Well we made it ok from Australia to Bali. Wow are things different here! Bali is like Lady Gaga - beautiful* and mad.
From the word go there have been hundreds of incredibly lovely people trying to sell us things (which is fine actually, they're not nearly as bad as the Egyptians). The architecture is grandiose but elegant and the Balinese Hindu religion has coloured our days ever since the moment we spotted the little tray of flowers, biscuit and a joss stick next to the visa desk at the airport. I hope the rest of Indonesia is like this.
We arrived in to Denpasar (which is actually nowhere near Denpasar, not even by Ryanair standards) and spent our first couple of nights in Kuta. Kuta is the most developed and most touristy part of Bali because of the excellent surf...
Which naturally Si surfed in! He caught one of the big waves and really actually properly surfed down the front of it, doing a turn and everything. Apparently it was even more fun than Croyde. Not wishing to conform to stereotype, I opted to go bikini shopping again as the previous bikini I'd bought is decidedly dodgy in the structural integrity stakes.
After a day in Kuta we travelled on to Ubud, which is where we are now. If you've read the book/watched the film Eat Pray Love, then Ubud is where she falls in love (I think) and no surprise because the place is proper lovely. It's a very chilled out artsy with lovely temples and boutique-y feel.
Yesterday we watched a traditional Balinese Legong dance at Ubud Palace - it's firmly on the tourist trail and deservedly so. The clothes the dancers wear are stunning, the setting is candlelit, the music is really clangy and exciting and the dancers themselves are amazing - they have unbelievable control over their bodies. It's seems to be all about having extremely expressive facial expressions and doing a really, really good version of The Robot... Though that description doesn't really do them any justice... In any case, a great evening was had by all.
Today we've been on a mission. Walking first to the Elephant Cave temple which was unearthed by the dutch and has some impressive carvings around the entrance to the cave which look a bit like an elephant. It was a nice sight to see, but to be honest the best bit of the trip was probably the fact we got lost on the way there and spent ages trying to pick our way around beautiful rice paddy fields, being both helped and laughed at by locals.
Then this afternoon we went to visit the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The forest covers quite a small area of land and contains a pretty temple and over 600 macaque monkeys - most of them youngsters. The monkeys are looked after and encouraged to stay because they're believed to protect the temple from evil spirits. They're absollutely everywhere - both cute and vicious in equal turns. Si's got a picture of a monkey that climbed on my back as it was checking my hair for nits. Which is lovely. What he doesn't have a photo of happened moments later when it got bored (after finding no nits, I hasten to add) and decided to try and swing off my hair and poke a finger up my nose before finally jumping off my head.
*If you like that sort of thing.