Perth and Fremantle!

Perth & Fremantle!

The flight to Perth was quite a long one - 5 hours. After driving, we'd gotten used to just how large Australia is so we were perfectly happy to sit there and let someone else take us somewhere for once!

We arrived in Perth at about 1am and found ourselves being checked into totally different rooms. Next door to each other, but each with 3 fast-asleep guests in already. We parted ways for the evening and I crept as quietly as I could into my pitch-black room. I removed the torch from my backpack and shoved it into my mouth so that I could use my hands to make the bed. In hostels, you have to make your own bed. And doing so at 1am, without waking the other guests, in the darkness using only a mouth torch is quite a challenge. Somehow, I managed it and promptly failed to sleep at all. You see, Perth YHA is perched on the corner of a train station. While it has great facilities (a gym, a large kitchen, a cinema room, loads of sofas and TV's), it's one major flaw is this train station. Trains come round the corner and have to blare their horns to announce they are coming. It is this horn corner that our rooms faced, so every 10 minutes or so we would be awoken (or kept awake) by an extremely loud, extremely close combination of rail rattling, engine noise and ludicrous horning. Charlotte had an even worse deal. One of the people in her room just HAD to sleep with window open, meaning it was roughly one billion times as loud for her.

I left my room the next morning to find an infuriated and exhausted Charlotte waiting outside. We got our stuff together, had a chat with the people in our rooms, showered and went to explore Perth.

The city from King's Park.

View over the bay from King's Park and, below, the memorial.

We explored King's Park for a while; an enormous park with loads of green space, some botanic gardens and a large glass bridge. We stopped for lunch for a bit and chilled out by the memorial at the café, and had a nice meander around the gardens. We then got the bus back into the town itself.

In town, we visited the cultural centre where there was an ice rink and a museum. The museum was housing a wildlife exhibit which consisted of much taxidermy and various dead things on display, as well as plenty of sea creatures. This left Charlotte feeling rather crabby:

We also checked out an extremely depressing photography exhibition showing never-before-seen photos of devastating incidences, such as plane crashes and violent riots. It was all a bit macabre and interesting in a dark way, but it certainly didn't leave us feeling cheerful.

After exploring Perth a bit more, we stayed one more night before making our way the next day to Fremantle. Fremantle is a short train journey away from Perth, just to the South West. We were due to stay in Fremantle Prison YHA, which had only opened a couple of months ago and was, until 1988, a fully operational prison. There was the option to stay in cells but we stayed in a 10 bedroom dorm in a large room. The facilities were excellent and the whole place was still retaining it's prison feel; it was very atmospheric! Charlotte managed to convince herself we were staying in the execution chamber until I manage to find a map explaining it had previously been, in fact, the kitchen unit. This made her happier.

Fremantle was lovely. Perth, we thought, was a nice enough city but didn't have much character to it. The park was great, but the city itself felt like an inflated Swindon. Lots of pedestrianised areas surrounded by chain shops and more shops, with the odd shopping arcade thrown in. To be fair, in Perth, they were re-building the entire seafront area so that was just one massive construction sight and wasn't aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Maybe we'll go again and see if we like it. 

Fremantle, on the other hand, was great. It had tonnes of character, wide roads, old buildings and a massive, bustling market. We strolled through the market, where I bought a chocolate banana, and then on to the park where I found the most magnificent skatepark (WITH ILLUMINATED HANDRAILS). It made me wish I'd kept my board. There was also a parkour arena, playpark, ferris wheel and ice rink. The local council had clearly put a lot of effort into maintaining entertaining green, outdoor spaces and it was great!

The next day, we ventured up to look for some surf. We took the train, after grabbing breakfast from Woolworths, and then a bit of a walk to Cottesloe Beach where we found...zero surf. We also found a lot of cold and wet people, a lot of seaweed and then it started raining heavily on us so we sheltered in the pavilion.

