Trip to Bali

Today is the day. The day Kyla and I leave for Bali. The Indo Hawaii.

We arrived in Bali at about 6:30P.M, and were picked up by Kristina’s (our boss) cousin and her husband. They were nice enough to take us out for some supper, and later on to our hotel in Kuta.
Kuta is a very interesting area. From my experience, it is quite comparable to Waikiki, Hawaii.
Lots of young tourists, lots of the same souvenir shops lining the streets, which leads to the ocean. For what it’s worth. I liked Kuta, but found it too commercial. After being in Indonesia for over 4 months now, and having only seen less that 15 white people, I just had to laugh. It’s the most hilarious thing to be submerged with another race like this one for so long and suddenly your walking down the streets of Kuta, and you see this huge pasty white bald guy casually walking along. It has to be the weirdest thing. A little bit of reverse culture shock I guess. The next day, Kyla and I took the Perama shuttle up to Ubud. This had to be my favorite place in Bali. Lots of ancient temples and shrines, a traditional arts market, and good food. We found a small home stay cottage in central Ubud for 35000 Rupiahs a night with breakfast. Equivalent to 4 bucks Canadian. We got to Ubud at about 11:00 in the morning and walked though the market for a good 3 hours. There’s so much to see there. If you want to get your souvenirs, this is the place to go. After the market, we went back to the cottage, dropped off our stuff and headed out to monkey forest. A sacred sanctuary, home to over 200 monkeys. This place was really cool. Huge old trees with vines hanging from the branches, ancient temples, and old stone statues covered in thick green moss, and monkeys running around everywhere. They look cute and harmless, but when you try touching them, they can get quite vicious. One of the monkeys actually climbed up on Kyla and started jumping on her head. We walked though the forest taking pictures of the various things that caught our eyes. One thing I found was a hidden stone staircase leading down to a small waterfall. We kept walking along the path until we hit a narrow stone bridge with a 40-meter drop below. We crossed it and came to a large square pool with 3 stone figures at the front. We came for the monkeys, but we stayed for the forest. It was quite unreal.
Later on in the evening, we decided to see one of the famous traditional Balinese dances. We have already seen one of the famous dances at Prambanon in Jogjakarta 2 months ago, so we thought it might be the same. It wasn’t. This was a lot more intense. Again, I am not one for dances, but these dances are unbelievable. About 70 or so men dressed in checkered sarongs came out of the temple, chanting this “Kacek a Cek” sound and sat in a circle around an idol with candles on it. 2 women then came out and started displaying the story through their dancing. There is no talking throughout the entire dance, except for one part. (I still don’t understand it) The chanting stops and this monkey gremlin like figure comes out and starts asking the audience the most common phrases you will hear in Bali. “Hello. Transport?” “Good luck for you, good luck for me.” It was so funny, after hearing this all day on the streets and in the market. The ending of the dance was the real highlight. Before I go any further, let me describe the setting in a little more detail. There are about 40-50 people in the audience on both sides of the outside theatre. All white people of course. Beside us were 2 honeymooners from England who had just been to the Gili islands. The last person to arrive was a tall East European woman with this fragile exotic dress, walking proudly to her seat accompanied by two men. Anyways, back to the dance. Thinking that it was over, people are getting ready to leave. Suddenly a small priest comes out with a basket of broken coconut shells. He dumps them in the middle of the courtyard, takes out this large can of carisine and starts poring it over the coconut shells. We looked at each other like, “What’s going on?” He then lights the thing on fire, and leaves. Then out comes a man riding a large broomstick like horse. He starts running around the fire while the 70 men are chanting in the background. The man then starts kicking these flaming coconut shells everywhere. He took one big kick and this pile of flaming coconuts goes straight for the lady in the front row with the fragile dress. She is madly trying to brush off the fire while the man with the horse continues to kick the shells everywhere. Me and the man beside me are just killing ourselves laughing, while Kyla and the man’s wife are just shaking their heads. It truly was a good day.
The next day, Kyla and I took a long walk though the high green hills, to look for the famous rice terraces. They're beautiful stair cut hills for rice planting. It was quite surreal. The winding path was on top of a narrow steep hill. On either side were hordes of tall palms, lush grass, and traditional Balinese buildings hanging off the sides of the hills. Kyla and I kept walking with no one around, until suddenly a man with 3 large green coconuts pops out of the grass saying, “I saw you, and I climb tree, and I get for you!” Before we know it, he takes out a large machete and starts chopping them open for us. We graciously took them and drank. Very refreshing after a long walk. I then gave him 10,000 Rupiah and we continued our journey.
