Bali

I thought this might be of some interest to anyone interesting in travelling the world soon. Last Summer I arranged to visit Bali and Thailand over a three week period with a few friends. Some people in England decide to take what is called a 'Gap Year', a break from education between High School and University to travel and work. A couple of my best friends did this and planned 3-6 month long tours of Asia and Australia. I was lucky in that I could join them on the Bali and Thailand leg of the tour.

Firstly, Bali is one of the most incredible places I have been too. I have never been to Indonesia before and it was like nothing I have ever seen before. It took about 21 hours total flying time to get there, incredibly long. You stop off in Qatar (a Gulf state) and Singapore on the way. Why was Bali so great? It is so so different from the West. The roads are absolutely crazy, everyone has motorbikes and any traffic laws are out the window! Stray dogs run rampant everywhere, street sellers on every corner, extremely humid, torrential rain then beautiful sun, it is extreme. Personally what I loved was all the Hindu temples, Hinduism there is such a kind, caring religion. Bali was hit hard after their spate of terrorist attacks in the early 2000's, this meant that tourism was pretty much wiped out.

So with tourism being most peoples main income they were forced to find other work, where they could. This was extremely tough and the poverty levels sky rocketed. However our tour guide explained that whilst the government did not really help, part of Hinduism is looking after your extended family. If you do not have much it does not matter, you share, you give and you ensure everyone is looked after. Even better in recent years the country seems to have recovered it's tourism industry and things are looking up. We had amazing days seeing volcanoes high in the mountain, lying on deserted beaches, going to Hindu cliff temples, eating at Balinese restaurants, visiting Ubud, which is written about in 'Eat, Pray, Love' and going out in the crazy party town of Kuta (an experience we will never forget!) The people were crazy, crazy as in nice and really weird. Our driver loved to meow at us throughout the journey before cackling and dancing, driving was not the first priority! Anyway I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking...