So far:
We traveled by plane, train, car, bus, boat, motorcycle, scooter, horse carriage and becak, 
visited 5 countries,
went to 16 destinations,
took 11 flights,
and stayed in 20 hotels, apartments and bungalows and 1 night on a boat.

And some more general things we love about this trip:
being able to spend so much time together as a family
discovering new places together
watching Jace try loads of different types of food and loving most of them
meeting lots of new and inspiring people
being outside so much and seeing Jace run around and play with everything he finds
watching our little boy grow and learn and seeing him so at ease wherever we are

Of course it’s not always easy. Like all young parents we struggle with raising a very active and stubborn toddler, but we’ve added an extra hurdle by doing it while traveling. Also we’re still adjusting to this new way of traveling as a family. If you’ve read our post about traveling with a child, you’ve noticed that there’s quite a few things that change when it’s not just the two of you anymore. That being said, we’ve had so many amazing experiences, met so many fantastic new people and seen so many great places, we wouldn’t have missed that for the world!

Jace is generally a very happy child and it’s a lot of fun to watch him discover all these new places, new people, new tastes, new animals… He smiles a lot and is constantly running around checking out his new environment. He loves to go exploring with us We know he won’t actually remember this trip, but we hope this sense of discovery, the idea that anything is possible, all the impressions he gets and the foods he tastes will stay with him when he grows up.

We’re very much looking forward to our next 6 months on the road!

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We started off on the wrong foot with Nusa Lembongan. As you can read in our review of Shipwrecks Beach Resort (spoiler: don’t stay there!) we didn’t have such a great first night. So right away we looked for a new place to stay. We looked up Taos House and since we were in a bit of a hurry to find a new accommodation we called them. They actually picked up the phone (big improvement!). After telling us they only had a room for two nights instead of the four we wanted, they apparently made some arrangements because a few minutes later they texted us we could stay the 4 nights we needed. Great service!

Getting to Taos House Nusa Lembongan

If you’re thinking of going to Nusa Lembongan, read our post about the cheapest way to get there from Bali. Since we were on Nusa Lembongan already, the owner of Taos House agreed to pick us up free of charge. Free harbor pick up is included if you stay at Taos House. So when you arrive by ferry, the Taos House staff can pick you up, or, depending on your ticket, you get dropped off by the boat crew. After our pick up in the morning, we arrived at their lovely hotel in the Mushroom Bay area. The owners (the father, his son and his daughter) were very nice and we were welcomed with fresh orange juice while we waited for our room to be cleaned. Taos House was a bit more expensive than the place we’d previously selected, but a hundred times better.

The amenities at Taos House

Taos House has a really nice garden in front of the rooms and a lovely swimming pool to cool down on the hot days. Jace really loved the place too. Partly because of the pool, but also because there were two little kids and a four-week-old puppy for him to play with. The staff gave us great information about what to do and where to go. The rooms were comfy and clean, and we appreciated the mosquito nets over the bed. The rooms are located in bungalow type buildings, each with their own terrace.

Location of Taos House

Taos House is located in the Mushroom Bay area. It’s not on the beach, which we initially wanted. But you can easily walk to Mushroom beach. We rented a motorbike, which is a great option to get around the island.

Food at Taos House

Breakfast at Taos House was included, which for us as budget travelers is always a good thing. It wasn’t a huge breakfast, but well made and enough for us to start the day. The restaurant also serves lunch and dinner. Taos House is a lovely family owned accommodation, it’s not a large hotel, so food options are limited.

