Pulau Weh 21-27.6

Pulau Weh is said to be the best place to dive in the northern Sumatra. Excited to get to dive again we arrived on the Weh island by a public ferry, which took two hours from the Uleh Uleh harbour in Banda Aceh. These couple of hours felt like forever listening to bad techno in the dirty seats of the hot and humid ship. Again we were attacked by locals in the port but we managed to get a cheap taxi to our hotel Lumba Lumba diving resort in Gapang beach. Our room was nice with a small kitchen and a spacious terrace. The only thing missing was aircon. Over the next days we (actually only Rosanna) did get used to sleeping with a fan but we still prefer aircon ;) The houses we stayed in were situated on a hill and surrounded by a wonderful garden, which had lots of creatures crawling in its bushes :)

Pulau Weh is a very green and luscious island with two small beach villages, Gapang and Iboih, and a larger town Sabang. On our first day we already spotted monkeys in the trees close to Gapang beach and over the next days we saw lizards, crabs, snakes, frogs, bats and geckos. One day also a wild boar ran by our terrace, quite random! Gapang beach had lots of street cats and two dogs, Brownie and Meshi who were lucky to have Christian owners. Pulau Weh is mostly inhabited by muslims who think that dogs and particularly their saliva is dirty or prohibited so they aren't really allowed to touch dogs. The local kids did always run away if one the dogs approached them. Many of the cats had cute kittens, who came to play on our terrace a couple of times and even stayed for a well-deserved nap after all that wrestling.

We dove two times in Pulau Weh, each dive costing us 45€ per person. Not very expensive. Our instructor Ron was an experienced fellow who taught us many things we hadn't learnt in Manta dive during our Open Water course. On our first dive, which was an adventure drift dive, we saw two Devil rays! Drift dive is meant to familiarise you with diving in currents. The second dive we did was also an adventure dive, this time a peak performance buoyancy. In peak performance dive you practise getting neutrally buoyant and do some skills like hovering. This dive was done on our house reef in Gapang beach where we mostly saw fish, such as bufferfish, boxfish, angelfish, parrotfish, lionfish, cowfish, stonefish and many more.

Of course all this diving makes you hungry as a bear! Unfortunately the food wasn't really the strong suit of Pulau Weh... The "restaurants" on the beach were houses where the owners lived in, so when you went to order, you stepped in their living room and wrote your orders on piece of paper (because English wasn't spoken almost in any of the restaurants) and took that to the kitchen :D The food was average at its best. Watermelon juice had the seeds of the watermelon in it and chocolate milkshake was milk+chocolate syrup+ice cubes. Since the restaurants weren't really restaurants they also made you wait for your food at least 30 min, not depending on if you ordered scrambled eggs or a chicken curry, and hardly any compliments were exchanged between the customers and the owners. If we thanked for our food, the normal response was silence, sometimes a "yeah" and rarely "sama sama" which means "your welcome". Serviettes were replaced by toilet paper and cutlery was held in mugs on the tables. In most of the restaurants customers could have tabs during their stay and pay them off when they were leaving.

We felt a bit more welcome in the Barracuda restaurant whose owners, a couple with a young daughter called Rishma, spoke quite good English. We ate most of our meals there and also rented a scooter from them. Rishma was very intrigued of Yatzy as we played it when waiting for our meals and joined us. The owners also made greek yoghurt by themselves which was delicious. That with fresh fruits was our everyday breakfast on Weh island.

The best food we ate was in the only real restaurant of the island, an italian place a scooter ride way from Iboih beach. They had delicious tiramisu and home made tagliatelle (again we ate all our food before remembering that we had the camera with us). They also served beer for Oliver, yeyy!

Our own beach Gapang was relatively small and quiet. There were some westerns staying in Lumba Lumba and some other places along the beach but we still got to know all the faces during our stay.

In addition to diving we drove with a scooter around the island and visited a waterfall quite close to Gapang beach. We turned two times wrong from the crossings while searching for the waterfall and were almost about to give up the search when finally we found the right road leading to the waterfall. After trekking up the river and arriving to the sadly small waterfall, we cursed the missing road signs of Pulau Weh once again and felt like the journey hadn't been worth it. 

The first time we went to Iboih beach, which was a lot busier with locals than our own beach Gapang, we got told off by a local man because Rosanna was only wearing a bikini on the beach... The guy directed us to a smaller beach right next to Iboih beach, where Westerns were allowed to sunbath. We couldn't help but to feel embarrassed and wished that somebody would have told us that on days when there are many locals on the beach, wearing bikinis is not really allowed. For us it was also amusing that locals didn't seem to know how to swim because they always wore life jackets while snorkeling. We snorkeled on Iboih as well, since the water was clear blue and it was easy to swim to the reef right next to the beach.

Our feelings of Pulau Weh were a bit mixed. We enjoyed our stay in Lumba Lumba because of the room but didn't enjoy eating at Gapang beach. We had fun on our first dive but the next one was a bit of a disappointment. Still the strict muslim customs were a bit disturbing and locals were eyeballing us wherever we went. Luckily we left Weh island a day before Ramadan started, because during it most of the restaurants are closed and you are expected to behave even more respectfully towards the local religion so it might have been so that Rosanna would have had to cover up more. But anyway, we might go back to Pulau Weh some day for the diving and the beaches but definitely not for the food ;)

Senggigi & Banda Aceh 18-21.6

We headed out from the Gili islands towards new adventures in Sumatra. We booked flights from Lombok to Banda Aceh. Early morning on the 18th we caught a public boat from Gili Meno to Lombok. We had decided to stay a night in Senggigi, a holiday town on the west coast of Lombok. As we arrived to the port on Lombok we were attacked by locals who we offering all kinds of tours around the island and different kinds of transportation to different cities in Lombok. We bargained our minibus transportation to Senggigi and from the center of Senggigi took a taxi to our hotel.