We decided it probably wasn't worth staying and went back to Fremantle. Upon our return to Fremantle, we decided to take on the free tour around the Little Creatures brewery. Little Creatures is a craft brewery that specialises in Pale Ales (as most craft breweries do). We stocked it at the restaurant I worked at in Mooloolaba, where they'd sent us a crate of 3-year out of date beer! Nonetheless, we took the tour and meandered through the brewing area while trying to listen to the tour guide amongst the clamour of an extremely busy bar and restaurant area. We finished the tour and were rewarded by ponies (small glasses) of free beer! We were allowed to try each of the beers they had on tap, and even Charlotte tried some! The one's she couldn't stomach, I had. This means I drank a lot of different beers very quickly, and not long after was a little dizzy. Regardless, we'd had a nice warm tour and some free beer. Result!

The last day in Fremantle, we visited the prison proper. The YHA was located in the old women's wing, a small section of the main prison. The men's area was much larger and it is this that you can tour through. We took a tour through the main prison with a tour guide and a small group which was fantastic. Our guide, Steve, was clearly a prison warden back when the prison was functioning (it only shut in 1988) and knew absolutely everything and explained and described all the procedures and events in explicit detail.

Old prison uniform

The cell block

Cell block with anti-suicide nets

Kitchen

Yard

Large (extended by knocking through the wall) cell

Cell block

Chapel. The murals were painted by a prisoner.

Cell for arrested police/informants

Standard sized cell. Still functioning in 1988. There were never toilets, even right up to closure they used the slop buckets.

Cell with paintings done by the prisoner

Another cell painting

The gym

Solitary confinement

Lashing post

Execution chamber. Supposedly the time between leaving solitary confinement, walking to the chamber and being hanged here was just 30 seconds. Charlotte stayed outside.

After the tour we took the train back to Perth, where we stayed for one more night in the YHA.

Travelling in Bali!

Bali!

Ah Bali. This was definitely a highlight week for us! We felt obliged to go to Bali while we were here as it's an essential world visit and it was cheaper for us to fly from Perth - Bali - Darwin than it was to fly straight from Perth - Darwin!

I was excited about Bali - not only because it was the first warmth we would have had since Byron Bay and it was going to be a cheap week as it's far more affordable than Australia, but also because it has legendary surf. Uluwatu, Padang Padang and Kuta are world-famous breaks. And, unlike pretty much all of Australia, they break left, making it ideal for goofy footers like myself!

Day 1

We landed in Bali after a short and easy flight. The runway approach goes directly over Uluwatu, which I was eagerly watching out of the plane window like an excited child, seeing all the surfers and awesome tropical waves.

When we landed, we got our first glimpse of what the week was going to be like. Within a minute of stepping out of the terminal we were swarmed by hundreds of taxi drivers, trying to grab our bags and lead us to their cabs. We were actively followed by one we had already said no to several times for about 20 minutes until we really got angry at him. We went to the 'official' Taxi office and Charlotte asked for a price to get to our accommodation Seminyak and he quoted her 200,000 rupiah ($20/£10). She declined this and I went and asked, and he quoted me 17,000 rupiah. When he realised Charlotte was also getting in the taxi he didn't seem massively impressed!

We the got a taste of Bali traffic - a nightmare! Hundreds of scooters weaving in and out of stationary gridlock, almost entirely made up of taxis! We decided not to hire a vehicle then!

We arrived at our villa in the evening and it was amazing. Placed in a totally quiet square within the hustle and bustle of Seminyak it seemed like a totally different place, with an incredibly well maintained pool and the friendliest and most helpful staff we've ever come across. They showed us to our villa which was a two storey mezzanine; a living area and kitchen downstairs, and a huge super-king sized bed with an 'outdoor' bathroom in which there was no ceiling above the shower. 

After unpacking, we wandered down into Seminyak high street to get some essentials from the supermarket, and then came back and went to sleep.

