One Life ...

We are starting to miss out days when writing our blog posts. We are totally confused as to which day it is as everyday is the same ... Sun, sea and snorkelling! We changed rooms today and now have a small kitchen attached. We also have a tiny gecko as our new pet!

Another lazy morning before heading out for gado gado for lunch.  We then walked to the middle of Jemeluk Bay to snorkel.   Today we saw some baby squid, a lobster hiding in a hole, a turtle, a lion fish, blue box fish and a beautiful white fish with black yellow splashes.  It looked like he had either been caught with a fishing hook or had been in an altercation with another fish as he had a big scar near his eye.  We also saw 2 huge titan trigger fish.  Darryl dived down to take a closer look which didn't go down well with one of the fish.  It swam straight at him, circled round and had another go.  Titan trigger fish have huge teeth and are known to attack divers and snorkellers as they protect their nest.  Darryl had obviously entered their domain... Not something to be repeated in a hurry! Back at our accommodation we listened to a couple of other guests having a jamming session with guitar and yukele before heading out for dinner. Today we headed to a place we had eaten on ou...

Breakfast Chillout time Lunch Snorkel Walk the beach Clean up Dinner Sleep ...Easy!

Breakfast today was at our accommodation as it is included in the price. Banana pancake and coffee. We then sat in the roof terrace, with amazing views of Mount Agung and the rice fields, whilst doing some research.  Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. We got ready in our snorkelling gear as the place we like to eat is on the way to the beach. Day 2 and another gado gado for lunch, it is just sooooo good. Today we talked with the lady's daughter and she told us next week she is flying to Southampton as she has a job on a P & O cruise ship. We swapped numbers in the hope that we can meet up back in the UK.  After lunch we headed to the beach and walked a long way along to get to the start of the coral. The sea was cleaner and the visibility clearer that yesterday. We snorkelled all around the bay. There is an amazing amount of fish. We wonder if this could be due to there not being any visitors for over 2 dues due to the pandemic. Of note today we saw a mantis shrimp, a s...

We are now well settled in Amed. Breakfast in the hotel, followed by a lazy morning staring at the beautiful Balinese countryside from the roof terrace. Next, we eat gado gado from the lovely lady next door. PM is snorkelling time. We are seeing turtles everyday and lots of beautiful reef fish.  Then we walk back along the beach before sunset. Sometimes Mt Agung shows his top! (Depends on the clouds that sit over him). Shower, short rest and into the centre to eat. Nasi Kampur is the preferred option at the moment at a small stall. Alphamart provides our cold coffee fix before heading along the road back to base. Often live bands slow our return to our hotel. Zzzzz

Breakfast today was at our accommodation as it is included in the price. Banana pancake and coffee. We then sat in the roof terrace, with amazing views of Mount Agung and the rice fields, whilst doing some research. Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. We got ready in our snorkelling gear as the place we like to eat is on the way to the beach. Day 2 and another gado gado for lunch, it is just sooooo good. Today we talked with the lady's daughter and she told us next week she is flying to Southampton as she has a job on a P & O cruise ship. We swapped numbers in the hope that we can meet up back in the UK. We have also met many other people in various countries coming to work in Europe. Unfortunately, we are unable to meet them in Europe this year because of the Brexit 90/180 rule as we will have already used our 90 day allowance. They are not getting British visas because the Schengen visa allows them to visit many, many more places. After lunch we headed to the beac...

Up at 6 and a short walk took us to the Perama bus. They used to offer a service that included one free stop off but now this is no longer an option. Perama must have taken a huge hit during Covid like the rest of Bali but slowly it is coming back to life. The shuttle bus did pick up and drop of other people enroute to Amed in Ubud, Padangbai and Candidasa. Amed was the last stop and this was the one for us. The driver kindly dropped us off outside our hotel, which was great! Our room wasn't ready so we headed up to the new roof terrace restaurant overlooking beautiful countryside. We chatted to 2 girls whilst we waited. One from Finland and another from the Netherlands. We talked about all sorts of things. Both of them are working as they travel, which now seems to be the norm. It also means a lot of cheap accommodation is booked up long term by these digital nomads. Once in our room we dropped everything, locked the door and went to find food! We didn't have to walk far and w...

Darryl was up at 6.30 this morning because there a few people with rather loud voices that woke him up. He decided to use this to his advantage and went down the beach for a surf! We walked to our last supper at the fancy hotel. We opted for a nice salad, chicken fajitas, garlic bread, pineapple juice Plus a take away pizza! We had to spend our final voucher so ordered a fair amount. However, the portions are not huge. On the way back from Legian to Kuta, we got a new pair of flipflops and stocked up on cosmetic products for Christine using some of our other vouchers. We continued our walk along the beach and we arrived at the turtle release centre just before people were allowed to release the tiny little critters.  We stayed and watched as all of the tiny turtles were released into the sea. It definitely looks like hard work for them trying to navigate the sand and then the huge waves pushing them back. Good luck little turtles! As the sun was setting we listened to an excellent sing...

