Back to Seminyak (again!)

We really just wanted to splurge our last two nights in Bali and since we liked Seminyak so much, we decided to go back to the town, relax in a nice villa, and get some rest before starting the madness of traveling once again.

Steven had found a villa online and booked it for two nights...it wasn't quite what we were expecting, so we checked out after one day and went to the Anantara Resort, the same place where we had seen the amazing sunset the week before. Ahhhh...paradise!

Note the outside jacuzzi on the balcony over looking the ocean.

Huge bathtub looking into the room:

And that concludes our 3 weeks in Bali...like with Australia, we were ready to leave and start the next adventure.

Lovina

We actually went to a Buddhist temple today; it was interesting to see the differences since the only temples we had been visiting for 3 weeks have been Hindu.

There were several signs posted asking for silence as people were meditating in the different rooms.

A dog guarding the Dalai Lama:

One of the meditation buildings:

The rest of the day was fairly mellow, but we did see a few other interesting things along the drive back to the hotel.

Monkey in a trashcan:

How many vegetables can a lady carry on her head while driving a motorbike?

Munduk

We figured we couldn't just stay in Seminyak for our last week in Bali, so we called up Nyoman and decided to explore the west and north of the island, the areas we had yet to see.

Our first stop was, shocker, another temple - Tanah Lot. At high tide, the temple becomes an island so we admired from afar and took a few pictures.

As we were driving to our next destination, we just so happened to pass a cremation ceremony taking place in a small village. Nyoman pulled over and we were able to witness the traditional cermony. The Balinese wait about one month after the death of a citizen as it takes time to construct the intricate, large, towers - this ceremony was actually for two women, the taller the tower, the older the person.

After lunch, we went to a beautiful botanical garden that was so peaceful, with a nice view of our next stop at the lake.

Pura Ulan, a temple located on Lake Bratan, is our second favorite temple in Bali. Hovering in the middle of the lake with a huge tower and surrounded by a beautiful garden.

It was a pretty nice day outside, we just desperately need a new camera:/

Back to Seminyak

We decided to head back to the Contiki Resort in Seminyak after the Gilis for 5 days for some more down time.

Scott and Sheening stayed in Kuta after the Gili, the town just south of Seminyak, for a change of pace before heading back home. We met up with them for lunch and some shopping one day - Kuta is crazy! We couldn't walk 2 steps without someone harrassing us about buying a pirated DVD, an ugly watch, a useless something-or-other. Kuta was the site of both of the Bali bombings and they built a nice memorial to commemorate the 88 lives that were lost in the first bombing in 2002.

Managing to buy a few things, we headed back to the calmness of Seminyak, glad to not be staying in the very touristy town.

Seminyak and Kuta are known for their amazing sunsets, so we headed to the rooftop bar at the Anantara Resort for a few sunset drinks...sadly, at American prices. Oh well, we were paying for the ambiance - this was the place to be and be seen.

Very relaxing!

Gili Islands

We left Bali for a few days and headed over to Gili Trawangan, one of the 3 Gili islands off the coast of Lombok - the island just east of Bali in Indonesia.

Instead of taking the 5 hour ferry boat, we spent a few extra $$ and took a "fast boat" arriving in just over 90 minutes. We use the term fast boat very loosely, this boat was hardly speedy. But faster and safer than the ferry, so it's all relative.

Gili means "small island" and small they are. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the island so transportation consists of horses and wagons:

We hadn't booked a hotel so we had the driver take us to a place we had read about on the internet. After deciding it wasn't for us, we let him take us to a place he thought we'd like better and it was a thousand times better. The villa was amazing! Two large bedrooms with outdoor bathrooms + shower, large kitchen, and our own private pool. Perfect for the 4 of us. Funny, we thought, "Oh cool, we can make our own dinner in our fabulous kitchen!" Only to realize a) supermarkets are few and far between in Bali and b) restaurant food is really cheap. We killed that plan pretty quickly.

We went into town for lunch, booked a snorkel tour for the following day, and took it easy the rest of the afternoon. The town is basically one main dirt road along the side of the beach so it didn't take long to see the island:

Most of the larger restaurants in town do a barbeque-type fare for dinner - you pick your fish or steak and they prepare it for you. We ended up at Scallywags, a restaurant started by an Australian and prides itself on fresh fish flown in daily and great organic salads. We were not disappointed.

And we didn't have to eat rice! Or noodles!

The following day, we had another lazy morning and went on a snorkeling expedition in the afternoon. We took one of these glass-bottom boats to a few coral spots - no joke, we think our driver was about 8 years old. Really wish we would have taken a picture.

