More Links to More Photos!

Bromo Photos Here

Yogyakarta Photos are here!

Borobudur Temple here

Singapore & Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur may be viewed via this link...

Bangkok photos

Hope you enjoy,
Renee

August 6, 2010

It’s been awhile, and we’ve done quite a bit.  Sorry for the long delay in updates.  I’ll try to be brief.  Here goes….

We saw smoking Bromo (see the photo to the right) in Cemero Lawang, Indonesia.  It was great.  We missed the sunrise from the famous viewpoint (because we got lost), but still saw a beautiful sunrise and had a wonderful day walking around.  From there we headed to Yogyakarta.

Yogyakarta was a nice city to visit, we only wished we could have spent more money on souvenirs.  We walked up and down the streets, exploring markets and eating fried tofu (lucky for me it’s a very popular street food in Yogya).  We went to different art galleries, got lost in the side streets of the kraton, caught a free music show, and also watched a shadow puppet show.  

We took a day trip from the city to the famous Buddhist temple of Borobudur.  The photo to the left is a close-up of one of the many bas-reliefs found at the temple.  It was beautiful and we were stopped several times by locals wanting to take photos with us.  The following day we headed up to Kaliurang in hopes of seeing lava flowing from Merapi only to arrive at our hostel and discover that there were no lava flows and little smoke.  I was feeling a bit under the weather, so we just decided to head back to Yogyakarta rather than hike.

From Yogyakarta, we took a train to Jakarta and immediately headed to the airport where we waited for our flight to Singapore, a country that is a city.  Singapore was a shock to our backpacking style.  It is an extremely clean city and has city prices that go along with it.  The architecture was absolutely amazing and we had a wonderful time walking the streets and enjoying the scenery.  The night-skyline was especially impressive as the city has a lovely sidewalk along the river.  

Due to the expense of Singapore, we left pretty quickly for Kuala Lumpur.  Here we saw the Petronas Towers, which were amazing in the daylight and beautifully lit up at night.  We enjoyed some delicious foods while in the city and spent most of our days wandering through air conditioned malls and people watching.  Because we’d already seen Malaysian Borneo, we decided that we should breeze through the peninsular section and head toward new terrain.  So, we caught a bus to Thailand.

We headed straight for the southern gulf coast island of Koh Pha-ngan.  This island is famous for its ‘full moon party’ held every month.  We didn’t realize until we were on the boat to the island that the party was to take place while we were there.  Literally thousands of tourists come to the island for the giant party, so the island wasn’t exactly the relaxing beach getaway we’d hoped it would be.  We skipped the giant party and relaxed on the beach for a few days before heading on to Bangkok.  We only spent a few days in Bangkok, exploring the royal palace and a few temples.  We were very eager to get to Cambodia.

We took a direct bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap, which is where we are now.  It’s a nice city, though it’s very dusty.  The temples of Angkor are extremely close (the park entrance is a mere seven kilometers from the city center!).  We have spent the last few days exploring the temples, which will have to be an all new post!  I’ll try to get started on that very soon.

We are enjoying our travels immensely and feel extremely lucky every day.  We hope you are all enjoying the blogs and the photos.  (We will both try to get better about keeping it updated!)  Miss you all!!

-Renee