Excuse me, you never told us you were visiting Indonesia? Did you go to Bali? Why and How? Let’s back up. (PS this will be Jessa’s post).
As you may have noticed, whenever you are traveling with Andrei, it is very important to be extremely flexible and to be prepared for any adventure or change in itenerary.
Originally, we had 3 full days to explore Singapore (Wednesday through Friday). However, Andrei did some research and a lot of people had said you can do most of Singapore in around two days, so he wanted to do one last suprise for the last full day. (Singapore skyline below)
On the way to Singapore, Andrei found an advertisement for tourists to visit an Indonesian island called Ranoh that was 3 hours from Singapore. This was part of an effort to draw tourists away from the only spot most people visit aka Bali.
He asked me how I felt about spending a day in Indonesia, and I said sure why not. As soon as I gave him the ok, he had a full day excursion booked from 7am to 9pm to visit a new country. He seemed excited, and I on the other hand was a bit more skeptical of the adventure. My mind went through a lot of “worst case” scenarios. Either way, we were headed to Indonesia!
Indonesia is comprised of 17,000 islands with a population of 277,000,00 pepple. This makes it the 4th most populated country, and only trails USA by 70 million. Only 6,000 of the Indonesia Islands are inhabited.
First, we went on an hour long, high-speed, ferry into Batan, Indonesia. This is an island that is part of the Riau Archipelago near the South China Sea. After clearing customs, our guide met us and told us we would be taking a 90 min drive through the islands.
While driving, the guide told us that each bridge we crossed indicated a new island. We counted 7 islands we passed before getting to our next stop. We also observed a lot of burning piles of garbage that people used to heat up their meals or get rid of trash.
After getting out of the car, we got onto a smaller boat with about 20 other people. This was to our final destination, Ranoh Island. (Photo Below: Our private guide Carl). Carl did an incredible job hanging out with us and teaching us about Indonesia.
As we arrived to our destination, we saw a white sandy beach with palm trees, banana boats, a huge floating playground, hammocks, and kayaks. We were pumped for the change in scenery and to start and end our honeymoon on the beach.
The first thing we did was put our things down and head to the floating playground. Now, the advertisement highlighted the playground to be very bright and colorful looking as if it could be a bouncy house or somewhere you could play the most epic game of tag. As we got closer, we noticed it was a bit run-down looking. Andrei eagerly jumped on it, and quickly got into the water because it was so hot and burned his feet. He splashed some water on it, so that I would not burn my feet. To our dismay, it was still pretty hot, the trampoline had holes, and you mostly just fell off the slide since it was so hot. We decided it was definitely one of those instagram expectations versus reality moments.
Next on the agenda, banana boats! I’ve never ridden a banana boat; it was so much fun! We didn’t explore too much outside of the wake, so we had a nice breezy ride on the South China Sea.
Following the banana boats, we kayaked and had lunch.
Indonesian food was quite interesting. They fed us chicken, a coleslaw, and something else you can’t really describe.
After lunch, while I cooled off in the shade, Andrei went exploring on the beach. Since it was low tide, he was in his element. He found a lot of unique sea shells and hermit crabs. The first bright shell he brought me, turned out to be a big ugly snail.
In true Andrei fashion, he was very excited about every single shell he found. “I wonder if your family would want one of those shells!”. I was getting a taste of what taking our future kids to the beach would consist of, lots of “Good Job and Wows”.
It was time for our jet ski ride! We were very excited to go on one together! The jet skis were very fast, and we were hitting speeds of up to 60 mph! We followed a local guide around for 25 mins and explored a couple of surrounding islands, and at one point the only thing we could see was the ocean. It’s a different sensation doing jetskis on the ocean versus a lake. Andrei would just hit the throttle and not have to worry about turning or slowing down, since there was nobody around us.
After an exhilirating jet ski adventure, we all went on the boat and cruised to the middle of the ocean where they preceeded to anchor us in and get into the water and swim to a nearby reef.
The water felt like a hot tub! It was neat to experience the warm water, and then bursts of cooler water. The coral reef was very much alive and we saw a variety of fish. This experience was very unexpected as we did not expect world class snorkeling in Indonesia. If you are wondering, yes Andrei made sure to point out every single fish he found to me.
After some snorkeling, we went back for afternoon tea. They fed us dessert,which comprised of a fried banana with grated cheese on top. So next time you want to know what Indonesian food tastes like, just heat up a banana and throw some cheese on top.
The tide had come in, and Andrei was a little sad his seashell exploration days were coming to an end. It was time to head back anyways, and we had experienced a wonderful time on this small island of paradise. Our return trip consisted of the boat, a 90 min car ride through the islands, and another ferry ride back to Singapore.
It was really neat being able to finish out our month long adventures the same we started them; from the shores of Mauis to the shores of Indonesia.
We spent the night exploring a hawker center and packing our luggage. The next morning, we slept in (8am), and headed to the airport. If you think our adventures and incredible luck was over, you are mistaken. (Hawker food stall below)
The Singapore airport is consistently named the number one airport in the world in terms of efficiency and wow factor. Unfortunately, we arrived too early to experience the 7 story indoor waterfall, so we headed to our gate.
After getting through security relatively quickly, we headed for the lounge. On our way, we noticed carpet everywhere. This wasn’t just dirty carpet, it was clean and beautiful. That’s not normal for an airport.
As I was noticing the airport carpet, Andrei was pointing at a lego store. This isn’t some small lego vending machine you’d find at an American airport. No, he had found a full sized lego store selling hundreds of lego sets ranging from Hogwarts Castle to the Kennedy Space Center.
The airport had multiple shopping malls inside of it, and each store was extremely spacious. They even had a digital art display that showcased Japanese traditions with sounds and realistic looking figures along the walls. This was airport was indeed very impressive, and we were just in Terminal 4, not even in the part that captivates people.
The flight home was smooth sailing. We had a 6 hour flight to Seoul, Korea with a 28 min layover. By the time we cleared customs we only had 10 mins to catch our flight. However, the Korean airport is extremely well laid out and our connecting flight was right in front of us, and we made it with plenty of time to spare.
The next flight was about 10.5 hours to Seattle, and was not as bad as I expected. We watched some movies, took naps, and played a little on our Switch. We were not excited for the 6 hour layover we had upcoming in Seattle.
Once we landed, they told us to collect our luggage for rescreening, to ensure we weren’t bringing in a pet snail to USA. Then instead of handing off the baggage at the next station, Andrei asks to be directed to the customer service counter. He asks the agent, if he could pay extra to get us on the next flight to Denver, that departs in 15 mins. They happily transferred our tickets, since they needed the later flight for missed connections, and we managed to turn a 6 hour layover into a 20 min layover.
We landed in Denver around 7 PM, and it felt great to be home. This incredible really showed us some of the wonders of the world, and exposed us to new cultures of all kind. The biggest takeaway, there is no place like home. We had filled the month of June with a lifetime of adventures, and couldn’t wait to see what marriage had in store for us.
Back to you Andrei 🙂
WAIT WHAT…. WE DID NOT SEE A SINGLE WEDDING PHOTO. YOU FORGOT TO SHOW ANY OF THE PROFESSIONAL KYOTO PHOTOS YOU TOOK… WHAT ABOUT THE OVERALL REFLECTIONS. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PART?
Don’t worry, we still have a few posts coming your way to highlight the wedding, reflections, etc. For now, we are going to combat jet lag and get some rest. Thanks for reading and staying engaged with us.
