Before hopping back to Europe for the summer, we spent some relaxing time in Indonesia. We flew into Bali, wanting to see for ourselves what the fuss is all about. It’s quite touristy indeed, but avoiding the main Kuta neighbourhood and renting our own motorbike we managed to escape most of the crowds. On the upside, May-June is still low season, so we found cheap and veeery nice hotels everywhere. So developed tourist locations are not always bad! Bali’s religion is mainly hinduism, and in the streets we saw endless rows of temples, daily offerings and celebrations that made the island particularly interesting to visit.

After a week in Bali, we started moving East, and hopped on the neighbouring island of Lombok. That island is majority muslim, and it was ramadan time, so we could hear lots of mosque prayers which gave an extra exotic touch to the atmosphere. We had no trouble finding food during the day, because the Muslim community here is quite relaxed (for example, not all women wear headscarves), and they seem used to mixing with other religions so many businesses and shops were open. Lombok has way less tourism than Bali, but we saw many resorts currently in construction so they are getting ready for a boom. We can understand why, as Lombok has much nicer beaches!

After a week of beach bumming, we got on a 4-day boat trip to go to the island of Flores, and the Komodo national park to see the infamous dragons. It was a very nice way to get there, with stops to swim, snorkel, and check those cute poisonous reptiles. Flores is not very developed yet, so it was interesting to travel in a much more rural Indonesia – a bit less comfort, but people were really excited to see us. And guess what, Flores is majority Catholic – so far 3 islands, 3 religions! And we didn’t continue East to Papua, where we could have seen animist tribes…

And to finish, here’s a little video with some snapshots from our Indonesia adventures. In particular we were very impressed with snorkelling in the Komodo national park, where we saw 4 huge bioluminescent squids (changing colour to fit in the corals!), manta rays, calamari, lots of beautiful fish and amazing multi-coloured corals. A shame that the camera doesn’t do justice to the beauty that we saw…

Indonesia is so diverse, feels like each island is a different country. Even within one island, it’s beautiful to see different religions and ways of life tolerantly sharing the space. We will definitely have to come back, to see Sumatra, Java and of course Papua!