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Published: August 19th 2005
The blog hasnt been updated in quite a while simply because we were too busy enjoying oursleves to bother getting pictures burned onto CD and sit down to publish them on the site, which is a good thing, but as this blog is also for us to look back on we thought we better write up Bali while the memories are still fresh.
We managed to get the emergency exit seats for the flight from Singapore to Bali which was a result, lots of legroom ! Customs took ages and then we had a debate with the Customs officials as the Lonely Planet said UK citizens don't need a visa for travel in Indonesia, they insisted we did but we thought they were just trying to con us out of $25 each... turns out Lonely Planet was wrong, again ! Paid up..
We had a loony taxi driver take us into Kuta to a pre booked room. He literally through our bags into his boot, raced us into Kuta barging everyone else of the road and didn't say a word the whole way. He then looked annoyed when I didn't offer him a tip !! The pre booked room
was no better, we were overcome with the smell of damp that had taken over the room when we walked in, it was potent, the ceiling looked like it was going to collapse in on us too, no way we were sleeping here. They got us another room in the same complex which wasn't as bad, but we'd seen enough and decided to head off the next morning.
Kuta is the central tourist area of Bali, a bit like the strip of bars you might find in Malia, but with all the British drunks replaced by Australian drunks. It's high season here as it's winter in Australia and they've all escaped here for a bit of sun.
We headed out of Kuta the next morning to a quieter place just up the coast called Seminyak. Nice quiet place with less bars but only a 15 minute taxi ride into Kuta for when we fancied a bigger night out. The beach was only 100 meters away from where we were staying. Nothing like the beaches of Thailand here, lots of undercurrents and big waves clustered with Aussie surfers. Great to watch though, which we did plenty off...
We
Young worker...
We spotted this little boy pretending to help out his mum who was working the rice paddie, very cute.booked up a bicycle tour for one day which was an early start, not something we're used to recently. We were driven up to an area in the north of Bali called Kintamani. Bali's active volcano Mount Batur (1717 meters above sea level) was our backdrop. It was freezing cold too, we had come in just shorts and t-shirt thinking we would get too hot on the bikes forgetting that the higher you go the colder it gets ! There was only the 2 of us on the trip which was great, we had a guide and had 2 cars (for security and to pick up the bikes when we were done), one in front and one behind. The ride took us through numerous little villages where all the locals were waving and shouting "Hello" to us, the kids in the villages found it highly amusing seeing us canning it through their villages on our mountain bikes. We stopped off at an Orange plantation for a look around (keeping an eye out for snakes) and the next stop was the famous Tegal Lalang Rice Terraces. We were amazed how pretty they were, built into the sloping landscape perfectly for irrigation
Balinese Cremation Tower
Here you can see the detail gone into the tower the locals are carrying. Must have been pretty heavy. purposes. It was like a huge grand stairway of rice paddies. By now it was warmer too. Lots of locals were trying to sell us the wooden carvings too "1 dollar sir, you like ? 1 dollar" No matter how many times we turned them down they just kept following us and giving it the hard sell. Easily sorted, back on the bikes and off we went.. We cycled through lots more villages where the locals we sitting out working on the wood carvings and more rice paddies. It was good because it was all down hill, hardly any peddaling. We finished the tour arriving in a town called Ubud for a Balinese lunch (very nice too) and we then driven back to Seminyak. Excellent day.
Another tour we went on was something completely different altogether. A local man in the capital Denpasar had recently passed away of old age. In Bali they cremate their deceased in a huge ceremony and then send out the ashes to the sea. It's to return the body's five elements of air, earth, fire, water and space to the cosmos, the soul can then depart and find it's new life through reincarnation. The
Balinese family
This is part of the family who's home they kindly let us have a look around ceremony is a celebration instead of a mourning event, the whole village of that person will come along and tourists are encouraged also to be part of the celebration. So, we thought we'd head along to this one.
