Whirlwind In A Mama's Head

I booked a leisure day trip for our second day in Labuan Bajo via Traveloka . When I say leisure, I meant a non-diving trip. We have a live onboard trip booked for the 3rd to the 5th day but that one is a diving trip covering different places and adventures so we tried to cram the other must-visits of Komodo National Park in one day. For breakfast that morning, we had breakfast boxes that the resort had prepared for us by order. The tour was operated by East Cruise Komodo and it was an open trip consisting of thirty-something people. East Cruise Komodo picked us up at Sudamala Resort where we stayed at 5:30 am and brought us to the harbour. The re-registration process at the harbour took about half an hour and after we were assigned a boat, we boarded. On the boat, our tour leader collected what was supposed to be the entrance fee for the National Komodo Park. It was IDR 150k per person for locals and IDR 300k per person for foreigners. We never saw the tickets but later on, we foun...

This time I am going to take a little break from the overdue Japan 2019 series and write about our most recent trip to Labuan Bajo. If you are not familiar with it yet, Labuan Bajo is part of East Nusa Tenggara in central Indonesia, a starting point to visit the Komodo National Park famous for being the only place in the world where you can see the Komodo dragons . Well, unless you count the zoos. Having been the host of the 42nd ASEAN Summit in May 2023, Labuan Bajo has gone under a major facelift. Labuan Bajo area is actually pretty small, but it boasts several luxury resorts like Plataran Komodo , Meruorah Komodo , and AYANA Komodo . These resorts are super nice to unwind by the beach without the overwhelming crowd you would find in Kuta or Seminyak area in Bali. That being said, the main experience in Labuan Bajo is to go on a live-on-board Phinisi boat! We'll talk more about this later. Our Hotel We took a 3-hour flight from Jakarta CGK airport and landed at Komodo Airport in...

If you think about the most famous and most printed pagoda in Japan, it has to be the Chureito pagoda. Not only it is printed on a variety of postcards and tourism ads of Japan, but it also is on the cover of the popular JR Pass! For many years I wanted to see it but our itinerary had never fit.. until this time! I figured since this was a big family trip and we are renting a car for the day, we just had to make the time to see it.  The Chureito pagoda is perched on top of a hill. If you want to see the famous view, there are just under 400 stairsteps to conquer. Opa and Yokoji-san declared defeat in advance so the rest of us including Oma started our ascend.