Australia: Whitsundays

Views over the Airlie Bay, not the same day as I arrived

So I take the night bus from Noosa to Airlie Beach, leaving Noosa at 6 pm and arriving at Airlie at 10 am the next day, so quite a long ride…
And just to make things better, as I arrive at Airlie it starts raining, and raining hard. So by the time I get to the hostel I’m completely soaked, and I can’t check in until 1 pm, which just tops it.

To kill some time I head to the agency that organizes the sailing trip that I have planned for the next 2 days, to check in and ask about what I need to bring and where I need to be.

Before heading back to the hostel I decide to spend some time in a café, indoors, with a hot coffee (and because I still can't check in). When the rain seems to diminish I head back to the hostel to check in and take a hot shower. I make some lunch and start preparing my luggage for the trip.

I spend the rest of the afternoon reading in the common area of the hostel, hiding from the rain.

S.V Whitehaven

The next morning I get all my stuff, drop my backpack off at a storage and head towards the sailing boat: The SV Whitehaven, the weather doesn't seem to be great this morning either, but you have to keep a positive mind set. At the meeting point we get introduced to one of the crew members as well as the rest of the group and head towards the boat.

The boat is an old boat, from 1982, completely made out of steel, with a weight of 34 tons and a max speed of 15 knots. We have 3 crew members, and 24 guests. The boat looks big enough to easily hold that amount of people, and as we get shown where we are sleeping I see that I wasn't too far off, I had a decent sized bed, if you keep in mind that it’s a sailing boat.

Once back upstairs we get a quick safety briefing, and they explain what itinerary we are going to follow: The first day will be all about water activities, kayaking, snorkelling and more snorkelling. So for these we are heading to the northern part of the islands.

First snorkelling spot

When we arrive at the first snorkelling and kayaking spot we have a nice lunch and then get in the water. I decide to go kayaking first, to get that over with, and then snorkel for the rest of the available time. When I get in the water to snorkel it starts raining again. Not that I'm complaining about it, the fish seemed way more active because of the rain, but it did take away some visibility, which was a bit of a shame. 

As more and more boats arrive at our snorkelling spot the captain decides to head to a different spot. A bit more south, thus, a bit closer to the place where we will be anchoring for the night. The bad hing about this is that the rain had only increased on our way, so the new spot had a whole layer of dirty rain water that came down from the nearby island, and this didn't help the visibility.

After the last snorkel we get some pastries to recover some energy and we head down to Hook bay, a quiet bay between Hook island and Whitsunday island  where we will be anchoring for the night. As the crew starts to prepare dinner, everyone left upstairs just starts talking and getting to know each other.

Early morning and the jumping ship

For dinner we get green curry, allegedly the best green curry served on all the ships, because it seems to be tradition to serve green curry on all the sailing trips of the Whitsundays. After dinner the mood falls quickly, the weather is at it's worst and no one seems to be in the mood to do to much, so we just head to bed and get ready for the next day, which will be an early one!



So the next morning I get woken by the sound of the engine and by the enormous waves hitting the boat at about, at one point so high that I was just bumping around in my bed.It's about 6:30 am and I decide to head to the desk, there I notice that I was the last one to wake up. But look around, not everyone seems to feel to good with these big waves.

Whitsunday Island

After a sightly rough trip we arrive at a little bay, Chance bay, which is the gate away to the Whitehaven beach. We have a nice breakfast and then make our way over the island to one of the worlds most beautiful beaches.
On our way there and from the viewing points we don't really have the best weather. But once we make our way down, the sun starts shining and makes for a wonderful beach day.
We were supposed to have about 3 hours at the beach, but after about an hour and a half, the crew member that had joined us at the beach calls us all together and tells us that we have to get back to the ship: There have been some issues back on the ship, so we need to start making our way back.

Back on the ship the captain tells us about what happend: The hydraulic steering had a little hole in the pump, so there was no way to steer from up the main desk, the only way was to have a man down there manually moving the rudder. This ment that we were going back by motor, as sailing could have to much of an impact on the course.
Everything goes smooth anyway, but it takes us about 6 hours to get back, instead of the planned 3.

Back at the port, on my way to my luggage storage, I see a few girls of the Norwegian group of Fraser Island, so I decide to join them later for a couple of drinks, before getting the bus to Cairns. 

