Hello from the other side of the world!
This is the first in an occasional series of musings, tall tales, observations and blatant boasting from the Seiler World Tour 2008! We have just completed our first month of travel which included two weeks of five star luxury involving seven days by the beach in the colonial opulence of the Oberoi Bali followed by another week in a boutique hide-out deep in the Balinese forest complete with ostentatious infinity pool (or as Mrs S calls it an eternity pool). Several enlightening photos attached. To summarise our honeymoon adventures, we spent most of our time playing with mischievous, macacque monkeys, getting up at stupid o'clock to climb volcanoes, cycling through rice fields and attending the cremation of the Ubud King! Of course we also spent a lot of time soaking up the sun and have currently thawed out our traditional pasty complexions to a rather appealing golden brown.
"We've come on holiday by mistake", so said Withnail in the movie Withnail and I and that was largely how we felt on our first night of real travelling. After the luxury of our honeymoon experience, we went from 5 star to no star in one easy taxi ride. Our first destination was Pandangbai on the East Coast of Bali. A corpse had more life and our accomodation resembled a disused barn complete with nocturnal beasties scrabbling around our room in the middle of the night. Ready to leave after three days, we caught a slow boat to the island of Lombok and then on to the Gili islands where there was no motorized vehicles and no police - a place where any crime will result in a low speed chase. Luckily Kate's guts stayed intact for the four hour long crossing!
Gili Trawangan, the largest of the three Gili islands, turned out to be our kind of paradise - laid-back, small and beautiful offering nothing much else to do than sun soak, snorkel in warm bath tub waters and watch picture post-card sunsets. The only drawback was the early morning wake up call as the cockrels competed with the 5.30am morning prayers from the local mosque.
After leaving Gili with five days to kill, we took a punt on a trip to Tetebatu at the foothills of Mount Rinjani - the second biggest volcano in Indonesia. After viewing our basic accommodation at the faded colonial outpost The Soejourno Hotel, we feared we'd made a bad mistake but it soon turned out to be the best experience of the trip so far. We truly got a taste of Indonesian life by making friends with some of the local villagers - even to the point of being invited into their homes for a cup of sweet Lombok coffee (without milk!) and helping out with English lessons at a local coffee shop (a 'Warung'). We also borrowed a scooter and spent a couple of glorious afternoons whistling through beautiful villages with views of rice paddies and tobacco fields. We were sad to leave but with a fast plane waiting to take us to Singapore for Katie S's big 30th birthday, we couldn't hang around.
We write this from Singapore whilst celebrating Kate's 30th. As a special break from the back-packing, we're living the highlife in a cool boutique hotel called the New Majestic - all red chinese lanterns and rooftop pool the kind of place featured in Wallpaper magazine - and we will be taking a riverboat tour followed by a Singapore Sling at The Raffles Hotel and then dinner at the Pan Pacific 37th floor restaurant with a panoramic view across Singapore Harbour! Next adventure is getting to Thailand by slow sleeper train to meet up with a couple of Bobby's mates Jack and 'The Skull' aka Neil Menzies!
Enjoy the photographic highlights, these were lovingly culled from the 5000 that Bobby has already taken with our new digital camera. Signing off!
Mr and Mrs S x
