Near death experience.

So i finally have a replacement room key. Which should make me happy, except for the fact that we only get given 1 key per room, meaning that myself and my room mate Denise (who is really nice by the way) have to share. Creating admin because we have to leave the key at the reception desk for each other. But still, it isn't completely unbearable.

Most exciting new development in the area of Seminyak (where we stay) is that there will be a new club opening across the street. The fact that we will just be able to stumble across the gravel road after a jol and not get harassed by lunatic taxi drivers is a seriously exciting prospect. The owner has offered our friends free drinks on the opening night, we still need to crack the nod, but i have no doubts that an invitation is in the not too distant future. The owner also wants to invite Selena Gomez to the grand opening, we all think he is reaching a bit far, but shame, let the man dream.

On a completely unrelated note, I almost burnt the hotel down today after making a seriously rookie mistake while making noodles in Sam and Lindsays bedroom. Im not sure if we have spoken about our R20 kettle we bought in the supermarket yet, and incase we have I apologize. A brief description: It is a plastic water jug with an element that has the shortest cable of all time. It takes about half an hour to boil water properly and it leaks while boiling. Lindsays dad calls it a "Soweto special" and we couldn't agree more. So now that you have a visual, after boiling a bit of water, I started to pour the water over the noodles, without taking the plug out of the wall. Not really sure about the science behind this situation, but the lid of the kettle shot off and there was hot water all over the floor. And all over my arm. Anyway long story short, the entire bedroom smelt like it was on fire and the little kettle is no longer boiling water. Lindsay and Sami are quite pissed off with me, but just thinking of it makes me laugh. And lucky for us Tom and Melvin have a "water  boiler" as they like to call it. If you guys are reading this again, we thank you in advance for letting us use the KETTLE. :)

Sammy is feeling a little bit sick so we are not sure about the plans for tonight.

One more random story for the day, Sam just made a cup out of a water bottle, she is quite proud of it.

Thats all for now. xx

Honeybeats

In the last blog post we failed to mention that we actually met a few Australian boys at the bar we were watching the rugby at. Anyway, details were exchanged and turns out they are staying in a Villa about 2 minutes away from our hotel. We got a message inviting us to a party at their place, so off we went vodka in hand saying it would only be 1 drink, which ended up as a very Sneaky Sunday bender.

As we arrived we were greeted by the very rowdy boys, 2 of which were on scooters saying they were just gonna go buy some booze. In those first few minutes any normal human beings would have turned around and run away, not us. Instead we kicked off our slops and walked straight into a wedding reception which none of us were invited to. We were asked to leave. The boys were a little upset but we just wanted to get out of a very awkward situation.

Outside the W Hotel.

We then went to their Villa (which is amazingly beautiful) for a while before deciding it was time to move the party elsewhere. This time we managed to squeeze 9 people into the taxi, including the driver who seriously over charged us. We went to the W Hotel to the Woo Bar. The W hotel is part of an international chain, one of the best in the world and very luxurious and expensive! The place was dead and I guess we were too noisy and rowdy for them, running around in reception and lying in the couches which they have in the floor (see photo), so reception called us a few taxis and asked us to please leave saying that the area we were in was reserved for 'guests only'.

Couch at the W hotel.

On to the next bar. La Vida Loca was where we ended up, which is apparently a gay bar, which we cannot confirm or deny. We danced, chatted and drank some cocktails. It was then decided that it was time for us to call it a night, not an early night but a night, which was a good call on our side as we had to be awake early for our field trips to the Convention Center and an outside events venue. Both were really nice and we found a beach we want to go to (maybe snorkel), overall it was a good trip besides our hangovers and the excruciating heat.

With the aussies.

On the stage.

The rest of the day was spent swimming, sleeping and eating. Oh and attempting to do some work, procrastination sets in.




xxx

K, guys its our time to shine.

