Whitsunday Pics-Boomerang

Sailed the Whitsunday Islands after hearing about it from Leeann and Holly for ages and now I absolutely get what they were talking about. the little beach town is called Airlie Beach and it is really cool but basically one street, haha. I signed up, grabbed some beers for the trip and headed to my boat at 2pm on saturday and hopped on board with my other 28 passengers. We immediately began racing our sailboat, the Boomerang, against another one called Broomstick and won but not by much. I was pretty impressed that these are actual ex raceboats and they sail competitively. Our crew was Heidi-skipper, Max-deckhand/first mate, Adam-chef and they were hilarious and awesome. We had amazing weather too considering it has basically been raining every day for the last month and we had a little break of perfect weather.

Our group consisted of Irish, Dutch, British, Welsh, tons of Germans, Aussies, and I of course was the only American. After sailing our faces off, we stopped off at an island where we snorkeled and saw loads of huge stingrays! I was amazed that they were so damn big and so close to us. One guy saw a small shark too. It is stinger season and I wasnt wearing a stinger suit so no chances were taken, but i got some cool pics. As we all started becoming friends we started having a ton of fun and it is just so ridiculously gorgeous out there and you are sailing on this awesome ship, it is just amazing. the guys had to pull up the main sail with the grinders, and the girls had to pull up the jib sail which was hilarious.

I got to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef in the middle of the trip and saw and touched a big ol sea turtle. We had a little party each night and played card games and just laughed a bunch in general. We snorkeled a ton and I even got to sail the boat for an hour or so. there are so many cultural differences and once again I had a guy tell me that I had changed his view of Americans as he had previously hated us. Why does everyone hate us Americans? Its ok, all international relations were improved and I learned to appreciate Irish and British drinkers more, haha. There are tons of Germans traveling Australia, but they always stay in their own little packs and only speak German. Same story with these Germans, they stayed in their pack but were nice enough. Ive met some cool ones, but they all just say that their English isnt good enough to have full conversations and that is why they are shy.

When you are sleeping on a boat, one thing I never really thought about was how early you get up. the sun shines in the boat like crazy and you really just have no other option other than getting up and starting your day. This provided for a lot of sun and long days with little sleep. We got to see Whitehaven Beach which was gorgeous and extremely white. There is a sinkhole around the corner from the beach that spits up silica which then deposits on this particular beach due to the current which makes it 99% silica beach. That is the highest percentage silica sand anywhere in the world. Cool fact and amazing scenery.

got back and went out with all the whole crew and had laughs talking about our trip over a couple of beers. Great friends who I will definitely keep in touch with.

got on a bus at 9 last night and it is 10 am here in Hervey Bay, over 12 hour bus ride, damn....gonna take a break here and grab breakfast and prob take it easy today. My ankle is all jacked up and I need to be fully healthy for Fraser Island Camping tomorrow.

PS- 110 Greenwich better be having fun back in NYC! Jun, Julian, and Berk, yall will be happy to know I have passed on the Tim berg videos to Australians, haha.

Whitsundays!

Just finished sailing the Whitsunday Islands and holy crap that was amazing! will actually write more when im at a computere that doesnt suck and I can upload pics while writing. Suffice it to say, W...O...W...

Magnetic Island Full Moon Party and Airlie Beach

I definitely skipped my bus out of Cairns because I went out with all my friends from rafting and had a blast enough to not want to jump on a midnight bus to Magnetic Island. I got lucky and rebooked my bus ticket and jumped on the 1pm bus and got to Townsville around 7pm. Took the wildest ferry ride of my life across to Magnetic Island and checked into Bungalow Bay. Grabbed some chicken tikka masala, which was awesome but Australia is really expensive, and a beer and waited for the bus to take me to the Full Moon Party. Well, these schoolies, which are high school kids who just graduated high school and have a weeklong party, were all at the bus stop and the driver decided they werent worth stopping for, thus leaving me to figure out my journey to the party. I made some friends with some local Aussie dudes, Simon and Larry, and we grabbed a taxi in a flash. Simon is a DJ on the island so they got me in with a free VIP wristband, sweet!

the party was cool etc. This morning I hopped on a bus, then a ferry, then a Greyhound on my way to Airlie Beach. This is where you get to sail the Whitsunday Islands! I have been pumped about doing this ever since my friends Leeann and Holly from Austin talked it up while back home. I made some friends on the bus and we are going to dinner in a bit here, but I am staying at the coolest hostel in town, Beaches, and already love this little beach city.

