I will post some photos from our holiday/vacation in Indonesia/Bali last July. Lisa and I both fell in love with Indonesia the moment we landed there in Jakarta. The people are really friendly and helpful and all smiles. Jakarta was only a stopover really, as most of our three weeks were spent on the island of Bali. The first photo is from the plane of one of the two volcano's that almost delayed our return, it had been erupting for some time, and the ash had closed the airport several times while we were there including the day before we returned, but luckily was open for the morning we left.. Our plane was the Airbus A380 double deck, its a great plane to travel in, and seats 525 passengers, we flew on one on our previous vacation to Vietnam and enjoyed it. Our first few nights in Bali were spent in a beach hotel in Sanur, on the south west coast of the island, its an area of gardens with bungalows, we had a honeymoon suite, because it was the only one available, honeymoons have sadly long since left my life though I can still pretend. The beach, many trees all over Bali are adorned with black and white chequered cloths, symbolising the balance of life, the yin and the yang. The road leading to the hotel, with bougainvillea growing through the trees I booked a driver I found on the internet earlier in the year, he met us at the airport and took us wherever we wanted to go as and when. His name is Sila and is an exceptionally kind and knowledgeable man and contributed a lot to our holiday/vacation.One day he took us to meet his family who are delightful, he lives with his wife, mother father and his brother and his child. Its in a small one street village about a 40 minute drive from Sanur. This is Sila with his youngest daughter Lisa with his other daughter (right) and his brother's daughter Sila's son and the girls His brother's daughter giving me an offering
A few more photos Sila's wife preparing a snack for us The family pig Family with grandmother in background The family temple Inside the temple
What's good in Indonesia? The first answer we got was the beach. Well, Indonesia is very much like the Philippines, they are both archipelago with thousands of islands. But the big difference is that Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in terms of population while the Philippines is a majority of Catholics. We had plans last year of going to Jakarta but we were shifted to Malaysia by the travel agency because of the available flights on promo (about 50% discount). Maybe this year we can again make plans of visiting Jakarta. But on second thought, maybe not. There was a suicide bomber just recently, huh.
We didn't rate Jakarta as a place to visit, it's like a lot of capital cities sprawling and modernised, the island of Bali is much more interesting, a lot more than beaches, its mainly Hindu there unlike Jakarta. .......with a population of 4,225,000 as of January 2014 Bali is home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority. According to the 2010 Census, 83.5% of Bali's population adhered to Balinese Hinduism, followed by 13.4% Muslim, Christianity at 2.5% and Buddhism at 0.5% We have booked flights to Malaysia for our summer vacation in July.
@Terry Page, we have beaches here and the most popular is Boracay so we do not bother to go abroad for that. Besides, we are not fond of beaches and we only to to beach resorts is for family bonding. But anyway, we were also offered tickets for Bali but we declined. I'm sure you will enjoy Malaysia if you are in Kuala Lumpur. They their HO-HO, that hop-on-hoo-off bus where you pay one time and have the whole day hopping on and hopping off to 24 destinations in the city. Check it out.