Photos

So I'm gradually adding more photos,
still back at NZ and Oz, I don't know how anyone put photos online the connection here is so slow,

PHOTOS from Oz

Older photos
Photos 1
Photos 2
Photos 3

Stuarts photos

Cycling walking

31st May Ubud
So I did some more aimless cycling and walking.
I went down to see one of the nearby rivers.
Other sight from Bali include, lots of bannana and coconut trees between the padi fields. Children flying kites and asking you to take their photo. The main roads are quite buisy so you really have to go onto the tiny back roads. I parked the bike and went for a walk on a path that went down the river valey through the padi fields.
A welcome releif from all the whizzing mopeds.
Chess is quite popular here with lots of people playing at the side of the road.
I had a game with some guys in Ubud, a good way to get away from the, do you need transport of it all.

Off the track, central Bali

28th to 30 May, Ubud and surrounds Bali, Indonesia
So I solved my transport by renting a bicycle.
No sooner had I done so, cruzing about town and I stumbled accross a festival at a temple.
Everyone was decked out in their finest traditional dress, and all the women were carrying, beutifully artistically arranged baskets of fruit and flowers.
The great thing about Bali is the ordinary everday is simply exta-ordinary.
Every doorway has a beutiful minuture offering of flowers and rice fresh every morning.
Every street has hanging decorative lamp like things down its length.
Every house has an in build temple.
Every village has about as many village temples as Irish villages have pubs.
Every field has a shrine (not an exaduration).
Every brige has a statue as each corner.
Traffic islands have giant statues.
Every child shouts hello as you cycle by.

Things aren't particularly expensive either.
My room in a home stay has a double bed and en-suite shower and toilet with ceiling fan all for 2 euro 52 cent.
I have been frequenting the same restaurant outside of Ubud because it was so good and I always seemed to be coming back that way.
Chicken in a delicious sause with rice served on a sizzling hot metal plate, you know fancy restaurant style cost 1 euro and 5 cent.
Beer can be a bit expensive 300ml bottle about 63 cent,
and my bicycle rental is running at 10,000 Rupiahs a day (84 cent),
but that was a very good deal.

So yesterday I cycled out to Tampaksiring,
the main road was a bit buisy and heading in the wrong direction so I headed onto a little back one which really gives you a good sence of the place.
Rice paddys with intricate irrigation, down and out looking dogs, chicken galore, beutiful houses, great tadition dress, pot wholes, rubbish and temples, temples and more temples.
There is no mistaking that this is quite a densely poplulated island and villages often run into each other.

Tampaksiring had a historic temple, with a holly spring, overlooked by a simple Sokarno (ex indonesian leader, spelt wrong) palace.
Then there was the really big, really old statues carved into the cliff.
The problem with the places where tourist go is that there is always someone to hassle them. On the way in I bought my temple clobber, which is a sorrong, (very David Beckham) and a scarf for around you waste, without these you would be not suitibly dressed to go into a temple. Ok well maybe long trousers could have surficed instead of the sarrong, but who can resist dressing up.
On the way out I stopped for some soup from the vendor selling to the hawkers.
We had a bit of a chat.
It was funny to see it from the other side as everyone gets keyed up to show their wares to the tourists trying to run the gauntlet.

Today I went to two villages near Ubud with loads more ancient temples.
There was a cave with an elephant mouth opening, this had tourists and loads of hassling for guide services.
Then another clif carving, smaller but more interesting figures.
This didn't have any tourists but had one old woman who does a blessing and expects a tip. "But I just payed the enterance fee", just doesn't cut it.
Then two more ancient temples one of which had a huge metal drum between 1000 and 2000 years old, the biggest single cast metal drum in the world don't you know.

Transport?

28th May Ubud
Well so far this seems to be a nation of transport salesmen.
I got a tourist bus from one tourist town to another (Kuta to Ubud).
This part of Bali seems to be quite built up all the way, with whizzing trafic, cars, mopeds, noise. The heat can be quite tiring. I think I need a snooze and a two second period where no one tries to sell me transport.

