There seems to be a huge focus on celebrating Christmas here in predominantly Hindu Bali. There are Santa Clauses, Christmas trees and every other imaginable type of Christmas decoration everywhere we look, and it feels like Christmas carols are playing constantly from every available speaker on the island. Today we saw a Christmas tree made entirely from full wine bottles. Admittedly a lot of this is probably for the benefit of the tourists, and we haven’t spent enough time away from the tourist centres here yet to know whether it’s more widespread. Even so, religious tolerance seems to be well ingrained here in Bali and celebrating each other’s festivals is something that most seem more than happy to do. This is a far cry from the ridiculous lengths to which political correctness has been taken back ... read more

Issy wants to sleep so I set off on my own south along the beachfront to the Garden of Hope Peninsula Island. I wonder how something can be both a peninsula and an island but then decide that I should probably start wondering about things like this a lot less. The small peninsula’s (it’s joined to the mainland) main attractions are two very large and impressive Balinese statues, and a feature known as Waterblow where waves supposedly force water high into the air through holes in the rock. There are signs everywhere warning that Waterblow is closed today due to hazardous conditions, but no one takes any notice of these and there are lots of people on the two observation platforms. The sea is flat calm and it‘s low tide, so it’s a bit hard to ... read more

To get to Bali cheaply we need to fly to Brisbane first. I think we may have been closer to Bali when we were still in Melbourne. As we get on the plane in Brisbane we notice that the first two rows of economy on both sides of the aisle are occupied by men who all look suspiciously like pilots. We hope that there are also pilots sitting in the cockpit, but just to be sure I ask a cabin attendant if he’s sure that at least some of the pilots sitting in amongst the passengers shouldn’t be up the front driving the plane. He looks at me very seriously and assures me that while there are in fact fourteen pilots on board he can confirm that they are all sitting where they’re supposed to be ... read more

Today is our last full day here so we decide that we will spend it doing very little. It’s just as well that we’ve decided to do very little as it’s Sunday and other than churches everything is closed. Issy wanders down onto the beach where she tells me she listened to a New Zealand couple try to explain snow and skiing to some very confused looking members of the hotel staff. We spend the morning swimming and lying on the beach. It seems that I have somehow been inveigled into another couple’s massage. I think I must have been asleep when I allegedly agreed to this. It only took me a few days to recover from the last session, so maybe it can’t have been all that bad, although I begin to wonder whether this ... read more

We set off along the main south coast road for today’s main destination, the To Sua Trench, which is about 50 kilometres east of the resort. The lack of sign posts trips us up as usual and we find ourselves at a dead end in the middle of a village in the pouring rain. Undaunted, we do a quick U-turn, wave vigorously to some bemused villagers whilst we look keenly at their houses in the vain hope that they’ll think that we came here on purpose, and head on our way again. We’ve read that the trench is really two trenches, both of which are large holes in the lava, and they are connected to each other and to the sea by lava tubes. The larger of the two trenches, which is the one directly connected ... read more