Bali and Darwin

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Hi Folks,

It has been a while since I was last documenting my travels on here but being as I took two weeks off to visit Bali and Darwin I thought I’d get this blog locomotive moving again.

I was joined by Danielle early in August and we spent a week doing touristy things before setting of to Indonesia. As I hadn't seen her for a few months a drink at the iconic 'opera bar' was in order ( nice bar overlooking the opera house and bridge.) As I was sipping on my beer and my better half- her glass of wine, a flock of seagulls were hastily picking apart a plate of chips when the bairmaid scared them off by clapping her hands. This caused extreme emotional distress for one of the seagulls as it emptied it bowels over my face. Luckily a family next to us offered baby wipes to clean up. I'm still waiting for something lucky to happen 😊

Thankfully the volcano which had threatened to alter our destination piped down and we flew into Bali Denpasar the following Friday. Everything was smooth until we wanted to the leave the airport. We had to queue for about 2 hours just to leave the airport!

Once settled in our apartment we ventured out to a neighbouring hotel and had some drinks and a meal. We were sitting eating our meal when a pretty flower fell on our table.

The next day we walked along the beach from Kuta up to Seminyak. Danielle sunned herself whilst I rented out a surf board for an hour. I managed a few more seconds standing up on the surf board then last year but I managed to stub my toe on the board in the last 5 minutes giving me a hobble for the rest of the holiday.

Highlights from then on include visiting Waterbom water-park, getting pampered at a spa for a morning ( turns out i'm quite ticklish), drinking at the club ' potato head' with Abdullah- a friend of Dans from university.

Mid-way through the holiday we went to a zoo and splashed out on an elephant safari. I questioned the ethics of subjecting wild animals to work, especially when they receive a firm clonk on the head with a hammer for wandering off to want to do elephant things. We also held an Orangutan and a lion which I guess isn’t too dissimilar from holding a koala like we did last year in Brisbane.

Our next point of call was Darwin. Free upgrades awaited us at the YHA as we went from sharing a 6 bed to our own private room. Free stuff is always welcomed. We then spent the next 3 hours waiting for our van to be cleaned and serviced before we set of on our road-trip. When we finally managed to get our wheels we drove an hour away to ‘ Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruises’ to watch hungry crocs jump out of the water to eat meat that was dangled out to them on a stick.

After the crocs Danielle took to the road in the Van and had her first experience driving a vehicle with an automatic gearbox. An hour and a half later after much left leg twitching we set up camp at Litchfield Tourist Park and chucked some Snags on the Barbie. (Snags = sausages for you non ozzie speakers)

The next two days were spent exploring Litchfield National Park which was stunning. The most popular past time considering the constant 30 degree heat was to go swimming in the (hopefully) croc free springs. My Favourite spot was Walker Creek and Florence falls.

After 3 nights of sweaty sticky sleep we returned the RV and flew back to Sydney safe in the knowledge that we had survived the ordeal without being bitten by any creatures both big and small and without any major fallings out :p

Look out for some Travel Blogs Coming up soon as JJHarvesworth explores Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

x

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