What a joy Jakarta was during Idul Fitri! (Idul Fitri is the holiday to celebrate the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan) Everyone travels home to their families to celebrate and feast which means Jakarta pretty much empties completely of people, leaving behind all the expats, a few native Jakartans and the non-Muslim Indonesians. The night that Ramadhan ended Jakarta was awash with fireworks and calls from the mosques, standing on my balcony listening to it all was one of my favourite moments here so far. The fireworks had been going off every night pretty much since Ramadhan had started as people broke their fast, known was buka puasa, but they were nothing compared to this night!

Despite the temptation to stay in Jakarta and experience it with the traffic and people and constant frustrations, Claire, Al and I left that Sunday to head up to Aceh and hang out there for the week. We flew into Banda Aceh, a stunningly green town, surrounded by lush hills on one side and mostly unspoiled coast lines on the other. We were picked up by 3 guys that work for Al's organisation in Banda: Ocxie, Dre and Riki, and taken to the house where the AYADs in Banda live where we got to meet Tim (the lovely guy who brought sunscreen over for me from Julzy!). They live in the most wonderful house - high ceilings and big spaces, despite how much i love my apartment this totally made me want to live in a house! After a quick makan siang (lunch) of super spicy noodles we set off in search of the secret beach that Al was dying to see! (On most of the beaches in Banda women have to swim fully clothed which is just not fun but not on this one!) Was meant to be a half hour drive followed by a half hour walk to get to the beach...this quickly turned into the promised half hour drive but also into a not-promised 3 1/2 hour return trek up and down a very steep mountain and also involved a good hour of walking through a creek! (water was lovely and fresh and cold though so wasn't that bad). Finally got to secret secret beach and was totally worth the walk - completely untouched and deserted with the Andaman Sea stretching out in front of us! Unfortunately we couldn't swim because of the huge dumpy waves breaking right on the shore but was still worth the walk! We absolutely POWERED back up the hill to make sure that we didnt get stuck there in the night and returned home very tired but happy campers!

Had dinner that night at one of about 3 places that was open in all of Banda due to holiday - and it was a chinese place so we even got to have beer (ssssh don't tell anyone!) followed by great coffee at this cool little place that was like a big beer garden, except without the beer!

Headed off to Pulau Weh the next day after some vain attempts to explore Banda and find coffee - the place really does shut down so perhaps not the best time to visit! Ferry out to Pulau Weh was lovely (sometimes there are definite advantages to having lax safety standards, such as being able to sit out on top of the ferry with all our baggage etc) and then it was an hour by angkot to Iboih, on the east side of the island where we were staying. Truly stunning drive along the coast through lush, green rainforest and plenty of glimpses of ocean!

I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful it was there although you probably get the idea from the photos. Iboih is a tiny village on the coast, popular for its diving! It doesn't consist of much, a few houses and warungs, a dive centre and a selection of low budget bungalows right on the water. About 100m across a channel is another island Rubiah which protects Iboih and provides for some amazing diving and snorkelling around the island and along the shore at Iboih. There is just a small sometimes paved, sometimes not, path that winds along the shore past the various bungalows and the limited places to eat. There were a large number of tourists there but it is still fairly underdeveloped (especially given its beauty) and doesn't feel like there are too many people around or too much happening.

We spent 4 delightful nights there not doing a whole lot really. Al went diving lots while Claire and I had a great routine of banana pancakes and coffee for breakfast followed by a morning sunbathe and snorkel, then lunch and then the afternoon in a hammock sleeping and reading. Pretty perfect really. The snorkelling was amazing, you could just jump in off the jetty where we were staying into the clearest, greenest water and float around forever observing all the different fish (so many colours), coral and general beauty around you. We ventured one day across the channel to Rubiah (about a 20 minute swim) only to discover about half way across some very unpleasant jellyfish, tiny little things that you coudn't see but you could definitely feel. They weren't bad stings, just not nice. We made it to the other side and climbed over for a swim where we very self-consciously swam with some Indonesian tourists who were covered from head to toe (and swimming in life jackets teehee) while we were just in our bikinis. Very friendly people though and I do love having enough language to be able to talk to people! We then hitched a ride back to our bungalow in a boat with a couple of guys because we couldn't be bothered dealing with the stingers again.

Also had my birthday there and my lovely girls even got me a birthday cake - tim tams artfully arranged around a tealight candle! Perfect way to start a new year of life reallly :) Unfortunately had to get up ridiculously early to get the ferry back to Banda on my birthday but went and had coffee with Tim and Stu in Banda before my flight (involved a very funny trip to the coffee shop with the 3 of us on one motorbike, me sandwiched between the 2 boys, with lots of startled/highly entertained looks from the locals at the sight of 3 "huge" bules crammed on 1 bike! Much easier to do when you are of indonesian proportions which we definitely were not). Got safely back to Jakarta after nearly missing my flight and prepared myself for the second and third celebrations of my birthday (to be discussed later)

To conclude, it was a truly amazing holiday. Everytime I go somewhere new in Indonesia I fall a little bit more in love with this country and Aceh was no exception! It is very easy to understand how and why some people come to this country for a short time and end up staying forever...