Subject: REGARDS FROM INDONESIA!!!!!!!!!

Hello everyone,

how are you??!!! We are fine, a bit hot but otherwise surviving. A lot of things have happened since Campeche where we were during my last message.....

Only a few days before Campeche Willy had left and we were back into travelling just the two of us. and it took sone time to get used to, again....

Like I told you last time, we were just about to leave Campeche and we did. We took a night bus to Palenque, where we wanted to see our last Maya ruins while in Mexico. The arrival time of this bus line was very convenient, 3:30 in the morning!!! So as you can imagine, everything were closed. We decided to take a taxi to the ruins; closeby there is a "resort" where there are a lot of small huts for rent. But it was closed. Great!!! And it was dark. Great!! And it was humid. And there were alot of moquitoes. Great!!! So, we camped on a terasse of one restaurant. Reetta spread out her sleeping bag, and I tried to get some rest on a comfortable, plastic chair....

Finally the morning came and we got into a small but OK hut. And decided immediately to take a "collectivo" to the ruin. The ruins were nice, but not as impressive as Chichen Itza or Tulum. And, I must admit, we had started getting fed up with  all the ruins. So, I hope that these were the last ruins before Asia....

From Palenque we took a bus to a town called San Christobal de las casas. It is a very nice town up on the highlands of Chiapas. The vegetation reminded us of Finland..... The town was very nice, but... I may sound very arogant and stupid and you name it, but the same thing happend to us as with the ruins, we start also getting fed up with all these nice towns with nothing to do....

So, we made adecision to make our way to the Pacific coast and after a long bus ride (hopefully our last 15 hour one) we arrived in Puerto Escondido. It is a holiday town for the Americans and Canadians, as well as the locals. Luckily we were there totally off season and the invation of American tourist had ended and it was very quiet and peaceful. Most of the hotels were almost empty, so it was easy to negotiate a good deal for a longer stay.

The main reason for the people to come to Puerto Escondido is the surf. Apparently the beaches around the town are very famous among the surfers, and one of the beaches, Zicatelo, hosts every year big competitions, including part of the World Cup. The beach boasts that it has the fastest breaking surf on the Mexican coast. And let me tell you, the waves were BIG on this beach. We only observed the talented surfers from the shade of a "too dangerous for swimming" sing...

The town itself is terrible, but there is a lot to do, or at least we created a lot of activity for ourselves.. We restarted our fitness programme (gym, jogging, walking), we restarted working on our tan, and we started bodyboarding. I don't know if you know what a bodyboard is, but to me it looked like a sissy version of a surf board. And it looked that if those Mexicanos can do it, Finns can do it better.... So, we rented a board one day and headed for the beach. Not the one mentioned above, but one with smaller surf, as we thought that let's give it a trial run first.... Into the water, and on the board, and, off the board... A new try and off the board. God damn it, the board was unstable.... Finally we managed to stay on the board long enough to paddle out, towards the area where the others were waiting for the waves... It was a bloody hard job. OK, here we were, trying to assess the waves, which one to take.... One went by, second one went by, not good but the size increased.... Then suddenly Reetta yelled out " I take this one" and she disappeared.... I didn't believe my eyes. She really caucht the wave and was carried far away towards the beach. Totally out of control, though. For my part, I never managed to catch one, so it took a long time for us to reunite.. We decided to take stock of the situation on the beach. Reetta was too devastated by her experience that she threw in the towel, but I decided to give it another go. So, out I went. and in I came, first totally out of control, and finally totally humiliated.....

But then it was all over, and we took a night bus to Mexico City. The ride was long and cold. These guys here have this amazing love relation with their air condition systems; it has to be on full blast all the time. luckily we still have our sleeping bags with us. The most memorable thing of the journey was the moment when we crossed a mountain pass and started opur decent into the valley where Mexico City is. The whole valley was covered with this brown stuff. I don't know what it was, adn I don't really even want to know.. But look bad.

We spent a couple of days in Mexico City and re-visited the Museum of Antropology. It was a good thing to do, as now after having seen a lot of ruins, we got so much more out of the second visit.

