Lickable Wallpaper

After the Perama boat trip (which was a major highlight of Indonesia as we saw so much, ate so well and met some cool people) we decided to dedicate our last week in Indo to our original reason for going there: surfing. We then did a lot of talking about where to go before deciding to head back to Bali, as its just so much easier to get around – it’s much more set up for tourism than most of the other Indonesian islands so everything is just less hassle. We landed on our feet as it turned out, because we got a pretty cushy number in a surfcamp on the Bukit peninsula, South Bali, near Padang Padang beach and the famous Uluwatu surf break.

Its a very small world, as we discovered that Josh, the owner of the camp is a good friend of a friend of Eddie’s, and he sorted us out well.

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We’ve been and gone to Ubud since the last time we sat at a computer, crossed from Bali over to Lombok and are now on Gili Trawangan, a small island just a few kilometres off the north west coast of Lombok. Ubud was great, a very different place to Kuta – it’s the cultural part of Bali, and is the place to go if you want to see traditional Balinese dances or other performances. Altough it’s a popular tourist destination, you get the feeling that they’re really serious about their traditions there – all of the performances are done by local groups and all of the kids in the village seem to be out selling tickets – it reminded me off going to a play in the parochial hall in Ballyhaunis not so long ago! We went to two performances, both quite different. One was similar to something you would imagine seeing in China, and used two-man monster costumes, it was very well done and very realistic looking. The other performance involved a group of over 100 men doing a monkey dance – both were unusual but very enchanting!

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We’re in Bali at the moment (in Kuta, the main tourist area by the sea) and although we didn’t get a good first impression, we’ve quickly settled down to the routine of eating, sleeping, a bit of surfing and a lot of sweating :-) We’ve come to the conclusion that what you first think of any place is mostly down to expectations – we didn’t expect too much of Kuta as we heard it was supposed to be like the Canaries for Ozzies, but it’s not nearly as hectic as we thought it would be. It’s great to be relaxing for a few days and not having to catch buses and trains! We’re staying in a really relaxed place called the Secret Garden Inn, just off Poppies Gang I (this is where a lot of the cheaper accomodation is in Kuta). A really clean, large room with air-con and a fridge is costing 240,000 rupiahs per night which is about €17. That includes breakfast and a nice swimming pool. We thought that Kuta would be full of backpacker types, but there are lots of families with kids around (most people here are either Australian or Japanese). Bali is a big surfing destination, but most of the breaks are for advanced surfers – Kuta is one of the few places that’s suitable for folk like us, but even at that, it’s great compared to a lot of Irish beaches! We both had a good session today and we were easy to spot from the beach being the whitest people in the water! We’ll probably be moving inland to Ubud in the next few days, but don’t have any definite plans yet.