Hello again, sorry for the delay but just been having so much fun and little access to the internet in between!! This is belated entry for my time in Bali......am actually in Borneo now but will talk about that later on. Be warned this is a long entry....

So I finished my nitrox course getting 98% in the final exam which surprised even me as the tables you need to learn are seriously confusing for a brain which is officially on holiday. Also passed the photography one too and have been putting to good use everything I learnt in Bali while diving. Fern, my instructor, is trying to convince me to come back to the Gili Islands next spring to do my dive master course.......hhhhmmm tempting, seriously tempting given the whole island paradise thing. Had a really nice goodbye evening to Gili Trawangan with this cool couple called Charlie and Eva who were on their honeymoon, and with my new found friend George who is as we speak venturing around Darwin hopefully with a fab group of new friends. Such a nice evening, such a cool island, such good times....what more can I say...I will definitely be coming back here again.

Arrived in Bali on the 22nd and checked into a hotel in Legion at George's suggestion called the Three Brothers Bungalows which was nice except for the caged monkey in their grounds. Poor thing.

Bali is SO different to the Gili Islands in terms of pace etc - when you walk down the street people are always grabbing at you and trying to sell you things or guess where you are from etc. I like it though in some funny way, it has a cool buzz to it. But I think much of my experience in Bali was formed around the people I hung out with and the amazing diving I was lucky enough to experience. Spent my first afternoon chilling on the beach, after taking the typical surfboard picture which to me symbolises Bali 100%. Some random guy came up and asked if he could take a picture of him and me together - I was like uh NO....weirdo. I fell asleep and woke up to find this massive Doberman puppy running towards me followed by about 15 (no joke) local flea infested local dogs chasing it....I was like NOOOOOOO stay away from me I didn't have my rabies jabs, I can't die 3 weeks into my trip!!

Had such a cool first night, George arrived from Lombok and we shared a room and a very funny amusing together. Started in this bar down the road putting the world to rights over cold Bintangs then walked along this dark little alley way by the beach to get some food....where we shared a bottle of local rose - ouch I have never felt so tipsy so quickly in my life, and had double vision by the end of it. Hilarious. On our route home we encountered my first ever fruit bat and I swear it was flying straight at us. We screamed like the complete girls we are and ducked down into the faetal position for a few minutes before running for our lives when it went behind us, and screamed and laughed the whole way home!!!!

After a long lie in (effects of the wine) we all hit the beach and watched the sun go down with several more Bintangs (did I mention I am now a total beer chick?), Paul giving George lots of advice on Australia and where to go and not go etc etc as she prepared for the next leg of her adventure. I so wish she was staying longer in Asia but we will definitely hook up in Australia later in the year. Was lots of fun hanging out with her. So after planning an early night Paul and I walked into Kuta and got started on a proper bar crawl, except every bar we went into started closing just as we arrived....we should have known then. I saw the site where the first bomb in Bali went off and the memorial site with everyones names on it. It was a harsh reminder of how horrific it must have been back in Bali then. The locals we have met this week have generally been so concerned to make sure you are having a fab time and welcome you to Bali wholeheartedly. We ended up dancing the night away in some pub/club called Paddy's Club - was hilarious! Finished the night off with a long walk back to Legion and cheeseburger on route.

The next day on the beach while swimming we saw the locals releasing this huge collection of baby turtles into the sea - was amazing watching them fighting the huge surfer waves to get to their freedom. So small, so cute!!

Ended up bumping into Mirko who I had met and had a few beers with on Gili Trawangan the week before. Was like seeing a long lost friend catching up on the week in between our last gossip. He's off to Melbourne tomorrow so we swapped emails and will keep in touch. He'd just been diving at Liberty Wreck on east Coast of Bali so we took his advice and decided to head their ourselves - best decision ever.

Was a long drive to Tulumben but a wicked one at the same time, lots of amazing scenery and people to see along the way. We stopped at Padangbai on the way for a cool down swim which was lovely little bay with lots of diving activity. Later stopped at Candidasa which again is a mini paradise and I would love to go back there and stay over for a few days another time. I cleverly (I thought) I would copy Paul with taking off my wet shorts and dry them out the window - except get this Paul had given me $250 ozzie $$ (his money to buy a surfboard) to put in my pocket while we swam.....yep you guessed it, as we arrived at Tulumben I realised it was no longer in my pocket, yep blondey here must have been flapping it out across the east coast of Bali to anyone who wanted it. Such a muppet, I could have cried with my own stupidity. Paul was very cool about it and after driving back a little way looking for it wrote it off as a sign that he was not meant to buy a board....

