Tjendana Paradise Seminyak

... also have a room by myself and air con, hey it is still the price of a backpacker place, I am still "backpacking". Discover my I-touch is not working, great no music, try to contact Apple all day, no luck, this is going to be interesting. I hit the beach for a while, go for a long walk get home and sleep. Up the next day canceling gym memberships and home insurance, go into a diving shop and enquire about dives there. The guy behind the ...

we woke up to more sunshine & a beatiful swimming pool , had breakfast with a map & the lonely planet, thanks chris & clive we think it will come in very useful, we decided to walk a circle around the hotel, yea!!!working it out when we arrived back it was 8k,the roads are very narrow, many streets have rubbish mounds, so when the wind blows unfortunatly so does the rubbish,very busy,very noisy, with everyone hooting (it is the road sign language codes ...

... country's minority Hindus reside on this island (with a small community on the neighboring Lombok). Hinduism is thought to have reached the island sometime around 900AD. Bali has always been a fiercely independent island, culturally, politically and economically. It largely resisted Dutch colonial influence while the rest of the archipelago was under Dutch control. During Japanese occupation in WWII, freedom fighter General Ngurah Rai, formed a liberation army ...

... some sort of ceremony that only happens 2x a year. Everyone from the very young to very old were decked out in beautiful traditional clothing and carrying offerings of fruit to the temples. I wish I would have gotten a better understanding of what they were celebrating and/or why it was a special day but "special ceremony" is about all we got. There's a few things that never seem to get old... and one of them is taking pictures of monkeys!!! I ...

... laptop has been saved by a freak table corner blocking it from being soaked! Yay for fate not being totally without pity! Shame to have a 'man' die until he really ****** me off, after all what could I do to the person who did come between me and electronic satiation? That old rat-in-a-bowl torture thing is so eighteen hundreds and don't think much of this modern electrode business... Far too close to some people's idea of a good time for me! Thankfully that oh ...

... queues of sweating tourists as they contemplate an hour or two waiting to be permitted entry, equipped with my Entry visa. Yes, yes I am living in Bali not visiting I answer casually to the police with machine guns eyeing my complexion with dubious stares. 'Where am I living?' Oh... ****... no idea... don't have a house yet... or any idea where I am living... 'Canggu' I venture a tad more nervously... They look blank... 'Canggu community school?' Oh **** maybe it doesn't exist and ...

... tall wooden doors as our gate. Haha..i found it quite amusing, really not necessary but of course lovely. It was 250000 rupiah a night so $25 per night between 2 people, a bargain! I picked Hanneke up from the bus station on my motorbike of couse, as she had just had the long bus ride from Bromo like i did a few days before. It was nice to see a famaliar face and nice to enjoy my last days not on my own... Hanneke and I basically just ...

... to just turn up and see what we could find. After popping back to Perama to buy tickets, we went to get out some money, having learnt that there are no ATMs on the Gilis. We had to visit a few cash machines, as each could only provide us with fairly small amounts of cash in fairly small denominations, leaving us with a wedge of notes with the approximate dimensions of a house brick. Having locked our cash away in the hotel safety deposit box, we went out in search of food. We ...

... the side of the road all in gorgeous pastel silk dresses with lace sashes and belts, they all had woven bamboo baskets on their heads filled with cut fruits and flowers. They were heading to the Hindu stone temple up the road to give their offerings for the week. Everywhere you look there are little statues 3-6 feet tall (on most every corner) with little woven baskets and flowers, fruit and incense burning. No wonder ...

... roads with an inclination over 25% (Where is the oxygen??!). We are used to walking, so we think it is going to be easy. NO, NO, NO. It's the hardest walk I've ever had, so we think that perhaps Mowgli is going to die in his attempt. We get surprised by him, and he gets it! Congratulations Mowgli, you survived HELL. We reach the top on first place, but on our way we find some of the workers of the zone, that go up and down many times a day, with 80-90 ...