He took us to a spot known off the coast of the neighboring island known for sea turtles, so we jumped right in. Only to realize we were surrounded by hundreds of small jellyfish! Even though they were harmless and just gave us little stings, it was not pleasant so we drove over to a few other spots and looked at some fish and coral. We asked the driver to take us back to the turtle area to see if we could spot one through the glass-bottom - luckily enough, we saw two.

We went back to Scallywags for dinner and packed up our bags as we were leaving the next morning.

Mountain Temple + Padangbai

It was an early start this morning since we wanted to climb Batukaru Temple, the Mountain Temple, before the sun became too harsh. There are actually 4 temples in total, none of which are really spectacular, but the views from the top were amazing. With something like 1700 steps, not including the steep climb up the road, we were pretty tired on the way back down.

The first temple with our local guide:

View from the first temple:

Second temple...just "eh."

But view from the second temple...we're going higher! We started near that very small building in the picture. Yes, it was a climb.

Third temple and view:

And this is when the clouds started rolling in - we looked up to see where the fourth temple was, another 1 km, and saw only clouds so we decided to head back down.

We went back to Candi Dasa for lunch and headed over to our hotel in Padangbai. Since we were leaving early the following morning for the Gili Islands, we wanted to be close to the boat dock. This is when the hotel nightmare began. Nyoman had taken us to check out the hotel a few days earlier - the manager showed us a room, nothing fancy and the price was right, so we made a reservation. When we brought our luggage to the room, we noticed a large number mosquitoes circling around. They were everywhere. And the room had clearly not been cleaned properly, things on the comforter, pillows had stains on them, etc. Needless to say, we weren't happy and found another, cleaner, hotel. Steven argued with the hotel staff to try and get some of our money back - after quite a bit of yelling and Nyoman calling the hotel manager, we were refunded almost all of the money.

And that was the end of our eventful day. Oh wait, we forgot to mention the Muslim prayer that being broadcasted over a loudspeaker at 4am the following morning.

Amed

Our first stop this morning was at Tenganan Village, one of Bali's oldest villages. Citizens are not allowed to marry outside of the village; if one does, he or she is no longer allowed to live in the village. All citizens are created equal, both men and women, and there are no social classes. The village takes care of it's citizens, providing food and shelter, so there are incentives to marry and stay.

On our way to our next destination, our car had to come to a complete stop as there was a processional for a temple ritual for another village. Each village has their own temple and unique rituals - the citizens for this particular village were in the middle of walking 5 miles or so. Uphill. In the middle of the day. Wearing fancy clothing (with the requisite flip flops, of course). Some were carrying things on their heads, others were playing instruments. And the entire village just shut down...not sure if that could ever happen back home. We're guessing no.

Once we were finally able to pass the processional, after a good half hour or so, we went to Tirta Gangga, the Water Temple - easily our favorite. The grounds were so beautiful, with ponds and lush greenery.

Originally a bathing and resting spot for the king in the 1950's, there is still a pool where people can swim.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Amed, a small fishing village with some coral reefs right off the shore. We all rented some snorkeling gear and dove in - there was some great coral but mixed in with the colorful fish and rocks was so much trash. :/ The infrastructure is, well, non-existent so people either burn their trash or just throw it on the side of the road. When it rains, the trash ends up in the ocean - we were told they clean it up about once a month, but it's pointless during the rainy season.

We headed over to our little hotel, had some dinner, and called it a night.

Candi Dasa

Today was temple day! So many temples to see, not nearly enough time to visit them all.

Our first temple visit was at the Elephant Temple. Hindu and Buddist monks used to meditate in the cave and it is believed to have been built around the 11th century.

We all received the traditional Hindu blessing of rice on our foreheads before heading off to the next temple called the Rock Temple, Bali's oldest monoliths. It was a healthy set of stairs on the way down, even better on the way back up when we were nice and sweaty. But the carvings and the sheer size of them were incredibly impressive.





Third in the temple visits was the Kehan temple, one of the largest in Bali:

We had lunch overlooking a beautiful green valley before heading down to Padang Bai.

We had originally wanted to book a speed boat for the following day to go from Padang Bai over to the Gili Islands, a group of 3 small islands off of the coast of Lombok, Bali's neighbor to the east. We were informed the boat was full, so we decided to have Nyoman take us around for a few more days before heading over to the Gilis. After driving around a bit, we ended up in Candi Dasa at a pretty fancy resort (for our standards these days):

Kind of an interesting story about this town - local contractors dynamited the reef years ago to use for building materials and the beach eventually washed away. The government then built really ugly cement things in order to restore the beach but were not very successful.

