Saturday 25th November

Hello peeps! Well it's been a fairly eventful couple of days since our last update! We travelled down from Lovina to Ubud on the 22nd November by shuttle bus, which took us about 2 and a half bone shattering hours in a vehicle seemingly built minus suspension. Once we got to Ubud we had a gentleman asking us to stay at his inn so we decided we would take a look as it sounded a lot cheaper than some of the other places we had been staying. The problem was that they gentleman only had a motorbike to take us there on so he called his friend up to lend him a hand. A few minutes later we were both gripping on for lives as the riders held on to our massive backpacks on the front of their bikes! It must have been quite a sight but fortunately the inn was only a few streets away.

The name of the inn was the Tengeh Inn and although much more basic than our previous dwellings, was still quite a charming little place with the rooms almost resembling a stone tower in a castle! It even had a bathroom that was outside on a varanda with only a tone wall between us and the next rooms bathroom to protect our modesty! We decided to head out to the Sacred Monkey Forest just 15 minutes walk down the road and see some of the wild monkeys there and maybe even decide to throw a few bananas for them so long as they remained well behaved! We paid our entry money, which was fairly cheap, purchased a bunch of small bananas and then made our way along the pathway of the forest. We soon reached a central area, dominated by a huge tree and quickly noticed a number of mischievious looking monkeys running and swinging down the hillside towards us. In my panic I quickly hurled 4 of the bananas at the monkeys whilst simultaneously shouting at Kerry not to get too close to them. The forest guides then approached me and explained to me that the monkeys were actually fairly tame and it was perfectly safe for me to hand them directly to the monkeys. I did as I was instructed and found out that the monkeys are actually quite gentle really. After this we watched a number of the monkeys swimming and fighting each other in a small pond built for them which was pretty funny, and then we made our way around the rest of the forest.

After the forest we walked for quite a few hours around Ubud and finished the evening by both getting an hour long massage each and then grabbing some food in one of the cheap restuarants. Upon walking back to our room we had to face the rather scary experience of walking down a dark back alley filled with about 10 barking and howling dogs which isn't something I plan on repeating in a hurry. The next day we woke early and met our driver to be taken back to the airport for our flight out to Perth.

Our flight to Perth was comfortable and only took 3 and a half hours, which seemed to go by in no time. We landed in Perth and around 4 in the afternoon and then spent the next few hours hanging around the airport while Kerry attempted to sort out problems with her mobile phone involving lots of phone calls to Vodaphone back in England. Things finally got sorted and we made our way by taxi towards the city and asked the driver to drop us off anywhere where we could find a large number of hostels. He dropped us off in an area just out of the city called Northbridge and we then spent a desperate few hours trying to find somewhere that had any beds left for us. We finally found a place called Aberdeen Lodge which had two beds left in a mixed dorm. He showed us to our room and I thought we were going to die of weed inhilation when he opended the door and the floor could not be seen due to the new carpet consisting of every item of clothing owned by the people sharing the room. The place was an absolute dump but we had no choice but to stay there. We locked our stuff away in the shoddiest lockers you have ever seen and decided to go across to the nightclub opposite the lodge as it was offering free food for backpackers. We got in there and discovered thatthe free food being offered was the best steak we have ever tasted and it was completely free! The theme of the night was Salsa dancing so we hung around and watched loads of really good dancers Salsa dancing to a really good live band! We got back to our room at about 1 in the morning and got about 3 hours sleep due to the constant people walking in and out of the room.

The next day we got up early and walked across a couple of streets to the main city centre and wandered around the shops and a fair number of malls doing a fair bit of window shopping. We then wandered down across a park towards the harbour to see the famous Bell Tower, which actually doesn't look anything like a bell tower, and then continued walking along the harbour shore line under the Narrows Bridge heading for Kings Park. We eventually found the entrance to the park which was a steep set of stairs known as Jacobs Ladder. As we were struggling to walk to the top, keep-fit fanatics continuously ran past us with faces gradually growing redder and redder. Kings Park was nothing short of stunning; beautifully landscaped grass areas, giant gum trees and a number of memorials that were genuinely very touching to stop and read. Best of these memorials included a plaque dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Bali bombing where 88 of 202 killed were from Australia. The plaque was deliberately placed in line with an 'axis' wall featuring beautiful statements carved into the marble. Every October 12th, the sun's alignment on the horizon shines through a narrow section of the wall alighting the plaque with 'rays of hope' for those who lost loved ones on that fateful day. Another tribute that was also very appropriate was a large circular plinth, upon which is a flame continually burning to commemorate the Australian lives lost in the two World Wars 'lest we forget'. Around the side of the plinth are the simple but striking words 'let silent contemplation be your offering'.

