backpacker insurance travel travel

Brooke

• I'm Home!
  I left Bangkok on Tuesday April 15, 2008 on the 7:20 pm flight, scheduled to arrive at LAX at 9:25 pm of the same night. It was an hour early getting in. I almost went back in time. The flight was, dare I say, wonderful. My travel insurance paid for my ticket home, and, with doctor"s orders, put me in business class. Let me tell you, it is the only way to fly. I watched some movies, had some...
• Bumrungrad Hospital and recovery
  They operated two days later. Just from judging my surroundings, I knew I was in good hands. That didn"t keep me from worrying though, and I was most worried about the anesthesia. What if I woke up in the middle? What if they couldn't wake me up after? The anesthesiologist turned out to be a cute little old lady in her seventies, who told me she'd had nine surgeries, so she knew what it was l...
• Lombok Continued: Minor Trip Interuption
  The next day we set off early, planning to drive around the island and spend the night in Kuta, on the south end. We spent the morning climbing the volcano, twisting, turning, going up and down (mostly up) and through some pretty heavy rain. Eventually we made it to the top. I mentioned to Charles that I was a bit frightened to go down. I looked ahead and all I could see was jungle and winding ro...
• Senggigi
  Charles and I were pretty severely ripped off on our boat ride from Bali out to Gili Trawangan, so when it was time to leave we caught the local boat back to Lombok. We had to wait a few hours, but it cost roughly 40 cents and restored our backpacker credibility. When we got to the other side, we tried our best to avoid the touts and finally found a van to take us to Senggigi, (Lombok's major tour...
• Gili Trawangan
  I spent 10 days in Gili Trawangan and I don"t know where the time went. Gili Trawangan is the largest, and most developed of the Gili islands, 3 small Islands on the northwestern coast of Lombok. There are no motorized vehicles, only pony carts, and no police. If you have a problem, you take it to the village chief. It takes about an hour and a half to walk around the entire island. Unlike N...
• Ubud
  Ubud is the cultural center, in the middle of Bali. Charles (the diver I met on Lembongan, and one of very few fellow backpackers I met in Indonesia) and I decided to rent motorbikes in Ubud so we could get out of town a bit explore the back roads. We spent 3 days cruising around, checking out small villages, rice paddies and temples. We even went to a monkey forest where the monkeys jumped on ou...
• Nusa Lambongan
  I knew I'd end up spending way to much money if I didn't get out of Kuta fast, so I got a boat out to Nusa Lambongan, in search of a mellow, kicked back island without any clothing stores, and that's exactly what I found. There isn't much on Nusa Lambongan. Mostly its full of local seaweed farms. I saw big tarps spread out on the ground, covered in piles fo seaweed laying out to dry, and local w...
• Kuta Beach, Bali
  My first impression arriving into Denpasar airport is that Bali is a lot like Hawaii. This was reinforced when I saw all the modern western shops, bars and restaurants. My second impression was that Kuta is a shopping Mecca. It's got tons of stalls as well as fancy stores with the real brands. My third impression was that its a shopping nightmare, as its got tons of stalls as well as tons of store...
• So Long Sri Lanka, I'll Miss You...
  Just as my mouse was hovering over the save button for this wonderfully written, funny, poignant, heartfelt blog entry about how much I would miss this country, some Sri Lankan man reaching for a bollywood video kicked the plug out of the wall for my computer and I lost everything. Now I'm sitting here seething about all the time I've wasted and good phrasing I've lost, while a local kid outside t...
• Sri Lanka Continued
  From Kandy, the South Africans and I took a bus to Dambulla to check out the cave temples, which are covered in Buddhist paintings and are really beautiful. From there we went to Sigiriya, a giant free-standing rock with ruins at the base and the top, which was once either a monastery, or the pleasure palace and refuge of a patricidal king who went to live their when he realized his brother was go...