Itinerary / accommodation

Day 1 - fly out from London Heathrow

Day 2 - arrive Singapore, stay Crowne Plaza Changi 1 night

Day 3 - fly to Bali, transfer airport to hotel, stay Jimbaran Intercontinental 2 nights

Day 4 - Jimbaran

Day 5 - fly to Komodo, stay Seraya 4 nights

Day 6 - Seraya

Day 7 - Seraya

Day 8 - Fly to Bali, transfer to villa, stay Villa Leya, Ubud 5 nights

Day 9 - Ubud

Day 10 - Ubud

Day 11 - Ubud

Day 12 - Ubud

Day 13 - pick up from villa for transfer to Denpasar airport, fly to Yogyakarta, pick up from airport, stay Plataran Heritage Hotel, Borobudur 2 nights

Day 14 - Borobudur

Day 15 - transfer to Yogyakarta via Prambanan Temple, stay Royal Malioboro 2 nights

Day 16 - Yogyakarta

Day 17 - train to Surabaya and transfer to Mount Bromo, stay Plataran Bromo 2 nights

Day 18 - Bromo

Day 19 - transfer to Surabaya airport, stay Cordia Hotel Surabaya Airport 1 night

Day 20 - fly to Pangkalan Bun, Orang Utan tour 2 nights

Day 21 - Orang Utan tour

Day 22 - fly to Jakarta, transfer airport to hotel, stay The Hermitage 2 nights

Day 23 - Jakarta

Day 24 - fly to Singapore, stay Mercure on Stevens 1 night

Day 25 - fly home

Day 26 - arrive London Heathrow

Jakarta

A final post before we start heading home. We arrived in Jakarta about 6pm and after collecting our baggage and locating our taxi transfer we made it to our hotel for about 7.30pm. After freshening up, we headed to the rooftop bar for a drink and a few hands of cards. We got a great view of the Jakarta skyline.

Today, Friday, we’d booked a day tour of the main sights. We’ve had a great day - Jakarta has surpassed our expectations, which - to be honest - weren’t that high!

First stop was Merdeka (independence) Square and MONAS, the national monument. A huge open space and, within the monument itself a good series of dioramas setting out the history of the country.

Then to the National Library for views over the city from the 24th floor, before heading to the National Museum (with ongoing repairs to the paving outside!). Good things to see inside, but on balance I think the museum in Yogyakarta had a better collection.

Then to the Roman Catholic cathedral and the Istiqal Mosque directly opposite. We couldn’t go inside the Mosque, because of Friday prayers, but it’s the largest mosque in South East Asia with a capacity of 100,000 over 5 floors inside and 100,000 outside. We did get inside the cathedral.

Next, via Chinatown, to the old centre of Batavia, now known as Kota Tua, still very Dutch-looking today.

We went to listen to a talk about Wayang puppetry / theatre which was very interesting - wonderful puppets (both two and three dimensional) and balsa wood face masks.

Our tour ended at the old port of Sunda Kelapa - very much the centre of Dutch trading activity here and still in use to some extent as a port today.

Back to our hotel, which used to be the telephone exchange in Dutch colonial times, for a swim before dinner tonight and a morning flight to Singapore tomorrow. We will catch up with Kit and Natasha over the weekend and then fly to London late on Sunday evening, arriving into Heathrow early Monday morning.

Borneo

We arrived into the tiny airport of Pangkalan Bun on Borneo shortly after 8am, after an early flight from Surabaya. Disembarkation was a casual affair….

Our guide, Jekki, met us at the airport and a 20 minute taxi ride took us to the port of Kumai to board our boat, which would be our home for the next three days.

The boat sleeps 6 guests, but we were the only 2 guests booked for this trip so we had an extra cabin to use as a dressing room and the services of our 4 man crew all to ourselves. In addition to Jekki, the crew consisted of a skipper, Eson, and two cooks, Vivin and Dewi. We were very well looked after, with breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner all served on board. We are going to skip dinner on our arrival in Jakarta this evening!

