Bali & Hong Kong

We arrive, jet lagged and humidified, late afternoon, just time to take in the view of the beach and fall asleep on the loungers.	Lovely 5* hotel, one of the dining areas reflected in the pool	the Nusa Dua bay by night with the tide out		breakfast over looking the gardens.
	what d'ya think of my new bag then?	one bay up from the hotel, the near deserted beaches of Nusa Dua, managed to brave the surf and swim round the island in the middle, doesn't look much but took an hour.	us, all white and still jet lagged.	how the other half live, the next resort up from ours, the Laguna.
Jules emerges from the depths, me practicing with the new underwater camera case.	the first of many underwater coral shots.	unknown fish	parrot fish?
angel fish?	anemone	some of the other snorklers who get taken out beyond the reef, they aren't doing much diving with the life jackets on!		the boat from club med bringing snorklers to our bit of reef
		cute family of black and white Nemos, mum was around somewhere, they would always face me which ever angle I came at them from.		every breakfast we had to run the gauntlet across the stepping stones
giant gold fish patrolled the waters feasting on tourists who fall in	Most roundabouts seemed to be an excuse for a temple, braving the traffic to make an offering was one way to get one step along the ladder to enlightenment.	Ancient monuments marked the gates to Nusa Dua, (well 1970's)
		those pesky tropical showers, still explains why everything is so green.	pano of us slobbing out by the pool. Julie found it particularly hard to tear herself away from this spot.	Swimming round the island, great waves crashing against the shore, had to get just the right position, too close and it would have been all over. Had to wave to the tourists who came to look at the surf, just so they didn't phone the coast guard to rescue me :)
lunch spot, best place to feed the squirrels chips.	ahhh, the beach	mie goreng or nasi goreng? Decisions decisions.	a bishop for a knight?	Bali chess challenge.
this ones only here cos Jules made me put it in!	Evening cocktails by the beach, the Capirhina wasn't quite right but it had the same effect.	the garden on rinse and dry cycle	another unknown fish, did spot one of these tucking into a lump of coral once, breaking off big chunks, you could hear it under water.	Jules from the sharks point of view.
good flippering action	pesky little fish, If you held still long enough they would try to eat you unless you fed them bread.	Jules displaying her snorkel diving skills.	yea what? It's cool down here.	a big fish
more pesky's	the one time we got Jules outside the reef was by boat, it had a glass bottom and after a swim we went over to a coral outcrop where thousands of large fish could be seen swimming around under us.	haggling with the boat man, 320,000rp for a return trip to the reef and turtle island.	beach commerce	quite possibly the cutest turtles in the world, our jokes about 'we will have this one for lunch' were met with 'it's a 5 year prison stretch for killing a turtle'
biggest turtle in the pond, they were so powerful you couldn't hold on to them if they wanted to swim away.	more animal exploitation but suppose its better than ending up as a handbag. Yes, it felt like a very big snake.	fruit bat, cute hairy body.	big sea eagle. Very sad that it had to pose with tourists who had embarrassing damp spots that made it look like they'd wet themselves.	'I should be riding thermals not entertaining school kids!'
coconut power	the big ones had wickedly sharp looking spikes on their tails.	I couldn't resist swimming out to the same coral outcrop we saw from the snorkeling boat. It was only 100 yards further out than the reef but I had a twinge of there could be some big carnivorous fish out here.	lots of tuna shaped fish shoaling around the outcrop.	nice colours
		coral garden, the stuffs just so alien its fascinating, the closer you look at it the more you see, kind of fractal life.		lilac coloured coral
things to do with an underwater camera #37, put it on multi shot, then timer, then try and get it to stay still under water long enough to take shots of self upside down. This isn't as easy as I make it sound.	just to prove it wasn't a fluke!		soft coral	black fish?
ah, the waves from below game.	struggling to stay alive in the reef surf.	the boundary between air and water	the look of someone who's just spent two hours being pounded by the waves.	Jules in her element in the poshest restaurant in the hotel/
practicing his technique in the pool	Cheesy grins with their cocktails, anyone?		Visiting Ula Watu temple, the guide book warned us about the thieving monkeys, they start off so cute, seconds late this one nearly made it off with my sunnies	nice cliff
good spot to contemplate the gods.	one Japanese tourist wasn't so lucky, just as he was reaching to get the glasses back the monkey bent them in half. We assumed the forest around must have been littered with stolen hats and sunnies		as a break from the relentless snorkeling Stu decides to try falling off a floating plank. Stupid sport.
beneath the waves	waiting for Jules to finish in the spa, I get creative with the hotel fountain	the fountain in front of the hotel was huge with paths all around it, made to look like an ancient temple. Pretty impressive in a not at all ancient kind of way.		entrance to the hotel
	about to get out backs massaged, part of the ritual seemed to involve wearing silly yellow robes.	it's hot in Bali, today the only thing sweating more than us is the ice cold water bottles	Ubud market, about 1 hour drive inland, centre of crafts for the island. You ca get anything you want, except anything you'd actually want.	everywhere you go there are offerings to the gods. Little leaf pots of flowers, food, incense, etc. these tend to congregate around temples into great drifts of offeringness.
wicker anyone?	Ubud market	on our way back to the coast we pass some rice paddy's being harvested. It was almost too hot for us to get out of the air con car and these locals were cutting rice by hand.	great under a wave shot. Seconds later the next wave sucked off one of my flippers. Once I'd recovered from the pounding, it took 20 mins to find it floating back inside the lagoon, several hundred yards away. For a moment I thought I was in trouble, if it had got both I might have been hitching a ride back with the snorkeling boats.	trophy coral
	white, crinkly coral, about 1m across.	a lost anchor.	cute little fish who though I was some drifting flotsam and made me home for a while, they kept swimming round and round me.	I think they look a bit like piranhas if they ever worked out they had numbers on their side they could probably nibble a human to death.
