The End

Soooo after Sunshine Coast we had enough of wandering around for a while. We decided to settle at Gold Coast. This means the travelling part is done and after a transition phase, day to day life takes over. The transition phase is full of applying for visa and finding jobs and boring things like that. Things that I don't want to go through, much less write about them afterwards. So the interesting stuff is no more. It ceased to be. It is expired and gone to meet its maker. Ahem!

Thus it is time to say goodbye to this weblog. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it ... most of the time. Thank you for accompanying us on our journey. Till we meet again, in whatever country it may be!

Base 31 - Sunshine Coast

We reached number 31. In my head they are far fewer than that even though I can still remember every one of them. Perhaps having written about them is the reason I remember them so clearly. I often asked myself if it is even interesting or meaningful to write about them but in the end of the day, they are part of the trip and I write a bit more about the experience that that goes beyond the houses themselves. And since we didn't go to hotels, it is interesting to see how people live.

Desk \o/

This one had a very small bedroom but on the upside it had a desk which made me very happy. This is the second house that had some kind of sound system, so the sound I didn't have to endure the sound coming from the TV speakers. It was a soundbar and a subwoofer but that was more than sufficient. Our host was a make-up artist and she offered small samples of everything you could image when it comes to bathroom necessities. I didn't use any but they were appreciated. She and her husband were generous in every other way too.

Airport.

The house was next to an airport - literally. I mean their backyard and the airport were divided by their fence. It wasn't as bad as I assumed though. I only conciously took notice of the airplanes perhaps two or three times a day and you only heard the airplanes for a couple of seconds which was surprising.

This way please!

One of the best things of our stay was the beach. You could reach it on foot in a matter of minutes, the weather was good but not too hot. The sand was good enough so I went jogging a couple of times. After the first jog, I went into the water and was alone even though it was the weekend. The lifeguard (who looked like 55) asked me:

- Hey mate, did you enjoy your swim?
- It was great. Did I go too far?
- No, you were perfect. I was watching you the whole time.
- Thanks!

Jogging route.

The second time was the most difficult because I had to run on stepped on, softer sand which gave in and so every step was three times as tiring as the first time I did it. On the way back I hated jogging, I hated myself, the world and you. Diving in felt like freedom. I asked the lifeguard how far the next lifeguard is, to find out how much I jogged and he said I did around 4,5 km which is a km above my record.

Third time was low tide with harder sand and it was so easy, it felt like cheating.

On our last day, our hosts took us out to dinner at a fish and chips place that had fresh fish fished locally. Fish! It was nice. No, it was awesome! Perfect! I have to think like an Australian here.

Sunshine Coast

By the time we were leaving Bali, we had enough of travelling and wanted to settle somewhere (meaning Gold Coast) but after a bit of a debate, we decided to go to the Sunshine Coast first because I was curious and it was close enough. I expected something like the Gold Coast but smaller but it felt completely different. Like one of our many smaller stops between Sydney and Gold Coast.

Noosa. The most popular place.

It was touristy all right but less for twenty somethings and more for families. We lived in the most "unimportant" place between Noosa with its shops and beaches and its national park and Maroochydore (I am not even going to look it up) which is the biggest town complete with a shopping mall.

Sand castle.

There was nothing to complain about, everything was nice but it seemed to me to be lacking something spectacular or having its own character. I don't know what I expected. The national park was nice. The shopping mall was good and had an interesting twist in that it was divided in two by a river. The salsa party we went to was dissapointing. This was balanced out by Diana finding a Zumba trainer which became one of her favorites.

Viewing point at the edge of the national park.

We stayed for a week there and that was OK. Now we know what the Sunshine Coast is all about and will go to live there once we are old and retired.

An impossibly wide tree.

Base 30 - Penestanan

Once there were cocks. Literal ones. And they woke us up every morning at 6. Then came the chickens. They joined in in a sometimes synchronized choir or sleeplessness. Then came the builders who built a small house next to us with a speed that put my game-building to shame.

There were two houses being built. This was the one farther away.

Our room was beautiful with a generous balcony, a small but useful kitchen, a big, confy bed and an open air bathroom. Our hosts knew almost no English at all but they were friendly. We dealt mostly with an older woman who was apparently the owner, her sister who carried our 25kg luggage on her head, and her two daughters. Although both daughters were in school age, they never seemed to go to school. They were busy cleaning up and working. That's probably how it works there but still I found it sad.

