Category Archives: Australia

Day 107 – Deflated

Actually quite fed up, we left Kuta to head to the ferry in Lembar that would take us over to Bali. Although we left early, we were covered in sweat already. I was still wishing for a pocket waterfall…when we had the following conversation:

“Nina, are all the bags still secured?” – *me checking all of them* “Yeah, all good.” – “Are you wiggling around?” – “Me? Not particularly.” – “Are you sitting further back than usually?” – “Eh, noooo?” *repositioning myself* “Is something wrong?” – “The bike is running weirdly.” – “Stop and have a look?” – “Yeah….”

Rocinante being professionally propped up on a center stand *cough*

Rocinante being professionally propped up on a center stand *cough*

Turns out we had a flat rear tire. Yay. Made me like Lombok even more in right that instant. Poor island being judged so harshly. But, actually, we were super lucky: Flo had pulled up right behind a workshop. It took him about one millisecond to consider to get out his tools and start getting the tire out or pay someone $4 and get it done for him. Guess what we ended up doing. 🙂

Despite not having all the Honda-approved tools, the workshop guy had the tire off in no time at all. Maybe enough time for Flo to finish half of his “es campur” (mixed Indonesian ice cream) that we were offered while waiting. Since we couldn’t see anything sticking in the tire, the tube must have a puncture. And we were still carrying the heavy duty inner tube that we got in Darwin despite thinking of ditching it for a million times already. Workshop guy cracked up laughing that we had a spare tube but it made his job even easier. He just changed out the tube and put the tire right back on. Flo had a look

Off came the tire and it took almost no time

Off came the tire and it took almost no time

for the puncture on the tube but couldn’t see anything. The valve was actually broken, letting air out which led to our flat tire. Which is much harder to repair than a hole in the tube. Suddenly we were glad to have carried that stupid tube for so long.

It cost all of 30.000 Indonesian rupiah and we were back on track. This time we prepared for the ferry even better, buying take away food before getting to the terminal. Everything doubles in price for the ferry.

Luckily, sleeping was possible...

Luckily, sleeping was possible…

Tickets for us and the bike were about $17. The ferry looked tiny (and slightly untrustworthy as it had rammed something in its past) but it wasn’t very full either. We managed the four hours to Bali alright, laying around and sleeping for most of it. I was very happy to sleep as the 30mins I was awake made me seasick again. Lombok was covered in rain clouds and the sea was on the choppy side.

Arriving in Bali at 4pm or 4.30pm, I was through with this day. So we went to a guest house right in the ferry port town. Which turned out to be a lovely little spot. We were already relieved to see the volcanic mountains and the rain forest that comes with it, but now architecture is different as well. None of the islands so far are resembling Bali in the architecture. And our guest house, despite being on the cheap side, is a little gem. Which also offers the fastest internet connection we had so far.

I couldn’t help but feel a bit like holidays here so went out and had dessert after dinner as well: apple crumble with ice cream. It was authentic and good but I kinda forgot that it will be hot….*face palm*. Flo, smartly, decided for an “Arak attack” instead.

Day 70 – Dili

Leaving Australia

The night was short, very short. To be in good time for our flight and be certain we got time to go to border Australia for the TRS scheme paperwork. TRS stands for tourist refund scheme, a way to get a refund on GST if goods are exported within 60 days of purchase in Australia. Given that we spend several thousand dollars in AUS, were ready to jump through some hoops to get 10% back.

warm, tired and confused

warm, tired and confused

A brief taxi ride later, we found ourselves at the check-in desk for AirNorth at the Darwin airport. Despite my better judgement I believed the check-in staffer when she said that we have to check in our luggage straight away and the only TRS desk is behind the security checks.

With plenty of time and our boarding passes in our hands we went through the checks. I got pulled over once again (my passport seems to have performance issues with the scanners), but nothing came of it. And just after that, we got the cold dark confirmation: People will tell you anything to get rid of you, especially if they know you can’t come back to complain.

“No refund, you have to show the goods!” – “I know, but the lady said …”- “The airlines problem, there was a desk downstairs” – “can I go back?!” – “No …”. I am not ashamed to say that I made a bit of a scene there and then, and when the superior border officer came around, I took my chance to plead our case one more time. She took pity, frowned upon the minion and with a “their story is pretty convincing” ordered for the full amount to be refunded. Wow, a near miss.

We even had time for a hasty breakfast and blog post before we got on board. Turned out, the breakfast was a bit premature, but then again, what about second breakfast?

