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Our first night in Bali did not exactly go to plan. In fact it was a typical case of having no plan! We arrived at the airport thinking it would be easy to book a decent hotel as it was low season. What we did not realise was that the Asian beach games where taking place all across Bali. As a result all the hotels we enquired about were full! We ended up booking two nights at a very cheap hotel in Kuta. We soon found out to our horror just why it was cheap!
The toilet was awful. The walls were covered in mould and there was a huge gap in the window allowing in endless amounts of mosquitoes. I won't even begin to describe the shower! If the bed sheets had been changed in a month they seriously needed to think about changing detergents! It was full of stains, hairs and almost certainly bedbugs (we've seen some bad cases of bed bugs!). We ended up covering the bed in bin bag liners and spent the night spraying every little bxxxxr that came near us!
We promptly made a quick exit the next morning, making our excuses, before scouring the internet for a new place to stay. We spent hours searching but everywhere that was nice and within our price range was full. We eventually found a lovely hotel that was rather expensive (it was 4 star!) so decided we could stretch to three nights and by then the games would be over and hotels readily available. The three nights soon turned into nine as we fell in love with luxury!
The hotel was no longer in Kuta, we found Kuta a bit too hectic and busy (we really wanted to just relax in Bali after two months of being on the go). It was in Sanur, another touristy area but a much quieter one. The Sanur Plaza was fantastic. It had an amazing swimming pool which we dedicated the nine days to! It had a basketball net in the pool as well as a volleyball net, and had many different sections. The staff at the hotel, like the Balinese in general, were extremely friendly and chatty and we just spent lots of time relaxing!
We got talking to a lovely Australian couple, Max and Bev, around the pool and we ended up having some great meals with them. They had been in Bali a number of times and so know the best restaurants. The fish in Bali was fantastic and we both fell in love with the red snapper!
We initially had problems getting our heads around the Indonesian currency as it works out as 16000 rupiah to the pound. After a day or two we had finally figured it out and it felt good walking around with two million in your pocket!
After nine days of lazing around the pool and sunbathing we decided we should really do some exploring. We decided to go to Lombok and caught the fast ferry from Padang Bay which only took an hour. Lombok has three islands just off its northwest coast known as the Gili Islands. The Gili's are famous for their coral reefs and excellent marine life. We stayed on the biggest of the three islands, Gili Trawangan.
Gili T is a small island with a population of only 700. There are no motor vehicles allowed on the island so the common mode of transport is the cimodo, which is a small horse drawn carriage. We stayed in a lovely beach resort (it was 5*! After our 4* hotel in Bali, and our private speedboat in Thailand we no longer felt like backpackers but international jetsetters!) and our room was like a posh tree house! Our toilet and shower facilities were outside but it was really cool.
Once we had arrived and settled in our resort, we checked out our swimming pool which was really nice, we decided to explore the island on bikes. We rode around the coast for a while but ended up getting tired and so retired to the beach. Here we became fascinated by the hordes of hermit craps in the sand and spent about an hour watching them!
The next day we booked a snorkel trip around the three islands. We stopped off at many different dive sites and the whole days' snorkeling was amazing. In terms of variety of fish it blew Thailand out the water! We saw puffer fish (Mandy was so thrilled to see one after she missed them in Phi-Phi) lots of species of trigger fish including the clown trigger fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, clownfish, hawkfish, rabbitfish, green as well as purple parrot fish and all sorts of colorful wrasses. We also saw a ten-foot sea snake which was rather scary! The highlight of the trip came on our second stop when we were lucky enough to swim with two hawksbill turtles. They were so beautiful and it was another experience we will never forget. I'll always remember it as the time I was attacked by a crab as when I was watching the turtle a crab became entangled in my hair and bit my ear! Luckily Mandy came to my rescue and managed to wrestle it out! It was a bigg'en!
We had the perfect end to the perfect day as we ate BBQ seafood at a beachside restaurant. If only we could do this sort of thing in England!
The next day Mandy fell ill so we just chilled out around the pool. In the evening we went to a beach cinema. This was a small shack on the beach with comfy pillows and the choice of about 200 films. We went for P.S I Love You and we both quite enjoyed it.
The next day we left Gili T and sailed back to Bali. Unfortunately the trip back was not as smooth as the trip there. The waves were huge and Mandy, as well as another passenger, became sea-sick. At times it felt like the speed boat would capsize and a two hour crossing ended up taking three and a half hours! The only good thing about the trip was seeing two dolphins!
We spent our final two days in Bali back at the Sanur Plaza before we said a sad and final farewell to Asia and headed south to New Zealand.
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