Indonesia - Amed

After a grueling and 'interesting' public bus journey of 3 hours to do 100km, which involved three bus changes on buses with no air conditioning, shock absorbers or very thick foam on the seats and with more 'welding' than actual body panels - we finally arrived at Amed on the North East coast of Bali. One of the main reasons we came here was for the diving at the nearby village of Tulamben, where, for just a few sheckles you can dive on the wreck of the USS Liberty, which was sank by a Jap submarine in 1942. Here's a couple of shots from the dive, the second one is me inside the hull of the wreck.


This is Gunung Agung, the largest mountain on the island - and still active! It's been known to throw some hot ash up in the air every now and then.

The area has many villages living in the same way for years. Basically crops growing in the fields (mainly rice) and people working the fields in the old fashioned way. We didn't any tractors on the land anywhere!



This was just a short visit away from our 'base' at Sanur. Needless to say we didn't take the public bus back, for just 15 pounds we hired a driver to take us all the way back in a new air conditioned car - enough of the 'roughing it' business!

So - no takers to the last cup of tea question, what do the Balinese do with all that sea weed (I guess the 'google kid' couldn't get a hit! Last chance to answer it before the answer.... in the next blog of course!

Ps Yes Didge, I did write to my Aston Villa friends congratulating them on their excellent win!

Indonesia - Lembongan

First - thanks to everyone for the comments and e-mails from the last blog, some of them were very funny - some quite cheeky (you know who you are!!). But does anyone know where my Sister Ginny has got to?

A big mug of tea to Andy and Schmenny with a truly superb piece of monetary conversion - 2 Million Rupiah = about 100 pound!!

These pictures are from 11th Feb (it's Valentines day today, 14th - so it's off for some special treats after this!).
After a 40 minute speed boat ride we arrived at another Indonesian island (there are hundreds!) Lembongan. This is Suzanne walking down the main street about to do some serious bargaining for a room for the night . We managed to get our own room with bathroom and sea view for the enormous sum of 85,000Rp (yes that really is 4 pound). Lembongan is not very 'touristy', so it gave us a good insight into normal Balinese village life.
This is the little strip on the beach where most of the accommodation is, that's Elvis testing out the sun lounger!

This is a couple of kids playing on the beach while their parents work on the seaweed farms just in front. These kids were fascinated when I took their picture and them showed them it on the camera.









If you are all fed up of seeing gorgeous sunsets on the blog, just let me know - I'll ignore you anyway! This was from the balcony on our room.

We hired a moped from the lady who cooks in the place we were staying and took off around the island. This is a little village next to the mangrove beach (great snorkelling!) . Nearly all the people on Lembongan are involved in the 'seaweed' market. You can see the seaweed laid out to dry (behind the Elvis on motorbike picture) and the picture of the guy 'raking it out to dry'. Now for a very tricky little free cup of tea question, can anybody tell us what they do with the seaweed?

The next few pictures are from villages and temples from around the island and kids riding their bikes back from school. This picture is the very rickety bridge that connects a tiny island to Lembongan - nerves of steel (and a change of underwear) were required riding over here - the boards lifted and rattled as you went over them!


Finally, back to Bali. This is the mode of transport that people use to move around the villages and towns, it's called a 'Bemo'. They run up and down the front street constantly and when you need one you wave him down. A ride anywhere along the street will set you back a massive 2,000 Rp each. Yes, that's 10 pence! You have to be on your guard though because one driver tried to rip us off and charge 20 pence each! Does he know we're on a budget!! The Bemo normally seats about 4 adults, so as you have probably guessed, when its busy the Balinese can get about 20 people in one. Yes Mr Sandersfield this picture WAS taken by me and my incredibly long arms - cheek!!

The next day we decided to take some public transport (mmmm) up to the North East coast to a place called Ahmed to see one of the best dive sites in all of Indonesia. That'll be the next blog then!

Indonesia - Bali

Here we are in Bali - for the people who didn't take notice in the geography class at school, Bali is an island which is part of Indonesian. This is the first step towards the last part of our trip through Asia.
We left Oz on 31st Jan and for those of you who wonder how far behind the blog is, we are still in Bali now (10th Feb), but these pictures start from the 1st Feb!

