Get me to the beach baby !

So having eventually left India (we got delayed for 3 hours on the tarmac at Mumbai but it was ok because the stewardesses got us REALLY drunk to make up for it) and spent the night sleeping on the floor in Singapore airport (as Matt was too tight to allow us to spring for a hotel) we made it to Indonesia......a country which neither of us knew anything about at all. Still it looked clean and nobody was staring at us or trying to take sneaky pictures of Charlotte on their mobile phone so we were happy.

Our first destination was an island called Lombok where we headed for the beach resort of Senggigi, the only thing of note here was Matt being told that Charlotte was a "nice girl" by one of the young lads at our guest house, before promptly offering him a "younger girl" for the night for "good price" (maybe if Charlotte hadn't been in earshot a deal could have been struck).....oh and a monkey stole Matts coke.

Then it was off to the Gili's a set of three islands with pure white sands and crystal clear sea's which can only be reached by local "ferries" (i.e small leaky boats),

 

We immediately loved the islands and set about celebrating in our usual fashion

We split our time between Gili Trawangan (the party island), where we tried some of the local foods including a specialty of the island - Mushroom Milkshakes - and also took advantage of the bar scene which was an alien concept to us after 3 months of drinking in Indian back alleys. It was here that we realized that after only 3 months we had been "Indianified" as every girl we looked at showing more than her ankles we immediately branded as a hooker.

We then spent the next few nights recovering on Gili Meno which was another island with amazing beaches and fantastic coral but whereas Trawangan was party central Meno seemed to have about 12 people on it half of whom were professional snoozers, this was fine for us as we fancied a bit of r'n'r... in our usual style!! 

And Charlotte got to work on her tan uninterrupted by people trying to flog sarongs & pineapples...

It also meant we got to enjoy sunset on our own private beach

One night however we were amazed to hear sounds of life coming from the town, as usually it resembled the village of the damned once the sun had gone down. Turns out it was a local wedding and we'd arrived just in time for the ceremonial sharing of a cocktail ? no we didn't get it either, but let's just say the bride seemed to be enjoying it a damn sight more than the groom......

                                             

...poor bugger, still at least it looks like she knows how to cook.

Next up was something that we were both really excited about, we had booked ourselves onto a 3 day boat trip taking us to see various snorkeling sites but more importantly to see real life Komodo Dragons, for those who don't know Komodos are giant lizards with poisonous saliva and are considered very dangerous having killed several local farmers in recent years. Exciting or what !

Of course the first challenge of the trip would be our co-passengers and whether or not we would get on with them......fortunately we could not have asked for a better boat, everyone was around the same age, although Matt was distraught to discover he was the oldest on the boat, and everyone was up for a party. Result !

After a couple of days of sailing through what were at some points quite choppy waters, stopping of to snorkel on the way - Charlotte inventing sea yoga as we did so...

...and getting up for some beautiful sunrises...

...we finally reached the Komodo Islands. Words can't really express how impressive it is seeing these things in real life so here are some pics instead.

This is a few of them devouring a buffalo carcass

This is a couple of the really big ones fighting over a bone

And this is the sneaky bugger who tried to creep up behind us while we were watching all of the above ! At which point our guide, armed with his trusty pole (!), told it that it was "dangerous" and we had to leave....

...whatever you say pal !

After this it was back to the boat for our last night at sea together, which started as a restrained sit down with a couple of drinks...

But soon got "Charlotted"

Next morning we pulled into the port of Labuanbajo on Flores, described in the Lonely Planet as "the next big thing in Indonesian tourism" described by Charlotte & Matt as "A smelly port town with lots of corrugated iron and rats". It was here we said goodbye to most of the guys from our boat and made plans to all rendezvous in Bali in the coming weeks.

A couple of days later we embarked on another boat trip to a nearby island called Seraya which we headed to with our new German friends Annabelle & Patrick from our Komodo trip. Seraya is an island consisting of 8 beach huts, a restaurant and....well that's it. This is easily the most remote island either of us have ever been too with electricity for 4 hours a day and fresh water for 1 hour ! But it was also one of the most beautiful beaches we had seen so far, so with nothing to do all day we got back down to some serious sunbathing

It was also yet another amazing place to watch the sunrise

After two days of island paradise we felt it was time to get moving again, also we were growing tired of the "limited" menu in the restaurant (nobody wants to eat spaghetti pomodore for 4 meals in a row). This time our destination was Bali and seeing as we were too pussy to undergo the 3 day bus / ferry / minibus / ferry / coach journey we decided to splash out and fly.....with a company that we've since learnt has a questionable safety record but we made it safe and sound so who cares.

Our arrival in Bali was auspicious to say the least when as we were leaving the terminal everyone around us started screaming and running. Matt's first instinct was that it was a terrorist attack or a tiger on the loose but then when he noticed that the floor was shaking and everyone was getting away from the buildings he realised it was an earthquake. Charlottes first instinct was to run in ever decreasing circles hyper-ventilating and panicking.

After we'd recovered from this traumatic event and found our hotel we waited for the rest of our boat crew to arrive. First up were the Germans, Annabelle & Patrick who got the room next to ours and between us we proceeded to set up the pre party bar on the balcony

And pretty soon the rest of the crew arrived and we were ready to hit the town

Our first stop was a place called Sky Garden which for some inexplicable reason gives out free, yes FREE cocktails to foreigners between 10:00 - 11:00 pm, naturally neither Charlotte or Matt abused this privilege....

...once we had exhausted the free booze and after Annabelle had had stern words with Matt for getting too drunk and forced him to drink coke & water to sober up, we headed to a nightclub where....well see for yourselves.....

And of course we all looked much better in the morning

The remainder of our time on Bali was mostly spent hanging out with our friends Annabelle & Patrick, Nico & Vanessa and our new English friend Joe. During this time Patrick & Matt learned to surf, we almost went on a roadtrip (but Nico managed to put the skids on that by crashing the hire car), we drank far too much with an Australian rugby team (Matt refused to be called a pussy by an Aussie so HAD to join in their drinking games) and also hired mopeds, in the process setting-up the Indonesian chapter of the "Wolverines", to go off and explore the island.

Before we knew it it was time to say goodbye to all of our new friends and also say goodbye to Indonesia, we only had a month there but loved every minute of it. Next stop Thailand !!