What a crazy last few days I have had! I’ve now been in Bali for 6 days so I’m going to attempt to recall all the action for my blog before I do more and forget what’s happened!

Day 1 –

Arrived in Bali super late and later than expected as my flight was delayed 😦 total journey time: 28 hours! (With time difference) and when I arrived I was very surprised to find that it was dark at only 7pm! But here the sun sets at 6 which is surprising. Poor little guy had been waiting for me at the airport to pick me up and obviously not checked that my flight was delayed so he’d been stood at the gate with my name on a sign for 2 hours longer than expected.. Oops.

The first thing I noticed about Bali was the traffic. Bikes everywhere and no rules on the road just anything goes. Children cycling by cars at night.. All seemed so dangerous!

I arrived at my hostel and it was unlike any hostel I’d ever seen. The place was almost like a treehouse in the jungle. So open and chilled. My room was so open and my bed was first as you walked in but if felt quite private as the mosquito net covering the bed was massive! I stayed at Gran’s Hostel and it was rather out of the way of Kuta (a short taxi journey) but definitely worth staying at.

When I checked in I was greeted by many many locals all so happy to meet me! They told me about the BBQ that would be happening later that night.

As I felt jetlagged and just groggy in general I didn’t join them for BBQ however I did head down after dinner for an amazing experience. A few of the local musicians were at the hostel performing reggae songs. As I went down my favourite song was playing ‘Hotel California’. I can’t explain how good this band was and how chilled they were. Just imagine Bob Marley and that was pretty much it. They took requests and the singer was brilliant. I jammed with them for a few hours before heading out to Central Kuta for a drink with a guy I had just met from Huddersfield. He hadn’t been out at night yet and I wanted to explore so we jumped in a taxi.

We walked down the main strip of Kuta which initially struck me as my worst nightmare! Full of clubs, people selling stuff, drunk people everywhere and so much tack. I didn’t realise my opinion would change in just a matter of days.

We didn’t fancy doing the night life thing so we headed for a restaurant at the end of the road where we had a pizza each and 241 margaritas. The drinks were so strong I ended up leaving both of them as I couldn’t hack it!

The taxi ride back to the hostel was interesting with the taxi man trying to charge us an extortionate rate after what was already agreed so we ended up having to leave the money and run off down a street with massive cows!

Headed back to the hostel to sleep off my jetlag! Unfortunately I’d also caught an aeroplane cold and my ears were completely blocked from the plane so this made my first night of sleeping uncomfortable but an experience all the same.

My first night in Bali was surreal and such a good start to an incredible cultural trip.