So the way the sailing works is you bring your own beer or spirits(which are convenently premixed in cans by the way??) and you get on a big sailboat for 2 days and 2 nights. I signed up to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef too while out there and am excited to see this boat and all the islands. The Whitsundays are a collection of 74 islands off the coast of Proserpine, which is the area Airlie Beach is located in. these vessels take you around and just go to a bunch of islands and you get to chill on this huge old racing sailboat and hang out with fellow backpackers and Aussies alike. All the pictures look absolutely breathtaking and I have been excited about doing this for a while so I am charging my camera solidly, haha.

http://www.sailing-whitsundays.com/
http://blueparadisesailing.com.au/?c=18687971&a=835390811&gclid=CPzyy6CEvqUCFQHabgodXSOh_g

there are a couple links to see what it is supposed to be like.

Time for dinner, Im starving!

Traveling Ups and Downs, gotta roll with the punches

Here are pics of Bali, fast internet is amazing












so sometimes traveling has ups and sometimes it has its downs, today started off as a pretty shitty down day but as you will see, things usually work out for the best in the end...

Today I was supposed to go dive the Great Barrier Reef but that didn't happen. i woke up really early in the morning or you could just classify it as the middle of the night with horrible stomach pains and got sick all night long. When I went to meet up for the scuba truck they saw that I was kind of sick and as I was explaining, i had to run to go throw up again. Well, apparently they thought that i was a risk to have on the boat or something and told me to take a hike. I thought that sucked but kind of understand how they dont want some guy puking on the boat. This, however was what got me. they didnt refund my money! I argued and argued with the "boss" and got nowhere and decided I should just sleep off my bad feelings and anger for this crappy company.

I knocked out and woke up at 11am, just an hour late for checkout, boom another deposit gone, sweet. So up to this point I have no food in my stomach, lost 260 dollars, havent seen the Great Barrier Reef, and am getting kicked out of my hostel without my deposit fee.

I decided to just try to make the best out of it. So i got a huge water, and packed up and went for a stroll to try to figure out my best plan of attack. I found a travel agency with free internet and read some brochures and decided that I could go White Water Rafting in the rainforest which I have never done before. I signed up, grabbed a steak and a beer for 10 bucks, sweet deal, and got my stuff together.

I knew this would be an awesome excursion as soon as I got on the bus! My friends from the plane were on my bus and they asked me to be on their raft and the guides were all hilarious people. we got out to Barron River and got our stuff on and I was paired up with an Indian man, Bregsi, his wife Lolita, and daughter, the spanish girl from the plane, german girl from plane, and our guide was Tom. We kicked ass! I had such a blast with our group, we raced the other two rafts, did the best on the rapids when one of the other boat full of Japanese tourists literally all fell out of the boat and I even got to save two of them, haha, safety first right! Really cool rapids and great people. And we are all going to dinner tonight before my bus leaves for magnetic Island around midnight.

Lesson in everything and this one is just to try to make the best out of your situation. Now my stomach feels great, i have a ton of cool new friends going down the same path as me and I have an amazing experience under my belt. the money and sleep lost are worth pennies compared to the memories I got today.

today is a great day!








ps, yes mom, that is a fake tattoo

pics of volcano

really slow internet connection so i will add more pics later

Toya Bungkah Volcano, Beach, Volcano

A lot has happened since the last time i wrote on here. This will have to be a pictureless post until next time, i am getting stuff done because I leave for Australia today. I delayed my ticket after much persuading by my friends Ilse(dutch girl), Jason(british guy), and Polly(aussie girl). so to catch up...

That night I went to Echo beach to meet Polly and some other yoga friends and ran into Ilse and Jason and drinks ensued! We had a blast, a great dinner and a good amount of Bintang's. Bintang is the local beer here. It actually means Star in Bahasa whichis what they called it after Heineken had to pull out of Bali, who originally brewed it. Polly runs a resort here and invited all of us back to her ridiculous pad. Oh my god you can own a freakin personal resort here for absolutely chump change compared to america. You need to have a nominee who puts their name on some documents, but then you get a mansion and land for cheap. It was then that the salesmanship ensued and I was coerced into moving my flight to monday, haha. It was well worth it.

I ended up hanging out with Ilse all the next couple days going to the beach, surfing, eating awesome food and actually having some ridiculous Indian food at this place my friends suggested called Queens Tandoor. Her parents own two houses here and are really cool. They suggested we go see the volcano at Toya Bungkah the next day and got us a driver.

On the way to Toya Bungkah we grabbed lunch in Ubud and shopped our faces off to get presents for folks back home for me. Mom, three male friends and Leslie are checked off the present list now, haha. Then we went to a temple where I got to actually where a sarong and belt and get in the holy water and cleanse my spirit in the fountains and pray to the Balinese gods which was very soothing. I love respecting local traditions and religions and hope they do it when they visit us as well. Just so happened that I got to go swimming to respect this one, haha, awesome! Got some snacks and off to the biggest Lake in Bali, Lake Batur.