On the first day, we left the port shortly after 9am, cruising down the Kumai river and then turning into the Sekonyer river which borders the Tanjung Puting National Park. This is home to the largest surviving population of orang utans - about 6,000 of them, up from around 3,000 15 years ago. We were served coffee and then a delicious lunch, whilst travelling to our first stop - a feeding station at Tanjung Harapan.

This used to be a rehabilitation centre for orangutans rescued from captivity, orphaned through hunting etc but the need for that activity has thankfully reduced. Nonetheless, both the semi-wild orangutans released from earlier programmes and the wild orangutans seem to welcome some dietary supplement! The feeding stations provide easy opportunities for tourists to see the orangutans close-up, the tourists provide lots of jobs for the locals, and the locals now have a reason to help protect the orangutans and stop destroying their forest habitat. So I suppose it works. We only touched the surface of the national park (1,000,000 acres) and probably ‘only’ saw 30 orangutans at these feeding stations, so most of them are off in the forest doing their own thing well away from the tourists. We certainly saw about another 10 orangutans in truly wild situations - they’re just a lot harder to photograph, particularly with just an iPhone camera to work with!

Anyway, back to Tanjung Harapan. Rangers arrived with baskets of sweet potatoes and bananas. The alpha male arrived first and hogged the bulk of the food. They are enormous - up to 120 kg. Others hung out in the trees around and about, waiting their turn. The trick seemed to be akin to the worst behaviour at the breakfast buffet, with each orangutan quickly loading up with as much as they could stuff into their mouth, one arm and one leg and then scarpering up the nearest tree. Some photos below.

After watching the orangutans for about 2 hours, we returned to the boat and headed further up the Sekonyer river to moor up for the night. We stopped opposite two trees full of proboscis monkeys, settling into the tree tops by the river for the night, but not without a fair amount of kerfuffle to start with! Difficult to photograph against the darkening sky but you will get the general idea…

We were early to bed, about 8.30pm and up early the next morning, with sunrise around 5.30am. The river was beautifully still and we had a lovely blue sky.

After breakfast, we continued our cruise up river arriving at Pondok Tanggui feeding station.

More time with the orangutans…

…before continuing up river to Camp Leakey. We were lucky enough to spot another group of proboscis monkeys en route. The male is really quite extraordinary. Grey trousers, white pants, a brown jacket and some rather fetching epaulettes to go with his enormous nose!

Camp Leakey was set up in 1971 by Biruté Galdikas, one of the “Trimates” mentored by Louis Leakey, alongside the much better known Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. It has operated as a research station ever since. Little was known about orangutans before she started her work. More orangutans here, including another massive male and a mother and baby stocking up before they climbed back up a nearby tree. We also saw our first gibbon but no good photographs.

After visiting the camp, we turned back downstream heading for our overnight mooring. This morning we had a chance just to enjoy being on the river, seeing what we could see. There’s lots of bird life too and we spotted three groups of orangutans close to the river. Two large males were boldly challenging each other from trees either side of the river but given they can’t swim there was little chance of a serious confrontation. We then saw another large male, making mating calls to a female up in the trees. She plainly wasn’t interested and just kept on breaking off branches and throwing them at him. Very amusing to watch. And after much searching, we finally saw a small gharial, lurking in the muddy water amongst the roots.

We had lunch as we cruised down the Sekonyer river and then back up the Kumai river to the port. A similarly relaxed boarding process, and a short flight brought us to our hotel in Jakarta where we are spending two nights.

Mount Bromo

We have spent the last couple of days in the mountains in eastern Java. We caught a train from Yogyakarta to Surabaya early on Saturday morning. Clean, comfortable and on time! 4 hrs brought us to Surabaya and a car met us there to take us to our hotel close to the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, about 2 1/2 hours by road.

Our hotel, part of the Plataran chain, is set in a splendid location, with far reaching views and wonderful grounds, beautifully planted. At 2,100m above sea level it was much cooler - indeed, quite chilly at times. It brands itself as “above the clouds’, but actually it’s right in and amongst them and it was amazing watching the weather changing literally minute by minute, from sunshine to thick fog and back again. We really enjoyed our time there. A few shots below. Photo 1 and photo 3 were taken about 5 minutes apart.

