Phuket, Thailand (a new country for us!)

Poor man's drone shot of Nai Harn (also known
as 'walking up a hill')

Even though we don't feel deprived when we're in remote places, we go a little crazy when we get back to 'civilization'.

My parents made me walk 10k...

Osa osa. Used to carry the King's bride. Luckily for the guys
carrying it, it's only made of GRANITE.

...and all I got was some lousy stone megaliths. After spending several hours on a rather treacherous walk to a waterfall the day before, we drove and swerved and bounced a couple of hours over to Gomo the following day.

When in Rome...reach for your wallet?

100,000 Rupliah is less than $7 USD

This surfer dude did an interesting write-up of the Nias area. It was mostly about the waves, as you would expect, but he also made this observation:

After landing at Sibolga, as low key a shearing shed of an  airport as you could imagine, we went with the flow of the local grifters. It  felt right, sometimes it just does.

Let's talk about the weather

It's funny how seemingly small things can make or break what you think of a place--things like weather or a friendly face. When we visited Bawomataluo village (try saying that 3 times fast), it was a drizzly day. There weren't many people out and everything just seemed grey.

Careful what you wish for...

After many days of sun and a busted water maker, we kept hoping for some solid rain and were glad when it finally arrived. We happily traded a gloomy, wet day for not having to buy and lug water jugs to the boat. The rain filled both our water tanks, all our 5-gallon buckets, and all our water jugs, as well as anything else that would hold water. But it kept coming and coming. And on day 2, it was still coming. By day 3, the day that we were scheduled to leave Tello, the downpours were so heavy we didn't even venture out from the boat for most of the day. 

Sorry I blew up

I'm pretty sure that's what the volcano Anak Krakatau would say if it could talk. As we made our way south towards the Sunda Straight and Krakatau, we had heard that it was erupting. A quick check on the internet showed it was a '4' (out of 5), and that a 2 kilometer exclusion zone had been established.  That meant that we wouldn't be able to actually land on the island. We also knew that volcanic ash is nasty stuff to get on the boat. We decided to visit anyway because the prevailing winds should have kept the ash off our boat and even if we couldn't get on the island, the sights would hopefully be worth it.