Welcome to South-East Asia

---

The flight into Bali was short and sweet as we arrived on a new continent. We paid for our visas, had our passports checked and then who knows what happened for the next 15 minutes after that....... We were asked so many times, can I carry your bag, where you going, you need a taxi, that the 15 minutes from leaving passport control now seems like a blur of fast moving objects around us. We decided that we were just going to 'wing it' when we arrived and didn't have any where booked to stay, we didn't even have a map or a guide book for help. So Matt haggled with one of the million taxi drivers to take us into Kuta, 50,000 Rupiah (Rp), £1 = 14,000Rp so around £3.50 and so off we went.

We walked around the streets of Kuta for a while until we found a lane that had a thousand shops all selling the same thing and a load of cheap hotels, later we found out that Poppies, the name of the lane, is the place to go for almost everything, we loved poppies! The first hotel we stopped at had a clean room and a swimming pool for 150,000 so we stopped looking. After a good night’s sleep we headed for some food and then took another taxi to South Denpasar to stay for a few nights with a couch surfer Patrick who was French but had been living in Bali for 6 years. Patrick and his girlfriend Rosa, who is Indonesian, give us loads of information about travelling around, where to go and what to see. They even give us a massive big Southeast Asia lonely planet, score, now all we need is a guide for India and we're sorted for the rest of the trip.

The following day, Patrick took Matt to hire a scooter so that we could see some of the Island, then explained to us how to deal with the police if and when they pulled us over. The trick is to only keep between 20-30,000 in your wallet so that when the policeman asks if you have an international driving license and you say no, he then says well you'll have to pay a fine 1 million tomorrow or 500,000 now. You show him your wallet and he sees that there's only 20-30,000 in there and you say that’s all you have as your leaving the next day, so he takes it and you’re on your way, sorted, unless your called Matthew and Kerry, the policeman that pulled us over was having nothing to do with the 30,000 Matt had in his wallet and started taking details down. Matt slyly took out another 50,000 from his shorts pocket and the policeman was happy enough to walk away with 80,000. So altogether, hiring a scooter for 2 days, petrol and the bribe came to 190,000. We thought this was still cheap enough and really enjoyed the weaving in and out of traffic and tooting the horn.

While we had the scooter, Matt drove us to Ubud, which is slightly south of the center of Bali, where a lot of tourists spend their time. We visited the temple there and the monkey forest, where we bought some bananas at the entrance to feed the monkeys inside. As we walked it Matt said 'I'll hold the bananas and you get the camera' he soon regretted this idea when some of the monkeys started jumping on him for the bananas, so funny, they were so cute.

We headed to Lombok next, which is the island east to Bali. We took a teeny bus to Padangbai, where the driver dropped us off at the end of a queue of traffic, he said 'you take scooter from here' so Matt and I refused to pay the 30,000 for both of us to get to the port thinking it can't be that far we'll just walk. Little did we know that the ferries hadn't been running for 5 days and the traffic queue was about 10km long! So we walked, all for the sake of around 2 quid, how cheap are we. We got on the ferry and spent 4 hours on the crossing, even got to see some dolphins too, then we shared a taxi with a Swedish couple to Senggigi which is on the west coast of Lombok, around 9 hours of travel and we arrived at Klaus's house, our next couch surfer. Klaus is from Germany and has been living in Indonesia for around 4 years. He lives in a beautiful villa on a complex with a swimming pool. We had our own room, bathroom and balcony, just wonderfully beautiful. We spent 3 nights with Klaus and got some really great travelling tips before heading to the Gili Islands.

The Gili Islands are 3 Islands just off the coast of Lombok, with beautiful white sandy beaches and clear waters. We stayed on Gili Trawangan, which is known as the party island for young travelers. We spent time relaxing for the 5 nights we were here, walking around the island, on the beach and cooling off in the pool. None of the islands have cars or motorbikes so it was very nice being in quiet surroundings for a change. Matt got a good price for us to get back to Kuta by fast boat which takes 2 hours instead of the 9 hours by slow boat, this journey turned out to be one of the most terrifying yet, the waves were so big and the speed boat we were on made some horrible noises at it hit the water. We were really lucky to get back to Bali as they stopped the boats and ferries later that day due to the waves being too big.

So we found a hotel right next to the one we stayed at the first night but this one had a bigger swimming pool. Kuta is like the Benidorm for Australians, they're all over. We had a great day shopping, with Matt bargaining to get 2 dresses, 5 vests, 2 pairs of board shorts and a belt for under £20. We met up with Thalia, a friend of Matt's from school and had a few drinks and a great catch up. Kuta's a great place that has pretty much everything that you want from a holiday destination with one massive fault, the beach. Kuta has this beautiful long sandy beach, which is a great place to watch the sunset, to go surfing, sunbath but everyone uses it as a rubbish bin. There is litter everywhere you look and people just don't seem to care as they unwrap their ice-creams and just throw the packets on the sand or in the sea. Kerry didn't even want to paddle as she seen the plastics and cigarette butts washing back and forth up onto the beach. We didn't see one actual rubbish bin anywhere, but did catch a glimpse of a syringe, not a nice place at all and it's such a shame.

Well to end on a better and funny note, after we'd been out with Thalia and had had a few drinks, we got back to the hotel as the heavens opened and Matt thought he'd make Kerry laugh. He took all of his clothes off and dived in the pool, how rude ;-)

Sending love,

Matt and Kerry

---

Comments

[Mammy]

Beautiful!
Lovely photos again, looks like you've enjoyed your time in Bali and surroundings.......continue to enjoy and just be careful! Love yous. Xxxxxxxx

[flash pelos]

south east asia
landing here reminds me of turkey many years ago hustle & bustle well first and foremost the photos are fantastic especially the mid air antics of matt good stuff.money is the route of all evil everywhere in the world,very informative as usualreally good keep it up you both look good and it helps meeting the the odd brit. enjoy yourselves and be safe love you both very much dad xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx