Hi everyone!

We are just waiting for a flight to Darwin this evening and I thought it was about time we updated our whereabouts for the past month.

We arrived in Jakarta and immediately wanted to get out of Jakarta. The traffic was intense, it was very difficult to even cross the road and finding our way around was a nightmare as we had still not managed to find an indonesia lonely planet guide. We stayed in Jakarta for a bit longer than we had intended, as Zoe was a little bit ill and the flights to Bali were fully booked for a few days. We got accustomed to the crazy roads a bit more in that time and found a few nice spots to eat so our time there wasn't wasted. The bombings happened whilst we were there too, we actually drove past the Marriott in a taxi on the day.

We caught our flight to Bali and stayed for a few days in the main surfer town, Kuta. As we are here in the peak holiday season for Australians, the streets are packed with sunburnt tattoo'ed ozzies and local street hawkers selling pirated dvds, i love bali tshirts and of course fake ray ban sunglasses! Our plan was to rest for a few days then catch a ferry to Lombok (the neighbouring island) and rent a jeep.

After an extremely long ferry ride over to lombok, we found all the accomodation in our budget range to be booked out. It was just so busy everywhere. Thankfully we found a room for a night which was not too pricey and rented a Suzuki Jimmy Jeep for the next 6 days.

We drove round the entire south west coast and found some of the most beautiful beaches ever. Miles and miles of powdery bleach white sand, big crashing waves off shore and crystal clear turquoise waters in the shallows. The best thing about these beaches was the absence of people, sunbeds, umbrellas etc. Just us and our Jimmy jeep (which was starting to fall apart due to the horrendous road conditions!) On our journey we came across many villages whose main trade was seaweed. It was all laid out drying in the sun with the local women tending to it. The children would surround our car reciting the little English they knew. In one particularly nice spot, we parked in the village and surrounded by about 20 kids walked down to the beachfront. The waves were huge - I decided to have a quick dip and ended up being knocked over by the wave in front of all the kids who couldn't stop laughing at the big clumsy white man!

It took us 2 days to get to Kuta in Lombok which is on the south coast, mainly because we got really lost on the way. However, it was a beautiful drive round the coast but the road was really boneshaking. We were so thankful that we had rented a jeep not a car, we would simply not have made it! In Kuta we stayed in a lovely place called 'Mimpi Manis' (it means sweet dreams in bahasa indonesia). It was a homestay where we were with a indonesian family and it was really hard to leave because they were so accomodating. The day before we were due to leave and head up north the car broke and a bunch of locals had to help us get it started again to get it back to our homestay. We called the rental guy and he agreed to bring us a new one. It was either that or we left it there so he had no choice!

We drove up north further, to the outskirts of South East Asia's highest volcano - Mount Rinjani. We reached a tiny town called Tetebatu where we went on a long walk through paddy fields and tobacco plantations to reach a huge waterfall. I swam in the freezing mountain water and held my head under the waterfall. Apparently it is supposed to prevent baldness, not something that I think I need help with but anyway!

We got back safely to Sengiggi (the harbour of Lombok) and took the car back. We then caught a boat over to the Gili islands. They were no doubt lovely islands. We did a dive off 'Manta point' which was good, although the Mantas seemed to be hiding that day. After seeing the beaches in Lombok Zoe and I agreed that they were the beaches of all beaches and could not be beaten, which made the Gili island beaches pale in comparison. The restaraunts were really great in number, quality and variety. We had sushi one night and barbecued red snapper the next.

So we did the ferry mission back to Bali and got the shuttle bus to Ubud, the culture capital of Bali. If I were to retire now, I think I could easily do it in Ubud. The first day we took a walk around the monkey forest and watched the tourists getting mugged by the naughty macaque monkeys. We know to keep our distance from these fellows, they will have your camera in a flash no pun intended. If they do come too close, brandishing a large flipflop menacingly seems to do the trick with the smaller ones at least!

The next days were spent doing a number of strenous things - drinking herbal tea in restaraunts set back in padi fields, browsing the amateur art galleries, going to the art museums, watching traditional dances like the "legong" dance, attending a carnival and doing a cooking course. Our homestay host turned out to be the retired cultural and development director of Ubud, so he took us to many of the performances and even took us inside the palace where his daughter lives. We felt so privileged as no tourists are allowed in usually. His wife made us palm sugar pancakes and fresh fruit salad with home grown papaya and cocunut every morning. Generally the food is incredible in Bali, so many different spices and flavours.

Now you can see why we stayed a week in Ubud!

That brings me finally to now. We are back in Kuta, Bali and have been surfing for the past two days. Both Zoe and I stood up on our first go which impressed our teacher.

We are off to Perth for 5 days, then to Cairnes, Brisbane and Sydney for 2 weeks. We will then be flying to New Zealand to buy a camper van as a temporary house and be working on a big farm in Christchurch.

We miss you all very much and are looking forward to seeing everyone in 3 months time!

Love Rich and Zoe