A day in Dili

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Day 69 – Getting ready to leave

Our last day in Darwin began. Slowly, we got up around 8am but Celia was already buzzing around, getting ready for work. So after breakfast, we had not much else to do than to pack up all our things that we had spread out over the last 14 days. While packing, we realized we still had a couple of items that we wanted to send to Germany but now it’s too late. The parcel is already on its way.

photo by woodleywonderworks

photo by woodleywonderworks

Everything fitted well into the panniers with room to spare (according to Flo). We had an eye out to pack smart so that we could easily get to things we still needed while storing tools safely in the panniers to not risk losing them at security.

I spent most of the rest of the day reading my book. Had the usual Sunday Skype call with my family while Celia arrived back and Katy made some yummy early evening snacks with cheese and olives.

Celia made a lovely, spicy dinner and we spent our last evening around the dinner table with everyone except Tig. Thank you so much Celia, Tig, Liz and Borja that we were lucky enough to meet you and had an excellent stay at your place with your amazing company and a whole lot of good food. Hope to meet you on the road or in Europe.

Day 68 – The Fault in our Stars

The plan for this weekend was to lay low and relax and gather as much calm ans strength as we could before what ever would expect us from here on out in the developing world. That, and the thought of the $60 it would cost, was the reason for denying the invitation to tag along to a rodeo that Celia ans some friends were going to.

Celia did manage to break us out of our sloth-like state for a while though: First, we went out to another local market for lunch. Nina and I had Lebanese food and a nice tropical smoothie. Nina got her falafel wrap freshly done just before they closed up, much to the dismay of the stall owners daughter, who was put to work.

After that, we extend our little excursion for some sight seeing to east point. Once again, Celia has proven to be an amazing host. This time as a patient tour guide putting up with my “sign fetish”.

That night we were alone in the house and thought to make use of the large flat screen and watch one of the movies we have been carrying around since day 1. We ended up going for two in the end, because The Fault in our Stars left us so sad that it needed some Brave to get us ready for bed without sobbing in a fetal position.

The Fault in our Stars is the first movie based on a book of the same name by John Green. We have been following and thoroughly enjoying the youtube work of John and Hank Green for a while now.  I especially enjoyed the Crash Course series, and by now we consider ourselves Nerdfighter. The movie was great, but so different that it is almost hard to believe it is of American make. Have a look at the trailer, but be warned: This is some seriously sad stuff.

Day 67 – Quiet days

With one of our hosts gone and Celia working like the most impressive worker bee, not much was going on in the house. Before disappearing for the rest of the day to work though, Celia managed to convince me to join in one more time for a walk through the mangrove to the beach. Nina was supremely captivated by her newest book that she passed on the opportunity.

CC-BY-SA 3.0 by Peter Ellis

CC-BY-SA 3.0 by Peter Ellis

The beach was again teaming with life, but to my astonishment, a whole different set of critters showed up this time around. Maybe it was about the different point in the tidal cycle or the progressing buildup towards the wet. Whatever it was, I thoroughly enjoyed watching thousands of soldier crabs give the beach these flecks of bluish purple. I even dared to join the others in exploring barefoot, after covering me head to tow with mud flung up from my jandals the last time around.

To get everything ready for the post office in the afternoon, I spend the afternoon copying. We took about 2500 photos in Australia, coming to roughly 64 GB of data (I want to keep the RAWs

Cooling down every once in a while

Cooling down every once in a while

for later use). There was no internet connection fast enough in sight to upload this in any way quick enough to our Amazon Cloud storage, so I chose a different tactic for the backup this time. We carry a 1TB hard drive as the primary storage, and usually whatever gets uploaded into the cloud then gets deleted from our active 64 GB SD card. With uploading out of the question, we chose to use cheap USB flash drives and mail the backup to Germany for uploading there.

Beyond the flash drives and some post cards, we needed to send another box home. Since Nina’s Companero suit is finally complete, her old pants needed to go. Some paperwork and even the much treasured Coleman Sleeping bag fitted in as well. The price would be the same, so I was quite happy that we were able to keep the sleeping bag – it for me symbolized a much needed turning point for the better on our trip and I feared that we had to just give it away.

Day 66 – Tying loose ends

MOAM

MOAM

We took the bus into the inner city today to get some more things off our to do list. Since we didn’t manage to get ready earlier (and I am reading a book that I can hardy put down), we were basically in town for lunch. Despite taking a sandwich, Flo convinced me that this will be our last chance to eat out in Darwin. So we ended up in this lovely cafe “Four Birds” and I couldn’t help myself but buy one of their amazing looking muffins. The lady at the counter told me it was chocolate with peanuts, peanut butter and “all the other good things” so yeah. Very, very filling, more like a small cake in itself than a muffin really. Afterwards, a French lady for the kitchen came out to talk to me because it was the first time she had baked these and she wanted to hear a customer’s opinion on them. 🙂

wohoo ... thousands. Wait, IDR

wohoo … thousands. Wait, IDR

Enough food talk. Flo then went to change our Australian money into Indonesian rupiahs and man, we got so many of them. As a rough guide, 10.000 rupiahs is one dollar. All money changers are vultures though, so we lost 17ct to the dollar compared with the current market rate. Imagine you would change $100 into a foreign currency and back again, you are left with roughly $70! So where ever possible we will try to get money from ATMs withdrawn straight from our credit card.

