Dreamland and beyond...

---

Surfs up in Bali!

After a couple of days of relaxing on the beach, (attempted) surfing and wandering the streets of Kuta we headed out of town for an afternoon. First stop Dreamland. Finding ourselves amongst many over excited Chinese tourists on the picturesque Dreamland beach, surrounded by more professional surfers than we found in Kuta. This beach is beyond beautiful. It had everything - rockpools, boats way out to see, golden sand, and surfers carving up the crystal clear waves. The one not so beautiful site, but a serious entertainment factor, was a portly Chinese fella working the speedos.

Following a quick dip we ventured on to Ulu Watu. Having been given sarongs and a firm warning about the monkeys we had a tight grip on our possessions as we entered the temple's clifftop grounds. Slightly nervous from our previous monkey encounter we wandered around the outside of the temple taking in the amazing views the clifftops had to offer.

After seeing a few less cautious tourists victims of monkey theft - cameras, sunglasses, bags and food being snatched left right and centre - we chose our seats for the Kecak Kecak dance performance. With a fantastic view of the setting sun, the ornately dressed dancers acted out a story from the Hindu religion (which included fire, monkey kings, romance and death) - surrounded by a chorus of 50 men chanting (see video). It was amazing.

Following Kuta we made our way north to Ubud. We made friends with yet another German! (self proclaimed Italian) Nick. We spent all our time here in Ubud with Nick which was great fun. We LOVE it here. Quite a small town bursting with culture. Arts and crafts everywhere and plenty of spa's, which we have made use of! Since being here we have eaten in some incredible restaurants (one of which is my new favourite restaurant) - from friendly roadside family run, cheap but delicious food with views of endless rice paddies to lounging back on cushions in a cosy shisha bar whilst listening to live music with a cold beer in hand. Perfect.

But it hasn't been all rest and relaxation. We've managed to squeeze in a visit to 'Elephant Cave', not really sure why it's called this as there were no elephants in site - live or carved from stone - but impressive nonetheless, and after haggling with a salesman originally trying to sell us some bone carvings for a taxi ride back, he simply pointed us in the direction of the tourist police and told us this was our ride. Thoughts of being taken to prison and asked for a large sum for bail entered our minds. Luckily all was fine though aside from a few odd looks; A trip through monkey forest (again having to keep a close eye on our things, not that this stopped them - one of them thought Nick's head was a coconut and tried to take a bite!) We have also been white water rafting through the jungle a little way away from here which was awesome.

We said farewell to our new found friend as he ventured on as we spend our last day here in Ubud taking the time to look around the markets (again) and shops and maybe buy a few souvenirs along the way.

Tomorrow we are journeying further north to Amed for some snorkeling and a fantastic water palace before we make our way back down to Denpasar for our flight to Thailand on the 10th.

We'll leave you for now and as many of the locals say to us English folk over here, "Later alligator!"

xx

p.s. Sorry! another slow computer that can't handle Java means no photos or video for now. we'll upload them another time.

---