Australia: Fraser Island

Fraser island: The biggest sand island in the world, the place where I will be spending my next 3 days.
It's an early morning and as I get to the reception, where we are getting picked up, I see plenty of tired faces. No one seems to enjoy the early hours of the trip too much.
The bus drive from Noosa to Rainbow Beach goes smooth and without too many issues, except maybe the heavy rain that started to fall as soon as we got to our break.
In Rainbow beach we get introduced to our tour guide: Kevin, and go trough the basic safety briefing and such.

Dingo!!

We have 4 jeeps available, 2 manual ones and 2 automatic ones. and we are a group of about 30 people, everyone gets sorted and we all have an assigned car. I'm in the car with Kevin, an Irish girl, and a whole big group of Norwegian girls.
It takes us about an hour to get to the ferry towards the Island, including the stop at a bottle shop and a super market before leaving Rainbow Beach. And another 30 minutes from the ferry drop off to the first stop: Lunch at the resort where we will be staying the next 2 nights.

On the way to the resort, we get surprised by the beautiful long beach and the amazing scenery, and to make it even better we get to see a dingo, sitting all by itself not to far away from our resort's entry. As we drive into the resort I notice that we drive over the same security that I saw in South Africa to keep the animals outside of the area, some sort of rails over which animals aren't supposed to be able to walk on.

After lunch we have a few minutes to refill our water bottles and get something from the local store before continuing to Lake McKenzie.

To get there we go though an amazing bush drive for about 10 km, or 30 minutes more or less.
The island already felt overwhelming, with the sandy coast and the massive jungle just a few metres away from the coast. And now with the lake it just feels like the cherry on top of the cake.
The sand is incredible white, and very good for your hair, skin and to whiten your teeth, or so they say. And the water is incredibly clear.
There is barely any form of life in the lake which is one of the reasons behind the crystal clear water.

Lake McKenzie

As the sun starts falling we make our way back to the resort, where everyone seems to be too tired to do anything so it looks like almost everyone goed a quick nap before dinner.
For dinner we get steak with veggies and potatoes, and after finishing we head towards one of the rooms that got upgraded (so we had a tiny fridge there) to play some drinking games and get to know each other a bit.
We end up going to the resort's bar later on and even jumping in the pool to end the night.


Day nº 2 starts with an early wake up call followed by what was left of breakfast (the other group seemed to know how things worked here and got up earlier to get the best of breakfast)
After breakfast we leave towards the northern part of the island. We drive for about an hour, over the incredibly long beach before we get to our first stop: The Champagne pools. The weather wasn't the best when we got to there, but that didn't stop us from jumping in and heading to the furthest part, where you get all the "bubbles".

View from the Indian head

After the pools we head towards the Indian Head, the most easterly point of the island, and even with a cloudy day like the one we had, you have some amazing views over the island.

The remainings of SS Maheno 

After the Indian head we go for lunch at a nearby picnic area before continuing towards the SS Maheno wreck that you can find on the island. Kevin tells us how after all the years of great labour, the ship had been sold to a Japanese company that bought it hoping to use all the metal of the ship, but on the way to Japan (the ship was being towed, as it had nothing left but the metal and the steering wheel inside)a storm raised and  broke the wire that connected both ships. The crew, without any way to navigate the ship, decided to strand it on the beach hoping that the Japanese would come and pick it up once the storm was over, but by the time they found it, the was had pushed the ship so deep in the sand that it wasn't rentable to get it out, so the legally abandoned it. 

Eli creek

The last spot of the day was Eli Creek, a massive source of fresh water with a flow of 80 million litres of fresh water a day, supposedly enough to sustain Brisbane without any issues. We spend a few hours here, going down the cold river down to the beach, and going up again just to repeat.

And to end the day we get pasta with meatballs and garlic bread, and then we head to the garden out at the rooms to try and play some drinking games with the whole group. But we get interrupted by heavy rain first, and then we even get a visit from a snake.

The last day of the trip starts with another early morning, but this time we only have one stop ahead, before going back to the mainland.

The view from and to lake Wabby

We are visiting lake Wabby, the deepest lake on the island, as deep as 12 metres, as well as the lake with most sea life.

To get there we need to walk about 2.5 km, through a little forest and then a massive sand batch that looks like a small desert.
Once there we swim from one of the edges to the other one, and once back just relax a bit, some of us stay in the water, with the Dr. Fish (those that nibble all your dead flesh away) while others just spend the last hours on the beach next to the lake.

