Komodo Trip, Indonesia

Two days before Christmas we got on a boat that was going to take us from Lombok on a four-day "sailing trip" with the island of Flores as our final destination. The sailing turned out to be a quite loud engine, the trip turned out to be three nights instead of the promised four, the all inclusive didn't include visiting all the stops along the way and food was only until we reached the destination although we had paid for a little more... However, during these four days we got to see so much beautiful nature, enjoy the sun and ocean from the deck of a boat and had great company. We were 13 people on the boat of different ages and from different parts of the world and we had a lot of fun! We stopped to swim in beautiful waterfalls in the middle of the jungle, visited a salt water lake (which looked suspiciously much like a regular fresh water lake but no...) had rice or noodles, climbed little mountains in the middle of nowhere with views of surrounding islands and bays, stopped at desolate beaches to swim and snorkel in clear, turquoise water with parrotfish, clownfish, rays etc, visited  Komodo and Rinca Islands with it's famous Komodos; giant lizzards who live mainly on waterbuffalos, can get up to 3 meters long or more and only exist in this very part of the world. They were pretty fascinating to see, but as their hunting technique is just to lay around and wait for someone to get close enough to eat, they're not that exciting... The islands were gorgeous though, and we enjoyed it very much. Every scenery was just stunning, stunning, stunning. In the nighttime we played cards on deck, drank beers, had more rice or noodles, pondered at the beautiful sunset and starfilled nightskies and just relaxed. We spotted dolphins several times and one of the nights, they came swimming with our boat but because of the darkness all we could see of them was the shining rays moving under us in the water as they made the plankton fluorescent. Soo beautiful!
For Christmas dinner we had deep fried chicken, vegetables and.... noodles! We had fun though and the imported gingerbreadcookies gave the swedish population of the boat some joy... We arrived in Labuhan Bajo a day early and as that was the end of it we all went out for a dinner togheter before saying goodbye. So, even though if we didn't get much christmas feelings, at least it's one that we enjoyed very much and will remember for a long time!

Gili Islands, Indonesia

After Bali we decided to travel to the island next door, Lombok, and the three tiny Gili Islands - Coconut Palms, sleepy restaurants, white sand beaches, turquoise water, fantastic sunsets and amazing underwaterlife. We spent a week on Gili Air just diving, doing yoga, sleeping, eating cheap rice and noodles, reading, drinking beers and diving again. The island is very small, took us no more than one hour to walk all the way around and we quickly felt at home. The diving was great and we really enjoyed the colorful corals, hundreds of different fish (especially clownfish, like Nemo, they're so cute in their anemones), turtles, octopus, scorpionfish, rays, parrotfish etc etc. Fantastic! We had a spiderfarm in our roof just above our bed and about a million of mosquitobites but we still loved it.

Later we moved over to the biggest island Gili Trawangan, wich was a little bit like Bali but way nicer. More restaurants and bars here than in Gili Air and we did a little bit of shopping and snorkeling and ate at a nightmarket where you point out the fresh fish you want them to bbq for you. For desert we had a giant pancake with coconut which looks nothing like the french crepes but still was pretty good. (Although we're constantly fantazising about real french food...) We only stayed two nights here before it was time to move on again. We had such a nice time in the Gili's, with Air as our favorite!