Benidorm..... sorry I mean Kuta

So after the days of whiling away the hours on a Crusoe-esque tropical island, really feeling relaxed, two things happened to blow that feeling away. Firstly we were battered from pillar to post aboard HMS Fawlty Towers and then landed, ingloriously, into the pit of Aussie hell.

One thing that has ingratiated us both whilst being in Bali was the neccessity for all overweight and predominantly Australian blokes to wear Bintang vests. Bintang being the famous local beer. It serves both the wearer and indeed the watcher, to convulse in a way in which you've just smelt say, raw sewage. I'm unsure if they do it to pledge allegience to wanting to look both stupid and Australian, or indeed both, but they look absolutely rediculous. Not only that, but if one of the family wears one, again predominantly the dominant male (dad), then sheila (mum) will don a pink one and then the little scrotes (children) will don vest-ettes. Just to add misery/laughter (delete appropriately), to anyone foolish enough to approach the herd.

Kuta itself is anything but the image you have of Bali in your head. Warned multiple times by websites, guidebooks and fellow travellers with tales of monolithic creatures of the deep appearing in the surf shops, we had to check it out for ourselves. After being plonked outside the terrorist bombing memorial (Kuta was bombed twice in 2002 and 2005) by the shuttle bus from Padangbai, we escaped down one of the motorbike infested alleys, called gangs here, and went in search of decently priced lodgings. After doing the circuit and haggling till the sun came down, literally, we stumpled upon a place called Ayu Cottages and went inside to haggle away with the proprieter. The place was nothing spectacular but due to being a 'lovely couple', (he told us this!), we got a relatively good deal on a room with air con for our last two nights in Bali, despite the smell of gasoline coming through the air conditioning unit and the mental French guys directly next door who spent the whole night smashing a polystyrene box.

We did have time once we had got used to being in a loud place again, to get out and catch a glimpse of the sunset down on Kuta beach with an ice cold Bintang. Kuta beach itself, despite the chaos behind you, is actually a pearler of a beach. 12kms of sand and frenetic surf makes you realise what all the fuss is about. Which is why waking the next morning we decided to make the most of our last 'day in the sun' for a while and spend our day tucked away on some corner of the beach. We had a great day. Innterspersed by me being whacked by mammoth waves and popping into the amazingly cold air-conditioned mall that is placed, bizzarely, on the beach. We also, like every other place we went to in Bali, got pestered by sellers about once every 2 and a half minutes. They never give up and try to sell you anything from sarongs, ice-creams to errr, harpoon guns! One woman got very close though, circling us for a few seconds she then started to touch my face and tickle shell's feet before quickly getting out her tweezers and making quick work in pulling ALL of the hairs out of my ears. The woman was literally insane. She even told me I looked like a monkey. Cheeky bugger.

In the afternoon, sat in the heat of the mid-afternoon sun, we started to summarise our time in Bali. I'm glad it's my turn to write as I get to conclude our time here:

Let's get one thing absolutely clear, the place has been amazing. Never before, despite the appaling southern traffic, the constant bombardment of sellers and the irritating dogs, has a place been so unbelievably friendly. Given the choking traffic chaos, the amount of people essentially selling the same thing and the obvious over reliance on the tourist dollar, the people are amazing. Not once in three weeks did we see even one person even get slightly angry. Something which living in the UK, is hard to imagine. Anyway, here is our joint quick summary of each place we visited:

Sanur-If goldilocks had three bowls of porridge, this would be the middle one. Relatively bland but a great beach and some good restaurants.

Ubud-Cultural, peaceful, bohemian and infested with rabid dogs!

Lovina-Quiet, cheap and laid-back (perfect).

Padangbai-Scruffy port town with confused bus loads of teenagers en route from Kuta wondering why they are in a hot Dover.

Gili Trawangan- bloody paradise that in about 10 years will be manicured, concreted and sold to huge resorts. For now, with horse and carts being the only means of transport....bliss.

Kuta-If your an 18 year old backpacker or your nickname is Gonk and your from Brisbane then this is your heaven.

We loved every second.

Anyway we are off to Singapore now before flying onto Hong Kong.
Tommo xxxx

Chilling on Gili T....

