Lombok -Last but not least!

We did a one day rafting trip in Bali before flying back to Bangkok.

Everything is so beautiful and green here right now. Aside from getting a little car sick on the way because we were recovering from a late night with some Swedish travelers we met the night before, the ride was fun, and we got a delicious Indonesian lunch with it.

View of low tide and sunset at Gili T (small islands off Lombok) the last stop in Lombok. The shores are so shallow that when tide is low it can be 1/2 a Km away! At night you'll see hundreds of lights on the ocean from fishermen out in their boats.

View of the lake from our camping spot. Locals hike down here

all the time to go fishing for a day or 2.

This water fall is coming from the lake... if you look in the bottom right corner you'll see the hot springs that we relaxed in. The hot water was coming from inside the rock and the pools were built by locals. They were pretty clean and didn't have that typical sulfur smell. Needless to stay they did little to ease our pain/soreness despite the local belief that they have healing power. I still don't know how I had the leg strength to hike 8 hours out of there the following day... maybe they do have power ; )

Like I said after 12 km of hiking straight UP! (about (8000ft elevation change)

We were exhausted but happy...next was to hike 2 hours down 2,000 feet into the crater and stay overnight at the lake.

On the second day of the trek we hit the rim of the active volcano which last erupted 100 years ago and now a lake inside thousands of feet deep. It took my breath away it was so beautiful. This picture hardly does it justice. The second volcano you see steaming inside formed in 1994 and a third smaller one is beginning just below that.

Mount Rinjani Trek

We decided to do some hiking for the last bit because Indonesia is so beautiful and we through originally we could hit the volcano in Lombok by ourselves...turns out the rules had changed and we ended up having to get a Porter (An pictured above). This guy was AMAZING! He carried all of our stuff shy some water, clothes and sleeping bags on his bamboo stick and in flip flops! for three days we covered a total of 25 km and 18,000 feet of elevation change! oh and it rained days so it was slippery too. He didn't speak much english but he knew "slowly slowly" or "hati hati" in Indonesian and kept saying that to us as we walked.

Same beach near Kuta Lombok...

This is our favorite beach break for surfing - while you can't see in the pic I just finished surfing a massive wave!! haha, no this is actually a great beginner beach about a 45 min scooter ride from where we stayed. We actually hit some nice waves here, good size for us. (and bigger then this white water I swear!)

This pic is from a remote beach in Lombok... there are so many coves with these beautiful beaches... one family might live here and do farming or earn money by charging to park in the area. Most of the smaller coves had great reef breaks (we stayed clear of those though).

We LOVED Lombok. Quick geography lesson... Indonesia is one of the largest counties in the world but is so broken up into islands people tend to forget about it's size... additionally, each island has it's own make up of people, religion, culture, character, and food. While the locals may notice more so then the tourists we found immediately that Lombok was far more remote and even more chill then Bali. There was little available internet, ATMs only in the largest towns and limited public transportation... Oh and the electricity just shut off mid day if the place didn't have a back up generator it meant no shower power and no blender power for our Arak Attacks! (Arak is the local hard A used in most drinks).

Ubud Bali

(Brandon's picture choice) This pig was freshly delivered to a very popular restaurant we had lunch at. The only food choice was rice and... you guessed it PORK. I asked specifically if they had vegetarian and that didn't go over well.. so we both enjoyed a delicious plate of this guy.

We took a bike ride through the beautiful rice fields around Ubud. Ubud is known as an opportunity to see the "real Bali" because most of it is so touristy... We saw a house for rent on our ride - did a quick calculation on how long we could live here on our savings and and were very tempted! ... But instead we opted to stick with the plan on moving to a cold rainy climate - oh and pay a lot more in living costs for it too : ) haha

Brandon's friend was cute in the beginning, but Monkeys are sneaky. We had a great time watching them at the temple overall.

The monkeys started off innocent enough. This was the first one the climbed on me.

We visited the Monkey Sanctuary in Ubud Bali... The monkeys seemed innocent enough until one turned on Brandon... What the video doesn't show is how the monkey proceeded to do a chin-up, grap a chunk of Brandon's hair in his mouth and hang from it. Unfortunately I was little help between trying to turn the camera off to get to him and laughing hysterically! soooo funny!