Medewi is a small village situated on the west coast of Bali. It is not on the normal tourist trail as there are probably much better resorts elsewhere on the island. Medewi is well known among the surfing community, so we had to go and check it out. It was a long and interesting drive through beautiful countryside and busy towns, really giving us a feel for what Bali is really like when you take the tourists away. We arrived in Medewi in the early afternoon and the sun was shining. The options for places to stay were quite limited. There [View Full Entry]

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Gee whiz, they are coming thick and fast now aren’t they! Bali has a peninsula at the bottom of the Island called Bukit and it consists of many areas of natural beauty. Most of the coastline has fantastic surf and is world renowned with many of the surfing world travelling there each season. We arrived there after a drive from Sanur, we nearly lost our lives about three times, which for the Bali roads makes it a cool journey. We had planned to stay first on the West coast at a place called ‘Dreamlands’, the name unfortunately did not describe the [View Full Entry]

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The morning started with Donna (not a girl) taking us to the port where the public boat/ferry was to take us over to the Island of Nusa Lebongan. A mouthful I know, especially with these teeth, Ken Dodd would be jealous. The boat left every morning at around 6:00am, so it was an early start, but the yellow man in the sky was already up and working overtime. We bought our tickets from the booth and got charged Western prices but as we had been used to this in the rest of Asia it did not come as such a shock. [View Full Entry]

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So travelling is meant to be a time when you rough it, well the Stones and me have suffered, I can assure you. We got a sense of comfort however from the moment that we entered the sleepy East coast town of Sanur. The lonely planet had described it as ‘Snoozy Sanur’ but as it was our gateway to a tropical island it would be home for a couple of nights. We arrived mid afternoon and as per usual headed for the beach to check out the sand, it is our habit to get to the beach ASAP so that we [View Full Entry]

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After a 1-2 hour drive we arrived unscathed in Ubud. We passed through the capital Denpasar and quickly moved on, it’s not a pretty place. Ubud, however, is a very pretty place. It sits in the hills among stretches of paddy fields. It is cooler than the coast and has a very upmarket vibe. This is reflected in the cafes and hotels. We stopped on the main street which is called Monkey Forest Road, by virtue of the fact it has a forest with lots of monkeys in it at the end of the road. We had a coffee in a [View Full Entry]

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So with the worst map in the world and our £4 a day rental jeep we made it to Perernan Beach just outside of Canggu, another surfing hotspot. The L.P had mentioned a lovely little homestay called Pondok Wisata Nyoman, right on the beach with just 4 rooms. We actually managed to find it, more by luck than judgement I think. It was at the end of a long road through the paddy fields dotted with houses of typical beautiful Balinese design. As it was firmly off the tourist trail it was frequented with a lot of local surfers, and on [View Full Entry]

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“Hello, is anybody out there? It feels awful lonely without contact from your mates.” My first line out of my new book, what do you think? I can already hear the abuse coming my way, love it, give it your best shot. So onwards and skywards, we have moved again and now the forwarding address is tropical paradise island, surf street and surf road. The green, clean walls were calling. We were transported to Bali on a Qantas flight and to Emma’s delight they served the red wine early on and she finished her claret amnesty with a rosé cheeks and [View Full Entry]

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We had an uneventful Air Asia flight to KL. It was good to be back. It’s one of my favourite Asian cities. Our flight arrived at midday and we were due to catch the overnight sleeper train to Singapore at around 8pm. So we had a few hours to kill. We collected our train tickets from the train station and put our luggage into storage. All done very efficiently, not what we were used to at all. We had a firm plan. Borneo’s food choices were not great, and we were hungry. We had been in Borneo for nearly 3 weeks [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so we wanted to book our flights out of Sandakan for the following Friday, which happened to be Good Friday. After everything we had been through we were ready to leave. The tour agents in Sandakan were generally unhelpful, one could only offer us flights at around 700-800MYR per person (6.4 = £1) for the flight to KL, while the other said that there were no flights. We needed to get to Singapore ultimately, and the only way to fly directly there was to head back to KK - not an option that we wanted. It seemed again that Borneo [View Full Entry]

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So there we were, stood outside what had been our humble abode for the past seven days excluding the time spent on the mountain, The wonderful “Rose Cabin”, a mixture of “Faulty Towers” meets “Acorn Antiques” but with a Malaysian twist. We had been informed in extreme broken English / International sign language that we could get a bus from outside the hotel and towards Sandakan. We estimated that this would take us about five hours; well the calculation was done on the Bornean method of travel which has to take on board the age of the transport, the amount [View Full Entry]

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