Sydney, Australia...

Goodness me, BIG slap on the wrist I have been terribly slack on here. I think last time I wrote I was in Chile, well I've since been to Australia and I'm now in Indonesia. Let's back track... so Valparaiso and Vina del Mar were wonderful, my favourite South American cities. The Chilean people are fantastic, so funny and dry and smart. I found Chile to be very sophisticated, you can see why it's on the brink of becoming South America's first first world country.

Next we headed for Australia which was a 14 hour flight to New Zealand followed by a connection onto Sydney, so quite exhausting, and nightmarish when we arrived and found no space in ANY hostels at all (some festival or something). Anyway, we finally found a friendly little place called the Sydney Star in a gay area in Darlinghurst and kicked back for a week. Mainly we shopped and ate and saw the sights (Opera House, Harbour Bridge, the Rocks, caught the ferry to Manly beach) and spent lots of time eating fish and chips and drinking fruit smoothies on Bondi which I have to say is my favourite beach in the world thus far, even better than Copacabana in Rio. I also thought the women on Bondi were the most beautiful I had seen anywhere. They all seemed to look like leggy, tanned models, in an impossibly 'un-efforty' way.

I also had nights out catching up with two friends who I used to work with in London and now live in Sydney, and my friend Gina took me on a night drive through Valcluse, a.k.a. the Australian OC. With all the sparkly lights and the sea it was very romantic! Finally we spent our last night at Watson's Bay with some old colleagues of Danny's, which was breathtaking at sunset. I adored Sydney, it had most of what we have in London but with wonderful weather and a perfect beach aswell. I'd love to work out there for a year or so. But much as I loved oz, we couldn't really afford to travel there (we seemed to be burning money, even though we were being very careful) so I was quite relieved when we moved on, if only for my wallet's sake.

Anyway, we were then supposed to fly to Darwin and connect on to Denpasar in Bali, but there was a cyclone in Darwin so we were rerouted to Melbourne (which is in the opposite direction) so after a very long day of travelling we landed in Bali at about 11pm where it was about 30 degrees. And it hasn't dropped anything below that since, it is ridiculously hot here, so much so that we were over the moon to find a tiny air conditioned ATM booth and have spent as much time as possible in there. Anyway, we've been staying in Kuta in Bali which is kind of like the Balinese San Antonio, packed with clubbers and suchlike so we'll head off soon to Ubud, which is a more authentic Balinese town and has lots of Hindu architecture and a really laid back vibe. There is much more to tell but this is costing me so I'll have to cut it short for now... With love from Indonesia!