Shipwreck diving, Balinese New Year, and Nusa Lembongan

Since we are now scuba certified, we decided to try our skills in Bali! We went to a place called Tulamben to the U.S. Liberty shipwreck. We hired a guide and some scuba gear and we were off! For $40 we got to go on two dives throughout the afternoon, have a guide with us the whole time, and get transportation to the site! (Too bad this hobbie is so addicting because it is going to be much more expensive at home!) Both dives were absolutely amazing! We saw a starfish, some kind of fish that looks exactly like the coral except occasionally his mouth moves or he will swim to a new spot, a Moray eel, yellow and red clown fish, a school of thousands of silver fish, not to mention we got to swim through a sunken ship! We both said we feel like little kids again everytime we get back from a dive...its the most exhilarating feeling! After getting both of our laundry done for about $8 (hand washed and hung dry) we headed back to Kuta where we originally started our Bali trip. On the 26th it's the Balinese New Year! That night the streets were filled with thousands of people, all ages, to see the parade through town. The people here spend months making these floats and creating a whole performance where there is a a guy narrating in a scary voice and music playing. They all make their floats dance and tell a story (not that we understood the Balinese but we got the idea). After the parade they march all the floats down to a temple on the beach and burn them. We are not exactly sure how good our Balinese-English translating is but the festival represents something about purifying all of the negativity from the years past, getting rid of any bad energy or evil spirits and starting over. The celebration goes on until about midnight and then the streets are dead until 5am on the 28th. We had to go grocery shopping the night before to get anything we wanted because from 5am on the 27th until 5am on the 28th no one is allowed to be seen in public, use lights, work, talk (or make any noise), eat (if your Balinese). Basically you are locked in your room for 24 hours. If you violate any of the rules it is possible for you to be handcuffed and taken away by the police (guess they take their holiday's pretty serious)! We spent the entire day watching the 15 DVD's we bought the night before on the lowest possible volume setting and eating cups of noodles. Needless to say, we were excited to start a new adventure the next day and see the outside world!
So after our lock down, we headed to Nusa Lembongan, a small island off the southern coast of Bali. We just got here this morning but spent all day laying out at an infinity pool where if you are laying on your lounge chair it looks like the pool runs into the ocean. After the pool we headed back to our bungalow, which we are paying a total of about $7 a night, to watch the sunset. Around 5pm the tide goes out about 1/2 mile from the shore leaving all the boats stranded and just small pools of water left. As the sun sets it reflects the red and orange colors into the little pools left behind by the tide. We have seem a million sunsets here but this is definitely one of the most amazing!

Tomorrow we hired a boat to take us to another part of the island to snorkle for a couple of hours....can't wait!

BALI! Ubud and the Gigli Islands!

So basically we showed up to Bali having no clue what we were doing...at all! We got off the airplane and we were swarmed with the locals offering to change our money or "you need transport?" (a phrase we quickly learned we would hear about a million times while we were here!) We were standing outside the airport, realizing we should have probably done a little bit more research but decided 'okay, we need money, we know that so lets go to the atm.' So we each took out "500"..."500" what? we had no clue-we couldn't figure out if we took $500 US or whatever currency they used here. Meanwhile some guy keeps offering to take us to a hotel for $50,000. We were so confused! Luckily some Canadian guy came up to us to ask us about what flight we came in on and we had him help us out a bit! So we went to Kuta and just told the taxi driver to take us to the hotel this nice Canadian guy was staying at (he also told us we only took out $500,000 rp which was only $50 US and the driver was offering to take us for $5 US haha-we learned later we kind of got ripped off but lets be honest, it could have been a lot worse!) So we made it to our hotel and for $6 each a night we were in a really cool place with a really cool pool but a really basic, crappy room, with a bathroom we were not exactly used to. Kuta is the main city here and it was a little overhwhelming at first-it's restaurants and vendors and hotels basically stacked on top of each other with everyone riding around on motorbikes.

We decided to get out of there first and head to Ubud. It was such a cute little artsy town with lots of culture. We stayed in an adorable little bungalow-for less than $8 a night! The first day we went shopping at the market and basically replenished our wardrobes with a bunch of cute, cheap dresses. That night we went to a Balinese Fire Dance Show. It started off kind of weird to be honest, with a bunch of people chanting and chanting and chanting. But, it ended really cool with this crazy guy who danced around on the fire coals that had been burning. He just kept going and going, it was crazy.
The next morning we decided to walk to the monkey sanctuary, which was amazing! There was a lady at the entrance that was selling bananas so we thought why not!? Well, those didn't last long...we were pretty much attacked right when we walked in by monkeys. They would pull on our dresses or jump up on us or try to get into our purses to get the bananas. But they were soo cute(when they weren't trying to steal whatever was in your purse!) They were so people-friendly and would just hop right up on us. Shanna and I decided we want one as a pet, and we even named him already...Aboo!

