Bali

AirAsia are pretty good, except when it comes to Indonesia it seems. The flight from Jakarta to Bali was delayed, but worse than that it wasn't advertised. The check-in desk wasn't announced, the number of the gate was different on the ticket to what the board said, and the flight wasn't shown on either gate! But we got there in the end.

We arrived late at night and, with our backpacks on, we searched the area for a place to say (cheap, preferably with a pool). We were directed by a whitey to a place round the corner that has decent rooms for 50,000 a night (about 2 pounds 60). I thought it was fine, but Rory being a snob made us move the next morning to their sister hotel, 5 pounds a night but much cleaner (which I was thankful for, I did keep expecting to see a cockroach every time I looked at the floor!)

We rested from the night of flying by the pool, and for the first day that's pretty much all we did. As the sun set we walked to the beach to watch it, and we were surprised by the sheer amount of surfers there were! Australians everywhere, and the local activities that follow them- people selling things on the beach, surfboard renters, surfing schools, motorbike rentals and the lazy people laying on beach instead of surfing (like us)! The whole area we were staying in was pretty touristy really, both a blessing and a curse. There were plenty of nice cheap little restaurants dotted around the busy roads (shops, tourists, motorbikes and surfboards), and after we had dinner we wandered back to the hotel, stopping at a 'tourist information center' to book ourselves a snorkeling trip for the next morning.

Up early (8am!!) the next morning for breakfast, and then picked up in a jeep to take us and a couple of girls from France across to the other side of the island where there are less surfers and more fish. There we split up, and Rory and I were given a private boat to take us out to the coral. That part I really enjoyed, it was a quaint little fisherman's boat, long and thin with two wooden outriggers roped on (and a little motor strapped to the back). Rory had never been snorkeling before and there was plenty to see, but it didn't quite match up to the Red Sea or the Maldives etc. However they did give us little bags of bread in to feed the fish with, and once we were in the water and got them out the fish swarmed to snatch bits of the bread right out of our hands! We even saw an evil looking eel at the edge of the coral!

That afternoon we spent by the pool again, and ate in a different restaurant that showed the new Harry Potter film projected onto a big screen. This is the life.

The next morning we decided to be brave, and wandered down to the beach to inquire about surfboarding lessons. We bargained a guy down to two two-hour private lessons including board and a surfing top for about 5 pounds each and headed to the ocean. I had never been surfing before (and Rory had but a long time ago), but I found it pretty easy-once you were up there! You have to get up pretty fast though, and after dragging the board out and energetically jumping up, balancing, falling/jumping off and battling the waves to get out again we got tired pretty quickly. However by the end of the morning we could each say we rode a few waves all the way in, without looking scared/stupid/like a novice. The afternoon was spent recovering by the pool of course.

On the morning of the forth day we were still tired from yesterdays strenuous activities, so swam or read by the pool. However in the afternoon it started to get a bit crowded by bored Australian surfers (we heard 'there's no surf dude' more than once) so we walked up and down the shopping streets looking at what was on offer. As the sun set over the sea we wandered up the beach north to the next little town and found a restaurant there that was showing Balinese dancing. It was too expensive for us though so we were cheeky and just ordered a cheap local beer each and watched the show for a while, before wandering back in the direction of the hotel, stopping off to eat at a place more in our budget (but surprisingly a really nice place, with the best food we had so far!).

On our final day we checked out of the hotel early and hired ourselves a little jeep for the day. With it we headed north- past the beautiful hills of stepped rice-paddies to the arty village of Ubud. Here there's a monkey sanctuary, where tourists come from around, buy a load of bananas and then act surprised when the monkeys jump at them to get the bananas. The place was actually really beautiful- with butterfly's, Balinese temples and tall dangly jungle trees. There was even a bright fat lizard that fell form the tall tops of a tree inches next to Rory with a loud 'splat' before running off (I named him the kamikaze flying lizard).

We then drove further north, getting steadily higher till we came out at a hill town overlooking a deep valley and the a volcano on the other side. Neither of us had seen a volcano before so we drove down to the valley and around the crater lake in the middle, looking at the weird large volcanic rocks lying around as it they were thrown there(which of course they were, as the volcano last erupted in 1991 we found out). We ate lunch at a very pleasant restaurant in the hill top town overlooking the breathtaking scene, before getting back in the car and heading back to the airport.