We have spent the last 16 days in Bali.  The first ten in Amed on the East coast and the rest in Sanur.

Amed was a lovely place to stay - really quiet, hardly any tourists.  Out hotel was built into the side of a mountain and had an infinity pool looking over the bay.  Very beautiful.  The local fishermen would take their boats out every morning at sunrise and every evening at sunset to catch fish.  Tiny little boats with brightly coloured sails.

We took a tour of the area and visited Besakih the largest temple in Bali, there were some ceremonies going on and people were putting out their offerings to the gods.  We also drove through the rice fields which were terraced up the hillsides and beautiful and green.  Finally we visited the Royal Water Palace at Tirta Ganga.  It was really good to see how local life is carried out in Bali, we saw numerouse wedding ceremonies and the villages making offerings to the gods.  All of them dressed in gold and brightly coloured sarongs.

We took a day trip to Ubud when we were in Sanur and had a wander aroud the town.  In the afternoon we went for a massage...which was interesting.  We had a full body massage, then a body scrub then they covered us in yoghurt and then we had a floral bath.  Very relaxing, although Simone ended up being covered in bruises afterwards.

We have had to barter a few times for some things.  Jim is pretty rubbish at it so its been left to Simone to sort out the bargaining and agree a price.  Jim feels too sorry for them and can't bare to bargain over a few pence.  He says his Dad is really good at it (typical yorkshireman) Gerry you will have to give him some tips.....

Anyway we are off to Ko Samui today, have a really long flight ahead of us, flying to Hong Kong then Bangkok and then we have to hang around for 6 hours for our flight to Samui....the white sand and blue sea will be worth it though:-)