Off Road

On monday I went to the Bali Safari and Marine Park. For about £25 you can go on the Safari journey, catch any show and have your photo taken with either a baby orangutan or a lion cub - who would choose the orangutan over a lion?!

The tour takes you through 'Indonesia', 'India' and 'Africa' where you will find species native to these countries. The honey bears were adorable and the rhinos were intimidating. The hippos looked pretty placid but remain deathly and the antelope were poised and pretty. The zebras were nonchalant and the wilderbeast were lazy. The stalks were still and the lions were restless. And as for the tigers, my favourite kind of cat, well they were just majestic. There were three of them, and one swaggered right past my door so I could get a good look at his beautiful face.

I didn't get a great photo of them but here is a video of a stunning white tiger at feeding time:





Back in the main park, I checked out some pythons, bats, comodos and even a leopard who seemed to have his eye on something in the water below. He crouched down low and tucked his ears back -wow he was gorgeous. Just one careless move over the railing and I wouldn't be alive to tell you about it.

There were also some very sociable elephants who kept wanting to 'shake hands' with their trunks; they loved having their picture taken and kept posing whenever I raised my camera. For some reason, the pictures of them won't upload so I'm sorry you won't get to see their happy faces but I'll find some other way to share them with you.

And so, the picture with the lion cub. I was in two minds about whether or not I should post this picture. Of course I was over the moon to be able to get close with a lion and feel its fur under my fingers and marvel at its beauty. Of course I was going to have the picture taken regardless. But one thing that niggles at my ethos on animals is that I believe the lion was heavily sedated. I know this happens and I'm not naive - they do this to animals in captivity all over the world. But my heart sank when I stood in that queue and watched how he just wanted to lay down and close his eyes. The tamer kept waking him up for each photo.

It didn't feel great and it made me realise that there wasn't much I could do about it. But it will be the one and only time I ever do such a thing. The only thing I could do, was pour out lots of love, warmth and healing to him as I stroked his coat.


The photo is for me to share with you, but to remind me that animals need our love and awareness more than ever. It has promtped me to look into what I can actively do for wildlife.

And in other news, we have celebrated yet another birthday, Franck turned 31 on Monday. There was sangria, live music and cake - hoorah!

I also stupidly got the date of my hotel checkout wrong and had to leave earlier than I had thought. So I'm now staying in Batubulan, a much more remote area that doesn't have internet so I have come to Sanur today to settle down in a coffee shop to write this. I will do my best to keep posting and not fall off the radar.

Stay tuned.

Don't Worry....About a Thing...

Last night was Reggae Night at Stumbar:

Hosted by Franck.


Featuring Damien and his pretend spliff...


...with his sidekick Loïc...

...and yours truly.


And the award for the best picture of the night, if not my entire trip, goes to....

...the boys. Loïc, Franck and Damien, an absolute winning combination. This picture will never stop making me smile.

Joyeux Anniversaire

Last night, I prepared myself for Anne's birthday party which I'd been told was being held on a boat - now I'm not a fan of being on a boat but I reasoned that it wouldn't matter too much as I'd probably get merry enough to not care and I'd be in the good company of my new French friends. But to my delight, the venue had been changed to Linga Longa, a very cool little bar about two roads away from where I'm staying. They always have live music and the staff like to know you by name.

Loïc had written a song for us to perform as a surprise for Anne so we turned up with the guitar and a few copies of the song and had a quick rehearsal with the guys before she arrived. Anne had tears in her eyes when we sang to her. I wish I had filmed it or gotten pictures but I was up on stage with the boys trying to keep up with French lyrics; I mimed most of it but the gusto was there.

In fact, I didn't get many pictures of anything really - I always seem to be really bad at taking photos on nights out or at parties. I'm usually having too much fun to walk around snapping everyone. When I do remember to get the camera out, I end up with crap snaps of people's shoulders and strangers walking infront of what I'm trying to capture. I got just a few from last night. They're not great but something for you to look at:

The Birthday Girl (and Pascal)

The band (not including the woman about to walk infront of me, of course)


Loïc and Franck

Damien jamming with the band

The night also consisted of free beer and me dancing to a Gypsy Kings medley, the room a little blurry by this point as I span around and pulled a few Spanish moves. I also got talking to Pascal who is a freelance photographer and is interested in doing a collaboration project with me; he's keen for me to write some prose to go with his photographs. He gave me his card and told me to come and check out his portfolio sometime - so we'll see if that manifests or not, but still, I'm so pleased that he's keen to work with me, let's hope that it's a success.