Day 2

Day 2 was mostly spent relaxing and exploring on foot. Breakfast was provided for us every morning and delivered to our door for no extra charge! We had pancakes (I had banana pancakes, Charlotte had normal ones), tea and a big container of fresh orange juice. We had this every morning! We started the day at the swimming pool in the apartment complex. The day before had been hectic and we wanted to wind down! After that and lunch, we walked to Kuta beach through the streets of Bali. Walking through Bali as a Westerner essentially means you will be shouted and beeped at every two seconds by Taxi drivers. If you can go 5 minutes without someone shouting 'Taxxxiiiiii!!!!' at you or 'Massage?!' at you then you've done well! Taxi's would stop, block the traffic and try to persuade you to get in as you're walking along and 90% of vehicles are taxi's! Walking Bali can be dangerous - the pavements are badly maintained/non-existent but everyone apart from the taxi drivers and touts are really friendly and helpful. We strolled through town to the beach and walked past a surf hire shop. We looked in to see how much a board costs and it is amazing - $10 for the day! And because Bali is where the pro's and surf teams fly in and out of all the time, they leave their boards behind. This means Bali surf hire shops are teeming with top quality, professional level surfboards to hire for pittance. It's great! I hired a board and surfed Kuta beach for a while, Charlotte sat on the beach and chilled and soaked up the atmosphere. Once I came in from surfing, we watched the sunset on the beach before retiring to the apartment for the evening.

Day 3

I was excited for day 3. We had one thing scheduled - Uluwatu! Uluwatu is the most famous break in Indonesia, row upon row of peeling and barrelling left-hand waves breaking next to stunning cliffs over a coral reef teeming with marine life. It really does have to be seen to be believed. At low tide the wave is hollow and fast and breaks over inch-deep reef, so we timed our visit to go at mid-to-high tide for safety! This also meant I didn't have to walk on bare reef barefoot. 

Getting to Uluwatu was interesting - the Taxi driver got lost and managed to take us around the whole of the base of Bali twice - an hour long loop - before we arrived at our destination. He then tried to charge us the amount that the metre said, before we pointed out he'd taken us on an unnecessary hour long detour and we weren't happy paying it. He took the extra cost off and we found ourselves at Uluwatu.

When we arrived, the waves were exactly as I wanted them to be. About 6 foot, clean and fat and I'd managed to rent a board from one of the cliff-side merchants (there is a whole village cut into the side of the cliff, accessible by a maze of stairs) with a GoPro mount! Not too busy and the mid tide meant I didn't have to paddle miles out. You get into Uluwatu by descending the cliff into a cave, and then paddling through this beautiful rock opening into the sea. It's a narrow channel leading straight into a crazy current which drags you down the cliffside towards and it's simply a case of paddling forward until you exit the rip, and then having to make your way right the way back up to the lineup - a tiring start!

Charlotte also enticed the local cat inside with milk...

Charlotte had found herself a cosy cliff top cafe from which to watch the action below and I had an absolute blast on challenging, and big Indonesian waves in bright sun. Heaps of fun and I could even see large tropical fish swimming around under me! Most people there were doing the same as me, and so I chatted with a few people in the lineup. A few guys were world tourers and apparently kept bumping into each other at surf spots around the world. A guy next to me said another person there he had met the week before in California!

After an exhausting and hot session, we found that Uluwatu was the one place in Bali that you couldn't get a taxi! So Charlotte pretended to be a guest of one of the 5* resorts and persuaded the staff to call a cab, which cost us about $20 to get back to Seminyak. All in all, the day cost us $50 in transport. For $60 you could get a private driver for an entire day - so that's exactly what we did the next day!

Day 4

Day 4 was very eventful. We'd booked a private driver from a company called Made Dodi which had fantastic reviews from travellers. We booked onto a tour of an area known a Ubud, which took in plenty of local sights and was apparently a great way to see the non-touristy side of Bali.

After the obligatory pancake, we met our driver (Gusti) at 9.00am and he put us into his comfortable and modern people carrier. We had this, for the day, for $30 each. First, he drove us to a fabric weaving and dying place that produced traditional batik paintings. Batik is cotton hand-dyed with beeswax to make fabric art. We watched them hand-painting and explored the art inside the factory before moving on to a Gold and Silversmith. This was clearly a 'bring people here to get commission' arrangement between the Silversmith and the driving company as there were 3 people sat outside half-heartedly heating lumps of silver and then a massive shop in which a woman followed us around trying her best to get us to buy all of the things. We didn't, we looked quickly and left before Gusti had even finished his cigarette.

