Overnight stop in Jakarta

What do you do with one night in Jakarta, capital of the largest Muslim country on earth? Why you go trick-or-treating of course!!

We stopped to spend the night with our old friends K&PV. We're leaving in the morning for Lake Toba with them and their two kids, but first there are some serious Halloween festivities to be attended to.

Their neighborhood is expat-heavy so Halloween is a pretty big-turnout event. It certainly makes for a fun weird-world counterpoint.

Pictures from Bali are up!

Here's a slide show of the photos from the first leg of our Asia trip.

Bali Update 2: We’re Weak!

So the place we booked in Ubud was fine. More than fine. It was remarkably nice - particularly given the incredibly cheap price. The bedroom was air-conditioned, a REALLY tasty breakfast arrived at the room each morning, and the location put us a nice walk from all the town's attractions.

Nothing wrong with it. A bargain in fact. But . . . well . . . the air con wasn’t all that frosty. And the pool was more for looking at than dipping in. And the TV got nothing but snow (in Bahasa Indonesia!). And there were the bugs. And . . . well, we’d just come from that dream stay at Umah di Beji.

So we looked at what doubling our price would get us. Turns out, not much. A little nicer décor. A view of the rice paddies. But still the same basic standard to the room.

Then we thought we’d just ask about availability at the Komaneka. I mean we were walking by and it’s SO hot here and we thought, what’s the harm? Well, it turns out that quadrupling our price got us quite a lot at the one available room at the Komaneka.

Aside from your own private plunge pool, overlooking the mini-rainforest? Well, there’s the 500+ thread count sheets to compliment the satellite TV. And of course killer air-con. But the grandest pleasure of all may be having the bathroom inside the air-con bubble.

The smile on Pleen’s face is more than worth it.

Dude, who am I kidding? The smiles are mutual!!

For our last night in Bali, this is gonna prepare us for the trip to Jakarta tomorrow!

Komaneka at Monkey Forest

Jalan Monkey Forest

Ubud, Gianyar 80571, Bali, Indonesia

+62 361 976090

www.komaneka.com/

Bali Update

Just some quick info for those wondering if we’ve fallen off the map. A fussy engine valve on our airplane caused us to miss our connection in Tokyo and we ended up arriving into Singapore much later than we expected. Turns out that 3 hours of sleep on a bed does wonders after 26 hours on a plane, and we were rolling onto our final flight to Bali 6 hours after we landed.

We spent our first three days in Bali with our old friends BL & ST. In typical fashion, BL outdid himself securing us a luxury venue beyond expectations.



Oh, and as you might expect, the food sucked as well.



































We are now in villa withdrawal trying with all our might NOT to compare our perfectly nice digs in Ubud with the dreamy Umah di Beji.

Bali is lovely – if hot! – and we’re happily exploring until we head to Jakarta to see another set of old friends in a couple days. More to follow!

Umah di Beji
Canggu, Bali, Indonesia
http://www.umahdibeji.com/