ENGLISH VERSION

 BALI (08.-16.05.2012)

Back to Asien

After only a few hours flight from Perth, we land in Bali. Actually we should be aisa-proofed but after such a long stay in Australia we are a bit shocked. It took us a few hours until we are used to bargain also for the price of the hired car.

Our first stop is Tulamben.

We are heartly welcomed by Erich and Jacqueline. The unusual humidity determines the first day. Besides sleeping, lazy turbulence and of course some Indonesian food, we do nothing.

The coming days we spent out time for diving and snorkeling around the Liberty and the Coral Garden. Even a night dive at the tails can not miss Pascal.

 oriental sweetlipps fishes

View out of the Liberty wreck

conger

 buffalo head fish

 Balinese mini diving boat

Then we drive further with our speedy sportcar, heading north to Lovina Beach.

From there it quickly moves us further over "mountain passes" to the artist (and monkey)-town Ubud.

 Flower arrangthe gods...

 

 ...there are also others, who are delighted about it.

 Balinese fighting

Our last week is almost finished, for this reason we treat ourselves a little more luxury, so check in to a resort, which overlooks the rice fields.

we already have it worser than that :-)

That's it, our last blog entry. Now you go home with a laughing and a crying eye, but in any case with a whole bunch of new, valuable experiences and a desire for further adventure.

MALAYSIA (28.12.2011-05.02.2012)

Kuala Lumpur (28.12.2011-03.01.2012)

From  Phuket we fly to the multi-cultural city, Kuala Lumpur (KL). We stayed for a week and started the new year at the Petronas Towers.

The city offers a lot of culinary specialties, in the different parts of the city (Little India, Chinatown, Golden Triangle, etc.).

The monorail and the metro are the best and cheapest way to visit this big city.

 

Klang (03.-06.01.2012)

There are at least as many rats as people in this city. Here we stay three nights to wait on the arriveving of our bus in Port Klang.

Kuala Selangor (06.-08.01.2012)

We get our bus back and start immediately to Kuala Selangor.

This place is known for the Fireflys, and for the National Park Talam Alam channel, which is the kingdom of silver hair monkeys.

These come without hesitation straight into the village and those who don’t look on their stuff, will surely miss something soon ...

Cameron Highlands (08.-12.01.2012)

After the enormous heat in the lowlands, we drived to the Cameron Highlands.

There is a comfortable climate as at home in Switzerland. Temperatures range from 15 to 25 degrees with a comfortable humidity.

Ideal for trekking in the jungle and to visit the famous teaplantations.

Teaplantation in the Cameroon Highlands

The tracks in the jungle, which are usually "signed" are simple jungle trails and the signs are damaged from the local guides to the confius the trekker, which will explore them by themself without guide. But because of that ist an adventure ist fun and ist a beautiful jungle and we meet another couple JC and Josephine which also searched fort he right path. Fortunately, we even find the way out of the jungle.

 Hike in the jungle

Island Penang (12.-17.01.2012)

With our bus we moved to the northwest to the Pulau (island), Penang.

The Pulau Penang is a peninsula which is connected to the mainland, by the longest bridge (13.5 km) in South-East Asia.

So we must not miss the comfort of our „Busli“.

Here we spend several days at the beach.

Again, there is a national park, which we explore on foot, unfortunately for the "ordi-nary" tropical temperatures ...

At the evening we meet again JC and Josephine (from the Cameroon Highlands) for some good food and to play the funny game „crazy dog“.

Litchi Mmhh

Melaka (18.-24.01.2012)

After a short stopover in KL to manage the shipping from our bus to Australia we reach Melaka.

The World Heritage Site, we stayed there over the Chinese New Year.

This animals live in the canalization….

We found a convenient accommodation by an friendly retired teachers couple.

Here we make our „busli“ ready to ship.At the evening we walk through the decorated Chinatown and enjoy the festivities for Chinese New Year.

Kuala Lumpur (25.01.2012-05.02.2012)

Our last days in Malaysia we spend in Kuala Lumpur. For the shipping of „Busli“ it must be completely cleaned to pass the strength quarantine inspection in Australia. "Clean as new" is the motto, i.e. the mud which has been fixed now over 30 years on the vehicle underbody must be removed that means clean, clean and clean again...