Next stop was a wood carving shop. This was much better - we saw the locals carving the wooden statues by hand and the woodwork inside the shop was of amazing craftsmanship (if a little odd by anyone's standards). 

We then proceeded to a large water temple known as Turta Empul. This is an active place of hindu worship and as such I had to wear a sarong to cover my knees. A bright pink sarong. Charlotte found this hilarious and took vast quantities of photos of me in the aforementioned sarong. The temple itself is old - built in 962AD over a fresh water spring and still functioning. Sections of it were roped off for worship and I can imagine the locals weren't too keen on the busloads of tourists being dropped off there.

Next stop was an active volcano overlooking Lake Batur. The view was stunning, but getting there was a mission as there was a large Hindu festival on and the one road was completely clogged with worshippers. We were taken to a restaurant and sat down by Gusti - clearly an arrangement had been made as he ensured the waitresses knew that he had taken us there. The prices were ridiculous and it was rammed with tourists (all of whom paid a different price for the meal!), so while he waited in the car we wandered off to the cafe next door where we had a meal and drink for $5 each, with exactly the same view and zero other tourists. 

After lunch, we then visited the rice paddies. These were huge valleys totally lined with rice crops and the entrepreneurial land owners had made little toll gates where $1 could get you across their fields. You could play a fun game of avoid the toll gates by choosing your paths but we paid them as they clearly weren't getting paid well at all. We also visited a local house, showing how the Balinese lived. This was an eye opener - a 'house' is a few clay huts for rooms scattered around an enclosure. The kitchen was medieval in style and the rooms cramped. They also had porcupines in cages, not quite sure what for, and chickens and cockerels for cockfighting. Gusti seemed genuinely surprised when we said cockfighting is illegal in Europe and didn't seem to think anything was wrong with it!

We were also taken to a place where they make Civet Coffee. This is coffee made from beans that have already been passed through the digestive system of civets, a small mammal that looks like a cross between a cat and a weasel. The coffee is extremely popular locally and around the world, and as a result demand is high. However, we were a little concerned with how the civets were kept. They were locked in tiny cages and showed signs of distressed and repetitive behavior. Gusti showed us the beans and we were told about the different stages of processing the beans before going to a viewpoint that overlooked the rice fields. I declined an offer for coffee. 

Last trip of the day was to Ubud's monkey forest. This is a few temples scattered around a forest littered with Macaques, small monkeys. So our surprise, these were not the crazy, badly behaved monkeys we'd been expecting or had encountered elsewhere. They were docile, somewhat tame and didn't seem to object to anyone being there and made no attempt to steal anything or cause havoc. This was very Indiana Jones - loads of little temples scattered amongst the forest and monkeys everywhere. Very cool!

After that, the day was finished. We paid $30 each for that whole day, a private tour around all of those places. That's £15 each. Astonishing value and we had seen loads!

Day 5

After the success of the previous day in terms of things seen and money spent, we decided to hire another of Made Dodi's drivers. The second driver turned up at our apartment just after breakfast, and was very young and a little removed from the tour-guide mentality that Gusti had. We had decided that today would be a day of sea and beaches! Because we were using his services for a second time, we bartered our price down by 10,000 rupiah to just 50,000. We asked out driver, who's name I forget, to take us somewhere where we can rent a snorkel and mask to go swimming off the beach. So he drove off and we sat back.

We arrived at a local water sports operator nowhere near a beach and the staff there hustled us out of the van before we even had time to register where we were and we were promptly sat at a table in front of a guy offering us water sports packages. Bali is supposedly home to some great reefs but apparently the only way to see them is to buy a water sports package from a dealership. We just wanted to rent a snorkel and mask and go off on our own - but this wasn't possible. The staff member was trying his best to hard sell us disproportionately expensive packages, from snorkeling to diving to water-skiing. This angered me and upset Charlotte so after about 20 minutes of trying to get across what we wanted, we left. Our driver seemed annoyed, I imagine because this meant no commission. We asked to be taken to a nice beach to swim in. He directed us to Suluban beach so we went there.