The main reason for including this location in our trip was to see Mount Bromo - not the tallest volcano in Indonesia, but the easiest to climb! We had booked a trip through the hotel including sunrise, an alfresco picnic and a climb to the crater. It was a very early start, leaving the hotel at 02.30. Our jeep and driver were waiting outside, alongside other jeeps taking other guests from the hotel.

The trip to the volcano is plainly a big thing, both for foreign tourists but also for locals (and apparently particularly busy at weekends). As we drew close to the entrance to the national park, it became clear that there were hundreds of jeeps on the road, all heading for a number of vantage points from which everyone was hoping to see the sun rise over Mount Bromo. We were ‘in position’ by about 03.15 so it was a long wait before it started getting light at about 05.00 and pretty cold. Whilst we got something of a sunrise and could see Mount Bromo smoking gently in the distance, unfortunately it was a cloudy start and we didn’t get the spectacular views of the Tengger caldera that we were hoping for.

Below, 1) sunrise; 2) Bromo; 3) some of the lines of jeeps parked up as we returned from the sunrise spot; and 4) a Google image of what we might have seen had we had a long lens and a clear day!

We returned to the jeep and were driven down a very steep and winding road into the Tengger caldera. This is a huge area some 16km in diameter, within which 4 or 5 later volcanoes have erupted, including Mount Batok, front and centre above, and Mount Bromo, the smoking crater to its left. The big one in the background is Semeru - the tallest volcano in Indonesia at about 3,700m. Our driver took us across the floor of the caldera, a flat expanse of black ash called the Tengger sand sea. On the other side of Mount Batok, the ground gradually became greener and we stopped at a spot where our hotel had set up picnics for us and two other groups of hotel guests. The sun had begun to break through by now and it was beautiful sitting there, munching and enjoying the scenery in some style.

After our picnic, at about 07.30, we retraced our route across the caldera and parked up so we could climb up Mount Bromo. It was very busy, with people either walking up or paying locals to take them most of the way by pony. We walked, of course. Peering into the crater was extraordinary - so much gas and very noisy too - and there were wonderful views all around.

Back to the hotel for a restful day, early dinner and bed!

We have just arrived at Surabaya airport, where we have checked into a basic airport hotel. Tomorrow, Tuesday, we fly to Borneo for 3 days on a boat exploring the Tanjung Puting National Park and hoping to see orang-utans.

Yogyakarta

We’ve spent the last few days around Yogyakarta, in the centre of Java, with 2 nights in a hotel near Borobudur and 2 nights in a hotel in central Yogyakarta. After a smooth flight from Bali, we arrived into the massive but under-utilised airport at Yogyakarta. From there, it was about 1 1/2 hours by car to Borobudur. Our hotel seemed almost empty the first night, but there were a lot more guests the second night. We are just coming out of the rainy season here and peak season really doesn’t kick off in earnest until next month.

The next morning we were up bright and early (helped by having gone back an hour between Bali and Java) to join our guide and driver. First stop was the temple of Borobudur - the largest Buddhist temple in the world. To give you some statistics - 35m high, 118m square, 504 Buddha statues, 2,672 reliefs, and constructed in the 9th century!

We were driven to the VIP entrance and changed into special sandals which aim to reduce wear and tear on the monument. Numbers are now restricted so only 150 people can climb the temple in each hour slot. We had a guide who was able to explain the reliefs telling the story of the life of Buddha.

We also visited two smaller temples close by, both part of Borobudur’s UNESCO world heritage listing, before travelling about an hour north by car to visit the Hindu temple of Selogriyo. This were many fewer tourists here - just 6 visitors all day when we signed the visitors book early afternoon. We parked up in a small village and set off to walk about 2km through the rice terraces. Lots of farming activity going on - everything is so lush and grows so quickly and easily. This lady is sieving rice grains which had been spread out on rush mats to dry in the sun. The final climb to the temple was hot but worth it and there was a super little stall selling coffee and cold drinks on the way back down.