We then also proceeded to the Indonesian embassy and collected our passports with the Indonesian visa in it. Most tourists don’t need to apply for a visa before entering Indonesia but we are special. Mainly because we wanted a 60 days visa instead of the 30 days one and also because we are entering through the land border from East Timor. This means we are now set for the next two countries and the next two months. 🙂

Back in Coconut Grove, Flo decided to make nachos as a goodbye dinner: Tig caught a plane to Melbourne late at night so we had to say goodbye to him already. :S

Day 65 – Stats 102, Australia edition

Country data #2: Australia

Full screen version of the map

  • 7012 km traveled (6789 km of GPS tracked)
  • 26 travel days, 48 days total
  • $21.53 Average cost per night (6x AirBnB / room, 21x camping, 21x invitation)
  • 375.84l of standard fuel for $ $676.03 (5.36 l / 100km)
  • ~$45.72 for food every day, eating out 1/3 meals
  • ~$7.500 in total, excluding shipping, flights and stolen paniers

All $ values are converted to NZD.

Day 64 – MAGNT

Not all here is idle procrastination and tropical weather today. For the first time in more than 25 days, we woke up to a properly overcast sky instead of the usual sunshine and puffy clouds.

No idea, should read more ...

No idea, should read more …

We cut our good morning skype call with our good German friend Sven short when Tig offered us a ride into town. Since we have been pretty laid back about exploring the city so far, I hopped on to the opportunity to get to town and check out the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. It turned out that I may have under consulted Nina on that decision – and most of that field trip was quite a drag for her, probably suffering a little from the after effect of the vaccination the other day.

The museum was nice, but nothing to get too excited about. The collection of aboriginal art was quite cool, but we were not in the right mood to engage with it properly I guess. In the end, we most enjoyed the exhibition about cyclone Tracy. This cyclone hitting the city on Christmas day 1974 led to the second almost total destruction of the City within 25 years (Japanese bombing raids in WWII marking the first one).

After a bus ride home, we spend the afternoon catching up on some youtube channels we really enjoy and got  ready to cook another dinner for our generous hosts. I am glad to report that the amount of cheese in Jamie Oliver’s Italian pasta dish was universally well received, as was the strawberry-and-ice-cream dessert that Nina added to the mix.

Day 63 – Last vaccination

Chilling outside after the vaccination

Chilling outside after the vaccination

After our very tight vaccination schedule in Wellington, Flo and I were missing only the second Hep A shot. It wasn’t required for this journey but if you have the second shot within 6 to 12 months of the first, you achieve what is basically “lifetime immunity”.

The shot itself was better than we dreaded (the Vivaxim shot was so painful) so maybe the typhoid component of the Vivaxim makes it burn so much and not the Hep A part. Afterwards, I felt a bit drained of energy so I didn’t do much. Flo, however, looked for maps and downloaded our GPS track for Australia and stuff.

It was quite loud on the roof...

It was quite loud on the roof…

The evening was exciting as we had proper tropical rain and all the frogs came out to rejoice. 🙂

Day 62 – Deckchairs

We had a very quiet start today, with the party last night and all. With fist week wrapping up, we are finally getting towards the latter end of our current to do list, so the bouts of downtime in between are getting longer now.

Finishing touches

Finishing touches

A while back we talked about the foods Nina and I are good at making. I already got to dish up my green bean salad, so today it was Nina’s turn. We spend some time in the kitchen to whip up Nina’s renown mole hill cake.

The afternoon was very low key, with Tig and Celia’s  on their first ride out together on their postie bikes. Tig thought this to be a grand occasion to test out their blue tooth intercoms as well. That in turn led to some bemusing sights in the living room.

We got served a nice dinner again compliments of Celia and had the cake served up and devoured just in time before we had to head out for the event of the night. The cake was received with much appraise (would you have expected anything else from Nina?).

The aforementioned event was to head out to town and see the documentary Iris in the deck chair cinema. During the dry, there is an outdoor movie theater set up on the waterfront in downtown Darwin. As if that was not chilled out enough, most of the seating is comprised of laid back deck chairs.