The Windy 500 Goes Global Again !

“Shhh....the Balinese dancers are moving away. Get ready to go...”. Not a comment I was really expecting to ever say if I’m honest. We were peering over the edge of our balcony at the three brightly dressed girls just below. It felt like a really crap episode of Doctor Who, all a bit surreal with bad costumes.  Our keenness to get to a different restaurant to eat was matched by their keenness to drag us in for the Balinese buffet and another dreadful exhibition of local dancing. I’m no great fan of ‘traditional local dancing’ whether it is Turkish, Greek, Irish...I don’t care. It’s dreadful. You know it will end up with some poor sod being dragged to their feet to be forced to dance with them. Our poor sod on the first night was Ralph and he still seemed scarred by the experience 2 days later. I had warned the staff that I couldn’t guarantee that all, or even any of the group would be there for the buffet. It hadn’t been that great on the first night and besides, the bar up the...

The Komodo National Park. It’s a group of islands off the coast of Flores with flora and fauna of World scientific interest. Very few of the islands are inhabited by humans but there are a few small fishing villages including one on Komodo Island itself. Here the mainly Muslim population live a peaceful existence for most of the day. They are a devout bunch, having built three mosques in the village. And so it was at the end of the day we found ourselves moored up on our boat 100 metres off shore, admiring the sunset, recounting the experiences of the day, dragons and turtles mainly, and looking forward to food and drink. Elena’s birthday. Two years ago we were in Hanoi and picked our choice of restaurant very badly. I had vowed to do better this time around. Certainly the scenery had been better. Pointy, rugged hills and islands, white sandy beaches and turquoise water. Under the water when we made a few stops we were seeing coral and fish of many different colours and a grazin...

I emerged from Le Pirate restaurant on to the main drag in Labuan Bajo and immediately found myself surrounded. It was a gang of bikers. Horrible looking lot too they were. A few dodgy looking tattoos and dubious Sun tans. My pulse quickened...strangely though I envied them with their carefree lifestyle, their cameraderie and their ability to get around. How I longed to be like them. Fortunately, for the princely sum of £4 a day, I too could have a moped and could go where the rest of the Windy gang could go. The freedom of the highroad was mine ! No more taxis for me for today. The highroads of Labuan Bajo are a bit like the town, in a poor state of repair. In fact, large sections are just gravel and stones. The rules of the road are also a mystery. It’s sort of left hand driving but not always and junctions are just a free for all. Challenging for a bunch of novice bikers and not conducive to speed. With Lucas on the back of mine, wrapped up in long trousers and long sleeved sh...

Labuan Bajo in Flores, Indonesia is a scruffy little town. It has a large mosque and a ferry port, neither of which are conducive of a good nights sleep. I found this fact out on my last visit 15 months ago. Our accommodation that time was pretty squalid. It was in the centre, convenient for the shops and also convenient for the mosque and ferry port should I feel the need to pray or chase after a departing ferry at 5am as it sounded it’s horn as it left harbour. Our visit this time to Labuan Bajo is better prepared and researched. For an extra £10 a night it seems you can get a beach, 2 pools, air con, unstained sheets and breakfast better than stale toast and brown gritty liquid. I prefer this accommodation at Sylvia Resort a few miles out of town, even if it is less convenient for the mosque. And so it was that the group arrived, dropped kit and staggered down to the beach, like a bunch of Tom Hanks in reverse, soaking up the view, the water as warm as a bath and the approachi...

Medan. Not a true tourist destination in the normal sense of the word. We are certainly feeling ‘unusual’ here. The locals are desperate to speak to us or have photos taken with us. All very friendly, just curious it seems. On the subject of feeling unusual, several members of the group have been for massages and got more massage than they normally would expect. And no, I don’t have any photos that I can share with you. Seems the definition of ‘full body massage’ out here is more literal than back home, but I’ve heard no complaints so far. It was a sad moment leaving Bukit Lawang. The staff at the Hotel Orangutan had looked after us and entertained us with their ‘music’ and beer. The drive back towards Medan wasn’t quite as awful as the journey out as we didn’t have heavy rain or darkness to contend with. Just large logs in the road and bone jarring pot holes. Medan is a fairly sizeable city, the biggest in Sumatra. Lots of traffic, dreadful pavements, shopping malls and big swan...

