Helllo to All,
We are back to Manado on Sulawesi after a week on Bunaken Island and no Internet, there was internet WIFI at the resort, but we aren't travelling with our own computer, so we were 'INCOMMUNICADO' as the Jimmy Buffett song goes!
Bunaken Island was absolutely beautiful, at least the parts we saw. The village and the homes are kept with pride, and the people, as everywhere in Indonesia, very friendly.
Most people go to Bunaken to dive, so the resorts there are mostly 'inclusive' with lodgings and three meals. We stayed at Bunaken Village Resort, in a lovely cottage with a big deck and hammock. Meals were served in an open dining area, where all the guests sat down to eat at a table together. The resort had a nice little pool, with saltwater, as fresh water is a precious commodity on Bunaken. The inn is run by Jochem and his wife Angelina. Jochem is originally from Holland, and Angelina is from Java. They are expecting there first baby, and poor tiny Angelina is only 7 months pregnant along with an uncomfortably HUGE belly! We hope for the very best for them with the new baby!
We also met Vim & Corry, a couple from Holland, who are frequent travellers, and had some great stories to share. They are retired now, so they travel as much as they can, as the list of places still to visit is long!!! We wish them long lives, good health, and happy travels. I hope that our paths will meet again!
We had heard from diving friends that Sulawesi was a great Diving destination, and I must say, it is without a doubt the most incredible diving that we have ever done! Not a lot of BIG stuff in the places we dove, although we did see a few sharks and some HUGE sea turtles. The sheer volume & variety of corals, anenomes, fish, and strange 'critters' was astounding.
And David, here is one for you, we saw a bright yellow frog fish actually moving!!! We watched him sort of waddle along the wall for a few feet by sort of gripping the wall with his stubby little fins and moving himself along. It was a very exciting find. When OPOS, our dive master told the guys back at the shop, they didn't believe him! For those of you who have never seen a frog fish (or angler fish as they are sometimes called) they pretty much just sit like a bump on a log in the same place, blending in with background, and are very difficult to see. Often, they will stay right there in the same place for weeks or months, so seeing one actually moving from one place to another is indeed rare! (I know, we divers are a bit weird, the things we get excited about!)
For both friends and strangers who may have found this post, we highly recommended BUNAKEN VILLAGE RESORT for both diving and relaxing, if you happen to be heading to Sulawesi, Indonesia. Beautiful, clean, relaxing, & the greatest staff ever!
Cheery Wave,
Carrie
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Friday, April 16, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
BOROBUDUR
We are currently in Borobudur. Home of the largest Buddhist Temple in the world. (It is an ancient temple, built by hand, with incredible intricate stone carvings of amazing detail, especially for the time when it was created.) Absolutely beautiful, and definitely worth taking the time to come here.
So, to back up a bit, we traveled here by bus on Thursday after paying a visit to the Sultan's Palace in Yogyakarta. We are staying at the LOTUS II, a lovely guest house recommended by lonely planet. We have a huge four poster bed covered with a lace mosquito net ~ a romantic fantasy bed except for the blue bedspread with cows printed on it! Our bathroom is larger than our whole room in Yogyakarta was, and we have hot water ~ yay! We have a balcony overlooking rice paddies. I sort of thought that a swarm of mosquitoes would rise from the rice paddies when evening fell, but they haven't really been a problem, although I am diligent about repellent anyway! We are served tea, meals, and semi-cold beer on our balcony.
The only downfall to this wonderful place is that when the call to prayer from the nearby Muslim Mosques begins, which is broadcast over loudspeakers, the mosque closest to us has a horrible chanter, truly. There must be 3 or 4 mosques close by, and the ones further away have lovely chanters, but the one next to us is just terrible! I can't imagine that it is easy to bow in reverent prayer to this man's voice! In addition, the early morning call to prayer is at 4:30am!!!
Yesterday afternoon when we arrived, we walked to a couple small temples in the village, and were able to walk around the grounds of a beautiful buddhist monestary. We got caught in the afternoon rain, and even though we had raincoats, ended up soaked to the bone by the time we got back to the LOTUS. All those people offering us rides all day completely dissappeared! So we walked home in a raging downpour singing SINGING IN THE RAIN & RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD.
Our experience with the friendly people here continues to be very positive, although there is somewhat of a circus atmosphere around the temple here in Borobudur with people selling wares of every kind ~ Buddhist temple ashtray anyone? There was even some kids carnival rides & arcade games! Luckily all these people are kept away from the temple itself. The temple brings a LOT of money to this village, with as many as 90,000 people visiting on Festival days, luckily there was nothing like that number here today!
