and then there were four.

On Thursday we had a school field trip to Uluwatu where we were going to watch fire dancers at sunset in a picture perfect venue. We were quite excited as it was going to be the most exciting trip were going to have other than the white river rafting.

However when we got there we were dropped off at the entrance where we waited for the other half of our group to join us, along with our lecturers. When this didn’t happen we all got over waiting and decided to go get ice cream. After returning to our drop off point, our one lecturer came to us saying that they had been waiting at the other entrance. Cool.

We received sarongs and sandwiches and headed inside, while walking to the area to watch the dance I spotted a monkey eyeing my sandwich out, refusing to be attacked like Lindsay in the monkey forest, I threw my roll into a bush and ran, at which point my flip flop broke.

So we found seats and got ready to watch fire dancers, but what we saw was not at all what we were expecting.  About 50 shirtless men came out and sat in a circle and started chanting and repeating what sounded like the words “check” and “tseck” the entire duration of the performance. There were also other dancers who told a story, luckily there was a program telling us what was happening, otherwise we would have no clue. It was interesting but it wasn’t a fire dance, in actual fact the only fire involved was the fire that was used to light us the stage area.

It was a nice experience and we all enjoyed the bit of Balinese culture we just saw but the highlight of the night for all of us was the 1hour and 45minute drive home. It was a truly unique experience as the driver insisted on driving in second gear the entire journey.

Friday was the 10 year anniversary of the Bali Bombings that happened in Kuta, where 202 people died. We decided to go check it out, which in retrospect we regret a bit as the street of Legian was like a ghost town as all the clubs had turned off the music for the duration of the memorial. There were such bleak vibes in the air and it definitely rubbed off on us.

Saturday was spent doing what we do best, vegging by the pool.

Sunday we woke up early and caught a taxi to Sanur, were we bought return boat tickets to Lembongan Island. We got there on a ferry the trip was bumpy but not as unpleasant as expected. We arrived in Lembongan and were bombarded with an offer to go snorkeling, the price was right so we accepted.

We got led down an alleyway away from the water. Slightly confusing. All of a sudden Balinese Rambo pulled up on a scooter that sounded as if it would break down any second, ripped camoflague cargo pants and mullet to boot.

Sami and Linds jumped on the back of a scooter with the guy that approached us first and I got on with Rambo. They took us through a very rural area until we eventually got to a beautiful white sand beach with crystal clear water. 

Rambo then grabbed his kid, gave us snorkeling gear and took us to his boat. We had a great time because we could get really close to the fish and coral reefs. Im not sure if we enjoyed snorkeling or taking pictures of ourselves more. Thank God for underwater cameras. Lucky for us Rambo let us do our own thing, unlike his son, Yogi, who wore a lifejacket and got tied to the boat with a piece of rope.

On our trip back to Sanur we caught a fast boat, the trip was short but extremely bumpy and unpleasant. Note to selves: take the slow boat and never drink the night before. We foresee disaster.

We got back to our hotel relatively early and seeing as we only had a fieldtrip the following morning, the party animal within convinced me to go to Alleycats with the boys. Needless to say, it wasn’t a great idea to play 1 for 1 with 5 dutch boys when drinking the infamous double doubles.

The following morning can only be described as living hell. Being stuck on another bus for a very long drive to Ubud to go visit a traditional Bali Village, to see how daily life is for the Balinese people although I am almost 100% sure that most people don’t plant rice and climb coconut trees all day. I must say that the highlight of the trip was watching a cock fight and of course seeing the reaction of some of our classmates when they saw a spider in a tree.

The rest of the week was spent working on assignments and sitting in classes. Boring. No need to elaborate on this point.

Brandon arrived in Bali yesterday and all three of us are so grateful to have a South African to hang out with and I absolutely love having my partner in crime at my side.

Gili Islands tomorrow and we are all crazy excited for this trip as we have been looking forward to it from day 1. 

Taman Rosani not Toman Rosani

Just a few highlights from our past week in Bali.

- The most exciting thing we did this week was go White Water River Rafting with everyone from varsity. This adventure was near Ubud with a company called Sobek and we really enjoyed it, besides the fact that anything outside is better than being stuck in an auditorium for hours on any day in Bali. Even though we all thought it could have been a bit more of an adrenaline rush, we took in the surroundings, quite amazed by the waterfalls and made up for the lack of excitement by screaming a bit too loudly while going through the rapids even though they werent very big. Being followed by a bunch of whooping men who thought it was too fun to splash us everytime they got close enough while singing "heyyyyy, sexy ladies, wop wop wop wop, Gangnam style", was not as entertaining as it might sound.


- Alleycats has really become our regular watering hole in Kuta where we always manage to drink too much in a short space of time before we head out to somewhere else for a party. We always manage to meet the most interesting people from all over the world and of course the "odd" australian never fails to entertain us. The latest freind we made had the words "dont judge me" tattooed on his bum, a sight we will be glad to never see again but we have a photo, so take a look!

