With just 3.5 hours sleep after our heavy night the night before, we got a public ferry over to Gili Air - the second of the islands we were staying on in the Gili islands. We hadn't booked any accommodation but Dave soon found a lovely place in the village set back from the hustle and bustle - it was so peaceful and gave us a glimpse of real Indonesian island life. All the locals were so friendly to us as we were walking up and down the windy alleys to the more touristy parts of the island. Our torch definitely came in handy at night!

Gili Air is very different to Gili Trawangan. It is much less developed and so chilled - think waiting an hour for your food, losing hours in your day and all seating areas in bars and restaurants being horizontal! It was great to relax in a place with much less tourists and more locals. We really enjoyed exploring the island and watching the sunsets from the west side of the island, which is so remote and much less developed than the east. One day we tried to take a shortcut through the island to get to the west side and got so lost - maps don't exist on Gili Air so the good old compass app on our iPhones sorted us out and helped us to find civilization before sunset!

The first day we did a snorkeling trip on a glass bottom boat. There were some brilliant snorkeling spots and visibility was excellent that day - up to 30m. The guides pointed out countless turtles - by literally free-diving with one breath about 15m and pointing at them! We also saw tons of fish and really colourful coral. It was great to see the marine life together, after our separate diving experiences. We also stopped off at Gili Meno (the third and final island of the Gilis) for lunch and went for a walk / dip on a secluded beach - pure bliss J I also did another dive - it was good practice for me but the visibility was pretty bad so I didn't see too much. I still managed to tread on a puffer fish with my flippers - woops!

After 9 blissful days on the Gili islands, we headed back to Bali in search of some more culture and scenery. We decided to stay in Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali. I had booked a homestay, where we basically stayed in a room in somebody's house. It was a cheap option and it didn't disappoint - the room had been recently renovated and we had our own private balcony where we had breakfast. The owners were so lovely and went out of their way to ensure we had a great stay. Ubud was surprisingly built up and developed in parts, but clearly very spiritual.

We only had one full day to explore Ubud, so planned an action-packed day. Firstly we went to Monkey forest, which is three temples with around 600 monkeys living around them. The monkeys certainly provided a lot of entertainment, taking a liking to Dave and climbing all over him. The bananas we bought lasted about 5 seconds! The main temple and scenery were spectacular, although it was hard not to be distracted by the prospect of a monkey jumping on you at any point! We then decided to do the Campuyan ridge walk, which took us out of the centre of Ubud and up a hill that intersected two rivers, passing villages and rice paddies. The walk was tough in the heat, but the café in the middle of the walk was the perfect place to cool down - with amazing views of rice paddies and our own wooden terrace over a pond! Last but not least, we went to a Balinese cultural performance - we were a little skeptical of it being quite touristy and perhaps dull but were pleasantly surprised. With only 20 people in the audience and front row seats, it was really intimate and we both found it strangely mesmerizing and downright weird in parts. We had no clue on the story (the brochure tried to explain but the English was pretty bad!) but that really didn't matter - 90 minutes just flew by…

The following day we needed to get back to Seminyak, but also wanted to explore some more of the island so we hired a driver for the whole day. He recommended some places to go and see and also incorporated some places we had researched and wanted to go to. We had a fun day with our driver, and spent the journeys helping him out with his English and discussing how we could market his taxi services better… Our day included the following:

- - Amazing views of spiraling rice paddies, which we really wanted to see as all the Thai ones are flat

- - A family owned coffee plantation, trying lots of different coffees and teas including Luwak coffee, which is apparently better as the beans are eaten by a cat-like creature and the remains in their poo are used for roasting?!

- - Breathtaking views of volcanic Mount Batur which stands at 1717m and its surrounding Lake Batur

- - Guning Kawi, which was my favourite stop - an ancient site with shrines calved into the cliff face - very memorable!

- - Elephant cave temple - some temples (one of which was in a cave) but equally amazing scenery to admire

- - A waterfall - it wasn't the largest we had seen, but it was a good end to the day to watch it with a can of coke!

We wanted to stay closer to the beach on our second time in Seminyak, and I had somehow managed to book us a two-storied house with so much space! We spent our last day in Bali just chilling by the beach, meeting up with our (soon to be Facebook) Indonesian friends selling their sun loungers…

We have both absolutely loved our time in Bali and especially the Gili islands. We can't wait to come back! The Indonesian people are all so lovely and friendly also. Bali was a little more developed than I had imagined and next time we would like to explore some of the other Indonesian islands, but the Gilis were like walking back in time… Next stop is Malaysia!