After a 6 hour flight of no food or entertainment provided we landed safely in Denpasar, Bali! Walking off of the plane we were hit by the familiar feeling of heat but a totally different atmosphere. Just being in the airport we already felt like we had left the Western world behind us in Sydney. The airport was very serious with signs up saying things like "If you bring drugs to Bali you will get the death penalty!" Anyway after a long queue for passport control we were both given the all clear and entered the outside world. Straight away there were people everywhere asking "Taxi? Taxi? Taxi?" We were a little bit overwhelmed by it all as we had read that we needed to find a cheap bemu (bus) to take us to Kuta, our first destination. These were nowhere to be seen so we decided a cold glass of coke and some noodles for around £2 would help us relax a bit. We sat down and decided how much we were going to pay for a taxi as you have to barter for EVERYTHING here! Once our tummys were full we set off to get a good price. The taxi man asked for 150.000 rupiah to start with but we managed to get him down to 50.000 for both of us.

Sat in a nice air conditioned car we drove on down to Kuta and for the next 20 minutes me an Amy didn't speak to each other. Both of us had our eyes fixed on what we could see around us and found it hard to take it all in. We had gone from being so familiar with our surroundings and things being just like at home to a place where there were no rules on the roads, mopeds everywhere, 4 people riding 1 moped (mum, dad, child and baby) street stalls, constant sounds of horns and lots more. We were both very excited to be in Bali and begin a different type of Adventure.

We arrived at our hotel for the next 3 nights and it was perfect!! We had a big, clean, air conditioned room, a lovely bathroom and all very modern. That evening after a quick random Skype to my Aunty we walked around Kuta to find something to eat. Kuta is meant to be like the malia of Bali and we soon found out why. The bars all along the strip were offering cheap drinks and happy hours and there were promotion people outside of all the bars trying to get our custom. We were searching for food first though and we soon found, after dodging in and out of millions of mopeds, a very cheap restaurant down one of the side streets of the main strip and had a Indonesian dish of noodles and chicken. The meal with drinks cost is about £3 so it's safe to say we were certainly enjoying the price of things here. After dinner we went to a couple of bars and spent most of the night people watching and being fascinated by Kuta.

After a brilliant nights sleep we had our breakfast (fruit and croissants) and then headed to Kuta beach. The beach itself wasn't that nice and the sea had lots of rubbish in but it still did the job of cooling us off in the boiling heat. By the afternoon we were dying for a cold drink so headed back to a cafe. After we had cooled down a little we wandered around Kuta looking in the shops at all the fake merchandise and then decided to go back to the hotel. That evening we went on search down the same side street as the night before to find somewhere to eat and found a really good place where we both had lovely Indonesian meals. After we found somewhere that served banoffe pie so treated ourselves to one of those and had some drinks.

The next morning we were served a rather different breakfast to what we are used to...chicken burger. Anyway it tasted good and filled a hole so we weren't complaining. Another morning spent at the beach but today seemed a million times hotter so we decided to spend our time in the water having a 1:1 surf lesson!! Both of us loved our time on the surfboard and managed to stand up and ride the waves a couple of times. The not so good part of it was the carpet burns we both got from climbing onto and lying on the board.

After our surf lesson we grabbed a drink and bought a couple of sarongs for a very cheap price, looked in a few more shops and then went back to the hostel. We decided to wander to the night market to find food tonight and after quite a long walk, got a super cheap meal of chicken noodles for around 80p. After dinner we found a gelato stall and sat on the kerb on the main road in Kuta people watching for just over an hour! The next day we had transport booked to take us up to Ubud, a more spiritual, relaxed vibe than Kuta.

Lots of love from Bali, Meg and Amy xxxxxxx