so.  i was in ubud.  stayed there for a couple of days and just wandered around the city and surrounding areas via motorbike by myself.  heavenly.  saw many, many temples and took ridic amounts of photos.  had lunch in random places and totally made an ass out of myself repeatedly.  quite a good time.

but i felt like i needed some sun and beach time because im in bali dammit!  so i hi-tailed it over to padangbai where i knew i could find a whole lot of nothing but sun and sand.  i was correct.

after being harassed repeatedly by the locals who wanted to give me a ride somewhere, i finally found a shabby but exceptionally quaint place to stay at the end of a beach that looked like it had been fairly abandoned.  Topi Inn.  it was perfect.  it has a restaurant on the first floor frequented by tourists and their local guides alike, as well as single rooms and dorm mattresses on the floor overlooking the bay.  i was lucky enough to get a room to "myself" with a couple of fans and a mattress that smelled of sweat.  i say "myself" because the walls were just sticks of bamboo and at one point i thought the girl who sneezed in the room nextdoor was in bed with me.  no matter.  i was about 10 yards from the beach at any given point in the establishment and i travel with my own sheets. 

i may come off sounding elitist and like a shitty american tourist, but i really dont mean to sound that way.  i loved that little hotel and made it my home for 4 days and 3 nights.  i spent those days in PB sitting in the shade of the hotel and watching the waves, reading, hiking over the cliff to the next bay over for more sheltered swimming.  actually, the water currents were quite interesting to watch because even though they were calm for about 200 yards out, they proceeded to become incredibly choppy and tumultuous just past that point.  i had no need for that business so i settled myself into some snorkeling in bloo lagoon. 

the topi inn was a funny place.  the staff seemed to both hate and love their job, and really dislike the people who stayed there.  fair enough.  tourists can be quite demanding, im sure.  nevertheless, i found some lovely people who turned out to be mostly scandinavian.  couple of swedes and couple of finnish. even one croatian.

i spent one of those days riding all over the east coast of the island.  i even found myself a little beach and posted up for a couple of hours.  that would be where i caught a really nasty sunburn.   whatev.  i rode of and got myself again pleasantly lost in the hilly valley between two volcanoes.  pictures abound.  it has to be one of the most beautiful scenes ive ever seen.  i had to pull over and withstand being honked and hollered at to take some amazing pics.  it was on this ride that i did some off-roading on the shitty rental bike and and got a dragonfly stuck in my helmet as i was riding.  totally didnt freak out and managed to get it out of my hat and hair without crashing.  bravo! 

decided to forego the gili islands and lombok because the ferry had been put out of order indefinitely- causing a traffic jam of semitrucks for literally 5+ miles- due to bad weather which makes tourists throw up on the boat and just a general mishandling of everything, as far as i could tell.

that being decided, i made my way back to ubud because i felt like i hadnt yet experienced all it had to show me.  this bus ride was of course taken after a night of drinking local arak with some scandinavian misfits and promising some balinese man that i would attend a cockfight with him the next day.

needless to say, the cockfight didnt happen and the bus was late and our busdriver was sideswiped by a truck which caused him to jump out and punchthe offending driver.  making us later into ubud.  and i still needed to find a room.  and i needed to eat.  i ambled across the street from the bus "depot" and had an interesting lunch which proceeded to make my stomach unhappy.

this unhappiness made me snap and yell at some guy who accosted me asking if i could come with him to his homestay, but finally settle for a room in a house with a gorgeous temple. 

stomach unhappiness continues today, but yesterday was a fun tour with some other people from my hotel.  it included two finnish women and an elderly kiwi who thinks he knows more than god.  either way, i had a blast and made a couple new girlfriends in the process.

i must go.  toilet calls... again.  shitballs.