Lobster blood......for dinner!

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My first visit to the southern hemisphere and what an awesome destination to choose, neither of us were aware of the fact that a second bomb had gone off in Bali not long before we arrived and some people from Australia had been caught bringing drugs in to Bali and the punishment for that is the death penalty, as a result of these two incidents tourism was down 70% when we visited.

I was a little worried when we stopped off in Kuala Lumpar as it was nonstop torrential rain but after a 12 hour flight it was good to stretch my legs, two servings of curry on the flight made it a lot more enjoyable too. After our two hour leg stretch we boarded our next flight, as we were coming in to land I saw a volcano erupting from the window of our plane, apparently it’s always erupting a steady flow, after another two and a half hour flight we landed in Denpasar, it was only a 30 minute transfer to our hotel and when we arrived we were in shock, I’ve never seen a hotel like it in my life, it was amazing. We were given a welcome drink and shown to our room, it was huge we had a sofa in our room it was that big!

We got changed and went straight to the beach, the sun was shining and I was hungry so we had some lunch, I had a Nasi Goreng (chicken, beef, rice & a fried egg), we fell asleep for about an hour sunbathing, luckily the sun wasn’t too strong when we fell asleep. We got ready for dinner and had an amazing dinner and a few drinks to celebrate being on holiday, we tried to go to bed at 10pm to try to get our body clocks in time but 10pm is 3pm back home so getting to sleep was not very easy.

We decided to set an alarm to get our body clocks to adjust faster, after breakfast it was off to the beach for some sun, I was a little worried as when we were getting changed the night before clouds came over and we heard the water fountains outside the room all night and thought it was pouring down all night long. We went for our first massage of the holiday £4 for an hour full body, I could get used to this, our jetlag was still really bad and we found ourselves awake long after everything in the hotel was closed, it didn’t help that the people in the room next door were making loads of noise.

We set another alarm nice and early again and as our noisy neighbours had kept us awake all night I thought I’d return the favour and turn our TV up as load as it could go to wake them up nice and early, lol. We booked our excursions to go white water rafting, to an elephant safari park, an introduction to diving, a tour of the east coast and a tour around the volcano Ubud. We went for a sunset dinner at Jimbaran beach, it was more expensive than I thought it would be and I hadn’t looked at the prices until it was too late, I didn’t have enough money to pay, luckily the people at the restaurant agreed to let me come back the next night to pay the difference.

We were late out the following morning and there were no sun beds on the beach so after a few hours around the pool we got ready and went back to Jimbaran beach, I felt so bad about not having enough money the day before so we ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, lobster (which we got to pick out) and two of the biggest king prawns I have ever seen, as we were picking our food the chef asked me if I wanted a special delicacy, lobster blood, I’m always up for trying new things so agreed, in hindsight this is not the brightest thing I’ve ever done as I later found out that raw shellfish can give you hepatitis. As our food arrived we watched the sunset, it was the most amazing sunset I had ever seen. After dinner Nikki decided to go shopping for some shoes, her attempt at haggling was hilarious.

The next morning we had to be up at 7am for our first excursion, white water rafting, it took us two hours to get there, it was really cool we spent about an hour on the boat in total although for most of the time it wasn’t so much white water rafting it was more like a leisurely cruise in an inflatable boat, as it was the dry season the water wasn’t really that fast. At the end of our white water rafting we had to walk back up to our car, there were hundreds of steps and literally from the very first step all the way to the top some woman followed us up trying to sell us statues, I have never been to a place where people are so persistent in trying to sell you stuff. Then we went to the elephant park, we got to feed the elephants and then got to ride one of them, just outside were loads of people, there was some sort of ceremony going on, we later found out that it was a mass cremation ceremony that only takes place every five years.

