Phnom Penh: Killing fields, rooftop pool, food and Khmer New Year

From Bali we continued to Cambodia. We flew through Kuala Lumpur and had to stay overnight at the airport. We had slept already many times at airports so we decided to take a room from an airport hotel that actually was inside the terminal. It was just a 30 sec walk from our arrival gate! 😁 Then one more flight and we were in Phnom Penh. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. The traffic was chaotic and it looked like the whole city is under construction. Our hotel, Aquarius Hotel, was very nice and it had a cool rooftop pool to relax in. They had even upgraded us a bit so we got a room with a balcony. 😉

Nice view from our pool

Bali, part 3: volcano hikes, toxic sulfur smoke, dolphins at sunrise and meeting up with friends

One night we were hoping to find something to help our sweet tooth. 😋 We drove around with our scooter and checked menus of different restaurants. One had a massive list of different types of cakes and we decided to give it a try. The restaurant is called Cafe Batu Jimbar. We ordered some chocolate mousse cheese cake and coconut pie (never seen that before) and both were so delicious! Edda couldn't stop thinking about the chocolate mousse cake for the next few days!

Then, all the sudden, it started to rain heavily. We were wondering whether if we would wait or go. Well, the rain might take a while so we decided to go. In the video below you can see that in just a short time the streets were covered in water! (sorry about the bad quality in the video)

New Year 1939, monsters, crazy traffic, stealing monkeys and more in Sanur-Bali

Then it was time to go to Sanur. We had heard about Ogoh-ogoh festival and Nyepi (the silent day). It was the Balinese New-Year and it was just after few days from our arrival to Sanur. That was going to be interesting.

One of the monsters we saw during Ogoh-ogoh festival

We had bought bus tickets to Sanur for just over 3€/person from the tourist info in Ubud. We were a bit early at the bus station so Edda got an brilliant idea, lets buy some ice cream while waiting! 😂 When our ride came, it was a bit of a surprise. There was no bus, but a jeep. Well, that suited us. It had a good ac and it's smaller than a bus so it gets easier through traffic. It took us about one hour from Ubud to Sanur. The "bus" ticket was only to the center of Sanur, even if the driver had to drive by our place to get to the next one. Well, it was not that expensive to get the driver drop us to our Villa, about 3€. 

Ubud: earthquake, rice fields, temples, rafting and more!

So, after island life on Gili Air we headed down to Ubud, a city in Bali inland. We had heard from many people that it would be a nice city with a lot of yoga and good restaurants. We went there for five nights to explore what the surroundings would have to offer. 

When booking hotels in totally new places, downside is that you don't know which location would be the best one. We booked a room at Pajar House Ubud because it had received good recommendations and it looked nice in pictures. The downside was that it was rather far away from the city. BUT, the hotel had a brilliant shuttle system. When we came to the hotel, we got an old Nokia mobile phone (Edda even remembered how to unlock it! 😂) and we could always call their reception or driver when we needed something. E.g. every time we were in the city, we called the driver when we wanted to come back and he picked us up. For free! Cool.

Vacation from traveling! Indonesia: Gili Air

Hooooolidaaay! Ceeeeelebrate!.... 😂 After six weeks changing place every second day in NZ and few days in Sydney, and long flights, we arrived to Indonesia! Our holiday destination. We had decided to stay only in three different places here. We are going to just relax, take it easy and enjoy our stay!

When we arrived to Denpasar, the capital of Bali, we started to hear "taxi", "taxi, "taxi"... We had checked that an airport taxi would cost around 30€ - 35€ to Sanur. That was way too much. Our friend Minna, who "lives" in Bali for the moment told that the blue taxis are quite cheap but we would have to walk a bit out from the airport. Then there was Uber, but we needed internet so we bought a local prepaid sim card. Luckily they hadn't blocked Uber from the airport as many places did in Latin-America.

Few days in Sydney: KOI dessert bar, coastal walk, walking tour, swimming and "inte gå" ;)

Since our flight from NZ to Indonesia was through Sydney, we asked Kilroy Travels whether if we could stay few nights there and it worked out fine. That was nice since Edda had never been there before and Markus' last visit was a long time ago. We didn't have any expectations for Sydney - we just wanted to walk around and we looked forward to seeing Edda's friends, Anki and Jocke and their son Theo. 😄 

 Teaser for this post 😀

When we first arrived we went to Judith's place - the Dutch girl we met in NZ. She is staying in Sydney for a while and we decided to walk around the city together. And we got to put our luggage in her room for the day which was great! Judith showed us where to buy a metro/bus/ferry card and showed us a bit of the city center. 

Last 3 places in NZ: Hanmer Springs, Akaroa peninsula and Christchurch

We are a bit late with our blog. We are now sitting in a plane flying through Kuala Lumpur to our next destination, Indonesia, and still writing about NZ… Well, it’s actually a quite tough job to write, especially when we have been changing places quite a lot. Now we are going to have some holiday from traveling and just relax in Indonesia. But now back to NZ. As we wrote in the last post, we were making knives and that we were a bit worried how long it would take to finish them because of the power cut. We had still to drive to Hanmer Springs that night. We finished early enough so that we manage to arrive to HanmerSprings around 9 pm. We checked in to a really nice hostel, Hanmer Backpackers, and had dinner.