Have now been home for 4 days and still thinking of Bali. We departed Melbourne on a Garuda flight 3 hours later than scheduled and was kicking myself for not checking the departure time before leaving home. Five hours at Tullamarine airport is too long. Can recommend Andrews Airport Parking for long term car parking. They very promptly transferred us from their car park to the airport in their mini bus and collected us on our return. We went straight to Ubud and stayed at the Tjampuhan Hotel for 6 nights. Hotel staff are always welcoming and very obliging. We took our own wide necked thermos and the staff happily filled it with ice for us whenever we wanted. Their courtesy bus was more like a taxi service, shuttling us to and from various parts of Ubud, even stopping to pick us up outside the Monkey Forest when we had not requested them to. Obviously we were looking hot and frazzled after our encounters with the monkeys - one managing to urinate on my friend's head and another trying to steal our walking stick. The highlight of our time in Bali was the trip to Cracker's Bar and Bistro. Everyone should visit the Candi Kuning markets and then have a beer at Crackers. It is 5 star and a complete contrast to its surroundings. The view from the upper storey which is not yet completed is also worth seeing. The Adopta Co-op shop, next to the bar, has high quality t-shirts, with some great slogans on them. About 50,000 rupiah each and a good buy as gifts for friends back home. On the way home from Crackers, we intended lunching at David and Moira's but our driver turned right instead of left and we found ourselves in the opposition restaurant across the road. Oh well, next time we will be the navigators. We spent the second week at Sanur, staying at the Puri Santrian Hotel. This is a very comfortable resort hotel, beautifully maintained, but too large to have the friendliness of the Tjampuhan. We found both Ubud and Sanur very quiet, which was fine for us but bad for the Balinese. Security was obvious in hotels, restaurants and on the streets, but Bali badly needs more tourists to build up confidence in the island again. Shopping was much the same as it has been for the last few years - perhaps the markets need to change their stock to gain more customers. As a regular visitor to Bali, it is hard to find something "different" to buy. Probably one of our best bargain buys were the pearls from the sellers on the beach outside the Jayakarta Hotel. For the first time we also shopped and lunched at Discovery Mall and the airconditioning made it very easy to spend money there. This was the one shopping place that was busy. From our observations, only repeat tourists are visiting Bali and the island needs to attract a whole new lot of first timers.