We arrived in Toya Bungkay around 5:15 and met Gede who is the nominee for Ilse's parents houses and company here. He treated me like a son and got us into the hot springs and got us massages and his wife, Yoman, made us amazing fish! So i will not do this justice, but when you arrive at his place, you are at lake level and across this amazing lake there is a mountain Jutting out of the other side of the lake making it look like a movie filmed in Interlaken, Switzerland or something only warmer. We caught up with Gede and his family and ate and had some Bintangs and then caught some sleep because we had to get up at 4am to climb the volcano the next morning.

Got up and our guide started walking us throught he dark. About an hour and 20 minutes, which is apparently really fast, we reached a little warung(food hut) at the top of the volcano and had eggs, roasted banana sandwiches and Bali coffee. was truly picturesque. We were above the clouds and looking across the lake at the other mountain...amazing. and the volcano was smoking...it had erupted in 1997 and spewed lava flattening a village or three in 1973! not today though thankfully! We took a ton of pictures and just took in the scenery which was other worldly. Finally climbed to the absolute top and literally took pictures inside of a cloud! I felt like i was in a plane, haha. We watched the sun rise over the mountain and quietly gazed at the amazing scene that is NOT the regular thought of Bali. This Bali is somewhere I could send my mom or family and have them fall in love with the scenery, people, food and pace for sure. No party but lots of amazing other things that Bali affords. After climbing the mountain, Yoman made us traditional bali style pancakes and taught me more Balinese over Bali coffee, haha. I grabbed a nap and then we went swimming in Lake Batur.

After swimming we went to the hot springs and went back to hang out with Gede(pronounced Kah-day) until our driver got there to drive us back to Canggu.

Got back to Canggu and showered up and met Mirko at Echo beach for a goodbye dinner and drinks. This place has its hooks in me for sure and there are pictures to come. I leave today for Australia and am excited, but am sad to leave this wonderland of waves, views, and nice people.

surfing, yoga, Canggu

Moved over to Canggu to stay at Surfers Paradise/Andy's Surf Villa and loving the change of pace. Andy is an great Aussie who runs an awesome group of villas here. WE have beers every night and he has his wife make me food all the time, it is awesome. Met up with my friend Mirco and a dutch girl named Ilsa at Echo beach for dinner and a beer then strummed a few bad songs on the guitar before reading a little and getting some much needed sleep. Got up to eggs, vegemite, toast, mushrooms/onions, coffee, orange juice, and jam. Surfed today at Tugu Beach and kinda pulled something in my leg so i got a massage which was ok, then I went to yoga at Desa Seni, which is a retreat my friend Lexie had suggested I try out. It was awesome, much better for the leg than the massage. I met some friends in class and we are grabbing drinks later after dinner with some other friends.

tomorrow I might dive this shipwreck or a number of different things. I leave Bali in two days and am really just now starting to plug into the social circle which sucks because I can see how you could live here easily. cheap, fun, surf, beautiful everything, and everybody is nice.

Having a relaxing great time here

pics

Surfing

i left my camera charger/uploader chord in Jakarta and will have to buy another one so I can upload pics, but ive got some good ones as soon as I do.

Funny story, i was gonna go out Friday night and all my friends from my hostel were cool but...I took a nap. Was supposed to be for an hour but i went to bed and 8:30pm and woke up at 2am. so i didnt go out, haha. Got u early and went exploring around Seminyak and Kuta, two neighboring towns which actually just run together. I tried to get lost so I would have to learn the roads a little better...mission accoplished, haha, i definitely got lost.

Got back, grabbed breakfast and got a little more acquainted with Bali by reading and then hopped on my scooter and rolled to Canggu to met Mirko at Tugu Beach. Mirko is a friend of a friend who teaches surf lessons here and was really cool and a great teacher. I was really rusty since 7 years ago in Costa Rica, but i shook it off pretty quickly and was up and surfing in no time. The water here is absolutely perfect and the waves were beautiful. Definitely got a good workout and a solid sunburn as well. I feel like i will try to turn this trip into a surf based deal now after talking with Mirko after surfing. He is 33 and has been surfing since he was 19. The guy literally has followed the waves around the world and just lives wherever is best for surfing and he can get a visa, haha. I was inspired and definitely made me doubt my ideas of a regular life. We talked about a lot of things and mainly really hit on the rest of my trip. I had been planning to just fly from Cairns to New Zealand as soon as I got there, but after talking to Mirko and hearing all he had to say about Australia and surfing and lifestyle, I think I will just go from Cairns all the way down the coast to Sydney. I am going to try(operative word) and turn this into a trip to make me a good surfer, which i am far from at the moment.

I feel like after talking to him and my buddy Oleg, this will make the trip focused around a hobby that Ive always loved but never been great at. A worthy endeavor I think.

