So we're back on the road.........after a sad farewell to Sydney our lovely home for the last year we crammed our backpacks full (never did get traveling light!) and flew back to Bali.This time we stayed in Kuta and having only driven through previously it was a bit different arriving late at night into the heart of the backpacker area. It was full of Brit's and Ozzie's staggering around hammered all about 10 year younger than us, we felt very old and a bit square! From Kuta we made our way to Senggigi, Lombok and had 5 days just doing beach stuff - snorkeling, swimming and eating, it was just what we needed, particularly Fred after a hectic month leading up to leaving - a few days on the beach chilling we were back in the "zone". From Senggigi we got a boat to Gili Trawangan - one of those local boats that doesn't leave till they have crammed half the population of Lombok on there plus i think most of the poultry!!

Gili T was a lovely place, full of great bars and restaurants, packed with dive shops and lots of cafe's selling "special" mushroom pizzas. The beaches were nice and they had pretty good snorkeling. We signed up to do five dives having read lots on the good quality of diving here....unfortunately it didn't quite meet the descriptions we read, the corals and fish we fine but nothing amazing. We did see lots of turtles, massive puffa fish and we also saw a few white tipped reef sharks that were pretty cool but dare I say almost a little tame to all the divers. Still it was a fun place and we met some nice people there.

After the average diving we were craving something a bit more special underwater and had heard a lot about south Lombok so decided to head back to the mainland and made our way down to another group of islands (Gilli's) where apparently there were amazing corals and macro life.......we were not disappointed. The diving was stunning much like what we had seen last year in Bunaken, Sulawesi. We were with a great dive shop as well and had two days of diving and stopping for lunch on little islands it was lovely - hopefully you'll get what i mean from the pictures. The area itself was quiet, not the best beaches ever and no internet, no phone reception , barely any warungs - the first place we stayed didn't even have Bintang!!! but the diving was worth it.

After S.Lombok we headed back to Bali and up the east coast to dive a shipwreck and check out the area. We started in Candi Desa which is a bit of a chavvy old biddy holiday place, lots of large burnt old ladies with gold jewelry and tats - nice! No, i'm being mean it wasn't that bad we actually stayed quite a while here as we found a lovely place to stay that was dirt cheap and i got bit ill, yes i'm sure you'll all sniggering!! So it was a nice place to stay and recover.

In between we hired a motorbike and packed a small bag and headed up the coast to Tulamben so we could dive the U.S.A.T Liberty, a US cargo ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese during WWII.The first dive we did was fantastic, a really cool shipwreck in its own right but then it was covered in amazing corals and an abundance of fish and macro life. Unfortunately my bug kicked in that morning so I spent the rest of the time in bed but Fred did a night dive there and a really early morning one and said they were brilliant as well - definitely one we'll be visiting again.

From Bali we flew to Singapore for a quick stopover and then over the border to Malaysia........