Bali

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It was quite strange to arrive back in a part of the world where as a white person you can't walk the street without some kind of hassle, mainly it's been massage, manicures, hair braiding (although the quickest way to stop that was to get my hair braided),and various items of clothing.

The area of Kuta is over run by scooters, and on a number of occasions, they have come far too close for comfort, weve both vowed that if someone on a scooter hits us we'll damage them more than they do us! Despite the fact that we're dodging them and clearly hating them, every 20 metres we're being offered the chance to hire one!

So, what have we actually done in the two weeks that we've been here? This was always planned to be a break from travelling, and more of a beach holiday, so one of the first things we did was book surfing lessons. Our lesson was quite entertaining, and also really tiring, but by the end we'd both stood up a few times, and now all we need to do is practice!

Our main activity was a trip over to the Gili's (or Gili Islands as most people call them, but Gili means Island, why would you call something island island?), they are a group of three tropical islands just off Lombok, to the east of Bali.

Getting there was long, we opted for the slow boat, as after 5 months away, our funds are running low. The journey involved a 6am start, a 2 hour drive, some waiting, a 5 hour ferry, some more waiting, an hour long drive, folloewd by more waiting and then a tiny local fishing/snorkelling/everything boat over to the islands themselves. After this long day we decided that the best way to spend the night would be in the Irish bar watching England beat the Aussies in the Rugby, which was awesome, especially with how arrogant they all were about it during our time in Aus!

The Gili Trawangan (the island we stayed on) was pretty much paradise, the sea was really warm and clear, the weather was great, and the whole place was really chilled out. Whilst we were there, we did some snorkelling, and went on a trip around various snorkelling sites between the islands, which were actually better than the snorkelling we did on the barrier reef. We saw loads of Turtles, and probably about a million fish.

The only downside of our time there was that we both got ill. We figured that the place to eat seafood would be on an island, but unfortunatelty not, and it is fair to say that it will be a long time before we eat anything resembling fish and prawns again.

Our journey back to Bali was made on the thursday before Eid (end of Ramadan), we thought we'd been quite cunning travelling the day before the last day of transport, sadly we underestimated the amount of people travelling from Bali (hindu Island) to Lombok (Muslim Island), we were stuck waiting about 1 km offshore for 3 hours to get to the port due top the number of busses boarding all the ferries. At more than one point, we were seriously considering swimming it with all our bags.

Since we've been back in Kuta, we haven't done too much, we now own about 30 knocked off DVD's, and have a few new t-shirts, we have also completely recovered from our bout of food poisoning for anyone that's concerned.

On the 12th, we walked to the bomb memorial, without realising that it was the 5th anniversaey of the attacks. The scariest thing was that when you hear the figure 202 victims, it doesn't sound that much, but when you see a monument with all the names on it, it really illustrates the scale of it, we scarpered pretty quick though, we felt quite harsh taking pictures when family and friends were there mourning.

I'd like to think that you're all watching the rugby, as we stayed up til 3 to watch the game the other night, and will be doing the same on sunday... Come on England!

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Comments

[neil]

running the world
yes foley. sounds like you and cat are rocking life in bali. your round the world trip sounds amazing. get a picture of your braids. bet you look classic. send me an email and give me a contact no so i can get hold of you safe as dermot o leary

[nick foley]

bintang- easy. hope you tried the arrak!