We arrived in Bali and went straight to Kuta beach. A guy collared us at the airport and talked us into one of his hotels and bundled us into a taxi. After the early start, we couldn't be bothered to look else where. When we got there there were 'no rooms at the inn', but they took us to the next hotel that just happend to cost about $100 per night - not a chance!

We went looking 'a pied' and found a place round the corner. It stank of mold, they charged us GBP2 a night extra for having a tv but no english channels and the breakfast was shall we say pretty rank but it was ok for a few nights.

That afternoon we went for a walk on the beach and found a swanky bar called Oceans 27. Absolutely amazing view of the sunsetting, a nice cold beer (or three) and a perfect way to end the day.

We walked around the next day and tried to find something nicer but agreed to move the next day to Ubud, just a little further north. Kuta was ok if you surfed but very much taken over by large American stores and not at all what we'd expected of Bali.

We got a cheap van to Ubud and managed to find a bungalow with hot water, air con, breakfast included plus a pool! Result. The breakfast was great and the people that owed it were lovely. The only down side was that the owners also made musical instruments and had music lessons and with paper thin walls, it was like having the batle of flowers in our bedroom! lol...

We were near a place called Monkey forest road, where they roam free. We had a little walk around and watched some of them fight, quickly moving out of their way. In the middle of our walk, I got a phonecall from Singapore airlines re our flights. I was trying to hold the phone and my notebook and pen, so put the notebook down. All of a sudden, out of nowhere I saw a little hand fly in and try to grab my notebook. I had to have a little game of 'give the notebook back' with the monkey - of course I won! After that I was pretty cautious and some of them were pretty vicious. On the way in we saw a sign that said 'If you are bit by monkey and may have Rabi's, wash with soap and water'! Ahh yes, I think that's what the Rabi's jabs we had before we left were! 60% of the time, it works all the time! - Not!!

We decided to do one of the day tours around Bali and spoke to the owner. He said that we would be better to hire our own driver for the day and do exactly what we wanted. So we did.

We went to Paddys fields, an Elephant cave, waterfall, Mt Batur (last errupted in '94 - a German couple who were walking around the Mt at the time were killed!), coffee plantation and a temple. The day was supposed to be pretty much free, but at every place we had to pay. Everyone seemed to be trying to rip us off and it was quite annoying by the afternoon. The plan had been to finish the day watching the sunset and having a nice meal by the beach. However, it seems we did one too many trips in our day, so the driver started to drive like a maniac after lunchtime, weaving in and out of the traffic. It was like being in a playstation game, bikes were 1000 points, old people 2,000,000! We had our seatbelts fastened tightly put it that way and at one point he was doing 120mph on the motorway!

The sun was starting to set and we seemed miles from the planned stop. Finally we arrived somewhere and got out. We had to laugh, because we assumed as the sun had gone down already that we were going for our dinner. But he'd taken us to the sunset spot anyway, which was 45 minutes out of the way.

Back in the car we were both pretty peed off, tired and hungry. Finally, we got to the beach for dinner. We found a seat outside, just got our drinks and ordered our food and were laughing about how stressful the day had been when - drip drip, ......it pi$$ed it down with rain! We couldn't get inside with everyone else quick enough. We were drenched and the glasses of wine were now half water...

We just laughed... what else could we do! Oh and ordered a bottle of wine and got pi$$ed and laughed some more about our day. In total we spent over 2,000,000 rupiah in the day = $ 200, the most we've spent in one day in the entire time we've been away.

We kind of wished we'd just gone with the organised tour now, but at least we can laugh about it now! But that pretty much confirmed that we'd had enough of Bali and so we're off to Lombok asap!