Once we finished there we had a little drive before having lunch, and then we head back towards Noosa.

The best thing about being back in Noosa is that almost everyone from the Fraser trip was staying there as well, so we decide to party all together. All in all, I had an amazing experience on Fraser Island, and I think that I was really lucky with the amazing group that I had.

The amazing group!

Australia: Brisbane & Noosa

The busy city shopping street - Brisbane

I head towards Brisbane with what you could say are the lowest expectations up to now, the reason behind this is how other backpackers described Brisbane to me: A boring city, nothing to do, a smaller and worse Sydney…

But when I got there my opinion started changing with every step that I took. Every single thing I got told seemed made up.

It is a big city, and there is no real beach, that was true, but that didn't mean that it was boring. All the streets where filled with people: youth going home from their school day, people on their lunch breaks, locals wandering around in their city, tourists enjoying street artists, families gathering on the grass or the “Brisbane Beach” for a picnic or just a little break.

Brisbane

I probably spent something like 5-6 hours just wandering the streets, hoping to get some highlights, and enjoying the city's atmosphere.
The Brisbane river flows through the city, separating it into various areas, and at the Brisbane botanical gardens you can see how the river allows for an amazing mangrove to grow.

The night life in Brisbane is something that I can’t tell you about, as I was exhausted and not in the mood for more party, so I decided to hang out at the hostel for the evening and just relax.

Noosa River's end 

My next stop is Noosa, and after checking my booking I notice that it’s going to be the first time in a while that I spend more than just 1 night in a place.
I have 3 nights in Noosa before going to Fraser Island, and another night when I get back. So I take my first day with a way more laid back mind-set, but as I walk to the main strip of Noosa I notice that you don't really need to much time. There are just 2 or 3 roads with things to do. Other than that you have the beach (which had veeery big waves the day that I arrive) and the river that gives a few nice hidden beaches.
In just a few hours I walk around all the highlights in Noosa heads, and even walk around Kayser Island, an Island surrounded by the river and located between Noosa Heads and Noosaville.

Luckily enough I have a kayaking trip planed on the Noosa Everglades the next day.

The river and it's lily pads

So the day starts nice and early, with a quick breakfast, a bus drive and a little introduction with information about the Everglades and the way that we should kayak to get into the river and back without wasting to much time.

The first part is the hardest, as we have the wind against us. We kayak over the massive Lake Cootharaba, which even has shark in it (if we have to believe the tour company that is).

After an initial hour of kayaking over the lake we get into the Noosa River, which has massive lily pad "fields".

On our way back, before heading back into the lake we have a little lunch break and enjoy the amazing view that the surroundings offer.

The next day would be a day to relax before heading to Fraser, but while making breakfast I bump into this girl that I barely remembered, but that I briefly met back at surfers paradise, so she invites me to join her and a few friends later on the day.
I head to the grocery store first and then spend the rest of the morning at the pool before joining them. We decide to make burgers for dinner and then continue towards the beach to have some drinks and play some games.

Australia: Byron Bay & Surfers Paradise

The night bus drops me off at Byron Bay at about 8 in the morning, I find the hostel to drop off my luggage and walk back to town to get some breakfast and coffee, especially coffee, because I figure that I’ll need it if I want to be able to kayak in the sea without falling asleep.

Byron beach and the cape

Byron is the most eastern part of the whole country, and it feels completely different to Sydney.
It’s a small town with a few bars and a couple of restaurants, but nothing too special (especially if you compare it to Sydney).
The atmosphere in town feels very relaxed

and the beach line is amazing. It’s one long beach that ends with a small cape into the sea, and the day that I arrive there are some amazing waves (that promises nothing good for the kayaking that I got planned ahead)

Just as I get back to the hostel the pick up for the kayaking arrives, and as we leave towards the beach the beach the driver tells us about how they saw a bunch of dolphins in the morning tour, but that we'll have to get through a bunch of waves to see them.

And while dragging the kayaks to the beach we discover that the latest wasn't a lie.
On the first try we catch a massive waves breaking onto us which makes us flip over and lose my sunglasses. But eventually after 3 or 4 tries we get into the deep sea (over the breaking waves). Once we got over the waves we had to wait for the rest of the group to get over them as well, and whilst waiting a group of turtles decides to come and greet us, swimming around us, under us and even sticking their heads out in a way of saying hi! While all these turtles are swimming around one of the guides tells us how they are the same kind of turtle as the ones in “Finding Nemo”.

