Laghawa Beach Hotel Sanur

... drinks from the swastika hotel - Mango and Orange juice to perfection! and then wandered down to Sanur Beach. It was very quite at night compared to the hustle of the day. I also forgot to mention that we caught two frogs outside our hotel room and had them as company for a while. Overall a nice day. <br><br>Thursday, September 2009<br>Sanur Bali, Indonesia:<br><br>Today we had an 11 O'clock start, first we went to Dreamland beach, which is apparently the nicest ...

... activities. We booked a surf lesson in Kuta for early one morning. We were joined by a young Dutch couple and the 4 of us headed out to ride some waves. Unfortunately, that morning Tracey had woken up with a bad back and couldn't even get up on the board during the practice session on the beach, let alone in the sea! Our instructor thought it would be safer if she stuck to body boarding, so she had to trade in her surf board and make do with riding the waves lying on her stomach ...

... winds had carried a rip current in and while we just wanted to wade in the shallow water, I got sucked out and out. I tried with all my effort to swim back to shore, but only exhausted myself. Huge waves splashed over my head and for once, I was actually getting frightened here. I didn't duck under the big waves because at that point, I was trying in vain to ride them in, my body surfing in front of them. I was more like a washing machine than ...

... rubbish there was no stopping Teddy form hitting the first decent waves of the trip. So he rented a sweet board for $3 and headed out. He came back in an hour later already sick. Still went out to surf the next day to confirm the source of the illness. lol. Confirmed. We decided that this was not the beach paradise we envisioned and set off to explore other areas. We actually found a small island off the coast of Bali with ...

Yall right guess I'll write another one of these since I guess people are reading. Starting to get out a bit more in the day now that my sunburn is lessening. I had plans to go skate a couple parks in Malyasia with another guy who is living down here but he was having visa problems and it was starting to sound like going to Malyasia by myself was gonna be nothing but hassels ...

... 000 Rp. It took only 15-20 minutes arrive in the center of Kuta. Our hotel the Bamboo was the best so far large marble bathroom quiet even though it was on the main drag Jalan Legian. We went out and had a quick look around, very interesting and very cheap compared to Singapore and Malaysia. Lots of locals and foreigners riding around on scooters. The money amounts drive you crazy ...

Boy was that quick.  I post the openning ceremony and next post the closing ceremony :-)  I am sorry - but things have been so jam packed that I have not been able to blog on the three days activities that happened in between.  I hope that in the next several days (today I have a post Summit all day workshop, tomorrow Dr. Kulkarni and two other delegates to the conference and I will be touring Bali together with a hired car and driver ...

... losing her flip-flop and chucking away her umbrella in anger... and all for the love of a good man! The tablets seemed to do the trick for the rest of the day, but the next morning was one of our scariest moments: I woke up barely able to open my eyes as the swelling was so bad; my hands were puffy and sore to the point where I couldn't make a fist; my body was covered head to toe in blotches and swelling; and I was literally sweating buckets. We headed straight for an ...

... trying to sell Jeff's surf board (thanks to Henry for making this a much much less painful process); relaxing; taking a long road trip to check out the area west of Kuta, spending time in Kuta taking care of various admin, and exploring the area. The highlight of this few days though, was our Private Villa experience. Yep that's right. Harry in a severe fit of over-generosity granted us an evening stay at an amazing Private Villa. So what is a Private Villa? We weren ...

Wow...what a joy to finally land in Bali (a 5 1/2 hour flight from Melbourne) and be greeted with such warmth and hospitality. The heat and humidity reminded us that... yes... we are finally in Asia. Hannah and Jack spent a lot of time at the kids club (Mom and Dad are very grateful!!) and learned about the Balinese way... Hannah made a special offering plate for a Hindu ceremony we visited. She was able to give it to the Hindu Priest and present it as her own offering.