Sometimes if you really want to visit somewhere, you need to accept a drop in the standard of accommodation. You may also need to put up with some less pleasant travel arrangements. And so it was to get here...hideously bumpy roads on a long minibus drive, cold showers, many steps to our location...but today’s experiences made it all worth the effort, big style. To get within a few metres of orangutans in their natural environment was awesome. Mind blowing. I felt deeply privelidged to be there, sharing this experience with the other 24 people in the group. Of course orangutans aren’t the only wildlife in the jungle. Thomas Leaf Monkeys (only found on Sumatra apparently) sat around in the rubber trees watching us as we watched them. Pig tailed macaques and the very common long tailed macaques, all within arms length of us. The trek wasn’t as arduous as many expected. It may have been a little slippery under foot but I don’t think we covered more than 3 or 4 miles in the day. Hard...

Our room is 113 big steps above the restaurant. I know as I counted them last night as I climbed them for the seventh time that day. It’s a nice room, the views of monkeys, trees and river are great, but boy do we pay for it in tired legs and sweat. On the subject of monkeys, I feel the need to share with you my wife’s comment last night that will stick with me for a while. “I’m not wearing that shirt of mine any more. It’s had monkey arse on it.”. She had left it on the balcony. The local residents had visited and plonked their arses on the clothes to watch Jo trying to shoo them away. To be honest, we are getting a little monkeyed out. The critters are everywhere. Whatever we are doing, walking, swimming, eating...they are there in the background waiting for an opportunity to steal something or just wipe their arses on something. Aron and Martin were burgled yesterday. Well, it was more of a walk in theft. They slept with their door open and the offenders got away with chocolat...

The path to our room is covered in the stuff. The local residents have visited us this morning and left some presents it seems.  We were awoken by monkey at dawn in our hilltop accommodation in Bukit Lawang, deep in the Sumatran jungle. Bukit is Indonesian for hill apparently and much of this hill is between the restaurant and our room up in the clouds. This is definitely a change of scene from yesterday’s swanky Malaysian Hotel. A bit more rustic. We had arrived here, eventually, after a long drive last night. Once more Google maps had lied to me. 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive ? More like 4 1/2 in 3 minibuses after the short flight from Kuala Lumpur. Everyone was looking a bit frazzled as we dumped our rucksacks by the side of the road in Bukit Lawang. They were even more frazzled after the short but hilly hike with kit through the village. Finally the three hostels came in to view and rooms were allocated. A cool beer was needed to help recovery. The subsequent 4 or 5 were just ...

I’m not sure how many ribs a standard chicken has but out here in ‘Little India’ it seems they have plenty. It was like eating a flat chested xylophone. Honestly, every part was another bit of rib cage. Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur certainly lives up to its other name. Huge Indian influence , especially at Deepavali Festival time. Annoyingly loud Indian music on the streets, bright neon lights and huge numbers of stalls selling the bright sickly orange jalebi and halwa. . We finally found the dodgy looking restaurant with the even dodgier looking meat offerings in various fiery sauces and ordered lots with Tiger beer and naan bread. Yes, as announced to the group at Heathrow, our first destination was indeed Kuala Lumpur. The goody heaven, multi cultural capital of Malaysia. As promised, significantly hotter than England in October (30 degrees !) and a fair bit more interesting. I spoilt them all with a 12 hour direct flight rather than one of those irritating flights with a three ho...

I did one of those all inclusive holidays once. It was a while ago now. The sort where you rarely venture beyond the boundaries of a large hotel, spend the majority of your time by a crowded pool or trying to eat your own body weight in buffet food. It was okay I guess, the weather was nice. Don't think I'd want to do it again though. I just get itchy feet after a couple of days, sometimes even less. I don't need 5 star luxury and luckily neither does Mrs B or the offspring and we have certainly discovered some considerably less than 5 star accommodation on many occasions. A room in a swamp in Costa Rica, a bathroom guarded by two cockroaches the size of tortoises in Thailand, sticky brown bed linen in Ethiopia... On this trip, we shouldn't be plummeting to any real depths of squalor. Not even close. This trip is backpacking for softies. Doing the gap year student thing but with a little bit of style and panache. Twenty five people ranging in age from ten to sixty-som...