The accomadation that I got in Ubud is amazingly ornate.
On the bus here I was wondering if all of those stone statue shops could really have a market for all of their life size statues. Perhaps some of the labour involved in the statue industry could be diverted towards pavement upkeep. Plenty of wholes you could get lost in.

I had been planning to go to Yogyakarta on Java but it seems to have been hit by an earthquake.
I'll have to see how that develops.

To the other side East Timor seems to be "erupting in violence"
I was unlikely to make it that far in any event as there are the islands of Lomboc, Sumbawa and Flores before you reach Timor.
There were some Australians who had just been evacuated in Darwin airport as we were flying out.
There are many things to see in Bali though and I should be based in Ubud for a few days.

Bali

26th Kuta Bali Indonesia
Flew in to Bali last night.
The flight arrived quite late so I just aimed to make it to Kuta which is just next to the airport.
This is probably why it has become the aussie cheap holiday meca.
I was expecting a spanish coast tourist resort type place but it's a bit more interesting than that.
The tourism industry here has been decimated by the 2002 and 2005 bombings.
Kuta has way more people to sell things to tourists than tourists, and there are still alot of those, the place is really cheap after all.
I booking into a place down the road from the 2002 bomb memorial.
Even here the Balanise are kind of cool, after refusing politely what someone is selling you can usually have a bit of a chat. There are loads of little flower offering everwhere, outside shops and on taxis etc.
Even ordinary building have fancy adornments. Where I'm staying and old woman comes along every morning to do some kind of blessing and she tries to teach me a few words. I'm not picking up much though, everyone speaks english here. Since I'm not a surfer I shouldn't stay too long, it's nice to relax though now that I am out of dormatory living at last and it takes a while to figure out things like the best means of trasport etc.

Darwin

22nd to 25th May
I fly to Darwin today.
In the north of the northern territory it is a tropical climate again.
There are nice walks along by the coast and the botanic gardens are some what more interesting than the arid zone one in alice springs.
There are a substantial number of aboriginal people here but they don't seem just as poor as in alice.

Perths Beaches

Perth 21st May
I'd say this would be a nice place to live.
Got the train to Cottesloe which is one of the Beach suburbs.
The climate is great, the winter here is nicer than the summer back home.
Another great sunset.
Perth seems to be a bit of a boom town, Western australia makes up one third of the country, there is alot of mining but most of the people live in Perth which is muted as being the most isolated city in the world.

Aussie Rules

20th May Perth
I went to an Aussie Rules match today.
The Freemantle dockers (from where I went yesterday) were playing the Kangaroos, a team from Melborne.
The place was full so there was a good atmosphere and the dockers won,
go freo.

Perth

18th May Perth
I fly to Perth today.
Crossing yet more of this vast country by air, the land seems to have more arible farming when you get in to Perth. There are free busses in the cenral area, nice. We went to the really big kings park. Much of the park is natural bushland and walking through you can forget that you are in the middle of a city.

19th May
Got the train to Fremantle today.
This is port near Perth, today connected by suburbs.
Wandered around looking at markets and "historic" buildings, like the prison where so many Irish people got their start in this country.
Walked to the beach for sunset and dipped my feet in the indian ocean for the first time.

Alice

16th May
Alice is a funny little place.
An island of civilisation in a sea of largely unpopulated outback.
There are two communities living here and they appear worlds appart.
The white australian appear to live affluant middle class lives with pretty suburban houses and fashionable clothes.
The Aboriginal people who here speak their own language appear really poor.
Most ware very old clothes and many don't ware shoes.
Alice has many centers for aboriginal services like education and health.
There are many aborignal people sitting in the parks, public places and dry river, lighting camp fires.
Education seems to be largely sepparate. A class of young aboriginal kids were being treated to ice-cream in mc donalds while I was there. They would chat away to each other in their own language but their teachers were white australians and would teach them in english, there where no white kids.

