Well we are now leaving Bali, and are very sad to go. We have had a fantastic time here, and it was a great intro to Indonesia as a whole. We have only had a few days since our last update from Gili Islands, but it’s been quite action packed. We finished up on the Gili Islands and were definitely feeling we could have stayed much longer, but all good things must come to an end, and we knew we had good things waiting for us once we got back to Bali. We returned to Bali via the same high-speed service that brought us there, BlueWater Express. This time however the ‘Express’ was somewhat questionable, due to the fact that the boat’s engines were on the fritz, with frequent stops to let them ‘rest’. So that was fun, but we did make it back to Bali safely, and were excited to check in at our most luxurious of accommodations thus far on the trip, the Pan Pacific Nirwana Bali. I’m not sure if it was the excitement of being out of Australia and seeing our money go further, or the realization that time is money and taking the time to find a cheap and clean and safe and fun place is time-consuming, but whatever it was, we opted to stay in a very nice place for a very attractive price due to low season. We could have probably found cheaper (actually almost certainly), but the fact is it was far less than we were paying for rooms in Australia, so we went for it!
The resort was set on a sheer cliff overlooking the Tanah Lot temple. It was a beautiful place, and we were amazed that we could afford it. The resort caters to golfers, as it features a world-class golf course designed by Greg Norman. To be honest, we felt a bit out of place there, as it was clear that it was catering to people well beyond our means. We had chosen the place for its proximity to the temple, and the beautiful sunsets over the temple. We had booked a sunset view room, but when we arrived we were told they had given them all away. We were disappointed obviously, so we tried to squeeze some concessions out of them. Well good thing because they ended up throwing in free buffet breakfasts and two 45 minute massages! Sweet deal. We ended up going out for a walk to the temple and saw beautiful sunset anyways, so we were totally fine in the end with the situation. Here are a few pictures of the resort and the Temple for your understanding….
The beautiful grounds and one of the pools……….
The Golf course overlooking the Indian Ocean…
The golf course also overlooks the temple…..
Knotty Travellers setting out on the sunset walk, in a quest to see the sunset over the temple, hoping the weather will cooperate….
We were not the only ones trying to capture sunset at the temple, there were lots of tourists there. In this picture you can see how the temple is set on a small island in the Sea.
Kim rejoicing that we are rewarded for our efforts, as we get some nice colour in the sky…..
The following day we took the opportunity to explore Bali as much as possible before we had to leave. We were again impressed with the amazing value for money we were now getting. For the two of us, we arranged a tour with TBTT tours. This company specializes, as many of the companies do, in private minivan tours. For $30 each, we were able to get a driver, an English speaking guide, a private air conditioned van including fuel, a buffet lunch, and entry to all tourist sites visited. Pretty decent we thought. The tour included a Barong dance performance, a visit to some art villages and local artists, a waterfall, Mt Batur Volcano, local farming villages including rice terraces, and Ubud and the Monkey Forest Temple. All of it was great, but we also enjoyed the privilege of being able to learn about Balinese life and culture from our guide. We learned a few fun facts about Bali and Indonesia as whole:
- Bali is a relatively small island of Indonesia, both geographically and population-wise (about 3.5 million of 250 million people)
-Bali is unique in its population. About 90% of Bali’s people are Hindu, where Indonesia as a whole is about 85% Muslim.
-Indonesia itself spans quite a big distance, and includes over 16,000 islands. It is the 4th most populous nation on earth, following China, India, and the US.
-Balinese people speak their won language, which is unique and distinct from other Indonesian languages such as Javanese. To communicate with people from other Indonesian Islands, people must speak Indonesian, which we were told is not the first language of most Indonesians, but is taught in school in every Indonesian region.
-Tourism is by far the biggest industry in Bali, about 60% of the economy is based on Tourism. Agriculture makes up the bulk of the remainder.
-Bali suffered some terrorist bombings in the tourist areas of Kuta, Seminyak, and Jimbaran, back in 2003 and again in 2005. This hurt the tourism industry quite severely, but it has now recovered. 3 of 5 men arrested in relation to the bombings have already been executed, the other two have apparently apologized and seen the wrong in their violence.
-Until WW2, Bali was a Dutch colony, before a brief 3 year rule by the Japanese that ended before WW2.
Sorry for the history lesson, we just enjoyed learning those and other facts. But back to recounting our time. We started off with the Barong dance. It was similar to the dancing we had seen before, but it was longer and included some acting. Its much to intricate to try and explain, but it involved witches and gods, and monkeys and farmers, and it was very entertaining. It was very animated, and generally fun to watch.
Highlights for me are the costumes and masks. Here are a few quick photos…
The band in the background beside the stage…
Monkeying around…..
After the dancing, we went to some more tourist sites including local art villages, a waterfall, some rice terraces, a spice garden and Balinese coffee plantation, and Batur Volcano, which is the most active on Bali… but has not had an eruption causing evacuation since 1993. Here are a few pictures of those spots….
