heading west

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So our travels through indonesia continue!!
Our trip from Flores to lombok was an interesting one! it took us 33hours! we left flores at 9am by ferry for the 8 hour trip to sape on Sumbawa from where we got on a bus for 2 hours to bima where we then had to wait and hour for the next bus, an overnight affair which should have taken us to Mataram in west Lombok for 8am however all started to go wrong about 1am!! the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere for over an hour with lots of tools going underneath. at bout 2 am we were woken by everyone getting off the bus and all that was shouted at us when i went to see what was happening was Sir yes sir or indonesian we didn't understand. it turned out another bus had stopped and everyone was piling on to it! we grabbed our bags and joined them. the bus however already had a full coach load before it picked us up so we spent the next hour squeezed into the emergency exit footwell. At 3amish we were dropped at a services where we were given meal tokens for dinner!!!!!! We spent the next 6ish hours here with no real idea what was going on until the bus pulled up and we all got back on! we finally arrived in Mataram a total of 33hours after setting off.
The next day we headed for the Gilis, 3 tiny islands just off the coast of lombok. we spent 5 days spread over two of the islands doing very little except for relaxing in the sun and quite abit of time snorkelling. The snorkelling was amazing and the sheer amount and variety of fish was astonishing, we also had a close encounter with a turtle and one day we went on a snorkelling tour where we saw around 10 turtles, a shipwreck and had a guided tour of the reefs with a very good snorkeller. We also went on a dolphin tour and although we didn't get to see any, the sunrise out at sea made it worth it. infact most mornings we were up to see the sunrise over mount rinjani on lombok because the sunsets were'nt very good as it tended to rain in the afternoon.We had some amazing thunderstorms with the ground shaking and night becoming day!! however we did welcome the rain as it meant we could have a shower because all the piped water on the islands was salty.

feeling quite relaxed we headed off to Ubud on Bali where we spent 3days. whilst there we saw some traditional balinese dances and visited a couple of hindu temples called elephant cave and Yeh pulu.
It was also pauls birthday whilst we were there and we went to the sacred monkey forest where one of the "sacred" monkeys tried to pinch hellys ring!! they also climbed up you and we had a good laugh at the tourists who were being ransacked for the food they had been sold at the entrance. Later that day we went out to another temple which was completely carved into the rockface, before heading back into town for a relaxing massage and a slap up meal. Pauls pressie was a new t- shirt to replace his rather holy one.
From ubud we moved onto Lovina where we visited some hot springs (the first time we've been emersed in hot water for about 4 months!) which were very nice and also we went on another dolphin tour. However from when we first got into the boat we could tell it wasn't going to be a nice experience because there were about 24 boats all heading in the same direction. there were 2 pods of dolphins and the boats constantly chased them down which you could see was distressing them, to think of an animal which hunts by echo location having 24 boat engines blaring in the water it can't have been pleasant.
we headed back to the hostel that morning feeling quite low and sad.
hope your all well

Paul n Helly xx

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Comments

[dave]

hot bath
what colour was the water before you got in?? :-) he he