The Northern Territory of Oz and beguiling Bali

I know I haven't updated the blog in a long time and much has happened since my last proper entry. The things is that the spare time I have apart from the sight-seeing, is easily used on writing emails and such, writing my journal (by hand) and reading and doing research on my next destination. Today is a different matter though. I'm in Singapore for the third day, have seen all the free attractions I'm interested in and I have already exceeded my budget for the city-nation. So I'm lying low and just waiting for tomorrow when I'm heading into cheaper Malaysia.

Kings Canyon in central Australia.

In the mean time I'll use the opportunity to catch up on recent (ehm...) events.

Rather than writing humongous blog post about all that has happened since the Great Ocean Road in Australia, I'm going to do things differently this time. I'll post the links to the photo albums here, but the telling will be done by the captions of the images. For those who care to read a bit more, I'll briefly summarize my best experience in Australia and Bali further down in this text. I was hoping to post pictures from my entire stay in Indonesia today as well, but I didn't get further than Bali, so Java will have to wait until next time, not to talk about Singapore. Sorry.

Here are the links to the photo albums in the gallery:

• The Red Centre of Australia
• "The Track" - from Alice Springs to Darwin
• Beguiling Bali

As far as experiences go, by far the best thing I did in Australia was visiting central Australia: Alice Springs, Kings Canyon, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. It is a unique area and so very different from anything else I've ever seen. The problem I found with the East coast was, that it resembled the north island of NZ too much. Sure it's beautiful, but not until I got to Alice Springs did I feel like I was in the Australia I had always imagined. Sleeping in swags under the stars. The heat. The red sand and rock. The dryness. These were the things I came to see in Oz.

Me by a funny looking termite "mound". I believe "tower" suites better. Check the image gallery for a much larger mound!

My ear which got hammered while surfing on Bali, is now much better. I will surf in Southeast Asia again before long, no doubt about it! Surfing was my best activity in Bali, it was so much fun and such an experience. Why is there no surf back home?

Pretend that's me.