October 2016 Bali Trip – Day 6 & 7

All this doing nothing makes you tired! We did bugger all today. Up lateish, but just in time to see a ceremony going past our bungalows. We were told it was one family, and they were carrying the blessing from the main temple for a new small temple they are building.

We scoot off to the hill for some breaky. Half the fam are already at the Deck, but we decide to try the newly renovated Ware Ware. We really enjoyed dinner here last year and their new renovations and rooftop deck look gorgeous. Food is only ok – standard bali breaky type food…the deck is far better. I should have stuck with Nasi or Mie Goreng for breaky as I remember them being really good when we came for dinner last time.

We decided to go for a ride and set off home in the other direction. Intended to go to Mushroom Bay but went the other way – and thought stuff it we will do it later. Morning was then spent in the pool waiting for Mel and Lee to arrive on the boat. They did so at about 11am, and were straight in the pool as well. A few Radlers were had along with swimming and then some relaxing…and repeat.

We had organised to meet the rest of the crew at Putu’s Warung near the Ceningan bridge for Lunch. There was 16 of us so it took a while to get food out but that was to be expected. Food was quite good, but Nyomans is better I think. Putu’s is No.2 on TA. The boys wanted their Rendang super spicy, and they didn’t believe them until they bought out a chilli and Lee just munched it down no problems. They were laughing hysterically then and I think they decided then that they were going to try and make it as spicy as they could! They managed to defeat Brad (which I haven’t seen before) and he could only eat half of his serve. Lee finished his but then was bright red for about the next hour!

Mel and I shared a not so spicy Beef Rendang, and I got a Nasi Goreng as well. The Rendang was very nice, and I would go back just for that! The rest of the food was pretty good too.

Back to the pool, and more drinkies. Have figured out the Radlers are only 2% – so they don’t give you a great buzz but I’m cool with that.

Everyone was fading fast, so most of them went to Mahagiri Beach Club which is only about 200m away. We decided on some take away from there as Lee had crashed out, and Mel wasn’t far off after their late night flight in and big day in the sun today. Three pizzas and two spag bol was $55. Food was average. I wouldn’t bother with this place unless it’s for the pool and Beach Club…which looks pretty.

Put on another DVD and only saw the first half an hour or so before I crashed.

Day 7

A bit of a sleep in again today, and then we set off to the Deck for Breaky. I forgot how good their food really is!! The skillet eggs were so yum! It’s not cheap at all with our breaky costing over $40. But it is really good.

Most of the group went snorkelling. Mel has a bit of a flu which is affecting her ears and doesn’t want to put her head in the water yet. So we took Mel and Lee exploring the island instead. First stop was Mushroom Bay where we booked Hai Beach Bar and grill for dinner tonight for 17 people.

Then onto dream beach for a swim. It’s so rough that we don’t stay long. We can see another beach over on Ceningan from Dream Beach so we set off to find it. Over the yellow bridge, and then down every little lane trying to get to it. We stop at Twilight restaurant for a drink on our travels. We are the only ones there after a table leaves as we arrive. It takes about 20 minutes for them to bring out a Bintang a coke and a juice. Wouldn’t recommend.

We set off again and finally make it to Blue lagoon viewing point. Looks so gorgeous! We turn around and notice another little lane that goes what looks like down to a beach…woohoo!! We found it! Secret Beach is accessed through Secret Beach Huts…and is gorgeous! The water is quite cool because of the cave letting through water from the open ocean. We explore the rock pools and see a couple of sea snakes, some weird starfish looking things and lots of little crabs.

 

Starting to get hungry so we head for home and Nyomans Warung. I am leading our scooter pack and at some stage on the way I turn back and notice I have lost them. I continue on to the Warung, and decide to wait for them there. My sister and family are already having lunch there so I sit and join them. About ten minutes later Brad arrived with Mel – Lee has a flat tyre and is getting it fixed. $15 later and he is sorted.

