Bale Hotel Bali Nusa Dua

... looked like a small pile of rubbish – some type of leaf, rice, a ritz cracker and a few flowers all tossed together. What a funny place to throw your garbage, I thought. But that’s weird, as I glanced around there were more of these things, seemingly randomly placed on the floor about the airport. On closer inspection, they turned out to be little woven palm leaf baskets, with carefully arranged rice, flowers, and other seemingly odd bits ...

... being able to go. but i digress. no trouble entering the country, thanks for a cheap $10 visa. cheap taxi ride into kuta, and walked along our strip and found a bunch of my class while searching for our hotel. 2 pools, a/c and perfect location: can't ask for much more. first night was a mess, with our class drying up the bar (for apparently the second straight night). good to see everyone in shorts for ...

... order to get an early start on a motorbike the next day and explore more of the island. While we discovered some beautiful parts (to be fair, we explored only the portion of the island south of Kuta, it is a MASSIVE island), we saw what Kuta was all about. All Balinese culture has vanished from Kuta, with exception of the angelic ringing of gamelan, as it is a collection of surfshops, bars, clubs, restaurants, guesthouses and all things Western. The entire ...

... over again. Somehow, it never got old. They would also have us steer our raft right under waterfalls where I would be in the perfect position to be pelted with water (once again Monkey Pee!) The best was the spot where we were able to jump out of the raft and float down the river in our life jackets - so awesome!! Except for the water that went up my nose... let's just say I am a tad paranoid about getting any sort of unbottled water ...

... their cyclo taxis of course... Topped up our horrific history levels with a visit to the war remnants museum form the vietnam war - it used to be called the 'American atrocities museum' and you can see why as it is chock full of pictures and stories of the fall out of chemical warfare, and when we got to the real life pickled siamese babies in a jar we decided we'd soaked enough of that up... So onto the 'fun' war part - crawling throught the tunnels the real life vietcong used ...

... why people come here though, sea, surf, a beautiful beach and hedonistic nights on the town. Not really my cup of tea. I've booked a travel ticket to Gili Trawangan this afternoon which leaves early tomorrow morning, I plan to relax for a while on this tiny island off the north-west coast of Lombok. Will defiantly be a long travel day tomorrow, was told the journey takes at least 8 hours on various buses and boats.

... get the message that ... the hotel is full as from tomorrow. Wait a minute: today empty tomorrow full? Yes. No more rooms available? No. She does keep on saying: come back tomorrow morning. I do NOT want to come back tomorrow morning. What if it IS full, I quickly pack and then? And I just do not believe her! In the room, we have a look on internet: sure rooms enough. So we book on internet, sitting in the hotel, would you believe that? Still no plans for tomorrow: NICE!

... I was back in a big crowd again. This is definitely small town living here, everyone is approachable (and always approaching!) to know everyone business. Privacy? What's that? I met a girl from The States at the fair (she found me actually) and we went for lassies* after the fair and swapped travel stories. Her name is Faith and she just came to Indonesia from a month in Thailand, so I had to pick her brain to find out all the great ...

... under her sunhat, now that she had had enough fun for one afternoon. The squirrels outsmarted her though; they weren't even close to done with gathering food for the day. Smarter than the average tourist, the squirrels kept on running from sunchair to sunchair searching for more food. Ultimately everybody ran out of food they were willing to share. However the squirrels had not had enough, though ...

... being sure any virus would have perished under the deep fried autoclave cooking methods of KFC (if indeed there is any chicken in it), but Rachel made the mistake of ordering a smoky wrap, ie scraps of floor sweepings deep fried in a msg/gm/poison sauce, it was absolutely disgusting even Graham couldn't eat it. We made our way to the check in desk (trying to remove the grease from our fingers and faces with a 10cm square KFC 'clean up wipe') only to discover that there ...