Bali

There's been a bit of a lull in the blog writing recently - for 2 good reasons. 1 - too much fun (and gin) over the Christmas period, and 2 - REALLY expensive internet. So two entries to come now we've moved on to Borneo - this one and then our 12 day celebrations on the Gili Islands.
The journey from Java into Bali was far less eventful than the previous volcano trip, which was a bit of a relief to be honest! An all night bus and ferry ride saw us arriving in Denpasar, and another 2 minibuses later we finally made in to Kuta - the Aussie capital of Bali. We only planned for a couple of days at the beach here as we were soon to be heading to beach paradise. It was certainly very full of Australians. That's really about all I can say! Which would imply that we didn't like it - on the contrary we were both pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the atmosphere and a good laze on the beach. We even had a pool in our hotel which was nice - shame the shower didn't work! After 2 nights we took a bus to Ubud, our main destination in Bali. The drive there was lovely - such a huge contrast to Java with much smaller roads and picturesque countryside, with colourful temples appearing every few minutes. We arrived in Ubud at a good time and then spent an hour traipsing around trying to find ourselves a cheap room. We finally found one on the wonderfully named 'Monkey Forest Road'. It wasn't until we took a walk around the town that it occurred to us just how much our new room resembled the temples and palace. Later we were told that the family who ran the hotel were actually members of the Ubud royal family. So that explained that then! One of the most beautiful places we've stayed - not luxurious inside the rooms, but lovely surroundings.
We spend the rest of that day walking around, looking at the palace and all the art galleries that Ubud is known for. The following day we took a walk in the monkey forest - and spent rather a long time watching monkeys jumping into a small pond, swimming back to the edge then jumping again. I found this extraordinarily funny. The monkeys were pretty cool - loads of them and much friendlier than many of the monkeys we've encountered previously. They never even stole our bananas. Once I'd dragged myself away from the jumping monkeys we took a longer walk around the surrounding villages and paddy fields - it really is such a beautiful area. We nearly bought wood carvings that we really don't need, but dragged ourselves away... We were hoping to hire a motorbike the following day (and the one after that), however the weather decided to remind us it was monoson season, and it rained almost solidly for the next 2 days, leaving us doing a lot of reading, finally getting into the modern world and using Skype for the first time, and generally relaxing in a beautiful town.
On the evening before we left Ubud, we met up with Oliver and Rhiannon (Oliver being another Berrygrove survivor). We had a lovely meal together, caught up on all their travel news and made plans to meet up for a longer time over New Year. Which I will leave for the next entry - diving, snorkeling with turtles, plenty of gin and a great fire on the beach.