The best piece of advice we got about Bali was to barter hard for everything, and aim for a third of their asking price. Wise words - hardly anything here has a price tag or fixed price. It takes some getting used to - if you wanted to negotiate a cab fare in London, which started at a tenner, and you were to suggest 3 quid you'd be told where to go! Over here it seems to work - oh the rich tapestry of life's experiences.... Hence we're now complete bastards when it comes to bargaining, and are looking forward to some normal, fixed prices when we get to Australia.

As you know, our brilliantly convincing impression of being Swiss got us safely through our hotel stay in Jakarta. Worse was to come though, on our 26 hour coach ride to Denpasar, capital of Bali, as our Indonesian driver appeared to be hell bent on breaking land speed records. We challenge anyone to sleep through his driving. At 3.30am we were woken by the sound of screaming and breaking glass - the coach had obviously hit something at top speed, as we now had a cracked windscreen. Losing valuable seconds, our driver ran once around the coach to check it out, then roared off again into the night.

Nevertheless, we made it to Bali in one piece, and have been staying with Sarah, a friend of J's mum who does business out here for 2 months every year. We've had a fantastic house to use as our base, which has been great, but more importantly we've been elevated from the status of scummy backpackers, to enjoying the cooking and laundry services of Sarah's maid. Landed on our feet or what??!!

For the most part we've been in Legian, north end of Kuta, which is the main beach 'resort' on the island - huge beach, lots of surf (hence lots of surfers), plus we've been able to meet up with Sare and Sammi before they set off to Nepal. We've hired a moped again (braved the roads), which has meant we've zipped around and seen a few places. We'd like to think that we look like Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis on our mean machine (if you haven't seen 'Top Gun', where were you?) - in reality we probably look more like the villagers out of Trumpton as our plastic crash hats look like Lego accessories. Still, our little bike has enabled us to go to monkey-infested hilltop temples for sunsets, watch flocks of herons landing on palm trees at sunset, and to visit Ubud, the main arty-crafty town inland where we did arty-crafty things (museums, gallerys, dances, you know) - but not at sunset. Maybe the best trip we did was further inland to Gunung Batur, an active volcano, which we climbed in time for sunrise - well worth it, despite the 3.45am wake-up call.

All the weight we'd lost in Malaysia (food there wasn't too great in comparison) has been well and truly put back on, due to the enormous choice of cheap food and drink here. J is trying to work it off by trying to learn how to surf (bloody knackering), but Kate has unfortunately somehow managed to catch a cold (don't laugh), so her fitness challenge will begin in Australia. Which we fly to tommorrow, landing in Cairns.