Kiss my **** Kuta...

Well sorry folks, it's been a while since my last blog but to tell you the truth, nothing particularly exciting has happened in the last week. And those of you who are placing bets on how much longer I'll stay in Bali, you might as well just pack it in because I don't plan to stay beyond the departure date on my plane ticket! Nepal is a calling, and I need to be by those glorious mountains and in slightly cooler climes. Although Bali is beautiful, don't get me wrong, it just doesn't make my heart sing. I could never live here that's for sure. And being a child born to a Mauritian family, I am going to be a little bias and say that for me, no other island tops ours; our little gem in the south of the Indian Ocean.

This weekend, we had a failed night out in Kuta, the bustling, 'trendy' part of Bali. The place to be for 18-35 year olds. We tried to start the evening off by going to see a film, you know, just as something to do. I didn't really know much about the film Columbiana apart from the fact that it's a French-American action movie, but thought it would be nice to settle down in a cinema for a few hours as I haven't done so since Cat and Niall took me to see Top Hat at an old style movie theatre (with an actual organ player and everything). When we got to the ticket booth, they had decided to change the films they were going to show. Columbiana had been replaced by Smurfs. Great. Not watching that. And anything else that might be interesting to see? Johnny English...sod off.

So, we swiftly turned on our heels and thought we'd go for a few drinks instead. Sky Garden is the most popular nightclub in Kuta. Kuta was an absolute nightmare. It's like Leicester Square on a Saturday night; it's full of idiots who don't know their drinking limits and forget any manners that they may have had when sober. And it wasn't until I was pushing past loud, staggering tourists in the street that I remembered just how much I hate clubs. Give me a low-key rock gig anyday or a nice comfortable pub where jokes and stories can be told. Anything else but a sweatbox full of clones that try to impress each other on dancefloors to repetitive, meaningless music that hits the charts because no one can seem to manage singing along to more than two sentences per track.

I was also told a very irritating fact: in Kuta, tourists get into clubs for free but Indonesians have to pay. Hearing this pissed me right off and I was even more reluctant to enjoy the venue. We stayed for one cocktail and left the minute the last drop hit the tongue.

On the plus side, I managed to get to Tanah Lot the next day, the famous sea temple on the southwest coast.


'Twas pretty cool....

Amed

On Tuesday we went up to Amed, a place on the east coast of Bali. This beachtown is famous for snorkling and diving; sorry to dissappoint you but I didn't get to try either. Although I did attempt (very poorly) to have a swim but gave up when I kept jabbing my feet on rocks. It's just not an ideal beach to play about on.

The trip was a two hour ride on the motorbike and boy does that really make your bum sore! We stopped off at Candidasa on the way, another place that people keep telling me I must see. And I nearly moved there when I left Ubud but I'm so glad I chose Sanur. Candidasa is pleasant enough but it's more of a quick-stop kind of place. It has a beach and consists of one main street which doesn't have much else other than restaurants. We took a break here to mark our half-way point to Amed. We ate some crap pizza but welcomed the cold drinks and continued our journey to the east where Bali becomes a very different place.

The views from the winding roads in the mountains were just breathtaking; we bobbed and weaved our way up to where it's breezy and thick with trees. I saw a couple of monkeys sat by the side of the road and I watched people harvesting rice in the land below. I was clinging on with both hands as we rode along so I didn't get any pictures, and I'm not even sure the camera would have done the landscape any justice.

Things are much slower paced in Amed. It's nowhere near as crowded as any other beachtown I've been to. It's a shame that it rained most of the time that we were in Amed because you cannot see the deep blue sea in the background of my pictures.


But guess who managed to come along for the trip this time...


I was so sleepy in Amed because the air was warm, the breeze was soft and all I could hear was the swish of the ocean...Loïc and I took this opportunity to meditate for a little while.