BACK TO THAILAND (17.-28.12.2011)

Kho Lanta (18.-28.12.2011) 

Now we are ready for the island.

By plane we travel further to Phuket and by Minivan to Kho (island) Lanta.

There, Nathi, the girlfriend of Flavio, join to us.

With the rented scooters we explored the islandand the National Park with the wild monkeys.

Over Christmas, we relaxed on the beach and enjoyed the variety of exotic fruits, which not only tasted us...

By boat we drived to the National Park Kho Ha, to do some diving and snorkling tripps. You can see some underwater pictures below.

 moray

What is fish/Stone?

water snake

boxfish

 

 

we four

... this cheeky monkey steals our pineapple

on this beach we celebrated Christmas

LAOS (12.-17.12.2011)

Luang Prabang (12.-16.12.2011)

Early in the morning we start with a boat which take us in 2 days to Luang Prabang. It is a very nice boat trip through the great nature of Laos.

We stay some days in Luang Prabang, buy some things on the market and do a trekking and kajak trip.

Impressions of our Mekong-trip

Nightmarket at Luang Prabang 

 

 

fortunately was this snake already dead

Viang Vienh (16.-17.12.2011)

Over very bad roads but with full speed, the bus take us to Viangh Vienh. Big party city where we stay for one night.

The next stopp is Udon Thani.

VIETNAM (25.11.2011-06.12.2011)

Ha Noi (05.-06.12.2011) 
The next stopp is in Hanoi. A very crowded city, like at Saigon there are thousends of Scooters and cars. In front of all the old town is very interesting.

 Das ultimative Transportvehikel 

Hoi An (02.-05.12.2011)

After 11hours bus driving we arrived at Hoi An a old french colonized city.
A amazing smal town on a river.
Specially at night, a thousands of silk latrens are shining.

Nha Trang (29.11.-01.12.2011)

We reach Nha Trang (spoken Niiiiiiaaaaa Taaaaang) after a 4 hour Bustrip over Hills and through Ricefields and Bananaplantages.  The plan was, to do some diving tripps there but the conditions have been so bad at this time that we decided to go further.

Mui Ne (27.11.2011-29.11.2011)
Our first beach on our trip, closed to our bungalow. We relax on the beach and enjoy cold tropial fruit smoothies.
Realy nice place to be.

 

Not everyone can relax ...

Saigon (25.11.2011-27.11.2011)
Some impressions of our first day in Ho Chi Minh City (Sai gon).

------------------------------------------------ASIA--------------------------------------------------

TURKEY (04.11-24.11.2011)

After a lot of custom stations we reached turkey and changed from the european to the asian continent with the ferry in Canakkale. After we are driven along the coast to Izmir and then to Pamukkale to the white pools. They’re very nice, white and filled with water and tourists.

Then we want to drive to the coast again, but unfortunatelly the car broke, there was a problem with the engine cooling, we repaired it in 4 hours and drove on.

 

nearly repaired....

Our next stopp was at the Chimaerre the eternal flame which cames out of the stones. On this place we meet a group of young people they invited as to eat with them. So we spent the afternoon with grilling, drinking tea and talking, it was a very nice afternoon.

Two days later Can (one of this people) bring us two big bags full of the best fruits from his garden. We really liked this, thank you Can.

Then we driven over Antalya to Mersin were we want to ship our car.

But car shipping from Mersin is not as easy as it sounds. To our luck we found Altu our friend and the best man in town. He organized everything for us. After a lot of phone calls he found the right people, which could help us to ship the car. But this was not all, he organized everything from the Hotel to the Barber and very good foods.

Next day we were invited by his parents in law to the dinner. There we meet this nice people and we get the best things from the traditionell turkish kitchen we really enjoyed it.

Thank you for everything Altu.

One day later we took our car to the harbor and give the keys to the shipping agent.

Luckly Altu found the only agency which has ever done car shipping before in Mersin.

Adem Tosun from the company Cizgigumrukleme did everything for the shipment of our car. A very complicated operation with custom shipping owner etc.

Demount of the boxes

 Bus in a 20'Container

Without car we travelled to Istanbul by train to get our flight there. Unfortunatelly we get ill in this time and must change our flight.