I think the lobster blood might have had a delayed effect, I had an almost sleepless night due to being very ill so the next day was spent doing pretty much nothing and eating only natural yogurt and dry bread rolls. Although doing nothing did mean I got to sunbathe all day, I had a delicious dinner of steamed rice and bread rolls, mmmmmm. I made it through the next night without any problems so decided to try my luck and eat real food the next day, after lunch I went for a massage but then Nikki introduced me to reflexology, now I’m quite partial to a relaxing treatment in the UK but this was ridiculous, I basically paid money for someone to hurt me, my first experience of reflexology was awful, never again.

The next day we had booked to go on an east coast tour of the temples and a cave, we were the only people on the trip so the guide asked us if we wanted to do something different, we didn’t but he insisted on taking us to and arts and crafts area where people were trying to sell us stuff, we later found out that the guide gets a percentage of whatever people spend in the shops. The first temple we got to was rammed with people, we were told that because it was a full moon the night before that all the people from different villages had come to pray so we wouldn’t be able to go in and that was the temple where the cave was. We then went to the Balinese courts of justice and another temple before lunch, we had some strange woman keep staring at us while we were having lunch, it freaked us out, then we finished with a visit to a traditional Apa village.

The following day I woke up exhausted due to our noisy neighbours talking all night, we decided to spend the day by the beach seeing as we were going on an excursion the next day and there was a long coach journey to get there. We were healthily burnt to a crisp by the end of the day, after a shower we went shopping, I tried my hand at haggling for the first time and managed to get a tailor made suit down from £80 to £50.

Another trip to another temple, this time we visited the oldest temple in Bali, we also watched a traditional Balinese dance show (not my cup of tea but interesting to watch once). When we got back to the hotel they had exactly the same show in the hotel whilst we had dinner, as I said interesting to watch once, after dinner we went to a bar where two guys were singing live, they were so bad it was entertaining, Nikki requested a Beatles song and they sung Stand by me.....by Ben E King, lol.

Another night kept awake because of our noisy neighbours, I’d had enough so complained they tried to move us to two other rooms but neither were as nice as the room we already had so I refused to move to them, so they upgraded us to the honeymoon suite with a four poster bed and an amazing view....result! We went to Kuta in the evening to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe (I love the Hard Rock) and then we went shopping, Nikki was in heaven.

After our first night in our new room there was peace and quiet, well there was quiet at least, I had been bitten so many times I couldn’t count the bites, mosquitoes love me. We had another lazy day in the sun and another massage, in the evening we had a curry as I had been craving spicy food but my curry wasn’t spicy at all, oh well suppose that gives me the excuse to get one when I get home.

The following day was our introduction to diving excursion, I could not wait, we were a little worried at first as we were supposed to be picked up at 8am and the van didn’t arrive until 9am, we drove to the marina and when we got on the boat it was straight up to the sun deck we went but it was bloody freezing up there because it was so windy. I knew I would love diving but I cannot put into words how much I actually enjoyed it, after the dive we went to a pearl farm which was interesting then back to the hotel for suckling pig for dinner.

The next morning it was pretty cold, after breakfast we went to the beach and there was a huge cloud above our heads, it started to rain for a bit but luckily it past and we could sunbathe again, we decided to make the most of the bad weather and had our last massage of the holiday when the rain started to come down. When we saw the cloud in the morning we decided not to put any sun tan lotion on, big mistake by the time we went back to the hotel to get ready it actually hurt to shave.

Our last day of the holiday, I woke up with bites all over me, the ones on my feet were the most painful, we tried to make the most of the sun as we wouldn’t be seeing the sun again for a long time but we were so burnt from the day before we found it uncomfortable to sunbathe. We had our last lunch and then as we were leaving the hotel all of the staff came to the front of the hotel playing music and waving British flags and saying good bye, how sweet what a nice touch, either that or they were glad we were leaving lol. Our flight home was awesome we had steak and potato wedges for dinner and a Magnum ice cream for afters, we managed to sleep most of the way home, little did I know that I was going to suffer the worst jet lag I have ever had when I got back, but it was worth it what an awesome holiday!

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