This beach was set within 5* holiday resort complexes and had gates to prevent the locals wandering in and out. It felt like a completely different place; quiet and well-maintained and clearly meant to keep rich tourists in quiet luxury. It was a stark contrast to the madness of Kuta and Seminyak. Our driver directed us to the beach and we wandered off to get a spot. We accidentally found ourselves walking slightly far up the beach to a spot where security informed us it was a guests-only area and that we had to go to the tiny public area. Nonetheless, it was still a very nice beach with shallow fringing reefs which I spent a good while meandering around with my GoPro at. We stayed there for a while and wallowed in the shallow water before drying out on a grassy patch.

We found our driver again, and made our way to the next beach - Pendawa Beach. We walked down this long beach which has a reef about 100m from the beach blocking the sea, forming a shallow seawater lake at low tide. This was perfect for kayaking and so we rented a kayak for $5 for an indefinite period of time. So we kayaked around the lake for a bit which was full of harmless jellyfish, that I waded through without incident, and seaweed. It was really good fun and pretty relaxing as we messed around on the lake. On our way back in, I did actually get stung by one of the jellyfish. I guess a stinging one found itself in there somehow.

Next stop was lunch. Charlotte had spied a nice hipster burger place on the way to Padang Padang which she wanted to check out. It was called Om Burger and had really good reviews. We left our driver in the car and went to have lunch. Charlotte ordered a vegetarian burger, I ordered a waygu beef burger and for a starter we had sweet potato. The sweet potato was interesting - it came out bright purple. Literally, bright purple. It tasted nice though, so we munched through them excited for the burgers. Our burgers came out upside down - you had to take them apart and re-assemble them. That was challenge 1. Challenge 2 was eating Charlotte's burger - it very literally disintegrated in her hands into a million little rice pieces. It ended up looking like a purple-brown rice meal with added bun. Unimpressed, she made her way through as much of it as she could manage before finishing off with a brownie. I happily chomped my way through my burger and we left.

Next stop was Padang Padang. Padang is another world-famous surf spot, famous for super-hollow tubes and being incredibly shallow. It was a surprisingly tiny beach but had brilliantly deep water which, after hiring a 6'0 performance shortboard (the smallest I'd ever ridden and shorter than me), I paddled over the deep water to the very shallow reef where the waves were breaking. Charlotte chilled on the beach and I surprised myself by finding out I could ride such a tiny board perfectly well and had heaps of fun on punchy waves that I could get whenever the locals weren't snaking them.

I paddled back in and we left Padang just as they were setting up for an evening party, pumping out 'Bad Boys' on repeat for a good half-hour through a live stage setup. We asked our driver to take us back to our apartments where we showered, and then promptly set out to get a gelato dinner!

Day 6

Day 6 was the day of the Potato Head Club. After a hectic week of driving, walking, surfing, exploring and generally having a non-stop time, we decided to treat ourselves and chill out. The Potato Head beach club in Bali is supposedly the best beach club on the island, so we went there! It opened at 11am and we arrived at 10.55am - to find an enormous queue. We joined the queue and when we arrived we were told there was only one beach lounger left and if we wanted it, we'd have to spend at least $50 on food and drink. We wanted to treat ourselves and would be there all day anyway, so we took the last beach lounger!

It was a great choice. Potato Head has the most amazing infinity pool with a BAR IN THE POOL. You can order and drink while partially submerged in a stunning pool overlooking the surf. We also found our loungers were enormous, massive bed-things with tables in the middle and table service. The food was outstanding as well. We stayed there all day, swimming, chilling, reading, eating, drinking, until we were so tired out from the relaxing that we went back to the apartment for a bit.

Day 7

After an awesome week of exploring as much of Bali as we could, we had to catch the cab to the airport and fly back to Australia. We were extremely lucky that we could fly; the Bali aiport had been shut for almost the whole week due to volcanic ash from a volcano in Java. The airport shut down the day after we flew in, and briefly opened again on the day we were due to fly out. We flew out, only to learn that the next day they'd closed it again. We'd heard stories of people who had been stranded for weeks and who's flights couldn't be re-scheduled for another week or so, or even longer. One family spent $4000 on flights during the brief airport opening. We flew in on our booked plane, and flew out on our booked plane. Very, very lucky! So with that, we jetted off to Darwin!