So we got back to our bungalow and decided we wanted to go to these elephant caves that were about a 10 minute drive away so we asked how we should get there and somehow a few minutes later we were on a motorbike we rented! Not our best idea we've had. Within about 5 minutes Shanna had the first sharp turn and, well, we kind of crashed into the curb. Shanna's foot was bleeding, it wasn't good haha! But she kept going and by some miracle we made it to the elephant caves. They were these caves used for praying and meditation that got burried and were recently uncovered. Our tour guide took us through and told us all about the history. We ended up at this river that was supposedly holy water and asked if we wanted to go swimming. Before we knew it this little Balinese man was swimming in this holy water in his underwear. Kinda weird but we thought what the hell and jumped in!
We ended the day on a walk through these beautiful rice fields, drinking from a fresh coconut and had mojitos at an adorable restaurant.

After Ubud we decided to head to the Gili Islands, specifically Gili Tawamban. There were two options to get there: one was fast and expensive and the other slow and cheap. We forced ourselves to take the slower option of bus rides, ferry rides and little boat rides. We stopped at Singigi on the way and for some reason decided it was a good idea to rent a motorbike again and ride along the coast stopping at all the beaches. It was so beautiful! We only had one more crash where we were riding on a dirt road that turned to sand and we lost traction and ended up in a bush haha. That night we went to a temple on the water to watch the sunset. The next day, another boat ride, and we made it to the Gigli Islans! It's a pretty small island with a strip of really cute restaurants and hotel/bungalows right on a gorgeous beach. We took a horse-drawn carriage (no cars on the island) to our really nice bungalow right on the beach and spent a lot of time relaxing on the beach. We learned really quickly that all you had to do was buy lunch at a resort and you could use their pools all day, so we also spent a lot of time at these amazing resort pools, steps away from the beach. We went snorkeling a few times (resisted the urge to spend money diving). One time we saw 2 sea turtles and one of them swam right up to us. We swam around with him for a while and we were even able to pet him, it was crazy! We also found this place that was their version of a movie theater. They were these little individual huts right on the sand and you could pick from the 500 illegal dvds they had-all you had to do was order $3 of food or drink each. This is also a party island so we spent a few nights out at the beach bars! The night of the 17th was St. Patty's and then turned Britt's bithday at midnight so that was definitely a great night to remember. Gili Islands were absolutely amazing! It was sad to leave them (and to have to get back on that damn slow ferry!)

SCUBA DIVING IN THE GREAT BARRIER REEF!

So another five hour Greyhound ride and we made it to Carnes, our last stop in OZ. We went out the first night to The Wilshed, another bar where everyone dances on the tables...don't know what it is about everyone dancing on tables but it always seems to make for the best nights! The next day we started our 5 day scuba diving trip. The first two days were boring videos and quizes in a classroom followed by diving in a pool...so crazy breathing under water the first time! The next day we boarded our boat that we would be staying on for the next two nights to do some real diving in the Great Barrier Reef! The boat was amazing...so pretty, amazing food, and we had our own room that even had a TV in it! The first four dives were with our instructor, to complete our training for our Open Water Certification. We had to show him that we could do all these tricks under water that we learned in the pool, like take off your eqipment and put it back on or breath with your buddy in case you ran out of air, use a compass.... that kind of stuff. The dives were all amazing though! The coral is so beautiful, with tons of colorful, sometimes massive, fish swimming around. We saw stingrays and reef sharks (not as scary as we thought) and some of the craziest reef formations. It was like straight out of Finding Nemo down there! So after we finished our first 4 dives (and passed our test) we still had 6 fun dives! Not sure what we really thought that meant but basically our instructor said "k you're free to go dive on your own now!" At first we thought he was kidding...yeah right would he send us down there alone! He definitely wasn't kidding, in fact we would have had to pay extra for him to go down again with us haha So we thought 'what the hell,' he seems to think we'll be okay and we did the next couple dives by ourselves, it was great! We were just starting to feel really confident in our diving skills until we remembered that our last night was our night dive, sooo scary. Basically you dive at night to see sharks! The light from the boat attracts the sharks all around so when you are gearing up you look down and there are sharks swimming right where you are supposed to jump into the water. This was a guided dive, of course. Basically, it was terrifying. But once we got the courage to jump in it was incredible. There were four of us diving together and when we all swam together there was quite a bit of light from all of our flashlights...BUT if you looked back, left, right, anywhere else pretty much, it was like looking into a black abyss-kinda freaky! We saw tons of sharks swimming around us, which was actually not as scary as we thought it was going to be, it was just really cool. Needless to say we were on such a rush when we got out of the water that night, as we were after every dive pretty much! The last day we had three more dives and we were so excited because we had rented out the digital camera for the night dive and our last three dives BUT we woke up and they said a cyclone was approaching OZ and the visibility wouldn't be too good, which it definitely wasn't. So we don't really have any great photos, except a few we managed to get of each other and a really funny video of us freaking out before the night dive and one really cool video clip of a shark, all posted below...