Brad and I shared the fresh snapper, prawns and more spring rolls for lunch today. Again so yummy! Back to the pool for a few hours before we have to get ready for dinner. The sunburn on my back is starting to come out…uh oh! I kept reapplying to my shoulders and front but didn’t reapply my back and it is burnt to a crisp. Bugger 😞

The trip to dinner is eventful. We get a truck to come and pick up half of our crew while the rest scooter. Some tough guy in an FJ cruiser doesn’t want to wait when the road is too narrow for two vehicles to go through at the same time and tries to drive into our truck, revving his car loudly and holding down his horn and yelling. Our driver freaks out and chucks it in reverse and doesn’t look and just goes straight back…into all the guys behind us on scooters. We scream at him to stop, and he does so before anyone is hurt. Scary stuff though. The tough guys is still holding down his horn and yelling at our driver to move…so we start getting the Guys on scooters to move out the way and tough guy squeezes through and just about runs over some of our group. Dad yells at him to watch out before he loses it and starts screaming at us. We are on our way again, before tough guy comes screaming back up behind all of the scooters following us. Luckily Brad and Lee were at the back and I don’t think he was keen to take on 17 of us along with two pretty big guys…he eventually stopped following us but not before we were all pretty shaken up. Our driver was very apologetic when we arrived.

Anyway, our dinner At Hai Tide Bar & Grill was fab! Food, drinks and service were all phenomenal! Mel and I were ordering pineapple juice, and I may have had a sneaky water bottle adding to the juices, containing the Tropical Pineapple and Coconut white Bundy Rum. Yum!!! There was even a very expensive bottle of sparkling wine ordered by Lee 🙈. I ordered the Beef Rendang, which comes on a potato cake and it was so good! I also tried some of Mel’s Tenderloin steak and it was simply to die for.  For dessert I wasn’t going past the Creme Brûlée. I had been craving one and Hai’s delivered! It was absolutely divine! Not enough superlatives for this place!! A couple had a table set up down on the sand and got engaged while we were there too – sweet!

Back home and straight in the pool to try and cool off my burning back, and then bed with another movie that I again watched a few minutes of before crashing.

October 2016 Bali Trip – Day 5

These days seem to be counting too quick! Set my alarm for 6am so we could get an early start and head into Milk and Madu for breaky. Didn’t realise my alarm was only for weekdays…no idea what day it is. Woke by myself by about 6.30 anyway and headed to breaky at about 7. I will admit there was a wrong turn this morning but I knew fairly quickly and corrected! It was just Brad and I, My sister and her hubby and her son this morning.

 

We were one of the first lot of people there, but it soon got very busy. Ordered up a storm, pineapple juice for me, as well as Shakshuka eggs with chorizo. I also ordered a Pipeline Nalu bowl for us all to share. Sister and her hubby have been hanging for decent coffee and weren’t disappointed! My pineapple juice was so yummy!

Food looks great and tastes even better! So glad we got to go to Milk and Madu…it’s so bloody good.

Back to the villa for a swim (no wrong turns this time!) for the next hour before our Rocky Fastboat guys came to pick us up. We said our good buys to our villa staff , sad to be leaving such an amazing villa and the special people there.

We load up into a minibus and we are on our way…until the driver got lost…about four times!   I google mapped him out of his little pickle. And we arrived to Sanur in a little over an hour…quicker than expected. They offered to put us on the 12pm boat instead of 2pm, and held the boat to wait for us. Turns out there was no seats left so we had to sit up top on the sun deck. A fairly smooth run over with a bit of rain and a storm in the distance. We always pay 350,000rp per person return with Rocky as we have used them a few times. We did however have to pay extra for the transfers from Cepaka.

We were trucked up to our new home by Rocky Fast Boats – Gecko Bungalows, which is at the northern end of the island, on the way to Mangrove Forest. $70 a night per room, and we have booked out all 5 rooms. It is essentially like having our own big villa! Highly recommended!!! They are new, nice and clean, the pool is perfect temp and there are so many little touches like DVDs in every room, Aussie power adaptors, hot and cold water dispensers, and tea and coffee facilities. Everyone is very happy!! They have also organised our scooters, which are all very new with new clean helmets as well. Wifi is also fabulous here, which is good because my data on my bali sim doesn’t work anywhere except in heavily populated areas like Seminyak or right in town in Canggu, yet everyone else’s stop seems to work ok.

The rest of the crew are staying at Tropica Tranquility, which is basically identical and only 100m away. The australian owners are friends and our bungalow manager actually runs both. He is also the son of Nyoman, from Nyoman’s Warung….our favourite Lembongan restaurant…which just so happens to be 100m to the right of us!

