Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Christmas holidays part 2

It has been so long since I have posted anything I nearly forgot I had a blog!

After Kuala Lumpur we flew to Bali in Indonesia. Our first stop was Kuta for a few days. I had heard that Kuta wasn't your average Asian holiday destination because of the number of Aussies there...well that was an understatement!! Kuta beach is like Benidorm for young Aussies! There are millions of them and they are all hammered most of the day.

The beach itself isn't the best, there were lots of washed up fish that were killed on the coral reef. We spent a few days there waiting for Jane to arrive before moving on. The sunset was beautiful there.







After Kuta we moved down the coast to a little village called Pedang pedang, which had a lovely wee beach there that was overlooked by loads of wild monkeys. Me and Mike thought it might be fun to try and skinny dip in the water one night, but my only attempt at skinny dipping was foiled by water insects that sucked onto your skin in the water! Uch! I have to get someone else to teach me to skinny dip properly!






Whilst we were staying at Pedang pedang, we hired a car to drive around the area. We went to the Hindu temple at Ula Watu which was beautiful.











One of the attractions of the temple was the hundreds of monkeys that lived there. You could food to feed them there and and they came up and took it out of your hand. I was too scared to hand it to them! We were all warned to take off shiny jewellery or sunglasses as the monkeys were renowned for stealing things from tourists. As I was walking around the cliff wall a monkey jumped on my HEAD!!! The wee fecker shook my head violently trying to get my hair clip off! Of course I was shrieking like a banshee, I thought it was going to scratch me and give me rabies. A local kid casually reached across me and pushed the monkey off me and laughed. By that time I just looked like an eejit and a photo opportunity for the Japanese tourists!









After a few days we were on the move again to Padangbai, one of the main passenger ports to Lombok. It was a nice little town with a nice little beach we went snorkeling on and some nice restaurants.










We only stay in Padangbai for one night before starting our journey to the Gili islands off the coast of Lombok. We travelled there on the Perema boat which took 5 hours....5 of the worst hours of my life! Whenever I feel sad that I didn't make it to Laos with Wee Laura and Mer during our Asian trip I remember how much I hate hate hate boats.



The crossing was so rough. The stretch of water is where the Pacific and Indian oceans meets and it is one of the deepest waters in the whole world.I was hanging over the side for literally the whole trip. Even Mike was sea sick for the first time in his life. It was so embarrassing , I threw up on a honeymooner!! Not right on him but he apparently was hit by some spray. I seen him a few days later and nearly died of embarrassment.






On Gili Trawangan we stayed in a beautiful 2 story colonial style cottage with amazing big day beds in the porch to chill out on rainy days. We stayed on the island much longer than we thought because it was so beautiful. We even ended up doing our scuba diving courses there.





When it was time to leave Gili T we got a speed boat to Lombok that took 10 mins then flew back to Bali. It so so much better than getting the boat again. We went to Ubud next, it was great there. Very arty with beautiful restaurants and traditional Balinese dancing and temples. We hired a moped for the day and went up into the hills and seen the surrounding areas. We bought two fantastic paintings by local artists for the flat but still haven't had them framed yet!


This is the door to our room in Ubud.


Ubud palace.


Bali was amazing, I would love to go back one day and see the north of the island and some of the mountainous regions in the middle.


















Saturday, 5 January 2008

Oompa Oompa Kuala Lumpur - Christmas holidays part 1

So after Mike proposed we headed out to meet everyone else to celebrate. The next morning we we had to get up early to fly to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the first part of our Christmas trip. Of course we slept in and were woken up by Jo B ringing us to see if we were ready. We had a mad dash to get ready whist feeling ROUGH!

We were driven to the airport in a comfy van, Rach, Jo B and Mike slept the whole way but I was concentrating on not throwing up so I stayed awake and watched the new version of The Italian Job which was good.

After a 4 hour flight we landed in Kuala Lumpur, we were all really excited as none of us had been to Malaysia before. We got a bus into the centre of the city and checked into our hostel. After grabbing some amazing Indian food we got a taxi to the Petronas towers .



They were used in the film Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones and I have wanted to go and see them ever since. As were were driving towards them we kept seeing a tiny peak every now and then but when we arrived there I was blown away by how beautiful they were! I have never seen a building like it in my life. I was so impressed.





On the way back to the airport to fly to Bali we were late, but this diamond taxi driver drove twice the speed limit and drove through red lights whilst pointing out interesting things along the way and we got there just in the nick of time!

Mike proposed!

On Friday the 14Th of December, Mike and I were getting ready to go out for our friend Jane's birthday. He suggested we have some pink champagne (my favourite...cheesy i know!) to get us in the party mood. We decided to take it up to the roof top helipad on the 47Th floor of my building. the view up there is amazing it looks like this from 360 degrees.

Well I won't tell you all the details but Mike got down on one knee with a beautiful diamond ring and proposed! I immediately accepted and was jumping and screaming. This picture is a bit rubbish, but this is it!

Another rubbish picture, I will put some better ones on there later.