Segare Anak Bungalows & Restaurant Kuta

... I will say if you are heading to Bali and you want a relax don't go to Kuta!!

We did take advantage of one of the tours to get us out of Kuta for a day, it was quite touristy but nice to see some other areas of Bali. We watched a traditional balinese dance, taken to a Goldsmiths and Art shop. Their art is amazing here, I pretty much love all the paintings if only we had the money to buy them and space to pack them!! The wooden crafts are amazing ...

... lovely unaffected traditional feel. It is as basic as it gets, no pool, no frills, no hot water even! We are enjoying the contrast and feel like we are giving the kids a true experience. I am however ****-bored.

Night 2 sees us all in one room with the kids sharing a single mattress on the floor. They wake up mossie ravaged as they knocked the net off during the night and no matter how many times I got up and put it back in place, it was hopeless. Day 2 ...

I finished off my Indonesia trip with a few days in Kuta.
Its a very touristy area, full of shops selling all the same souvenirs and people asking if you want transport, not at all like the Gili islands really.

But it was a nice few relaxing days, I had a really nice hotel and the beach wasnt too far away either. Although there were plenty of sights to be had - lots of speedos, including the man who had ...

... Paddys. The music here was slightly better so I started dancing and all was fine and dandy. BUT! I bought a beer, placed it on a ledge, had a few sips of it, placed it back on the ledge, turned around to take another sip and some ****** had nicked my beer! I had no idea who had nicked it, but I sat there angrily glancing around the room giving people evils until I realised I'll never find out who had nicked my beer. I wish I had found the prick!

It was nearing the end of ...

... in the back of the car with me and Greg sat up front. The whole time the sister was telling me how beautiful my "white" skin is and how her skin is so ugly. It makes me sad to think that so many other women from other cultures put light-skinned women on such a pedestal and have such poor body image. Ever since we have arrived to Thailand and the rest of SE Asia there are all kinds of products to whiten the skin. I wish these woman could accept their own true ...

... to Padang Padang (without the police interruption) and arrived back just in time to pack and get our transport back to Kuta to prepare for my second New Year celebration of the year, Balinese New Year! In typical Jav/Jay style, I had read nothing about Bali so we only found out that the celebration of the New Year was taking place a couple of days prior....and what we heard was quite interesting. New Year's Day or Nyepi Day translates to the day of silence. There are also ...

... The way they practice their own version of Hinduism has been a truly fascinating study. Balinese are not passive about their their beliefs, instead they wear it proudly up their sleeves to display not as a trinket for tourists but as their way of life. Like in India, religion and culture have intermingled and inter-developed so that every aspect of life is governed by both. Hinduism came to Bali from India. The basic story of Ramayana and Mahabaratha, the Vedas ...

I love art. Unfortunately, my literacy doesn't come close to matching it. One of the main reasons I chose Ubud as my base in Bali was its artistic heritage. Every other shop seems to be a gallery of paintings. It's a very aesthetically pleasing village to wander. I made a trip to four of the ...

... a sanctuary right on the edge of town where you can go hang out with the macaque monkeys. They accost you before you even get into the sanctuary...I guess they don't realize there are boundaries around their territory...and Lisa has to give up her ice cream cone to a demanding monkey who is not about to be shaken off without some treat. Have you ever tried to shake a monkey off of you? With those four limbs and a tail...and a very ...

... the Balinese determined it was haunted and only those that could live no where else due to their economically/social status lived there. But then in the nineteen seventies the dharma bum - hippie generation discovered Bali and Kuta in particular. With this came the first of the surfers as well who were attracted to the cheapness and proximity of surf to Kuta. So Kuta started to get a few tourist oriented restaurants and bungalows one of the first of which was Poppie's ...