Category: Allgemein

Coming from Langkawi we reached Koh Lipe by speedboat.

For this we needed to handout our passports at the pier in Malaysia to some kind of tour-operator and fill out Thai immigration form. But nothing to worry about, as we got back our passport at arrival in Koh Lipe, Thailand.

First impression on the island was, whoa … clear waters. It definitely looks like the TV-ads for the white italian nougat-balls. The island is situated in an Thai National Park, where there is basically “some” limitations on tourism. Which makes Koh Lipe substantially more expensive than other Thai islands. But having a closer look, the area is not maintained in a way you would expect. Garbage gets burned, Longtail boats everywhere damaging underwater life, way too much tourism with way too less sanitary installations. But in Koh Lipe all the bad stuff is better hidden.

We spent 3 nights in Langkawi, an island next to Thai border. Should have been a duty-free paradise, but checking the prices for liquor showed not substantial cheaper prices. So no partying and getting drunk for us 😉

Exiting the pier where our boat from Georgetown embarked, we’ve seen a lot of malaysian people waiting for their ships. The taxi-driver told us, the 2-month school vacation started, this also explained the high-season prices for our hotel.

One day we hired a scooter to get to a nicer beach in the north, where we also spotted some “dusky leaf monkeys”, a species endangered in Southeast Asia.

Besides that, nothing important to be mentioned on Langkawi.

After getting the connection flight from Kuala Lumpur we finally arrived in George Town, both still in pain. The hotel-staff at Victoria Garden Hotel was superfriendly and made our stay as enyoyable as possible.

George Town is the capital of Penang island, which is a province of Malaysia, is UNESCO World Heritage and earns this title. In difference to Singapure or Kuala Lumpur, George Town did not follow the path of “modernism” and maintained most of its colonial buildings from pre-war era. In addition it has a large chinese and indian population, which makes it easy going from Chinatown to Little India in a few steps, just follow your nose for five-spices fragrance or the smell of cumin-based curries. Naturally this makes George Town the streetfood capital and i can tell you i enjoyed it by every bite.

A good challenge for us was also to find all the street-art/graffiti all over George Town – we simply loved this town as it has so much to discover with all your senses.

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For sure we also visited the botanical garden of George Town, seeing us encountered by lots of monkeys – somehow aggressive in their way of demanding food.

Afte coming back from Gilli Air with its colorful sealife and laid-back mentality, we’ve been striken hard by the “full power” of tourism in Bali.

We stayed 4 nights in Nusa Dua on the eastside of the central Bali tourismus area. Surrounded by western 4/5-star resorts, we found a small hotel “Kaniya Bali” where we spent our days by the pool simply doin nothing.

The beachfronts there were blocked by the big resorts, so we hired a scooter in search of some hidden beaches accessible for the public. Those what we found, were not great, just muddy, shallow waters with lots of plastic and no shades and vegetation.

So we moved on to go nearby Kuta on the westside. We expected the worst, as we remembered an australian TV-show informing about “hordes of australian teenagers choosing Kuta for their Springbreak”.

Luckily it wasn’t that bad, seems the scholars returned already.

The beaches were nicer than Nusa Dua, but we spent again the time by the pool planning our next stop , going to Georgetown on Penang island.

I finally decided driven by multiple requests of shadi to have a haircut. I found a trustworthy barber capable of enough english and he startet his work. In the end he gave me a complimentary head-massage. I was expecting some goodies, as only cutting my isolated hairs would have been way too easy money. Here’s the result i’m satisfied with it.

Besides the wonderful Gilli Air i was quite disappointed by Bali:

Indonesian Food: quite bland.

indonesian Beer: switched to Carlsberg, no more to say.

Indonesian Beaches: private beaches of the top-resorts might be nice, but not the public ones.

In addition both of us had some health issues: Shadi got diarrhea coming from chicken sausage and i had some kidney/back pain.

Luckily but tired we boarded our flight from Denpasar to Georgetown over Kuala Lumpur.

Seems that Bali is not our island of gods or we made the gods angry.

Coming from Perth (~4 hour flight) we arrived late at Denpasar International Airport. Visa was easy, you don’t need one when staying less than 30 days. We took a Grab Car to our stay at Ubud, central Bali.

There was lots of traffic on the 25 km road to Ubud, so it took us about 1 hour to go by cab. Indonesian driving is different to recent Australian driving, i was happy not to have to drive a car in the night on these narrow roads.

Ubud is the Yoga capital of the world, as it seems. Lots of single women in their middle-ages seeking for their inner peace of mind. Vegetarian/vegan food is the common food in here in addition to healthy fruit-shakes detoxifying your guts … so you get the power for the next yoga session. Ubud is also the cultural centre of Bali, with the famous dancings and shadow puppet theatres. Overall it is very calm besides the traffic, only disturbed sometime a little by the gongs and singing of gamelan orchestres with their , to our ears, “arhythmic” music. Bali itsef is mostly hindu, while the rest of Indonesia is muslim.

We stayed at a small hotel called Griya Kartini, one evening the owner’s mother introduced us and another couple and invited us to some balinese tea-ceremony in the evening. Madame Kartini told stories about her life, her lovers , her businesses, … a 82-year old dame with style wearing her colour-matching gems with nails and Chanel’s No. 5.

She named her first dog “Dollar” , when Dollar get pregnant, the puppies were called Euro, Rupie, Pound and Yen.

In Ubud we rented a scooter, just to go to the rice fields north of it. Which was disappointing, as the rice-terraces seemed to be constructed for the sole purpose of tourists shooting themself swinging the terraces and shooting photos for their instagram followers. Sooo touristic… rice-terrace disneyland.

