We have been spending our days wisely in Bali enjoying the waves everyday!
We have had a few interesting moments:
1. Two days later, we returned to the restaurant where we enjoyed the birthday party for the French business man. To our surprise the restaurant was gone! So was the shop next door and the hairdresser. In fact the whole road was deserted. All of the shops had been left abandoned. We tried to find an answer as to what had happened but all we have come up with is that the land owner has asked them to vacate. Interestingly, the area backs on to the demolished area which we walked through on our first night. We are only guessing but next time you're in Kuta there will be even more hotels!
2. Another local birthday party invite! We were walking to our favourite local restaurant for dinner when we were invited to join a lady for her 43rd birthday party. We were very kindly given a meal and drinks and didn't even have to sing on the karaoke, phew!
3. We were returning from surfing and took the direct route back to the hotel through the shopping centre. We were studying an unusual fruit when a lady from the Philippines purchased some for her family. She asked if we would like to try them and we shared one of the fruit. A conversation had begun. We talked to the lady and her husband for a long time about the Philippines and about their next stop, Australia. Lovely people that recently experienced a very sad time. They explained that two of their friends were killed in the latest terror attack in Sri Lanka!
We had a 2km walk in the morning to the Perama office where we caught a bus to Tulamben. There is very little public transport in Bali so getting around is relatively expensive compared to the rest of the country. At the office we relaxed and enjoyed free coffee before chatting to an English couple also on a long trip from Cornwall.
The bus dropped off in various places before dropping us in Tulamben. We are here for wreck diving on the USAT Liberty that lies just off the beach. We checked in to the room we had booked and for the first time on our trip the hotel had no record of our booking. We were a little suspicious but they upgraded us for free and gave us a rather luxurious room that was twice the price!
We dropped our bags and headed straight to the water. We went out to the wreck but we weren't the only ones. It was crowded with divers and snorkellers. The coral and fish around the wreck were pretty and we saw a good variety. Later in the afternoon we took a short walk to a quiet spot with a great view of Mount Ajung, the recently erupting volcano! We are outside the exclusion zone that was in force but we don't seem all that far away.
We will now settle back into our eating, snorkelling routine for the next few days! Plus, there is another British couple staying at our dive resort who love traveling too, so we will have plenty to talk about.
