Day 3 - MCG

Michelle couldn't wait to get back to the ground on day 3...we were a bit late...

Warne scored more runs that any Englishman and the pic is of him being clapped off at the end of the innings as the not out batsman....you'd have to zoom in a lot to know that though!

England played terribly and the Aussies bowled well...and the rest is history. I decided that if you can't beat them, join them and briefly joined the "Boony Army" - Australia's version of the Barmy Army. In fact, I didn't so much decide, as be told by the barwoman that I had to. Why? Because it was a Victoria Bitter promotion, and I'd drunk so much VB (not that I thought I had that much!)

Michelle is relieved that she doesn't have to go to the cricket until 2nd Jan now...I sold it as drinking in the sunshine, but she had to take wooly socks and a blanket with her to keep warm!

Day 2 - Melbourne Cricket Ground

The Aussies seem to like sport as much as I do, which is quite refreshing. the Boxing Day paper devoted pages 1-5 to Shane Warne's last test match at the MCG.

In the ground we did a mini Caribbean tour reunion (I was lucky enough to go to the Caribbean on rugby tour in 1999) - two mates from that tour now live in Melbourne...Murray Collins and Rob "Barracuda" Layton (who still moves with the pace of a sloath!). Murray had an Aussie with him but fortunately he didn't rub it in too much!

We're off to Murray's on Saturday for a BBQ - to ensure that we are typically Aussie...fortunatlely the waether has warmed up a bit now.

Michelle was noty quite as excited by the cricket as me...she spent most of the last session talking to ger friend Angela on the phone outside the ground!

Beaches

Although it was still blowing gales and cold on Boxing Day we thought we should make an effort to see the beaches...

They would have been good if the sun was out I'm sure!

The water was freezing, which was a shame for Matt. When out game of frizby was affected by one of the many gusts of wind, the frizby ended up well into the sea. Matt had to wade out to waist height in his jeans to get it....! Well he didn't really have to...but he felt guilty despite us saying that he should leave it...

You can see in the photo of Michelle just how windy it was...

First impressions of Oz!

Bloody cold. Freezing in fact!

We met up with Sarsh and Matt at the airport but not before Michelle had recognised Kevin Pietersen meeting his girlfriend off the plane. We spent 3 days at Sarsh's parents beach house and hired a clapped out old car for very little to get us around....we didn't make it out on Xmas day though as it was so cold/raining/haling...
so instead we spent most of the day cooking a huge feast for Xmas dinner. You'll notice that Michelle's portion in the background is a lot smaller than mine!!!

Cricket in Melbourne anyone?

I realise this is unlikely, but is anyone reading this going to be, or could be, in Melbourne on 27th and 28th December and want to watch the cricket? It looks likely that we'll now have 2 spare tickets for both days (having thought we wouldn't have any for a while) so get in touch if you're keen....

The view from our balcony in Ubud...

Yes, still living in style and we have a huge balcony where we get served breakfast every day. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with a few camera experiments as I'm just realising some of the stuff that can be done...

Botanical Gardens...

We've been for a nice day trip to the botanical gardens, but the highlight was the walk down a quiet road to get there! Superb rice field views....and lots of dangling things overhead...something about keeping evil spirits away I think.

We also encountered a talking bird...we didn't speak it's language but it loved to mimmick our laughter!

Michelle has left 2 posts....be sure not to miss her first one lower down the page as she doesn't post very often - I wouldn't want you to miss anything she has posted!

Facials and flower baths

After our hectic day sightseeing, I got Ed to come with me for a relaxing facial at one of the many spa's here - overlooking a rice paddy - and here's a pic of Ed relaxing under his face mask..

It was so enjoyable (well I thought so!) I managed to get Ed back the next day for a massage, body scrub and flower filled bath.. unfortunately this time Ed was clever enough not to bring his camera for me to take any pics... shame because the plastic, speedo style pants we had to wear were very fetching..