The people here, especially the children shout Hello as we walk by. I am sure we say hello to everyone we pass! It turns out I am something of a curiosity here with my pale white skin. I have been asked to take pictures with quite a lot of the people here. Mostly Muslim women whom I look like a giant standing next to. (Vanessa, if you are reading this, you would feel tall here!) Even Glen gets comments from the men about how tall he is. I was worried about not being covered from head to toe, as many women here definitely are, but after being asked to pose for pictures with these lovely women, my worry is gone. I am just a curiosity! (People have asked for pictures with Glen and I together also.) We are finding that most people DO NOT think we are married. I guess the idea of an interracial marriage is a bit foreign too them.
Well, I guess I will close for now. Tomorrow we are off to BALI!
Salamat Malam (Goodnight)
Carrie
PS. Did I mention this wonderful room with such hospitable hosts cost the grand sum of 150,000 rupiah, (about $17.00)!
So, to back up a bit, we traveled here by bus on Thursday after paying a visit to the Sultan's Palace in Yogyakarta. We are staying at the LOTUS II, a lovely guest house recommended by lonely planet. We have a huge four poster bed covered with a lace mosquito net ~ a romantic fantasy bed except for the blue bedspread with cows printed on it! Our bathroom is larger than our whole room in Yogyakarta was, and we have hot water ~ yay! We have a balcony overlooking rice paddies. I sort of thought that a swarm of mosquitoes would rise from the rice paddies when evening fell, but they haven't really been a problem, although I am diligent about repellent anyway! We are served tea, meals, and semi-cold beer on our balcony.
The only downfall to this wonderful place is that when the call to prayer from the nearby Muslim Mosques begins, which is broadcast over loudspeakers, the mosque closest to us has a horrible chanter, truly. There must be 3 or 4 mosques close by, and the ones further away have lovely chanters, but the one next to us is just terrible! I can't imagine that it is easy to bow in reverent prayer to this man's voice! In addition, the early morning call to prayer is at 4:30am!!!
Yesterday afternoon when we arrived, we walked to a couple small temples in the village, and were able to walk around the grounds of a beautiful buddhist monestary. We got caught in the afternoon rain, and even though we had raincoats, ended up soaked to the bone by the time we got back to the LOTUS. All those people offering us rides all day completely dissappeared! So we walked home in a raging downpour singing SINGING IN THE RAIN & RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD.
Our experience with the friendly people here continues to be very positive, although there is somewhat of a circus atmosphere around the temple here in Borobudur with people selling wares of every kind ~ Buddhist temple ashtray anyone? There was even some kids carnival rides & arcade games! Luckily all these people are kept away from the temple itself. The temple brings a LOT of money to this village, with as many as 90,000 people visiting on Festival days, luckily there was nothing like that number here today!
The people here, especially the children shout Hello as we walk by. I am sure we say hello to everyone we pass! It turns out I am something of a curiosity here with my pale white skin. I have been asked to take pictures with quite a lot of the people here. Mostly Muslim women whom I look like a giant standing next to. (Vanessa, if you are reading this, you would feel tall here!) Even Glen gets comments from the men about how tall he is. I was worried about not being covered from head to toe, as many women here definitely are, but after being asked to pose for pictures with these lovely women, my worry is gone. I am just a curiosity! (People have asked for pictures with Glen and I together also.) We are finding that most people DO NOT think we are married. I guess the idea of an interracial marriage is a bit foreign too them.
Well, I guess I will close for now. Tomorrow we are off to BALI!
Salamat Malam (Goodnight)
Carrie
PS. Did I mention this wonderful room with such hospitable hosts cost the grand sum of 150,000 rupiah, (about $17.00)!
Friday, March 12, 2010
T minus 1 day
Hi all , before we start, I do believe you should all go buy the new dave matthews and tim reynolds in las vegas cd, if for nothing else, the acoustic version of kashmir. Sorry just needed to show my dave love. So , it's the day before we leave and ...well I've been packed for hours now..I'm ready to go, knowing that I have probably forgotten something, I almost forgot to pack underwear, too old to do the commando thing..oh oh oh try not to picture it..yeah I know not pretty. I was able to cram everything into 1 backpack, so I'm only going to take a small day pack with me on the plane. ( I sort of wonder sometimes whether anyone cares about these sort of things..cause for the most part I'm not sure I would, but It's our blog so....I guess I can be as boring as I want to be)
So we leave tomorrow around 2 and get to San Francisco at about 4pm and then we have 8 hours there, so we think we might go down to fishermans wharf and do touristy stuff. We leave SF at just after midnight and get to Hong Kong around 6am the NEXT DAY, I think it's 15 hours in the air...blah blah blah , wow almost boring myself, ok we get into Jakarta at about 2pm on monday mar 15 with our backpacks hopefully. I 'm not sure about Carrie, but I have a hard time sleeping on planes , so I'm not sure how much sleep I'm going to get by the time we get there. We have booked a hotel in Jakarta for 2 days when we get there, so we can recover from the flight and maybe plan what we want to do from there.