We didn't really know how to start our time in Bali, but as luck would have it we received an e-mail from Kevin and Sarah who we met in Fiji (they're from England too), they were in Bali on their last night when we arrived, so we had a great night catching up with them and getting some top tips! It was really sad that they had to leave the next day (they actually changed their flights to stay longer but found out that they didn't have any time left on their visa and had to change the flights back!!).

We're staying in a place called Sanur, which we will be using as a base while we are here. This is the beach at Sanur, which is normally fairly quiet being out of season (this is the wet season, which means it normally rains once a day). That's a typical Balinese boat - a kind of canoe with stabilizers on.

At festival times the kids dress up in masks and this kind of pantomime dragon thing and come around the restaurants to collect money - this is me being 'caught' for a few thousand rupiah.






This was a little bonus, we booked a simple bungalow at this place (Flashback's) and when we arrived they had double booked - so we got the penthouse for the same price, it was a really superb place - in fact so good we changed the booking for five days (at the same price of course) and gave ourselves a real treat. We even had a DVD player and TV, haven't seen one of them for ages. You can get any DVD you like here for about 50 pence. Even DVD's that are not in the movies yet are on the stalls here!







Elvis showing off the swimming pool, which is salt water so there's none of those nasty chemicals!



















These pictures were taken on a Sunday when it seems all the Balinese head for the beach. There's also street vendors out selling satay chicken and bbq'd corn

Can you imagine if you parked your bike amongst this lot?











This picture is Elvis' paradise. It's a health spa which does all the massages and treatments a woman could desire.






Look we're rich beyond our wildest dreams! Each one of those notes is a 50,000 Rp note and there's 40 of them there, that makes us double millionaires. Ok - back to earth and a free cup of tea for the closest guess to how much that is really worth! (Dollars or Pounds will do).















New friends - this is Nuala and Lee from England (Lee is a big Aston Villa fan and he forced me to watch three football matches on the trot late one night/early morning) and Philipe and Georgia from Greece and Italy. Philipe and Georgia live in Corfu town so we've promised to look them up next time we visit the Greek Islands. After this we headed off on the 'Scoot' boat for a few days on another Indonesian island - Lembongan, but that's got to be another blog!

Fremantle - Last stop in Oz

Fremantle, which is an area just South of Perth just happens to be the last stop in Australia for us. It's a very laid back little town feel with lots of road side cafe's and bars - not that you can go to them when you're a backpacker or the budget could be seriously damaged!

We thought you'd all like to have a look at the 'accommodation' of your backpacker type. This is a six bed dorm. - Suz on the bottom and me on the top! You have to move around quiet like - in case you wake up the others - not easy when the beds squeak even when you breathe!

This is 'Little Creatures Brewery' - you all know the score by now.... have to test the beer..... make sure it's up to scratch... etc etc Elvis was sampling the 'pip-squeak cider', I was loving the 'pale ale'.

Don't try to fathom this game out - it's Australian rules football and like American 'football' there's hardly any use of the foot. This game makes even less sense than American football.

With only hours left in Australia we decided to visit the infamous 'Fremantle Prison'. We took a torch light tour and got all the gory details. Up until 1991 it was a maximum security prison but actually started its days as a convict prison.

Speaking of 'gory details' look at this - can you imagine having to do your business in a bucket every day - Elvis and I couldn't imagine it and we almost had to leave, the thought made us feel so ill. By the way, the bucket wasn't named Gordon!!

These are the real gallows used to execute many prisoners. The last execution was 1967.
The latest inmate of Prisoner Cell Block 'H' - Elvis on her way to cell B4.






After a successful escape from the prison, Elvis and I posed for a mug shot. Don't be fooled by the calm exterior, after this picture we made a dash for the train station, to catch a bus, to catch a taxi, to catch a plane to Singapore to catch a plane to Bali. Feeling exhausted? Well we made it and we're sitting by the beach now in Bali writing this - the next blog will have details of the Bali trip - so far! PS Ginny - no idea why the beaches are so empty, but don't say anything or it'll all change! POMS it would seem is Prisoners of her Majesty - well done to Shirley Sandersfield and James Sorrell - tea and scones to you both!!