Ze bed.

Ze view

Ze kitchen

Ze open air bathroom

We stayed there for four weeks and after a short while they figured us out. We ate nasi goreng for breakfast and one day Diana asked for more vegetables. A few days after that, every time I got my breakfast it was "SPECIAL, VERY BIG BIG". I also had to laugh every time and thanked them.

Relax like Buddha

In the end it was a very nice stay, tainted by the noise for the first half of the day. The neighborhood outstanding, the coconut juice was flowing... ah, those were the greatest times. But we had to go back "home" to Australia and the looming danger of the volcano didn't help.

Penestanan

I am not 100% sure if Penestanan is part of Ubud or not and if they grew together. I am also too lazy to look it up. The last time we were in Ubud, we visited because there was a hotel and a yoga school there that were recommended to Diana when she was in Thailand. The girl there told her that Yoga Barn was too commercial and the other school is better. It turns out that the Yoga Barn is too commercial and Intuitive Flow is smaller, more personal, more consistant in the quality of its tutors and they take more more often to correct you if you do something wrong.

Intuitive Flow.

The rooms at Yoga Barn were very nice but the one in Intuitive Flow were outstanding. I took part in two Yoga Classes. One of them were the kind of exercises you would expect, focusing on stretching, breathing and balance. The other was one where you lie down and gradually learn to sleep without losing your awareness. I fell asleep losing my awareness in a matter of minutes. Diana was laughing at me for days.

Light is always a major part in good photos.

While living in Penestanan Diana spent a lot of time in the yoga studio and I spent a lot of time programming my game and looking for jobs in Australia. We also went to the gym and Diana introduced me to Squash. In the beginning she let me win and later I let her win. But don't tell her that. I was making too many points in a row once and she wanted to give up. We probably never played a real game the whole time we were there. And we played a lot.

It looks like something out of Tomb Raider.

Other than that we explored a bit more of the restaurants in every direction, tried some new delicious food and went to walk on a trail where most of the photos were taken. Because our hotel was further away from everything, we also had to learn driving around on a scooter, constantly defying death. We also went to a place that most people seem to think is reduntant in Bali: a sauna. But it was nice there. They had a pool to cool down and of course other people from Germany.

The most vertical trees.

Our room and neighborhood was an adventure in itself. We will go into that next.

Base 29 - Canggu

OK, this is probably going to be one of the most content-free posts I have ever written. My hazy memory tells me that I did have some things to write about this place but my memory also fails to deliver. Bad memory!

Bed.

As is tradition in Bali there is no sidewalk at the side of the road. What made this neighborhood more dangerous than anywhere else is that often at the sides of the road there were no shops or whatever, just a wall or a drop to a rice field or some kind of open drain so you couldn't step sideways even for a bit.

Terrace.

Although the room was not bad, Diana hated it there because we had no privacy. There were other people walking in front of the room to get to their own rooms and so she didn't have anywhere to meditate about life and the universe as we know it. As soon as our German friends left for Germany we left for Ubud.

I added a blurry photo of the yoga place close by to make the whole thing a bit less boring.

Sorry!

Canggu

Back to Bali. But this time in the city in order to perhaps have a beach we could go swimming. Only we couldn't because most of the time they had big waves and red flags, which says that swimming is forbidden. We were told repeatedly that Canggu is beautiful but we didn't see it, presumably because we weren't in the center of it. I still managed to do some good photos.

The greenest green ever.

This post and the next one are going to be really boring. What should I write? Let me see ...

The cloudiest clouds or something?

There was a yoga school/retreat/restaurant nearby but everything except the yoga thing were luxurious but prohibitively expensive there. I went once to do a Ying Yoga class and because the trainer spoke with a heavy Spanish accent, I had to constantly think about sex during the whole duration.

I don't even know. Let me be!

I also had birthday while we were living there. Diana told me she made a reservation for McDonalds and she was so serious about it that I believed her for a while. In the end, we went to a Greek restaurant called "Nostimo" which had shockingly authentic Greek food, although they told me that they never had a Greek working there. It was like in an alternate reality.

I have a rule of not making photos of my food but I made an exception.

After our friends from the Germanies left us, we left Canggu as well.

That's all folks!