Shock News: Michelle to leave post

She has got bored of waiting for an image to download so it won't happen this time but Michelle has been drafting a post for the blog and will post it next time...

Contrary to the opinion of a couple of people who emailed me, I haven't been stopping her from leaving a post - I've been encouraging her almost daily - she just isn't keen (that's an understatement!). But next time we pop into the internet cafe you should hear from her...

You can NOT be serious...

Surely that must be what Strauss is thinking - I gather he wasn't out again...the 3rd time in a row he's been triggered by an umpire, and his previous 3 innings he got himself out with stupid shots. 6 innings in the Ashes and he hasn't actually been got out by good bowling from the Aussies yet - he must be fuming.

Apart from that little moan, the less said about the cricket the better really. But on the positive side of things we've secured 2 tickets to the 2nd day of the Sydney test match on 3rd Jan (thanks Mailee). We had a choice and went for day 2 because any later and the match could have already been over! Michelle is busy learning the Barmy Army chants, the latest of which I gather is:

Old Glenn McGrath
Old Glenn McGrath
With your pension book
Your zimmerframe
You've soiled yourself again Glenn McGrath

The temples of Ubud and other things

Have decided to stay a while in lovely Ubud.. our driver for the day took us to a few of the local sites.. starting out at Goa Gajah, the elephant temple, as shown in the pics, along with Ed in a sarong with a flower behind his ear (we made an offering to the gods). Supposedly washing your face in the fountain promises eternal youth so we had a bit of a splash.. a bit late for me though!

Then we were shown around a temple where they were preparing for a evening celebration, followed by a trip to the archealogical museum, although neither Ed or I really knew what we were looking at!

Finally we spent lunch and the afternoon overlooking a beautiful bird park.. with exotic birds wandering around the grounds and ponds.

Ubud

We like it here and check out this piece in the local tourist leaflet to see why! We haven't taken advantage of this service yet... :-)

Sacred Monkey Forest

We've done a little exploring in Ubud, but not that much as I failed my motorcycle test! We were shown how to use a bike with gears and were then expected to get going with no room for practice...off I went until I hit a wall after about 20m! Then tried an automatic which I thought wasn't a problem but I clearly looked to shaky to the guy and he sold us a car with a driver instead!

These pics are of the money forest which had some great scenery and also monkeys that seemed to want to jump from ever-increasing heights into their little pool...

Lookey Likey?

Jackie Onassis / Michelle Lamb - you decide...

Slightly less disasterously...

...we spent just the one day in Lombok due to "unforseen circumstances". We managed to get to the port by taxi and bemo only to be told that there was no express boat which takes 1 hour anymore, and that we'd have to take the ferry that takes 5 hours. After arguing a lot with the various touts who wouldn't sell a ferry ticket without selling accomodation in Lombok, we finally got our tickets and got there at around 8pm (5 hours was conservative). We decided to stay in Lembar, where we had docked, for the night and move to a more popular area the next day - the Lonely Planet that there was a hotel there that was very clean and good so we went there and found it to be pretty awful but with no map of the area we decided to take her last room available.

We needed a torch to see anything and the bathroom was the typical hole in the ground but there was also no basin and cockroaches in it so we didn't use it unless absolutely necessary. After a pretty sleepless night (it was a room which had lots of holes in the roof do mosquitoes coud easily get in and there was no way of putting our net up), we got up to head off, but I found my top lip had swollen up a lot. At first I thought it was just another deformity - just the usual expected ugliness - but on checking the instructions that came with the malaria tablets, it said that if your lips swell up you must stop taking the drug (Malarone) and seek medical advice immediately.

Michelle went into overdrive worrying about me which was very sweet but I felt fine so we just got the ferry back to Bali where we don't need to take malaria tablets, and came right back to our 5* residence here! We went to the clinic here to ask for an opinion but they were less help than Michelle's diagnosis (honestly). We've established that there is one ingredient in Malarone that is also in the drugs that we need for India so we wanted to know if the Indian malaria drugs may have the same effect, but the woman there couldn't really help with that...