So after the excitement of my birthday we still had another 2 days of fun ahead of us on the beautiful island of Gili T. We decided to make the most of the warm sunny weather and spend our days lazing on the beach in an attempt to top up our tans. It's a hard life!
Having splurged our money for my birthday, we had to keep spending to a minimum for the next few days and kept our eyes open for cheap places to eat. What a mistake! We ended up with grey vegetable soup and stale bread for our lunch and fatty chicken satay sticks with rice from a night market stall. All in all pretty nasty and not enjoyable in the slightest. What we lacked in food we made up for in Bintangs and biscuits, classic stuff hey!
The following day, lessons learnt and ready to enjoy our final day, we set off to the beach and hired some snorkelling masks and fins. I can honestly say I think that it was the best £4 we have spent so far on our trip, snorkelling is amazing! I can't believe that we've never done it before. Tom was straight in with his snorkel and fins to suss out the best places. He was gone for ages and came back with a huge grin on his face, deperate to take me in and show me. It took me a while to get used to using the snorkel, I was not a natural by any means! I mean really, having a mask squished tight to your face and clamping your mouth around a piece of plastic that hundreds of people have used took me a while to get past. You can imagine how frustrated Tom got with my cleanliness issues! Anyway, once in the water and able to breathe with the snorkel thing without freaking out, we had an amazing time. The water was crystal clear and filled with schools of fish of every colour possible. I wish we had had an underwater camera to use to show you what we could see. I'm not a fish expert so I can't tell you exactly the fish we saw but I recognised lots of them from Finding Nemo! Seriously though, we did see squids, lobsters and huge schools of bright blue fish that swam right beneath us. Truly awesome!
So after a hard day snorkelling we took some time to chill out on the beach. Suddenly we were surrounded by a group of Lombok school children asking us to sign their exercise books and have photos taken with us - fame at last! They were full of questions for us too asking where we were from and why we had come to Lombok. Soon their teacher appeared, honestly the most laid back person I have ever met! It turns out that he and three other teachers had brought 100 of their students to the Gilis to meet the tourists (that's 4 teachers to 100 children!!) He was loving using every cheesy English turn of phrase at the end of every sentence he spoke. For every phrase he used (eg. 'sound as a pound brother') he high fived Tom as a seal of approval. Good God! Aside from this, he was a lovely guy and we agreed to meet him the next day to talk to the rest of the children so that they could practice their English and meet people from England. The kids were really sweet and bombarded us with questions and flashes from their cameras. The boys spoke to Tom about their favourite football teams (they are obsessed with the Premier League) and even told him that he looked like David Beckham! The girls chatted to me about their favourite music, films and books. They loved looking through the books that we had in our bags from the beach, especially our Lonely Planet guide for Bali and Lombok. We left with promises of a personal tour around their school in Materam and the area should we ever go back to Lombok.
For our last evening on the island we had one final splurge and ate at a seafood barbeque. They had a huge bbq outside the restaurant with a huge fish counter where you could select the food you wanted and then watch it being cooked! You could then choose from an amazing salad bar and fill your boots basically. Tom was in his element, as usual when it comes to food! We ate red snapper and a seafood kebab, which totally made up for the dodgy food we had the previous day (thank god!)
Sadly, we had to leave the following day and I honestly can't put into words how truly horrific our boat crossing was back to the mainland, other than I thought we were going to die! I never in my life want to be on a boat that gets pummelled from all sides by huge waves so that it almost tips over. Or have the sea disappear completely from beneath the boat so it hangs in mid air, then crashes down so hard that it almost gives you whiplash. Do you get the idea? Add to that the fact that a similar boat (all be it a much smaller boat but still) capsized a few days before in bad weather, killing many of its passengers, then you might just get my mindset during this trip. We were both sweaty messes by the time we got off the boat and heaved oursleves up onto dry land in Padang bai. Who would've thought we would be so pleased to be back there?! No sooner had we stepped off the boat, we were then ushered into a mini bus and set off to the Benidorm of the island, Kuta, for our last 2 days in Bali. How much more excitement can we squeeze into 2 days?
Lots of love Shell xxx

Horizontally challenged!

After two days spent 'acclimatising' two doors down at the relatively sulubrious Puri Sading we have now spent the past two days, three doors down at a place called Flashbacks. Despite the name conjouring up images of Vietnam War Vets lounging on armchairs the place is immaculate, (all for 265,000 rupiah-£18 per night). In all honestly, despite it only being four days into our trip, I have not felt as chilled as I do right now for six years. The last time being sat on a sun lounger in lushly green surroundings in Greece. Yesterday was spent turfing our increasingly heavy rucksacks the distance of about six Mini Cooper's to our current residence, the aforementioned Flashback's then lounging around the plunge pool (see photos above) and then making our way down to the shopping fortress that is Hardy's, a place so bustling with cack it would not feel out of place on a wet weekend in Skegness. We went with the intention of buying a plug adapter, since the one we brought with us is as much use as our Mosquito net, another dud. What we didn't realise, and were rightly castigated for, was that to buy anything electrical we would have to inform one of the thousand employees so that they could write you out a piece of paper quoting your intention to buy said product. Once you had peroused the other multitude of items in the store, cheese donuts, chocolate made from bark-that sort of thing, you then paid at the checkout where the checkout girl shouted something about electrics and one of the employees came rushing over with our plug. A rather strange if not laborious process?! I also, after searching through what was essentially a mountain of clothing items, bought a pair of swimming shorts that after inspection back at the hotel, could actually stand up on their own.