We took another Parama shuttle to the East side of Bali, Chandidasa. There we found an impressive one-room cottage. The cottage itself was on stilts. The bedroom upstairs was smaller than my bedroom at home. There was only one bed, and yes, Kyla and I had to share. Below, between the stilts of the cottage was a deck with a table in the middle where we were immediately given juice as soon as we arrived. The bathroom, which was behind the cottage, was one of the best. Open ceiling in one part, clean toilet and sink, but best of all, hot water! Something we both haven’t had in a long time. The cottage was surrounded in palm and banana trees and was about 10 meters from the ocean. A nice sound to fall asleep to.
The next morning we went and ate breakfast with the owner of these cottages. She seems a little exocentric but nice nonetheless. We also ended up talking to one couple, Tim and Antonyous who told us their life stories and about all the traveling and things they have done. Truly inspiring. At about 8:00A.M. One of the locals took us out to the reef to do some snorkeling. I had never snorkeled before and this was my second time swimming in the ocean. I was a little nerves, but it ended up being quite amazing. So many colors of fish and coral. I had a school of fish swimming around me trying to catch a candy wrapper I had caught. We ended up spending 2 nights in Chandidasa. Before we left, I decided to take one more walk on the rocky beach to the cliffs to watch the sun rise. I sat and watched the fishermen as they prepared their nets from the canoes, while the women of the men walked along the beach with baskets of food and cloths on their heads. On my way back to the cottage, I ran into some of the local people on the beach. One of them started asking where I came from, what my name was and all that. I practiced the little Bahasa that I knew with him. He then offered to take me swimming to the next beach past the cliffs. I agreed and we were on our way. The beach was nice white sand, with small crab holes everywhere. At one point I almost pulled a Kristen Ojabouski. (Daniel will get that one)
After that he took me on his motorcycle to his friends house/farm. There, his friend makes a special wine that I had read about called Palm Wine. The way they make it is quite similar to how we collect the maple syrup in Canada. The wine itself was quite good. I tried some that had been fermenting for about 1 month and that was not so good. He then took me to the boarding house that he lives in with is wife and son. Cost for one month, 120,000 Rupiah. About 15 dollars Canadian. The time was already 11:00A.M. and I had left for my walk at 6:30A.M. I could only imagine what Kyla must be thinking. I gave him a little something for his kindness and we said good-bye. When I got back, Kyla was more worried that I thought. She was ready to send the “dogs” to look for me.
We then left our private cottage and were taken further down East to a small fishing town called Padangbai. This is a major place for tourists because this is where they take a ferry to the next island, Lombok.
We made quite a lot of friends in this town. Especially after being pressured to buy everything they sold. From what my parents have told me of Jamaica, this seems quite comparable. Their selling techniques are incredible. That evening Kyla and I went to one of the local restaurants, with a sticker on the counter that said, “Don’t let the terrorists win, come back to Bali. We ended up talking to some people who were in Kuta the time the bomb went off last month. They still seemed a little shaken up, and told us to be careful. This is the second time there had been a bomb in Bali. It’s very sad because 90% income in Bali is tourism, and 75% of the tourists have left because of these bombings. I feel even more pressured to buy things from the locals after hearing this. On Tuesday morning, we took a walk to a private quiet beach named “Blue Lagoon.” I rented a snorkeling mask from the near by shop for 10,000 Rups and went for another underwater observation. So many fish, so much coral, and so much garbage. The lagoon was good for snorkeling, but as your swimming, your foot gets hocked on a plastic bag, or candy wrappers. The area was nice and quiet. We left once the tide was up.
Later on we took another shuttle to the South side, and stopped in the town of Sanur. This place was quite similar to Kuta, but with a lot more water activities. We went snorkeling one last time before we headed to the airport. Instead of garbage, this time was jellyfish. These things surrounded us in the water. It was like a “Finding Nemo” experience. We had to finish swimming early.
We then took our last shuttle to the Airport. Our plane leaves for 8:45 and we were there at 5:00. We sat there until 7:00, when Kyla says to me that we mine as well go to our terminal. We go to the bag check desk, and there is a closed sign. We asked the man when we would be able to go to our terminal. He then tells us that our plane has already boarded. We stood there stupefied.
“What do you mean the plane has already boarded? It leaves at 8:45.”
“Its earlier.”
“Oh….”
We quickly give him our tickets, not asking for our passports or anything, run to the terminal, run across the Jet way, get into the plane, sit down and were gone. From sitting in the airport, clueless, to being in the air, all under 5 minutes.
And that was our trip to Bali.