The park totals 400 hectares comprising a large botanical garden, a stomach turning tree-top walk across a purpose built bridge and a water garden. We saw a number of wild birds as we walked around including Parrots, Ravens and an Albatross. After such a beautiful walk we walked back to the hostel with heavy hearts thinking about the hell hole we were going to have to sleep in that night. We ended up spending the night grabbing a few beers from the local off licence and chatting to a Kiwi guy called Simon. We quickly established that all the people in our dorm were on some form of illegal drug and we felt pretty concerened about staying there again. A highlight of the night did include a 7 foot Kiwi guy called Tim (nice but dim) coming in to the room extremely drunk and walking in to the door. Simon then decided it would be a good idea to suggest that Tim was so big that he could probably take the door off its hinges if he ran at it hard enough. Tim took this as a challenge and despite our protestations ran at the door full pelt from the other side of the room and shoulder charged the top panel of the door smashing the panel across the hallway narrowly missing not only the manager of the hostel but the deputy manager too, who just so happened to be walking down the corridor at the time. They immediately asked him what the hell he was doing to which his response was to say that he couldn't open the door! My god it was funny but what a goon! He then spent the next hour attempting to hammer the panel back on to the door. Thankfully he eventually succeeded and he left us alone to go to a rave on the beach. We then managed to get a few hours sleep before being awoken by one of our room mates smoking some white stuff out of a wine glass. But this point we were literally counting down the hours until we could get out of this drug crazed area. It seems to be a pretty bad problem in Northbridge, which seems lovely during the day but at night seems to have a nasty underbelly that isn't pretty at all.

Today we woke up from a not so pleasant sleep with the biggest smiles on our faces yet!!! We were leaving the "Hotel Paradiso" (Rick Mayal's Bottom movie) to head off for pastures new. After packing our bags and reeceiving our deposits back for the locker keys (that never locked anything) we headed to the train station with our dead horses on our backs. It only cost $3.20 each for the train to Fremantle and we were both hoping that the hostel we'd booked that previous night (after rigorous intenet review searching and asking the guy at the hostel a million questions over the phone) would be better.

The train only took 20 minutes to arrive at Fremantle Station, upon which we headed for a road called Beach Avenue, where we thought the hostel was. By the time we got there we were knackered and our backs were soaked from sweating so much. When we looked up we were at a Hostel called "Australian Backpackers" NOT "Sun Dancers"! We'd gone to the wrong blooming hostel and our one was another 20 minutes walk in the direction we came from, in fact had we have gone the right way in the beginning we would have been there in no time at all!! By this point we were a little annoyed with ourselves and gasping for a drink. The only salvation would come from the hostel being plush. We spotted the hostel on the High Street as it has 38 rooms, so you can't really miss it! The outside was decorated nicely and the reception bar weas quiet so the first impressions were good.

The experience of being here is exactly what hostelling should be like. There is free tea and coffee, free internet access, free spa and pool, free snooker and a no smoking policy throughout. Everyone is over 25 (or so it appears) so the atmosphere is more grown up and pleasant. There is a massive kitchen here and we shall be going to the supermarket tomorrow to buy some cheap grub to eat as we have been naughty tonight and have eaten the devil's food (McDonalds). There are a variety of graffitti designs on the wall and we have a double room to ourselves. After last nights escapades we needed some space from inhumanity!

We spent today pottering around Fremantle, which is like New Orleans, with perfectly maintained buildings and an oldie-worldie ambience to this quaint little port and ex-whaling town. We walked around a nice building, an ex gaol, called The Roundhouse, which was the first public permanent building in West Australia. We booked a trip to Rottnest Island, which is a half an hour boat ride away and apparently has the best beaches around for tomorrow morning at 7:30am. We bought some cheap snorkelling masks as it is expensive to hire them and we will need them for NZ, Fiji and Thailand anyway. As we have more free time now we decided to buy a new book each. To save money we wanted to but a second hand one but weren't that interested in the titles. As we were walking to our 3rd second-hand book store I told Darren about a book that I half read in 1998. I couldn't remember the title or autor but knew the story line (vaguely). He lost interest in my rambling after a few seconds and we headed into a packed thrift book store containing 1000's of books. Believe it or not the first book I saw was the one that I was talking about! It was called "Weaveworld" by a guy called Clive Barker. It felt like fate so I bought the book, although it was fortune at $9 second-hand!

Tonight we went to the beach as there was a play and fireworks display. We missed most of the play (various dances and acrobats by school children) but caught the fireworks, which started off beautifully in various shades of green and pink, but culminated in the massive explosion of the boat on which the fieworks were being fired from! There were a lot of flames! The night sky shone in hues of orange and yellow, which tied in nicely with the schools pirate theme! We don't think the boat exploding was planned as the fireworks display ended immediately. Noone was hurt but there was quite a crowd standing around laughing! After that we walked back to the hostel and got on the internet to abuse the free usage. Needless to say that is where we are at the moment.

You may have noticed we have managed to upload some photos now so we hope you enjoy them! It is coming up to 11pm so we shall say goodbye for now as we have an early start. Night night x