I will give you one guess where we went for lunch 🙊🙊 The most amazing spring rolls, French fries, Grilled prawns, and a Chicken Nasi Goreng, two soft drinks, and a large water for a total of 186,000. So cheap and the best food!!! The spring rolls were so good, that the rest of the family actually got a heap more take away for dinner!

A little explore on the bikes after lunch, followed by some swimming and a cold Bintang or two with a visit from some people we know from home who were on the island.

Brad felt like a pizza for dinner so we scootered on down to Tigerlillys, where we had a nice pizza last time. There was only one table of two there before us, and we sat and ordered straight away. Food didn’t come for over 45 minutes. The satay chicken was minced chicken that was very dry and not good at all. The pizza was ok – not the best but decent. They noticed we left most of the chicken and delivered our bill minus the Satays. So even though the service was lacking and the food not amazing, they made up for it a little at the end and were very apologetic.

Back home to lounge on the beanbags chatting with a few drinkies before heading to bed. We picked out a DVD to watch/fall asleep to – Central Intelligence. Quite funny…well what I saw of it anyway!

October 2016 Bali Trip – Day 4

No sleep in today, up first but in no rush to do much of anything today. Swimming, breaky – which was the same again for me – banana pancake and an omelette, day bed relaxing, more swimming. The newbies were headed off an a day trip today so it was just the non-newbies today.

We eventually mustered up enough energy to jump on the bikes and our wolf pack headed up towards Tanah Lot. Some shopping, a few photos at the temple, found some Luwak Cats and watched them for a while. It’s so hot here, I don’t know why but it always seems hotter than anywhere else.

We decided to go and check out the new Finns Beach Club, and looked forward to jumping in the pool. We arrived (with no wrong turns – woohoo) but the place was jam packed and no day beds or sun loungers were available. We grabbed a couple of booth seats at the restaurant, and ordered some lunch.

We really enjoyed Finns when it was down in Uluwatu, but the new one in Canggu feels quite pretentious filled with all of the beautiful people. We didn’t go swimming as we felt a bit out of place. We ordered a nachos to share. It was ok, nothing to rave about but tasty enough. We headed back to our villa to swim instead, accompanied by a few duty frees and wasted away the rest of the afternoon until our in-villa feast was ready for us for dinner.

Dinner was again incredible! I never thought I would be having dinner in the villa every night instead of going out to all the lovely restaurants. But our cook has been so fantastic – I asked her if she wants to come and live with me!

Made it a bit later tonight, night swims, a couple more vodkas and some Yahtzee tournaments before crashing out about 10.30.

October 2016 Bali Trip -Day 2 and 3

Up at the crack of dawn as usual. It’s so gorgeous waking up to the first morning sounds in Bali! Roosters are going off across the river, and the birds and lizards are all signing as well.

I was hoping to get a few more hours sleep but the body clock wakes me up way too early for at least the first week in Bali every time. By the time I start getting used to Bali time it’s time to go home and try and adjust all over again.

I jumped up and went exploring the villa in the daylight. It’s just gorgeous with rocks and moss and rainforesty bits everywhere. I wasn’t alone for long before Mum and Dad spotted me up and joined me, and everyone else slowly followed. Brad however had to be forced out of bed a couple of hours later when breaky was ready.

One of three private plunge pools within our villa. We were in one of the Upper Terrace Rooms

There is quite a few more stairs than I expected here and of course my room is at the top of them. I would have gone up and down them a good 15 times yesterday! On two of those trips I found a little friend 🐍🐍🐍. I am petrified of snakes at home but this little guy is only about 50cm long, and hides in the garden along our villa wall. He is more scared of me and takes off and tries to hide when he hears me coming. No one else has seen him and they all think I’m tricking them.

Chicka and Ketut, our two chefs/maids take our orders for breaky, and I ask for a banana pancake as well as a small omelette. I forgot to bring down the tube of Vegemite, so run back up the stairs and everyone is thrilled that I bought it! Breaky is super yummy!

We only just finish eating and the lovely girls from Casa Spa arrive for our first day massages. We have used Casa many times and they are simply amazing! A one hour massage costs about $17 for them to come to your villa.

