You Better Balieve It

The Josh Franco Section
We are in Bali. Bali is an island. You live on an island.

I took a while debating which title to use for this blog 'Balieve it Or Not' came a close 2nd but I thought the one I chose was more threatening which is always good.

So we are on the Indonesian island of Bali. So far our stay has been very pleasant. There have been things we've had to get used to such as breakfast serving ladies and pretty much everyone else in every profession trying to push a relatives transport firm on us and bartering for pretty much everything including hotel room prices but I think we're settled into the flow of things now. The culture seems quite similar to Thailand and once again everyone has been friendly and very helpful (especially with suggestions for transport).

We started off in the beach side resort of Sanur and spent a couple of days lazing on the beach. Our first hotel let us down slightly by allowing a Balinese band to practice outside our room every hour of the day and night and failed to inform us of their rooftop pool but we soon found a better place at a better price. They told us about their pool too.

From here we bussed it through rice paddies and small villages to the town of Padang Bai. Much smaller than Sanur it was basically one seaside street. Over our two and a bit days here we again gravitated toward the beaches. There are some great hidden beaches here - one we had to climb through a construction site to get to. Still it was worth these little treks to find these nearly deserted cubby holes of sand, rocks, waves and old women with hard-ons for coconuts and pineapples. We also had an incident with our first hotel here. I say incident but the right word would be infestation. The head board of our mattress was filled with tiny bugs that crawled and squirmed their way onto our bed. To make matters worse there was no staff around so I had to wake the kiwi owners on any door I could find. Needless to say we only spent one night here (Nic is still slightly traumatised) and went on to find better accomodation. The place we stayed last night was a restaurant with deck filled with comfy chairs and hammocks surrounded by rooms and with views looking out to the sea. Nic loved the place as it fulfilled a childhood dream of living in a treehouse and I think it's set the standard for places to come. Basically we're going to try and get wood.

We are now in Ubud which is a small-ish town away from the sea and the base for arts and culture in the island. Galleries are everywhere as well as a giant market selling pretty much every type of small wooden sculpture you could imagine. We've planned some walks as well as a visit to the Monkey Forest for the coming days. Excitingly it is also Gulungu (The Balinese equivalent of Christmas - Something to do with goods victory over Evil). The main celebration is tomorrow and the streets are adorned with palm leaf weaving and small basket offerings to the spirits. I guess that makes today Gulungu Eve so Happy Gulungu everyone!

Missing You,

Steve & Nic

xxxxxxx