- On Sunday we went to Uluwatu a little area with the most amazing little beach with the best waves which is lying down below and between cliff faces. To get to the beach you have to walk down what feels like a thousand stairs but its definitely worth it. Up amongst the rocks and cliffs are a whole lot of little bars and warungs where no matter where you sit, the view is breath taking. Sunday night is the night for a party in Uluwatu at Single Fin a surfers bar which overlooks the beach. We seemed to have chosen the best night to visit Single Fin as there was a surf competition being held that night with many, many people there to support it. The vibe was too amazing while we sat infront of Single Fin overlooking the break watching the boys surf by spotlight. We will definitely be visiting Uluwatu and Padang Padang again.

- Friday night got a bit more out of hand than anticipated (we blame the double doubles, that hit you hard and when you least expect it), with Bosman chipping a front tooth on a beer bottle. This is no surprise at all, its been a while coming and we are just grateful it isn't any worse than it is. As well as this incident we had a friend in a scooter accident, nothing too serious but just another reminder to us why we should not be on scooters at all!

- We visited a shopping centre today where almost anything could be bought, except cotton of course which we have been looking for for the past two weeks and we have still not found. They do sell fresh water turtles though for 60 bucks, which we think is a steal and we are seriously considering adding a new bugger to the group, dutch name and all. 'Stoffles' will live near the kikker fontijn.

The accents have become noticeably worse, krusty in fact, and when alcohol is consumed it just gets revolting.

We have to renew our social visas tomorrow, 450 000 rupee worth of social visa which we believe could be put to greater use in another form of socialising, something we are not happy about, but then again being deported wouldn't be to great either.

Ta Ta x

We didn't bring Flash drives.

2am and we were awake. We packed our backpacks, put on our takkies and went outside to meet our driver. There was already a German girl in the car and we still had to go pick 1 more person up, a girl from LA who has family in East London. Small world. By the time she got in the car we were running a bit late and it had started to drizzle. We got a flat tyre about 30 minutes into the trip, which in all honesty we were not surprised at after he was driving so badly, hitting every pothole in the road. 

We then stopped off to have tea, coffee and pancakes with chocolate and bananas and told to wolf it down because we are running behind schedule and would have to run up the volcano to make it in time for sunrise. We were all a bit on edge at this point and by the time we actually got to the site we were just keen to get walking, luckily for us the rain had stopped. We were greeted by our 'guide' who was really enthusiastic and took a photo of all of us before asking if we had brought flashlights. Seriously? Three little blonde girls who didn't even think to pack jackets. No. We don't have flashlights. 

We resorted to using the flash on our blackberries. Thank you technology. It was pitch black and we were about 2 minutes into the walk when our very reliable and knowledgable 'guide' tells us that he is not feeling very well and can we please do the hike by ourselves.  Eyewitness Travel, Bali and Lombok states that "A local cartel, the HPPGB discourages trekking alone and climbers are advised to take a licensed guide with them", we were all seriously unimpressed with this guy and in retrospect should of cut our losses and left him at the bottom of the volcano, but in the moment we were all fuming and actually shat the guide out, saying we have spent so much money to do the trek and it is extremely unorganized considering we were running late, had no way of seeing where we were going and our guide was trying to ditch us, he reluctantly took us up the volcano. 

The trek was a mixture of soft sand and loose volcanic rock, this made things very difficult for us and I seriously thought at least one of us would come back home with a missing tooth or broken leg, which would have been a serious problem, because there is not a chance any of those useless people making a quick buck out of us had a first aid kit let alone a plaster. 

Half way through the hike our Blackberries proved to us why they are such useless phones after being on charge all night and being put to the test for about 40 minutes, the batteries started dying, leaving us to share lights between us, slowing the hike down. As time went on we began to get more and more concerned that we would still be climbing when the sun started to rise, Lindsay was motivating us to move forward more than the 'guide' who kept trying to convince us that the sun only rose at 6:30am. He needed to rest more than us and close to the top we decided to leave him panting on a rock. We were then met by another man on the path who tried to hijack us as a group and lead us up. Also trying to tell us that there would be cold Coca Cola and Bintang at the top of the volcano. We were not interested at all and after a few minutes of him slowing us down Lindsay just told him to get out the way. Not really sure if the main reason for this was that she wanted to get to the top or because he was the smelliest human being of all time and she was gagging from being downwind of his stench. 

Reaching the top was an amazing feeling and we managed to get there just in time to watch the light from the sun creep over the lake and make the misty valley the most beautiful color, allowing us to see what we had just spent about 2 hours climbing up. We whipped out our cameras, took a few photos and then just sat down and soaked in the view . Our 'guide' was right, the sun did rise at 6:30, but by then the picture perfect moments were long gone. We became frustrated shortly after when our 'guide' approached us and offered us a hot drink, that was at an extra cost. When we booked the tour we were assured that we would be getting coffee or tea at the peak as well as bread, bananas and an egg that they would cook using the heat from the volcano. Empty promises. We complained. Again. We finally did receive the breakfast we were promised and it was extremely unsatisfying. 

