbajo, a ramshackle harbour town in western Flores, where we docked and celebrated our safe return to dry land with some of our fellow travellers, by means of dinner and drinks. Then it was back to another night on the boat (in the port) before all heading our separate ways the next day - Simon and I were heading to Ende, in eastern Flores, to make our way eventually to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), wh...

We could easily have stayed on Gili Air for a few more nights, but we were diverted by the discovery of a 4-day boat trip leaving Gili Air a few days after we arrived, from Lombok to Flores, taking in various islands along the way….it sounded like the perfect opportunity to explore some of the places we wanted to go to anyway (eg Komodo National Park) plus at around £100 each all-in, excluding alcohol, it seemed too good to be true! So off we set, travelling ...

Back down at the bottom of Ijen, our next stop was Ubud, in Bali - a journey which seemed endless, particularly after our 2.30am wake up call. After two buses to get to Java's eastern harbour, a ferry to Bali, an extremely hot 5hr bus trip to Denpasar and then a slow, traffic-heavy taxi (fed up with public transport by now) to Ubud, we finally arrived around 7pm, 10hrs after we had started. After a shower and some food it was a quick dash around town on our new...

Our first port of call in Indonesia was Surabaya, in Eastern Java. We headed straight to the bus station, and walking through the bus terminal in Surabaya felt a different world away compared to where we had just come from: immediately far more rustic, but enticing. Indonesia seems to have its own distinct smell (maybe sweat mixed with incense mixed with the smell of a recent tropical downpour) and this is the smell that hit us on our arrival. And we loved the ...