Rainy Season in bali...question mark???

Howdy from Indonesia...Many apologies for the delay in writing...I wish I had the excuse that I was really busy, or off in the jungle trekking, but sadly enough my excuse is that we've been doing a lot of relaxing and the thought of hitting up a computer seemed a little too taxing. But I've been taking some great mental notes and have a lot to tell!

So we flew from hong Kong through singapore to denspasar, on the island of Bali. A high-light from the singapore airport is free internet, which makes it one of Cam's favorite airports in the world. Agreed. Next we hopped in a cab to Kuta Beach, which I describe as an Australian Panama City beach, with an exotic twist I guess. There are australians everywhere on holiday trying to have the time of their life and it's funny because some of the indonesians have picked up their mannerisms...Imagine an indonesian guy saying 'mate' and 'g'day.' It's pretty funny. Andrew's mom visited Kuta in the 70s (not sure on the date..I'm hoping i'm not showing your age margot!) and she was telling us how there was absolutely NOTHING there...my have the times changed.

We also hopped around the island to a beautiful beach called Dreamland which is one of the nicest beaches I've been too. It's funny though you take a taxi and they literally drop you off on a deserted cliff. Next you take a lovely stroll over a garbage dump, complete with cows and burning garbage, to stumble upon this beautiful beach with breathtaking blue water. It has some surfing which cam and andrew tried, but I chose the lie-around option and best part about it was there's ladies that walk around giving you massages---2 bucks for 30 minutes. Fantastic.

After Kuta, we hopped on a 'speedboat' to Lembongan, another island known for surfing. The trip over is supposed to take 30 minutes, however, one of the engines wasn't working and ours took an hour. Cam claims this as a regular occurrence and has dubbed it 'Indonesian Time.' The same thing happened on our way to Gili (where we are now) but unfortunately that's a 2 hour trip, that ended up being 4 hours.

We stayed in lembongan 5 nights, at a wonderful place called Mainski Inn, which is right on the water with a lovely infiniti pool. And would you believe me that it's the equivalent of $8 US a night? One catch is that we were at the back of the resort, right by a rooster farm. And they are LOUD. Unfortunately, we also got the roosters who thought the sun rose at 3 in the morning when it's dark out. I guess they failed the rooster university, because last time I checked they were supposed to yell at daybreak...just saying. This resort is owned by an australian restauranteur and his food is fantastic. The food here and in Indo, in general, is incredible. We've been eating a lot of fish, with some indonesian rice noodle dishes thrown in. And of course because of Cam a lot of McDonalds. He claims you have to try it at least once (or 2 or 10) in every country (he found the best in the singapore airport obvi).

Like I said, Lembongan is known for surfing and on our first shot at surfing in Lembongan, Andrew and I got so caught up in surfing that we were out in the sun too long and got a bout of sun stroke. Let me tell you, it was an uncomfortable 24 hours with no AC. Our saving grace was that the bathrooms had been recently redone, which they were charging us an extra 2 dollars for. I claim it as the best $2 I've spent on this trip.

The resort was pretty quiet so for our last 2 days the owner headed back to bali for supplies, leaving the staff to 'run' the resort. They did a fine job, but they were joking around a lot, not wearing their uniform, sitting with us to eat, blasting porno in the reception hall. Pretty memorable that's for sure. They were obsessed with A-kon (for my parents generation he's a horrible rapper), but they were so entertaining trying to make out his words we toughed it out.

After 5 days, we headed back to Kuta and the next day took another lovely 'speedboat' to the Gili islands. Which are absolutely beautiful and so relaxing. They don't allow motor bikes or vehicles on the island (which compared to Kuta is a great relief) with the most popular mode of transportation being via horse carriage. We've opted to travel by foot primarily, but it's fun to have the horses come whizzing by. The gili islands are three small islands, near Lombok known for relaxing and its scuba diving. We've been doing plenty of relaxing so far, and plan to get certified for diving next week. Our favorite daily activity is going to the 'movie booths,'which are raised bungalows with lots of pillows, and a small tv to play DVDs. These booths are also usually at bars, so plenty of Bintang (local Indo beer yumm) accompany them. I think we've seen like 6 movies since we've been here (and have had plenty bintang).

So that brings me to today. We are going to bounce around Indo until our visa runs up on the 12th and I'm at the process of looking for super saver flights to figure out where were going next. It's pretty fun to let the airlines determine where were heading next. I also love the fact that if we like some place we can stay-- travelling without a timeline or time frame has been and will continue to be a really unique experience. ANYWAYs, i'm just looking through this and it seems as if I've written a novel, not a blog entry. For those of you who have made it this far, thanks and I promise to write more frequently and shorter entries :-)