Bali and the Gili's

Rice fields in Bali; September 2011

Our first day in Bali was pretty disorientating, Kuta the main tourist town is like Magaluf for Australians. The traffic is incredibly hectic and the music is loud. This was a bit worrying at first but as soon as we ventured away from Kuta we were relieved to see that Bali is all its cracked up to be. After an hour or so of riding around on a scooter we managed to find Kerry and James, some friends from home at there place in Sanur (it took 15 minutes to get back).

With Kerry and James we went to the port town of Padangbai were we organised a car rental for the next week. This trip let us see the REAL Bali. We started in padangbai and went to the blue lagoon, a nice little beach and then on to candidassa for lunch and a haircut (by some nutter). On the drive to Amed the views over rice fields and mountains were breathtaking.
We spent two days at a really nice place on a black sand beach in Amed, we went out with some local guys who tried to teach us some bahasa indonesian. 'Appakabar' (how are you) sounds like something out of harry potter.
Next up was Lovina, were we went to see dolphins in there hundreds, this was incredible. On route we stopped at a balinese hindu temple, the guy showing us round was VERY friendly. From Lovina we looped round through the mountains and past some huge lakes along some questionable roads and finally arrived in Ubud. Ubud is the cultural capital of Bali, and well known (trust me they dont let you forget) for being the setting of "Eat, pray, love". James got his duck he was looking for, so he was happy.
After six days we arrived back in Padangbai to get the boat to the Gili islands. On Gili Trawangan we spent our time lying on the beach, relaxing by kerry and james pool and eating very delicious satay chicken. We chartered a glass bottom boat for a snorkelling trip of the islands, this was possibly better than the snorkelling on the Perhentians, so yeh AMAZING.
After an incredible two weeks we said goodbye to kerry and James and headed for Lombok.....

Photos

Singapore

 Singapore (zoo)

Singapore is a modern, clean and very safe feeling city. It is the kind of city either of us could live in (i could live at the airport). The food is great and people are really friendly. All this does come at a cost though, we were paying twenty dollars each to be in a 10 bed dorm with the worst snorers on the planet.
During our stay we visited the (amazing) zoo, continued eating a lot and had singapore slings by the river. As is our habit in cities we did way too much walking around, but this was probably a good idea as we will be spending the next few months lying on the beach....

Singapore photos