Greetings from Bali!

I've finally made it here, which is my final stop of the South East Asia leg of my trip. It feels like the 4 months have been really long, but at the same time I remember arriving in Bangkok all excited about starting my trip, although a bit nervous, like it was yesterday.

I fly out to Sydney on Wednesday night (Indonesia time), and back to the cleaniness, english speakers, and more hot weather and beautiful beaches.

Since my last posting, I managed to get a flight to Ende. I just turned up at the airport in Labuan Bajo and bought a ticket. Ende is a place that I don't have much to write about! I spent one night there but after walking around for a while I realised there was nothing of interest to see or do, so I caught up on sleep!! The only notbale thing that happened was when I was walking around in the evening a group of girls got really excited when they saw me, as I doubt they see that many foreigners, and then when I said hi they started screaming hysterically. It was like being in a boyband!

There was a crazy guy at the hotel I stayed at who kept telling me to take a car to Moni, my next destination, but I told him it was too expensive so he got agitated and told me to take a car to the bus station, but even the price he was asking was loads. He kept coming up to me and looking angrier each time, so the next morning I quickly left and found a moto to take me to the bus station.

The bus to Moni cost me less than 2 pounds, and the people on there were really cool. It only took an hour and a half before I arrived in Moni. Moni is a small village but it's ideal for seeing Mount Kelimutu, which was the reason why I was there. The people were all really friendly, and it felt like I was the only tourist, but then I met 2 Australians that I had met at Ende airport.

A local guy called Silvester had invited us all round to his house for food. I was the first to arrive and was greeted with a keyboard and microphone. I thought to myself "oh no, what have I got myself in for", thinking he was going to play all night and even worse sing. From experience, the Indonesians I've heard sing during my trip weren't the best. Thankfully the other guys arrived so we all chatted while he played keyboard. They thought he was serenading me before they arrived!!

That night, was probably the coldest I've been since leaving home. It was freezing, and I had a cold for the next few days. I'm used to all this hot weather now, I've been in it long enough that I've got quite dark as everyone back home keeps telling me.

I had to wake up at 3:30am the next day and get a motorbike driver to take me to Kelimutu. I then had to walk up the mountain for 20 mins to reach the summit and see sunrise. Mount Kelimutu is amazing, it overlooks 3 lakes that are supposed to change colour but now only 2 lakes change. There's a black lake, and then a lake that turns blue-turquoise-green and another that does the same but also sometimes turns red. While I was there none of that happened!

After returning to my hotel I went to Maumere, which is near the north coast of Flores, and was where I was getting my flight to Bali from. Maumere is a cool little place, but again there isn't much to see and definitely not much to do. I caught up on even more sleep, and just went on random walks, The locals were again really friendly, all the children would say hello mister, and they all want hi 5's. It was in Maumere that I witnessed an actual c*** fight. The chickens were quite savage, but I could only watch it for a bit before I decided to move on.

I was excited about going to Bali and being back in a lively environment. my flight stopped off somewhere on the way, but I have no idea where it stopped! Everyone had told me that Kuta is full of Australians. It's their equivalent of Ibiza for the Brits, and that's exactly what I witnessed. I decided to stay a couple of nights in Kuta before heading south, but when I got to the south I found it to be really quiet, really expensive and really bad weather, so I returned to Kuta and this is where I've decided to spend the rest of my time until I leave.

I just want to relax in the same place for more than a night or 2, and I've learned to cope with Kuta now. The beach is really good here, and the surf is good, so I spent today and will spend tomorrow attempting to surf. I did stand up 4 or 5 times after lots of falling, and some of those falls were brutal!

One bit of sad news, my microfibre travel towel has gone..... I gave it in for washing in south Bali and it was only when I checked on returning to Kuta that I found they hadn't given it me back. I'm really upset, and although I took the toilet roll and the nice soap they gave me, it just doesn't make up for my loss. To make matters worse, that night I went out and I had my really small torch in my pocket. The bouncer decided it was too dnagerous to have and took it off me. When I went back to get it he was no longer there and the new guy had no idea what I was talking about. The torch could do the same amount of damage as a normal mobile, probably not even that, so I'm not having a good few days. I had to buy a new towel, a normal fluffy one from a department store here, but at least I got 70% off.

I've developed a magnum addiction in the last few days. Not as Baasit asked, an addiction to Tom Sellick, which I thought everyone had, so isn't really an addiction, but for the ice cream. Every time I walk past a Circle K, or other mini mart, which here is every few metres, I'm tempted to buy one. Thankfully Circle K is the only one that does them and the Circle K's are at least 50m apart from each other!

I also had my first major cockroach incident today. it wasn't anything major, although it was huge and decided to walk across my bedroom floor. I've been quite luckily in that I haven't had many or even rooms with cockroaches, maybe they were just well hidden. I can cope with ants, geckos and even to a point spiders, but I hate cockroaches so I had to get the guy to get it out. He ended up battering it to death with the brush outside thankfully, but I'm sure the Greenpeace brigade will make a big deal about this latest incident!!

I've loved my time in Asia, I've seen so much and met so many amazing people. I'm so glad I decided to include this in my trip, and the other night I wrote a list of things I've done that I wouldn't have otherwise done if I didn't come travelling. Off the top of my head I had 55 things, which is amazing.

South East Asia is great, and I thought I would list a few things I'm going to miss about it:

- The really friendly people

- The great weather, great food and beautiful beaches

- All the spelling mistakes they have on signs and menus

- How cheap everything is compared to back home

- Being able to ride a motorbike and drive however you like thanks to the relaxed road rules

- When you say you're from the UK the locals reply with "lovely jubbly". I keep trying to tell them no one says that back home but they don't listen

- That feeling when you've haggled or aything involving money and you know that you haven't been ripped off

- All the sunglasses street sellers who try to sell you sunglasses even though a) I'm already wearing a pair. b) It's raining. c) The glasses he's selling are womens ones

- The lady selling bracelets/flowers/or whatever, and when you tell you don't have a girlfriend so you don't need to buy any of her stuff, she replies with "you know why you don't have a girlfriend? Because you don't buy bracelet/flowers/or whatever

Some things I'm not going to miss are:

- The mossies

- Being offered some sort of narcotic everytime I walk down the road, and in Kuta being asked "Transport" every 10 seconds, and "Motorbike" every 20 seconds

- Taxi drivers who decide they can't understand English so don't understand what you're saying even though you say the road name which is in their native tongue

- Shower lottery! Not knowing whether the shower will have any power or whether only 2 holes have water coming out and both are aimed in random directions

- The rats the size of cats

- Trying to cope with all the 0's that some places have for their money. The amount of times I've almost given 100,000 for something that's 10,000 is ridiculous

- The really loud and bad horns that buses decide they need, and that bus drivers decide they need to use every few seconds, especially on a sleeper bus

Right the next time I post I'll hopefully be in Oz. I'll let you know if the toilet flushes the other way!!

Take it easy, I'm off to get a magnum......

P.s. I couldn't find a beach pic of a beach in Bali so the one for this post is of a beach in Papua New Guinea. The beach here has sand and sea just like that one. Thought I better put a disclaimer about it as the beach in the picture looks nothing like the one in Kuta.