And then we flew to to San Francisco. And it didn't come one day too soon. We were at that stage pretty tired of travelling, moving all the time, packing our bags, busses, etc. which, of course, was not made any easier by our poor Spanish skills.

At SFO there was a nice little (Reetta reminds that it was blue) Dodge waiting for us. Good it looked good, almost heavenly. And driving it felt even better!!!

We drove down the coast on Pacific 1. The coast is absolutely wonderful, ocean on the right hand side and the mountains of Big Sur on the left. Too bad it was bucketing down almost the whole way to LA. Somewhere halfway through we were caucht in a traffic jam. Soon we found out that it was caused by a land slide which again was caused by several days of heavy rain. So, I decided to run down to the end of the queue and check out the situation, and Reetta stayed in the car. At the end of the queue I saw the land slide, which didn't look that bad, but part of the road was blocked by a couple of large boulders. One local said that as the rain was about to end, the slope should start drying, and it could be OK to pass in a couple of hours. I was happy about the news and started jogging up the hill and what did I see: Reetta was driving down!!!!! I didn't have a chance to say much, as she accelerated away and drove through the land slide area!!??? Crazy Finn!!!

Probably she was still a bit high on the antibiotics: since Honduras she had had this terrible couch, and she was on her second precription..... (a third was still needed to kill the bastard off...)

One amazing thing along this castal road is the Hearst Castle. I won't start explaining it, would take a lot of time and space, but look it up in the net!!!!

And then we finally arrived in Los Angeles. It is an amazing place. On one hand it is soooooo BIG, but on another it has a strangely small feel in it. Maybe because it has not one centre but is an agglomoration of a lot of independant cities, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Venice, just to mention a few.

Our first target was to find a cheap and OK hotel, and that was not an easy job. We were by then used to staying in not so nice places, but Reetta's mother was on her way to meet us, and we wanted to treat her a bit better. Once again, our little Dodge came to rescue; I drove and Reetta went in hotels to ask about the price, etc. Finally we found a nice one in the Sunset Boulevard and we able to negotiate a good package with the owner.

And then came the second Christmas, in form of Reetta's mother and all the food and candies and goodies from Finland. That night I felt first very good, and then very ill. Luckily I didn't puke. Would've been terrible waste.

Reetta's mother is a typical Finnish lady, and also the mother of her daughter. What I mean about that is that there has to be a programme for every day, and it is organised by the minute. So, during the next 7 days there was no rest. The first was Universal Studios. It was GREAT!!!! Will have to go back again one day!!! The Magic Mountain (amazing roller coasters!!!), driving and walking around Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

As California was an expensive place, we decided to make some easy money. As there were no vacancies in any of the oncoming blockbusters, we had to drive all the way to Las Vegas, not to get married but to get easy money in the casinos.

Las Vegas is an amazing place. It is very hard to describe it in words, a big chunk of plastic and metal, hotels and casinos, some nicer than the others, and of course a lot of tourists. Some richer, some like us. We stayed in a Casino on the Strip. And we played 50 cents, and didn't win anything. So, next morning we drove back.... and promised never to vist again.

And then it was time to take Reetta's mother to the airport, and for us to drive to San Francisco, and to winter. Or that's what it felt after LA and Las Vegas. It was freezing and windy, and on top of that the hotels were much more expensive than in Hollywood. We ended up staying near Golden Gate bridge, which we of course had to walk across. And we did, and it was cold but it was nice. Until it was time to walk back over the bridge. We were just about to reach the bridge when we herd a metallic voice through a loudspeaker: "the bridge is closed". It was  a voice like you hear in the american police series. But first we couldn't figure out where it came from, as there were no cars, let alone police cars in the parking lot. There was only a huge tow truck. We walked over and the tow truck driver told us that the bridge was closed for pedestrians for the night, and we must have been the last one who were let on the bridge and didn't realise that there is no way getting back. But not to worry; americans are friendly and helpful people. Our new friend let us climb into the cockpit of his massive tow truck and he gave us a lift across the bridge back to San Francisco. And on top of that he drove us first to the top of a hill to take a nice night picture of the city. Good man!!! But he was an ex-ice hockey player....