We had to wear black sarongs and joined a crowd of hundreds of local people marching down the road with offerings and singing songs. In the middle was a huge tower made of bamboo, at the top was the deceased in his coffin and a couple of his family members standing up there with him. The tower was carried by about 20 or more local men. It was all quite strange, but very interesting. The procession headed up to the cemetary where the coffin was taken off and opened. They lifted the deceased man from the coffin and placed him in a bath shaped chamber made of wood. Lots of locals came and spinkled holy water on him and covered him in leaves. Then he was cremated. It was quite shocking to see right in front of your eyes, in the UK you never see the actual cremation, but also we had to remember that this was a celebration and the
locals seemed used to this type of ceremony. We're glad we went and seen this and will never forget it, but once was enough.
One place not to miss in Bali is the Ubud monkey forest, we went along there and had a highly amusing time playing with all the wild monkeys. They're extremely cheeky and will grab anything off you they can get. They nicked a bottle of water off one guy, opened it and polished it off, pretty funny !
A highlight was visting a local compound. This is basically a family home, the compounds run either side of the residential roads but they aren't just a house. They have a walkway going in under an arch and quite a large inside area that contains a few sleeping huts, a cooking hut, an area where they keep their animals and a temple area where they pray. It was amazing walking round the compound and seeing how the locals live their daily lives. Many of them have rice paddies out in the country too. We got a shock when we went into the kitchen area though, I wasn't about to accept a kind offering of tasting anything,
they had just killed one of their pigs and stewed him up, it was less than hygenic in there ! But again, very interesting ! 2 little boys that lived there were following us around and when I took a photo of them with the digital camera and showed them the pic they were dumbstruck ! They couldn't believe it, laughing their heads off and touching the screen, it was very funny. I gave the eldest of the compund a small donation for letting us look around, which he gave to the little boys. Very nice people.
One night we went to a Kecak Fire Dance. This is a show mainly put on for the tourists displaying Balinese dancing accompanied by a choir of one hundred men. It's a play based on an old Balinese myth of an evil prince versus a family who's wife he kidnaps... Anyway, it was a good show and the finale was a guy walking through burning embers a few times, ouch !
We had loads of excellent nights out in Bali. The area of Seminyak where we stayed for a few days turned into a massive gay gathering after midnight, we didn't
realise this at first but it was all quite amusing watching all these drag queens marching up and down the street, most of them looked awful, it's the hands you see !
Days were mostly spent down the beach chilling out and then watching the sunset while drinking with some of the locals in the makeshift bars set up on the beach. That was our favourite part of the day ! We had a funny night out with a group of friends we made, 2 Kiwi blokes, 2 Dutch girls and a guy from Peru... We drank in various bars, one full of 'working girls' which we left pretty quickly and got home at sunrise. We're planning on meeting up with the Kiwi's when we get to New Zealand at some point.
We visited a waterpark in Kuta called Waterbom, also a very amusing day. Lots of acting 10 years old again running up the steps of the waterslides and racing each other down.
The locals in Bali were the friendliest we had met in all our travels, everyday we would get chatting to new people for ages and exchange stories. They are a very peaceful nation
of people in Bali and lots of them had awful stories of the night of the bombing here in October 2002, whenever we said we were from London they would bring up the recent bombings there and tell us how disgusted they are with it all. We visited the sight of the bombings here too, they have a huge marble memorial and fountain built with all the names and nations of the people who perished. Where the 2 bars once stood there is now just a gap there and it's used for people to mourn.
So, after 2 weeks of immense enjoyment in Bali we decided we should probably move on. We left a really nice place we were staying in Legian (5 GBP a night) to head to the airport and make our way to Australia.
Would love to come back to Bali again one day, recommend it to anyone.
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Mary
non-member comment
hey, im from australia and im doing a school assessment. i was wondering if you would be able to tell me of any misunderstandigny ou had with the locals because of cultural differences. If you can help me id be grateful and you can contact me at mild_jalepeno@hotmail.com, if not thanks anyway. mary