Jul 08

We vacate the Gilli islands and head to back to Bali. We arrive late in the evening at the port town of Padangbai and arrange our excertion for the next day. The Liberty wreck is a world war two US war ship that was blown out of the water by the Japenese just off the coast of Bali. They managed to submerge it on the north East coast of Bali, where it remained for the next twenty years or so until 1967 when the local volcano erupted and the lava spilled out and pushed the ship back into the water. The dive was amazing the best that we have done yet. you had to dive from the shore which was a little tricky, but as you progressivly submerged and swam deeper you were greeted by amazing views of the battered ship before you. The ship was covered in loads of really colourful coral and the fish surrounding the ship were in abundance, huge and varied. We navagated our way over and sometimes through little passages through parts of the ship, fantastic. After our two nights that were needed to complete the dive we caught the bus to Ubud in central Bali the cultural capital.

Aswell as the cultural capital, Ubud is also the shopping capital. So we did some lovely walks through the surrounding country side, and even more walks through the market and streets that were alligned with countless shops. It was nearing to Zoes birthday so she took full advantage of the situation and shopped till I dropped.

During our time in Ubud we also caught a "Kecak" local dance show, which was really cool, loads of the locals take part and its set in their temple grounds. As far as I could make out the men more or less sat round in a circle and made alot of silly noises while the women did some crazy robot dancing. It was really good. We also went to the monkey sanctuary where I got attacked by several monkeys and zoe laughed and took photos, instead of being concerned for my safety.

So thats it for our time in South East Asia, we fly from Depensar to Perth on the 6th July to begin the next leg of our journey. This leg is set to be very cold and I believe there will be work involved. No!!!!!!

After the Perama boat finished, we were a little sad, mainly at leaving our super chef behind, but also relieved about having a bed to sleep on rather than a mat on the floor! We got the bus to Sengiggi and went out for drinks with the English crew then stayed the night ready for the Gillis in the morning! The Gillis are 3 islands of the coast of Lombok famous for white sand beaches and excellent snorkelling.
We decided to start off on Gilli T, the big party island and hop our way round. Gilli T was cool, very developed, very crowded and super modern, we bagged some awesome accomodation with our buddies from the boat and spent two days on the island drinking, dancing with the locals and eating more yummy food, Indonesian cusine is really excellent!
It was pretty sad saying goodbye but we left in style after a few hours sleep with sexy hangovers.... we headed to Meno (the super quiet island) and boy was it quiet, we thought we were the only people there but more seemed to appear at feeding time! We got a really cheap bungalow surrounded by spider webs which was ok until we found a big mamma in our room on night! There was very little to do on the island except seriously relax and work off the hangover so thats what we did! Plus the beach was the best of all three Gillis and the snorkelling was good two, we finally spotted a turtle! Whoop!
Finally we checked out Gilli Air, by this point if possible we were getting a bit bored of islands, we only stayed one day which we spent most of it snorkelling with turtles again! Wow our luck has finally come! Time to get back to the mainland via the 5 hour ferry journey, what fun! Luckily our friends from the boat were on the ferry so we had 5 hours to catch up and eat hawker food!

We board the Perama boat not quite knowing what to expect. The tour was two days and two nights and we were looking forward to the dragon spotting but not really sure about the rest.
The boat was full of European's so the local crew could see that they had to provide a "party", which they certainly did! A few beers (12 or so) and several shots of "Arak" later the party was booming with some euro semi cheese house the boat was going off. We crash on the deck of the boat as we couldn't afford one of the cabins and sleep through the end of the party. We wake up early as we were freezing because we opted to sleep on the front part of the boat and when the boat set sail we had the full force of the wind in our face. No matter though as we were soon docking outside "Rincha island" home to the Komodo dragons and several other animals that are usually their pray. Before we set foot on to the island we were told that there is no guarantee of seeing the dragons and don't get our hopes up! I think they were having a little laugh at our expense because as soon as we get to the cafe area on the island, before our trek and guide briefing we are greeted by several of the amazing creatures. They were massive the largest was about 3 metres long and really fat, it was mating season so they were all chasing each other around looking for some action, I mean chasing as they can reach speeds of up to 30 k. The dragons are really dangerous as they have a bacterial bite and if bitten you would die without medical attention in a week or so. There were times when it looked like they were closing in on us and Zoe at least once got a little to close when taking photos and had to jump out of the way of the approaching dragon, quite amusing! The trek was cool and we saw more dragons, which were posing for the camera crew that was present on the island, no Attenbrough though, gutted.
Back on board and we get on our way to the first snorkeling location. We snorkeled for about an hour and were satisfied with what we saw so we get back on board the boat, suddenly there was loads of commotion and the crew started shouting something and tell us to jump aboard the little power boat, we then realise that they are shouting manta so we jump in the boat and go and catch it up. The Manta ray was about 2-3 metres in width and swimming with it was amazing, it was so majestic and kept swimming back and forwards between and under us. We could get really close to it.
Back on the boat we eat some more amazing food, spotted some dolphins and have a much more chilled out evening before crashing on the deck again this time down stairs behind closed doors.
The next day was not quite as amazing as the first but was still fun, we mainly chatted with our new friends, all the people on the boat were really friendly and made the trip really cool. We visited, swung into and swam in a waterfall, went snorkeling again at a really ace site around a beautiful picturesque island that you could walk around in 6 minutes, sunbathed and watched another beautiful sunset. In conclusion the Perama tour was really good mainly because of the awesome food!!
We met some really cool people and we end up going to the Gili islands with two of them Hannah and George.