Oktoberfest in Asia

On Friday Budi got us tickets for Oktoberfest Asia, where he was gonna play with his band, Wicked Aura. 

Oktoberfest was not the first thing we had in mind when we came to Singpore, but it turned out to be a very long and fun night!

Charlie and his Angels! Xoxo ;)

Brazilian beach party

On Sunday we headed towards Sentosa, an island in southern Singapore. 

The party was a perfect combination of dancing in the sand, chilling by the pool, listening to music and watching performances. We saw for example capoeira, mukulele, samba and fire shows!

Amazing fire show.

Budi and the warrior dancers!

Surprising Singapore

We arrived in Singapore on Thursday evening. Stella and Budi were our lovely hosts for the weekend, so we headed to their place after picking up some take away on the way.

We didn't have that many plans for Singapore, which turned out to be a good thing since our hosts had lots of great ideas. 

During the weekend we met a lot of new people, saw Little India and Arab quarters, participated in Oktoberfest Asia, listened to live music, went to a Brazilian beach party and much more.

Thanks Stella and Budi for a great weekend!

Confusing Gili

We stayed on Gili Trawangan for four nights in total. Everyone told us that Gili is paradise, but when we came there it turned out a bit different than we thought (more rugged and rough).

What surprised us the most was that there where quite a lot of tourists. The main road that went along the beach was full of restaurants, shops, diving places and fancy resorts. 

When we walked a few blocks towards the center of the island everything changed. The streets were dirty and the locals lived in poor conditions. It was strange to see how huge differences there were, side by side.

But of course Gili was a nice place, with white sandy beaches, turquoise water and warm weather.

When we came back to Kuta we met Ilkka who is studying in Bali at the moment. We had dinner together and it was our last night in Indonesia. Next up Singapore with Stella!

Finding Nemo :)

The program of today was a snorkeling trip around the three Gilis. We stopped at three different spots and had half an hour to swim around at each place.

On the first stop outside Gili Trawangan we saw different types of corals. We had a lot fun with Elisa's underwater camera, but unfortunately we can't post those photos yet. But underneath you can enjoy a very flattering photo us...

The next stop was outside Gili Meno, and we saw sea turtles! One of them was really big, but it was sleeping at the bottom of the sea.

The last stop was outside Gili Air, where we then stopped for lunch. Here we swam amongst lots of colorful fish. 

Riding to the sunset

Today we decided to go horseback riding. Mia and Kata were eager to go riding already before we even came to Asia, and Elisa got excited to join us. 

We had found a small stable earlier and went there in the afternoon. It was only the three of us riding, and our guide drove a bicycle instead of a horse. It was really nice because we got to decide ourselves in which pace we wanted to move.

All of us liked the horses we rode. Kata rode with Suzanne, which was very feisty and had a strong own will. Kata had to work really hard but in the end it really paid off! Mia rode with Guton, a tough stallion, but he turned out to be easier to handle than Suzanne. Elisa got the sweet and calm Susie.

Elisa was a bit nervous in the beginning cause she had only been on a horse once, ages ago. After the ride she was really excited and wanted to do it again!

We rode around Gili for an hour, and in the end we got to gallop on the beach during the sunset. The view was amazing and people who were chilling on the beach took photos of us while we rode past them. Definitely a high on life moment for all of us!

After the ride we stopped at a beach bar with a bonfire and some reggae music.

The long road to Gili

On Friday we booked a slow boat ticket to Gili Trawangan. The trip was supposed to consist of a bus to Padang Bay and then a ferry to Gili Trawangan. We specifically asked if the ferry goes straight to Gili, and the answer was yes.

Everything went well (except for some delays in the schedule) until we were on the ferry and realized that it's heading towards Lombok. This meant that we had to take a bus to the northern part on Lombok, and then another boat to Gili. All in all we traveled for 12 hours, and it was so nice to finally reach Gili T. 

You can do a little detour like this too.

Waiting for the last boat ride. We felt the "travel agent" had chosen an appropriate name for his business.

The harbour area was interesting.

Finally we arrived to Gili in this boat sitting on a bag of ginger.

Luckily the rough day ended well. A warm meal and cold beer did the trick!