The Engleson Files

So after three grueling days of flying down south of the equator the family landed at Dempasar International Airport in Bali, Indonesia. It was roughly 12:30am when we arrived and we were all completely spent - with no hotel booked either, ooops! It took us about an hour to find a place and during that time I quickly realized that the Kuta beach area in Bali is not a desirable place to be at all. The entire area looks like an American city with all the Western amenities - all at outrageous Western prices as well - and I just did not like the vibe there at all; there certainly did not seem to be much of Indonesia that’s for sure! We weren’t planning to stay long, but we were still all quite sick and just needed a couple of days to unwind. So we shacked up at the Melasti Hotel and rested our weary bones.

Magnus enjoyed the pool, Kristin and Svea enjoyed the sunshine and I tootled around trying to find us some plane tickets in order to go and see the Komodo dragons in Flores, which is where our next disappointment came. It seemed that all my research was for naught because the ticket prices were double (at least) from what I had been seeing on the internet. From place to place, I quickly realized to fly our family to Flores was going to cost roughly $500 CDN - and that was not even coming back! Fast boats were expensive, slow boats couldn’t go, and basically throughout the course of the day it was abundantly clear that we had to say goodbye to the Komodo’s - and that broke my heart. I had been pumping these guys up for a long time and we were all really excited to see them (or at least Magnus and I were!) So, there we were, in Indonesia (but not really), plan A out through the roof and all tired and jetlagged - a lowly beginning indeed.

But after our second night in Kuta, we set a plan to set sail for Lombok and that is where our whole vacation took shape and got us back on track…