Then it was time for a long flight to Bangkok where we landed close to midnight. Taxi to downtown and as usual we didn't have any hotels booked. It took a little time to find one, but thanks to the taxi driver and Reetta we found a nice and cheap one. The taxi driver must have been the happiest of all; we gave him a huge tip, as we were not yet accustomed to the local money and tipping culture.

Bangkok was hot and humid, thus we stayed only the minimum time in order to organise our tickets down south to the island of Koh Samui. While we were wondering around the streets of Bangkok we met by accident a man who turned out to be a school teacher on holidays. He had time to kill and we could do with a guide. So he took us to a memorable trip: We hired a long tail boat (you know the ones with a big, not so safe looking engines at the back, you must have seen them in the old James Bond film "Man with the golden gun") and went for a cruise in the old Bangkok, which is just across the river, but totally hidden from the new part of the city. It is a maze of canals which are lined with houses, temples, schools, bars, shops, you just name it....

The next day it was time for yet another night bus to Surathai from where the ferry leaves to Koh Samui. The departure from Bangkok was a big hazzle, and at Surathai there was a nice surprice for us; we hadn't received our ferry tickets... and the local guy selling the tickets was not willing to understand our situation. But, not to worry. Once again. Luckily we had got the business card of the manager of the travel agency in Bangkok, with his mobile phone number on it!!!! So, at 6.30 in the morning I called the guy and he organised everything. The ferry ticket sales man didn't look happy as he lost a couple of Euros he could have conned from us.

The reason to go to Koh Samui was one of Reetta's friends who was there on holiday with her friends. I spend a nice three days relaxing by the pool surrounded by 12 nice young girls..... What hard life a man has to live!!!!

Otherwise Koh Samui was not really for us, it was a BIG tourist trap. We needed to get out of there. Near Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand (the east side) there are a couple of islands, and we had heard that Koh Tao is beautiful, more quiet and cheaper and the diving is good. This was only partly true: the diving was s__t. We spent 5 days on the island, including the Thai new year, Songkran. it is also known as water festival. the main idea is to get others totally wet by using buckets, water guns, etc. And of course everyone has the same idea which means that you get wet in the process, as well. And whilst getting wet, it is nice to get drunk, too. And that we did.....

Luckily the Finnish New Year has nothing to do with water, as it is in December; everyone would turn into ice blocks.

As we were rather disappointed with the diving on Koh Tao, and as we wanted more, we decided to cross the peninsula and to go the Phuket where it is easy to organise dicing trips. First we took a night boat from Koh Tao to Surathai. That was an experience. It was an old wooden ship which took 66 passangers. It was a night boat but there were no cabins on board. All 66 of us (the boat was full) slept on matrasses on the upper deck. It was like on one of those slave ships from Africa to the New World.....

In the bus from Surathani to Phuket we met an Englishman called Richard. He had just booked a liveaboard diving trip for 4 nights 4 days. we followed him and were able to negotiate a good price. And we were back into serious diving again.

To those who don't know what a liveaboard diving trip is, let me give a short explanation. A liveaboard is a all inclusive diving trip during which you dive from the dive boat as much as you can (in pracatise 4 times a day). The daily routine is pretty much the following: wake up, light breakfast, 60 minutes dive, breakfast, 60 min dive, lunch, 60 min dive, snack, night dive, dinner, sleep. That goes on for 4 days after which you are more than raady go back to shore. BUT, it is a wonderful and effective way to see the underwater wonders, and there was plenty to see. The water in the Andeman sea on the west side of Thailand and close to the Burmanese border was clear and full of everything you could imagine, sharks, turtles, rays, morray eels, fish and fishes, corals.... Very nice.

Then we got stuck in Phuket. The area where we stayed was affected by the twunami but you could hardly see that something had happened. Only in some places there were some damaged builings but in general the reconstruction had been fast and furious. But so were the people. The tsunami had affected most of the main tourist season in the area, and the  monsoon was soon to come, so the locals were in a desperate hurry to get as much money from the tourists as possible before the time ran out. It took some time to get used to their rather pushy approach.

