Indonesia for 2 weeks

woodchuck

We are a couple, planning a trip to southeast Asia for the last week of September and first week of October. We're leaning towards Indonesia atm (we know it might be the start of the wet season in certain places, but we're willing to take the chance... within reason!). It's such a huge area of the world though, so we're looking for advice. We haven't even booked flights yet; before we do, we want some sort of rough itinerary in mind so that we know where to fly to and from and where we might stay in-between.

So basically, what places would you recommend in Indonesia for a couples holiday for 2 weeks, to include the following:
- Beautiful scenery, possibly including easy hiking trails.
- Getting up close with the wildlife (e.g. reserves with komodo dragons or monkeys, any sort of boat tours that might include dolphin watching... the more of this kind of thing the better imo! I love animals ).
- Historical sites, such as temples.
- Cultural activities, such as visiting rice fields, or anything else you would only experience in that end of the world.
- Nothing too beach heavy. Unavoidable I'm sure and a little bit of this would be nice of course. But we wouldn't be interested lounging on a beach for days on end. We'd be open to activities such as scuba diving though.
- No extreme sports (scuba diving and easy hikes are probably as extreme as we'd get!)
- Places that are relatively easy to get around or between (without needing to drive ourselves, but hiring a car and driver would be grand). Also we won't be backpacking, but bringing suitcases. So easy of getting between destinations with suitcases in tow would be important.

Help! It feels like it's getting so close, but we have nothing at all organised. The more we look things up, the more confused we seem to get! And a lot of the suggested itineraries online seem to include a fair amount of beach time, but we really wouldn't want that to be the focus of the trip.

duffman13

woodchuck wrote: »

We are a couple, planning a trip to southeast Asia for the last week of September and first week of October. We're leaning towards Indonesia atm (we know it might be the start of the wet season in certain places, but we're willing to take the chance... within reason!). It's such a huge area of the world though, so we're looking for advice. We haven't even booked flights yet; before we do, we want some sort of rough itinerary in mind so that we know where to fly to and from and where we might stay in-between.

So basically, what places would you recommend in Indonesia for a couples holiday for 2 weeks, to include the following:
- Beautiful scenery, possibly including easy hiking trails.
- Getting up close with the wildlife (e.g. reserves with komodo dragons or monkeys, any sort of boat tours that might include dolphin watching... the more of this kind of thing the better imo! I love animals ).
- Historical sites, such as temples.
- Cultural activities, such as visiting rice fields, or anything else you would only experience in that end of the world.
- Nothing too beach heavy. Unavoidable I'm sure and a little bit of this would be nice of course. But we wouldn't be interested lounging on a beach for days on end. We'd be open to activities such as scuba diving though.
- No extreme sports (scuba diving and easy hikes are probably as extreme as we'd get!)
- Places that are relatively easy to get around or between (without needing to drive ourselves, but hiring a car and driver would be grand). Also we won't be backpacking, but bringing suitcases. So easy of getting between destinations with suitcases in tow would be important.

Help! It feels like it's getting so close, but we have nothing at all organised. The more we look things up, the more confused we seem to get! And a lot of the suggested itineraries online seem to include a fair amount of beach time, but we really wouldn't want that to be the focus of the trip.

I'll go straight for the obvious here because your fairly short on time but you could pop in to Bali and then head up to Ubud for some spiritual stuff along with rice fields. You can do a bike tour from there into a local village were it's still very tribal. While in Ubud you can hike the volcano for a cracking sunrise and there is the monkey forest in the same area for some wildlife. Be careful of the monkeys, they are very wild.

A few days when you land in Seminyak or Chengu which will get you a little beach time while giving you access to temples such as Tanah Lot and Uluwatu. There are a lot of temples you can do, id recommend either hire a bike or a driver for two days.

You could get a boat to the gilis (run regularly and won't be an issue with cases) and do some diving, some amazing spots there and a good place for a party. If you wanted to go another stop you could go over to Lombok and see some national parks/waterfalls etc.

Seminyak is about 20 mins from the airport and most of the stuff is within 2 hours of there. The trip to the Gili Islands/Lombok would be another 2 hours away again but well worth it. Just in two weeks that's what I'd recommend otherwise you would be rushing if you tried to cover much more ground in Indonesia.

dory

I'm here now, lovely county. I love beaches so I spent one week on Karimunjawa , then the Gilis and next Bali. I had great plans to do Mount Bromo but will do that next time.
You could do a circle of Java - Mount Bromo, yogyajarta, Borodudur , Bandung (lots of hot springs). Or at the moment here there are loads of people offering 4 days, 3 night boat trips to Komodo with snorkelling and thins along the way. Also a lot of people talking about Rinjanj which is erupting at the moment but people still seem to be hiking it.
All the guide books say don't spend time in Jakarta, and they're right. I stupidly booked two nights there.
I found the itineraries at the beginning of the lonely planet good for ideas (but in general the Indonesia lonely planet is terrible). I got overwhelmed planning this as there's just too much to do. So accept you can't do everything and just pick a few things you can realistically do in two weeks.

One thing I've found good is a local sim. For 13 euro I got 6GB internet for the month. I use it to get trip advisor recommendations for hotels and restaurants. And I've used google maps a lot when I'm lost! Telkomsel is good.

dory

Oh, and you can get those lonely planet itineraries for free if you download the sample version on kindle. The sample gives you the first few pages of the book and that includes the itineraries.