Island hopping

After leaving Thailand with our Diving Licences in hand, we headed off to Bali to hit the beach and dive the sites for 3 weeks before we finally reach Sydney and start working...after nearly 7 months of travelling, I suppose it was time we started to do some sort of work!
We slept for a few hours on the comfy seats in the Bangkok airport, a lot comfier than the Delhi airport!! So we managed to actually get some sleep before we had to check in at 4am. It all went smoothly until we went through passport control. Ofcourse as we came from Laos into Thailand overland, we only had a 15day visa, we were leaving on our 17th day so we were pulled aside by an officer and had to fill in some forms and pay a 2day fine. No doubt we are now blacklisted and won't be allowed back in!!!haha



We sailed on through and caught our flight into Denpasar, Indonesia. We had been looking forward to returning back to Bali after our last trip. The first 5 days we spent on Kuta beach, Tourist central!! but that makes Kuta what it is in a way. Full of Australians left right and center, I guess Bali to them is like Spain to us. The weather was Sooooo hot and we did nothing but spend 5 days on the beach, deciding against surfing this time and thinking more about where to go to dive, especially with the famous Mola-Mola sunfish. Luckily for us it is in season for Mola-Mola's to be around the coast of Bali between July - October so fingers crossed we would be in luck. We also found 3 ridiculously cheap restaurants that were selling plates of fish and chips for just over £1 and local food, (1 day I had 2 whole catfish, chips and vegetables) for about 80p!! awesome stuff!!
Our accommodation was cheap but horrendous!! definitely the worst we have ever stayed in!! at night you could hear rats running around above the ceiling and when we told the owner he just looked and agreed as if it was no problem!haha fair enough. Although, the place was ok, the owners were friendly and they had a pet monkey who was really cool, we had made a friend!
After spending 5 days on the beach, our tans had suddenly picked up!...after 1 day we could tell the difference, the sun is so different here to the rest of SE Asia...Sar was really happy, now she could carry on working on her tan!

5 days was enough and we decided we had seen what we were interested in seeing here on our last trip when we went around the South of the island with James and Hayley who showed us the beautiful beaches, the Uluwatu temple, and the famous surf sites such as Dreamlands and Pedang Pedang. Although there are Volcanoes and mountain villages which would be cool, we had come here to chill out and do nothing but hit the beach and dive.
The next day we decided we would get a boat across to a tiny island called Nusa Lembongan, which had a site called Crystal Bay which is the site to go to if you really want a good chance of seeing a Mola-Mola. The boat ride was a public boat and took nearly 2 hours, it was horrible!! From start to finish it was rocking everywhere, it had 2 floats either side which I guess is used to stabilise the boat but the sea was wayyy too choppy for these to even remotely help!! Sar thought she was going to be sick on multiple occasions and she wasn't sitting next to the side, instead if she was going to be sick it would be all over me or the bags, or herself!!!hahah luckily she wasn't sick and just felt ill, for a while even when we had arrived.

We arrived and we met with beautiful sunshine and the bluest water we had ever seen, it was AMAZING! quite a few boats mind you but we had been warned by Lonely Planet, because of the local seaweed farms. The seaweed was a big industry here as we later found out, it is used for their ice-creams!! oo errr!
We walked along the seafront and tried to find a cheap room. This proved impossible and we had to settle at the end of the beach at a place where it was about £10 a night...A little bit priceier than we thought but we figured that must be the island as a whole compared to Kuta. although we were paying more the rooms were pretty big and impressive, no rats and really really clean, luxury in a way that it was similar to the standards of Rainbow in Pha-Ngan which is, GOOD!!
That day we headed straight to the diving centre and arranged a day to do 2 dives and hopfully see a Mola-Mola. I still had 2 days left where I wasn't allowed in the water or in the sun because of my tattoo so we arranged it for our 4th day there to be safe!
The beach was awesome, the waves and the surf was all set about 100yards out and from there to the shore it was really shallow and no waves....paradise. We still couldn't believe how blue it was and spent most of the day on the beach. We headed out for tea and had Barracuda which was pretty good although I think my plate was the 1 that some people next to us had turned away because it was overdone, so I guess they just brought it to me, it was nice nonetheless but not compared to Rach's in Tao!
The next day we moved rooms where we paid the same but had an even better room and a balcony! it was cool and owned by some Australians who were really friendly.
We spent the next couple of days on the beach, and didn't move apart from to get food, from where we were staying. They did the BEST fish and chips and at a good size too! lots of chips and lots of fish...perfect.
There's not much to tell for the next couple of days as we didn't move from the beach, I was finally allowed to swim, and so we sunbathed and sat in the sea all day and would watch the sunset in the evening before getting a quick shower and having tea.

Diving came around, and bright and early we were up and at the diving school for 9 o clock. We got all our equipment and checked the sizes before heading on the boat. We decided to rent a camera too to get some pictures. We were joined by a group of advanced divers and a group of open water divers. It turned out our group was me Sarah and the divemaster which was great news! the bad news was, we had been told before we got on the boat that we were going to Crystal Bay only to find out once we were on the boat and on our way that we weren't :( so our chances of seeing a Mola-mola were pretty slim, still we kept hope.
Our first dive site was called Buyuk, and it was amazing, we dropped down around 23m and saw a lot, massive schools of fish, huge fish, and the highlight, was a Shark!! We had seen a black tip shark! It was awesome, it was coming straight at us which sent the heart going, such an awesome feeling. We had the camera too so were snapping away while this shark was coming towards us. It soon lost interest and headed away. We then saw some lionfish which were pretty impressive and then headed up to the surface. Sar had found her new hobby, playing with the camera under water, keeping her occupied for the whole dive!!

Back on the boat and we got a free lunch (if you can call a handful of rice lunch) and had an hour wait until our next dive. We set off hoping to be at Crystal Bay but we stopped too soon so it was official, we weren't going! We stopped at a bay called Toyapakeh which was an interesting dive, the current was sooooo strong, so most of the dive we were just floating with the current which was cool until you get too far away from the coral and it becomes hard to control and you're in the full force of the current!! still quite fun but we had no control over how fast we went and struggled to look for fish. We did see some Nemo fish which were cool to play with and ofcourse we had the camera so were playing around with that. A good day but sadly no Mola-Mola's, but still 1 amazing dive and 1 strange dive and 400 pictures to go through when we got back!! It turned out that they didn't charge us for the camera so we got it for free!! that evening we had tea and were met by an Australian couple and a guy from Belgium who we chatted with. They were on our boat from the open water dive group. The Australians ran a caravan park in Rode, between Adelaide and Melbourne and invited us to come and visit over Christmas so that's an option!!
The next morning we had booked our boat to go and see the Gili Islands. We both didn't want to leave Lembongan but at the same time were excited to see the Gili's and do some more diving