I Will Go The Distance

Let the (official) 'Road Trippin Southeast Asia' adventures begin! If you haven't realized, at this point, I've already been traveling for four months, including a trip home and back, so here goes.

My travels have been absolutely fantastic since June! I  finally left Indonesia in mid-August after a 30-day tourist visa, and then a 30-day extension. Don't worry,  I'll be back. We still plan to go to Papua and dive in Raja Ampat.

We swam with stingless jellyfish in Derawan.

Mt Rinjani. Looks harmless in the beginning.

Summit domination! It was cold and rainy.

The volcano is behind me in the picture, slightly smoking.
This is on the way down from the summit (that's why I look so happy).

The porters carried all of the supplies up and down. Water, food, tents, etc for our three day trek.

We got Advanced open water scuba certified at an amazing island called Gili Air.

Now I can dive as deep as 30 metres...that's nearly 100 feet!

We drove motorbikes around, basically, the entire island of Bali (on two separate occasions), got lost, got a better map and only used phone GPS when it was getting dark. Along the way, I saw beautiful scenery, carved a wooden turtle and even got blessed at Ulu Watu.

We returned to Flores, an island in Indonesia. We dove from a live aboard boat around Komodo National Park where we saw huge manta rays (sorry no pictures because my underwater camera case is broken) and my arm was stung by fire coral. We even drove to a waterfall and spent a few days at my favourite beach in Indonesia.

We rode in a huge passenger ship known as the Pelni, to get from Flores to Sulawesi (still both islands in Indonesia). Thanks to Kristina finding the deserted female clinic, we had a great place to sleep during the 14-hour journey.

Jumping off a rock near a waterfall in Flores.

The second captain let me "drive" the Pelni. Such a huge ship!

Some of the most spectacular sunsets I've seen yet!

Worth it!
We watched the majestic manta rays for at least ten minutes.

It looked worse at it was healing. Vinegar was the best medicine.

We saw a bunch (upwards in the hundreds, maybe even in the thousands) of pigs and water buffalo about to be killed at two elaborate funeral ceremonies in Tana Toraja, an area in southern Sulawesi. I actually watched a man kill two pigs and skin them, and also I watched one buffalo get killed. I was legitimately very sad afterward, no joke. This is not a tradition I can even begin to understand, but to each his own.

The Torajan people believe that a good afterlife is guaranteed for the beloved
family member based on how elaborate the funeral ceremony is.

It takes months to build the traditional Torajan rice houses and area for the funeral.

We stayed (hungout, read, napped, snorkeled) on another beautiful island in The Togeans. We also dove a World War II bomber plane that crashed in the 1940's.

A relaxing island in the Togean Islands.

We dove again in Bunaken, a different island in northern Sulawesi and saw loads of turtles and beautiful coral walls. A guy who dove with us had a go-pro, so he recorded and edited a wonderful underwater video of our dive (it's on Facebook).

The Mangroves outside of our guesthouse on Bunaken.

For the two weeks, I stayed in Malaysia at a yoga retreat center. My friend and I did this program (from a website) called "workaway", which means we worked at this place (pulling weeds, making a floor tile mosaic, painting, planting, learning to make sourdough bread from scratch, etc) in exchange for a free place to stay and eat.

Yoga twice a day. This is the meditation chant.

The perfect lime!

Sourdough bread chef.

Pulling weeds was such fulfilling work, even though it took us nearly two weeks to finish.

 All in all, the first four months of travel have been amazing!