Travel photos and journals from across Asia [1997-2025]
We had planned to do very little on our first day in Yogyakarta (pronounced locally as Jogja), so the pool at the Puri Pangeran hotel made a good excuse for just that. In the afternoon we took a walk to Malioboro Street which is the main tourist strip for shopping. I was expecting something similar…
After speaking to other travellers who had done the hikes we decided to avoid the crowds on jeep tours at the lookout point and make our way across the “black sand sea” to Bromo itself for sunrise. The National Park fees for foreigners were steep to say the least at 900k/$70 for all of us…
The Bromo Tengger National Park is a pain to get to and from so we did a little research online and mulled the idea of using one of the many tour companies that offered overnight trips there. As with anything booked online in Indonesia the prices quoted were outrageous; between 5 and 6 million rupiah…
My Thai bank cards were useless outside of Thailand so we’d booked a flight via an agent on Gili Air from Lombok to Java with Lion Air for 1.2 million Rupiah (plus 15% agent commission). The ride to the airport took under an hour and by early afternoon we’d landed in a very wet and very…
Again, boat rides and any form of transport involving westerners is heavily regulated and accordingly price hiked. We booked a boat over to Lombok and van ride down the coast to the resort town of Sengiggi for 300k for the four of us. Before we even landed on the beach on Lombok the taxi bandits…
It was time to move on so we headed to Padang Bai the next morning to get on the fast boat to the Gilis. The tourist boats are all tightly, almost mafia, controlled and heavily price regulated costing up to 700k ($55) per person in high season, luckily the guys in our hotel got us…
Flying directly from Bangkok to Bali was the most cost effective method of getting the four of us to the area of Indonesia we wanted to explore on this trip. Air Asia took us to Denpasar for $370 USD after a couple of days in the Thai capital to break up the long rail journey…