After spending a week on this beautiful island, our last day arrived. Even though we had to work on our research project, the last days felt a little bit like vacation. We decided to choose a more fancy accommodation this time. We arrived at a beach resort, located next to a crystal clear blue sea, with very luxurious rooms that even had a flat screen television (and this for only 15 euros). We could state that this was completely the opposite from what we experienced in Sumba.

We woke up in a happy mood because it was Anaïs’ birthday! However we also realised that this was our last day in paradise… Since this was our last morning, we decided that we could take a break from our research and it was time to relax. Anaïs could decide what the planning was for the day before going to the airplane. We ended up at the most beautiful beach of Belitung named Tanjung Tinggi (this is what we heard from everybody). After tanning and taking pictures for some hours, we had to get lunch before going back to the hotel. Of course, only now we discovered that this was the place where you could get the best Nasi Goreng… On top of that, we had two full plates of food including three drinks for not even 3 euros (try to find this in the Netherlands!). After this we went back to the hotel to pack our bags.

During packing we got a message from our local friend that she was too afraid to drive because of the extremely bad weather. In just one hour the weather turned from full sunshine to heavy rain. In the city, the rain was so intense that the water got up to people’s knees. Luckily she sent her driver (local people are so sweet here), so we could still be at the airport in time. This was a bit of a crazy ride since the driver didn’t use his windscreen wipers, which resulted in us being a little scared.

When we were almost there I saw a dog in the middle of the road. It didn’t look like the driver was going to stop or drive around it so as a reflex I screamed “HALLO, stop!!!” but he didn’t listen. Everybody was screaming at this point because it seemed as if the dog was under the car. Then the driver started laughing really hard, and this while he didn’t say a word the entire ride. In the end, everything turned out to be all right because the dog was fine and we caught our plane.

Now we are on our way to the fourth and last island of this trip, Java. I am really curious to see what the big city of Jakarta will look like!

Written by: Josine