Today was a bit of a wash out. It rained a lot. We didn't do a lot except watch TV, eat and wait for the rain to stop. It usually rains at night but today was an exception. By the afternoon the sun was out. We didn't go in the water today but went the stir fry man for dinner and the shopping centre for Music of the Stars.

Today the alarm clock woke us up at 9am. We had an appointment at a fancy hotel to find out if their holiday club was for us. It was raining so some time spent inside the fancy hotel suited us just fine. There was no rush as the weather wasn't great. We talked to the sales rep for about 2 hours which qualified us for 1.5 million Rupiah in hotel vouchers. The vouchers could be spent in the spa or in the hotel restaurant. The spa was quite pricey and didn't seem great value. However, the food was! We found it hard to spend 500,000 Rupiah and we had chicken fajitas and beef burito and a take away pizza! Wow, 2 more trips to the restaurant from our vouchers... A taxi home avoided the short shower and then the sun came out for surfing time. As the sun set we devoured the pizza from earlier before going back to our home stay to plan ahead.

No surfing this morning as low tide was a little early. Instead, we had a relaxing breakfast before heading to the BeachWalk shopping centre for lunch and to spend more vouchers. On the beach was a Balinese cremation for 4 people. One of them we were told was the King of Kuta. We don't think he was actually the King but a very prominent member of the local community. Lunch was great at a cool sushi restaurant. We had some kind of curry, omlette and rice plus miso soup and unlimited Ochi tea. The food was nice and the vouchers covered most of the cost. We just paid a small amount in tax and service charge. We stocked up on milk, bananas and other goodies in the supermarket. Next stop, the dog show at 5 in Discovery mall! There was plenty of cute dogs, big and small. Live music, popcorn and strawberry milkshake was our evening entertainment.

The relaxed routine of Bali is a great one. Respite from the heat in air conditioned shopping centres. Nice warm water to surf in. Free evening entertainment at a number of shopping malls and bars. Free money to spent courtesy of the holiday club. Pringles were purchased as a treat, though they are disappearing quickly. Lots of ice creams, iced coffees and strawberry milk shakes too! We have had Japanese ramen a few times at a new stall for only 10,000 Rupiah including a drink and free toppings. Today we watched a talent show with singing, dancing and drumming. Tomorrow is a dog show. May be we will watch that on the way back from the beach. Great singer tonight onthe way back from surfing at Discovery mall. Now back home eating rice packets.

Darryl surfed the early slot but Christine slept and had a relaxed breakfast on the terrace. Darryl rushed back, got cleaned up and was back for the taxi pickup at 11am. A short taxi journey to the hotel club. A warm welcome and delivery to our presenter. We drank lots of free iced Latte and listen to a friendly lady deliver her soft sell. As we decided it was not for us, the boss arrived with a harder push but for us it was time to leave. 1,000,000 Rupiah shopping vouchers in hand we left. They didn't offer us a taxi home but the shopping centre was nearby. They didn't even show us a room in the hotel that was part of the club. This seemed like a very amateur operation. We scoured the Boardwalk shopping centre for good deals to spend our money in. We thought it might be nice to enjoy pizza! The Sardinia restaurant were offering 2 for 1. We parked ourselves and asked about the deal where by a different menu appeared with 50% price increases. It appears that if you want 2 for 1,...

Wake up Breakfast Surfing Lunch Surfing Relax Music Surfing is always great, though the beach clean up needs to work 24 hours a day. Or, is it an impossible task to remove the daily ocean deposits of wood, plastic and general trash! Lunch at a new spot. We pointed and asked if one of the dishes was vegetables. Yes, came the answer but when we took the first bite it seemed not to be a vegetable. We asked again what this fatty piece of 'stuff' was .... It appeared to be beef skin of some kind of pure fat. Disgusting! We walked to the Perama shop to find out about shuttle buses. It appears that they are now running but with no free drop offs. This is a bit of a pain and means transport is a lot more expensive if you want to go to more than one place. There is however a new Government bus that is really cheap. However, I spent most of my evening trying to figure out the routes, the stops and how to pay. We got approached by another Bali timeshare (holiday club) operator in the Boar...

