Bali and Gili

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The 4 nigths we spent in Kuta, Bali were completely different from Bunaken. We went from a remote location with few tourists to millions of tourists all milling around with varying colours of Bintang tops. It took us a while to get a taxi to get us to our requested road and then a good hour walking round to find somewhere to stay. We ended up staying in Ayu Beach Hotel with 4 of us in a really nice room. There were 2 pools and breakfast was included too.

The first 2 days we spent walking around, sunbathing and shopping and then a night out to Sky Garden which is where everyone ends up at some point. This place is huge and Connie got lost trying to get back to one of the roof terraces. We all ended up getting back to the room at different times and the next morning was hilarious as Linda had bought back a Dutch guy... Interesting to say the least! The day was spent relaxing while Matt and Linda headed to the Immigration office to try and sort their visa - unfortunately it turned out the the only way to stay in indo longer was to leave the country! Their friends were due to arrive the following day too... We decided that rather than stay in Kuta for them to head to Singapore on a visa run, we would head to the Gilis. Unfortunately we missed the last boat out of the day so spenty the evening getting to know Kersten and Vera.

The Gili's are gorgeous and it's easy to see why people end up staying here for a long time. We found a cheap place called Kodong Giyat's Homestay which was set back away from the beach and was nice and quiet. We then found a dive school called Gili Divers which are absolutely amazing and asked which sites we wanted to dive and they would try and accomodate us. We booked in for 2 days time to do Shark Point and Manta/Sunset Point. That afternoon and the following day we walked up to the North West of the island to secluded and beautiful beaches for sunbathing and sunsets. The dives were great (saw 2 sharks pretty close) but we had to go Deep Halik instead of Manta Point due to the conditions but even here the current was extreamly strong and we ended up getting swept down to 36m and saw absolutely nothing. The following day we tried Manta Point again but again the site was changed, this time to Deep Turbo - was a nice site but our favourite was that afternoon at Hans Reef. We saw lots of macro life and turtles too.

On our last night we went to a Full Moon Party with Linda, Vera and Kersten (Matt felt unwell so didnt join us) which was great fun and we were all up until the early hours of the morning. There was a slight mishap the next morning but eventually later that day we got to the Lembongan Islands. We decided to make a pit stop here as you are virtually guarenteed to see Mantas as they have some that stay all year round. We found that a small dive school (Drift Divers) that were going to Manta Point the following morning. We headed out with everything crossed but the boat veered round to Crystal Bay instead as the swell and waves were too high - no Manta diving for us today :-( We were so so annoyed. The dive was pretty unprofessional too as he spent the whole dive holding an intro scuba guy leaving us and this Austrian called Robert to fend for ourselves. He even left us on the bottom in huge surge conditions to surface! We ended up playing rock paper scissors and wasting air :-( We decided to leave straight away and just get to Flores to do some dives in Komodo where there is still a pretty good chance of spotting Mantas... So fingers crossed!

Basically we have just got the Labuan Bajo on Flores and booked 2 dives and a Rinca visit (to see the Komodo dragons) with Divine Diving tomorrow so fingers crossed for 5th time lucky Manta sighting!! We are heading back to Bali on the 8th and going to visit a temple near Ubud on the 9th to get some culture before our flight to Bangkok on the 10th.

Its so sad that the end of our holiday is in sight but we have had such an amazing adventure so far! Will keep you all updated. Hope everything and everyone is well at home xx

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