Bali, Indonesia - Beautiful Culture

We caught the ferry over to Bali from East Java, which cost us a whole 50p each, and then shared a taxi to take us to Pemuteran. Here we stayed in a beautiful homestay complete with tropical outside bathroom. Menjangan island is reported to be some of the best diving around Bali, so Ashley took a trip out there to find out. The island itself is uninhabited by humans but is home to thousands of deer who will happily let you get close to them since they have no predators on the island and therefore do not fear people (The name Menjangan literally means many deer).

The diving itself was good, although we are still yet to find anywhere that equals the Maldives for the variety and abundance of marine life and the beauty of the coral, some of this may be down to time of year though.

After a few days we headed on to Ubud, Bali's arts and crafts capital. We stayed in a stunning traditional Balinese house just outside the town and hired a scooter to explore the area.

We visited a waterfall not far from our homestay, with a rather comical sign.

We also visited a night market, which we found was the perfect place to go if you wanted to buy a goldfish. Ashley also got himself a helping of suckling pig cooked in the local way.

The Tegalalang rice terraces were simply stunning, but Ellie learnt the hard way not to misplace your footing and slip off of the thin paths!

We really loved Ubud. For us it was a good blend of Balinese and Western culture.

The shops were very up-market and wouldn't be out of place in Covent Garden, but everything was still sold at reasonable prices. The food on offer was delicious and it was great to see the craft workshops, including a shadow puppet maker.

At this point we had planned to move on to the Gili islands and Lombok but after looking into extending our visa, and rethinking how long it would take us to travel down the east coast of Oz we decided to move on and extend Australia to a full month. Our host gave us a lift to the airport in Denpasar and after a short fairwell we set off on our way to board yet another flight.