But this was only in the main resort town. We rented a motor bike for three days and went around island and discovered beautiful places, and friendly people. And on top of that, the Thai cuisine is the best we have come across on our trip, yet (it even surpasses Mexican!!!!)

The next destination was Singapore. And getting from Phuket to Singapore couldn't be easier. As anywhere there are several low fare airlines operating in Asia offering rather extensive route networks in the area. We were looking for something cheap and cheap we found. We booked through internet a one-way flight to Singapore, and it cost 17,5 Euros per person!!!!!! The planes were brand new, and the service was very good, I mean the little service that there is nowadays on these kind of flights.

In Singapore we stayed with our good friends Christophe and Pia who had just moved there from Toulouse. They have a lovely house just outside the city centre. We had our own litlle cottage at the back of the garden, right by the pool.

It was great to be there. First of all to see Chris and Pia but also to have a "holiday" from travelling and to stay at home. On April 31 Pia and Christophe organised a Scandinavian night. It was perfect timing as it was Vappuaatto in Finland. We had all the Scandinavian and Finnish specialities: Koskenkorva, graved salomon, herring, dark bread, .... It was great!!!

And on May 1 (Vappupaiva) we went to Raffles to have the famous Sunday Brunch. Massive and good. Turn for Singapore Sling came later...

Singapore is a strange place. On one hand it has an Asian feel in it (Chinatown, Litlle India, etc.) but on the other it is very Western, clean, sterile, full of shopping malls. I mean FULL of shopping malls. The favourite hobby of the Singapore people is shopping. it was crazy!!!

The most annoying thing were the taxi drivers; they just don't understand English, and what is even worse they don't admit thay they have absolutely no clue where to go, but they drive anyway. Luckily it is cheap....

We kind of got stuck in Singapore. It was so nice to settle into some kind of a normal routine again. We re-restarted our fitness programme in form of gym, and we started doing grocerie shopping at the local Carrefour!!! They had such nice French things there, and dark bread...

After two weeks it was time to move on. On Koh Tao we had made two major choices concerning the rest of the trip. First, we decided to skip the northern option, i.e. to go to North Thailand and Laos, but to head south instead. The second one was that we decided to shorten our journey; we were getting tired of travelling and wanted to get back to Western life..... And also to enjoy a bit the short but beautiful Finnish summer...

So, south we went and to the south of Singapore there is Indonesia. We heard meny good things about Indonesia along our travels, so good that it was even hard to believe. We also hard heard that it is cheap to get domestic flights in Indonesia, so we decided to take a ferry from Singapore to the island of Batam (close to Sumatra). Batam is a dump, dirty, noicy, crowded but definately a good place to buy cheap tickes. Unfortunately we didin't get a flight for the same day, so we needed to stay the night. Never again!!!

The flight took us to Jakarta, and cost us 30 Euros!!! Not bad!!! But at Jakarta, we were facing a new problem. A familiar one, though: we didn't know were to go!!!!! This has been a common problem during the trip, but luckily most of the travellers we have met, at least of the ones travelling more than a couple of months, have similar problems....

So, at Jarkarta airport we needed to decide the direction. Richard (read above) had e-mailed us that he had flown to Sulawesi, adn he was staying at a lovely dive resort (Living Colours) run by a Finnish couple, and that the place was full of Finns. We had already read about the diving in Sulawesi which supposedly is amoung the best places in the world, but the tickets to Sulawesi were expensive... Not by the European standerds (75 Euros for a 3 hour flight!!!) but compared to another option, 23 euros to Bali!!! we needed to have a family meeting and we decided to have a working lunch to talk the situation over; we went to McDonald's. It was good!!!!

And we flew to Sulawesi, to the very northern tip of the island, city of Manado. From there we were taken to a small island called Bunaken. It is a national park surrounded by small islands and coral reefs. The place was great, and full of Finns.

Diving in Sulawesi really is good, reefs are in impecable condition, lots of big stuff in form of sharks, turtles, rays, tuna, etc. but also a lot of small stuff like pygmy seahorses, nudibraches,... and of course a lot of fish and fishes....

