Indonesia

Hi all, sorry its been so long but we seemed to have entered some sort of time warp where one day we're arriving at Denpasar international airport and the next we're back in Singapore waiting for a connection to Sydney. Thankfully we managed to do a fair bit during that 'day' so the blog will be longer than just one paragraph.

Bali was great, brilliant weather, good food, beatiful scenery but like everywhere we've visited so far it had god awful local wine, we have so far resisted the temptation of splashing out on ridicuously priced imported wines and have had to make do with lager and weird sounding highly flammable regional spirits, poor us eh?! So for one reason we're looking forward to getting to Sydney and sampling some of the best Australia has to offer but for so many other reasons we'll be sorry to leave Bali, and Asia as a whole. We've both enjoyed Asia more than we had expected, and could have easily spent our 6 and a half months here but the tickets are booked and no doubt we'll continue to have a great time in Oz and afterwards.

Anyway back to Bali, we only managed to see about a third of the country partly as we got stuck in Kuta (think any one of several hundered resorts around the Med) for almost 2 weeks (long and very boring story....much like the blogs then eh? in fact dont answer that) from there we travelled north to Ubud which is the area that lots of manufacturors (sp?!) artists, writers, desingers (and us) stay. It also had a monkey forest nearby where the monkeys had some some traits as some of the kids from Bonymaen, small, very cheeky, they both tend to have whispy hair around the face and slightly long dirty fingernails (not wanting to stereotype of course, I mean some of the monkeys were positively large) We also hired a car which was terrible, we spent 4 hours the first day avoiding scooters with whole families on, carts filled with fighting cocks (i'll leave you draw your own conclusion) and just continually going around in circles. That was even before we left our hostel! to cut a long story short driving in Bali isn't for us. Once our pride had been bashed and pride alone (more luck than judgement) we gave up and hired a car with a driver, only slightly more expensive but a damn sight less stressfull. He took us to visted a series of beatiful temples and Gunang Batur (Bali's second larget volcano) which was stunning, we've got some great pics and we're hoping to get some on here from Oz.

From Ubud we came south again to Sanur, we only stayed for a couple of nights but managed to see everything worth seeing (we think) we got up the second morning at 5:15am to watch the sunset thinking it would be very romantic to watch the sun come over the horizon sat together on a deserted beach, think again. There must have been at least 300 kids there, apparantely on summer holidays from Java and although they kind of spoilt the romance it just wouldnt be Asia without a few hundered locals at close proximotory, we spent most of the rest of the day playing the biggest game of crazy golf i've seen in my life, 18 punishing holes which incidentally for the record books I (Ant) won, sorry Tan.

Following Sanur we caught a shuttle bus to Dreamland (Erics old stomping ground) we met up with Indra who ran the place where Eric stayed and made camp in his old tree house. It's a fantastic place, the houses are built in a large field which is on top of a cliff overlooking 2 beaches, everyone we met (including Erics cronnies Arya and ChiMien) were so helpfull and friendly we both felt right at home, they even had 3 dogs to amuse us. We had only planned to stay a night or 2 there before heading off to see more of Bali but we didnt leave until we had to come to the airport a week later, again got some photo's to put on here. I think we've said this about each place we've been, but we mean it! that we'd love to come back to Bali again in the future, theres lots we just didnt get to see and do, and lots we'd like to see and do again, Tremacassy Bali!

For some people at home they will be glad that we're leaving an area of moving tectonic plates, civil unrest and bird flu but we'll be a little sad although we do have six weeks in Australia to soften the blow, Ozzy ozzy ozzy!! oh yes and the world cup, i've got to stop Tania continually counting down, 6 days 5 hours 26 minutes, 25 minutes, all in good time Tan.

Seeya this 'arvo, bring your 'ute, fair'd inkum mates.

Ant and Tan xx