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| Relatives of the monkey who ate Otis's football |
Hey guys,
As we wind up the Trip Heard Round the World (tickets back to the US on April 18!), we hope to get our blog up to the present day!
With Malaysia covered, all that stands between the reader and Australia is Bali, but a month of Bali requires more than just one post! We have to break it up somehow but here's the overview:
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| The Balinese are BIG on carving, especially stone |
We flew into Denpasar Airport (don't search
Google Flights for
Balikpapan, you may not have a bad time, but you WON'T be in Bali!) and immediately bypassed the tourist beach centers around Denpasar and Kuta and drove about 50 minutes to
Ubud. Some people call Ubud a Mountain town, some people say it's Bali's cultural heart, I say the second group is more on the money. Ubud seems to me like the Chiangmai of Bali: it's full of western tourists (many more Australians here) but it's easy to handle, everyone speaks english, it has tons of restaurants and there are plenty of opportunities for yoga and massage. It has
much better coffee, though I never tried the
weasel poop coffee and cannot vouch for it.
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| Soca Cantik proprietor Risma bringing daily offerings for shrines around the villa |
We spent about a week at
a hotel in the middle of town which was friendly and nice, but was constantly bedeviled by monkeys from
a nearby forest preserve.
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| Otis enjoys a temporarily monkey-free deck at Bali Bohemia. The hotel gives you slingshots to dry fire to scare the monkeys away |
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| The Bali Bohemia pool has a lot of character |
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| Monkey invasion party inbound |
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| future football eater |
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| All thees monkeys live in the Ubud monkey forest, where tourists pay money to be mugged by the 605 crab-eating macaques who live in the 27 acre park |
After comparing some options and maybe flailing just a bit,
we rented a vila just south of town in the middle of a rice field.
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| Carrying the luggage to the villa |
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| view of the rice fields from the bedroom window |
Ubud living generally went like this: We rented and learned to drive motor bikes (60,000 Rupiah a day = $4.50). We ate out a lot but cooked in occasionally. We swam in our tiny pool. We kept tabs on the geckos that ran up the exterior walls at night. We took pictures of sunsets.
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| even after the monkey popped it (we think the monkey supposed it to be a weird mango), Otis's football saw much use in the Soca Cantik pool |
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| The pool was also Jen's best spot for trip planning |
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| Jen arrives on her motor scooter |
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| Otis initiated a tradition of buying and trying some new-to-us Balinese fruits |
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| Sunsets, when we remember to stake them out, were often bonkers |
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| spotted this one from the bathroom window |
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| a little later that evening |
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| topped off with a crescent moonrise |
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| Jen captured evening dew on young rice |
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| I preform the nightly gecko census |
And while most days we did stick close to our villa, we also had a few excursions to avoid "take Montclair around the world with you syndrome" (TMATWYS is a syndrome where you travel ten thousand miles to sit in bed and look at the internet all day - a especially common happenstance in suburban Brisbane, I regret to report). These included:
After we left Ubud, we spent a few days at another Middle-of-Nowhere beach destination called
Medewi, known as a world class surf destination and we visited a very popular temple on the coast called
Tannah Lot, but that's for another post.
To read about our excursions, see the captions below!
Pemulan Balinese Farm Cooking School
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| Selak Bali, or snake fruit, at the local market |
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| Dragon fruit, which don't taste like much but are impressive to look at |
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| A candlenut, which we learned was an ingredient in many Indonesian dishes |
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| the ingredients we picked on the farm for our gado gado |
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| Baby pineapples are the cutest |
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| Otis and I grind peanuts |
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| Jen and Otis cook |
Tirta Empul Tampaksiring
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| It was sooo hot, but luckily Tirta Empul is a sacred spring |
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| pilgrims, or hot tourists, can use the spring water to wash impurities from their bodies and minds in the pools - if they brought their own sarongs! |
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| Jen went into the inner temple while Otis and I waited outside (I wasn't allowed it because I was wet, Otis is always happy to skip a temple), so she'll have to narrate this one in the comments |
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| bonkers koi pond with super clear water |
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| Gunug Kawi is a very old temple |
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| Otis and I check out its ruins |
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| These carvings are the big draw at Gunung Kawi |
Tegenugan Waterfall
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| We spent a good while here swimming beneath the waterfall, but the water would have been nicer with less trash. |
Goa Gajah
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| Another sacred pool |
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| Jen and I at the Elephant Cave |
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| Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, but Bali remains predominantly Hindu. Here, Otis and I receive a blessing and are shaken down for 50,000 IDR. |
Fruit Carving Class at Pondok Pekak Library
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| Since we had no previous fruit carving experience, step one was to cut all the green off the water melon |
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| Jen and Otis learn the steps |
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| Jen was the best at it, I think, but I started to get a better hang of it in the end |
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| Our finished melons |
Bird Walk with Bali Bird Walk
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| This lovely walk with Su, a dedicated birder who had even been to New Jersey, featured many beautiful birds who I couldn't quite focus on (especially kingfishers), so here are some domestic ducks |
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| Su said touching the caterpillars can give one very bad rashes, she even had to go to the hospital once |
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| Walk over, the THRTW staff are ready for lunch and a cold drink! |
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