BALI HONEYMOON

It's been more than six months since we got back from our honeymoon! I wasn't going to share anything at all about our trip to Bali and the Gili Islands because we didn't do anything particularly noteworthy beyond lazing by the pool, walking on the beach and eating street food - or rather, I didn't take any pictures of anything noteworthy! But in the end it's nice to have memories to look back on and I'd all but forgotten to look at the photos since we got back, and I think I'm going to print the one above - a shame Darren's not in it!

The picture above is from our little cabin at Pearl of Trawangan - the rest of the photos are below in chronological order.

We flew into Bali - after stressful delays and re-booked flights, we all but missed our first day at the beautiful Warwick Ibah Luxury Villas in Ubud, which was a shame as we had splashed out to get a private pool villa and it was the most beautiful hotel we stayed in on the trip. I had the best massage of my life and for the remaining two days we had in Ubud we had a tasty meal at Murni's Warung, visited the Monkey Forest and had two delicious helpings of barbecued pig at Ibu Oka. We made a couple of friends during our flight delays and it was actually nice to have people to meet up with - I know, not normally what you'd do on honeymoon!

From Bali, we took a fast boat to the Gili Islands for three days at Pearl. Even in the two years since we had last been to the Gilis (our guide from last time here), so much had changed - think as many avocados as you can eat. But we stuck to traditional dishes - especially at breakfast - except for a return to the famous Scallywags barbecue.

To round off the trip, we spent a night at the Jeeva Santai Villas on Lombok, before flying out to Malaysia to spend time with my family there. Lombok is beautiful and I would love to explore the island more; the tourist industry is really starting to pick up there, which means you can get good deals on really luxurious, brand new hotels. However, I have to say that the food at Jeeva Santai wasn't very memorable - we walked out of the hotel to get some roadside snacks and enjoyed a few cocktails at sunset instead of a full meal.

(We also had a 'second honeymoon' a month later in Japan! We rented an airbnb and stayed in Tokyo for the whole two weeks just eating and spending time with a few friends we have there; after quite a hectic actual honeymoon, it was nice to work without a schedule and just do whatever we fancied! I took close to zero photos, but if you're interested in going to Japan I did a huge series of blog posts last time we were there, which you can see here.)