Blogs from Bali, Indonesia, Asia - page 6

The rich and powerful have descended with much fanfare on beautiful Bali for the G20 summit, which is being hosted by Indonesia for the year 2022. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, as your humble travel correspondent has embarked on a five week adventure to this wonderful part of the world at the same time. Mind you, the massive carbon emitting convoys I bear witness to on the streets every day as the elites shuttle from the G20 venue to their five star accommodation in Nusa Dua is something to behold, and doing wonders for local traffic conditions at the same time! I'm sure it comes about at the conclusion of another exhausting day emitting copious carbon from their lying mouths, as the elites insist on pontificating in a superior tone about what they have in store ... read more

One more time, we are on the move. My lovely wife has a new top job as the commercial director of a hotel in the process of rebranding. This is a superb challenge and will keep her super busy for the months to come. So here we are, on the move again calling Bali home since early September for her, and October for me... For those who ask, home is still also in South Africa too. She will not commute much, but I'll still be between the two places for the months and maybe years to come. Imagine, I've never lived in Indonesia, so this is going to be the 11th country where I will spend more than a year...and yes, we are back to Asia for now! Tanya is working long hours during the day, ... read more

Before I go into any further detail, it is worth pointing out that the original blueprint for the stay in Indonesia was radically different from how it actually turned out. In the original draft, the idea was to explore Sumatra along with Kalimantan, the Indonesian area of the island of Borneo, however, various factors are responsible for this mutating into a visit to the resort island of Bali. For whatever reason was behind it, I was heading Bali-wards, with the intention of staying in 4 different areas over the spread of 12 nights, and the first portion of the stay was a couple of nights in the island's capital city of Denpasar, though hardly bearing any firm relation to the kind of tourist-oriented areas found elsewhere on the island. Denpasar, as I rightly recall, is an ... read more

Well a whole week in Bali! Absolute bliss and we have survived! Lots of stories of phones and bag snatching going on but as always we are very vigilant. Let me start with the procedure to get out of Aus, if you are organised it is not difficult, we decided to go to the airport 2 days before travel, Sunday night and get our PCR test with histopath set up at each airport, very easy and quick got swabbed, said it may take 90minutes for result, ours back in 30 with stamped certificate, $79 each, then home to relax. If this is required ongoing I would suggest country people go to airport and stayover night before. Nothing worse than stressing re PCR especially if you have early morning flight. We had a very easy check in, ... read more

Call me travel crasher: not only I self-invited joining three friends on a their supposed to be pilates-trip in Bali, but I diverted their plans too! Thankfully, they agreed to the idea of going to Nusa Penida Island, South East of Bali. Nusa Penida is known among divers to spot Mola Mola or Sun Fish, which appeared usually in August, but its current tends to be strong. A few cruise offers day trip to Nusa Penida and its neighboring island, Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan. Of the three islands, Nusa Penida is the largest, with total population of 45,000. After making the travel arrangement the day before, four of us headed towards Sanur, where the plenty of boats were waiting. We didn't expect our boat would be full. It had 20 rows with 3 seats on ... read more