The Next Great Adventure ... All Aboard ...

Day 29 ... Arriving into the tiniest airport in Labuan Bajo, we headed for the baggage collection area, picked up our bags and got a bargain for a taxi (£2.50) to the Le Pirate hotel. We checked in, to the smallest but cutest little room which is a cross between a beach hut and a shed! But it has air con and a fan and a working shower which only has a small part of the room open to the elements which means less bugs, lizards and frogs, so that's fine by me!! Once we were settled in our tiny room, we went up to the roof top bar area to grab some food and a cocktail and watched the sun set which was an amazing view! Later we had to pack a smaller bag for the boat trip and left our 20kg backpacks at the hotel for the next 3 days.

Day 30 ... It's the start of our 2 night boat trip, island hopping around the islands near Labuan Bajo, Flores. We were taken to the boat and given a room each. There were 2 other couples, Luke and Gladys from Netherlands, Philip and Lena from Munich and Morgan on her own from Arizona, living in Aus. They were a great group and I could tell it was going

to be a fun trip! We arrived at the first island and went snorkelling, we were lucky enough to see a turtle along with some amazing multicoloured fish. I can't believe what I've been missing out on, not snorkelling for all these years!! Once we had hopped across a few islands its was time for dinner and then a movie on the boat! Great evening!

Day 31 ... Our wake up call was at 7am, although I was awake at 5am and managed to get an amazing view of the sunrise while lying in bed as we had left one of the zippable sections of our cabin open all night to get a nice breeze throughout the night! After breakfast we headed to the first island stop of the day. We arrived at a tiny white, sandy beach island in the middle of nowhere, it was like paradise with crystal clear blue water! We got to another island and spotted a manta ray so we all got our snorkelling gear on and jumped in, the size of the manta were incredible! The next island we were heading to had an unexpected stop off along the way when we came across a whole herd (not sure what the word is for a huge group of manta, just Googled it, it's a fever of manta rays!) of manta rays, so of course the guys jumped straight in! I stayed on the boat and I must have counted 15-20 of them and they were just the ones I could see near the surface! They were around 4-5 meters wide, the size of them was immense and a lot bigger than ones we had seen so far! Farel, the main guide on the boat with us said we are so lucky to see manta there and so many of them at once, he was going absolutely crazy at how many there were, so it

seemed like it was an unusual sight to see! Adam managed to get some amazing go pro footage up close!

Day 32 ... Our last day on the boat, there wasn't as much of a breeze last night so although it was bearable, it was a little too humid. Another 7am wake up call and Adam doesn't know what's hit him! 2 early mornings in a row, but at least we have amazing views to wake up to! It's another day of island hopping, we headed to an island for more snorkelling which was another amazing spot next to a small but tall island which had an amazing coral reef which dropped straight off from the edge of the island. We saw a huge camouflage fish, an eel, a mini shark, turtles and an array of colourful fish in all shapes and sizes! But no manta today, I think we got our fill yesterday with that amazing display of enormous manta! After a stop off on the most beautiful heart shaped island which is what dreams are made of...paradise found!! We headed to Angel Island for a swim before setting off back to Labuan Bajo. All in all, it was a fantastic 3 days, with a great group of people! Thanks Tom and Fiona for the recommendation!

One of our highlights so far!

While on the boat, we did our maths and realised the second day on the boat was our 30 days up on our Indonesian visa! Opps! We get a free 30 day visa when we enter and if you over stay you get fined on the way out! To add to the stress, the fine went up on the 1st of November (3 days ago) from 300,000 IDR (£5.50) to 1 million IDR (£55)!!!! Yikes! Plus the fact that our flight to the Philippines isn't until 8th November so that would be 5 days over our limit, which would then be x2, x£55...!! We've heard people are still only being fined 300,000 IDR, so hopefully any visas dated before 1st November will only be charged the lower amount! Anddd to add to those issues, we have been keeping an eye on the weather in the Philippines, and yesterday there was a notice on the internet saying typhoon warning. That plus the fact that every island we were planning to visit has really bad weather forecast for at least the next 2 weeks. Plus the fact that accommodation in the Philippines is really expensive for a room that is less than desirable to say the least. To get a decent room we would be paying £60 - £70 where we have been paying around £30 (which is our nightly budget we've given ourselves) in Bali. Plus the fact that a flight from Bali to Philippines would be £175 per person compared to £55 per person from Bali to Kuala Lumpur, that kind of made our minds up! We can fly into KL, stay a couple of nights in a nice hotel (with a gym!!) and do some research on where we want to visit in Malaysia. We're then heading up to Thailand and Koh Samui for Christmas and Koh Tao for New Year. We've pre booked our hotels for then as the small islands get busy at that time of the year. Unfortunately the hotel we booked for our first 3 nights in Coron and the internal flights we've pre booked for around the Philippines will just have to be written off and put down to one of those things and remind ourselves, try not to book too far in advance!! Lesson learned...hopefully!!