We rode out to town to pick somewhere to have dinner and we made such a wrong choice. It was dark by this point and there were no street lights so we stopped at the only place that had customers. As we sat down and looked around we noticed that the place was full of Czech people who didn't once crack a smile and just guzzled down their beer and played cards in silence. We got some rather miserable looks everytime we burst into laughter or raised our voices - we ended up calling it the House of the Dead. It was full of people but there was absolutely no life. The food wasn't particularly nice and my blood curdled when I spotted a cockroach on its back a few feet away from our table. We decided that enough was enough when a moth landed in Loïc's beer. We quickly threw some money down on the table and dashed for the exit, shuddering as we went.

I was glad to be back in Sanur after a terrible journey home. It chucked it down heavily as we rode back and the wind picked up. There were some nutter drivers on the road and so we had to be extra careful. There was a ceremony going on for a few miles so we got backed up in traffic for a while and had to negotiate our way around a mass of Balinese people marching, carrying fruit on their heads and banging gongs.

I was soaked and shivering when I got back to my hotel, the first time I've actually felt cold since being in Bali. I stood under a hot shower for a good twenty minutes, put some clean, dry clothes on and had a lovely hot drink down at good old Stiff Chilli.

It's the Little Things

So for the past week I've been getting some poems and prose down and having some chillout time, hence why I haven't posted a hell of a lot on here. I sit around in coffee shops or go for walks, I write in my head and sometimes on paper. I'm now well and truly settled here in Sanur and I love the fact that I can walk to the end of my road and be on the beach if I just need to sit and watch the world go by and gain some inspiration.

I'm getting to know the locals a little bit and I see the same faces at breakfast every morning. The guy who runs Stiff Chilli knows me by name now and refers to himself as Johnny Be Good...this always makes me smile when I go in there for a coffee or a light bite at lunch. The other day I was in there and one of the waiters was chasing a baby squirrel around the place. It was running between people's feet, squeaking and jumping around tables while people were trying to eat. The waiter cornered it and picked it up and took him discreetly out back, although I hope he just set the poor little thing free and didn't hand it to the chef in the kitchen.

I went to dinner at a restaurant called the Piccadilly the other evening. The restaurant sign is designed to look like the London Underground logo and they serve gammon, egg and chips. They even had this old telephone box in the middle of the room:


There was an acoustic duo playing cover songs by artists like Coldplay, Bob Marley and The Beatles. I was dancing in my seat and singing along. The lead singer could see that I was enjoying myself so he asked where I was from. I told him that I was from London and so he said he'd play one last song for me, what would I like? Being put on the spot in front of the whole restaurant, I couldn't think of anything so I told him to play what he wanted. He chose "Angels" by Robbie Williams. He lost me then. I was not impressed. Anyone who knows my taste in music, knows that I loathe that song, he couldn't have picked a worse song to play me. And so, unfortunately for them, the band lost my smile. But I didn't have the heart to be an arsehole about it so I clapped and said "thank you" when it was over.

In other news, they've moved me to a different room at my hotel. I'm not really sure why but it's bigger, has a power shower and a balcony. I still have a shite view of the building work going on out back but this little place feels like mine. It didn't have a towel rack like my other room (I wash my clothes in the sink and hang them up in my room) so imagine me trying to explain for fifteen minutes what a towel rack was. All the English-speaking staff had gone home and it resulted in me miming getting out the shower and hanging a towel up to five Indonesian employees - all completely blank and wondering what the hell I was doing. In the end, one of them understood the alternative word 'hanger' and I finally got my rack.

And if you're wondering what Keith's been up to, well, he's a little annoyed that I don't take him out much but he enjoys it when I take him to the beach when it's quiet:


Last night I went to Antida, the garden bar in Denpasar, the same place I went to last weekend. Although this time, no cake in my hair. It was a blues night so it was far more tame. I didn't get to dance, but I swayed side to side, as you do when listening to blues music. There was a lot less beer this time but plenty of rain and some awful hotdogs that we bought at the food stand. This is what Loïc and I thought if them:

We quickly downed some Carlsberg to get the nasty taste out of our mouths and soon cheered up...

Loïc's UK friend, Kat joined us for an hour or two. Turns out she lives in Clapham, my neck of the woods. She heads home on Saturday and said she has some PG Tips she can give me...happy days!!! I haven't had a lovely cup of PG Tips since I was back in The Big Smoke.