Jan blagged us the last two seats in the first fast boat from Gili Trawangan. The company had clearly over booked and we stowed away with a large group from the US. We got to the coastline of Bali in around 90 minutes, the minivan from the shore took around 3 hours. It was stress free though as we were being dropped at our hotel, let it take as long as it takes. The roads of town were solid with traffic, the maze of the one way system didn't seem to be as effic...

The Gilis were another one of those places that, even from the very early planning stages of the trip, we were very excited about. They're usually rated in the top 5 places in the world to dive. The small speedboat took less than 45 minutes to reach Gili Trawangan from northern Lombok. We cruised up to the beach, the sea was glassy, the beach was white. We jumped onto the shore and we quickly realised this was not paradise. The road was lined on both sides with ...

We arrived in Lombok quite late. The journey to the hotel took around 90 minutes with a cabbie that spoke little English except "David Beckham" but told us at least 10 times per minute that we were headed to Senggigi. The hotel was nice and quiet, set in lush gardens and about 10 minutes from the beach. Perfect. By the time we'd reached the room, we'd been up for 18 hours, we'd climbed a volcano and were simply exhausted. Night night. After a good night's sle...

From Ijen, much of the route was a back-track towards Surabaya. As soon as we turned off the main artery the gradient of the road increased, the air became visibly less dusty and the traffic that had filled every inch of the road vanished. As we climbed higher, the valleys and surrounding mountains showed more of themselves, even on the steep face, farmers grew cabbages, corn and potatoes, zig-zag paths ran through the crops making the tending and harvesting pro...

The 7am train journey to Surabaya was very scenic, endless paddy fields in varying states of the growing process made the colours switch from patches of deep green where the new rice plants were being propagated, through green and brown where the rice was growing to yellow where the rice approached harvesting and finally to black where the harvested plant stubs had been slashed and burnt. In every field, groups of people were sowing, harvesting, spraying or repa...