When everyone arrives we continue the tour upwards, following the cape almost all the way up to the end, so literally kayaking further than the Australian land reaches. And while kayaking over there we manage to see a group of dolphins a bit further playing and jumping in the waves.

As the tour progresses the waves seem to get bigger so when we got to the end of the cape we decided to turn back around.

When we get back to the hostel I decide that I want to walk up that same cape where we just kayak around. The walk takes a bit longer than I expected, but then again, I found spots that where much prettier than I expected. At one point I even passes a few areas with public barbecues and locals grouping around them with drinks and great smelling meat.

To end the day I head toward one of the bars known for it's prize games.I meet a couple of Dutch guys playing pool and join them. Later on the bar decides to hold a pool competition while we are waiting for the beer pong on. And against all the odds I end up winning this one which got me a 50$ bar tab for the night. One of the Dutch guys decides to go home so being two we sign up for the beer pong tournament, with a main price of 150$ bar tab and a skydive. Sadly enough we don’t get past the second round in this one.

Next morning is the  day that I’m heading towards Surfers Paradise. It’s a city in the middle of the gold coast, and as far as I heard, it’s a little bit like Byron Bay, but bigger and busier.
And that exactly the same feeling I got when I arrived. It feels like a big city, with enormous skyscrapers and big shopping centres, but without the stress and rush that comes with a big city, you could even find businessmen just sitting on the beach boulevard enjoying their little break.

I had no activity planned here, so I grabbed my camera and left the hostel to see the city centre and of course, the majestic beach.

The centre was nice, and so was the beach, but there was no surfing going on, I asked around and it seemed that the sea was very dangerous at the moment, the storms on Fiji had ceased, but the sea was still shaken because of it you could even appreciate the storm leftovers here at the gold coast. The government even cancelled a surfers competition that was going to be held this week because of the dangerous currents and waves.

Surfer's Paradise by night 

I take note of this and decide not to go for a swim, but rather just spend a few hours relaxing at the beach, which has a few nice shadow spots (because of the skyscrapers)

As the sun starts going down I head back to the hostel, the plan for the night is all you can eat hot dogs followed by various drinking games, but not with beer like we are used to, every glass is filled with this cheap wine that comes in boxes of 5 Litres and they call "Goon".

After the games we head to one of the clubs in the center and spend the rest of the night around there. 

Australia: Sydney

My flight lands in Sydney at 6 in the morning, and by the time I get though customs and everything it's 7. Quite early, and it feels like the city is still waking up, I get the train to the city center and drop everything off at the hostel.

Santa maria Cathedral and Hyde's park

My first plan is to walk around the city, so I leave the hostel and start walking towards the big buildings. On my path I find a tourist map and see that I'm not far off the harbour zone, which is where all the well known building are.

The city is amazing, the combination of old buildings and new buildings, the busy streets and the big parks, the city has such a nice feeling to it. It all seems to be in harmony.

On my way to the harbour I walk by Hyde park and the Santa Maria Cathedral, and just after these I find the harbour. Everything keeps amazing me, and I just walk around taking pictures of the opera house, the bridge, the harbour... everything. The weather isn't the best, as it is a bit cloudy, but maybe it's for the best, because it doesn't feel to hot, but it's not cold either. 

Around the afternoon I decide to get my planning ready, and head towards a few travel agencies to see what the best way to travel around Australia's east coast is. And I end up booking an incredible trip, with scuba diving, kayaking and sky diving. We plan everything carefully in order to match the time that I'm here.

World's most famous Opera House 

The next day was Sunday, a quite quiet day in Sydney, as a lot of little cafés close, the big companies are closed as well, and there just seems to be much less people walking though the city. I was planning on taking the city sightseeing bus, but due to it's cost (and the fact that the biggest part of the tour is around the same area) I decide just to walk around all the spots that the bus does except Bondi Beach.

I visit the botanical garden, the opera house and walk over the bridge. Continue all the way up to the rocks, and at this point it tarts raining, so I look for somewhere to get cover.
By the afternoon I head towards the cinema, because Deadpool is just out. I get a ticket and get in the cinema, which I later found out is the world's biggest Imax screen!

