Bali & The Gili Islands

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So, we left Japan after a quick day of fish and sightseeing and were off on the longest travel days. We flew from Tokyo, Japan to Hanoi, Vietnam. We arrived in Hanoi at about 10:30pm local time and not having Visa's we were planning on spending the night in the airport. After about and hour and a half of negotiating with the immigration officer on duty, we were allowed to stay in the airport overnight until our 9:30am flight left for Kalua Lumpur, Malaysia. That flight landed at the most chaotic airport of all time with about 16 flight gates in the area normally reserved for about 4 gates. Everyone was running all over the place and almost no one spoke English, and Rachel & I almost got onto the wrong flight. However, a nice man told us where to go and we got on our plane to Bali. So after about 30 hours of travel time we finally got from Tokyo to Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.

Our first stop in Bali was Kuta Beach, supposedly legendary as "Budget Bali" with perfect beaches and amazing waves. We arrived to find that none of the aforementioned items were true. We ended up in an overpriced air conditioned room for the night and after exploring the terrible beach with worse waves than in San Diego, we were quickly off to Ubud, which is the cultural center of Bali.

Upon arrival in Ubud, we also found that prices were much higher than our fairly new Lonely Planet Guide book told us, but we found an amazing place, called Ala Hibiscus which was out in the rice paddies and reminded us of a Hindu Temple. We did some awesome things in Ubud, including some white water river rafting on the slope of Gunung Agung, the largest mountain in Bali, a great hike through the rice paddies to an artist village where we got some pieces of artwork, a sunset tour to Tanah Lot, the famous temple where you watch the sun set behind the temple which is our about 50 feet into the ocean, which also included a visit to the Holy Monkey Forest where the little critters were all around us being fed noodles by the guide, we took a scooter tour of the surrounding areas to see the Rocky Temple and the Elephant Caves, had a phenomenal Babi Guling (Suckling Pig) meal at the most famous restaurant on all of Bali, and we even saw some of the legendary Balinese Fire Dancing.

Then it was off to the Gili Islands via an all day boat ride for 3 days of relaxing on the beach, snorkeling and diving in the coral reefs off of Gili Air. It was a very calm and relaxing few days on an island with no motorized vehicles only horse carriages to cart people and things around the island.

After the Gili's we went back to Bali where we spent the next morning hiking up Gunung Batur (one of the volcanos on Bali) to see the sunrise over the volcano. This was a great hike and a beautiful sight. Then it was off to the north of Bali where we thought we were going to go to the island of Pulau Menganjan via this town called Labuahon Lalong but when we got there, it was a tiny fishing village with no hotel to stay in and only a $60 boat ride for each of us to get the 45 minutes to this island. So our angry driver reluctantly took us back to a beautiful resort town about 25 minutes back from where we came. We were lucky to find this small gem before it blows up into the next hot spot, we even scored a room from Rachel's smooth talking at a gorgeous resort for about $30 per night.

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Comments

[Autumn]

Wow!
The photos look amazing! We miss you both already but I can't wait to read about the next stop!

[lory]

Bali
Wow it sounds amazing so far, so glad you guys posted...keep em coming love ya!