To get there, a good option was to go through Bali, and since we used award flights (free flight in business using the stack of United miles I had gathered), we had to arrive in Bali 4 days before our connection to the next towns on the way to the boat.

After a quick online search, and asking some friends, I quickly figured out that spending 4 days in Bali wasn't the worst thing in the world, so that's what we did.

The flight from SFO to Bali (via Taiwan) with EVA Air was really good. Made flying as much of a breeze as it can be:

seabass was on the special order in advance menu, quite tasty

met the definition of lie flat :)

The EVA Business Lounge was quite nice too, even had ice cream :)

After the last flight, we arrived in Bali in pourring rain, to be greated by our guide, see next post.

We arrived in pretty good rain, which only got worse over time for the rest of the day

Everyone seemed to have a tour or a guide waiting for them, we did too

Our guide took us for an evening at the Zoo where we had dinner, saw an animal show, and got to visit the Zoo at night with a flashlight (not forgetting getting to feed an elephant):

After the visit, we got a drum and dance, and fire dancing show:

and that was it for the evening, despite the great flight, we were beat and jetlagged.

Next, Tawan, our guide, came to pick us up. He drove us around Denpasar in the morning and took us to the Bajra Sandhi Monument:

Next, he took us to the near island where we booked our dolphin experience with Bali Dolphin Interaction (beware, there is another one, and apparently it's not as good). Driving around was "interesting", you got to see all kinds of things:

Eventually, we got there. Before I put more pictures, I'll answer the "isn't this mean to inhumane to the dolphins" part. I'm not an expert, but while their enclosures didn't look super big, they were in the ocean (i.e. real water), they are allowed to go swim with one another after their work hours (bite marks and scratches they do to one another confirmed that), and allegedly, they're let out to swim in the ocean on sundays, but they come back for the easy food and the routine they're used to. While I'm not sure if I could believe that, cats and dogs do that happily and come back for food and companionship, so maybe it's possible for dolphins too, at least I hope so.
All that being said, we were split up in groups and had one dolphin to play with for each group. The dolphin is obviously trained to do tricks, but just like a dog that likes go fetch a ball, apparently our dolphin was more than happy to do some of the tricks and bring us back a ball too:

Once our dolphin fun was over, Tawan took us to a place that sells Luwak Coffee, the most expensive coffee in the world, where individual beans are eaten and pooped half digested by a local animal (Luwak). Apparently, it makes coffee better (I wouldn't know because I hate coffee :) ):

Luwak, the choosy animal

Next, we went to the monkey forest, which is both a nice temple, and lost of wild monkeys, which you're not supposed to feed since if they bite you, you can get rabbies, but you can pay a local to feed them for you and make them climb on you:

some tourists fed the monkeys directly, but it wasn't a grand idea. Some do end up bitten.

just what you're not supposed to do

We ended by having dinner close to our new hotel in Ubud, at Indus, with a great view and good food:

breakfast location

Tawan then took us out for a drive:

lots of rice fields

people drying their rice on the side of the road...

We went to Gunung Kawi. On the way down to a temple, lots of stores:

Next door was Tirtha Empul Temple:

offerings

Next, we went to a Volcano Rim, but unfortunately the weather and visibility were poor, so the view was not that great and we ended up not going to the hot springs that were down there, but we still had lunch at the view restaurant that was right there, and the buffet was tasty and quite cheap:

Later on the road, we went fruit hunting for Jennifer :)

On the way back, we went to Penglipuran temple and its street of traditional houses for tourists to see:

Last, but not least, the elephant cave and its surroundings:

On the road, we saw a flock of ducks used to 'clean' a rice field :)

the lizards were having breakfast too :)

the staff kept the ground meticulously

This is not what I usually do, but we had some spare time in the morning :)

We then started our day with the bird park, which I figured would be fun. I was indeed right, on top of having unusual birds, they had some you could interact with (including the big blue parrot that came down from its perch slowly and calmly to bite my finger pretty hard, stupid parrot).

they showed us how cocks fight. Mmmh, ok

this one was super friendly and literally asked me to scratch under its feathers :)

this little guy wanted to clean our ears :)

Next door, they had reptiles, we had a quick look:

Our next plan was to have suckling pig, a local specialty. Yummy piggy was had :)

Next, we got to visit places that had art for sale: wood carvings and paintings:

art indeed

To finish the day, we went to Tanah Lot to see the fesh water source in the middle of the ocean, the temple that hosts it, and the surroundings. Once is supposed to see the sunset there, but it was an utter clusterfsck of people due to a special gathering of motorcrossers that day, as well the regular tourists. It took us almost 45mn just to get out of the parking lot before sunset, never mind what it would have been later... (yeah, we missed sunset, but we were going to be 10 days on a boat, so we'd get many more):

at the lowest tide, you can walk to the fresh water island

fresh water comes out of the small island

they have a secret snake in a cave you're supposed to pet (for a tip)

they have a secret snake in a cave you're supposed to pet (for a tip)

After a long drive back to Ubud (which would have been twice as long, if not more, had we waited for sunset), we got an evening reflexology massage, which did include some severe foot plant manipulations to stimulate nerve endings

And that was the end of our 4th Day in Bali.