The next day, we’d arranged a driver to take us to our hotel in central Yogyakarta via a stop at the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, and another world heritage site, Prambanan. The main temple area actually contains 240 temples (16 large ones and 224 small ones around the edge) and there are subsidiary temple areas with hundreds more. The site is beautifully maintained and landscaped and very much more spacious than Borobudur. Whilst seeing Borobudur was an amazing experience, on balance we probably preferred Prambanan. A great guide joined us to tell us about the reliefs - this time stories from the Ramayana. Whilst the main temples have been restored, the smaller temples are still largely untouched - just piles of stones following various earthquakes. We spent about 3 hours wandering the site, but just a couple of photos below.

On our last day here, today, Friday, we have been exploring central Yogyakarta, visiting the sultan’s palace, the water palace, the Sonobudoyo museum and the Vredeburg fort (the Dutch VOC base in Yogyakarta). After the sultan’s palace, we had a coffee stop at this lovely little cafe. The museum merits particular mention - supposedly the best collection in Indonesia after the national museum in Jakarta. A couple of highlights below. The last picture shows some wayang puppets.

Our hotel here is opposite the train station. We leave by train early tomorrow morning, heading back east to Surabaya where a taxi will meet us to take us up to Mount Bromo.

Bali

We flew back to Bali from Komodo on Thursday and this time travelled north from the airport to the inland town of Ubud, where we had booked a 2-bed villa with a small pool for five nights, set in the rice fields about 6km / 20 mins by taxi out of Ubud.

We have enjoyed the villa - sunbathing, chatting and playing lots of games. Diana and I went into Ubud on Friday morning for a wander, visiting one of the Balinese art galleries, the water temple (where we had to don the clothing pictured below) and the palace. It has a reputation for a thriving arts scene, which has developed since the 1930s, and there are an also host of places to eat and drink. We found an excellent cafe for coffee and pastries.

On Saturday, Kit and Natasha had booked to take us for drinks and dinner at Ambar, which has a fantastic position high above a jungly gorge. We enjoyed the view looking out to the sunset, the cocktails, the low-key jazz band and some delicious sushi.

On Sunday, Diana and I had booked a full-day tour. Since they’d both been to Bali before, Kit and Natasha opted for a bit more time relaxing at the villa, before heading off on an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) adventure, which they said was great fun.

Our first stop was the Taman Ayun temple, at the heart of the Mengwi kingdom. We arrived about 08.30 and found the place completely empty. It was lovely to wander around at our leisure. The temple and its grounds are beautifully kept.

Then onto a small coffee plantation, where we met Po - a very fat but friendly civet cat (or luwak in Balinese). As you will probably have heard, one of Bali’s specialities is luwak coffee, produced from coffee beans that have passed through the gut of civet cats. We tried the coffee, which was strong but apparently lower in caffeine than normal coffee.

Then to the Jaitulwih rice terraces - brilliantly set up by the locals with way-marked trails. We really enjoyed walking around, seeing how the rice is grown and how the whole water engineering process works to keep everything well irrigated. The paddies were spread over a huge area and make for a very beautiful landscape.

After a lunch stop, the weather began to worsen as we headed up the mountain to see the Ulun Danu Beratan temple, set at 1,239m above sea level. Much more crowded, with busloads of tourists from Java, and all a bit Disney but the gardens were beautifully planted. We had been due to head on to a couple of mountain viewpoints, but with the clouds closing in and heavy rain we weren’t going to be able to see anything, so we skipped those two stops on our itinerary and headed straight for the Tanah Lot sea temple…

…after which we headed back to the villa to rejoin Kit and Natasha. We had dinner in a lovely restaurant close by, with bamboo pavilions set over water and looking out over the rice plantations. Diana got a couple of great photos as the darkness closed in….

…and Natasha added one of the three wise monkeys!

We have had a lazy day at the villa today. Diana and I had a massage at 4pm this afternoon and we are waiting now for a chef to arrive, who’s going to cook up a Balinese feast in our villa for us to enjoy, which should be great.

We go our separate ways tomorrow. Diana and I head on to Java and the city of Yogyakarta. Kit and Natasha have one more night in Bali before heading back to Singapore and back to work! We have really enjoyed travelling with them and getting to know Natasha, but we are very much looking forward to continuing our travels in Java before rejoining them in Singapore before we fly home.

