2014 Bali, Indonesia Scenes & Wildlife

Boarded and awaiting take-off. A quick celebration with a welcome drink!

Taxi-ing to the runway, an interesting sight from a by-gone time came into view. Apparently this is the last Concorde which is still held by British Airways. G-BOAB, known previously as Speedbird Alpha-Bravo. It is a totally stripped plane on the inside, which BA wanted to display as a commemorative symbol at Heathrow, but it was not allowed by the new owners of the airport. At the time of our passing it, it is currently parked behind BA's Engineering Workshops with an uncertain future.

Heading east over Turkey, a number of large towns were visible. Always difficult to take this sort of picture from 37,000ft, the clear air helped to get a good exposure and with a bit of post processing, the main road lighting shows up clearly as well as some of the suburbs.

This is a new quiet rest area at Qatar Airport for Business Class passengers awaiting their flights.

Not yet half-way there, it is not easy to rest when it is after midnight and awaiting a boarding call.

We were finally kept waiting until the last minute for boarding, until this amazing transfer coach arrived for the Business Passengers. It's the first time weve seen a transfer coach with saloon easy chairs fitted for the passengers, so we supposed that the normal coach couldn't be got and the First Class coach was all that was around. Not a particularly good picture, but I didn't want to intrude on the other passengers sitting to the right of me at 02.00 local time.

The modern Qatar Airways Airbus had the dark blue night lighting, giving a soft, ample lighting for the rest of the night for sleeping passengers.

Modern aircraft now cruise high enough to get a feeling of being on the edge of space. As we headed east, the approaching dawn produced this dramatic lighting effect, more effective than at ground level.

One of the main reasons for travelling to the Tropics is that we get a chance to try more exotic fruits, and breakfast here was an indication of things to come.

After a 10 hour flight it was nice to be on the ground again and the airport was negotiated to reach our transfer vehicle for Maya Ubud. it was again coming to Dusk, and by the time we finally reached our destination through the heavy traffic around Denpasar, it was dark.

Even the arrival was impressive, and confirmed our expectation. This hotel is approached via a long private drive with a security gate at the entrance, so once on the site it was peaceful and a different world from the busy roads around the area.

Perched on the steep edge of the river valley, even swimming there gave wonderful views along it.

This was a walk-on open area with wide views along the river valley

From the roof-top vantage, a view south along the central gardens. on the left is a row of villas of which the second was ours for the stay.

The roof-top walks from the Bar/Lounge area gave nice views all around.

The bare trees in the centre of this view are Kapok trees and were casting away their soft downy seeds all the time we were there. The Gazebo on the left was where you could have a special private evening meal. We used it on the last night to celebrate our 45 Wedding Anniversary. The staff at this hotel were all really nice, and made the day and evening really "Special" for us.

You can just see above the purple Bougainvillea at bottom right the steep steps which lead down into the valley on a 1in 1.5 slope in a series of zig-zags. Not too bad going down, but a real struggle coming back up!