Vi Ai Pi on thursday night was a bit of a let down, it was their 4th Birthday party and the vibe was cool, just a bit chilled for our liking. There was a drinking competition that our friends won and two Indo singers that were really good, but the atmosphere was lacking so we moved next door to our favorite place in Bali, SkyGarden. However this time round SkyGarden was too full making it almost impossible for us to make use of the free flow special. Boo. We got over it and decided to have an early night. Lindsay also learned that it is not a good idea to drink while taking anti-biotics.
                                                                                                  

Friday morning we woke up quite late and spent most of the morning in the pool before heading to Kuta with some of the Dutch students, we managed to fit 6 people in a taxi excluding the driver which the dutch students did not find amusing at all. We roamed the streets spending way too much money, where Lindsay and I found our new favourite shop, with the most amazing clothes, which made as take a vow to not eat out anymore so we could spend our money there rather!

We then went to a pool party at the ProSurf Lounge sponsored by Billabong. The taxi ride there and the fact that we were starving kind of killed our vibe and to top it off it was even more busy than SkyGarden, seriously disappointing and it was impossible to get a drink at the bar where the barman were moving at snail-pace. As well as the slow service the locals were extremely rude and unwelcoming. Instead of letting it kill our party mood we decided to go next door to the supermarket and buy a few beers each and move across the street to Kuta Beach. We just chilled with our mates and enjoyed the music from the party, feeling brave we thought it would be a good idea to walk along the beach all the way back to our hotel. Not only did we walk about 8km down the beach to get home, we then had to walk through some very dark ally ways which we would not normally do in South Africa so everything in our minds was telling us to freaking run even though it was quite safe. An hour and a half later we got back to the hotel to find that the lock on my door had broken when my roommate had come home earlier in the night. We then ended up pushing Sammy and Lindsay's beds together and having little sleepover.

The alarm went off this morning which none of us even heard, we eventually forced ourselves out of bed close to lunch time as we had to go on a search for a supermarket to buy some noodles, noodles and more noodles, our staple diet for the next few weeks. We were very disappointed to find out that fruit is fairly expensive but we had a lot of fun pushing the baskets on wheels around the shop…

We have just come home from an Aussie bar which is situated right down the road from our hotel..we had a few Bintang's while watching South Africa lose, much to the amusement of all the Aussie's at the bar. Although we left with our heads hung low sammy was very happy that she made it out alive and no geckos fell on her head.

Over the last couple of days, Lindsay and I have realised that the more we drink and meet more Aussies the more we are developing a bit of an Aussie accent, something which we are trying very hard to avoid but so far we are failing.

xx

Are you guys wearing your Havianas out?

Today we woke up being positive about our day of lectures and we were all ready to work hard on our assignments but when we came downstairs to go to school we found that all three school busses had left without us. Great.  So we had to catch a taxi to varsity but the taxi driver had no idea what Stenden was and also asked us for directions, which of course we had no clue what was potting or how to get there,but we got there in the end.

We were all on a mission to get some work done with our PCO (Professional conference organizer) groups, but instead everyone ended up more confused than before with regards to our assignments, nothing unusual there :)

Busy getting dolled up now while sipping on some vodka. Vi Ai Pi tonight for the Welcome to Stenden Party(dinner included). Yes please.

xxx

First Day of Real Classes, and Dinner with our Friends.

Feels like we have already been here for about 2 weeks but today was only day 1 of real classes. We are in separate CBL groups (well just me, obviously) but it wasn't bad at all, actually helped to make a few more friends. We have already been given assignments, bleh, but there is a awesome area in the pool where you can work with your laptop. Shotgun. Enough about that.

We were walking down the street today in search of a decent place to eat where we wouldn't break the bank and during this short-lived adventure we were hooted at about 1000 times by people wanting us to move off the road (there are no pavements, and when there is the drivers see it as an extension to the road) and by taxi drivers. Something that we seriously need to get used to.

