Hello all, we have been in Bali (Ubud) for three days and tomorrow we are moving onto Legian until Thursday and then it is back to Darwin until the 17th when we will be heading  towards Katherine and across to Victoria River on our way for the third leg of our journey across the North West of WA.

Ubud is a very pretty place set amongst mountains and is known for its artistic communites.It is a tranquil surrounding and less commercial than Legian. The weather is of course warm but very humid. Never having been here, it has been an interesting experience to date. We are very blessed in Australia. Where perhaps we have too much infrastrature and regulations, here, of course, there is very lttle which is not necessarily a good thing. We have done the usual tourist things, shopping in markets, experienced the pleasures of Balinese traffic, although, I hear the best is yet to come when we reach Legian.I have been hit by Bali belly and am feeling less than fit and healthy today but hopefully it will clear soon but I think that I will stick to Western food for the remainder of this holiday.Rodney is doing fine but he has now experienced a love affair with the mosquitoes and  is not happy. None the less, we soldier on as they say.

Yesterday, we visited rice fields, coffee plantation, the royal family temple and then visited Lahore Temple which is supposed to be spectacular at sunrise, unfortuneatly, it was cloudy. A good day just the same. We have been driven around by this nice Balinese man named Wayan who picked us up at 2.00 and returned us at 8.00 all for the princely amount of $40.00 and that was divided amongst five people. He only receives 25% of what he makes so he made a grand total of $ 10 for the six hours that he spent with us.  Ironically, he has a brother who live in Montmorency of all places. They really do say that it is a small world.

Take care Gabriella and Rodney