I'm miles behind on the blog again now, so once more I'm going to use my facebook updates to the family to recap everything. Kicking off with Bali, where I headed straight after Singapore to meet up with Tom Smith, my old friend...

Thought i'd let you know I've arrived safely in bali, met up with tom no problem (other than he told me the wrong flight and I was just leaving the airport when he arrivd an hour later than I expected!).

hi guys! All is going well here - its nice to share the planning work load now that I'm with another person! Especially as it seems we are pretty similar-minded in how we do things and what we want to do. We spent a day and night at the beach in kuta, just to experience - yes it is everything we hear it is, but i suppose it's really just a bit of fun. We were shattered anyway after barely sleeping the night before - he was in Jakarta airport, and I was in the Bali airport, which it turns out is currently in renovation, and therefore is just a bit of scaffolding and tarpaulin over concrete. Not my best night's sleep! The morning after we decided to make it over to ubud using public transport etc rather than the tourist shuttle bus, and my GOD was it a hassle. Quite a fun experience, flying around in packed minibuses with indonesians, but probably won'tbe doing it again, especially as the 2 hour journey involved 4 vehicle changes and worked out as the same price.
Having fun here in ubud. Very nice place, a little more cultural, although still in quite a touristy way... we are staying in a lovely place! Had a day of cycling around and going to a nearby village and the monkey temple. Think we'll go to a balinese dance tonight. Tomorrow we're doing a couple of paddy rice field walks and going to see the art everyone bangs on about.
As a whole, bali doesn't feel like much of a backpackery place - there are no dorms or hostels anywhere! So its a good thing we're together at least, because there isn't much of a chance to meet other travellers, as everyone stays in their own rooms with their own rooms.
Our plan is to head to the south east, a more backpackery area, maybe surf on an island nearby, then head to gili islands. We've both decided we want to do our padi there!

Finished our time on bali with a night in a chilled out beach town called padangbai - good fun. Great day in ubud yesterday, saw a traditional balinese dance performance (better than that water puppet show in hanoi where I fell asleep!!) and had a funny old night in a retro 'groovy' bar. It was only really us that thought it was retro - everyone else was around 40 and was genuinely loving it...

Tomorrow we're heading off to the gili islands, where we are going to do our padi - feel it is the ideal opportunity! Then we're going to head off to Sulawesi, still having not met another traveller who has been... At the moment we're weighing up flying for $80, or catching a pelni boat over for $25, takes 48 hours. Don't worry mum, it is THE established company in indonesia, and whilst rough and ready it is safe! Conspicuous lack of pirates. We both think it would be an awesome experience, just need to work out timings, as there is only one boat in our time span.

As I sit here listening to the rats squabbling in the rafters, I can't help but think fondly of my sturdy bedroom in Somerset...