Thoughts and Adventures

October 30, 2018

Reechout and our way to make traveling sustainable.

So here I am, back in Europe. The French Provence has been my home for a while already, and it will be for a significant while to come. We made the decision to come back to France, as a small break in-between travelling. Because I’m sure as hell not going to give that up. Over these past months I’ve kind of caught that travel bug that everyone has been talking about. I think that being back home, the weather getting colder has just reminded me of that again. At the end of this post you will know all about how Reechout is helping me to keep on travelling. If you are interested in reading anything about my travels please check out my blog page.

August 22, 2018

Moalboal, a tourist town with a local touch

After spending the first few days of our Philippine in Manilla, we made our way South to Moalboal. The trip there is tough but straight forward. A flight from the capital to Cebu and there all you have to do is chose for a car or a bus. The bus is significantly cheaper, but the car will give you way more comfort. Anyways, the trip there will be more than worth it.

June 15, 2018

Plastic and corals, South East Asia in a nutshell

Today marks the 3 month anniversary of our travels. In this time we have visited many countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. We have seen nature and (plastic) pollution, rich and poor, the beautiful and ugly side of traveling. I could go on with the opposites that we have encountered, but there is always something similar that links everything together: human influence.

May 29, 2018

Molana, a hidden gem in the Banda sea

Molana is a hidden gem located south in the Moluccans, Indonesia. Other than a website there is not much is to be found about this island online, But after a few WhatsApps, and paying the deposit we surrendered ourselfs to the hope that it would all work out.

We were welcomed by a lady called Betty. She was a very interesting character, full of laughter, wearing a Chelsea shirt she was awaiting us at the airport. She didn’t have any front teeth left in her mouth, and Alessa and I wondered how she managed to bite in any kind of food, but yeah that’s not important to this story. They brought us to a small harbour village at the East side of Ambon.

May 24, 2018

Traveling the Kei islands, discover the unkown

The way there

From Bali we made our way to the Kei islands. It wasn’t an easy trip flying to Makassar, then Ambon and finally to Langgur. There are different ways of getting there, and one includes a boat but everyone we spoke to seemed to have come by plane. The trip became all the more challenging when I fell ill in Ambon with 39 degree fever. After checking in our luggage the sickness became worse, and we decided that we could not fly to the Kei islands before seeing a doctor. There are two hospitals on the Kei islands but they do not have the facilities to check your blood for tropical diseases.

When we tried to get the luggage back, the lady at the counter told us “don’t worry we have a doctor here at the airport”. I thought yes! Let’s go see her and figure out what I have but it was quite a bit more complicated in reality. I came there and it wasn’t a doctor we were going to see, but the quarantine officer. She saw me and blocked me from flying all together until I had my blood checked for dengue and malaria. Great, now we were at the airport but had to drive back to Ambon, get my blood checked and come back to the airport.

April 20, 2018

A Sri Lankan train ride from hell

This post is about the journey from Kandy to negombo Sri Lanka. What I expected to be a relaxed ride turned out to be an endurance marathon to survive a Sri Lankan train ride.

We arrived at the station about 45min before the train would leave and we calmly bought a second class ticket for the first part of our journey to Colombo. We deliberately chose second class to avoid the crowds and get a seat for the 3,5h ride. However when we got to the platform we just found a very shabby looking train full of people. At this moment I still thought to myself “ah this is probably 3rd class let’s look for second.” We found second class and it was not any better than 3rd. About 30min before the train had to leave the people were already hanging outside of the doors and I started to panick on how to get onto the train. We found one wagon where we could squeeze in and this meant that we would have to hang out of the door too.

April 17, 2018

Hiking and Waterfalls in Ella, Sri Lanka

We drove up from the South beach town Tangalle, towards the mountain town Ella. We noticed the journey getting colder as it progressed and it turned out that this is one of Ella’s characteristics. The long rainy days can cool down the whole mountain area. You can wake up with the warm sun and when the rain comes in the afternoon it gets chilly. The big upside is that since it rains nearly every day that you don’t need airconditioning.

March 21, 2018

The Golden Triangle

This triangle that is made up out of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur and this is where we spend the first week of our trip. The capital Delhi is with its 24 million inhabitants by far the biggest city I’ve ever visited, and the smog in the air tells me we are not supposed to live with as many people on such a small area. Agra is much smaller than Delhi but in my view the pollution here doesn’t get much better than in Delhi.

March 6, 2018

And the journey starts

Off to India we go. I’m writing this at midnight on the night before we leave. My alarm will go at 6:45 tomorrow morning but I just can’t simply lie down and sleep right now. There is way too much going through my head. I’m thinking about how crazy it is that I’ve just packed a bag in which I should have everything I need and want to have with me for the next year.

October 21, 2017

The world is round!

Deciding on how you want to travel is a tough. Do you want to plan your trip ahead, save money and know what is going to happen? Or do you want to keep the freedom to plan as you go, perhaps pay more for your fights and maybe have some visa issues. This is the question is was most confronted with when deciding on how to plan my world trip.