	big wave, I'm a glutton for punishment.	sea urchins in the shallows of the lagoon, they had electric blue markings under the formidable spines.		different type of urchin, these collected rocks and stuck them all over till they resembled little balls of gravel.
romantic dinner on Jimbaran bay, where someone had the bright idea of putting a dinner table on the sand and was copied by about 50 other restaurants, still it was very nice.	sea, sunset, drinks, lobster... anything else?	the table stands patiently waiting its diners, keeping watch over the sunset, knowing its time will come and it can play its part in the great cycle of life.	Jules, showing off her flower.	just beyond the tables, the sweet corn man sets up stall. I like the way the long exposure captures the smoke on the breeze from his charcoal burner.
one ant says to his mate, 'I wish I was up there', the other says, 'it's over rated, lobsters just a big prawn'.	the hotel grounds lit up at night	off diving, more cheese.	equalize those ears.	doing the side stroke.
wave to the camera.	cool, cross between a coral and an anemone	Jules, master of the deep	oh, look, a lesser spotted crisp packet.	now we're talking, a lion fish, our guide had great eyes and was able to spot a host of under water critters.
cant remember the name but little long fish that float with their heads down and tails up, weird.		must work out what these are actually called, rather than just calling everything stripy an angel fish.	in the words of the famous song, 'in an octopuses garden under the sea'	blue coral fan, looked cool close up.
mmm, stone fish, one you don't want to tread on.			kind of like broccoli
some one call Pixar, its ok, we found Nemo!	cutest family of clown fish living in their anemone	Jules looking very Cousteau	camera across a cool, cuttlefish, almost impossible to spot, it looked just like a rock to be gin with then as it swam it changed colour to perfectly match the seabed below it. Amazing to see.	side stroke the other way
peaka boo	the up side down stroke,	at least we know there are plenty of fish down there.	huge statues of Hindu gods guard most large roundabouts.	last whole day, spotted a tiny bay on the map on the back of the island, dragged Jules over to it and had to go for a little dip.
great undercut rock outcrops guard the coast, as the waves lifted me up and down the only danger was hitting my head on the underside.	lettuce anyone.	found a shoal of barracuda like fish, might be jack fish?	cool green thing	best find, spotted a blue spotted ray, it didn't hang around, they can really move when they want to.
starfish, there were hundreds of these living inside the lagoon.	just a moment when the sea grass was covered in bubbles for some reason.	nice, sea anemone, as soon as you get close they shoot underground, had to creep up on this one and just after the shutter closed it was gone.	underside of a starfish, you can see all the little teeth.	cool fast moving thing, looked a bit like a star fish but could almost run along the seabed. These lives under most rocks in the lagoon,
tiny baby moray eel. Found under a rock. Spotted a big one outside the reef but when I went back with the camera the next day it was gone.	the curve of the bay flood lit at night, with all the hotel gardens and bars fronting the sand. Fantastic view.	one of they may bars along the path	the best mushroom shaped green coral I managed to find, must have been 2m across.	more self timer snorkley antics
round a couple of divers and spent a while playing in the bubbles coming up from them, kid of like a free Jacuzzi	huge lens shaped bubbles coming up from the depths, they had beautiful shimmering edges, mesmerising to watch.	Hong Kong, wow, very intense, after the calm of Bali it's a shock to the system but, feeling well rested we head off to explore, first stop the peak for an overview.	escalators inside peak tower.	cool fountain at the top,
the cable for the peak tram. We trust our engineering but I couldn't help wondering just how much speed we'd get up if the cable was to break.	the old rickshaws, displaced by the taxi, must have been something to travel around Hong Kong in one.	look as the size of my... building.	by lunchtime we are in desperate need of refreshment and head for Maxims, famed for dim sum, great place. No idea what we were ordering but it all tasted great.	finally Jules legs look thin enough to let me put them online.
Times Square, manic.	spectacular quantities of floating signs crowd each other for our mindspace, but they do look spectacular at night.	live fish in the market, it's the little things that remind you your not in England.	Hong Kong sky line through the smog, we don't appreciate how lucky we are to have good pollution controls, the air was thick with the haze from the millions of cars.	Jules swimming over the edge. View from the pool on the roof of the harbor plaza hotel.
the harbor by night, looking south from Kowloon to Hong Kong island, spectacular.	pano of the same view.	more cheese. After too long in the hotel bar, we go for duck pancakes in a restaurant recommended by the McDonalds. It takes a while to arrive so we get even drunker, but it's worth the wait, it's the best peaking duck ever.	nibbles, kind of peanuts in salty oil, strange but tasty.	who says drinking effects your vision.
the infamous bamboo scaffold, some tower blocks were 80 stories tall and all that was holding them up was overgrown grass and string.	HK from Kowloon star ferry terminal	inside one of the myriad of malls, we had to keep alternating between the sweltering but more interesting backstreet markets and the frigid ac malls. Shopping nirvana.	recovery cake after another day exploring HK.	last evening we head to the island to meet up with Jules colleague Kate, the skies get blacker and blacker and as we cross the harbor the heavens open. Apparently it's a black cloud warning storm. Very dramatic.
we survive the rain and meet Kate, a local, who takes us to the kind of bars you could never hope to find alone. The 'feather bower', opulent place, serves strawberry and chocolate daiquiris, fantastic. This is how to live it up in HK.	Jules in strawberry chocolate heaven.	strawberry chocolate cheese anyone?	the view from the hotel window, watching the million tone tankers and luxury cruse liners glide past dwarfing the tiny junks.	the opulent harbor plaza lobby

Bali & Hong Kong - 2007