17th May
Went for a walk in the hills around alice, there were tonnes of kangaroos, skipping all over the place, cool.

Alice Springs

15th of May
This place is vast.
Today I had to get to the nearest civilisation, Alice Springs.
Though a tiny distance on the map this is a 5 hour drive away.
The bus prices being astronomical I decided to give hitching a go.
So it was a hike out to the entrance road of "the resort" which having been built so spread out had its own shuttle bus to get around.
Then I made a little sign and waited, sure I had half the day to wait for the bus anyway. I got a lift a paid the petrol costs.
This was a bit of a roadkill wildlife tour with kangaroo carcases every so often with crows or eagle feeding on them. One eagle nearly droped a leg through our windscreen but just missed. The size of the farms or "cattle stations" are vast. You pass a boundry fence every 44km. Some of the stations were overgrazed, in general there are alot more trees then you would imagine for a place where 9 months without rain is not unusual, rain once a month is alot, and the rivers flowing once a year is alot.
The map of Australia looks a bit like the imaginary ones I used to make as a kid with vast squares for arbitrary funny reasons. Like in south australia there is a huge Germany sized square for missile testing and an Ireland sized bit of which is radioactive from the British nuclear testing in the sixties.
In the middle there are lots of big Aboriginal lands square, but the good bits at the edges don't seem to have much of these. Tourists need permits to visit comunities in these Aboriginal areas to prevent pointless gawping.

Kata Tjuta - Olgas

14th of May Yulara
So having booked a second night at "the resort" it was time figure out how to get to the other amazing feature Kata Tjuta or the Olgas without being fleeced.
The answer was that there was no way and I took the bugetary hit.
The bus only goes here twice a day and all so it was a three hour walk or nothing.
The walk was good though, spectacular scenary and I saw my first Kangaroo, with joey and all.
I also saw a cool big lisard and big spider.
Then the obligitory Uluru sunset stakeout on the way home.
That evening I sat down for a chat with some fellow Irish people to discover that the guy was the Rooneys (and Cloheseys) cousin. Small world.

Ayers rock

13th May Uluru - Ayers rock
I got a flight to Ayers rock today.
Flying for three hours over largely unpopulated and featureless country gives a bit of hint to the vastness of this country.
I landed at the airport near to Ayers rock or "oops I should have said Uluru or whatever they like to call it these days" as the airhostess put it not bothering to hide the resentment that this tourism cash cow is now ultimately controlled by the aboriginal people of the area.
So you get a free bus ride from the airport to "the resort" or Yulra.
This fake tourist town is a distastefull monopoly designed to extract the maximum revinue possible from the hoards of tourists drawn to the sight seeing meca of Uluru - Ayers rock.
The resort is strategicly located a 30 minuite drive from "the rock" and 50 minuites or so from the nearly as impresive Kata Tjuta - Olgas.
This allows them to charge crazy prices for the buses out to each.
I got the bus out to Uluru - Ayers rock.
It really is impresive, located on this vast largely featureless plane it and the Olgas stand out for hundreds of kms in all directions.
When you get there you realise that it is very big, as very steep.
After carefull consideration, rightly or wrongly, my love of climbing stuff outweighed me sense of respect of the aboriginal peoples request for people not to climb the rock so I headed up. The first part was really steep and has a chain to help people not fall off. Since part of part of the aboriginal peoples concerns was the number of people dying up there I took extra care not to fall off. I think the problem here is that to aford to get here you have to be middle aged and loads of people have heart atacks trying to climb up. Anyway I guiltily puffed my way to the top and marveled at the views for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, it is spectacular and not to climb would be to miss out on this.
The climb is closed over 200 days a year due to wind so I had good timing getting there just as it opened.
Down at the base again I walked around some of the base and it's spectacular from here too.
For some reason the flys really love your face, don't know why.
Then on the way back we stopped at a sunset viewing point with hundreds of others to marvel at the rocks colours change as the sun gets lower.
Then back to the most expensive, largest dorm with the worst snoring that I've stayed in yet.
Best tourist quote for the day "daddy why is it called airs rock when it's not in the air"
that kid has a thing or two to learn about gravity.

