Surfs up!! Sun, Sea and Beaches!!

Here we are at seminyak! We wanted to stay at Ned's hideaway, but it was full!! The next 10 places Yvette checked were also full or above budget.... This meant we had to walk a bit with our bags to find a good spot. Fortunately after a 10 min walk we were closer at the beach and found a hotel for 8 euro per night!

We walked to the beach the first day, but unfortunately it was a little bit disappointing, was this the beach Bali is famous for?... where are the palm trees?? where's the white sand?... do I smell garbage?? and where are the big waves??

How's the surfing going Ruben?? :(.. Ronald is already as good as me :( after 20 minutes....

You figure: we were a little bit shocked and had to let it sink in: Bali beach was not what we expected. But after taking the sight in for a little while we started to get used to it: Hey we're on a beach!! We can go sunbathing!! Rent a surf board for 3 euro! and a sunbrella with chairs for 2 euro!!! RELAX!! take it easy!!!

And so we did, the next few days we relaxed on the beach, got a tan an went shopping for some flipflops and second hand books. Yvette got a full-body massage on the beach while the guys went surfing. We ate Pizza and other western food!! and in the end had a jolly-good time, only to be topped off with a visit to Kuta on the last night.

This was it: The place of the terrible bombings a few years ago (2002 and 2005). There was a big memmorial reminding us of the tragedy. This place was really wicked though, we paid as much for a drink here as we did for a night at ubud. The second bar we entered was the climax of bad taste!! There were indonesian dancers and even some chippen' dales :s... bad music, drunk aussie, old men with young indonesian girls and little kids who pretend to sell bracelets but were actually trying to pickpocket you, and men offer you aggasie (XTC) and mushrooms every 5 meters.. you can imagine the rest...

Compared to everything we had seen so far this really wasn't indonesia... Bali is not paradise, but just a party island. We went on and saw some more bars, it was fun watching, but also a little bit disturbing...

time to go home have good sleep and sadly depart from our dutchie friends Nigel and ruben who had travelled with us all the way from yogyakarta!!