Doha, Qatar and back home in Holland!

From the tropical rainforest in Bali to the dessert of Doha
We left beautiful Bali last week to fly west around the globe towards Holland. We had one last stop in Doha, the capital city of Qatar in the Middle East. We stayed here for three nights to explore the city and to adjust to the time difference with Bali. Doha is a totally different world than all the other seven countries we visited during our trip. Qatar is one of the world's richest countries. The skyline and the buildings are impressive, the people are friendly and again adored Rafael. We enjoyed our two days in Qatar a lot. It was winter and a mild 24 degrees celsius was perfect to stroll around.

See the pictures further below for an impression of our stay in Doha.

Home sweet home! 🏠
Time has come, after 11 weeks of traveling, it was time to go home!
For us it felt like it was ages ago that we left Apeldoorn on November 11th of last year. We just saw, experienced and explored so many places in the past 3 months, it's been a truly amazing trip around our beautiful planet! We are very grateful to be able to travel the world together as a family. 🌍

Statistics of our trip around the world in 79 days:

• Loops around the world: 1

• Countries visited: 8

• Total airplane flights: 12

• Total distance by plane: 45.177 km

• Total hours of delay of flights: 9,5 hours

• Stamps in passport: 13

• Distance travelled by car in New Zealand: 4754 km

• Number of accommodations we stayed at: 24

• Highest temperature: 38 degrees celsius in Sydney, Australië 

• Lowest temperature: 5 degrees celsius at Mount Tongariro, New Zealand at 2200m

• Food poisoning: 2 times (Rafael & Ilona in same night in Fiji)

• Total methods of transport: 22 (plane, rental car, (mountain)bike, kayak, speedboat, ferry, tourboat, jetboat, paddleboard, chair-skilift, cable car, tram, bus, gondola, two feet, train, steam engine train, taxi, scooter, scootmobile, buggy/golfcart, dhow boat)

• Empty ballpoints for writing in my travel diary: 3

• Total pageviews of this blog: 3100  (ref. date: 28th Jan 2017) 

• Number of swim armbands Rafael worn out: 5

• Loss of mobile phone: 1 (and found back!)

• Friends we've met around the world: 8   Frank & Rosemary (USA), Jack & Rachel (USA), Krista & Will (New Zealand), Neeltje (Australia), Beth (Indonesia).

•  Estimated number of playgrounds visited by Rafael:100

•  Number of SIM-cards bought for smartphone: 4 (Fiji, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia)

Pictures of Doha, Qatar:

Museum of Islamic Art

Cruising around on a traditional wooden 'Dhow' boat, along Doha Corniche.

Skyline of Doha

Enjoying an arabic dinner with a stunning view!

"The Pearl"

 This is an artificial island spanning nearly four million square metres.

The name "The Pearl" was chosen because the island 

is being built on one of Qatar's previous major pearl diving sites.

On our last night we visited Souq Waqif.

The souq is noted for selling traditional garments, spices, handicrafts, and souvenirs. 

It is also home to dozens of restaurants and lounges.

Fragrant herbs and spices

Lots of families spending the night together watching traditional music.

Dinner in a beautiful Persian restaurant

View from the plane on Qatar.

Europe!

Home sweet home!
The first thing to do when home: eating grandma's New-Years- 'oliebollen'

Thank you to all the people we've met on the planet during our trip!

Thank you for reading my blog 🙏, see you next time!

🌍🌎🌏

2nd week of Bali, Indonesia

The second leg of our trip in Bali continued with some great  trips and sightseeing. We also discovered more of the east coast of Bali around and at Amed beach. We also visited two palaces: the Waterpalace Tirta gangga and the Royal Palace "Maskerdam" (pronouncation of Amsterdam by the Balinese).

After 5 nights in our fantastic villa close to Tumbu village, we drove back southwards to Sanur where we hopped on a fastboat to the small Balinesian island "Nusa Lembongan". The weather was very hot and humid and therefor we explored the beautiful underwaterworld while snorkeling and lots of swimming. We stayed our last night and day in Bali close to the airport in the very hectic and touristy place Legian/Kuta.

It's so hard to select pictures for my blog, so here are just many of them😄:

The map of Bali and the places we visited.

Tirta gangga, Bali waterpalace.

En route, we saw some nice ricefields again.

Amed Beach

At the beach in Amed with our driver Ketut,
who offered Rafael a ride because the walkway was a little muddy.

Our wonderful host Eka preparing a delicious 'Nasi Goreng and Chicken Satay'.

Daily market (pasar) of Amlapura

Gateway to Karangasem Grand Palace
This palace was built by the first King of Karangasem by the end of the nineteenth century.

The main building at the palace was known as the "Maskerdam" (Amsterdam).

Inside, there are rooms with furniture that was a gift from the former Dutch Queen Wilhelmina.

View from the palace at Amlapura town.

 Beautiful and holy Mount Agung

Waiting for the fastboat to the small island Nusa Lembongan, where we stayed for three days.
Rafael always enjoys a boat tour 🚤

Rain on the way at Jungubatu Beach, close to our Airbnb 'beach house'.

Sunset at the Jungubatu beach

We rented a buggy for the day to explore the island of Nusa Lembongan.
 There are no cars on this island, however there are lots of scooters.

'Blow hole' at Devil's Ear.

Lunch-stop and swimming at popular Sandy Bay Beach Club.

View on Lembongan Village

A local volleybal-field

Unfortunately, this is also Bali 😩

We asked our host Ekha if he could advise us for a snorkeling tour.
Off course he knew a family- member to arrange this for us
and he and his friend were so kind to bring us to the boat by scooter 😲.

The snorkeling was surprisingly amazing. We saw so many colours of small fish.
According to Remco this is a "snelfie" (snorkeling selfie) 😂.

The last day the we stayed at Legian /Kuta to be close to the airport for our flight in the evening to Doha.
 Luckily we found a playground for Rafael again 👫


Terima kasih Indonesia!

Of we go to our last destination of our trip: Doha, Qatar