Komodo

Kit and Natasha made it to Bali for about 8pm on Saturday, so we were able to have drinks together before an early start for Komodo the next morning. A flight of a little over an hour took us to Labuan Bajo, at the western end of Flores island. We were met and taken to the port, from where we travelled by boat for about 3/4 hr to the island of Seraya kecil, our home for the next 4 nights.

We arrived there about 12.30, so we had a good long afternoon to settle in and enjoy relaxing on the beach. There’s little else there, but it was a beautiful spot, the staff were very friendly and there was the opportunity to take out kayaks or go paddle boarding or snorkelling if just sitting reading began to pale.

On Tuesday we had organised a trip around the Komodo National Park - for some reason a UNESCO World Heritage site. We went by boat straight from our island hotel, and after retracing our route to Labuan Bajo to pick up permits for the park, we carried on to our first stop at Padar Island. We climbed a lot of steps to the summit with fantastic views across the island as we climbed.

We had seen photos of the view above in the guidebook, but obviously taken at the end of the dry season when the land looked pretty arid. We have arrived at the tail end of the rainy season, and it is lovely to see everything looking so green.

From there to swim at Pink Beach, so named because of the red coral which has broken down and coloured the beach vaguely pink. And from there to Komodo island itself to see the Komodo dragons. We saw 4 adults and 1 juvenile. Amazing creatures, apparently unchanged for 4 million years.

After a picnic lunch, we carried on to a wonderful reef where we could snorkel above the beautiful corals and tropical fish. Then to Manta Point, where manta rays are known to congregate at a cleaning station where they are cleaned by small fish. We were able to snorkel with the manta rays and probably saw about 20 of them over 2 ‘dives’. There was quite a strong current in this area, so we were dropped off by the boat at one point and picked up ‘downstream’. We were able to just float past them and all agreed this was the highlight of the day…but unfortunately no photos! The picture below gives an impression of the beautiful marine landscape we spent the day in.

Singapore and Bali

Welcome back! We had a smooth journey from London to Singapore with British Airways. Both of us managed to get a bit of sleep en route and we arrived in Singapore after the 13 1/2 hr flight feeling ok. This was just a short stopover at an airport hotel, but Kit and Natasha kindly joined us for dinner - and Natasha even paid, which was very naughty! It was lovely to meet her for the first time face-to-face and I’m sure we will enjoy travelling together over the next 10 days. Kit and Natasha had prepared a lovely bag of holiday goodies for each of us (a book, some chocolates and a bottle of SPF50 suncream!) and we handed over some Easter mini eggs and a Harrods teddy for Natasha.

Kit and Natasha both had work commitments on Friday, so we left them to it and caught a flight to Bali that morning. We have enjoyed the last two days here, catching up on some sleep, reading by the pool etc. Kit and Natasha catch us up this evening (Saturday) and we all head on together to Komodo tomorrow.

Our resort hotel here is on the beach at Jimbaran Bay, close to the airport. It’s been a perfect spot to recharge.

But the highlight of our two days here has to be our morning spent at a Balinese cooking lesson, which Kit and Natasha had given us as a Christmas present. This was run by the team at Jala restaurant, part of the Four Seasons resort just up the road. We met the chef there at 9am and he took us to the local fish market, where we saw amazingly colourful lobster, expert fish filleting and much else besides.

Then back to the restaurant to cook our lunch. We made Tum be Siap - minced chicken in banana leaf; Pepes Ikan Kakap - grilled red snapper wrapped in banana leaf; Lawar Kacang Panjang - tossed long beans with spicy grated coconut; Sambal Matah - spicy lemongrass shallot relish; and Kue Labu - Balinese sweet pumpkin cake. We had a lovely team helping us - all the ingredients were ready prepared so not too much chopping! And at the end of lunch, we were presented with two lovely red aprons and two very fine certificates to show we’d completed the course!

Back to the pool this afternoon and another chance to watch the sunset shortly after 6pm.

Off to Komodo tomorrow, where we have no wifi, so will post the next blog once we are back in Bali at the end of this coming week.