Conclusion

Pros:
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• friendly staff
• owned and operated by a local family
• big swimming pool
• nice garden with good atmosphere
• decent breakfast
• clean and good sized room

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Cons:
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• the hot shower didn’t work very well (the staff did their best to fix it and finally managed to on day 3)
• not on the beach
• a bit above our budget

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Check the price and availability of Taos House on Booking.com >>

Check out more places to stay on Nusa Lembongan

Booking.com

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Somehow the owner of the accommodation we booked thought that Shipwrecks Beach Resort sounded more fancy then the original name of Shipwrecks Surf Retreat (which was already quite pretentious) so this is what he called the place on booking.com. Obviously he forgot to update everyone that he changed the name though, so no one knew of a place called Shipwrecks Beach Resort. The guy who arranged the drop offs from the boat didn’t know, no one in the streets in the Shipwreck Beach area knew… On top of that they didn’t pick up the phone at the number that booking.com send us. All in all it took us a good 1,5 hours to find the place from Tropica Shipwreck where we were mistakenly dropped off. Even though it was only about 5 minutes away.

So already in a pretty foul mood and with a little one who was seriously tired, we were shown our room. Since Jace really needed to sleep we didn’t want to argue, but what a dump. The only good thing about it was that it was quite spacious, but the paint came of the bedroom wall which looked extremely dirty, the bathroom didn’t look too clean either, there was no mosquito net, the shower had no water pressure, everything felt damp…

We later found out that there were actually rooms that were a bit nicer, but sometimes you just don’t feel the love for a place. Especially since it wasn’t a cheap room either, it was advertised on booking.com for €32,- per night. We actually felt a bit uncomfortable and started our search for a new place to stay as soon as we got there. And we weren’t the only ones. A German couple that we met there also decided to leave much earlier than the two weeks they’d originally booked to stay.

The one thing this accommodation did have was a great location, it was right on a nice sandy beach. And in the end we ended up paying only IDR400.000 (about €27,-) for the one night we stayed there. The owner was very flexible when we told him we only wanted to stay the one night.

Weirdly enough this place got a pretty good score on booking.com. If you do end up going there, don’t stay in the first room on the right when you enter the premises, take one that’s more in the back.

So, to sum it up:

Pros:

• great location on a sandy beach
• good size room
• small but very nice banana pancake for breakfast

Cons:

• room felt damp
• no water pressure
• no mosquito net
• paint comes of the walls
• personnel hardly speaks any English
• not a great atmosphere

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There are many cooking classes in Ubud Indonesia. Since Ubud itself is very busy, we chose to stay in a village outside of Ubud in a lovely family homestay called Kas Komala.  There was a cooking class down the road, only about 5 mins away. After looking it up on TripAdvisor it turned out people were really happy about it, so I decided to book a morning class with them.

The start of my Bali cooking class

There were 12 people in my cooking class, all ages and from all over the world. Pilled in two cars, we drove to the market for ingredients. Actually, we didn’t buy a lot, just some spices, but it was nice to visit a local market. We’d already been to a few, but I guess for most short-term tourists it would be quite an experience. Of course, local markets always offer great photo opportunities!

Back to the family compound for cooking

After the market, we went to the family compound for the cooking class. We were welcomed with a nice drink of young coconut and shown the kitchen and dining tables. Very professional setup. It was obvious they had a lot of experience teaching the classes because even with 12 participants things ran very smoothly. No time for relaxation, it was time to work! The gender bias was quite clear, the boys had to do the hard work of pounding and grinding the meats and spices and the girls did all the cutting.

Fun Balinese cooking class

Of course, the class was also meant to be fun. While we were cooking there was time for jokes and sharing stories as well. We had a very diverse and international group with Canadians, Australians, Czech, Germans, Norwegians and English of all ages and it was nice to hear what everybody was up to. For instance the couple from the Czech Republic was in Bali on their two week honeymoon. He was a marine captain who works in Nigeria for a Dutch dredging company, 6 weeks on/6 weeks off. Unfortunately, his wife didn’t speak English, but we managed to communicate any way. One of the Germans was actually Czech by birth and did sales for a company selling Czech steel in Germany and the Norwegian girl had just been in Australia for a year on a working holiday visa.

Best cooking class in Ubud

The dishes we made were absolutely delicious! And with such basic ingredients, amazing. We made a clear mushroom soup that was absolutely to die for, homemade peanut sauce, basic yellow sauce (that has sooo many uses), chicken curry, sate lilit (lollipop sate, with ground chicken), gado gado, Balinese lawar (salad), pepes ikon (fish in banana leaf) and fried tempe manis. I really hope I can find all the ingredients when we’re back in Holland, because these are dishes I would love to be able to make at home!

