Advertisement
Published: June 23rd 2013
Edit Blog Post
Hi folks,
Well we've had a pretty busy couple of weeks since our last update. Well, actually busy in terms of moving about a bit, we've spent most of it lying on a beach and in the ocean, so not really 'busy' as such!!! We had an over night in kl after Cambodia, spent a great few hours seeing round the city. Nipped up their sky tower for a great view, then went into Chinatown for a phenomenal meal on a simple street pavement cafe. On our first day in Bali we decided to have our engagement dinner, we hadn't had a nice night out and dinner together since we got engaged, primarily as Nepali cuisine is pretty average, so we went to a swanky place on the beach called Ku De Ta. Awesome seafood salads and steak with some nice vino was followed by cocktails on a giant double bed on the beach, pretty sweet! We then had four nights in the Gili islands, which was very special. Our island was about a km circle with beaches and reefs all around. Little cafes and huts were strung along the coastline and we spent our days dondering about sunbathing and
snorkelling. We did manage a run round the island every morning to keep the beach bodies in some sort of order though! We were staying in a rustic wee hut 20yds from the beach, very simple but in many ways the lack of development made the island all the more appealing. (No motorised vehicles allowed) Our last few days in Bali have also been mainly spent on the beach! We've been staying at the south of the island, near lots of surfing beaches. Unfortunately the waves are pretty massive, I've been totally mangled trying to boogi board in them once or twice, so we've mostly stuck to shore. We're staying in a great little b&b, which is ten minutes by moped from several beaches with great cliffs overlooking the shore. Exploring the island by moped has been great fun, although the fact that Mrs Snoddy To Be starts getting twitchy at anything over 20kmh does increase the time it takes to get around!! One of the beaches we visited was also near to somewhere that markets itself as 'the best golf course in Indonesia'. We sneaked onto one of the holes to have a look at sunset and got chatting
to one of the members, an American guy called Hawkins Dunlap. He very kindly invited me to play with him the next day. Had a cracking day with two old American rednecks, a large crate of lager and a bit of golf. Hawk had many tales to tell, including when he mooned Air Force One as he's not the biggest fan of Obama's policies!! Before we came down here we had a night in the hills at Ubud, in central Bali. It's a beautiful cultural spot, where we also managed to find a helpful bar owner who got the rugby up on his screen for us -delighted. That night we were up
at 01.30am to start a hike up Mt Batur, a 1,700m volcano with the aim of making it for sunrise. It was quite strange walking all the way up in the pitch black with head torches, but it was clear and we had great views of the stars all the way. Unfortunately, when sunrise came, so did some very Scottish looking mist and we could only see about 10 ft!! However, our luck hadn't totally run dry and about an hour later it finally cleared and we were treated
to some cracking views of the crater lake and surrounding volcanos, with north shore of the island in the background. One other point worth mentioning is that there's a monkey sanctuary in Ubud that we walked past. We'd discussed not having anything 'interesting' in our hands that the monkeys might be tempted to nab as we walked past. Don't think Kirstin was thinking about it too hard though as she had an open pack of salted cashew nuts in her mit. A large male ran up to her at which point she started getting a bit worried, screamed a bit and then ran away. Obviously he thought this was great fun and chased after her!! At this point a bus load of Korean tourists were giggling themselves senseless at the scene to add to the atmosphere. Kirstin eventually worked out what she had in her hand and after she gave that to the monkey all was well again!!! Certainly the monkey seemed to enjoy the rest of the nuts. Now it's off to Brisbane for 10 days of lions tour!! We've not met anyone that we actually know since we got engaged so really looking forward to catching up with
some familiar faces as well as having a few quiet libations with 50,000 other like-minded British and Irish fans! Hope all's well back home. Donald and Kirstin. Xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.259s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 18; qc: 59; dbt: 0.052s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb