Note – Richard and I spent 19 days in Thailand with our grandson, Kahlil, and daughter-in-law, Susy.  This blog post – edited slightly for spelling and sentence structure- was written by Kahlil. My mom and I flew from El Salvador to Los Angels and hoped to ate at In-N-Out but it was closed. Then we…

Knowing that a visit to Laos must include a “catch up” date-however brief-with our dear friend, Kiyoko Nanni, we left Bangkok, Thailand heading for Vientiane the capital of Laos.  We had met Kiyoko while serving at the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, Israel.  At the completion of her service, about 8 years ago, she had pioneered to Laos, living…

It’s May 1, 2018 – the 60th day of our 60 day Indonesian visa. We could have extended our visa but for now we end this chapter of our adventures. My interest in visiting this vast, and totally unknown to us, country, started with a chance meeting- in about November 2014- with an Indonesian woman…

The next island on our list was Java, a vast and varied island with so much to experience and appreciate.  Java is divided in to three areas, west, central and east.  We decided to skip the capital, Jakarta, and head to Yogykarta (Jogja as the local call it.)   https://photos.app.goo.gl/8fAQrF0Xswr3KnTs1 Our accommodation, a refurbished and well maintained older…

Day 1- Friday: Tanjung Puting is a national park in Indonesia located in the southeast part of West Kotawaringin Regency in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan (Central Borneo). The nearest main town is the capital of the Regency, Pangkalan Buun. Kalimantan is very different than the other  islands we have visited in Indonesia. It’s very humid.…

I went scuba diving! Ok so now you know what I did let me tell you the back story and the adventure. When I was 16 years old I got certified to scuba dive. At the time I smoked cigarettes. Smoking gave me sinus infections that made diving nearly impossible. So I never pursued the…

We were aware that there were three ways to get from Mataram, Lombok to Labuan Bajo, Flores: air, land or the sea.  We ruled out the travel by sea (3 or 4 days on a live aboard or a fast boat which includes site seeing and sleeping on the boat) and did not want to…

Sadly, we departed Gili Meno. We could have stayed longer but so far we have said that about everywhere we have been, here in Indonesia. We had contracted with this guy we met on the beach to get us to our next stop. He was nice enough but even he didn’t seem to know what…

We had intentionally started our travel at Bali (most westernized of all of the islands in Indonesia ) to get acclimated with the weather, loosen up our bodies by doing yoga and getting massages, and get a bit of acculturation, before heading out to the other island and what I have come to call “…

As far as we understand there are three Baha’i communities, with Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA), in Bali (Ubud, Bedung and Denpasar.)  We were lucky to be able to meet some of the friends in two of these communities.  We wrote about the small but vibrant community in Ubud earlier (chapter 21).  Thanks to our newly…