Amelia and I returned back down south to continue with the next stage of our visa extension. Our drive from Amed was relatively straight forward apart from a very near miss – a completely oblivious local lady decided to pick something off the road without the slightest regard for traffic. My heart was in my mouth as we passed at what must’ve been literally millimetres from her head!
Sanur is only half an hour down the road from the immigration office and also the main gateway to ‘Nusa Lembongan’ – an island twenty or so kilometres east. With Nusa Lembongan being the next place on our ‘itinerary’, Sanur was the ideal place to base ourselves.
We arrived at ‘Gustav Bali Homestay’ during early afternoon, it was a nice cheap place (hard to find in Sanur) with great reputation. After checking in, we went to explore the surrounding area on foot.
Sanur is Bali’s oldest upscale resort area and a hotspot for middle-aged and older families. It had a relaxed feel to it, but with its expensive restaurants and beachside resorts we felt a bit out of place.
The rest of our afternoon was spent relaxing on the beach and watching a variety of different kites hovering around, from the kite surfers out on the water to the locals on the beach playing with huge manmade kites (put together from bamboo, string and some sort of fabric). I found it a little unsettling at times, having a seemingly out of control 10ft rickety kite jerking back and forth a few feet above our heads, but Amelia was quite content ‘resting her eyes’!
Finding a place within our budget for dinner proved easier than we thought. Just down the road from our homestay was a place called ‘Coconut Tree’. It was packed to the rafters but luckily there were two girls on a long table happy for us to join them.
The food was great and the portions were big, but what really made the place in my view was the extra strong coconut mojitos!

Needing to drop Faith back in Uluwatu for the second time required an extra mode of transport for the return journey. With me having the only experience driving a car in SEA, Amelia decided to ride the moped we’d hired from a man down the road. So with Amelia on the moped and me driving Faith, we drove in convoy to the immigration office and completed the second stage (payment and photos) of our visa extension. Why this can’t be done during the first stage is beyond me!
After returning Faith back to the garage, Amelia was more than happy to return to being pillion again and have me ride the hour or so back to Sanur. The journey was going well, up until we saw the Polisi pulling 'random' people off the road for licence checks. Unfortunately, this time the fact that we were British didn’t work, and I was told to follow the ‘polisiman’ around the corner to discuss my options. Driving on most of SEA’s roads without an ‘International Driving Permit’ is against the law. The ‘fine’ in Indonesia is 250,000 rupiah (£12.50), but with a little bit of “sorry officer” here and “I didn’t know officer” there, I managed to get away with coughing up just 100,000, which of course went straight into his back pocket.
Back in Sanur, we found a relatively new restaurant offering some promotional pricing on their menu. What stood out for both Amelia and I, was the fish and chips. At only 25,000 rupiah (£1.25ish) we couldn’t resist! When the plate full of homemade chips and freshly cooked fish arrived with tartare sauce we were more than happy with our choice. It really did go down a treat!
Backpacking inevitably takes its toll on your clothing, and it’s at this point that even I have to ‘bite the bullet’ and purchase some new clothes. So I ‘dragged’ Amelia along to go shopping at a nearby market along Sanur beach front.
Dinner was back at the Coconut Tree for some very hearty curry noodle soup. Afterwards we returned back to the room for our new ‘nightcap’ (thanks to my sisters) of vodka with ginger ale.

With not much to see or do for us around Sanur, we decided to have a productive day blogging, only making a brief stop for a small lunch.
Having slogged through a ‘hard’ day of ‘work’, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at a popular warung a few hundred metres down the road.
The place was called ‘Lilla’ and served some delicious food at a digestible cost. Amelia had a very ‘western’ dish of tuna in garlic butter, served with boiled new potatoes and salad. I had curried fish cooked in banana leaf served with rice. Surprisingly the ‘western’ dish in an Indonesian warung was the better choice!

After a week of toing and froing, ‘hanging around’ and bribing the polisi, the day had finally come! We returned to the immigration office, after a morning of more blogging, to collect our passports with their new updated visa. Disappointingly, after all the effort and money it was just a mere stamp.
With the Polisi nowhere to be seen on our way back, we decided to spend our 'bribe fund' on a very refreshing watermelon and mint fruit shake, before returning back to the homestay for another few hours blogging.
The food, although a little expensive at Lilla’s, was good enough to entice us back for another meal. This time Amelia went for an Indonesian style curry, which was again (annoyingly) better than my dish.

With our new extended visas and dodgy stomachs (maybe Lilla’s food wasn’t so good), we boarded a speed boat to Nusa Lembongan…