We stayed the night in a new but average hotel, which was partly still under construction. As for Senggigi, we didn't enjoy our time there one bit, mainly because of the aggressive locals. We ate in a couple of decent but overpriced restaurants and laid by the pool. In the evening we managed to go see one sight: the Hindu temple of Senggigi.

The next morning we were eager to continue our journey to Sumatra and got on a bus to the airport. After 12 hours of travelling (our flight was from Lombok to Jakarta, from Jakarta to Medan and from Medan to Banda Aceh) we finally arrived in Banda Aceh and shared a taxi with a Swiss girl to our hotel. The hotel we stayed in was an old business hotel which had lost its glare a decade ago. Our room stank of cigarettes but was tidy enough. Anyway the hotel didn't have any non-smoking rooms and you were allowed to smoke pretty much anywhere in Banda Aceh so no point in complaining.

The next morning we went to walk around the city and see some tsunami memorials. Aceh was badly hit in the 2004 tsunami and the city even has its own tsunami museum (built by the Americans for over 6 million dollars). But first we headed for the big mosque by foot and we soon noticed that we were the only people walking. None of the locals walked anywhere and there were no other Westerners to be seen. We were so annoyed by the locals staring and laughing at us that we soon switched from walking to the sidecars of mopeds. 

We also visited Lampau and its "boat on a house" sight as well as a 2500 -tonne power-generator vessel that was brought 4km inland by the wave.

The tsunami memorials were a nice thing to see but overall we didn't really like Banda Aceh mainly because of its strict Muslim customs and the too upfront interest of the locals for us anywhere we went. First it was funny but then it got annoying as we got asked for the hundredth time to take a photo with some local guy.

So in the morning of 21th we couldn't have been happier to get out Banda Aceh and head towards the island of Pulau Weh.

Nusa Lembongan 7-11.6

We arrived on the small island of Nusa Lembongan by fast boat operated by Scoot. The journey from Bali to Nusa Lembongan cost us around 650 000 rupias (~40€) per person (it also included our trip from Lembongan to Gili Air later on). The Scoot staff took us all the way up to our hostel Poh Manis which was located in the middle of the small island. Most of the hotels and hostels of Nusa Lembongan are located on the many beaches of the island but some of the newer places are located more towards the inland. The journey from the harbour to Poh Manis was made with a small van that struggled to drive down poor road to Poh Manis. Apparently nobody was interested in building a proper road when constructing those new places inland. On our way to Poh Manis we saw a dozen cows and it felt like a million chicken. Cocks were yelling everywhere.

First day we just laid by the very comfortable pool of Poh Manis. A bit later we had the courage to get on a couple scooters and drove to Mushroom beach. On Nusa Lembongan it was normal for as many as four people to drive with one scooter and of course nobody wore helmets. This felt quite unsafe at first but we soon got used to it :D There were also plenty of western people driving around the island on scooters, which we took as a good sign.

We ended up staying at Poh Manis for dinner on the first night and the food was actually quite good. We were amazed by the amount of small (and not-so-small) geckos living with us in the bungalow. Their sounds were something we had never heard before and to us they sounded more like birds. We felt really comfortable in our room since it was nice and clean with a mosquito net and aircon.

Second day we switched from two scooters to only one; a scooter called JohnbeGood. It became our lucky scooter and we used it for the rest of our stay. We drove to a beach called the Dream beach, stayed there for a couple of hours and spent our time playing Yatzy and collecting seashells. We also continued our unconventional turist picture tradition. Later we drove to other beaches such as Sunset beach, Tamarin beach and Mushroom beach. Rosanna was excited to find Indonesian cider at one of restaurants but unluckily it tasted like vinegar.

On the second night a thunderstorm hit the island and we woke up to the sound of rain banging on the roof. Water was everywhere, our toilet flooded a bit and the power was out. There was nothing else to do than to go back to sleep and wait for the electricity to go back on... On the third day on Lembongan we headed out for a snorkeling trip on one of the local's boat. He took us to three different snorkeling points: Mangrove point, Gamat bay and Cristal bay. We saw plenty of colourful fish. Rosanna felt a bit seasick and threw up into the sea couple of times.. Lucky fish got some food! 

After lunch we drove across a suspension bridge to Ceningan island located right next to Nusa Lembongan. There we visited the Blue Lagoon cliff jumping spot and saw some seariously impressive surfing. After driving around in the heat it was time to head back to Poh Manis to relax by our pool. That evening we ate in a restaurant called Hai which had sooooo good food.

On day four we went to explore the mangrove forest on a local guy's boat. It was a nice experience, the forest was totally silent and the boat moved around pushed by a long stick. We saw some crabs and according to the guy the forest was also home to numerous birds (which we didn't spot). 

After the mangroves we walked around the Jungutbatu village, saw a traditional music performance by local school children and ended buying some stuff also. Lembongan was filled with chicken and cocks in particular and some were also sold by the main road (they are in the baskets in one of the pictures). Petrol for the mopeds was also sold in Absolut Vodka bottles. We took some pictures of the never-ending seaweed plantations that the locals had in the shores of the island. The smell was quite horrible...

We liked Nusa Lembongan a lot! We think that one huge thing why we liked it there so much was the staff of Poh Manis. They helped us with many stuff and had a map of the island available as well as tips for what to do around the island. Generally the local people all seemed to be very friendly and helpful but not too clingy. The island had plenty of stuff to do and explore for a couple of days visit. The food was tasty and restaurants generally speaking good.

Last but not least couple of photos which Oliver woke up around 7 am to take :