We Made it to Bali

Just now getting our western adapter so we can start blogging about our trip to Bali. We headed out of Shekou on Friday night and caught a plane at 11:30 pm to Bangkok landing at 1:30 am. We slept on some benches at the airport for a few hours then caught a 6:15 am flight to Denpesar, Bali, Indonesia. Jamie and I actually caught a break on these 2 flights as we had an extra seat on the first one and 2 extra seats each on the second one so we could actually lie down.

Our guide and driver picked us up at the airport and drove us to get some money exchanged. We had brought some US dollars. The exchange rate here is about 10,800 to $1, so you carry some pretty large bills around. It is odd at first, but you get used to it. The restaurant menus are pretty smart because they just print the first 2 numbers of the price (ex. 59) then say at the bottom that it is all in thousands of rupiah.

We are staying a great place in Nusa Dua Beach. We aren't on the beach directly, but it is only a 10 minute walk or a 2 minute shuttle ride away. It was an exchange from our time share in Orlando, so we are staying the whole week for practically nothing. We have an apartment style accommodation, so we went down the street and bought some groceries for breakfast and lunch. Nice place and the pool area is tropical with tons of beach chairs that have shade and pads on them.

We haven't done much but just hang around the beach and pool the first couple of days. We are waiting for Tuesday and Wednesday for our guide to come back and take us around the island all day. We'll then have a ton of pictures to show of all the various places on the island. We might do some scuba diving on Wednesday or Thursday which will be my first try. I'm a bit apprehensive about scuba diving. I have always told Jamie that I like to breath real "air," and she assures me that the air in the tank is "real." I'm skeptical about that.

I'm going to post separately some cool things that have happened to us while we've been here. One involves fruit, another currency, and finally a state song.

Bali is beautiful and the people are amazingly friendly. We'll keep you posted of our travels.