GREECE (27.10.-2011)

From Ioannina we drived to Igoumenitsa. We were astonished that every shop was closed at Thursday, then we read in the internet that today is the national day from greece.

Close to Igoumenitsa we decided to stay on a small camping. We were happy to get a warm shower and to go swimming to the sea, which has a temperature about 21°. So we stay for two days and relaxing in the hammock.

Because the ferry season to the greek islands was finished we decided to travel over the landway to turkey. So we drived to Alexandroupolis. We stopped at the olymp and walked 8 hours to get to one of the tops on 2866 m.ü.m.

 On top of the Skalas 2886m.ü.M.(one of the main top of Olymp)

During the travel through the backcountry we saw a lot of cotton plantages.

ALBANIA (26.-27.10.2011)

Albania, the country of Mercedes Benz. Some streets are ok and some are in a very bad condition. Not only the standard of the streets is different to our streets , also the art of driving is not the same.

At the evening we found a pretty place to stay at the coast. At this part of the coast we were not alone. We meet the to frenches, Elodie and Sebastien which stay also at this place.

With them we have had a funny evening.

Maybe we’ll meet them again at Greece or Turkey.

Next day, we go further to Sarandë. There we changed some Euros to LEK and bought

some burek.

Which were very delicous.

After this meal, we travelled over the greek boarder untill Ioannina.

There we founded a closed camping where we could stay for the night.

 

Search our bus.....

MONTENEGRO (22-26.10.2011)

Further we drived along the coast, over the border to Montenegro, where we visit the city Kotor(also nice). After we „sprint“ with our bus 1300m higher to the top of the Lovcen nationalpark. This park has one of the highest points in this area. From this place we‘ve had a good view to the sea and to the back country of Montenegro.

 

For sleeping, we decided to go back to the coast closed to Ulcinj.

Morning at our sleeping place in Montenegro.

BACK TO CROATIA (19.-22.10.2011)

Back to the croatian coast we enjoyed the good climatic conditions. After three days we decided to travel further . Our next stop was Dubrovnik wherer we saw the nice old town,.At this time there were a lot of tourists, so we didn’t spend more time to this city and drived forward.

BOSNA-HERZEGOVINA (17.-19.10.2011)

The entry to Bosnia was easy. Soon after the border, we were delighted to see a VW T3.
At this time we didn't know that there are thousands of T3 buses in Bosnia. Bosnia, the country of the VW T3!

With our VW T3, we were in good company...

Because the temperatures at Bosnia were also very low, we stopped at the first supermarket und bought an electric heater (Brand: Einhell)

This we had already installed at the campsite of Sarajevo...

SOOO NICE.... :-)

We liked the capitol Sarajevo, especially the old town is charming and the food (Ćevapčići) is super. Of the recent hard times, only bullet holes in old buildings are visible. In the new part of the city we see a lot of modern buildings.

We stopped on our way back to croatia at the source of the river bosna.

After the stop at Mostar, we travelled over the bosnian mountains to the coast.

@Gregor: Thanks for the good travelling tipps. With the coordinates we have found any place we're looking for.

 

CROATIA (16.-17.10.2011)

In Croatia we enjoyed the beautiful nationalpark Plitvicka, with the amazing waterfalls and the nice lakes. Already Winnetou knew where are the best places to live... 
At night, temperaturs fell below zero degrees. So we decided to move to the south.
Going to Bosnia.

Here it was already cold......

SLOVENIA (13.-16.10.2011)

From Italy we drove over Ljubliana further to Dolenjske Toplice where we meet a lot of nice people from the CCS (Camping Club Slowenien).

They invited us to celebrate with them the Jabolka (Applefestival) and the private camping party. Which one started with Marroni from the fire and slovenian wine. So we decided to stay a little longer and to visit with the people from the CSS the partisan commandocentral from WW2 in the forrest.

ITALY (11.-13.10.2011)

Our first stop was at the lake of Garda in Italy. Then we travelled further to Venecia and Grado. Until now, we had good weather conditions and hot temperatures. But this changed suddenly at Slovenja.

SWITZERLAND (11.10.2011)

We started in Steffisburg, Switzerland at 11.10.2011 with a fully loaded car, a lot of spare parts and a lot of fun.