But you can only dive so much; we had already done over 50 dives since February which had totally ruined our travel budget.

And you can tolerate a lot of Finns in the same place at the same time only so long.... 

After a week we were ready to leave but it took us still 4 days to actually get out of Sulawesi; there was some sort of an international paracliding competition in Manado and all the flights were full. Finally after 4 days of no go, we decided to take our own initiative and went with all our luggage to the airport, only to find out that all the planes were full... It took us more than 4 hours to get a place for the follwing morning... and it took a lot more money we had expected as we had to fly via Jakarta. Nut finally we got the tickets, Bali here we come!!!!!!

Finally late the following day we landed in Denpassar airport and took a taxi to the hotel which was in the middle of Kuta, the biggest and the worst tourist trap on the island. Luckily the main season had not yet started, so the prices were reasonable and it was not too crowded.

After two nights at Kuta, we moved on. This time not too far, only a few hour bus journey to the north east corner of the island to a small town of Tulamben. The reason to go to Tulamben was Liberty. Liberty is a wreck which sunk during WW II and was moved to its present location by a huge explosion  that rocked Bali in 1963; Gunung Agung, the Balinese sacred mountain exploded and killed more than 1000 people.

Liberty is nowadays, unfortunately, hardly recognisable as a wreck. It is more of a huge pile of bent metal covered by coral, but it is full of fish. and they are huge as they have good hiding places within the scrap metal, and the tourists feed them... Bad tourists!!!!! But anyhow, we made safly our final dives on the trip (i certainly hope so!!).

The next destination was Ubud, a small town which is famous for its artists, paintings, wood carvings, etc. It is nice place after the hazzle of Kuta. From there we made trips to the surrounding area, first with a motor bike, but when we wanted to go to the mountains (Reetta wanted to climb a volcano!!!) we rented a car.

And car was definately a safer option. The traffic in Bali is something else. I have been driving in quite a lot of countries in my life but I have never seen enything like this. The roads are narrow (in good shape, though) and they are full of speeding cars. and the small places between the vehicles are filled with motor bikes going even faster and passing you left, right and centre... Not Kosher at all!!!!!

After visiting the Hindu temple of Besakih (bali is Hindu, by the way) we turned the car towards the mountains and finally reached the old crater rim, which had been formed by a huge explosion several thousands of years ago. Now inside this huge crater was a lake and a small and active vocano, Gunung Batur. It last erupted in year 2000, and even as we spesk the activity has increased so that part of the mountain is off limits.

First we had some ideas of climbing the volcano by ourselves, and our guide book said that it is possible, and I am a big mountaineer after all, aren't I??!!!  The road to where the path up the mountain begins was so bad and so full of trucks that we decided to skip this and turned into plan B; we hired a guide.

4 o'clock the following morning we started up the hill. It was more of a hill than a mountain, the path was slippery, though, because of the lava sand. and we really would have been lost lost without a guide. It took us 1,5 hours to the summit. The view could have been great but we were unlucky with the wearher; everyhting was covered in clouds, and we didn't see the sunrise. But the mountain was intresting; from the summit you could see all the craters, the steam coming out of then, the path of the lava flows into the valley and over the old villages!!!!! and you could also feel that the ground was warm... You could even boil an egg in 5 minutes in the sand!!!!

And then back to Ubud. First up the mountains, then down the mountains, and then turn left when we se signs for Ubud. Easy. But, there were no sings Ubud, and we ended up driving all the way to Denpassar, got lost and it took us 1,5 hours to find out of there and back to the right road...

Now, we are back at the hotel, car has been safely returned, and we are heading for a dinner!!!!!!

And then back to Kuta!!!!!

Long one!!!! Sorry about that!!!! Probably you should read it in parts!!! Or delete!!

And to the Finnish speaking readers; koska taa juttu on nain tautisen pitka, johtuen lahinna mun laiskuudesta kirjottaa, niin mulla ei oo tarmoa tehda tata samaa suomeksi, eli taa tulee nyt sitten vaan englanniksi. Anteeksi.

Have a nice summer everyone!!!!

Allu