JudithMerijn

We ended a full year of travelling with a fun holiday with friends in the Philippines. We were already in Puerto Princesa where Riemke and Mariska were able to fly to despite another typhoon landing in the country disrupting some flights. It was great to see the girls and continue where we left the year before catching up and drinking cold beers then in South India now in the Philippines. Together we travel with a shared van to Port Barton, an amazing, relaxed, beautiful, still not too busy nor touristy, beach town on Palawan island. Here we meet with Joyce, Maarten and their 1,5 year old son Duuk and with the whole bunch we spend a few days and nights touring islands, snorkelling, lazying on the beach, and partying the year away into 2020 at NYE ... read more

The past few months have been ‘busy’. We did quite a lot of travelling, trying but often failing to travel slowly and most of it not in any way efficiently. Since our last blog post we have travelled from Alor to West-Timor (the Indonesian part of the island Timor) and then to Timor Leste (an independent country). From there with a lot of boats, busses and some planes via Nusa Penida, Bali, Singapore, Berlin and Brussels to The Netherlands. Here we have spent four weeks with our family and friends, trying to catch up with their lives and just spending quality time with the people we miss during our travelling. We then flew back to Indonesia, via KL and Jakarta to Ambon, from where we travelled across part of Maluku, visiting the Banda Islands and Kei ... read more

The past month has been a fun, a bit food focused and social month for us. We traveled overland from Myanmar to Thailand where we would meet two friends for 48hrs in Bangkok and then we would fly to Kuala Lumpur to meet two other friends with whom we would spend almost three weeks exploring Malaysia. We had a great laugh, some tears were shed, we had plenty of drinks and enjoyed a lot of the best food ranging from Michelin star dumplings to the best Laksa of the world (according to the locals that is…). From the border we first went to Kanchanaburi, a pleasant town in Thailand, where we could get used to this part of the world, being very touristy, modern and everything available in abundance. We adjusted quite well, we had great ... read more

Walking across a border usually feels a bit nostalgic. Sometimes it’s one big annoying time wasting bureaucratic experience. Most of the time it’s a little bit like in a time machine going from one timezone to another with just one step. Walking through the India Bangladesh friendship gate entering Meghalaya state in northeast India was easy, the border police and immigration officers on both sides were friendly, and although the actual time difference is only 30 minutes, it felt like going back to the future, with one step we immediately saw and felt the difference between the two countries. Meghalaya was the first of the four northeastern states, called the Seven Sisters, we would visit. Immediately we could not only see the difference with Bangladesh, but also with the rest of India. Meghalaya is predominately Christian, ... read more

From Nepal we walked across the bridge that is the border into West Bengal, India. Already in the eastern part of Nepal we could see a lot of tea plantations, but now travelling to tea capital Darjeeling there is tea everywhere. With two shared jeeps we end up in Darjeeling, positioned on a high ridge and therefore again quite cold. We were surprised how lively the town is and especially Indian domestic tourists know how to find this place and spend some time during their holidays. We walked around the town, visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate and drank a lot of cups of nice tea, because obviously this is what you do in a place called Darjeeling. We got to experience a somewhat nostalgic government bureaucracy, when we applied for a local permit; first at ... read more