Last night we ate at by far the best restaurent we have eaten in and it goes by the name of Swastika Restaurent. That's right people, Swastika's, but not a fascist in sight. In contrary the food was unbelievable, basic chicken sate taken to the next level gently simmering on the table straddled across hot coals. I opted for the Barbecued chicken 'Balinese style', a delicious plate full of Chicken thighs devoid of bone and a plate full of semi-hot, garlicky sauce to pour atop. We shall be going again tonight.

Today started off slowly, after a terrible night's sleep and feeling let down by the fact that I couldn't watch Match of the Day this morning via the Beeb's website due it not being available to resident's outside of the UK. We then ate our free breakfast of delicious homebaked bread topped with fresh tomato and freshly brewed coffee and then followed that by walking down to the beach area for a walk. What started as a stroll turned into a three hour amble due-south through some of the nicest sets of villa's and resorts you could imagine. Passing through the hoards of sellers who can all still remember our names and relationship status we reached prime 'honeymooners' territory and wasted no time in lapping up the manicured beaches and photo opportunities. From there we dodged the rabid dogs and made our way back to the hotel to collect our bags and mangoes to return to the beach for a bit of beach action. Despite the constant threats of invading rabies we had our first proper beach session under the midday sun. It was also the first time we acknowledged how lucky we are to live this lifestyle, it is bliss. From the beach we headed back to the plunge pool for bintangs and to email as many Ubud homestays as possible in preperation to learn how to cook Balinese-style and dance like a bit of a twat. Ubud tomorrow! Much love, Tommmmmmo (thanks Claire!) xx

Salam from Sanur!

Believing is definitely something we needed to do when planning and saving for this trip and for the moment at least, things are mightily sweet. After the constantly draining rounds of goodbyes before we set off on Wednesday the flight itself seemed to stir up memories of flights when I was a child. Gone were the constant flashes of explosions in the sky and impending doom to be replaced by surges of excitement for the months ahead, that and a valium induced haze which certainly took the edge of things! Qantas were amazing though, amazing food (roast shoulder of lamb served with fresh veg and new potatoes and a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toasted muffin, bacon and real stewed beans), constant snacks (twix ice-cream, fruit, cookies) and the unbelievable array of entertainment. In fact one of the options you could choose was to watch footage of the flight from the perspective of the tail, bearing in mind this was a huge double-decker it was seriously impressive, especially when you could almost shout at the pilot to tell him to straighten up as he came in to land at Singapore.

After deliriously wondering around Singapore airport for an hour or two it was time for flight #2 over to Bali. Now the safety briefings at the best of times at the start of a flight are nowadays rarely listened to but this was incredible. The plane, from the moment they sat down, was the loudest most raucous gathering of people I have ever heard. It was as if a massive fox had been let loose in an Indonesian Chicken pen, rendering the safety announcement, quite predictably, useless. Still the in flight meal option of what was essentially a large 'chocolate' bomb gave the whole thingh yet more surrealism to soften the blow of being surrounded by hens, one of them quite literally.

So we landed, got through 'customs', (small men with sticks) and got a taxi with Indonesia's own version of Paul Daniels, with a speech impediment. He seemed to say every third word as if had lost his bottom teeth, meaning that pen and paper, alas, was the universal language on this journey! Anyway after battling the hideousness of South Bali's roads we found ourselves in Sanur at our hotel. Sanur, locally, goes by the moniker, S-nore, which is slightly offensive given that when we ventured out for dinner we were treated to not one but four live bands in a small vicinity, beats the crap out of Southsea nowadays!! In the end we ventured for a cool looking place over the road and had a sharing platter of Balinese treats which was mouth-wateringly beautiful followed by two Bintangs, the local beer. Whilst we ate a young Balinese quartet played songs for the crowd and took ANY requests. They were amazing for four late teens/early twenties guys and just topped our first night off with another hint of surrealism as they thrashed out ny request of Roxanne!! Tommmo x