The diving trip was definitely a highlight of our trip thus far, we absolutely loved it! It's addicting though and we are so tempted to do it everywhere here in Asia...could be an expensive little hobby we picked up!

Magnetic Island

To break up our bus ride from Airlie Beach to Cairns we decided to do a stop in Magnetic Island. When we first arrived, we were a little confused, having no idea why we had decided to stop here. Its basically a small island off the coast of Australia that is really quiet, had a really small hostel, and was extremely hot. After trekking for about a mile to find some place that would serve lunch, we met up with one of our friends, Neils, who we met in the Whitsunday Islands. He had done some reading and suggested we rent a "Moki" (really small car with no doors) and drive around the island.

At 9am we headed off for our adventure with 2 more of Neils friends following in another car. Our frist stop was to take a 2 hour walk where we were supposed to get great views and see koalas right on the path. Of course, because we are cursed when it comes to seeing wildlife, we saw no kaolas, and compared to the really hot, not so great hike, the views were only ok. So that part of the adventure done, we decided to head to the waterfall we had heard about. When we walked there it turned out to only be a small creek, but at least it was somewhere to cool off. Next we headed to a little beach on the north side of the island where we hung out for a few hours and got lunch. After a while the other 2 with us decided it was time to return their car. Since we couldn't all fit in the car on the way back we decided to get dropped off at the hike again to see if we could see any koalas later in the afternoon....of course no suck luck. While we were waiting for the others to come back and pick us up we found our car had broken down a ways down the road and we had to walk to it and wait for a new car! (so far not sounding so good...but so far it was a good laugh and still fun!) After getting into a new and working car we decided to try the waterfall again because we must have gone to the wrong spot. Sure enough we found the right waterfall and practiced swinging off the rope swing into the pool of water below. One our way to the next stop, Nelis decided it was time for the two of us to learn to drive a manual car. So after 5 minutes of lessions we both gave it a go. Verdict is....we don't suck! We made in a few kilometers down the road successfully with no accidents! It was really exciting! Our next stop was to see the wallabees (mini kangaroos). When we got there, expecting not to see anything, there were wallabees everywhere! They were the cutest things we have ever seen. There was a guy there, who knew a lot about the place, that gave us all a little bit of food to feed them. They would come right up to your hand and place their little hands on your fingertips and eat right out of your palm. It as precious and we wanted to take them all home with us! Just this part of the day alone made up for the kind of awful hike, breaking down car, and lack of koalas. We were so excited to get to pet and feed them it was unbelievable! Conclusion: Great Adventure!

Visiting Tanya! and Byron Bay

So after we had to leave the moms we hopped on an airplane up to the Sunshine Coast to stay with Tanya and her family for a while. Their house is incredible in such a cute town called Perigian, near Noosa so we were in for another treat! It was amazing to see Tanya and be with a good friend from home, and so great to be in a home for a while (and the homecooked meals really topped it all off!) We had a few really fun nights out in Noosa and got to enjoy the beaches for a few days.



Luckily Tanya was able to get the weekend off so we decided to head down to Byron Bay which is an adorable beach town. We stayed in the Arts Factory Hostel, a funky, hippie-type place. Gary and Sara, two of our friends that we met on Kiwi Experience in New Zealand met up with us too which was great fun! The first night in the hostel we all stayed in a room together, not the nicest but it was fine. Then...the second night they said they only had room for two so we figured what the hell, we can pay for two people and squeeze in four. Ooo were we wrong. We ended up staying in a tent basically. It was one bed with a tent over it, not even room for the bags, they had to go under the bed. So we squeezed three of us in one bed and Gary slept in the car haha! We decided we needed to be pretty drunk to be able to sleep like that so we read Lonely Planet on what bars to go to. They said Cheeky Monkey was "a backpackers' bonanza - cheap food, cheap drinks and cheesy tunes. Expect (dodgy) table top dancing, instant friends, long nights and easy sleazy fun." Perfect! Ended up being one of the most fun nights we've had! They didn't have a dance floor, there were only tables of all different heights for everyone to dance on. It was great, we even went back the second night. During the day, though, it poured rain, non-stop for 2 of the 4 days we were there which kind of sucked. But, regardless Byron was a really cool little beach town!


