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Right, well it's been nearly a whole month since I've updated this, so I don't think it will be too detailed!
Last entry was us sleeping on a bench Denpasar Airport, Bali. We got a total of about 15 mins sleep before giving up when it got too loud and getting a taxi to our resort. Thankfully the woman at reception opened it at 7am and let us check in just after that. I've never been so relieved! We went straight to sleep without even looking around.
A few hours later we fully took in our lovely little cottage in a 'garden setting'. complete with fridge, tv and dvd player - the first time we've had it since we've been away! The place is lovely. There were only a few cottages in the whole place, and a bigger building with rooms closer to the road, so it was nice and quiet for our whole stay. We ended up barely leaving the place except for dinner, shops, currency exchange and a quick walk to the beach - the danger of getting breakfast included in the price and a lovely pool to swim in. Sanur village was a little bit middle-aged for my taste anyway, haha. It was lovely to get there after hectic Singapore, but I don't think we saw many people under 40... We spent those 3 days lazing by the pool, eating some amazing food and then settling in for the night with pirate DVDs and some beer before we decided we should probably do something!
We booked a driver on the day we were transferring from Sanur to the younger and livelier Kuta and saw our first bit of Bali outside the street we were staying! Our first stop was the Holy Spring Water Temple - a UNESCO World Heritage site - where Ryan cleansed his Chakra! The water bubbles up from the ground in the rear part of the temple, then is directed through some fountains into a pool. The idea is that you climb into the pool (wearing only a sarong) and work your way through the fountains. You have to first wash your face with the fountain water 3 times, then wash your body starting with the top of your head 3 times, then take 3 sips, working through 11 fountains in total. I wasn't allowed in, but Ryan came back feeling cleansed of all sin and bloated from 33 sips of Holy Water.
Afterwards we drove up to Mt Kintamani to have a look. It's an active volcano towards the North of the island which I really wanted to climb, but as it started smoking a few weeks beforehand they weren't running tours up at the time... shame. We took in the view from a restaurant perched on the edge of a cliff before leaving without ordering anythin - way too expensive! haha It was a lovely place to see it from though - you could see all the barren fields around it covered in black ash. I'd never seen a volcano before, it was quite disappointing there was no lava or billowing smoke... I guess maybe I've seen to many action films.
Then it was on to the rice paddies where we had a cheaper bite to eat overlooking the hills. We saw a nice little man who gave Ryan his baskets and hat so Ryan could have a picture, then charged him for it. Oh well, live and learn.
We spent a few hours on the way back at Ubud market - I assume this was the biggest one on the island. There were loads of lovely things to buy there, but it was all too heavy to send home so we just picked up a few Christmas pressies. I don't think it would have been too cheap to send all the decorative stuff we wanted. On the way to and from the sites we stopped at, we passed loads of little villages who each had their own trade like painting, wooden doors, stone carvings etc. We didn't stop, but just driving through was pretty impressive! Balinese artists certainly aren't stingy with detail in their work.
After our tour our driver dropped us in Kuta and we found a nice little prison cell in a guesthouse there. In fairness, it was really cheap, but that bathroom made you feel like you shouldn't drop the soap. The shower was just a pipe coming out of the wall and it was about as effective as someone hosing you down but without the added bonus of being able to direct it. You had to splash the water over yourself to try and wash.
Kuta was a lot more lively than Sanur - plenty shopes and nightclubs playing terrible house music down on the main strip. We stayed clear of them. We did find a nice pub with a rock covers band playing one night though, they were pretty good and they did requests! The main sight in Kuta is the Bali bomb monument. It's a massive carved stone wall on the sight where the nightclub was bombed and has the name of everyone who was killed listed under the country they were from. To each side there are 11 flagpoles, one for each country, and loads of memorials put their by the victims families.
On our first full day in Kuta we tried out the beach and worked on our tans. The waves were bigger than we were used to after coming from SE Asia and I realised that my bikini didn't stand up to much when a wave hit, so I steered clear of the water after my first swim.
We had an early night that night because we both had activities planned the next day. Ryan tried his hand at white water rafting, which he said was amazing until he cracked his toes on a rock when he stepped out of the raft at the end (typical) and I went horseriding. I know I did it in Cambodia, but that wasn't much good and I'd always wanted to go on the beach! The place was a bit badly run (they didn't even ask if I'd ridden before when they threw me on a horse and sent me galloping down the beach) but it was loads of fun! My horse Jennie was a bit nuts and decided she was going fast for the whole ride but I wasn't complaining. She kept running into the sea to cool down too, it was black volcanic sand on that particular beach and I could feel the heat rising on it from the saddle - the poor thing must have been tip-toeing through the sand to stop it's hooves from being scorched off.
We both got back in the early afternoon so we wandered down to the beach again to sunbathe and watch the sunset. It's the first place we've been where the beach was facing due West and we could see the sun disappear into the ocean.
We had another early night that day so we'd be up to catch a taxi to the airport at 4am and fly back to Singapore. We both wished we had longer in Bali, it looks quite small on the map so we didn't realise how much there was to do, but we've said that about every country we've passed through! I don't think I would have made it to Australia for another few years if I'd spent as long as I wanted everywhere!
The flight back to Singapore was uneventful except for the airport surprising us with a 10pound 'airport tax' fee. I found out while we were waiting to board what they used it for - the airport toilets were floor to ceiling marble! They still smelled though.
We had a some time in Singapore from Saturday the 28th until our flight on Monday evening which was spent the same way as our first trip through the city - shopping and going to the cinema.
On Sunday we went to Singapore Zoo after hearing that it's worth a visit, it was fantastic! We spent so long walking around that the big cats had been put to bed when we got to their enclosures, but the rest made it worth the trip. The place is huge and had loads of animals you wouldn't see in a zoo at home - too cold for them I suppose! The highlight was a huge indoor rainforest area where the animals just roamed free. They were only little ones like mouse deer, fruit bats, ringtailed lemurs, butterflies and birds but it was really cool to get right up next to a lemur! It started licking it's parts as soon as I posed for a photo though, and when I stood next to it and waited for it to finish it kept glancing at me like it would stab me if only it could find a knife... Ryan took a very quick photo and I walked away quickly, so quickly I didn't notice a parrot flying in my direction and it had to swerve to avoid hitting me square in the face. I don't think there are many zoos where that would happen!
On Monday we watched A Christmas Carol at the cinema (it was alright) and caught our flight out of Asia and on to our second continent!
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