Posts in Category: Travels
Rawa Island
When I first talked to a german who’d been to singapore for an internship before, he said “you’ll be spending every weekend in Rawa!”. It took me quite long to finally get there on me 17th weekend ;). The organisation was a little complicated for our group of 15 and the prebooked transport didn’t work smoothly either. After almost 2 hours,the minibus and the cab were finally both at the pickup location. Going through singaporean and malaysian customs took some time as well before our late-night arrival at Mersing where we boarded the speedboat to the island-paradise. Rawa, private property of the scheich of johor, is located southwest of Tioman island and houses 2 resorts next to the pier which is equipped with 2 waterslides. We stayed at Alang’s Rawa for 2 nights, enjoyed the food buffets, the rental kajaks and the beautiful scenery. Of course we didn’t miss out to play flunkyball and party at night. The “Let’s build a sand-car. Are you in?”-“sure!” conversation made us spend almost 3 hours digging sand and reconfiguring the shape :D. Unfortunately the weather shortened our beach time a little but thanks to a bunch of awesome people I’ve met in Singapore, we had a great weekend!
Bali: -32 to +3142m
Besides getting my advanced open water diver certificate and some further diving in Bali, I also toured around the island for 1 day, hiked the volcano at night and spend an afternoon enjoying the waves at Kuta beach.
Unfortunately the hike to the volcano wasn’t rewarded – as I expected – with the view of a beautiful sunrise. After starting the trip with 200 stairs to a temple located at 950m at 3.00 a.m., My guide and me hiked through the steep RAINforest. The high humidity and fog filled the air with water and the additional wind resulted in a blistering cold which I neither expected nor was prepared to encounter. No jacket could have possibly withstood this madness for 3 hours anyway as the other freezing figures in perfect waterproof outdoor gear on the mountaintop assured me. 😀 After googling some details, it turned out the 1600m hike from 1300m to 2900m which was told to me, was a slight underestimation. The parking lot below the temple is located at around 900m while the mountaintop rises to 3142m, resulting in 2242m of steep forest or rocky paths and climbing with a headlight in the dark. The clouds and fog didn’t allow for any good pictures 🙁 but 2200m in 3h is quite an achievement :).
I tried to capture the vast rice-fields (from a driving car) and impressive temples as well as the waves at kuta beach, but see for yourself:
The other 71%
After getting to singapore I was eager to finally have a chance to dive. To see the wonderful world below the surface. After my open water diver in Tioman Island where I caught a first glimpse of the hidden beauty while focussing on all necessary techniques and procedures, I went to Bali last weekend. The padi advanced open water diver course is an accumulation of mainly fun-dives with some additional skills and Bali’s east coast offeres interesting dive-sites. After looking through the vast amount of diving schools, I decided to join the Tulamben wreck divers for a few days. During 4.5 out of 7 dives I rented a camera and tried my luck with color distortion, parallax (floating particles that reflect any flash coming from the same direction as the camera – e.g. built in flash), little light and quick moving objects while floating by myself. Underwater photography requieres a lot of skills and perfect buoyancy – especially with a compact camera without external flash or light. (The underwater casing for my nex 5 is as expensive as the camera itself 🙁 ). Thanks to my diving instructor I had a great time and some of the pictures turned out ok, allowing you to take a glimpse at the amazing habitat between -30 and 0m. [I met a turtleee! 🙂 ]
The wreck of USAT Liberty, a US cargo ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942, then towed to the beach and unloaded. A vulcanic eruption in 1963 made it slip into the water. It lies at 3-30m depth and has become a very famous diving site in Bali.
Hong Kong
Labour day offered an excellent opportunity for a long weekend trip. When asking some friends who are doing internships in Taiwan and Shanghai, we concluded to meetup in Hong Kong. After disembarking the plane and the bus skipping a few stations due to labour day protest-parades, I checked in at the CheckInn hostel which turned out to be a really good choice. We spent the weekend catching up, discovering the town and visiting Macau with some new friends we made at the hostel.
Vitoria peak offers a stunning, contrastful view of the city embedded in hills covered in forests and trees. Eager to see the “worlds longest escalator” – which turned out to be a huge disappointment since it’s just many short individual 1-way escalators connected by walks of up to 5 minutes and only runs downwards until 10 a.m., we had to walk all the way down back to the city. The aqua-cocktailbar offered strange and “forgotten classics” cocktails with chilis, a pepper-rim on the glass or other exotic mixtures. Unfortunately, the casino in Macau didn’t offer Texas Hold’em and we weren’t that lucky while playing roulette, so we had to stick to the ferry instead of returning via helicopter-cab :(.
Krabi – even more of a paradise
My last weekend trip took me to Krabi, Thailand. Located on the same bay but opposite Phuket, it’s a famous tourist location with lot’s of hotels, bars and massage centers. Since they realized on friday that sunday will be their most important public holiday, the thai new year, they cancelled my prebooked hiking/jungle trip for sunday. I spend saturday travelling around a few islands by speedboat and met some cool people to have a few drinks at night. It went crazy when all waiters suddenly attacked you with waterguns while you were drinking cocktails. Everyone got wet and we had a great start in the songkran festival (and luckily my camera survived without any damage unlike my completely soaked passport)! On sunday, I hiked a little, walked to bay that can’t be reached by cars and swam around a few smaller islands (besides getting completely wet again). Luckily, the blueish blur on a few pages of my passport still counted as travel-visa-stamp and I was allowed to travel back to Singapore ^^.
Singapore again
When my parents visited me in Singapore, we went to some really nice locations where I got the chance to capture these pictures:
Jakarta
A few weeks ago I spent a weekend in Jakarta.
When I booked the trip, I was really excited – JAKARTA ! One of the few cities in Indonesia you know. From movies.
Excited, until everyone I mentioned it to toled me: Stay at the airport, grab the next plane to somewhere else.. – Is it THAT BAD??
Wikitravel and the internet confronted me with similar advice.
I still went there – but I probably won’t do it again. I stayed near the old town which is the poorer part of the city. Poor, simple, sometimes a little dirty – but not dangerous at all and everyone is helpful. On the opposite, the south of the city is like singapore. Giant shopping centers with all brands you ever heard of. They even sell cars on the ground floor.
Singapore Zoo
Even big kids like the zoo ;). Here’s what the Singapore zoo offers – besides some 1m lizards walking around the public area.