My Vacation Within a Vacation

It has been a while; my apologies, I've been roaming around Bali and the West Coast of Australia. It is safe to say that the last two weeks were the best spring break of my life, or at least young adult life. In Australia, they do not want students to get too bogged down with school work, so they grant students tuition free weeks all the time--seriously they are on holiday more than they are in school. So, I had the opportunity--after completing a crap load of work--to travel and see Bali and other parts of Australia.
The first week of spring break, six of my friends and I traveled to Kuta, Bali where we had the time of our lives. First of all, because Bali is a third-world country, everything is extremely cheap for the most part. While I was there, I got a dress for $3, a pair of sandals for $7, and fake ray ban sunglasses for $2. Shopping in the markets was a lot of fun, but also very scary when the shop owners would start to grab us and chase after us trying to get us to buy their merchandise. Besides shopping, we spent a lot of our time doing touristy things. My good friend Jillian is a big surfer, so she had hired a guide to take her surfing every morning; we went with her one morning and it was very cool to watch her surf, while at the same time experiencing my first black sand beach. A few of the days the boys on our trip would go surfing with Jillian and ride their boogie boards, or "body boards" as they called them to sound cooler. So, while they were surfing in the morning, my friend Ally and I rode an Elephant named Indo through a safari, and also hiked up a volcano at 3am to watch the sunrise. Hiking up the volcano was the most intense 3am workout I've ever done, but it was absolutely breathtaking at the top. I did manage to fall 6 times on the way down though. My friends Ben and Ally decided to turn it into a game to see how many times each of us fell down the mountain--I of course lost. Other than that, we spent the rest of our time relaxing in our rooftop infinity pool at our hotel relaxing. The entire time, all of us were saying that this was the most relaxing vacation from "stressful" lives in Australia, haha. The one major disappointment in Bali was when I was told after eating the delicious room service burgers for three days straight at lunch that it was in fact made from dog--I almost got sick. Needless to say, I did not eat the burger or any other meat the rest of the week.
We arrived back in Perth on Thursday night, and we were leaving for our bus trip up the West Coast at 7am. Therefore, I had roughly 10 hours to do laundry and re-pack for my next vacation. I told you, I lead a rough life. Friday morning, we departed on our 7 day bus tour up the West Coast of Australia. I absolutely loved this trip. It was SO different from Bali, and I felt like I finally "saw" Australia. We drove to the most beautiful gorges, beaches, you name it. Each stop was more beautiful than the previous one. The other reason I really enjoyed the bus tour was because of the people on the bus. We spent three days snorkeling on the most beautiful reef in Australia. While snorkeling, I swam with turtles, sharks (I almost peed myself), a 10 foot wide mana ray, and heaps of beautiful fish. Hence, it took a lot to get me out of the water.
Considering this was a backpackers bus tour, it meant we stayed in hostels, cooked all of our meals with the food they provided us with, and spent a fair amount of time on the bus. Therefore, the majority of the people on the trip were young adults around my age traveling through Australia. On my bus, we had Canadians, Germans, Americans, Dutch, English and and a not so nice Swiss family, which we refered to as the unit; I felt so worldly. I throroughly enjoyed interacting with the people on my trip and learning about their cultures. Again, everyone on my bus claimed that I had the "thickest" American accent. Whenever I would say Ya'll, it would cause and uproar. Probably one of the funniest moments on the trip was our last night when we stayed on a farm and slept in swags outside under the starts. That night at dinner, this girl Tina was videotaping everyone with her camera, asking them about their day. Ester, who is my favorite Dutch person of all time, was telling Tina about her day (keep in mind her English was pretty good), and she said she was reading a book about a girl cheating on her boyfriend. However, with her Dutch accent, it sounded like she was saying the girl was "shitting" on her boyfriend, and we all were laughing hysterically. There were many fun memories similar to this one, but that was one of the best.