Jakarta

After a lovely stay at Komodo Islands it was time to head to new destination. We decided to fly to Java's capital - Jakarta.


As soon as we found a hotel and dropped our luggage, we went to see the city. Jakarta is known as developed city in Indonesia and as a financial center. The locals are very proud of their capital. The city was different than what we saw so far. Skyscrapers and arranged infrastructure made us wonder, if we are still in Indonesia.

Deutsche Bank in Jakarta.

In the center we went to see their famous National Monument - Monas.

It was a very hot day and we felt a bit tired, so we decided to go for a drink. Boris tried the famous kopi luwak coffee and Jerneja couldn't resist the avocado shake.

While we were wandering around the city, we could still see some typical Indonesia things.

At the end of the day we even found the Hard Rock Cafe.

Who wore it better?

Greetings from Jakarta,

Jerneja & Boris

The return to the island

The return to the mainland was bitter-sweet. We already missed the diving, but we knew that more adventures await us. We started off with delicious dinner at our favourite restaurant in Khao Lak, where lobster was the star of the evening.

As entree we got onion rings with spring rolls and home made spicy sauce

Table was nearly big enough for the star of the dish

To recover from 4 day liveaboard we had to eat a lot.

American breakfast

We decided to spent the rest of vacation on beautiful Phuket Island.

We settled down in Phuket Town. This part of the island is not known as the best place to be as a tourist. Therefore perfect for us. It was not crowded and a lot of local people live there. We found a very interesting restaurant in our guide book owned by Thai chef, who was spending some time in Italy. Thus his food is supposed to be a mixture of Italian cuisine with Thai enrichment. The restaurant is simply called The Cook and this name was already promising enough. Nevertheless we needed to experience that. From the street it was really hard to find restaurant, since the restaurant's logo has almost fully faded away. Once we found it, we went inside. There were a lot of pictures of pizzas with all sorts of toppings like green and red curry with chicken, pork with coconut-milk, sea food, etc. We were amazed after a waitress hand over a menu. Our decision was quick: green curry pizza with chicken and shrimp pizza.

Food was delicious and we were certain to come back. We rented a scooter and started our journey around the island. One of the reasons we visited Phuket in particular was to accomplish another visit of the Hard Rock Cafe. Therefore, we headed off to the west side of the island called Patong. As a matter of fact this is the most touristic place in probably the whole Thailand. Patong is a half an hour of scooter ride away from Old Town where we were staying. We arrived there in early afternoon and we saw a lot hangovered young and old people, weird dressed men and women and yet a few people still drinking in a bar or club from previous night(s). We were looking for Hard Rock Cafe and voila...

Again we were not disappointed about HRC, in the middle of afternoon there were only few people inside the cafe nevertheless we experienced live music of a local band.

View on the street we awesome, specially this 3-wheeled-pancake-maker.

For a dinner we chose The Hooters where the food was very american-ish.

BBQ ribs

Fried chicken

This was more of a gourmet experience. More cultural and natural to follow, stay tuned.

Greetings from Phuket Island,
Boris & Jerneja

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas (Nevada)

In the Hard Rock Hotel we took full advantage of the room service. American breakfast for one is enough from two hungry Europeans.

The journey in Las Vegas continued in the southern part of the city, the famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.

We headed back to the city. On the way we saw huge Coca-Cola bottle and M&M package.

It turned out that these are multi-storey shopping and entertainment complexes. We visited M&M store first. No special explanation needed.

All colors, flavors and sizes of M&M candies

3D cinema about M&M candies

The M&M Nascar car

Right next door to M&M store it was Coca-Cola store.

It was time to refresh ourselves. Luckly for us there was a Hard Rock Cafe not far away from all the shopping complexes.

Hard Rock's tradition is if you have a birthday, you get special treatment and whole cafe is singing "Happy Birthday" with the toast. Oh well...

The last thing we wanted to try in Las Vegas was a typical american dinner. In the Strip area it was impossible to find anything else than world-class, well-known and fancy restaurants. So we went on the north side of the Las Vegas. In so called Old Downtown Las Vegas, where we experienced a strange feeling. This area was totally different from the Strip area. Very small houses with grates on the windows and doors. Nearly every property had a sign "No trespassing" and walking through this area was unpleasant. There we found our dinner and we expected everything else than hospitality. People were nice and really friendly. And more importantly food was delicious.

Cheeseburger with bacon and fries

Medium-rare steak

Cheese cake

Pumpkin pie

We experienced Las Vegas in all it's glory and it's horror. Nevertheless nice and unforgivable journey. There is so much left to see that going back might be an option.

Till next time, Viva Las Vegas!

Boris & Jerneja

Viva Las Vegas

In this October we decided to spend one week in the Sin City, Las Vegas.



For our accommodation we choose Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas.

On the ground floor there was reception where we checked in. Passing through huge casino in the same floor, we finally found elevator to our room. At 8th floor of Hard Rock Tower, we opened the door of the room and immediately discovered the beauty of Las Vegas. This was not just a regular room but huge suite with big bathroom and gorgeous view on the hotel's swimming pools and on the Strip area of Las Vegas.

Right next to the hotel there was familiar restaurant.

For the first days we just explored the Strip area to get used to the atmosphere. We walked into one hotel and there was surprisingly casino. We walked through the maze in the casino and came to some kind of shopping mall. There were a lot of stores with well known brands. Unfortunately taking pictures inside the casinos was forbidden. But anyhow we manage to capture one interesting moment.

We passed the shopping mall and suddenly we were at casino. Again? No. This was a casino of another hotel. After a while we noticed that all hotels are connected and you could just walk through the hotels.

We finally came out of this neverending walking place and saw...

Each of the hotels had his own theme. The one was about the New Your City. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the roller coster (passing through some of the hotel's rooms) and so on.

Another hotel had aquarium with all sorts of sharks swimming in.

The next in line was the Paris.

One of the best known hotels in Las Vegas are:

Hilton Grand Vacations

The Cosmopolitan

The Caesars Palace & The Bellagio

Speciality about the Bellagio hotel was the famous fountain in front of the hotel. It performed a water spectacle every 30 minutes.

No words needed!

Greetings from the Sin City,

Boris & Jerneja