After surfing I went to a place that Mirko suggested called Mojo's Burritos for a shrimp burrito to get refueled. I also bought the coolest damn blow dart gun i have ever seen! It looks like I should be living in an African tribe or something. It has a build in dart holder and is camouflaged because it is made of wood and stuff. Very solid purchase for 9 bucks. Then I road my scooter around Seminyak to get more in tune with the local digs and grabbed a beer at a ritzy bar on the beach called, Ku De Ta. It was a beautiful location and I will probably go back there.

I grabbed another massage when I finally got back to my neck of the woods in Legian. This massage wasnt so great though. The one the day before was actually better but both were cheap as dirt. In Thailand i could get an hour long massage for 5-8 bucks and these were 8 bucks each. Sweet prices and worth it after surfing.

When I got back to The Island, my hostel, I hung out and listened to stories from all of my bunk mates and made some great friends over a poolside beer. Chris and his group are from England, Two dutch guys, a Canadian guy,an asian swedish girl, british girl, aussie girl, and Oleg who was from New Zealand. We all got showered up and went to dinner at Blue Ocean. I had and amazing seafood dinner! I am still on NYC prices instead of traveling prices, so when I saw a seafood basket with swordfish, mahi mahi, snapper, calimari, shrimp and rice for 11 bucks I knew exactly what to get. It was amazing and really filled me up. We had great conversation over great food and drinks and I got to know my fellow Islanders much better. Then we paired down and went out. Oleg became a good buddy because he has worked in finance as well and was a cool dude doing kind of the same trip i was doing through thailand and everything. the girls and us went out to a couple of bars and then we ended up at the tourist hotsot...Sky Garden, haha. This is a 5 story party, untz untz, dance, drink, extravaganza filled with tourists. It was great actually although extremely trite and obvious. Had a great night and here I am today alive and well.

About to go try to get my camera chord, a day pack, a shirt and a snack. I love this place. After errands Im going to a surfing market at Deus Ex Machina to try to buy a used board and hang out with Mirko. I think they put a movie together and are throwing a party too, should be fun.

Jakarta with Sung Je, Now in Bali

So I arrived in Jakarta and got through customs and my buddy Sung Je was there to pick me up. We went back to his parents place via their personal driver, which was pretty cool. It is very commonplace in Jakarta to have a driver but I felt pretty cool. I got cleaned up knocked out for a couple of hours and then we went to dinner at a place in this enormous mall where I ate Nasi Goreng. It is like fried rice with a bunch of stuff in it essentially. we just caught up and chilled out at dinner over a Bintang Beer. Went to a cool bar and had some drinks and shared old war stories from college and selling books and all that. Was a great night. Even managed to get a little sleep.

As I woke up i still had not gotten a confirmation email from my flight so we called them up. No email because i was not on a flight, whoops! So we had an amazing breakfast for his moms birthday full with kimchee, rice, bulgogi type meat, soup, vegetables. It was a feast! Then his parents advised we just go to the airport and ask ticket prices. I actually got a better flight at a cheaper flight by doing this and boom here i am in Bali.

Jakarta has over 10 million people during the day which is ridiculous and Obama was there for a speech before the G20 summit in Seoul so there was even more ruckus.

Now in Bali, I found my driver and we found my place, The Island, which was recomended to me be a friend of a friend, Lexie. Very cool place and beautiful landscaping. I just got a scooter and am about to grab a beer and some food. It is friday night in Bali...what should I do?

Flights: NYC-Anchorage-Taipai-Jakarta

Been flying since 10pm Eastern time and i think it is somehting like 645am in Indonesia right now? not sure what that amounts to but im still in the Taipai airport and ive already done some cool stuff.

Ate King Salmon Jerky bought in the Anchorage airport, surprisingly less crappy than I would have though. They had salmon everything there. This little Chinese lady bought 300 bucks worth of salmon in front of me in line.

Finished a book i had started the day I left Thailand, kind of a cool bookend to my vacation from traveling. Book was "Three Cups of Tea" Greg Mortenson and is great. Man builds schools in Pakistan and does much more. Was given to me by Henry who had read it while he was traveling. Il try to pass it on.

Finally got my flights from bali to cairns and Sydney back to USA booked, haha. Flying by the seat of my pants here but it all seemed towork out. I actually got my replacement credit card, stolen on Halloween, about 12 hours before I left. Bought a new camera and watch and even had time to buy a guidebook for New Zealand.

I flew China Air and am always amazed as soon as I get on a non-US airline that they give you free wine/beer/whatever/headphones.

About to hop myflight to Jakarta where Sung Je Lee, a great friend from Texas, Southwestern, and Wranglers has just finished his Indonesian Military service and is about to head back to Law school inAmerica. He is gonna pick me up at the airport. good start to the trip.