How traveling fills up your bucket list

There are plenty of blogposts out there on how to create a travel bucket list. In our opinion, one of the best ways to grow your travel bucketlist is to go travelling. Yes, you heard right! In contrast to popular belief, we think that traveling fills up your bucketlist rather than emptying it.

Let us explain by using our trip to Indonesia as an example.

Java bucketlist

Our first stop in Indonesia was Yogyakarta, Java. Two major items on our bucketlist were the temples Borobudur and Prambanan. Because we lost a day due to a flight delay, we only managed to see Borobodur so Prambanan remains on our bucketlist.

Little did we know about the super instagrammable Tumpak Sewu waterfall back then. I guess we have no choice but to go back there one day.

Bali bucketlist

Bali was our next stop. Here, we just did not schedule enough time. We had heard too often that Bali is overcrowded, overly touristy, and overall overrated. We could not have been more wrong about Bali. Yes, it is crowded and touristy but it's not overrated - it really is beautiful. When we went out to explore, we found lush scenery and stunning temples. What we did not manage to see? - Any of the waterfalls and beaches. Do we regret it? - A lot.

Komodo bucketlist

On the Komodo islands, we managed to tick off two bucketlist items: We saw the famous Komodo dragons and visited the pink beach.

So why is Komodo still on this list? Because we were on a backpacker boat, we completely missed out on scuba diving in the Komodo national park. It’s one of the prime diving destinations in Indonesia so I guess we’ll have to go back…

Sulawesi bucketlist

The last stop of the journey was Sulawesi. On Sulawesi, we visited Tana Toraja with their unique death and burial rites - an experience that changed us forever and belongs on every bucketlist.

Afterwards, we traveled north to Manado to go scuba diving in Bunaken - and had to skip the Togian islands, again because of time issues. They are very hard to reach and the boats are quite unreliable, so it was uncertain if we would catch our flight back.

So yes, we traveled Indonesia but we only discovered that it has so much more to offer than we previously thought. And for us it's similar to every travel: You learn more about a place when you're there, other travelers tell you about new places, or you just simply misjudge places before you go. You're simply never really "done" with a place.