Hej allihopa! Hello everyone!

After almost three whole months on Bali and Lombok, which makes up for about half our trip so far, we have finally left the area and moved on to Singapore. We were sad to leave but also ready to move on, but before Bali let us go it turned out the island had one final treat in store for us.

Our Qantas flight was overbooked when we got to Denpasar airport, Bali on Sunday so we were asked to go on another flight the next day instead. For the inconvenience Qantas put us up in a 4-star hotel for the night with all mealsincluded (a la carte dinner, buffe breakfast, and lunch) and also US $ 250 dollar each for the inconvenience! For those of you who are not up-to-date on the exchange rates, that's about 125 British pounds or 1700 Swedish kronor! Not too bad hey!!! And the huge pool and gorgeous room wasn't too bad either!

Less than 24 hours later we were finally on our way to Singapore though. We arrived early Monday evening and it is now Wednesday and we are catching an early evening flight out of here to Krabi, Thailand (that's on the blog photo). Singapore is way too expensive when you're on a backpacker budget. The shopping isn't too cheap either.

Our time on Bali and Lombok was great. We really miss everyone in Buitan at the IHF educational center, but we will soon meet some of them again as we are going to go to Banda Aceh in the most northern part of Indonesia to work for a week at the IHF school and orphanage there. That was where the tsunami hit the worst and they look after 12 children who lost their families in the waves, and provide good education to so many more there too. It will be great to see Irna, the director of Banda Aceh, whom we met in Bali when she was visiting there. It will also be great to catch up with Deny, (who does just about everything that needs to be done for the IHF!), who was on Bali throughout our stay but who have now gone too Aceh too. We experienced so much in Butian: we met many great children and adults, we got to go to a traditional Balinese ceremony (Galungan) and wear gorgeous traditional Balinese clothing (see the photos!), we visited the friendly people in the extremely poor village of Songan, visited the local public school and saw some great dancing and acting performances put on by the students, and we also managed to do some more diving at Tulamben while we had a day off.

We got a special section in the photo albums for photos of our land- after Butain we went back to Lombok for a couple of days to sort paperwork out and it is our dream coming true!

Next we're off to Thailand. Fingers crossed that it won't rain too much on the West coast, as we'd really like to explore that region a bit more but it is monsoon time there now and could be quite wet. If that's the case though, we'll head over to the east coast and Koh Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan and the like. We got about three weeks there now, then a week back in Aceh, and then a few more weeks in Thailand yet again before we unfortunately have to go HOME!

Lots of love,

A&J