Looking forward to what Borneo had in the way of adventure we arrived into it's capital, Balikpapan, on the 8th of January. The flight we took with Batik Air was very smooth though you couldn't help having a bit of a nagging concern in the back of your head due to the recent AirAsia crash which took place over the same sea. Upon arrival we took a massively overpriced airport taxi to 'Rina's Guesthouse' which we had pre-booked. There wasn't much in the way of ch...

On 3rd of Jan we took the boat to the island of Lombok; our plan was to go east via land and boat to the Komodo Islands, the only place in the world that you can see the famous Komodo dragons. This was to be achieved in around 2 days via the islands of Lombok, Sumbawaya and Flores, and would be our longest journey since taveling south to Kerala in India. After reaching the mainland in Lombok we headed away from the touts at the dock who always want to get you i...

Christmas on the Gili's   We thankfully left Kuta on the 23rd for the Gili Islands. Sadly however we would need to return due to the overcomplicated and ever changing process of getting a Visa extension in Indonesia, so with passports left with an Agent in Kuta we took the ferry (oversized speed boat) to Gili air. The Gili Islands consist of 3 small but very different islands; Gili Trawangan - the party island Gili Meno - almost deserted but good for relaxin...

Ubud to Bingin, Bali A couple of exhausting, 30 degrees bus rides later, we finally arrived in Ubud, still stinking of eggs and ready to sleep for a week! Ubud is the cultural capital of Bali, and we were looking forward to getting somewhere that we could start to soak up a bit of local culture rather than scale volcanoes each morning! On arrival we dumped our stuff on the path and sat next to a water fountain whilst trying to research somewhere to stay for the ...

Beautiful Bromo & Intimidating Ijen Having got back to Yogyakarta we had to make some decisions on where to go next - realising we wouldn't have time to go to Borneo before we needed to be in the Gili Islands for Christmas, what with the unreliable public ferry that only runs every few days from Java to Borneo, we planned instead to head east through Java to visit the volcanic regions of Bromo and Ijen and undertake a couple of hikes. This time we stayed in...