Asian Invasion begins- Bali and Lombok

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Hey everyone,

Welcome to my travel blog! Hope you enjoy reading it and I'll try and keep it updated as much as possible.

After an amazing year in Australia, where Amy and I landed in Sydney and worked for 4 months, travelled NZ for a month, went our seperate ways for awhile (Amy to South Australia and me to Tasmania), we then reunited in Melbourne where we worked for a further 4 months and then had an amazing time travelling the East coast with our friend Tina. Now we are all travelling through Asia together and we currently have our friend Katie with us who we met on the Kiwi experience in NZ.

We flew from Perth to Bali on the 20th August (the day mine and Amy's visas expired), I felt sad about leaving Aus but really excited about the next chapter of our adventure! We had a couple of nights in Kuta which we had heard described as the Magaluf for Australians so we weren't too sure what to expect. The first thing that hit me was how in your face people were and how everyone is trying to sell you something- you have to say no thankyou so many times! Kuta was busy and the roads were crazy- so many scooters darting around each other and people would even carry toddlers without helments on their laps, or big surfboards strapped to the side of their scooters. We found a nice place to stay and went out for dinner on our first night. We all tried a Bintang beer (the traditional Bali beer), it was nice! On our second day we walked around the many market stalls and Tina got dragged into one by two women who said they would paint her nails for $2. When they had finished they tried to charge her $10 per hand! Tina held her ground though and they agreed a more reasonable price. We spent some time on the beach which was nice, but not very relaxing as too many people approach you. That night we watched an incredible sunset on the beach and had a night out in a club called the 'Sky Garden', it was free entry and an hour of free drinks which as poor backers we were all up for!



We then travelled to Sanur on the South East coast for a couple of nights. After the craziness of Kuta, this was just what we needed. We found a cheap homestay and spent our days walking along the 5km stretch of beach, going for meals and reading our books. Tina, Katie and I are all obsessed with the Hunger Games and I am half way through the 3rd book at the moment. We had the Turkish fish treatment that you may have heard of- where lots of little fish eat the dead skin off your feet! It felt really weird and I'm not sure I liked it. We all had our feet in the same tank but the fish seemed to love me and were trying to climb up my legs.....I'm not sure that's a compliment! One night we watched a Balinese dance performance whilst we ate dinner. After Sanur we got on a boat to the island of Nusa Lembongan. It was a cute little island where we spent a couple of days doing yoga, and walking around the coastal path. After that we all got on a fast boat to Lombok. Myself and Amy were keen to explore a bit of the mainland and Katie and Tina wanted to go straight to the Gili Islands which we had heard so much about, so we went our seperate ways for a couple of days. The speed boat was really choppy and we were all glad we had taken some ginger tablets before the journey. We dropped the girls off on Gili Trawangan Island and then got on a connecting boat to Lombok. We travelled down the Lombok coast to Sengigi (a place we'd read about in our Lonely Planets and we thought might be worth checking out for a couple of days.) Lombok seemed alot poorer than Bali but we found the locals really friendly. Everyone on the beach wanted to talk to us or have their picture taken with us- we felt like celebrities! Lombok is part Hindu and part Muslim so we had to cover up alot more. Their were some tourists wearing bikinis on the beach but we didn't feel comfortable so on our second day we went and used the pool in a posh hotel. It was so relaxing and we treated ourselves to a cocktail from the pool bar which had seats in the water. We re-joined the girls in Gili Trawangan where we stayed for the next 5 nights. It's a beautiful island and of the three Gili Islands (Trawangan, Meno and Air) it's the liveliest as well. The weather was great, beautiful and sunny each morning- sometimes too hot! We did lots of sunbathing, went for walks around the island, ate in beach huts, went on a snorkle trip that took us around all three Gilis, visited the turtle sanctuary and did lots of drinking! Me and Tina loved one bar in particular- Rudy's Bar - that we went to about three times. On our last night there was a full moon party, but we were too hungover from the night before so we went to the open air cinema to watch the Hunger Games instead. After our time on Gili T was over we got the boat back to Bali and a transfer car to Ubud. Today is our third day in Ubud and we love it here! If you've ever seen/read Eat.Pray.Love, this is the place where Elizabeth Gilbert spends alot of time in the third section of the story. The shopping is amazing here and we wandered around on our first afternoon. The girls bought some Bintang t-shirts (the obligatory souvenir from Bali) and I bought my third pair of harem trousers (so comfortable....but I think three pairs is enough now!) Yesturday we went on a day tour around Ubud where we visited lots of different temples, rice paddie fields and ate lunch over looking the volcano. In one temple they made us hire sarongs to put over our trousers even though we were all ready covered up! It makes you wonder if it's necessary, or just a money-making scheme as we'd already paid to get into the temple anyway. It was a lovely day that we ended at a coffee plantation and got to see how they produced the coffee and tried lots of different types including ginseng coffee and pure hot chocolate. The lemon tea was my favourite. Today Amy and Tina have gone to Bali Safari and Marine Park and me and Katie have done yoga and are going to the spa later. We've booked a three hour treatment of a massage, facial and hair mask all for the grand price of about 19 pounds- amazing!!! Tomorrow we will go to the monkey forest and then it's back to Kuta (and maybe one more cheeky night out in the sky Garden) before Katie flies back to Perth and Amy, Tina and I fly to Bangkok. I've been obsessed with going to Thailand ever since I saw the beach about 10 years ago so needless to say I'm very excited!!!



Hope you've enjoyed reading our Indonesian adventures. Until the next time!! xxxxx

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