We had a great 20 day trip to less-travelled parts of North & South East Asia seeing many places in an incredible journey that started with flying from Sydney to Manila. Our tour operator was APT and we had many great holiday experiences.
After 2 days in Manila we spent 17 days travelling on the small ship Caledonian Sky exploring relatively unknown regions of South East Asia rich in natural beauty, wildlife and timeless traditions.
We started with visits to a couple of island ports in the Southern Phillipines, then the East Indies - Borneo then Sulawesi (the Indonesian island formally known as Celebes) and a number of smaller islands in the Indonesian archipelago then East Timor & finally Darwin - where we will spent an extra day to visit Kakadu National park before flying back to Sydney.
As well as seeing beautiful beaches, wetlands, mangrove forests, amazing cathedral chambers and volcanoes we witnessed a wonderful Orang utan Rehabilitation centre, a Bornean Sun Bear Centre, Long nosed monkeys, amazing birdlife plus saw Komodo Dragons in their natural habitat.
A variety of cultures and peoples live in this region with some economies are based on local crafts and batik clothing, other markets have buffalos and pigs that are sold for funerals and other ceremonies. Other islands have indigenous cultures that are studied by Western anthropologists, since they have remained unchanged for over 400 years.
During World War II, many of these islands were the site of fierce battles between allied soldiers and Japanese forces and have touching memorials for the many thousands of Australian servicemen and women who died bravely in battle or perished as POWs suffering incredibly bad conditions and atrocity.
Below is the overview map of our journey (courtesy APT) - hope you enjoy reading about this as much as we did experiencing it.
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