This post was originally written on February 4th and 10th, 2025

Can you believe it is 2025 and we have made it through the longest month (for those of you who live in the north where the days are long and cold)? This is exactly why I love to get out of Edmonton and travel in February – escape the winter!! And a winter it has been, as the last few days have reached -30 Celsius!!!

So as you can see from the title of this post, we are heading to Indonesia this time. We will be doing a 22 day tour with G Adventures that starts on the island of Java, then we head to Bali, Lombok and then Gili Islands. After the tour, Liza and I are heading to a remote part of Bali where we will be staying in a tree house on the beach.

About 20 years ago I traveled to Bali where my friend and I stayed in a fancy tourist area. It was absolutely amazing and although I only saw a tiny glimpse of the Balinese culture, it was what prompted me to explore more of the corners of the world. 

This trip, Liza and I are really lucky that we get to share this adventure with a bunch of friends along the way. My tried and true, Kris will be joining us for the entire tour along with her friend AJ. (Kris has been on many of my travels with me going back over 20 years ago, when we lived in Australia) Then when we get to Bali for the second half of the tour, our friend Ally will be joining us along with Liza’s boss/friend David. I feel sorry for the other people on the tour who have to put up with our shenanigans! Sorry-not sorry!!!

We leave tomorrow night and fly through Vancouver, Taipei and then arrive in Jakarta on Friday afternoon. We have a day to acclimatize before we set off with the group on Saturday.

I look forward to sharing our travels with all of you and I hope that I can bring you a glimpse of Indonesia by sharing our adventures through my stories.

See you all on the flip side!

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We made it safely to Indonesia! I was a bit worried as it was a balmy -30 when we left and flights were being cancelled from Edmonton. 

Thankfully our flight was only delayed by about an hour, which made it touch and go when we got to Vancouver. We only had one hour to get to our next gate but our sprinting abilities made it possible to get to there on time. After boarding and breathing a sigh of relief we started to taxi off. However, just before the engines started revving and we were about to take off, someone had a medical emergency and we had to go back to the gate. The boy was ok and once cleared, we then had to sit for a good hour longer before successfully hitting the sky. 13 hours later we arrived in Taipei, but now we had an airplane of chaotic passengers trying to frantically get off the plane and transfer to their next flight. Luckily we had enough time to make our next flight, but the staff in the Taipei airport were militant by yelling at the top of their lungs to get people from point A to point B in record time. 

Once we arrived in Jakarta we were hit with the big city traffic. It literally took us 1 hour just to get out of the airport!!!! Jakarta’s traffic is no joke!! We spent the next day in Jakarta and really the only attraction we visited was the local Circle K. Just trying to get used to the 14 hour time change was all we could muster for our first full day in Indonesia.