There are five girls, and they all set up in one bedroom and the first five of us goin. I waited till the second group as I got my breaky last and didn’t want to lay down straight after I finished eating.

The pool beckoned until it was time for my massage. It was lovely, but not as good as I have had from previously from Casa. The girl I’ve had every other time didn’t come this time. Still a wonderful relaxing massage and well spent $17. Great value when I don’t even have to leave my villa!

Back in the pool while the last group had their massage. Afterwards, Made our villa manager and driver, drove most of the group into Canggu. It’s about a 20-25 minute drive, further than the website stated. We rode our bikes behind the car as we had no idea how to get out of Cepaka, where our villa is. I’ve never felt lost in Bali like I do here!

We exchanged some money next to Old Mans and then settled in at old mans for some lunch. Nasi for me and a Burger with the lot for Brad. Didn’t get many photos 🙈 but food was yum!

A few of us got SIM cards as well at the little store next door to old mans. Our villa WIFI is not great, so I got a SIM card with 5GB of data for about $25. By the time we all fluffed about for a while it was getting late, half the group wanted to go shopping in Seminyak, but got talked out of it because we had arranged dinner back at the villa, and they would have had bugger all shopping time by the time they allowed for driving time in traffic. They have arranged to go in the morning instead.

I checked out google maps to find our way back but still followed the driver. Think I have it sussed now. It’s bloody hot and we are all dripping so back into the pool for the rest of the afternoon. The duty free Grey Goose got opened and we had a couple in/by the pool.

Chicka has made an absolute feast for us for dinner, and we sit down to eat about 6.30. I’m not even very hungry after lunch but it all looks and smells so good that we all hoe in!

Absolutely stuffed with food, a few vodkas and a big day in the sun/heat and we are all fading very quickly! I drag my heavy legs all the way back up the stairs and fall asleep before my head hits the pillow at about 8.30!

Day 3

I slept in!! Woohoo! Woken up about 8am because breaky was just about ready. More banana pancakes and a bit of scrambled eggs for me. Our villa chefs are great cooks and everything has been yummy so far.

After breaky we retreated back to our room for a bit more of a relax and a swim in our plunge pool. It’s quite cool but very refreshing. I think we eventually got going and jumped on the bikes and headed towards Seminyak at about 11.30am. We found our way ok – not a wrong turn in site which I was happy about! The remainder of our big group went into Seminyak as well to go shopping be had left straight after breaky.

Our first stop was to check out our Villas for next week (iVillas). There is a construction site next door, so we could move to another villa complex (Ulin Villas – which I don’t think are as nice) or stay in the first one with a 50% refund, hour massages each as well as in villa BBQ thrown in. They have erected privacy screens so the workers can’t see into the villa and pool area. The noise wasn’t very bad, so I think we are going to stay at them and see how we go.

Workmen erecting screens at iVillas

We inspected Ulin Villas, which are nice if not getting a little old. They are in a great spot just down the gang between Ginger Moon and Ultimo. Ginger Moon – it was calling our names! A BBQ chicken pizza and the spicy chicken wings between us to share, a couple of diet cokes and some cold air con and we were happy!

It was so bloody hot that we decided we needed to swim. We made our way to the W, ordered a Bintang and a Bintang Radler and straight into the pool! The pool is quite warm but still better than not being in a pool! As long as your are ordering food/drinks you can use the pool. Towels are 40,000rp each to hire. In the end they didn’t even charge us for the towels.

We were meeting up with some Bali friends so made our way up to La Laguna. Great afternoon chatting, with yummy (but fairly weak) cocktails. Its a great spot to spend a Bali afternoon.

Brad wanted to get going so we could get home in the daylight and hopefully beat any rain but that didn’t quite happen. By the time we pulled into Happy Chappy Express in Canggu and picked up some take away it was pretty much dark. A few more minutes down the road and the heavens opened up. It was so heavy we had to pull over because we couldn’t see. We pulled in under the awning of a tiny little shop and waited it out with some locals who couldn’t speak a word of english! The road started flooding it was so heavy. Once it got a bit lighter we kept going, and only a few minutes up the road, the road was bone dry. Found our way back in the dark easily.

Inside Happy Chappy Express in Canggu.