Anyway, net effect is that we *have to* stay in Bali until we go to Australia as anywhere else in Indonesia needs malaria tablets and I can't take them - I can think of worse things that can happen! Tomorrow we are going to go and stay in Ubud for a bit - the cultural centre of Bali and a bit inland....

Catastrophe!

I'm not sure if that's how you spell it, but that sums up what the last day of the last ashes test match was. Assuming it would be a boring draw I didn't even watch the first session and had a lie in, then saw on the TV (we have BBC World in our 5* accomodation!) that England were struggling and watched the final 2 sessions. It was made all the more unbearable because the sports bar gradually filled up with more and more Aussies as they realised a win was on the cards. I wanted to leave before the end so I didn't have to watch them celebrate but Michelle wouldn't let me!

There were 3 things that had to happen for England to lose - we had to play terribly, the Aussies had to play at their best, and we had to have some bad luck. All that seemed to happen - I saw that Harmison was LBW to one that was going way over and I hear that Stauss wasn't out, although I haven't seen it.

Anyway, Michelle was very disappointed too (believe it or not) as we'd just heard the day before that Wilesy (for those that know him) had managed to get tickets for us both to go to see the game in Melbourne on 27th and 28th - it's not 100% yet, but looks very probable, and Michelle was keen to watch when the series was still alive, not when England had already lost it as could happen now. So we went out with another English couple and had far too much to drink, leaving Michelle ill that night and both of us with a stinking hangover the next day when we were meant to go to Lombok. Fortunately no hotels are full here so we extended by a day to get back to 100%!

The Bombs...

We went and had a few drinks at Paddy's Pub last week which was bombed back on 2003 and also saw the gap left now by the other bomb that went off then...there are still a couple of photos of victims with words from the family basically saying that they will never forget there...

Our hotel

Perhaps these couple of shots will show why we've spent a bit longer than planned here....

John Mitchell for England rugby coach

Sorry, one other sporting comment....we should try and get John Mitchell as the new rugby coach. There is 2 months til the Super 14 starts so England could get him now...he did a great job as assistant coach, and he did a great job for the All Blacks til 2003 - I couldn't believe they sacked him just because of a lucky interception try by Australia in the World Cup semi final.

I'll try not to talk about sport for a bit on this blog.... :-)

If only we'd picked Monty...

We're still in Bali enjoying doing very little...we're basically having a holiday from travelling! Watched a lot of cricket...swam in the hotel pool a lot, had a bit of sun, and enjoyed the food and beer. At some point we are going to move on to Lombok but we're enjoying doing very little for the time being and Michelle seems to have developed an interest in cricket!

Yesterday morning as we walked to the sports cafe for the 8:30 start, Michelle said "I hope Pietersen stays in" and she has been predicting a draw from Day 1, smart girl (I think). 8:30 starts aren't her forte but she even wanted to come to watch the cricket this morning after we got in about 2am last night...I'm not quite sure what's happening but maybe she's being converted!

As everyone except Duncan Fletcher (who has been great for England apart from this selection blip) seems to be agreed on, we should have played Panesar. Imagine how much pressure we could have put on the Aussies with him instead of Anderson. As it is we have only 3 bowlers who can take wickets it seems, and at a crucial time straight after tea we decided to bowl both our non-wicket takers together just to make sure Ponting and Hussey could play themselves back in easily.

So I presume it will be a draw, although we could put a bit of pressure on them if we get a couple early tomorrow and bowl them out by lunch. It's interesting how the Aussie's here feel....they are genuinely pleased we got a big score because they want an exciting series, and for the same reason they want us to pick Panesar. I was told to "go home" when I celebrated Langer's wicket last night with Michelle being the only other pomme there though! Bali seems to be like a second Australia...all good practice for the real thing in 3 weeks time...