Bali

After the hectic pace of Java, we needed a bit of relaxation. Luckily, Bali was the perfect spot. Bali is beautiful, interesting, and definitely relaxing.

After spending one night in the beach town of Sanur, we waded out to a boat heading to Nusa Lembongan, a small island off of Bali's south coast. Nusa Lembongan has few cars and the pace of life is centered around the constant Hindu ceremonies and the tidal harvesting of the seaweed.

We stayed in a beach hut on the remote side of the island and rented a motor scooter to get around. One the scooter it takes about an hour to tour the whole island, so we had a lot of time to read or nap on the beach. It was a perfect spot to spend a few days.

Then we headed back to the bigger Bali, where we toured terraced rice paddies, visited the Hindu temples, and wandered the streets of the artist town of Ubud (of Eat, Pray, Love fame). Almost 90% Hindu, Balinese life is dominated by ceremonies and the homes and towns are all centered around temples. Even though the temples there are very old, they are still used almost daily, and we ran across many elaborate ceremonies involving entire communities.

We could have easily spent another week in Bali, but were getting pretty excited for our next destination: Borneo.

Check out some of our pictures from Bali.

Bali

Java

After a two day trip that took us through Germany and Thailand we landed in Jakarta, which is on the island of Java in the country of Indonesia. Indonesia is made up of some 20,000 islands and is well known for the wildlife in Sumatra and Borneo, rice paddies, temples, Bali, and the bombings in both Jakarta and Bali that targeted tourist locations. We went because it had a good mix of culture, beaches, and wildlife (and it wasn't the rainy season).

We spent two nights in the crazy, overcrowded, hot, dirty, and fascinating city of Jakarta. We saw a few things but mostly learned how many people you can pack into a very small space (NYC is nothing!) and how it might be easier to take a taxi across the street than to try to cross on your own.

Our next stop was Yogyakarta. To get there we took a train across Java. The train took 8 hours and we spent most of the time watching the mountains, volcanoes, rice paddies, and daily life go by outside our window. Yogyakarta is a good size city, if we hadn't been to Jakarta we would have thought it was a big city but in comparison it was calmer and smaller. The main reason we went to the city was see two temples. Within 45 minutes of the city is the world's largest Buddhist temple and South East Asia's largest Hindu temple. Both were beautiful and amazing feats of human engineering.

After three nights we were now off for our next adventure in Bali. Here are some pictures from our week on Java.

Java

Honeymoon

For the past month we have been on our honeymoon traveling through South East Asia. Four countries, 13 hotels, 12 flights, and six islands later we are home. We are going to post pictures in three groups, a post for each main island we went to. But here are some things we learned from our trip.

1. Java has more motor bikes that you have ever seen in your life (and the drivers are crazy!).
2. You are never far from a Starbucks or a KFC.
3. You have to bargain for everything.
4. Rice paddies are beautiful.
5. Everything is always an adventure, you never know what to expect.
6. Bali is famous for a reason, it is beautiful and fascinating.
7. Stick bugs are really cool.
8. South East Asia is really really really far away.
9. You can watch proboscis monkeys forever.
10. Planet Earth was right, Borneo is really cool.