We arrived home ad our gorgeous staff set the table for us to eat our takeaway. Happy Chappy was declared the best Chinese Brad has ever eaten! A hot shower to get out of our saturated clothes… and we were going to go back downstairs…until we laid down. Another early night for us party animals!

October 2016 – Bali Trip Day 1

One of three private plunge pools within our villa. We were in one of the Upper Terrace Rooms

We have arrived!!

My day started when I beat my alarm up at 5.30 doing last minute things like tanning…oh and packing! I’ve never left it that late to pack ever!

We left for the airport by about 1.30 and had a dream run all the way to Brisbane airport. I guess there is an upside to the arvo flights – our highway traffic from the Gold Coast is normally horrific! We made it in about an hour, which meant we were checking in three hours early. So was the rest of the flight! Was happy to see they have Mad Mex at Brisbane airport now so we had a late lunch.

I don’t even know how but time went very quickly and all of a sudden it was last call for our flight! They had ‘lost’ some luggage that was meant to be on our flight so we sat on the Tarmac for an hour while they found it.

We had been given row 44A and B by our Jetstar friend, with no one in C. These armrests don’t fold up though but still nice to have extra space. Finding Dory kept me entertained (so cute 😍) for a while then I dozed the rest of the way. We still managed to land on time, and got through the airport in record time. It was only about twenty minutes! Found our drivers and away we went.

I had booked a villa through Elite Haven Villas, in a little village called Cepaka. The drive to Villa Maya Retreat from the airport took about 50 minutes. Arriving late at night and having no idea where we were going, made us feel like wE were in the middle of nowhere! Lots of whingeing from the kids and the men 🙄 about how far out we are, and also how many steps from the car parking area down to the villa. Feeling a bit deflated – being the organiser sucks if someone isn’t happy 😣. They were all aware that it was somewhat ‘remote’, but it even surprised me how many twists and turns down tiny roads we took. Hopefully first light and some exploring will make everyone happy.

They were all pretty thrilled with the actual villa though. We got down to the living area and only had to wait a few minutes before they served us a late dinner. I had just asked if they could cook us some food and pop it in the fridge for us when we arrived at 11pm. Instead we were met with huge platters of Nasi and Mie Goreng, chicken satays, spring rolls and prawn crackers – all freshly cooked. Yum!

Our friends had arrived earlier in the day on a flight from Melbourne. It is their first trip to Bali. They were all asleep by the time we got to the villa. There is 15 of us spread across the Villas 6 bedrooms.

Even though I didn’t get to sleep until about 1am, my eyes still pinged open by 6am this morning. There is roosters crowing (not too close – thank god) and geckos making their weird little noises. So good to be back in Bali 👙☀️🍹

A Few Reno Photos

We are very slowly renovating our house. I had great intentions of getting the whole house done within the first 12 months. Ha!

Stubby coolers from Golden Key Shop Bali

Golden Key is a great shop in Legian where we sourced our stubby coolers for our wedding favours. It was all arranged via email, and they were ready to be picked up when my parents went to Bali (without me I might add!).

I believe we paid 7,500rp each – approximately 75 cents!

 

Super Slack and haven’t finished my trip report from March!

As the title says I have been super slack and still have not done the Legian part of our March trip yet. I have been super busy with work and planning the weding which is now only a little over 5 months away…EEEK!

I promise I will try and get the rest of the trip report done shortly. In the meantime the Jetstar take a friend for free sale is on again (finishes midnight 15^th May) so we have now booked our honeymoon. Slightly delayed but we are going back to Bali for the sixth time for 11 days in March! Yippee! We are also flying from the Gold Coast this time which means via Syndey instead of Darwin….excited about missing the Darwin 3am stopover again! Also excited about not having to organise getting up to Brisbane. Even though the fares were a little more from Coolangatta, the convienience of being 5 minutes away from the Airport is invaluable!

I am secretely hoping that we get the phone call with the offer of a paid upgrade to business class on either of the flights….I would love to fly Jetstars Star class again….and what better reason than on our honeymoon?!? Last time it was $199 per person each way. It would mean return business class for a little under $1000 per person. Here’s hoping!

