Indonesia- Labuan Bajo where everything was crazy but somehow we were ok

After resting in Jakarta, learning how to use money, not drink water, call a taxi, say thank you in Indonesian Chelsea and I confidently headed for the town of Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores.  It's a little fishing village that has semi-recently exploded with tourism because it's a major port city for anyone wanting to visit the islands home to the Komodo Dragons.  (Why people want to go to Bali rather than visit Komodo Dragons is beyond me!).  Turns out when small towns in third world countries explode with tourism it does not always come out looking like a resort...They have a little airport, a harbor, and main-street lined with businesses while the physical infrastructure seems to be crumbling under the unplanned-for heavy traffic.  It's very interesting and in many respects a lovely place.



Chels and I had a plan to land in Labuan Bajo early in the morning, and get on a boat that same day that would take us to some beautiful islands, feed us, drop us off at huts on a beach, take us to see amazing animals, meet other nice people, etc.  Basically, we were planning for paradise.  But instead we flew on Lion Air, which is like the Indonesia version of Frontier Airlines.  They are known for terrible scheduling problems, but we figured we would be able to squeak by.  Well we ended up with an initial delayed flight, and then spending almost the entire day at the Bali airport with our flight being pushed back and back and back until it was so late in the day that there was no way to even charter a boat to take us to catch up with the boat we had booked.

*sigh*

I had read a lot about the difficulties with traveling in Indonesia, so I was prepared but disappointed.

 

Being in Bali all day was sort of like this..

Ha!  Could be worse!
Delayed again?
Ugh it's hot.
Delayed again?
We're tired.
Delayed again?
For real, what are we going to do?

But eventually we made it and Chelsea found a tour company that was willing to take us out the next day and do basically the same tour, except we'd sleep on the boat instead of on a beach.  At the time that sounded pretty good to us.

Thankfully we had a hotel reservation at a BEAUTIFUL place WITH AC.

Cold 'welcome drinks'

Balcony with our room



Dinner at the fish market.  I was SO surprised I did not get sick from this experience, but it was sooo delicious!  There were all these vendors with a bunch of fresh fish on sublimating ice (it was HOT) with little grills they would cook them up right there for you with some rice and veggies!  SO good!  So greasy.  Also kleenexes are on every table instead of napkins, so that's kinda fun for really greasy sticky fingers.

Well I think my flight is boarding so, there's day 1 in LB!

To be continued....



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