Day 54 - Goodbye Asia

Our last day in Asia is here (well for a while, we have one more day in Hong Kong on the way back home). We started with another delicious hipster breakfast (Shakshuka for me, breakfast burrito for Matt plus smoothies which had bee pollen in them). We then made it to the beach today after yesterday's overheating, almost losing a flip flop and straying into posh beach club fail. Our top tip - take a taxi - and who'd thought I'd ever say that?! Seminyak make it very difficult to get to the beach considering it's a town on the coast. The beachfront hotel's have just formed a wall which mere mortals may not cross. {Insert Trump joke here} The beach is disappointingly horrible. You think Bali beaches, you think white sand, blue sea. Here in Seminyak there's been a rubbish problem for years apparently. No one clears it up and it just washes in to the water along with sewage from the town. Blurgh. Matt attempted the water for a while but kept getting hit by litter. Even the guys renting sun beds just ignore the litter at their feet despite there being bins.

We had a nice time anyway on our sun loungers protecting our pasty bodies under a parasol. I think I'll come back whiter than ever at this rate. I befriended the lady who sold us the sunbeds, she told me I was a 'lucky lucky lady' but what I think she meant was 'I'm a lucky lady as you can't haggle and I've got a good price for these sunbeds'. After a couple of hours and via a Indonesian-Tex Mex fusion food truck we headed back for a final nice hotel shower before 3 weeks of campsites. It began to absolutely pour down while we were inside but kindly gave us a break to go for a couple of drinks and dinner. At drinks we befriended a dog (there's a theme here) and we saw a frog loving life in a puddle. Dinner was a mega feast of ribs, sate and sides at Warung Nia. Then the rain came back. We hot footed in to a bar we went to a couple of days ago via a man offering to sell me Valium. (I declined) and sat on the last outside covered table to watch the rain. I've not seen much heavier and it meant we had to get a taxi back to the hotel before going to the airport causing much confusion for the driver.

Bali airport is queue after queue. A queue to get in the airport and get your bags scanned. A check in queue. A queue to check passports. Then a queue to scan bags again. Then a queue to get to the gate and have bags checked again (and all water taken away) then a queue to get on the plane. We were not in good humour at 1.40am when our plane finally took off...

So Asia ✅. On to our Australian camper van adventure. What were we thinking...?!?!Read more