A few more pictures of our resort, Ubud by Como, on the way out:

We got up early to visit the Bali Zoo and Saphari Park. Lack of planning and knowledge (and them having a useless website), caused us not to know they had private safari tours in a jeep for 2 where you could hand feed the animals. That would clearly have been the highlight of the visit. Instead, we got the normal group safari tour, which was still good to see animals there.
We didn't sign up in time for an elephant ride that would meet the time we had to leave by, but we got the camel ride instead, which wasn't bad :)

the private jeep we should have been in :)

We went to visit the tigers:

just like our cat, but a tiny bit bigger :)

but eh, it was hard to pass on :)

grooming, just like our cat

Time for our camel ride:

Even if we didn't get to ride one, we did get to feed some elephants before their bath. Their trunk is very very good at probing and tickling you everywhere until you hand out the food :)

Then was time for the elephant show, this zoo's main feature:

Last but not least, we had a quick look at the rest of the place before heading out:

After the Zoo, Tawan drove us towards the airport, but since we had a bit of time left over, we had lunch by the beach, where we hadn't spent any time so far :)

And that was it, the end of our trip in Bali. Next were the flights towards Sorong (via Makassar) to reach Raja Ampat, our ulimate diving destination.

While you should go to that page for more details, I'll put a few pictures here:

For more many pictures of Diving in Raja Ampat on the Waow, go here.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, and we went out to spend 5 hours looking around before heading for the airport for our flight to Taipei.
We first went to the nearby mosque with hopes to have a quick look inside, but we likely arrived at the wrong time. Someone who didn't speak much English told me we couldn't really enter and look without him to escort us, and only 40mn later. Since it wasn't clear and we didn't have time to wait in our short morning, we just left to meet arturo at Monas were we had planned to meet around 08:00.

Across, there was a church across the street. It wasn't the best one ever, but probably nice for there:

Walking around town was not worth it, and crossing each street could take minutes before I could find a break in traffic to run across (no lights or crosswalks in many places). I've never been to india, but from what I've heard so far, it seems similar. For next time: use cabs to go everywhere, even for a 5mn walk.

We eventually made it to Monas, the national monument to meet Arturo. They were supposed to have an elevator to go to the top, but it was broken. We took the stairs, and those were also closed 1/5th of the way up, so we ended up just a bit higher for a quick view which wasn't fantastic anyway, so no big loss.

They had a diorama downstairs, with interesting history (as written by the winners :D )

view from the level slightly higher up.

Next, we went ot the Museum Nasional which had decent collections to look at:

nice piggy bank

We got to see places in Indonesia we didn't go to:

When traffic isn't moving at all (which is often apparently), street vendors walk up to the cars:

And that was it, we had to go to the airport. There were a few more things to see in Jakarta, but they were farther away, so we wouldn't have made it there in the limited time we had.

First, we our time in Bali was great thanks to our guide and driver, Tawan. If you need someone to help you in Bali, contact him at wayan_tawan@hotmail.com.

While we didn't get to see a lot of Indonesia (mostly Bali), we still got to see Bali, Makassar, Sorong for long enough to know that there isn't much to see, and Jakarta. Clearly, there is a big contrast between Islands that are more Muslim than others, although Indonesia allows all religions. Ok, the religion part became a longer rant, so I'll leave it at the end.

Some road were pretty narrow and still had rice drying on them

A fine example of impartial story telling :)

Like Malaysia (which unfortunately did host some of the 9-11 hijackers and their planning meetings), Indonesia also welcomes many religions. To me, this is great as long as they are all accepting of one another and don't try to push their views onto others. Obviously, I'm biased, but nowadays Islam has a track record of heavily pushing their views onto others, and setting/changing local laws to match their religion (a bit like if there was a law preventing alcohol or pork in a random country). While it was thankfully possible to get tasty pig in Bali, that's not true of many of the others Indonesian islands. Similarly, the food in local flights that doesn't offend anyone was the worst food I had ever eaten, and I'm not that difficult with food.

Similarly, they have the same problem in schools where kids have to wear uniforms so that they can all be treated alike (while I didn't grow up with this, sounds like a reasonable idea to me). However, Muslim girls had their own uniform to allow for their religion mandated hide your face veil, which in my eyes kind of defeats the purpose of an everyone is the same school uniform:

Yes, Islam is supposed to be peaceful religion of course, except that it contains easily manipulated followers, some are turned into extremists which around the world they sure have given the entire religion a very bad name, even if they are a very small minority.
Sadly some of those extremist Islamists have also done bad things in Indonesia, namely bombing the Borobudur Buddhist temple in Indonesia, the largest one in the world, or more recently bombing Bali which pays less attention to sharia law (Islamic law for all, even non islamists) and over 200 people got killed for the islamic crime of drinking alcohol at a pub. Sigh...

On the plus side, outside of bombing a major Hindu temple, extremist muslims in Indonesia haven't started eradicating all the christians like they have done in Egypt, so I suppose it could be worse...
Again, I know that most Muslims are peaceful and nice people, but the extremist cancer in that religion is sadly a problem :(

Yeah, sorry, this was too long, but to end the topic on Indonesia, all the people we interacted with were fantastic, it's only in the airports on crappy cheap flights that were glorified bus with wings that we had to fight line cutters and people trying to push their way through. While Jennifer was frazzled by this, it was not a problem for me, I know how to handle that and make sure not to get pushed around.

We had a great time, and we've already made plans to go back and trying a new diving cruise on the Banda Sea out of Maumere and ending up in Ambon.