November 2011
55 posts
Heathrow strikes →
If you’re flying out of Heathrow on 30/12/2011 read this….
“i need sunshine, i need angels, i need, something good and i need blue skies, i...”
– Maverick Sabre -‘I Need’
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Last day/night of Winter 2010/11
01/04/2011 A pretty uneventful day. I’ve been to Chinatown too many times now. More shopping. more bags of Milo than you can shake a stick at. We played ring of fire, sang and listened to guitar, drunk more vodka, stumbled to a reggae bar, got stranded on the dance floor by a Norwegian guy, drunk a little bit more vodka, had a screaming match with some chick in the hostle who said we were...
Jungle Trek....ATTACK!
30/03/2011 What better way to cure your hangover than a trek across the middle of Tioman island through thick jungle full of dinosaurs and insects for 3 hours. Me, Josie, Hugh and Trevor set off on a mission and got to experience real Tionam jungle. Hiked up a load of stone steps, climbed under and over fallen tree logs, splashed in streams and got bitten by crazy mosquitos. We reached Juara...
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Island life (plus vodka)
29/03/2011 Josie and I hooked up with some Canadians and fellow English men/women and went for a major trek to get beer! We all chatted on the way to the big duty-free alcohol supermarket in Tekek. After sunbathing and pineapple fried rice we all found a little bar with wooden decking looking out to sea so we had a few beers before going back to the terrace to neck vodka in pure English pig style!...
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Kuala Lumpur (again)
26/03/2011 So stupid o’clock arrived and me and Josie were whisked off to the airport to sleepily board our plane to KL. Had a hellish time hauling all our stuff around KL before following a guy to Birdsnest hostle, which apart from the Sahara temperature, was cute and cosy with cats and iguanas hanging around. Spent an evening at the Petronas towers.
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Last day in Lembongan, HUGE SURF
23/03/2011 Surf was absolutely pumping but probably a bit big for me, as it was my last day i paddled out anyway. High tide was approaching and waves were already starting to crash against hotel/restaurant walls. I had to sprint along sections of wall to get to the paddle-out point so I didn’t get taken out by an incoming wave. The surf was easily double-overhead when i got out there (way...
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Dream Beach & the bridge to nusa Ceningan
22/03/2011 Early start but not so early by time we actually go off our arses and started walking. We walked through the first village and through forest up a few steep hills and bendy empty roads. Another village, lots more windy paved roads surrounded by nothing interesting, a poor tied up cow and we made it to dream beach.
Cove shaped with a huge crashing shore dump and unexceptionably...
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Knee deep snorkelling
20/03/2011 Morning started with a walk and snorkel across the length of Tamarind beach. There wasn’t much to see apart from a few nemo fish and alot of seaweed but apart from the massive rip in the middle of the beach which kept us busy for a little while there wasn’t much going on. As usual i didn’t have shoes on so was sprinting from patch of shade to patch of shade the whole...
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Shipwrecks
18/03/2011 Looooooong paddle out to reach Shipwrecks but the clearest water i’ve ever seen without a doubt and some of the best views you can get from a surf break. The first 45minutes was small, weak and I was surfing with half of Japan. When a boat came and picked them up the surf picked up for the rest of us. Had a bit of a shocking one, not going to lie, a bit frustrating when i saw a...
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The boat to Lembongan
17/03/2011 Theres nothing like a steady boat journey to clear the mind. the boat was a local wooden fishing boat painted white and blue. We sat up on the roof for the journey under the bright blue sky. When we reached the outer reef nearing Lembongan we noticed just how clear that water was. See through. Beautiful shades of blue, the midday sun shimmering across the surface. i spotted the surf in...
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Monkey Forest Fun
12/03/2011 After a shop around the hundreds of street stalls in Ubud we hit up the Monkey forest Sanctuary. those monkeys were not shy, My water and Josie’s newly bought items were favourites to steal. I was nearly in tears of laughter when the little bastard took of with Josie bag up the tree. Luckily it was returned after the park keeper chased the little critter around. Without any...
Bali's middle bits
12/03/2011 The journey to Ubud took us straight through the middle of Bali and we passed some of the beautiful, natural scenery that makes Bali what it really is. The bus took us up mountains, down mountains, up some more mountains, down some more mountains, past greener than green rice fields, through villages until the sea was far in the distance. We drove through a village which must’ve...
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Tsunami Warning...stuck in Lovina
11/03/2011 After a stroll to the beach which wasn’t a beach, just a stone wall and the brown sea we wandered through town. Lovina wasn’t overly exciting until my Dad rang me saying a huge 8.9 Earthquake had hit just off Japan and Bali had a Tsunami warning. We couldn’t figure out how ‘in danger’ we were so we checked online for info and as usual the BBC was going off...
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Us-ripped off? Never!
10/03/2011 how long was the 10th of March 2011! So we alighted the ferry in Bali and I was happy to be on common ground again. But i was happy to soon, soon after opting for public transport to Lovina we realised we’d made a wrong decision. The local bus driver said we had to wait for more peopke to fill up the bus or pay 50,000rp each (the sign in the bus stop said 16,000rp). No chance....
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I'm fed up of writing about being ripped off
10/03/2011 So I won’t go into detail. Got ripped off massively and spent more long hours on a mini bus, too many in the last few days and I am actually getting a bit depressed and need to get back in the sea! Was happy to get to the ferry, mainly because we could get off that bloody bus. The ferry journey was pretty relaxed and I breathed a sigh of relief when i spotted Bali in the distance....
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MT.Bromo
10/03/2011 After maybe 3 hours of very cold sleep (a huge body shock when you’re used to sweating yourself to sleep in a bikini in Kuta) our ‘guide’ woke us up. I was knackered and head-achy but I remembered I was about to see an active volcano erupting and i perked up. It was chilly as we piled into the 4x4 and a 15 minute drive further up the mountain. When we got off i assumed...
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Yogyakarta
08/03/2011 Getting of the plane and picking up my luggage seemed like a massive effort as i was becoming less and less drunk and more and more sober. Not fun when you figure out your phone won’t let you call out and you have no clue where you are meeting your friend, which could be anywhere in the whole of Yogyakarta! Luckily it fixed itself enough to be able to get the address off her. Next...
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All nighter flight to Java (still pissed)
07/03/2011 After a hard journey back to Kuta on the peds i booked a flight to java for the next day to meet up with a friend. What to do when you’ve got a flight at 6am the next morning? Pull an all-nighter, get wasted on free flow (2 hours of free alcohol) in Sky Garden, lose your phone, try to steal a sign and get your mate up at 430am to give you a lift to the airport whilst you are still...
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Pre-Nyepi drinks
04/03/2011 Another pretty laid back day. In the evening pre-Nyepi celebrations started so we watched the rowdy Hindu groups parade their Demons down towards the beach. There was an excitable atmosphere and everyone seemed to be enjoying the day. We started on the beers at 3pm and went through the night!
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The road from Tabanan (driving in a storm)
03/02/2011 After a couple of hours surfless sunbathing and an encounter with a giant lizard in the internet place in Balian. Shona and I headed to Tabanan on our peds to get cash out. The journey there was reasonably frustrating but interesting. Nyepi is coming up so we got to see the tens of intricate monsters being set up in the villages on the way through. We got caught up in a few Hindi...
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Up the mountains
01/03/2011 No surf again! So we met up with the girls, jumped in the back of the Kijeng and safaried up the mountains! The roads were steep and windy the whole way up but the views spectactular. We were so high at the end we were level with the clouds. You could feel the drop in temperature as we pranced around in our mini shorts eating pisang goreng on the side of the road which we ordered with...
