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 !!  

Ok seen the Taj....let's get the hell out of here !

After yet another eventful train journey (turns out we'd bought the wrong tickets this time !) we arrived in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal and set about trying to find Shabu, Matt's guide from 5 years ago, which miraculously we managed to do and though he was pleased to see us he was confused to note that "Christine" had grown about half a foot and picked up a few pounds (just kidding !!!). We then headed off to find our hostel before going to a rooftop bar to watch sunset over the Taj....in true English style

Then it was back to the guest house to get an early night as we had arranged to be picked up at 5:30 in the flipping morning so that we could go and watch sunrise over the Taj Mahal from the Red Fort as this was supposed to be truly amazing. However it turns out that 5:30 in the morning is a little too early for us, so when we were roused at 6:00 by our guest house manager banging on the door and telling us that "your driver has been waiting outside for 40 minutes !" we decided to sack off the Red Fort and head straight to the main event. This was a stroke of luck on our part as it meant that we got to the Taj Mahal before the tens of thousands of Indians and other tourists who descend upon it daily meaning we had the place practically to ourselves

It also meant that Matt got the chance to take some pictures that might not otherwise have been allowed!

And even got Charlotte in on the act ! 

After a couple of hours of walking around and checking it out the place started to fill up and we became at least as big an attraction to the hordes of Indians as the Taj itself....

...so we decided to leave and see what the city of Agra was all about.

Errm...

Yeah....

And here's one you definitely won't see in the guide books

Basically it's the same as every other Indian city, hot, crowded & smelly ! Not really what you expect from the city surrounding the jewel in India's tourist crown but hey T.I.I !!

Time to get some more culture, so off we went to the Baby Taj, this is another white marble building with similar carving work as the real Taj but on a smaller scale

 

Then it was time to head to the backside of the Taj and watch the sun go down from the opposite bank of the river

It was here that we took a picture which we feel kind of sums up India

This was great but soon enough we were back in the rickshaw riding through the now for some reason even smellier streets of Agra....

 
...it was at this point that we had our first epiphany - We'd had enough of India ! Sod waiting around for the monsoon to finish so we could go to Goa we wanted out of here. With this in mind we dived into the nearest internet shop fending off beggars, street children and carpet salesmen as we did so and changed our flights and our plans so that we would soon be flying to Indonesia.

We now had less than 2 weeks remaining in India ! To celebrate this fact we went and had a few drinks with Matt's friend Shabu.

Our next mission was to use our 2 weeks to get down to Mumbai, where we were flying out from, upon checking the train connections we realised the easiest & cheapest way was to train it to Jaipur and from there on to Mumbai. So Jaipur it was....the town they call the jewel of Rajasthan *cough*BULLSHIT*cough*

There's not really a lot to say about Jaipur so here are a few pictures....which somehow make it look like a lovely city, really worth visiting - trust us it's not !

The Floating (flooded) Palace

One of the gates to the "pink city" - which by the way is dirty not pink (cowshit mixed with pollution does not make pink !)  

The Palace of the Winds

The Raj Mandir - India's largest Bollywood cinema 

 

And a camel that made us laugh because it was holding up traffic

 
Jaipur was also where we had our second epiphany- We (well Matt mainly) had had enough of vegetarian Indian food. So when we saw a K.F.C Charlotte was amazed to find that Matt had developed the ability to move at a speed faster than light and had ordered half the menu before she had even got through the door.

And consumed most of it before she could sit down

Next up was our final train journey in India, the overnight train to Mumbai.....this one was actually fairly uneventful although Charlotte did wake up to find that the nice, well educated, old Indian lady she had been talking too had stolen all our water before quietly slipping out of the carriage. Honestly you can't trust anyone in this country.

After going through the usual tasks of finding a guesthouse and having a shower we spent the day wandering around Mumbai and we were pleasantly surprised, instead of the usual narrow, crowded, filthy streets we found ourselves walking along wide tree lined (relatively) clean streets with buildings that didn't look like they were about to collapse

This was more like it.

That night Charlotte made Matt go and watch the Chelsea vs Man Utd game in a local bar which, much to Matt's consternation, was full of Indian Man Utd fans but it was all good natured fun and Matt took the defeat in his usual non-sulky way. On the way back to the guest house Matt purchased a couple of beers and opened one to drown his sorrows, this proved to be a bad idea as while Charlotte was in a shop a policeman pulled up next to Matt and demanded that he get on the back of his bike (apparently drinking on the street is illegal in Mumbai !). Matt refused to get on the bike and the policeman demanded a 1000 rupee fine, Matt then refused to pay this by which time Charlotte had reappeared, at this point the fine suddenly changed to 500 rupees, again Mat refused to pay, then when a bunch of Indian kids walked by we asked them to help and the fine became 200 rupees....hang on a second, I'm pretty sure you don't barter for fines...the kids explained that the police are all corrupt and upon hearing this the policeman suddenly accelerated away cursing Matt in Hindi. We then legged it back to the guesthouse in case he'd gone to get his gun. 

The next day, with our spirits raised by the cleanliness of the streets we thought we'd go and check out Mumbai's beach because hey who knows maybe it's a pristine stretch of white sand with blue water and some palm trees......

Oh no hold on we're in India.

To get over the disappointment of this we headed to a 5 star hotel for our first proper drink (i.e. not made with Indian booze) in over 3 months and sat and reflected on the amazing adventures we'd had and all the brilliant people we'd met - India we love you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next morning we packed our bags and prepared to say goodbye to the craziest country on the planet but before we left Mumbai decided to show us that it too was a real Indian city and give us one last reminder of what we were leaving behind

 

We hope you've enjoyed reading about our Indian exploits as much as we've enjoyed enduring them. Next up South East Asia !!!!