This morning we are not sure what happened but we didn't wake up until just before 11.00! Breakfast was the regular oats and fruit (papaya) with chocolate milk. We washed it all down with coffee ... When we eventually made it out, we walked along the Kuta back roads to find the market and fruit sellers. We found the market but there wasn't many/if any people selling fruit. We did see plenty of small nasi campur stalls ... We were approached on one street corner by a time share rep. He told us the deal and we agreed we would go to listen to a one hour talk. In exchange we would get a taxi across to Nusa Dua, a free lunch and a couple of tshirts. It was a fairly painless process that took a couple of hours out of our day. The actual resort we went to was quite nice. We listen to a very informal talk, stuffed our bellies with free burger and chips, mango shake and a fancy latte ... We didn't buy ;-) but we did have a nice day out! The taxi dropped us home. Darryl went surfing ...

After a bit of lay in after our day and half of travelling we had a late breakfast on the terrace. We then had to change rooms as we had specifically booked a room with a safety deposit box and the one we were in did not have one. Once everything was moved, we donned our rashvests, grabbed our bodyboards and headed for the beach. In order to get to the beach we have to walk through a shopping centre. It was sad to see many of the shops were boarded up, we can only assume as an aftermath of covid. Onto the beach and we were horrified by the amount of plastic washed up on the beach... Never have we seen this before in Bali. We stopped and chatted to a German family and the dad said he had been coming here for 20 years and he had never seen it like that either. As we walked on one of the lifeguards was just putting a flag out so we spoke to him about the amount of rubbish on the beach. He said it is washed up every day as it is rainy season. He said it is cleared every morning (we ...

Coimbatore - Singapore - Bali. 2 flights with middle of the night stop in Singapore. Singapore airport is one of the world's best and a great place to transit. Airport food is always expensive but we were prepared with packet noodles for Singapore. There is a hot water machine in most transit areas, so noodles are a great snack! 1st flight was ok, 2nd flight we slept throughout. The view from the plane was great as we approached the island. Volcanoes peering through the cotton wool clouds. We touched down with a bump, sailed through immigration and stepped outside. It was pretty warm even though this is the shoulder season. A short walk from the airport took us to our hotel but we couldn't help noticing how scruffy Bali was looking compared to 2019. We checked in and went to buy 2 bodyboards. We had seen a Facebook Market place add for a few for sale, so we headed to find them at the beach. We saw a few for sale and eventually got ourselves 2 old boards for a reasonable price. ...

Today is our last day in India. We started the day having tea and cakes with our friends. Then, in exchange for last night's noodle cooking lesson we were give a lesson in dosa, samber and tomato chutney. This made a delicious and filling breakfast to prepare us for our journey. A spot of gardening and more tea drinking and then it was time to say a sad farewell. Our friend and his brother in law gave us each a lift, with our bags, on their motorbikes, to the bus stop. We caught a bus to the main bus station and then another bus towards the airport. Some buses in India are free for ladies and the airport bus was one, so the entire journey from our friend's house to the airport cost 37p for about a 2 hour journey. Possibly the cheapest airport transfer ever! As both buses came as we arrived at the stops (unlike yesterday) we had some time to kill so stopped for some rose milk at the first station and then tea and samosas at a little cafe outside the airport.  We had a ...

After a long lazy breakfast we headed for the bus to the Isha Yoga Centre.  We had to catch 2 buses and the whole journey took around 2.5 hours with some lovely scenery along the way.  First stop after the hot journey was a refreshing kulfi which interestingly didn't melt in the heat.  Next we walked to see the impressive 112m high head.  Sculpture.  Along the way we passed the agricultural areas which are tended by the volunteers.  We also saw bullocks pulling carts of people to and fro the head.  There was a sign board explaining the bullocks have the best and easiest carts to pull, the weight is limited and they are given regular breaks.... which we are sure they would need in the intense heat!  Then we had to hand in our mobile phones and bags, go through a security check and then we were within the walls of the beautiful ashram.   We had to remove our shoes, which is OK other than some areas we had to walk, the floor was burning hot!  There were separate bathing pools for the ...

Waking up naturally is definitely the way to go. We talked to our friends, drank chai and a rice soup with jackfruit and pickle. When 11 o'clock came it was time to leave our comfortable family home behind. The 20 minute walk to the station went quickly. We purchased our general tickets to Coimbatore from the ticket counter. India has changed so much. It used to be a wrestling match to buy tickets but now everyone purchases online. No one is at the ticket counter any more. Platform 2 - 12.15, express train to Chennai - but we were getting out just part way along the journey. Our train arrived on time but another was delayed by 2 hours. We were the lucky ones. The train passed through beautiful countryside and we chatted to the man sitting opposite who spoke great English, with quite a nice accent. Very clear. At Coimbatore getting off the train was an old school India experience. As people try to get off, people try to get on. Everyone has at least 10 bags, bundles or boxes. We are...