Hotel Melasti Legian Resort & Spa

... we went and had the cheese fondue. Nice but very rich. Tonight we are having a Bali feast at our villa that one of the balinese girls is making for us. Justine is trying to get us in for a cooking class, but havn't found one yet. Today we are going off to Sanur, Jimbaren Bay and Nasa Dua. I have booked in for another hot stone massage today. Having fun but missing everyone.

... me up from the hotel later that evening - but as this would be my first motorbike passenger ride, I asked that he bring me a helmet. "No worries - I give you 100% guarantee that you will be safe". Good - but I still want the helmet!



We parted company and I headed down Poppies Gang (a well-known backpackers street (alleyway in Kuta) and didn't make it more than 50m when I started talking to Wayan, a security guard at Poppies Cottages. We went through ...

... their stay at Melasti relatively easily. But we were having trouble finding a suitable place. There were availabilities at the more expensive accommodations but we were hoping to spend less than we had in the first week. In the end Melasti made room for us the entire second week and we moved the 200m down the beach to Mum and Dad’s hotel.

Dad and Greg discovered Billy’s Bar on the beach and could be found there most afternoons or in between meals enjoying ...

... my organization Wyatt provided me with an orientation about the program and the history of Bali and Balianese people, including their main religion of Hinduism. The craziest thing to find out was how many holidays they have! One is coming up on Wednesday called Galungong and it takes the people about a week of preparation before the holiday. I guess they have something like 200 days out of the year that are holidays, so I assume their entire lives are spent preparing for ...

... with a map we picked up at the airport. As we drove, we saw store after store loaded with merchandise. There were bead stores with buckets of beads, necklace stores with row after row of necklaces, home furnishing stores with shelf after shelf of decorative trays. We were in awe, and really wondering how big Geneva Market would be when we saw the volume of merchandise in the stores in the tourist district. The taxi driver made a right turn ...

... I stopped for a drink first at the Lotus Café, a local landmark built right in front of the temple. The manager was a middle-aged white guy, the first such instance I'd come across in town. I later ran into him at the Denpasar airport as we were both headed to Jakarta. He turned out to be a jolly guy, Austrian. After the "show", I wandered around Ubud until I found the Jazz Café for some live music. Shortly after I paid the 25,000 rupiah (about $2.80) cover ...

... It was a good game and the team we decided to route for, Spain, wins. we would loved to have stayed with the folks we met, mopey Germans and reveling Spainards, but we have a 7:30 pick up for our countryside biking, so off to bed again. Traveler's note: If you have a little extra cash the Lumbung Sari Cottages is a great place to stay. Despite the US $50 price tag we were able to get the room for $27 with a little negotiation.

... quite like this, they came out of everywhere to this feeding ,lots and lots of monkeys, and some of these monkeys were BIG, and hairy, and they had really, really, big teeth. All was well, for a couple of minutes until , I have no idea what set them off, I was standing pretty far back along a path, i guess one of the monkeys grabbed another, and they turned to chase the one who did the grabbing, and the whole pack of them ...

... learned to say "Saya allergi" pretty quickly), it was really hard to get anything that didn't contain fish or byproducts, so this seemed like a safe bet. Rach had Nasi Garang and I had....pizza. But it was really good! We talked about the day and decided to arrange a car and driver for the next day because there was no way we were going to do another hike like that one. Rach had a huge blister on her heel that was killing her, although she didn't whinge at all about it, but by the ...