Advertisement
Published: February 10th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Ahh Asia land of a thousand smiles its nice to be back again
We land in Bali around 11pm and head straight to our hotel in kuta beach after a brief haggle with a taxi driver. The first thing that hits me is how cheap it is 3 quid for a 40 min taxi ride. Bali even at this time of night is very humid, totally different to the dry heat of Africa.
We dump our bags and go out for a look around. Kuta beach is often described as the Australian Ibiza and I can see why although to me it reminds me more of Bangkok but with a beach and loads of rip-curl and billabong surf shops. Sitting out side a local bar sipping a bintang beer each its nice to be back in asia and it has a familiar feel to it like visiting old friends again.
We have 2 nights to explore the Kuta area which if you want to party it’s a great place full of bars, neon and drunk aussies plus plenty of cheap food stalls and restaurants. The beach at kuta is ok but with the mass tourism comes a bit
of pollution and rubbish which spoils it somewhat. Its not really what we have come to Indonesia to see so after a couple of days enjoying the madness, noise and traffic of the place we decide to head inland to Ubud
We had decided to rent a car before we got here but the drivers are mental and there are thousands of moped drivers with a death wish I still cannot work out the traffic laws and moped drivers seem to be able to go anywhere including pavements and the wrong way down tight alleys whilst clutching surf boards. Plus there is a unwritten rule that if there is an accident involving a tourist its always there fault. So for the bargain price of 20quid we hire a driver to take us round the island.
Bali is unique in Indonesia as they are mostly Hindu here where as the rest of Indonesia is Muslim and they take there religion very seriously. Every day everything receives a blessing of incense and flowers and straw mats. The house they live in the temple they worship in, the shop they work in, the pavement outside the shop to bring luck to
the people that visit the shop. When you are walking down the pavement you are constantly dodging blessings and smoking incense sticks on the pavement, I have never been to a country with this many temple that takes it religion this seriously. Whilst staying at one guest house (and waiting for our breakfast) it took one priest an hour just to bless the various bungalows and paths, before moving on to do the local temple which was massive
Anyway our first visit on our cultural exploration of Bali was around an hour down the coast to a 14th centaury sea temple that was carved out the rocks, the place was amazing and typically we timed our visit with one of the many religious ceremony that take place there. Before you enter any temples in Bali you need to be dressed properly and that involves a sarong and a special belt and sometimes a head scarf. We were the only westerners there and after we received our blessing and a drink of holly water we were free to explore the temple. Louise received a fare bit of attention from the local worshippers and had to pose for photo’s with a
few groups of pilgrims as she was the only “blond devil” to visit the temple. We also got collared by a group of 80 year olds who had made the journey from a nearby island and they wanted us to take photos with them which must have looked strange as they were all about 4 foot tall.
After the sea temple we made our way inland to the foot of the volcano into the rainforest to visit the main temple on the island which was a huge place hidden in the depths of the forest and had a eerie feel to the place but really nice to see as it was full of monks where were worshipping there. We took a detour to Tira Gangga rice paddies that have been granted world heritage status. They are not only beautiful to look at and cover most of the slopes of the 3 volcanoes on bali, but are a real engineering feat considering the were built thousands of years ago with nothing but basic tools and water buffalo.
We head into Ubud before night fall which is the cultural heart of Bali where all the artist and poets and temples
are situated. It has a really nice feel to it as you can wander down the small street and visit gallerys and temples and the traffic is not really a problem. We spend a couple of days visiting temples and see local dance troupes perform traditional dances and just soak up a bit of the culture and eat the beautiful local food until we are fit to burst. One of my favourite temples was the monkey forest temple which is in an old growth rain forest and dedicated to the hundred of monkey that have free reign over the place. The highlight was watching an American family buy a huge bunch of bananas from a stall at the side of the road to feed the monkey before heading into the temple, we follow them at a discrete distance until they get into the main section, then around a troupe of 50 monkeys descended on them and basically mug them for the bananas, the dad just dropped his on the floor and ran off aiming kicks at the bigger ones as he went it was very funny.
After a few day in ubud we wanted to see some of the
other islands so we head to the coast and get a sea cat over to Lombok which is around 70kms from bali. Lombok has a much quieter feel that bali and is dominated by a huge volcano that towers over the island. Our destination is the little backpacker islands just off the coast of lombok called the Gilli islands. There are 3 islands that make up the gilli islands all of them with a different vide to them. We land on the main island Gilli T which has the rep of being the party island and is the biggest (although it is on 2km long) then we transfers to Gilli Air which is the most beautiful of the 3. There is no motorised transport on the islands so everything is done via a horse and cart. The islands are beautiful and are like the Maldives but for back packers. The diving and snorkelling is superb and they are so chilled you just spend your days on the beach and your nights sitting on mats in beach bars eating fresh caught sea food for a couple of quid a head. They really are as close to paradise as you can get
with friendly locals and a chilled out vide perfect place to spend a week relaxing. After 4 days on the Gilli islands our 10 days in Indonesia were up so we headed back to Bali and caught our flight back to Perth. We both really enjoyed Indonesia and like all of asia you leave wanting to return again.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0335s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb