Advertisement
Published: August 10th 2007
Riding the waves
The wave was much bigger than it looked..... we promise!After leaving the quiet town of Candi Dasa, we headed for the unofficial cultural capital of Bali, Ubud. The streets were lined with art shops, wood carvings and more art shops. We found a cheap room set in a small courtyard close to a river, we found out after we had agreed to take it that the bathroom was infested with giant ants.......nice! After ten minutes spraying them with DEET (it was all we had handy) they seemed to dissapear or die and left us to it, feeling confident that they weren't going to move into our backpacks we headed out on the streets for some exploring. This turned out to be a bad idea as we came across a painting that took our fancy. We inquired on the price and quickly left the shop agreeing that two million rupiah (120 pounds) was slightly over our budget. We went for some lunch and our thoughts, however much we tried not to, returned to the painting. After more discussions on the painting we decided it was time to put our haggling skills into action. We decided we could spend one million rupiah (about 60 pounds) and no more, but weren't very confident
of getting the price down that far. Our luck was in, the haggling went well and we eventually settled on a price of 1,133,000 rupiah, slightly over the amount we had set ourselves but we were pretty sure we had bagged ourselves a bargain. Now we have the problem of carrying a metre long tube around with us for the next 8 months!
Our second day in Ubud took us on a little excursion to the nearby volcano of Mount Batur. We hired ourselves a car (and a driver) as we weren't keen on hiring another moped on Bali's busy roads and headed for the hills. We headed towards lake Batur near the top of the volcano to check out the 'natural' hot springs which turned out to be a heated swimming pool! We stopped to take photos of the surrounding scenery but as soon as we got out of the car we were jumped on by locals thrusting tacky souveniers in our faces shouting 3 for a dollar... when we said we weren't interested they'd shout 'okay 5 for a dollar'!! They didn't seem to want to take no for an answer so we ran back to the car
for cover!
The next day was Ben's birthday, we decided to leave Ubud and head back to Kuta where there was much more nightlife... any other day this would have been true but unfortunately Ben's birthday fell on the day before Bali celebrated their new year. Everything closed down early to allow for a procession of giant paper mache monsters through the streets to scare away the evil spirits.... New year's day Bali style is known as silent day (Nyepi day), no one is allowed to leave their house or hotel to give the impression that the island is empty in hope that the evil spirits won't return. It was a very long day but fortunately we were allowed to use the pool and weren't confined to the four walls of our room.
Whilst in Kuta we have been practicing our surfing and drinking skills... we met up with Gary Bidwell and his girlfriend Mel (who are also on their travels) for a few quiet drinks... a few quiet drinks turned into a very messy night, resulting in the four of us dancing in a cage at the Bounty club and Gary throwing up in the taxi home... schoolboy error!
Sunset on Kuta beach
...sorry yet another sunset! The next morning we were booked in for our final lesson at the surf school... once again our timing was off, not only were we extremely hungover but the rain and rough seas meant we had to abandon our lesson. Neither of us were too dissapointed as this meant that we could gratefully crawl back into bed... It is now Saturday and this evening we are heading down under... first stop Melbourne...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 19; qc: 78; dbt: 0.0562s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Daniel Lee Butler - He fixes computers
non-member comment
Gutted
You must be gutted, not only do you see someone from Crawley but you meet probably the ugliest most annoying crawleyite (couldn't think of a better word). Bidwell should be left in that cage and never freed.. Malc I'm not lying you look about 965 years old in that photo with bidwell, all you need to do is sit him on your lap, give him a toffee sweet and it will be like a proper werthers original advert....... Have fun in melbourne guys...much love xx