Tuesday 13th Nov

Today has been pleasant and hot, as usual. Lovely lovely. Better than the wind and cold you are having, we hear!

We have been conned a couple of times today! Firstly we decided that it would be nice to leave North Bali, although we loved it to bits, and travel to the South East, to a resort called Sanur, one of the mpst popular places to stay in Bali. In order to save money we encorporated the trip down (3 hours) with a tour of one of the volcanoes and the rice paddies. (costing $50) We were picked up and the only time we got out of the car was to take a photo once. The rice paddy tour consisted of driving down a road with rice growing and the tour guide saying änd thereś the rice!!!"Really????????? We were expecting to be walking up the volcano, practically in the lava, or walking near the rice fields, anything except staying in the truck (with no air conditioning) and seeing the sights zoom by at 40mph. Still, it was better than walking to Sanur! A taxi would only have been about $25 so we were duped a little.

When we arrived at Sanur we went to the beach, which is golden and sandy. My (Kerry) feet were hurting so much, as my sandals have made my feet bleed like crazy. I was gagging for some ordinary flip flops (mine were packed and sent to Bedford ages ago!), so thought id grab myself my first bargain of the trip. I went to the first stall (out of what looks like hundreds!) and they could see my poor feet coming from a mile off. They actually had flip flops in a size 2, which to me is a near miracle by itself! When I asked how much they were they said 900Krp (about 5.50GBP) We haggled him down to 600rp, which I was fine about. Anyway, they same pair were 16,000 in the supermarket a few shops down. Luckily itś not a lot of money to use and the pain they have saved me is considerable anyway!

The beach is very peaceful. There are no waves, due to a natural coral, which breaks the waves further out to sea, so the water is crystal clear and warm, like bath water. The area is nicer than Kuta, a little quiter, but there are taxi drivers are based here again, as their were in Kuta (but weren´t in Lovina). After the 100th beep all you want is quiet and the should-be quiet road here turns into something worse than London! There actually wouldn´t be any traffic if there were no taxis!

The sun sets away from us, so we can´t see the amazing skyline that Lovina offered, with it´s pinks and blues (at which point I always think of you Jodie, if youŕe reading this.)

To be honest the hotel is beautiful. Lovely pool, great location etc etc but it´s not Lovina. We both fell in love with that little town, to the point where we shall be getting a shuttle bus back in a couple of days!!!

In our room the bed is covered with the most minging blanket youe ever seen and the bathroom´s pretty grim (although we´ll see worse in Thailand I´m sure!!)

The food´s cheap here, about 3pounds feeds both of us, with a beer thrown in for good measure.

In the evening we went for a walk and bumped into Kate, a girl we met in Kuta, who is traveling my herself. brave thing! We spent an hour talking whilst a band played in the background, in a nearby bar. They played a tune by John Mayer, one of our favourite artists and it was lovely to hear one of our songs all the way around the world.

Tuesday 14th Nov

Today has been an ultra chilling day. We have spent the majority of the day tanning ourselves by the pool, listening to our ipods, reading the last of the magazines we bought at Heathrow and generally doing not a blooming lot!! We have booked our tickets to Lovina, for tomorrow morning and have booked a room at the same hotel as before for 6 nights. Hell, why not live in luxury whilst its so cheap? On the bus it only costs 10GBP for both of us to get there. The room there costs the same as this one and neither of us like the commercial side of Bali much.

We are going to eat soon at a nearby reastaurant and then pack our rucksacks up again, as the bus picks us up at 9:45am.

The internet connection is good in the South but rubbish in the North, so bear with us for the next installment....