Australia Day - In Perth

Australia Day is MASSIVE in Perth. It's their most important day of the year and they take it very seriously. We returned to check it out and report back to our bloggers! So what's it all about Alfie? Well it celebrates the day Australia was discovered 26th Jan 1770 (this should have been a cup of tea question!) and is slightly controversial. If your an Aboriginal, there's nothing much you want to celebrate about the arrival of the Europeans, in fact the indigenous people have their own name for the day, which I can't remember but reflects the sadness of their plight.

They have a bike race down at the banks of the mighty river Swan - if only I had brought my bike along.....

We went up to Kings Park to get an aerial view of the proceedings, including the air show (Sunderland has nothing to fear - our air show is still the best!)

Here we are having our 'picnic in the park' waiting for the fireworks - the place was packed!

I'm not keen on taking pictures of fireworks, but I tried so you all could get the idea. They had fireworks going off from barges on the river and fireworks off the top of the sky-scraper office blocks, all in time with a musical theme. It was very impressive.

This is the office blocks - the other pictures are from the barges on the river.

After Australia Day we move a few miles South to Fremantle for our last few days in Oz - then it's off to a whole different adventure, Indonesia! Bali is our first stop on the 31st January.

On the road - the last leg!

Are you getting fed up of seeing me drinking beer yet (you can tell I'm not)? As I've said before, it's an Englishmans duty to check how the Ozzies are getting along practicing our craft! This place was in Albany, Tanglewood Brewery - the last stop of our trip. (The beers were really good by the way - a lot better than some I've had at home even).

I've mentioned the coastline before - it's so beautiful - massive rock structures in the ocean. This place is called 'Natural Bridge' in Frenchman's bay, you can see the bridge in the next picture. It's difficult to get a sense of scale in these pictures but you can't beat seeing it with your own eyes - it is truly awesome.

These pictures are slightly out of time sequence (not that you would know that!) this place is called 'Elephant Rocks' - if you view them from a certain angle they look like a herd of elephants. The sunset that night was amazing - the colours were fantastic.

This was the last view from the bedroom before it went dark.

This picture (and the one above) is from a walk we did in the morning along the river at the Wilson Inlet in Denmark (which was actually before Albany but the pics are out of sync) then along a disused railway line - it was quite early in the morning and the light was really beautiful in the trees. There was also lots of birds and critters out - including this one in the next picture. There's nothing next to it to give it any scale, so I'll tell you it was approximately 5 feet long. It wasn't at all concerned by Elvis and I standing in front of it taking pictures - in fact, it looked so 'unbothered' I was beginning to think 'should we be concerned'. Anyway, we went our different ways without any drama as the Ozzies like to say!



We did have a different kind of drama the next day though! We were in Albany and had to have the van back in Perth the next day by 4pm at the latest - a distance of 600km. Well we got up early and set off the next day - stopped had breakfast, stopped again for coffee and cake and then realised that we were running out of time. So, like what often happens, the last part of the trip turned into a race. To cut a long story short, we made it by 10 minutes only, I was at the front of the office traumatised!

So the van went back and that was the end of our road trip around the Southern Curl - but we had a fantastic time and apart from reversing the van into a rock the size of a house (which I ridiculously claimed 'I couldn't see it') fortunately I was going so slow there was not even a scratch, there were no problems at all. I'm sure we will do this again someday. But for now, we had to prepare for Australia day in the best place to be on that day - Perth. Next blog of course!

Rosy Lee questions - I don't know why the Australians call us Poms - you were supposed to tell me that! The time I set fire to the forest and was making my escape (thanks for that reminder of my past Ginny) was 4:55pm - can you not see my watch? Looks like my impression of a gay Kangeroo hit the spot, and finally - yes you're right, the next few blogs will be 'catch-up' from Australia, because right now we're sitting in a cafe in Indonesia, Bali to be exact- having a great time but you'll all have to wait until we catch up before you see it! Thanks for all the comments - they had us laughing our heads off!