I know I promised to write sooner, but our time has been so eventful that I forgot all about you! Just kidding! Well, we are obviously now in New Zealand and it’s beautiful and fantastic! But I should probably pick up where I left off last time!

After the good times checking out volcanoes and hanging out in ubud, we rented a motorbike and went to see the botanical gardens about 20 minutes away, and it was so beautiful. Lots of tropical plants, flowers and fruit that I had never seen before.

Later that day, we headed to Devilicious, a restaurant that Jean-Michel and Shannon visited a few times during their stay and met some really cool people. There, we met Dewan, a local medicine man and his American friend, Erin. (Jean-Michel had already met Dewan in September with Shannon) After visiting with Dewan and Erin for a while, Dewan invited us to join him and Erin the following day to come watch him teach kids to play gamelan. Gamelan is an instrument that most Indonesian males learn to play. The best way I can describe it is xylophone-like, but it doesn’t chime clearly like a xylophone. It has a tinny, bell like sound to it, and when there are over 20 of them at the same time, it is a loud clammering of different bell sounds. That makes it sound really unappealing, but it’s actually quite beautiful (as long as you’re not right up close, because it’s too loud when you’re close).

So Dewan and Erin picked us up at our homestay on their motorbikes the next morning. It was the rainy season in Bali as you may know, but Dewan assured us the previous night that it wasn’t going to rain. 5 minutes after mounting the motorbikes, it was pouring, and we pulled over and took shelter under an overhang. It didn’t look like the rain was going to let up any time soon (just the opposite actually!), so we decided to bear it and get drenched. And get drenched we did (do or do not, there is no try). It was literally coming down in buckets and the sewers were backing up. There was a river flowing down the streets in under 10 minutes of this. By the time we got to our destination, we were soaked from top to bottom. We took our shoes off and dumped out the water, and went to sit in the hut to listen to the kids play, still getting wet by the rain that was still coming down. It was beautiful though! The kids were so funny. We quickly picked out the teacher’s pet, the brat, the shy one, and the class clown. But they were all so cute and the music was wonderful. We sat with coffee and crunchy fried soy bean crackers and watched Dewan teach the kids with a wide smile on his face the entire time. It was a lovely afternoon!

After that, we went for a trip to the Gili islands of Lombok! We got a ride to Padangbai with the owner of our first homestay, and from there we took the gili cat, which is almost as cool as it sounds! It is the fast boat to the gilis (takes about 1 hour), which is significantly faster than the public ferry (called the JM ferry!) that JM and Shannon took last time for a hefty 12 hours boys and girls! We first got to gili Trawangan and had to wait a few hours for the island hopping boat to Gili Meno which was our destination, so we hung out on Trawangan for a few hours and had lunch and some tropical drinks.

Then we took the boat to Gili Meno! It was so beautiful! The weather was very hot, the water was clear and blue and full of coral and fish, and we were on our very own secluded island! Hello! Well, it wasn’t our very own, but it felt that way. There was probably a total of 40 tourists on Gili Meno and it takes 45 minutes to walk the circumference of the island. Bam! Anyway, we planned on spending about 3-4 days on Meno and then going to Trawangan for 2 days, but Meno was so relaxing and we made friends there! (some were JM’s old friends from last time) so we stayed almost a week. During that week, we did things like chillax, eat, drink, swim in the beautiful warm ocean and socialize with our friends. But the most eventful part of that week was going scuba diving for my first time! We actually went snorkeling the day before, and it was very very cool and I should probably describe it to you better than that, but the scuba diving was just too cool, so I will skip to that. We had a training session in the pool in the morning on Gili Air (the third gili island) and then we were off to the ocean! It was crystal clear blue and warm. We descended to 12 meters with our instructor and we saw some incredible things under the water! It was such a breathtaking experience! We saw many different colours and types of coral, thousands of tropical fish that were close enough to touch(!) and four sea turtles!! (two different types) The sea turtles were the coolest part!

Sadly, our time in the Gilis had to come to an end eventually, but we were also very excited to go back to Bali. When we returned, it felt just as exciting and new as when we got there the first time! It was so green and lush and full of good energy. We drove back to Ubud and found a new homestay near the monkey forest, and that night we relaxed and went to Devilicious again, hoping to see some of our friends, but it was a quiet night. The next day, we went back to the monkey forest! The monkeys were all over the place and very excited! One of the people working there threw some lychees into a pond, and they went nuts! It was a fun afternoon! The next few days were less eventful, more relaxing than anything. But we did go to the Arma museum, which was very cool. Lots of amazing art pieces!

After Ubud, we headed to crazy Kuta! (near the airport) Once we arrived in Kuta and found a crazy cheap homestay (7 bucks American a night), we went to the beach! Duh! It was blazing hot in Kuta and stayed that way for our whole time in Kuta. (I burned my scalp in Kuta that day) If you can believe it, the water at Kuta beach was even warmer than in the Gilis! It was incredible! It was like bath water! But there was quite a bit of garbage since Kuta is a very busy place, and there are lots of surfers. The waves were also quite violent (hence the surfers!), so we didn’t swim for long, but the beach was nice. The next day, we both were feeling a bit off. I think we had gotten too much sun the day before, and I was very near passing out the whole day (I actually fell in the street and scaped my knee, but I think that might just be because I’m clumsy..) Anyway, we did some shopping that day, but other than that, we just feeling too tired to do much more, so we relaxed and played cards that night! The following day, we had to leave! Very sad! I will tell you about our last day in Indonesia because it is a funny story. We arrived at the airport very early and we checked the screens for our flight but it wasn’t there, so we figured it was just because we were so early. We were sitting waiting, and I glanced at our tickets and I think my heart actually stopped. I said “Jean Michel what day is it?!” and he said “it’s the 10th, why?” and I go “no…it can’t be the 10th. No no no…” It turns out our flight had been the day before. Yes, we missed out flights. All three of them to get to New Zealand! We think the reason is because everything we had booked was on the 10th, but the one thing on the 9th was our flight out of Indonesia (we flew overnight). Long story longer, we had to buy new tickets, and 28 hours later and wallets much lighter, we have arrived in beautiful New Zealand! We have actually been here for 5 days already but I will leave you to digest this giant blog entry before I tell you about the fantastic time we have been having since we arrived!

Wow, my fingers are 5 pounds lighter after that blog! I feel like I should thank you for your attention! Thanks! And please, come back and read about new Zealand in the next week or so! It will be worth it, I promise!

Also, we come home very soon, so get planning your welcome home parties! Just kidding! We are had and are still having such a wonderful time on this trip and we are sad that it’s almost over already, but we are also excited to come home! And it will be so great to see you all again! We missed you lots!
Okay I’m done! Catch you next time!

Love

Lisa and Jean-Michel

written by  jeanmichelisa on March 15, 2009 from Ubud, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Australia, Bali and New Zealand adopt Jean-Michel and Lisa!
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Yeah! Fun Stories! Good to hear all is well, and you finally made it safe to NZ. Have fun back in E-town in a few short weeks. Hope there is no April snow for you to be welcomed home to! ;-P (just kidding....)

written by  Shannon on March 15, 2009

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