Finding cheap places to eat is proving to be quite the challenge as we live in a more upmarket area, and it ends up being more expensive to catch a taxi to the cheaper areas, so we have just decided to buy noodles and packets of cereal to live off for the next few days. We also plan of taking full advantage of the snacks table the varsity lay out every day. This is also what we plan on doing at the clubs as they offer free snacks to tourists just before the hour where they give out free drinks. score.
No skaam.

We went for dinner with some of our new friends tonight, so nice to be spending more time with different people. We are planning on going to the Gili Islands with them over a long weekend which is something we are really looking forward to. Mid way through dinner a very small cat that looked more like a rat than anything else ran under the table I almost jumped out of my skin, and Sammy onto the table shouting "guys I cant get bitten, you have had your shots I havn't!!" while Lindsay just wanted to take it home and wash it. And feed it. We might need to be careful about how we act in front of these people, they are new friends after all and might think we are complete freaks and decide it is safer for their mental and physical health to stay away from us.

Tomorrow, we have a few workshops at school, followed by us stuffing our faces shamelessly in the canteen before we come back to the hotel to put some work into our assignments. Very boring to read about so we wont go into any detail about it tomorrow, but we will hopefully have plenty to speak about as we are returning to Kuta! Free dinner sponsored by Stenden (thanks) and then us just club hopping until we eventually find some poor suckers to buy us drinks.

Until then xx

we don't do that in Africa.

As you know we went out to Kuta last night and you are hoping to hear some juicy details about the night. Sorry to disappoint you but we have made a pact that what happens at SkyGarden stays at SkyGarden, unless you can figure out what happened for yourselves after we post some pics…

No description needed.

In the cab going to Kuta.

All we will say is that a great time was enjoyed by all, so much so that none of us noticed the fact that there was an earthquake in the early hours of this morning, no tsunami warning, so everything is fine.
The party continues. Jollers must jol.

I did almost get beaten up by what is by far the largest balinese person of all time. I walked into her after turning around in a hurry messing my after the party street food all over her. After apologizing what seemed to be 1000 times I searched for Sami and Lindz who had run away in anticipation of a real "beat down".

Returning to our hotel at about 3:30 am. we decided it was a brilliant idea to go for a swim with our new friends, yes, we finally have some friends (bbm dancing face). Lindsay woke up this morning with an eye infection, and Sam with the worst hangover of all time.



After convincing the girls that a trip to town would help cure us we headed off to the mall in search of laptop plugs and slip slops and of course something to eat. We then had an encounter with the most reckless driver in Bali, he seriously needs to get his license revoked and should thank his lucky stars that his cab was left in the same state it was when we got in. Sam was not feeling too great, the mixture of hangover, extreme heat and jerky driving did not treat her well. No more explanation needed.

The combination of jet lag and free drinks caught up to all of us today and we all enjoyed long afternoon naps. It is now time for us to get stuck into that work.

Lovelove x

Why are we so short?

First day of lectures. Hands down the longest amount of time any of us have ever spent in a lecture hall in a day let alone an entire week. This mainly consisted of various lecturers telling us about our upcoming module, the info about Bali like the culture and the dos and don'ts. From all of this the two things that stood out to us was that if someone on the side of the road asks us for "jiggy jiggy" the answer is always no, and that if we want to survive in Bali we HAVE to jaywalk(no problems for Sam Peckham here, but myself and Lindsay will have to work on this particular skill of ours.)

We then had welcoming drinks, this is the first time we have come across Arak. It wont be the last and none of us are complaining.

As we have no class tomorrow, just 5 chapters to read and a CBL to prepare for, you know no biggy, we have decided to venture off to the party area Kuta for the night. We will have to update you on this epic adventure at a later stage, but until then we will just have to talk about a cat that lives in our hotel that we are 100% positive is possessed or extremely demented. This thing is seriously creepy with its meow that makes it sound like it is dying from  laryngitis and the way it lurks behind every corner giving you the fright of your life.

Lots of love and hugs xxx

First day of school.