Before leaving Phnom Penh, we were sat in the bar of our guesthouse. An american voice emerged “wanna take a shot?” And it wasn’t Katie’s. It turns out a great way to travel is after 4 shots of Stollis vodka. That stuff is smooth and 4hrs on a bus flew past. I even managed to make my way through a Hannah Montana movie the bus was playing and quite contently I might add.
What can we say, we’ve already fallen in love with Cambodia. We had several people tell us that Cambodia is one of their favourite counties in SE Asia, and we can confirm, the country is living up to the hype. The people are incredibly nice, the cities are very green, easy to walk around, and have more charm in general than other cities we’ve visited. We arrived in Phnom Penh after an overnight sleepless layover in Singapore. We hopped into a tuk-tuk that trekked us into the city centre for $7.00.
We took the slow ferry to Lombok, an island east of Bali. The slow boat option was good for us because it was less than half the price of the fast boat. The touts tried scaring us off buying the cheaper option, quoting times of 7 to 8 hours to arrive on the island. In fact it only took 3.5 hours plus a 45 min shuttle bus to our destination town of Senggigi. One thing you learn when booking travels in SE Asia is you never really understand all the steps of your journey- but generally you will get there…eventually. Because we aren’t in a hurry, the slow option of travel works for us. If you’re limited on time, spending the dough on faster travel is probably worth it.
We caught a flight to Bali from Bandung airport, a very small but busy airport with very easy going security. We have been using lion air, a bit like easy jet for cheap flights, although I’m not sure why you would call your airline lion air as lions aren’t synonymous with flying.
After Jakarta we headed by train to Bandung. We sat in executive class seating. I know how lavish that sounds and we’d recommend it if you want a straight forward ride. I think it just means more leg room and quitter people to share the cabin with. Our assigned seats had been taken by other people, so Stephen sat behind me instead. No biggie.
We landed in Jakarta safe and sound ready for a new adventure in another foreign land. We didn’t know too much of what to expect, as it was sort of a whim that we came to Indonesia so quickly after only spending 2 weeks in Malaysia.
Sorry blog its been over a week since our last post. A few technical hitches… WiFi more like Where-FI!?
Outside of George Town, about a 1hr twisty-turney bus ride will take you to the Tropical Spice Gardens. This really was twisty-turney, as the bus driver drove fast around the curvy coast of Penang, even a local girl got off to show us her breakfast.
George Town is the capital of the state of Penang in Malaysia. We are ironically staying in Little India, which is full of curry houses, street vendors and Indian music pumping out in the background. Little India is like India’s touristy cuter younger brother – unlike its older brother, it is less hectic and the streets are much cleaner.