We went back to Tanya's for a few days and just relaxed at a beautiful cove in Noosa before hopping on the Greyhound to head up to Rainbow Beach.

Frasier Island and Whitsunday Islands

From Tanya's house we headed to Rainbow beach on the Greyhound bus which is where our Frasier Island adventure would begin. The bus ride was 14 hours of driving with a 3 hour stop in the middle of nowhere! Condsidering it was Sunday, no only were we in the middle of nowhere, but nothing was open. We had to sit in front of an ice cream shop for 3 hours...good thing the ice cream was good! After that we got on the bus for the 12 more hours only to find out that Brittany's seat wouldn't recline and neither one of our lights worked to read. We had to practically break Brittany's seatbelt so that we could tie it around the outside arm of Shanna's chair to hold it back. It was quite funny but we are definitely glad to be back to sleeping in beds and not busses.

Once we got to Rainbow beach we went to an orientation meet the other people you would be traveling with. There are 11 people in each 4WD vehicle and 2 cars caravan and camp together. You then head to the groccery store and stock up for the next 3 days and 2 nights you will all be camping together on the island. The next morning we packed up the cars...more like the boys packed and the girls supervised..and we took a ferry over to Frasier Island. We thought the whole time we would be driving on the smooth sand of the beach but we were definitely mistaken. About 70% of the time you are on backroads where all of the 8
passengers not sitting in the 3 front seats are literally getting tossed all over the car the bumps are so bad...but great fun!


The first day on the island we headed to Lake Mackenzie which is a crystal clear lake. It was absolutely beautiful and even when you are shoulder deep in the water its like you are in a bath tub. We wished we could have stayed all day but becuase of the tides on the beach we had to get to our camp site and set up. After setting everything up we hiked down to the bbq's where we made burgers and hot dogs!


The next day we went to another lake, we can't remember the name but something like Lake Wantabe. We were told it was a short 30 minute hike, but it turns out it was really 50 minutes in extreme heat and humidity. All we wanted to do when we got to the lake was jump in and never have to hike back! In the lake there were giant cat fish swimming right up to us..too bad we couldn't eat one! When we got to our second camp site we set up, ate some PB&J's (which only the americans eat apparently, everyone else thought the jelly on peanut butter was gross?), and headed to a Eli Creak to cool off before heading back to the camp sight. The second night we realized that sleep would come much easier with some drinks so we decided to break out the boxed wine (cheeper than beer) and do some damage. Needless to say, the tents were much more comfortable the second night! (Apparently we have a theme going between Byron Bay and Frasier Island)! We drank on the beach and got to watch shooting stars....great night!


The last day we went up to Indian point where you are supposed to be able to see sharks, sting rays, possibly whales and other wildlife but of course we aren't that lucky...only a sting ray, but the view was georgous! After that we headed back down the beach to the shipwreak which apparently has been there since 1937 and is how the island got its name! We took some good photos and headed back to the ferry which would take us back to Rainbow Beach for one more night.



From Rainbow Beach we headed to Airlie beach which is where the Whitsunday Islands are located. We boarded a sail boat for another 3 day 2 night adventure. There was only 15 people on a boat that could hold 25 (10 ppl canceled thinking the weather would be bad) which was great for us! We met a lot of really fun people and the views from the boat of the islands were spectacular! Only mistake we made was to go out the night before the boat took off. We woke up with a small head ache, which turned into a horrible hangover with the swaying of the boat! You have to wear "stinger suits" (they look like wet suits but are to prevent you from jelly fish stings) and after snorkling we could only peel them half way off before needing to pass out on the deck of the boat with horrible head aches! At least we got to snorkle for a little while with sea turtles and enormous bat fish...sooo cool!


The second day, feeling better, we headed to whitehaven beach which has really fine white sand and crystal clear blue water and then off to another snorkling adventure. This time we made friends with the a school of fish that followed us around the whole time we were in the water. Everytime we thought we lost them we would look back and there they were. Then they would come up and practically hit your masks they were so close.

One the last night on the boat we docked on an island with three other boats and partied at some random little bar. It was an absolutely great night and half the people out drinking were still wearing their "stinger suits" from the afternoon!


We made a lot of really good friends on the boat and a few doing the same route as us up the coast, so we will get to meet up with them again on our way up!