For the last full day I have a tour to the Hunter's Valley planned, Hunter's Valley is the wine area of Sydney (of New South Wales actually) . Even thought that most Australian wines are made at the west coast or at the southern states, where the weather is a bit better for the grapes, they still have a lot of wine estates in Hunter's Valley as well, about 240 estates, they also specialize in making port.

So it's an early morning, waking up at 6 and being at the bus station at 7:30. By the time we get to the Hunter's Valley it's about 10 a.m.

A view of a tiny part of the Hope vineyards 

We do 2 wine tasting at different wine estates, the first one being a family run estate for over 6 generations, where we got a lot of interesting information , and the second one being a big estate called Hope estate, it's better known and feels more like a business. We have our lunch at this estate and continue towards our last wine tasting, at a little estate which was specialized sparkling wines. The trip ends with a visit to the Hunter's Valley gardens, which is a park known for being the biggest display garden in Australia.

Back in Sydney I get invited to a party organized by the travel agency, with free beer and free pizza.
After a long day I eventually make it back to the hostel to spend my last night in Sydney, the following day I will be taking the night bus towards Byron Bay.

Indonesia: Bali

Seminyak & Kuta

On my way from Kuta to Seminyak we get stuck in traffic, and as it keeps on getting worse, I decide to walk the last bit instead of staying in the car, and on my walk I discover the reason behind the traffic jam: A local ceremony is going on, right there, in the middle of the street.
Just another example that shows just how religious the Balinese people are.

The way to the hostel was longer than I expected but eventually I make my way there. The hostel is cool and there is a lot of social activity, but it's in the middle of nowhere. Which is a bit disappointing, as it means that I have to walk for over half an hour to find a place to get dinner.

I start the next day searching for the Seminyak beach, which ends up being another big disappointment, to start with, it was super hard to find, as a lot of the roads leading there where cut of by hotels, making them private roads, and once there, it was nothing special, a long beach just like Kuta beach, but with more trash spread all over the sand. After all these let downs I make the decision to leave Seminyak, I wasn't going to enjoy it here so I head back to Kuta, which has a better location to get around and is a bit cheaper.

Once I'm back in Kuta I decide to head towards the beach, and if the waves are nice maybe even rent a surfboard. And so I did, I spent the afternoon at the beach surfing and eating watermelon, and I have to say, it was awesome.

The day was quite relaxing, and to round it up I decide to go in search for the local food market (of which I had read about in the lonely planet). It is supposed to have plenty of local food at low prices. But what I found was not quite what I imagined. I arrived at a little square, yes, it had a few places with a variety of local food. But it was nothing like a market, it felt more like a little square with a bunch of tiny local restaurants ran by local families. Nothing big but they had good food.

The next morning was an early one. I had a lot planned for the day, so after a good breakfast I take a taxi and head towards Uluwatu, the most southern part of Bali. The drive takes about an hour and a half. And the first thing on my list is visiting the temple.
As I pay the entry fee and move to head towards the temple area I get called back, I need a scarf over my legs...Even though that I am wearing a sleeveless that barely covers my chest, I just need to wear a scarf over my legs...

The temple is at the most extreme part of the cliff

Anyway, with my new purple skirt I walk towards the temple's domain. The domain is massive, and has lots, lots of monkeys (I would even say to much). The temple is built at the edge of a big cliff, it offers some amazing views, buuut, you can't acces the temple, the closest that you can get is to a patio, which has another patio before the temple.
And back on the monkeys subject, not only here are to much of them, but they are also very aggressive: As I was walking around I got to see how a monkey stole the glasses of a Chinese tourist, and after stealing them he started twisting them with what seemed like the sole purpose of breaking them, the Chinese, hooping to get his glasses back, gives the monkey a bottle of water, his one reaches out for it, without dropping the glasses, and open the bottle of water to drink out of it.

View from the bar

After my visit to the temple I decide to head towards the beach, it's supposed to be an incredible surfing beach, if you can call it beach (it barely has sand, but has some amazing waves breaking on the reefs). But I find no taxis near the temple, so decide to walk for a bit. After the 30 minute walk I arrive at the beach, there are a bunch of restaurants build all the way upwards on the cliffs next to the beach. And every single one of them has an incredible view over the surfers and the reef.
I head for the highest bar, guessing it will have the best views, and I wasn't wrong. From up there I had some awesome views over the reef.