I’m not sure if it’s the best cooking class in Ubud, but I would definitely recommend the Jambangan cooking class! It’s run by a lovely family, the setup is very professional, things run smoothly and I learned a lot about Balinese cooking. And, not unimportant, it was fun!.

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1. Amazing amounts of kites in the sky. This we especially noticed when we were in Sanur, but we see it in other places as well. Making and flying kites is part of Balinese cultural and religious tradition. From the youngest kids flying their tiny homemade kites of bamboo and plastic bags to the monstrous 10 meter sized creations that are flown during the Bali Kite Festival in July and August, there are kites everywhere.

2. Little offerings everywhere. We were perplexed by the sheer number of little offerings left at seemingly random places, you see them on sidewalks, steps, statues and temples. Sometimes you find one next to your rented motorbike or even see someone placing an offering in the middle of a busy crossroads! Every morning the offerings of the day before are removed and everything is cleaned and made ready for the daily gift of offerings meant to appease and please the various gods and demons of Balinese Hinduism.

3. Balinese women are physically amazingly strong. Everywhere you see women carrying all kinds of very heavy things on their heads, from half banana trees to complete dive equipments. Even very old grannies shuffle down the streets The division of tasks between genders is very clear cut and for us Westerners seems very gender biased with the women as the loosing party. After a bit of reading about it though, it seems appearances may be a bit deceiving. Yes, Balinese women are very strong both physically and mentally, having to balance running the household, raising the kids and earning an income, but it’s not that the men are lazy. The division is very traditional though.

4. Everybody drives a motorbike. We’re not exaggerating, there literally are motorbikes everywhere. When you drive around you see more bikes than cars, at a ratio that easily reaches 1:10 or maybe more. It’s like that in most South-East Asian countries, but here it seems even more noticeable. Mothers can easily transport two kids on the motorbike and often you see whole families of four together on one bike. It never ceases to amaze us. We therefore find it really funny that WE are an attraction for THEM when we drive around with the three of us, with Jace on my back in the Manduca carrier

5. The price difference between the local warungs and the more western style restaurants is crazy. Why anyone would want to eat at one of the restaurants here is really beyond us. Why pay more then double or even triple for the same dish just because it’s served on a nicer plate in a more posh atmosphere? The bigger warungs however, even if they offer a better price than the restaurants, all seem to offer very much the same menu, nasi goreng, mie goreng, gado gado, ayam kecap, cap cai… We love the more local feel of the small warungs and night markets and the interesting dishes they serve. Like most places we’ve been cooking western food isn’t their forte, although there obviously are exceptions.

Expats that live in Bali and people who’ve been coming here for many years are complaining that it’s overrun by tourists. While I’m sure that’s true and we normally don’t like the tourist traps, we can’t wait to see more of Bali.

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Free wifi everywhere, for real?

Even though most accommodations (and supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants etc.) in Bali offer free wifi, it isn’t always very reliable. For example the place where we’re staying now advertises free wifi, but it’s done by a dongle with prepaid credit that often runs out. Especially when you’re working online, there are times when you really do need to be connected and using you’re iphone as 3G hotspot works quite well.

Save some $$ on your mobile internet

The first SimPati mobile internet package we got was about 60.000 rupiah (about €4,-) for 1,5GB. After a comment on the Webworktravel FB group we figured there had to be better packages out there. Of course things are never as easy as they seem and after visiting at least 5 or 6 stores in the area it was clear none of them knew how to do it (or maybe they just wanted to sell us the more expensive package :-)). So we spend some time researching how to get the best deal. And we thought we’d share it on our blog to save other travellers some time and $$.