I am glad we have around 5 months between the wedding and honeymoon…It is far too hectic to be planning a wedding where almost everything is DIY and a honeymoon overseas all at the same time. We have booked a minimoon for four days right after the wedding. We will be heading to the Sunshine coast to stay in a gorgeous house right on the beach that is pet friendly! Diesel will have a great time on our minimoon too!

Our gorgeous house for our Dog Friendly Mini Moon!

Is it too early to start the Bali countdown??? 302 days…..

Day 7 – Gili T and my 30th Birthday!!

Day 7 – My 30th birthday!
I am officially old!! Finally managed a sleep in. Woke up to a heap of messages / missed calls from my beautiful family! My sister put these pics up on instagram of my 1st Birthday with some very sweet words that made me teary and miss all my family at home!

My gorgeous Mumma, Me in the middle and my sister

My sister, Daddy, Me and my dolly

Apparently I didn’t like everyone signing to me!

Finally mosied on out to breaky at 10am. Same as yesterday…more banana pancakes, more nasi goreng with chili sauce! After breaky we went for a ride up to the harbour to book a place on our boat for our return trip tomorrow and to see the turtle conservation area.

Turtles at the Hatchery

Bubba turtles with some sick fishies

Back to the room and in the air con to cool down…. It is very hot today. We headed on down to Villa Ombak around lunchtime. If you spend 100000rp per person you can use their pool and loungers and they give you towels etc. We had lunch here at the pool bar. We had flatbread pizza things that were nice. I also had a mango granita that was amazing in the heat!

After floating around in the beautiful pool for ages we went to Romeah Spa at villa Ombak. I chose an hour foot massage and an aloe Vera facial. Brad had an hour foot massage and a half hour back massage. The foot massages were great because they were done laying down – not in a chair. They were definately more leg than foot massages but that suited me fine as the ol’ legs were a bit sore from all the riding bikes! I was a little disappointed that they started my facial half way through my foot massage so I was only actually in there for an hour and 20mins instead of two hours. Would have preferred them to be done one after the other to be pampered longer. It was 900000rp all up. Nice spa and very good treatments. Back to the room at 4pm to relax for a while…..I am old now after all!

Brad had gone to Kokomo the day before to ask for a nice table as it was my birthday. They promised to “make special” for me. We wandered down to our waterfront table about 7.30pm. The night couldn’t have been more perfect if we tried. It was a full moon. The water was light up purple from the moon. It was truly the most perfect setting ever. Our meals were amazing. I took a bottle of wine that I had bought from home and they didn’t even charge corkage.

Perfection!

Does it get any better?

Salt & Pepper Calamari Entree

Garlic Prawns Entree

Pork belly entree

Tenderloin steak – perfection!

Chocolate Souffle

I highly rate Kokomo. 3 shared entrees, 2 mains, one dessert, One beer and 2 waters and it was only $56. For the quality of the food, service and the setting I would have happily paid double!

Back to room for a while before heading down to check out full moon party. It was pretty tame. We stayed and had a couple of drinks and they were letting off fireworks just for me!!! Happy birthday to me! Off to bed by about 1am.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I’m 103…..

Sad tomorrow is the end of our time on Gili T…why didn’t I book it for longer? Off to Legian on the 12pm boat.

Day 5 & 6 – Gili Trawangan

Day 5

Picked up at 6.45am for trip to Padangbai. Rained on the way with the weather looking very ominous. Was getting a little worried that we were not going to have a very pleasent crossing but it had stopped raining and fined up by the time we got to the harbour.Fast boat to Gili Trawangan was with Marina Srikandi – we paid 700000rp each return. Found out others paid a bit less but oh well. The boat left at 9.05am. Swell decent at times but a fairly smooth crossing…the boat rides the swell well. I would hate to see it in bad weather though.

We arrived at the harbour on Gili T at bit before 11am. We decided to walk down to Scallywags as I didnt like the poor horsies having to drag our ass’s around! Luckily we were able to check in straight away. We were offered a welcome drink – I got a pineapple juice and Brad had a bintang. I have somehow managed to lose the pics of scallywags – I think they might be on my dad’s phone still so when I find them I will post them.

Because we were picked up so early we missed out on breaky at the villa so by the time we had dropped our stuff in the room we were starving. Out of ease we ate lunch at Scallywags – a Nasi Goreng and Penne Arriabata…. both were good.