Speaking of sleep..probably not going to get much of that tonight either, it's almost addictive, the feeling I get when I travel, especially this time, because I have never been to Indonesia before and well.... it's not the most stable country in the world. To be honest though, everywhere I have gone has never been as bad as people have said it would be, and well ... I think that's the whole point of travel, to get you out of your comfort zone, to experience things out of the ordinary and see how you react, to learn things about yourself..ok cliche, but to be a better person and really isn't that what we're all trying to do?
Oh what the hell , .. I'm a little tipsy.. Carrie has been the best wife ever, I drag her around the world to these 3rd world countries with sketchy sanitation, large sharks, bugs, bugs and more bugs and she has always been willing to be by my side...maybe not real comfortable, but trusting me enough to go through the experience with me, and I love her for that and am always amazed at how lucky I am to have her as my wife. Does this qualify for embarrassing ?
Well that's all for now... hmmmm... not the funniest post in the world...mushroom walks into a bar and says hey bartender, can I get a pint of beer? bartender says we don't serve mushrooms here!! mushroom says; hey come on , I'm a fun guy (funghi).
So we leave tomorrow around 2 and get to San Francisco at about 4pm and then we have 8 hours there, so we think we might go down to fishermans wharf and do touristy stuff. We leave SF at just after midnight and get to Hong Kong around 6am the NEXT DAY, I think it's 15 hours in the air...blah blah blah , wow almost boring myself, ok we get into Jakarta at about 2pm on monday mar 15 with our backpacks hopefully. I 'm not sure about Carrie, but I have a hard time sleeping on planes , so I'm not sure how much sleep I'm going to get by the time we get there. We have booked a hotel in Jakarta for 2 days when we get there, so we can recover from the flight and maybe plan what we want to do from there.
Speaking of sleep..probably not going to get much of that tonight either, it's almost addictive, the feeling I get when I travel, especially this time, because I have never been to Indonesia before and well.... it's not the most stable country in the world. To be honest though, everywhere I have gone has never been as bad as people have said it would be, and well ... I think that's the whole point of travel, to get you out of your comfort zone, to experience things out of the ordinary and see how you react, to learn things about yourself..ok cliche, but to be a better person and really isn't that what we're all trying to do?
Oh what the hell , .. I'm a little tipsy.. Carrie has been the best wife ever, I drag her around the world to these 3rd world countries with sketchy sanitation, large sharks, bugs, bugs and more bugs and she has always been willing to be by my side...maybe not real comfortable, but trusting me enough to go through the experience with me, and I love her for that and am always amazed at how lucky I am to have her as my wife. Does this qualify for embarrassing ?
Well that's all for now... hmmmm... not the funniest post in the world...mushroom walks into a bar and says hey bartender, can I get a pint of beer? bartender says we don't serve mushrooms here!! mushroom says; hey come on , I'm a fun guy (funghi).
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Two Embarrassing Old People
So here we are, setting up our shared travel blog. And if you think it is difficult to name your blog, you should try naming a shared blog. It is a bit like naming a baby. He makes a suggestion, she says no. She makes a suggestion, he says no.
So why did we choose "TWO EMBARRASSING OLD PEOPLE" you ask? Well, when Glen & I were first dating, he said to me, "I want to be that embarrassing old couple kissing behind the palm tree at the mall." I thought that was a great goal to work toward, and I am sure if you ask our children, we do extremely well at achieving embarrassing old people status! Thus, it seemed a fitting title to describe our shared life experience.
Cheery Wave,
Carrie
So why did we choose "TWO EMBARRASSING OLD PEOPLE" you ask? Well, when Glen & I were first dating, he said to me, "I want to be that embarrassing old couple kissing behind the palm tree at the mall." I thought that was a great goal to work toward, and I am sure if you ask our children, we do extremely well at achieving embarrassing old people status! Thus, it seemed a fitting title to describe our shared life experience.
Cheery Wave,
Carrie
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