BALI... A little belated on the blog front but finally worked out how to logon again... 

So just got back from Bali on Wednesday night. We went for 5 days and 5 nights with Jo Skipworth (Dougal may remember Jo... :)), her housemate Claire, and two of their Kalgoorlie school friends Kristy and Tonille.  We stayed in "the Residence" in Seminyak (red circle on map), which is an amazing 4 bedroom villa with our own pool and breakfast cooks to boot! It cost us $600 for return flights and accom, so pretty good i thought! It is about a 2km walk to Kuta where we went out on one of the nights, and were about the oldest people at the club we went to!

The weather was perfect, hot too humid, enough sun to work up a bit of a tan but then enough cloud to not over-do it! Our villa was about 5 minutes walk from the main street and lots of shops, then a 15 minute walk to the beach.  Very westernised area though, there were almost TOO many Aussie-like 'contemporary' restaurants, which had prices very similar to Perth, because =Seminyak is a bit more upmarket I suppose. Very little street stalls etc, but as you go further out (eg on the way to Ubud) it changes dramatically and you can get a great Indo feed for under $1.

One of the nights we headed down near Jimbaran Beach (south of Seminyak) and went to this amazing resort bar called "ROCK BAR".  where you line up for ages and then go down this 6 person lift to the bottom of a cliff where there is an amazing bar set on the rocks amongst the crashing waves. By the time we were ready to go down in the lift it was almost dark.. - 1.5 hours of waiting>! But oh so worth it – basically the resort is perched up on big limestone cliffs with amazing views of the ocean. 

Afterward our driver (Wayan, became our best buddie!) took us to Jimbaran beach,  lined with gorgeous al-fresco beach dining. The only catch was that a seafood dish was about $40 a pop! Wow talk about overpriced! It was extremely tasty though… We had a few more beers/cocktails here and even enjoyed our own private karaoke session thanks to the 4 wandering showmen that had amazing outfits and some cool banjo/guitars! We sang along to Brown Eyed Girl, Bryan Adams Summer of 69 then some Jakc Johson which no one really knew (including the lead singer) so we all just mumbled this one.

Other than that, lots of realxing by the pool, eating, cocktails, walking, shopping (lots of amazing leather), and topped it off with a cooking class in Ubud. 

Until next time...

Renovations at Bonnie Brae

Well we have finally got around to tackling the big bedroom, or should I say, we have got Chris onto the job.

He was complaining about the smell - quite justified we discovered!

And you thought the house smelt before Hils - it was putrid!

But "we" battled on - still not quite finished, but the painting is virtually done - a huge thanks to Chris for the excellent quality paint job! Note the cream strip in the ceiling.

I think we have decided to stick with the same carpet that's in the back bedroom - as you can see above.
 Will be putting in a new hearth, so will keep you posted.