Sugar and spice and all things rice

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In my notes i just have a list of words about the Gili Islands so i thought i'd share them with you rather than bore you anymore with over-wordy entries:

Mushrooms
Spaced out residents
Tourists
"Paradise" islands
3 metre waves on journey over
No cars just poor horses schlepping you about
If you are 20 years old you would really enjoy
Fishermen entrepreneurs
Sun
Coral everywhere (sometimes in your feet - ow)
Meeting lots of lovely people - Frank and Aurora from France, Graham from Sydney, Pete from Bristol living and mixing cocktails in Shanghai.
Cock-anut Cottages - roosters woke us at our cottage at 5am.
Sweatiest bike ride in world and the island can be walked in 1 1/2 hours!
No fresh water - salty salty

I think that about covers our 1 night on Gili Trawangan (Party spice), 3 nights on Gili Air (Medium spice) and our day trip to Gili Meno (Chilled spice). Very enjoyable, very different, very hot, very young, very relaxed (by mushrooms i mean "magic" which are widely available and which, seemingly, the locals enjoy with some gusto - ordering at a restaurant can be a time-consuming affair!). Good experience but i don't think it is somewhere we'd go back. The "paradise" moniker is a hard one to live up to isn't it, seeing as everyone's idea of paradise is different. Mine would be a massively wide sandy beach with clear blue water - not too deep, tennis court with people on hand to play whenever i liked, bar with interesting people to chat to all the time, enormous swimming pool all to myself, huge bed, cool room and cashew, mango and fig trees in beautiful garden.... hmmm....

Ubud's fab... Another "culture" dose, well sort of! More like another dose of shopping... though we did do a fair bit of stuff including a two day cookery course which was great fun. Sensibly the cookery school didn't really let us loose on the food but controlled our input to "grinding" and a bit of "stirring". Theoretically we should now be able to make fantastic indonesian food though i'm not sure we'll be able to get the 4 types of ginger, coconut oil and special palm sugar required in Battersea.. some guinea pigs may be needed (as guests not as food!). Personally i just wanted to know how to cook rice so that it doesn't have the consistency of wallpaper paste. Met some great fellow cooks (JB and Clara from Paris, Antoinette and Paul from Canberra plus of course our host with the most, Oleg).

We did a big hike through the paddy fields where we saw two of the most enormous spiders you have ever seen - pic doesn't do them justice i promise... they were enormous. We ate some great food, listened to some lovely indo-latin music and even attempted some salsa (sad). If South Bali's is a top model - all gorgeous beaches, sun-bathing, resort this, boutique that then Ubud is like the model's bookworm, more academic sister - it's inland, lusious and green and it is also a real hub for creativity which is something the Balinese do exceptionally well. You can find brilliant bookshops, museums, art, dance, music and even the tourists are noticably different - less concerned with how they look and more in search of spiritual or intellectual fulfillment. A right ugly mob...only joking....

Having said that - in typical, shallow fashion we are spending our last 5 days in Indonesia just sitting on the beach doing nothing but enjoying the scenery and weather. We have both really loved this country - there is just something about it from the beautiful offerings you see everywhere on the street to the smell of josticks to the warmth of the Indonesian smile - we'd definitely come back.

Next, and sadly last, stop Hong Kong. We'll be back in London in 5 days!!

xx

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