the.adventures.of.nance.n.chez
8th Jun 2012 A bit of Indo.... We have had a fantastic time here, parts of it have stunning scenery and we have met some really lovely people, who are so friendly and helpful and most of the guys seem to have fallen in love with our Cheryl! We started off in kuta, Bali which has a massive long stretch of beach and is really well known for surfing. Its pretty touristy there, but we both enjoyed it. Cheryl had a few surfing lessons and was great, managing to stand up on her first attempt! She is hooked on it now! Here we were joined by our new travel buddy, my mum - yay!!! It has been great having her with us for the past few weeks. Next we headed off to udbud, which was a bit of a let down, they have a pretty good market there but it was again very built up and not really what we were expecting, with loads of traffic. We went walking one day hoping to see rice paddies and beautiful scenery, it was boiling and I think we might have been walking the wrong way as we didn't see too much! We also went to a monkey forrest in udbud, the monkeys were a bit over friendly and approach you to get food, one started to climb up my skirt to my horror, but we managed to shoo him away! They were so interesting to watch and so human like, there were also lots of little babies that were very cute! Next was lombok, which was a 5 hour ferry ride. We stayed at a place called sengiggi, now this place wasn't too great either, the sands are black and the town isn't too nice with noisy traffic all the time and people wanting to sell you stuff everywhere. We stayed here for 3 days and on the first of these days we arrived really late so ended up staying in a awful place! It was right next to a mosque, so we got awaken by calls to prey at 5 am after the last one had been at midnight and we had the worst bathroom ever with a hole in the floor for the toilet and a very strange shower. After that night we checked into a really nice room with a sea view! We neede the luxury following the last place! We found an excellent little place here to eat at that did Italian fresh fenchetti which was about a pound for a meal, it was really scummy and nice to have a bit of western food. One of the days we decided to check out the capital of Lombok called Mataram. The locals use a form of transport called bemo's here which are small van things with a row of seats each side in the back. The driver was trying to get all this extra money out of us and when we said no he just kept on going and ended up dropping us in the middle of nowhere. You would have thought we would have learned by now! After, all these local guys were trying to tell us that Mataram was an hour away, trying to con us again into taking transport, we ended up walking for about 45 mins to get to where we wanted, which turned out to be rubbish and then on the way home just decided to get a taxi which was only £1 each, after all that trouble! Next we headed to one of our favourite places that we have visited so far, the Gili islands. The last leg of the journey was a small boat from main land to the Gili's. It was full of locals and we ended up being squeezed into the middle of the boat which was so full of produce that we couldnt even put pur legs down on the seat! It was very funny, we were just squashed in between all this fruit, veg and plucked chickens in plastic bags! Then the locals started eating all the food, tucking onto a banana or whatever was in front of them! Good job that the journey was only about 25 mins or so! There are three islands and we stayed on Meno, the least developed of all three. We managed to get a good deal on a wooden cottage set in beautiful gardens with an outside bathroom, it was gorgeous! In Meno we spent many of the days walking around the island, which you can walk the whole way around and enjoying the beautiful beaches there. The sunsets were amazing with lots of pinks, reds oranges and even a purplish shade as well. We found this lake that was like a mirror at sunset reflecting all the colours of the sunset, it was stunning. We went to visit the other two island as well which were more built up but just as beautiful. The snorkelling was just amazing, you could see coral gardens of all different sizes and shapes and loads of different tropical fish, it's like another world! A highlight was also snorkelling with the turtles, they are amazing creatures and come up for air every so often so that they are right next to you, it was really special. The people on the islands were very musical and most of the guys who work at the restaurants seem to be learning how to play the guitar, some of them have awful singing voices but they don't care and sing there little hearts out whilst they play, it makes you not worry about your voice so some evenings we would sit around with them singing songs on the beach, they were good times, but must have sounded so bad to anyone listening! After we dragged outer selfs away from paradise we went back to kuta for a few days. The food in Indonesia has been some of our favourite, we have eaten mainly local food. They eat loads of fried noodles and rice with veg and an egg, there curries are really good and in general the food was really healthy and tasty and also very very cheap! I think we would both love to come back to Indo again, especially the Gili's. Now for the last leg of our trip....... The phillipines. Lots of love to everyone xxxxxxx
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