Bali Bitches

Today we fly! We took a train and a bus to the airport to save ourselves considerable money. We ate Burger King at the airport which gave us both stomach pains and threatened to come up later on the turbulent plane ride. Lesson: Don't eat fast food! Our airline of choice was Air Asia which is a budget, internet only airline. The flight was into Denpasar in Bali from where we took a quick walk outside the airport to much cheaper taxis. Our friends, Michelle & Corky, had chosen Ubud - the cultural capital of Bali - for their honeymoon. Months ago we had organised to meet up with them here when we knew we wouldn't make the wedding. They stayed at the Four Seasons which is a fantastically amazing hotel. We arrived late (9pm) and stayed to catch up for a couple of drinks and then head into town to grab a room. We soon found out that taxis don't run after 11pm although the hotel offered to take us for a mere $100 US. We crashed on the couch of their amazing villa which had its own pool. The next day were shouted to a fine breakfast before we hit the streets with our packs to walk a couple of kms into town. Ubud is full of shops selling things you would really want to have in your house along with galleries and great clothes. It's hard not to want everything. We got caught in a wedding parade with all the locals dressed traditionally, playing music and carrying offerings on their heads. We found out that just about everyday in Bali there's a festival for something. They often let travellers into cremation ceremonies where they burn loads of bodies at the same time and the town becomes really smokey.

01 The Honeymooners

After we'd walked about an hour we came across a restaurant with 4 guys sitting out the front watching an American Football game. We decided it was a good spot to stop and have a beer. 'The' beer turned into 2 or 3 and when we finally got up to leave the guys stopped us for a chat and before we knew it another round had been bought and we were being invited to sit down and chat. They were expats from USA, Aust & Germany and they all had businesses in Ubud. One of them owned the restaurant we were in, Naughty Nauri's named after his Balinese wife. After many more beers they introduced us to a shot that Dolf Lungdren had shown them at the same table. A few of those, some more beers and we couldn't even remember whose honeymoon it was. Then we were taken to a huge house owned by one of the guys that was gorgeous and overlooked rice paddies. More drinks, a clothed dip in the pool and we were ready to leave. All of us had hurt ourselvs in one way or another. We got a ride back to the Four Seasons which was exactly the place we were trying to leave that morning. The walk back to the villa was interesting - Corky fell into the 'bushes' along the side of the road and I jumped on top of him. What we didn't realise was that there were sharp bamboo spikes sticking up from the ground and I caught the side of my eye on one and cut myself luckily missing my eye by a centimetre. We crashed with them again and vowed to take a cab in the morning.

02 The Wedding

03 The Musicians

04 The Ladies

05 The Dolf Lungdren

06 Too Many Shots

07 The Pool

08 The Rice Paddies

09 Offerings

10 Flying Corky

11 Michelle's Hidden Talent

12 Villa

13 $12

14 Pool