We arrived in Bali over four months ago with a 60 day tourist visa. That meant we had to leave the country before we could stay any longer. On day 60 we headed back to Perth on our pre-arranged trip. It was not only a chance to renew our visa, but after two months in Bali we welcomed some time back in (our old) normality for a couple of weeks and to sort a few things out.
After living away from family many times before, we were very aware that time is limited for any trip back. We almost had a full calendar even before we returned. We had no time to waste.
Olive had missed her friends a lot, thankfully this trip corresponded with her birthday, and we planned an ice skating party with her friends, which she and her friends loved.
We were also lucky that some friends of ours were heading around Australia for 6 months, and they had organised a going away party, perfect for us to catchup with mutual friends! You can read their blog: Derbyshires on the road. It has been interesting to follow their adventures so far as they are visiting many of the place we went to on our Around Australia Trip with Olive in 2008.
Of course there were catch ups with our families in Perth. There were a few of these, which were thoroughly enjoyed at some of our favourite places around Perth, like Stickybeaks at Kings Park and Point Walter on the Swan River.
If you have read our post about the foods we miss, you will not be surprised that we had a big shopping list of things to eat while back in Perth, and many things to buy and bring back. Some of our imports included chocolate (especially Easter eggs), licorice, quality tea, barbecue shapes, drinking chocolate (there is one particular brand that we really like), vegemite, nutella, nuts and dried fruit, stain-remover (most washing products are Indonesian, so we can’t work out what is what), zip lock bags and nappies (the Bali versions are very average)!
We arrived back in Bali with more toys, books, and food supplies. Don’t know what we are going to do when it is time to finally leave here, we will have so much gear. This time we just got the 30 day visa on arrival, as we had planned to head to Singapore about that time for a (can we say ‘much needed’?) holiday. We bought some more supplies there too! You can read about our trip to Singapore in our next blog post.