The next 2 days went by in a blur of diving activity, was the most amazing diving I have ever, ever done so far. We did 3 dives, first one at Liberty Wreck which was just gob smackingly amazingly good with so many big fish everywhere you looked and such a wide variety of things to look at. Saw frogfish which we had never seen before along with heaps of other stuff. We did 3 dives a day and every time we go to the surface after a dive we would both say wow and shake our heads in amazement. Fantastic. Paul showed me how to use my camera properly and took it upon himself to just pick me up under water and put me into the right place to get a good photo, even if this did mean putting me within an inch of a vicious moray eel, lion fish etc and on the final dive within a metre of a huge barracude which was the same size as me. I think at that point I nearly wet myself in my wetsuit and screamed quite firmly and in high pitched tones "PUT ME DOWN STOP PUSHING ME" much to his amusement. We saw so many things we hadn't seen before including Pygmy seahorse, bumphead parrots, blue ribbon eel and just too many to even remember. Needless to say under his good guidance we got some fantastic shots which I promise to add to this site and Facebook asap. Thank god to be back on mainland with a fast internet connection!!

Because we were doing such a lot of diving and I had been introduced as "Princess" to Tony the guy who ran the school (after my dismissal of a lot of horrid rooms prior to our arrival further up the coast of Bali) we managed to secure the penthouse suite for the remainder of our stay which was sheer luxury and meant we could totally chill out with cold Bintang and watch DVDs on the wide screen tv in our own luxury area!!! Nice one.

Oh yeah I should mention that on my final dive I was getting slightly more confident at appproaching fish at close range on my own so swam off on my own to get a shot of a big bat fish. On getting closer I spotted a lion fish and went to get in position to get closer and went to put my hand down in the sand.....bad move....a stone fish (or so I thought - Carla u will remember what happened to that guy in Fiji who stood on one and how deadly they can be to touch) quickly moved out of the way.....so I began snapping that to show Paul how good I was...except the current (I maintain it was current not my poor buoyancy Paul) moved me into the feather star nasty evil things nearby. My hand itched for the rest of the dive badly and by the time I got to the surface was already swollen. After looking at the photo the stone fish turned out to be a scorpion fish which are also deadly so I was lucky it moved out the way of my hand. Anyway after the hand incident I also got eaten by what I thought were cute little black fish until Paul moved me out the way.... When we surfaced Paul (with his divemaster hat on) said what is the lesson learnt here - I said buy and wear a glove under water when diving with camera in case touch anything, he with a straight face said no numpty don't touch anything and ALWAYS shake the sand before putting hand down cos of things like stone fish. oops. Lesson learnt I fear as a few days on my hand is still itchy and swollen :-(

Sad goodbye from dive school, we had had a wicked divemaster showing us around which made such a difference and Tony was great too. Paul was offered a divemaster job if he wanted to return to Indonesia which was cool. We had a LONG journey back to Kuta to catch our flight to KL...ok mainly because I am such a terrible co-pilot and took us totally through the back streets rather than on the coastal road.

After such a horrid journey we then got charged lots for being overweight with our bags and asked to pay a departure fee too. Feeling slightly despondent by this point we drowned our sorrows by using our remaining Rupiah to buy Bintangs before our plane took off and true to fashion were the last to arrive on the plane itself and promptly fell into an alcohol induced sleep until we landed in KL and said our goodbyes as we both went in different directions. He to the Perhentian Islands (lucky lucky sod) and me to meet Charlie at KL. He then heads onto UK and Africa as I head to his homeland in Australia!! That said he called me later in evening to say problem with flight to Kota Bharu and the line went dead - let me know you got there ok?!!

Very very very excited to see Charlie it has to be said, my new partner in crime. Oh the fun we will have trying to climb that damn mountain. Another story to follow shortly. Have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bali and am sad to have not stayed as long as I would like so will DEF DEF be back to see more soon. I want to see so much more of Indonesia as a whole really.....Flores, komodo, Java, Moyo etc etc.

I promise to add photos soon. Keep emailing me, love hearing from everyone. Big hugs and happy wishes from a very happy Caroline!!!! xxx