For dinner I decided to head to a well known restaurant in town with a few friends from the hostel. The sky garden is a all you can eat all you can drink for about 7€ (and full of backpackers in a party mood). And I made the huge mistake of easting too much and too fast, and give up after about an hour (and you had 4 hours).
So after a way to heavy meal I end up going to sleep as soon as I get back at the hostel.

What a way to end the last night, but it's probably for the best, as I have a plane to catch the next day, towards Australia.

Indonesia: Bali

Kuta & Ubud 

I arrive at the Ngurah Rai International Airport, in Bali, Kuta. It starts raining as soon as the plane lands, and to make things worse, the rain just intensifies as time goes by.
At the exit to the hall I get overwhelmed by the amount taxi drivers approaching me, they do seem kinder than the people in Thailand, but they feel way to persistent.

I eventually get to the hostel for what I think is a fair price, and guess what, the rain got worse. Because of the storm that is going on my only option is to wait in the hostel until everything clears out.
Around the afternoon the rain finally ceases and I have the chance to go and explore the little city.As I walk towards the beach I notice how not even the locals were prepared for such a heavy storm: the streets where flooded, the side-walks where slippery and the beach looked like a mess.
Because of the gray looking sky I decide to keep the walk short and look for a place to eat while I walk. I was expecting lots of street food or restaurants with local food, but to my disappointment that's not the case, the only local dish that I seem to find is Nasi Goren, which is just fried rice with crackers and a satay.

A local offering

My last objective before heading back to the hostel is finding a way to get to Ubud, and I booking a little shuttle which leaves around 11 a.m directly to Ubud: my first real destination.

As I walk towards the bus stop I notice something that I hadn't noticed yesterday: Even in a busy city, people make time for offerings and religious related things.

The bus leaves the station and I get a seat next to the window, I am well decided to keep an eye out, expecting to see some extensive rice fields, forests or fast paced rivers somewhere in the 2 hours drive between the two towns. But to my surprise, nothing changed, we followed the main road (which isn't even a highway, just a big road) and next to it, you can see stores, houses, big office buildings, everything but the open spaces that I was expecting. It all feels like one big city with a busy road between the two centres.

One of the Monkey forest's Temples

Anyway, I arrive at Ubud and drop my things off at the hostel. Ubud feels a lot more relaxed than Kuta, less busy and prettier, I have lunch and continue towards the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, which is a little forest full of various species of monkeys just at the edge of the Ubud main road.
It is considered sacred place for the townspeople and inside the forest you can find a couple of temples which are still in use.

In my search for dinner today I encounter a few groups of local kids all dressed up, making loud percussion noises, dancing and cheering. They go around places asking for donations while they show of their dragon costumes and try to give a nice little show. I am guessing that this is because of Chinese New year that was just a few days ago, but I am not absolutely sure.

The next day I am planning to visit the famous Balinese rice fields. They are in a little village called Tegalalang, about 10 km up north from Ubud, and of course, seeing the short distance I decide to rent a bicycle to go to the fields.
The journey is harder than I expected, because it is uphill all the way, and obviously I take a few roads that lead towards nowhere, making the trip even longer. On top of that, the sun just keeps on getting harsher.

On my way I do find lots of small, local rice fields which looked amazing, but are nothing compared to the impressive fields of Tegalalang.

The way back to Ubud is a lot easier, as it is downhill all the way. And once I'm  back in Ubud I start my search to find the famous Kopi Luwak coffee, and I have to say, I don't think it's all that special. Maybe it was just the place where I had it, or my taste buds not being developed enough, but it just tasted like a flat americano.

Before the sun starts setting I visit the Ubud palace.And as the sun sets locals start to sell tickets to the "exclusive" traditional dance show of which you have more than 4 in one single night. I don't think they understand the meaning of exclusive over here.

Forwards to dinner, because I still have trouble finding local dishes or restaurants that serve anything other than Nasi Goren.
I decide to just look for an appealing place instead of a local place, and end up having dinner in a Spanish tapas bar, the owner was from Barcelona and it felt really good having the option to get all the traditional Spanish dishes here in South East Asia. I had a bit of "ensaladilla rusa" and some "patatas bravas" It was glorious to get some real Spanish food after such a long time.

The next day is my last morning in Ubud, I visit the little market that's right next to the hostel, have something for breakfast and then just continue to the shuttle back to Kuta, from where I would go to Seminyak, a beach north of Kuta of which I heard lots of good things.