Australia accelerated

12th of May Cairns
Wandered down the town today. The central crosroads is pedestrianised and there was childrens school choirs singing at an outdoor stage there.
I also found a Japanese musical group in crazy costumes rehearsing in a park.
The town is quite quiet really, there is a public outdoor pool that is quite plesent but the weather is still late rainy season.
I decided to spend less time in Australia then originally planned and moved all the flights on my round the world ticket forward.

Great barrier reef

11th May Cairns
Today I went on a tour snorkling to the great barrier reef.
The sea was fairly choppy and the reef being 50km off shore meant that there were alot of people feeling ill or getting sick.
Then when we get there it's here's your snorkel into the water with ya and give us a shout if you're drowning.
When you look down are loads of cool colourdy fish milling around and nibbling on the corral below.
Using the snorkle took a bit of getting used to and needed a bit of concentration.
The weather deteriorated further with torrential rain for the second half of the day and a wavy sea to cope with snorkling too.
Then karioki in Cairns which always has a promotion to keep the backpacker community entertained.
Free dinner for example, tiny portions though.

Rainforest and waterfall

10th May Cairns
I got "Johns bus" up to kuranda which is in the Atherton tablelands very close to Cairns. here I went for a walk through the rainforest and up to the spectacular Barron falls. Just as I arived a train full of tourists pull up swarming around the lookout, but they pulled off again fairly soon leaving it fairly peacefull.

Cairns

9th May Cairns
It's nice here.
The hostel seems quite friendly.
You wouldn't believe how many Irish people there are in Oz.
My room has four others from Ireland one of which I went to collage with.
I went north on the bus to a beach called Yorkies knob, hehe.
It was realy tropical, we picked coconuts off a tree.
The water was brown though and you have to swim in fear of your life of box jelly fish and salt water crocodiles both of which could kill you.

Moving again

Sydney was nice to hang around for a while,
lovely climate, starting to get cold for them means that you need a jumper in the evening. There are lovely parks, harbour and beaches. Ozies are really sporty, walking through a park lunch time you can feel in danger of being run down by all the joggers. On the beach I saw one of those beach cano then run then swim races and the life guards really ware those funny little swim hats.

Katumba in the blue mountains was beutiful. The forests were really australian with eucoliptus trees and loads of parrots, we even saw, what I think was a gliding possum, but amn't sure, just hanging out at the enterance to the hostel.
Dora from Hungary was a good travel buddy for this part of the journey.

Hostel rageOne of the problems with traveling here is that you have to stay in overcrowded dorms where the maximum number of bunks is squashed into every concevable square centimeter of the room. Your fellow room mates aren't always the best at dorm etiquite. In Katumba our room mates had four alarms go off before 6am and got up to none of them. In Sydney a room mate took a full voiced phone call in the room at 6am. I am in danger of suffering from hostel rage.

8th May
Got a flight to Cairns.
It's tropical here, the first thing that I notices was water condensing on my cold hands getting off the plane.

Hanging out in Sydney

27th April to 3rd of May
After a whirlwind tour of NZ, staying hardly anywhere for more then two nights for the last month, now is the time to stay in the same place for a while.
During the past few days I explored Sydney in a bit more detail.
I met up with a traveling friend the I met in Equador who invited me to a dinner party which was a highlight. I went to the well known Boni beach for a day of sun and hanging with surfers, walked the coastline as far as Coogee beach.

4th of May Katoomba
I met up with a friend that I met in NZ to travel to Katoomba in the Blue mountains near Sydney. Here the are views off a long line of cliff over endless forest.

5th of May Katoomba
Today we went for a days walking down the steps to the bottom of the cliffs and through the forests.