After leaving Nepal we would travel to three different countries and hop between six different islands on what turned out to be an epic and eventful Asian adventure.

An adventure which took us from the culinary delights of the multicultural Kuala Lumpur, overland on a 7 hour train journey to the bright lights of Asia’s little red dot, Singapore. A western metropolis sticky with humidity, where smokey temples rub shoulders with soaring sky scrapers.

After a whirlwind 24 hours, we left Singapore’s western ways behind, bypassed Indonesia’s sprawling concrete capital Jakarta and headed directly to Yoyakarta, the heart and cultural soul of Java. Here bearing shawls, we hung with locals and explored Yoga’s many historic sights, before travelling overland on a testing journey of bemos; buses, and trains to the moonscape of Mt. Bromo.

A journey in which we would loose our clothes to a laundrette fire; find ourselves walking through the centre of an Islamic Extremist Demonstration; being thrown out of a taxi in the middle of nowhere; trying to stop what appeared to be the abduction of a woman; dodging a torrent of aggressive touts; and avoiding being forced off a bus by scammers. To say that this was our most testing traveling experience yet would be an understatement. But the kindness of locals and travellers we met along the way made it  a more enjoyable one.

Exhausted and a little broken we arrived into Bali, where we would spend the next two weeks taking advantage of some much needed R&R. We sipped cocktails and partied with drag queens in Seminyak; chilled in hammocks with friends while living like beach bums on the paradise that is the Gili islands; and finally explored the less visited palm fringed beaches on the developing island of Lombok. It was the break we had needed.

 

But with S.E Asia’s wet season looming, there was no time to hang around. Keen to avoid yet another natural disaster, we decided to score our selves a couple Working Holiday visas and put our Asian adventure on hold for drier times. So in early  June, we swopped  the sweltering tropical heat of Indonesia for the sub zero temperatures of the picture perfect Land of the Long White Cloud- ANew Zealand.

And so began the next chapter.