It was so bloody hot that it was then straight into the pool. The pool here is lovely – not huge but never more than one or two other people in it at the same time as us. There was always Loungers available.

We then walked back down towards the harbour to hire some bikes. We picked one where the bikes didn’t look too dodgy and paid 35000rp each /day. We continued to head north on our bikes and rode around the whole island. Up near the northern end the path was very sandy so we had to keep stopping and walking through those patches but the rest was ok. I didnt time it but I guess it would have taken us between 30 – 45 minutes to ride around the whole island.

We did notice how quiet the rest of the island was – it seemed to only be the main strip that had anyone there….all the other hotels looked like ghost towns. The beaches were pretty much deserted.

Once we were back to the hotel it was straight back into the pool with a couple of mini-bar beverages. I tried the Alben’s Cider here – not as good as the Bali cider I don’t think!

All this hard work required a little relaxing so it was back to the room and the air con to watch a movie and have a couple more Goose’s. Dinner was next door at Trattoria. The complimentary bread they bring out was wonderful. We ordered a pizza (The Eduardo from memory) and the Seafood Risotto….a little strange for me seeing as I have a slightly weird phobia of seafood in stuff – I love Seafood and I love Risotto but just not together! I blame this on the numerous vodka’s I had consumed earlier.  The pizza had parma ham on it and was super salty. The pizza bases were really nice though – I just think we picked the wrong toppings. I ordered a cocktail here – the amount of alcohol in it prevents me from remembering the name of it though…..super potent!

Said Cocktail

Without my phobia this would have been lovely.

The Eduardo Pizza!

Day 6

Up early again – damn you Body clock! Today is the last day of my 20’s! Perhaps that is why I can’t sleep? Since I am awake I arm myself with the iPhone 5 and head out to watch the sunset. Got some gorgeous pic’s of the sun rising over the mountains on Lombok – mountains that we could not see the day before once the clouds/smog set in.

First pic of the morning – the camera fogged up because it was already so hot!

Back to lay in bed till my tummy was screaming for food and woke Brad up. We went out to breaky at 9am. Scallywags do the best breaky! Indo food and banana pancakes for me. I do love a good Nasi Goreng with chili sauce on it first thing in the morning!

Back to the room to chill for a bit before the boat takes us to Gili Air at 11.30am. Today was a very hard day! Eat drink swim snorkel repeat! The scallywags boat takes you over to Gili Air and back for 150000rp per person. For this you get the boat ride, use of the Gili Air beach club – sun loungers, towels etc and 150000rp credit at Scallywags.

The view over to Lombok

Obligatory laying on the beach pic.

From where you’d rather be!

Mmmmm Vodka slushies!

We bought our own snorkels/flippers from home and walked North just a little from Scallywags to have a snorkel. There was some cool fishies! Lots to see right in the shallows. Where it dropped off got really dark and the current got quite strong and being the big scaredy cat I am I wouldn’t go near the drop off!! Brad kept going to the deeper parts and I kept yelling at him that Nemo’s Dad tells us not to go near the drop off!!  Look what happened to Nemo! Luckily there was no Bruce the shark!

Fishies!

More Fishies

Even More Fishies

Ok…you get the picture

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Getting deeper!

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Pretty coloured fishy

Extreme Fishy close up

Just keep swimming…

Brad took this…I wasn’t going over the drop off!

Near the drop off!

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Getting sick of seeing fish yet?

Retards under water

We had all good intentions of exploring the Island but kind of never peeled our sun burnt butts of the sun loungers! We had a lot of food and several beers, ciders, waters etc here and we only spent an extra 100000rp on top of the credit we had. The boat picked us up at 5pm to take us back to Gili T. On the boat ride back we saw a Sea Turtle! I was so excited that I kind of wanted to jump off the boat and swim with it until I realised that I would have been in water that is kilometers deep….so listening to Nemo’s dad I stayed on the boat.

Very tired from all of our doing nothing over on Gili Air meant we didn’t want to venture to far for dinner so the BBQ at Scallywags it was for dinner. Brad had the Ribs and I had Prawns. The salad buffet was good. I also had the warm brownie for dessert..yum! Again back to the room for drinks and a movie before passing out going to bed.