Rice terraces… Bali’s most significant commodity. We were told they learned the method from Vietnam….
These terraces had been recently cultivated…
One of the many things we found interesting in Bali was the traffic, so full of motorcycles all going pretty much wherever they please. I could not determine a system to it all, but it seemed to work. This picture shows to some degree the amount of motorcycles on the road, but during heavy traffic you could multiply this several times…
When driving we also noticed that traffic traffic round abouts usually featured fancy sculptures of local heroes or gods….here’s one we were able to snap a photo of….
Now on to the waterfall….very pretty. We saw many boys playing at the bottom.
Now at the spice garden, this is typical offering. We were explained that these offerings are for the Hindu gods to basically keep good spirits watching over the place. They also have offerings for the bad gods, usually kept at the entrance to a house or property, to keep the negative spirits happy. The idea is that bad spirits exist and by making offerings you can better keep things in balance, like the yin and the yang we were told.
At the spice garden I was offered a very peculiar delicacy…..Luwak coffee, nicknamed by the Balinese as “poo-poo coffee”. I was not aware of the name or where it originated, but I had heard about this animal that eats the coffee beans right off the trees and then through their digestion process enrich the taste of the beans. When they are through, of course they poo them out. The excreted beans are then collected, washed and rewashed, and then used to make a very expensive and rare coffee. Well I learned that this animal is the Luwak, and this coffee is from Bali. I was told it can fetch $120 at posh places in California. I was offered a cup for only 30,000 Rupiah, or about $4. So I decided to give it a try…….
The detailed explanation of ‘poo-poo coffee’, if you are interested….
Poo-poo coffee, down the hatch…..
Unfortunately, the coffee was crap. No pun intended. It was not smooth as advertise, rather it was grainy. I did not enjoy it, but I did love the ginseng coffee they served.
Now at Kintamani, overlooking Batur volcano….
I think the highlight for both of us though was the Monkey Forest Temple in Ubud. As the name suggests, there are monkeys, and its a temple within a forest, so not just a clever name. I was here many many years ago when my parents brought me along on what we referred to then as our ‘big trip’. I don't remember the setting, but I do remember the monkeys… very aggressive. I think they have been trained, but they seem very intelligent. They know where to look for your valuables. I remember them crawling on me and trying to get my wallet from my back pocket. Well this time I was prepared, so Kim and I had removed all of our valuables and jewellery. We also were not wild about them crawling on us, so we tried to avoid that. One of them did sit on Kim’s lap for a brief time, but we did not get harassed too badly. We had also been warned not to bring food by our friends Erin and Mark, as they suggested it was much more fun to watch other tourists get harassed as they tried to feed the monkeys bananas. It was all very amusing. Hard to explain I suppose, so I will just let some pictures do the talking….
Kim and our guide, Mariani, sitting out some rain waiting to tour the Monkey forest.
The monkeys came to us while we waited…they too wanted to be out of the rain I suppose….
The monkey enjoying some chill out time on Kim’s lap…
Not sure what this guy is all excited about….but interesting pose anyway…
Cheeky monkey…sticking out his tongue at me….
The baby monkey clinging to its mom, as mom get some Banana from the braver (or more foolish) of the tourists…
As you can see, the monkey are VERY EAGER for the bananas… glad we weren’t these guys!
Looks like this guy found some…..
In another part of the temple, the monkeys groom each other and keep each other warm in the rain…
This one had interesting eyes…
And we would be wrong I suppose to forget that we were there to visit a temple, which was neat, so here is a photo, albeit not a great one due to poor lighting and rain…
Before we left the forest, it started raining very hard….Mariani was kind enough to have gotten us umbrellas to use, but we still got drenched from our run back tot he car. On our drive back to the hotel we were supposed to stop in Ubud for some shopping, but due to the extreme rains we opted not to stop. The drive back was fun, very interesting to see how the rains affect the driving. Here are a few photos for your understanding….
After such a long day we just decided to take it easy in the evening and get ready for our flight today. This morning, before we left, we took advantage of the free massages we were given, and we grabbed some pretty wicked sunburns by the pool as well, so hopefully that wont come back to bite us as we tour around Kuala Lumpur over the next few days. We are currently on our flight there from Bali, Denpasar with Air Asia. This is the first flight we have been on where we are clearly the minority as whites. We are now starting to feel like we are entering Asia, and are hoping that Kuala Lumpur lives up to all of our expectations. We only have a short time there before heading to the Philippines, but we are hoping we can squeeze in most of the best bits. We’ll be sure to update you again as soon as we can. We are finding that flights are a good opportunity to slow down and catch up on our blog/journal.
Signing off for now. All the best to everyone reading.
Cheers,
The Knotty Travellers
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