We arrived in Bali on the Saturday night having spent 5 hours in Darwin airport. All was going well until my rucksack did not come off the carousel! I had, with hindsight stupidly, travelled in jeans and a tshirt, so was not best dressed for the sticky heat of Bali. Our taxi dropped us miles away from where we needed to be and we had to trawl through the mentally busy streets in the humid heat to find somewhere to stay. This was much worse for Phil though, as I only had my tiny carry on luggage to carry!

We settled in for the night (1 nights' accommodation for both of us with breakfast for 3 pounds!) and went for a roam the next day (with me in Phil's clothes!) to buy me some suitable attire from the stalls. Pip and Guy arrived later that night so we went to the airport to meet them and spent the night with a few drinks and catching up on 5 months' worth of news.

We spent a few days in Kuta, on either the beach or at the hostel pool, and the boys surfed everyday. We then moved to the adjacent island, Lombok, and headed to Gili Trawangan. This is a tiny island (about 1 mile at it's longest) with white sand and beautiful clear water. We stayed here for a few days over Phil's birthday and entertained ourselves with some snorkelling which was great straight off the beach. On Phil's actual birthday we went for breakfast at about 10.30 and started the day with a birthday Bintang beer! It was a bit overcast so we ended up sitting in an Irish bar for the duration of the day/night! I randomly bumped into someone I know from Torbay who is over here with his brother and a few friends so they joined us too. There were lots of card games and drinking games and it was lots of fun but noone wanted a repeat performance the next day!

After Gili Trawangan we headed to Sengiggi, which was on Lombok island. We spent a few days here and then headed back to Kuta, with the intention of going to Jimbaran the next day. Jimbaran has been recommended by lots of people we've met so we hired a driver and got dropped off at the beach there. We spent about an hour hunting around, to find some cheap accommodation and discovered there was none. The cheapest place was 75 US dollars per night, per double room. This was a bit of a shock considering how much we have paid everywhere else and so we called up the driver and asked him to pick us up. This was a bit embarassing as it was literally an hour later and we were all in the exact same spot as where he'd left us...we all decided we would rather be back in Kuta than spend the next 5 hours trying to find some accommodation we could afford. We came back and celebrated with a few drinks (because we had technically saved ourselves money by coming back!!).

We are all really enjoying it here. The beach is nice, it is hot every day (all day/night) and the surf is ideal for the guys. It is so chilled out and our biggest decisions involve where and when to eat, which always ends well because Asian food is awesome and cheap!

Going to look in to a few day trips before the guys head back to Torbay at the end of the month, and then we leave a few days after them for Singapore.

love to you all xx