[styled_box title=”Good to know” class=””]To check your remaining quota use: *889#
To check your remaining phone credit use: *888#[/styled_box]

Cheaper mobile internet step by step

Here’s the step by step guide of how to get the 4,5GB valid for 30 days. To get other packages (more GB’s or longer validity) choose one of the other options in steps 4 and 5. We used an iPhone, menus might look a bit different on an Android phone.

Before you start

Get a SimPati / Telcomsell simcard with enough credit. To check your phone credit call *888#

Step 1:

Call *363#. This will result in an Indonesian text menu. We haven’t figured out a way to get this in English, if you know how, please leave a comment below.

Step 2:

Press REPLY and then 1: Paket FLASH (Buy internet package). Choose reply in the top right corner.

Step 3:

The following menu gives you the choice to select the validity. We chose the 30 days validity. To do so press REPLY and then 3: Bulanan (month package for 30 days) and reply. You can also choose one of the other options for longer or shorter validity.

Step 4:

The following menu gives you the choice to select the size of the package you want. We chose the 4,5GB package which costs 135.000 rupiah. To get his press REPLY and then 3: 4,5GB and reply. You can also choose one of the other options for more GB’s.

Step 5:

Indicate whether you want a monthly subscription or a one time package. To choose the latter, hit REPLY and then 2: Sekali Beli (one time package) then reply again.

After this you should see the following message:

‘Terima kasih permintaan anda sedang di proses. Tunggu sms notifikasi sebelum penggunaan.’,

This means ‘Thank you for your request is being processed. Wait for sms notification before use’.

You will receive a text message shortly after if you have enough credit in your account. And you’re done! Your internet should be working!

It took us a fair deal of time to figure this stuff out so we hope we can spare you the trouble with this post.

P.S. If you choose a different package leave a comment below with the type of package and the price.

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Coincidently our friend Tracey, who I first met in Koh Tao when I was traveling solo for three weeks in Thailand in 2011, had just accepted a job there as underwater photographer with Bali Reef Divers (check out her website www.traceyjonesphotography.com. Tracey and I keep meeting each other on the road, first time in Koh Tao where we both did an underwater photography course, then in Koh Lanta when she was working there as underwater photographer and Mau and I were traveling, then again on this trip in Sanur and now in Amed.

At first we didn’t take to Amed so much. It’s not just one village, but a stretch along the coast with a few little villages (Amed, Bunutan, Jemaluk, not sure what the others are called). The whole area is referred to as Amed and there’s no real lively town center. Hotels, homestays, restaurants and small shops are scattered around this one coastal road. This took some getting used to. Star East Bungalows is a bit further from the main road, so we were happy we could rent a motorbike. This made it easy to go out for lunch and dinner, although we often made sandwiches for lunch to save on our budget. For dinner our favourite place was Warung Wayan, a great little restaurant near Eurodive at Indah Beach. We stayed in Amed (or Bunutan to be precise) for 2,5 weeks and at the end were sad to leave. The place had started to grow on us. We really enjoyed discovering the surrounding countryside on motorbike. Some of the views are absolutely spectacular.

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I was a bit worried about the 8,5 hour flight on day 2, but he was very relaxed and flirting with all the flight attendants. When we arrived at the apartment in Bali however he collapsed, too tired to sleep and over-stimulated. We spend our first night in Bali trying to help him get some sleep.

Our travel schedule:

Day 1:
– Got up at 05:00
– Dahab to Sharm el Sheikh by car
– Sharm el Sheikh to Cairo by plane
– Sharm el Sheikh to Dubai by plane
– Arrived at Dubai airport at 17:30 then spend over an hour trying to locate our stroller and find the shuttle to the hotel
– Arrived at the hotel in Dubai at 19:30, had dinner and went to bed too late

Day 2:
– Got up at 05:30
– Dubai to Bali by plane
– Arrived in Bali at 21:40 local time and were at our apartment by 22:30

Even though we had a rough first night, this morning we were sooo happy to be back in Asia! The apartment we rented through Airbnb is comfy and clean and it’ll be great fun to go exploring our new environment. We’ve never been to Bali before, so it’s a new experience for all of us.

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