After our 4 night stay in Ubud, we took bus-ferry ticket to Gili Islands in the east, to be precise, Gili Air next to Lombok. The boat was full, lots of party-people most of them heading to Gili Trawangan, the party island of the three islands. Looked like Ballermann in Mallorca, gladful that we moved on to “our” Island – Gili Air.

On Gili Air ( “Air” means water in Indonese) there are no scooters and cars, just bicycles and horse-carriages pulled by Ponies. Crossing the island takes 30 minutes by feet, surrounded by crystal clear waters , excellent for snorkelling. Underwater-sight is about 10 meters, we saw lots of colorful fish, soft corals, but unfortunately no turtles yet.

We stayed 3 nights in Perth, which we realized as a city worth visiting. It’s the headquarter to many mining companies in Western Australia, has ~ 2 mio population and is just “nice” and laid-back.

The city centre contains some “old” buildings (Aussies say “antique”, to everything older than 100 years as it seems) and some nices shopping arcades. Besides that great museums and in general a more relaxed and easy-going attitude of the people compared to eastern Australia. And also some great beaches, what u need more. The “Swan river” divides the city, so they have both freshwater and saltwater in their city and everyones seems to go fishing by own boats during weekends.

From Perth we took a flight to Denpasar on Bali / Indonesia. More to come…

Here’s some pics of the trips we’ve done nearby our stay in Jurien Bay.

Green Head Beach: nice beach with crystal clear water. some sea-life underneath. There’s also showers and bathroom available near the parking lot.

I wanted to go to a place called North Point, only accessible via sand roads. While going there, we discovered some piles of stones, built by passing people over the years. At that moment a herd of cangaroos crossed the street. I went out of the car, did some pics, went into car again, just to find a small spider climbing up my shorts … Aaaargh !!!. Out from the car again, getting out of my pants and my underpants… Being naked in the desolate outback, next settlement 50km away, i examined my private parts, just at that time, a car passed by . I wonder what the driver thought at that moment.

We did a trip to the “The pinnacles”, a national park full of limesand formations, some of them 3,5 m high. You just observe the park by car, walking would be too harsh because of temperature.

It is still not known what caused the forming of pinnacles.

Included in our ticket (15 AUD per car) was the entrance fee to Lesueur National park, a little bit further northwards from Jurien Bay, where our hotel was.

As it was near dawn we arrived at Lesueur NP, we were the only car driving the 18km loop road of the park. While driving slowly and as silent as possible, we encountered lots of kangaroos, wallabies and some ostrich (whoa, they are quick).

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From Perth Airport it was just an easy 2 hour drive to Jurien Bay, where we rent a hotel for 4 nights.

By driving the Indian Ocean Drive up north, we could get a impression of the vast distances. Soon after leaving the city of Perth, it feels like being in the middle of nowhere. Just bushland, small trees, nearly no shadow, sanddunes … only interrupted by cadavres of kangaroos rotting in the kerbsides.

As Jurien Bay has only one supermarket with very limited offerings and we needed to get some provisions , we decided to take a trip to the next bigger town up in the north – Geraldton.

Short trip of 200km for the supermarket – but we enhanced it with some stops at nice beaches, did some swimming in the emerald green waters of the indian ocean. The journey is the reward.

What is not so good in here is the constant winds – which makes the current 40°C more convenient but also dangerous if forgetting your UV-blocker.

And the road to the smaller beaches can be “blocked” by sandheap, piled up from the dunes. I guess, that’s the reason everyone driving 4WD vehicles in here.

some cities you love , some cities you dislike. Sydney was for sure first choice.

very cosmopolite, nice beaches, interesting architecture, cozy hidden districts and lanes, friendly people, various markets , Sydney has it all. We stayed 3 nights in Haymarket District, also known as Chinatown.

We stayed at Broadbeach, which is suburb of Goldcoast. The same tall buildings, same retirees as in miami.

We went to springbroke national park, which was a curvy 45 minutes drive from us. The drive was the highlight of the curvy trip as it was near perfect for motocycles, but also enjoyable by car.

At the end of the street we did some walking to, guess what, … a waterfall.

Quite unimpressive cos of lack of water…

Whole Australia is lacking water/rain currently, which results in bushfires. News is full of warnings where not to go and already 3 people died.

Another trip we’ve done was to famous Byron Bay – a place famous for surfing and its therefore laid-back and hippiesque livestyle. “Eeeazy mate…”

The beach was gorgeous, rather windy and cold water, but nice.

Besides of those 2 trips we’ve been lazy, shadi got a little cold, mine was also feeling not to well, so we kept it low and relaxed.

After Goldcoast we flew to Sydney, and this city was great and enjoyable.

Compared to Melbourne, Sydney was much more interesting to us. We stayed there 3 nights and had some discussion on where to move next. Both of us wanted to leave Australia, both no the other hand both are interested in western Australia too.

So we’re sitting currently at Sydney airport waiting for our 5 hour (!) quantas flight QF581 to Perth in western Australia.

Quantas rocks : i’m currently waiting from 10000 feet as they have FREE onboard wifi on their continental flights.Network connection was sufficient to upload photos, downloading podcasts and doing maintenance on my blog’s server.

And for sure, i used vpn/wireguard as quantas privacy declaration was too nebolous for me… They are storing data of webpages you are surfing to … Fuck off

In addition each seat has an ipad available for use of their entertainment program.

And onboard food was also good.

And you get icecream …

I’m happy ????