The result:

We suppose that's why hotels have such fancy pools?

Ubud

Ahh, we are so far behind on blogging, not quite sure where or how to begin. It's our last day in Bali, tomorrow we leave for our flight to Hong Kong, then eventually to Vietnam to start the next journey. The past 3 weeks have been filled with many temple visits, eating great (and cheap!) food, and just soaking in the sights, smells, and sounds of this little island. Not too bad;)

Our great family friends, Lance and Ketut, do quite a bit of business in Bali and gave us some tips before leaving - the only way to really get around the island is either by motorbike or hiring a driver. There was no way in hell Stephanie was going to drive a scooter in the crazy Balinese traffic, so the driver was the way to go. Plus, Nyoman (who is Ketut's brother-in-law) was able to tell us a few extra things along the way and point us to restaurants and hotels.

Nyoman picked us up from our hotel after our stay in Contiki and we headed to Ubud, the center of the island known for it's culture and spectacular rice paddies. We made a few stops along the way to see some people making silver jewelry and batik weaving - watching both gave us a new perspective on how labor-intensive both crafts actually are.

Both stops were definitely geared towards tourists with tourist pricing, so we decided to look instead of buy, with the exception of two small fans at the batik store - these ended up coming in very handy as the humidity was pretty stifling at times.

We stopped for lunch at a little cafe before heading over to the Monkey Forest, one of Stephanie's favorite stops. The Macaque monkeys are considered to be sacred and they know this very well. We had read the monkeys can be agressive, especially if he/she thinks you are in possession of some kind of food, preferably bananas. There was a stand at the entrance of the park selling bananas, but we decided to watch the other suckers get attacked instead. Some of our favorite photos (trust us, there are many):

Nyoman took us to see the white herons after the Monkey Forest - for some reason, the herons fly back to the exact same spot every evening for no known reason. Sometimes they come in flocks, other times, not so much. This happened to be one of the other times:/ So, as we were waiting for these white birds to fly home, we became dinner for the mosquitoes and decided to head back to the hotel and freshen up for dinner.

Dinner was at a place in central Ubud called Dirty Duck - it's specialty being, obviously, duck. We pulled this from the internet to explain the naming of the restaurant, it's not because the ducks have poor hygiene.

The genesis of the restaurant's name was an incident in which numerous ducks from a nearby paddy field decided to seek shelter from a storm in the place prior to its decoration and opening, leaving myriad muddy webbed foot prints in their wake.

Steven ordered the house specialty, crispy duck, Stephanie ordered the roasted duck:

Day 2 in Ubud started with a traditional Balinese dance with intricate costumes. It tells the story of a fight between the good and evil spirit - the good spirit ultimately winning, of course.

Nyoman then took us to a stone and wood carving demonstration - both were, again, geared towards tourists so we admired the work but kept our money for later.

Our next stop was at a coffee plantation of sorts, Bali is fairly well known for their coffee and we were able to try a few varieties with chocolate coffee being the best in our humble opinion.

Coffee roasting the old-fashioned way:

Lunch was next on the agenda and we stopped at another tourist trap, but at least this one had a nice view of lake Danau Batur and Kintamani, a dormant volcano.

Our next stop was supposed to be some hot springs but, upon arrival, we found the entrance fee to be a bit high just to soak in some warm water so we decided against it. No matter though, we saw some beautiful scenery along the lake so it wasn't all for nothing.

Our first of many temple visits was the Pira Tirta Empul, a sacred spring temple. We were lucky enough to visit during a prayer so we saw some of the traditions and customs associated with the Hindu religion. In order to enter any temple, one must wear a sarong - Steven and Scott seem to be enjoying wearing theirs - the random guy in the middle is in charge of the sarong rental stand for tourists who don't come prepared.

Even the younger ones need to put on fancy clothes:

A few other pictures of the temple:

We ended the afternoon with a drive through the rice paddies and Nyoman showed us his village and village temple. Bali has something like 22,000 temples, pretty impressive considering the island is about the size of Delaware.

Dinner was at Cafe Lotus in central Ubud again; the restaurant overlooks yet another temple area where there just so happened to be another Balinese dance going on as our food arrived. Surrounded by good food, good friends, and a good atmosphere, we couldn't ask for much more.

Day 3 in Ubud, the hotel organized a hike down the mountain to the river Sungai Ayung - Stephanie stayed behind because her stomach was upset, turns out that wasn't such a bad idea. It had been raining all night so the trail was muddy, treacherous, and they had to cross over a river at stomach height to get back to hotel.

We decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the hotel. And with this view of the rice paddies, can you really blame us?