We landed at Denpasar Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali at 14:20 and were hit by the heat the second we stepped off the plane. After jumping on the shuttle bus to take us to the arrivals hall, we joined the very long queue to buy our visas. These cost US$25 each and you have to come prepared with crisp new notes otherwise they won't accept them! It seemed long queues are pretty standard here as we then moved into another ridiculously long queue to get through customs. As we were stood waiting, panic began to set in as there was a sign saying you must have a return or onward flight booked to gain entry which we didn't have, plus we didn't have any accommodation booked as we weren't sure whether we would be able to get to the Gili Islands that day or not! So we had visions of us being marched off to some interrogation room while our luggage was going round and round on the carousel just asking to be stolen or have something planted in it! Matt was really paranoid about someone planting drugs on us as Bali is notorious for 2 things: being incredibly corrupt and enforcing the death penalty for drug trafficking! His paranoia was based on a dream he had had the night before where someone had planted drugs on him and he didn't know whether to hand them in or just try and ditch them! Thankfully, after a long wait and lots of sweating, they barely checked anything and we were let through without any dramas, and so we were thrust into the craziness of Bali!
 
Eventually, we were reunited with our backpacks and we made our way outside to be greeted by what seemed like hundreds of people waiting for arrivals, holding boards with names on . We had to literally push our way through them all of them, it was like swimming against the tide! As we stood trying to work out what to do next, a taxi driver came up and asked us where we wanted to go. We told him we wanted to get to the Gili Islands and he explained that boats only go there in the morning so there would be no more until the next day. He advised that if we weren't bothered about staying in this area (which, from what we had seen already, we really weren't!) it would be best for us to go to Padangbai, which is where the boats go from, and stay there for the night then get the first boat over in the morning.
 
After negotiating a price (yep, we were thrust straight into the mad concept of bartering!), we packed our bags into his car and he drove us, for about 2 hours, to Padangbai. This gave us an opportunity to see a bit of Bali, from the safe distance of the car, and I was immediately struck by the state of the place: after being spoilt with the cleanliness of Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii you kind of forget what to expect . Everything looked so dirty and covered in rubbish with such poor people everywhere. It's very much like Malaysia in the way that there's always people working and building but nothing ever seems to improve. The roads were a nightmare as well so it was a good job we weren't driving, cars and bikes force themselves everywhere as there looks like there's no real order on the road. Our driver said that people get killed nearly every day and it's not surprising! 

 Along the roadside we were surprised by the number of roadside shops selling carved wood or pottery. They were so impressive with everything from statues for temples and wooden huts to beds, doors and water fountains. Some of the patterns were incredible, so intricate, but we couldn't work out who buys them other than hotels as they are huge so you could never ship them out of the country! That's a real shame as I would love some of the wood panels, doors, wardrobes or statues in our house! This was just a nice distraction though as there was a small element of panic every time the driver slowed down as we thought that was where we were staying for the night and some areas really didn't look very nice at all but to our relief when he finally did come to a stop, Padangbai looked lovely!