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Published: December 20th 2006
After Sumatra (I've added photos to my previous entry) we flew to Bali which is another of the Indonesian islands.
It was amazing how different this place was compared to Sumatra - loads of tourists and every local you meet tries to sell you something - transport, t-shirts, bracelets, hats, fruit, drinks, mats to lie on the beach, blow-pipes, bow and arrows etc etc. So, as you walk along in Kuta you get shouted at from everyone you meet to buy something. Also, the prices for everything was much higher here than in Sumatra (don't get me wrong its still dirt cheap) but the standard of living seems a bit higher as well which is cool.
Anyway, we stayed in Kuta for a couple of days which although it has nice beaches and really good surfing (if you are into that sort of thing), it's all a bit too much like the worst parts of Magaluf, so we headed on to another town called Ubud.
This was a bit more laid back and is full of art museums and shops. Bali is a majority Hindu island (Indonesia is mainly a Muslim country) and the art here reflected Hindu
traditions - I really enjoyed the art museum we went to - it displayed lots of pictures of Hindu epics which all seem to invlolve great flying beasts (Garuda) and a big white warrior monkey (can't remember his name!), and the stories are all seem to have some form of crazy battle in them - hopefully I'll learn a bit more about these when I'm in India.
We also went to see some traditional blainese dancing (these played out some of the Hindu epics) at the Ubud palace which was pretty cool - I've included one of the pictures of the 'baddies' (can't remember their names either I'm afraid!)
Anyway, after Ubud, we made a pretty long trip across to the little island of Gili Trewangan just off the coast of Lombok (another large island to the East of Bali). We ended up staying here for 5 nights as it was so nice. It's just a little island with guest houses, bars and beaches. We spent our entire time lying around, going snorkelling, eating, drinking and chatting to other travellers. I never thought I'd like spending my time like that (see all my previous trips) but I have to say I loved it all. The snorkelling was so good - the coral reef is in good nick and there are tonnes of tropical fish swimming around it, and also some sea turtles and sea snakes.
On the first day me and Chris had a sea turtle swimming inbetween us which was pretty amazing. We also met a few other travellers on the island to spend our hours of relaxing on the island with.
All in all, as you can probably tell, it was really relaxing and I'd love to go back again. However, I wasn't too worried about leaving after 5 days, as the promise of Singapore, with air-conditioned rooms and hot, non-saline, showers!
Leaving to get back to Singapore was a bit of a mission though - it took us two days, 3 boat journeys, 2 bus journeys, 2 taxis, 4 flights and a tube to get us there, so ended up feeling pretty knackered by the end of all that!
Still, I'm in Singapore now and I'm just off to pick my brother up from the airport, as he's joining me for the next couple of weks of my trip.
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davidg
non-member comment
lucky bugger. i'll say no more... felt so sorry for you having to travel back to singapore - sounded like a terrible hardship ;o) Happy christmas by the way!