Bali

Jungle Gudge

View more photos 

So after a brief flight we found ourselves in Bali.  Having booked into a place up the east coast from SIngapore we were met by a very laid back bloke with our name on a piece of cardboard.  A two hour drive and we were in his village of one street and shown to our Lumbung on the beach.  They used to keep rice in these things which are a room on stilts with a living type area underneath out of the sun.  The roof is thatched and there are no windows, just roughly fitting shutters.  The bathroom was on the ground with a shower that came out of a piece of bamboo in the wall and had no ceiling so you could look at the moon while showering.

The weather was incredibly hot and sticky as we were there in the middle of the wet season.  When it rained at night it was a deluge, followed the next day by searing heat and profuse sweating.  The beach was of a black sand type and when you turned away from the beach you saw where all the volcanic looking rocks came from.  A large and still active volcano was behind us and after a brief read was due for it's next eruption.  This gave an added twist to listening to the evenings thunderstorms. 

View from posh pool

View more photos 

The wildlife was awesome, with everything you looked at having some kind of creature attached.  Needless to say Lynds was as excited as me to hear a gecko in our room while we were nodding off.  I assured her it was on the roof with an almost certainty that it was more like three feet from our heads.  We spent days lounging on hammocks, listening to the sea and being the only customers at the cafe up the road.  After a week of gentle beach walks and lazy nights playing cards the wildlife got the better of us.  Lynds sat on the throne while I stood guard for frogs and bugs (this had become the norm since the crab in the shower and the frog in the middle of the floor incidents), and out of the corner of my eye I spotted an eighteen inch Guana on a pole that held the roof up.  Needless to say Lynds was in the right place to see such a beast and the next day we were heading to Kuta, the islands capital, and checking into a hotel with such frivolities as walls and windows.

It was here we really noticed the effects of the bombs that had gone off here.  And also discovered that three had gone off in October which neither of us new about.  The place was very quiet which meant that the locals desperate for work continually harangued us with "you want transport?" and "braid your hair darleeeng?" (not just aimed at Lynds) every third step.  The benefit was that we could walk into the poshest Hotel in town and barter the price down to less than half what it would normally charge.  As a result a week of sitting by a pool and being pampered ensued.  There really was little else to do here.  The odd pagoda, but in all honesty having just come from a string of pagoda and temple having sites, it was kinda nice to do bugger all!!!

The locals we chatted to were friendly, with an amazing knowledge of British football.  But they all new the place was desperately quiet, and were looking for jobs on cruise ships and the like to earn some more money.   And the worst of it was the fact that they were all resigned to the fact that there would probably be more bombs in the future.