Three loves reunite!

I was fortunate to take another trip to Indonesia. While it is clearly my favorite Southeast Asian country (love number one), I was also reunited with diving (love number two) and my family came to visit in Bali (love number three...my family, not Bali). Those are clearly not written in order of importance, rather in order chronologically.

Love #1 Returning to Indonesia. The people. The food. The weather. Everything that I love, remember. Still just as fantastic.

Love #2 Diving in Raja Ampat, Indonesia (way far east, near Papua, which is the furthest eastern island of Indonesia) has been at the top of my list of diving that needed to happen since I started these travels in June. I decided to live (eat, sleep and dive) on a boat for seven days so that I could experience some of the best dive sites in the Raja Ampat area. Pictures will give you a better idea of how absolutely amazing and mindblowing it was. It has been, hands down, the best diving I have done so far! Seven days of living on the boat, meeting more great people (the diving community is so much fun) and doing seventeen dives! Life doesn't get much better than that.

The Jaya. Our boat with Komodo Diving.

I was bored while waiting for the
next dive so I climbed the mast.

We even took a little hike for sunset at a nearby lookout point.

Our awesome dive group! Germany and USA represent.

I am so glad we had an underwater camera with our group.

Almost every dive was like swimming in an aquarium!

I wouldn't usually link a blog post in my own blog post, but a dive guide on our trip, who works for Wicked Diving, also writes a blog for them. So, if you're interested in more of the specifics of our week of diving, check it out. I think he did a great job.

http://wickeddiving.com/2015/03/concerning-the-big-picture-and-fishy-fish-fatigue-trip-report-for-raja-ampat-liveaboard-trip-13/ 

After the liveaboard trip, we relaxed at a homestay at a nearby island, still in Raja Ampat. We thought we would need time to unwind from the massive amount of dives we had done and just from living on a boat. It turns out, we just wanted to keep diving. Luckily, our homestay also had a small diveshop where we did five more dives. When I wasn't diving, I was sitting in my hammock reading or laying on the sand in the sun. 

Do you think we were done diving yet? Ha! We headed to southern Sulawesi for more diving. It's the off season (apparently there are a ton of sharks in the peak season), but we still had fun diving and met some more interesting characters (mainly boat builders and spear fishermen). We did five more dives here.

The view from the restaurant where we ate fresh fish barbecue.

Notice the beautiful water colors?
Or were you distracted...by the tree, right?
This is for my sister and her "love" of spiders. 

Love #3 My Family!!

I met the fam in Bali. My dad, sister, brother-in-law and two cousins made the long journey to check out what was so great about Asia and Indonesia. I can't say that any of them enjoyed the plane rides and long flight times, but they all survived (some better than others), and maybe I convinced them that it's a pretty great place to be (but I don't know, you'll just have to ask them for yourself). 

We stayed in Canggu for three days. We went to the beach a couple of days. We went on a water sport adventure, including a jet ski, banana boat ride and a tube ride. We drank a lot of Bintang, the local beer, while sitting next to the pool. We went out one night to the crazy strip of bars and clubs.
 

Dad at the dance club. It was hilarious!

We took a big van for some rice field site seeing, coffee tasting and stopping at the Sacred Monkey Forest along our way to Ubud, where we spent three days. We got massages (while the boys drank beer) and went shopping. I took my cousin to try an introductory course for scuba diving. I think he's hooked, and I'm happy to be that "bad" influence (I don't know if he realizes, yet, that diving can become an expensive habit, and will most likely involve trips around the world to desirable divesites. Darn). More beer was consumed pool side, except this time our villa had a private pool. This led to more jumping in,splashing around and ridiculous water fights. We even had a night of playing euchre. From here, we took an early morning excursion up Mt Batur to see the sunrise from the top.

Rice field green. Gorgeous!

Mt Batur is 1,717 meters high.
So proud of everyone for making the climb!

View from the top of Mt Batur, right before sunrise.

 

Then, their short vacation was finished, and we all flew back to Jakarta together.  Unfortunately, I don't have any group photos, so I'll put one on here later from one of my family members. I am so glad they came to visit and I could share with them a little bit of my Indonesia experience. I hope they had as much fun as I did! Thanks for coming. Love you guys!