We were seriously disappointed in the tour, but at the end of the day we were still standing at the top of the most active volcano in Bali. An amazing moment and achievement for all of us. Our 'guide' and driver put us through a lot of grief but the views alone were worth it. However we do still need to google the volcano to find out how far we walked etc, because the 'guide' could not answer a single question. Surprise. Surprise. 

When we finally made it back down the volcano we were all just keen to get back to our Hotel in Seminyack, not that gross room we rented for the night. We negotiated a price and jumped into a taxi, leaving Ubud behind us. We had a really good weekend away but I cannot see us returning to Ubud. We would rather spend our time on a beach enjoying the fish in the sea and learning to surf than getting robbed blind by someone who has only climbed up the volcano 3 times. 

Life is all about different experiences and no matter how unpleasant they are, I am sure that as long as we have each other to get through them we will manage to have a good time. 

That is it for the weekend. More varsity field trips in the morning.

xx

"Make your own sandwich? I want to make a sandwich with 10 layers of bacon and thats it."

The last post was typed on Friday afternoon, but just to cover what we did after that. We went looking for a Mexican Restaurant with our friends who were certain it was just down the road, which it wasn't. After walking for half an hour in the wrong direction we decided to just eat anywhere. The boys were disappointed and we are sure the search for tacos will resume sometime this coming week.

Monkey Forest.

Saturday morning we woke up and caught a taxi to Ubud, we got dropped just outside the Monkey Forest excepting to see a lot of monkeys and some Balinese people worshipping said monkeys. What we were not expecting was for one of the fattest monkeys in the forest to jump onto Lindsay, attacking her water bottle 2 minutes after walking through the gates. Unfortunately there is no photographic evidence of this event as Lindsay just stood still trying to avoid being bitten and myself and Sam were useless, panicking more than Lindsay. Needless to say that incident really put us off and every time someone offered us "Banana for the monkey?" we quickly declined.

"It is advisable to heed the warnings against feeding the monkeys - they can become aggressive."

The people who work at the monkey forest obviously do not heed against these warnings, they are just keen on making a quick buck off all the tourists. It was extremely bizarre for us to see people laying out offerings and chanting to the monkeys, all we saw were monkeys living the high life playing on vines and ancient stone temples and snatching the food being offered before it hit the ground. The funniest moment of this excursion was definitely seeing a little boy walk in as we walked out with an entire bunch of bananas, he looked extremely chuffed with life but he had not seen the thousands of little monkey eyes watching him, we all just chuckled and said "yoh, goodluck".

We then made our way up Monkey Forest road in search of our next excursion and a place to eat. There were many "tourism offices" where you could book tours, so thinking we were all cool we went to most of them trying to bargain for the best deal. We managed to organise a short tour to the elephant cave or buddhist temples and to the rice terraces and we booked an excursion to hike up Mount Batur a volcano which is still active. As we learned later, we would be jewed out of the proper experience anyway. We had lunch at an amazing little restaurant in central Ubud that looked over a beautiful rice field and we ate the most delicious food, leaving us all so full we could hardly walk back up the road in search of accommodation.

Our adventure to the elephant cave or some of the many Buddhist temples was an enlightening experience but not one that we would highly recommend. We were required to wear sarongs into the temples as a sign of respect, something which we were not too excited about as it was extremely hot. Next stop, the rice terraces, which are definitely as beautiful as what they look in pictures. We did a bit of shopping and visited a place where they showed us how to make coffee, we also got to sample different types of coffees and teas. The Vanilla Coffee was too divine for words.

Elephant Caves.

Coffee and Tea Tasting.

We went for dinner at a small restaurant where sitting on the floor on pillows was optional, we chose this option. It was not long until we spotted the mice (Plural), running around everywhere. We were all very shocked and the waiter found it quite amusing. Besides the mice, the food was good.

We managed to find accommodation at a small home-stay just off one of the main roads which we paid R70.00 each for, for the night, little did we know it would come with some surprises, nonetheless entertaining as usual. We thought we found the bargain of the century until we bathed ourselves and went to bed. The bathroom was very special, the basin was in the bedroom but if it was in the bathroom  it would have been possible to sit on the toilet, shower and brush your teeth at the same time. Efficient- yes, hygienic- not so much. When bed time came we were greeted with ginormous ants all over the floor, which later made their way into our beds. We blame this on Sammy as she thought it was a good idea to kill all their friends with her slop. As all became still and we got used to it sounding like we were sleeping in Grand Central Station with all the motorbikes up and down the road, we heard a very strange sound coming from what sounded like in my bed. We eventually presumed it was a chicken in the roof, we found out today that it was not a chicken, but a species of gecko or lizard. We are all really glad we did not know it was a gecko or a lizard because from the volume of the sound it was making it sounded like it could be the size of a Komodo dragon. We also had to lock our door with a wooden plank, how Sammy slept, we have no idea.

Too hungry to write anymore, to be continued….