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We had booked ahead for our room in Kuta and thought it looked pretty nice! When we turned up though, it was a different story. It was a very grim, dirty and dark room! When we sat on the bed, it collapsed underneath us - well, of course, this made James go on his war path. He stormed off to the reception and demanded we be moved!! Out of nowhere, the nicer rooms (the ones we thought we had booked over the internet!) became available!! Thankfully!!!

Kuta is the main beach town in Bali. It is the destination of many, many Aussies on their summer hols!! In that sense it could be comparable to Benidorm!! Every evening we were surrounded by lots of groups of 'youths' (!) drinking and falling all over the place!! However, by the day the big draw card is the endless beaches. We spent our first few days chilling on the beach, watching the surfers, getting pedicures (well, I did anyway!) and swimming in the sea. After our jungle adventures, this was just what we needed!!

Next, we visited Ubud further inland on the island. We had decided to splash out for a bit here, especially after our terrible room in Kuta, so we checked into a 5 star resort for 2 nights. We seemed to be the only people staying in the hotel and had the place to ourselves. The room was absolutely beautiful: four poster bed, sunken bath tub, rainforest shower, all overlooking the infinity pool!! The hotel grounds were surrounded by rice terraces and it was so quiet and tranquil.

In Ubud there is a Sacred Monkey Forest that we didn't actually go into, but walked past several times. As monkeys do, they often climb over the wall and into the main streets for a wander. After our previous encounters with monkeys, we kept our distance!! The town itself is little more than one main road, which is a cluster of Balinese shops and restaurants. We managed to get a fair amount of Christmas shopping here (so keep your eyes peeled, people!!) and ate some good food and drink. We tried a bottle of Indonesian wine one night - our first wine in a long time! Unfortunately, adding this to our final bill came with a bit of embarrassment!! This was the night Ubud had a power cut!! The whole town was in darkness, so restaurants used candles and the shops shut up early! Unbeknown to us, it also cuts out ATMs - you can probably guess what happened - we didn't have enough money to pay our bill and had no way of getting more!! In the end we had to leave James' driving license and go back the next day!!

After 2 days of luxury, we headed back to Kuta and back to the reality of cheap rooms again! We checked into Hotel Lusa and had to leave the next day - I think this room was probably worse than our first hole! It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in weeks! Fortunately, we found a much nicer place and stayed out our holiday there.

On our last day we treated ourselves to a day at the Waterbom water park! This is the first time we had been to a water park together, so it was lots of fun! The park is only small, but it was pretty quiet as well so we didn't queue for more than five minutes! Some of the rides were terrifying!! After the first slide, I was shaking for about 10 minutes it was so bad!!! But all in all, a great way to end our Bali holiday!