We've been in Bali for over a week now and I (Kris) must have put on about a stone in that time. It's been great, I don't think I've eaten rice more than once in the whole time and I've managed to eat about five pizzas, the same amount of burgers, one fillet steak (a real investment at $4), a wealth of different salads complete with french dressing and a 7oz curry wurst! Awesome! We have also, to be fair, had some lovely Indonesian food. Eating rice and fish for a few months really puts you off the Indonesian stuff though and I hate to say it but Sulawesi cuisine is enough to put you in McDonalds!
Aside from getting fat we've also been touring around on our newly rented scooter a little bit. After a couple of days in Kuta we'd seen enough undies to last a lifetime (the latest Ozzie craze is to wear the back of your boardshorts around the underneath of your bottom thereby exposing your white Y-fronts!) so we made a move to Ubud. The place is a lot more relaxed and so far has not been a prime location for underpant action so we can eat our burgers in peace without nudging each other constantly to point out the latest pants-offender!
There's no beach here but I can't honestly say that we're in desperate need of one right now. We've done a couple of little walks to get our legs working again and it really does feel like rehab being on solid ground and not water or sand. We were tempted to go up Gunung Batur yesterday which is a beautiful volcano but, due to the raging heat and our delinquency, we decided to just drive around inside the crater (there's about 6 villages in there and growing fast as it must be the only place left to buy land in Bali) and skipped the 600m climb to the top of the inner crater. Thank god we didn't climb it because about an hour after we decided not to go up the perfect weather turned into a nasty rainstorm that we had to drive through to get back to Ubud. Just goes to show that eating pizza and being lazy brings you good luck!!!
It's amazing although we were on a scooter, travelling at 60km/h, in heavy cloud and rain and skriting around a volcano there were people still trying to sell us things. One guy actually drove along side us on his scooter and proceeded to pull things out of his pocket to try and punt them to us whilst we were driving through sheets of rain trying to avoid livestock, children and bottomless puddles! Still, that's part of the charm of Bali! It really is a unique place, massively over-populated and a bit odd but still lovely. The people are absolutely obsessed with making things look nice, I bet they even carve their toothbrush handles! Everything is displayed with such care and attention to detail with flowers everywhere and every door and window frame carved with little leaves and swirls. Its an amazing thing that sets the island apart from other, similarly crowded, parts of Indonesia where the amount of people and traffic can just make the place look ugly. Nowhere is this Balinese artiness more apparent than in Ubud as everywhere is either a gallery, a temple or an art shop and the town itself is surrounded by some beautiful countryside (those terraced rice-paddies from the tourist brochures!).
We'll be flying out of Bali to Kl on the 18th and from there up to Thailand to sort out becoming dive instructors! More thumbnails ...
| 
8 votes 
