The Bali report is finally here by popular demand (ie. one anonymous commenter who I obviously know personally - love your work!)
We stayed first in Seminyak, described by one of The Fella's colleagues as "the posh end of town", by one of mine as "a bit like the Gold Coast" and by an ex-colleague as the place to go for good food. So you can see that we really relied on Workmates Travel Inc. for guidance. Hmmm.... Well it was quite busy, and there were lots of fancy shops and restaurants. We mostly walked around, read by the pool (beginning a successful theme that continued over the week) and ate. Actually that sentence could describe the whole trip. We had one particularly spectacular eating experience. Sardine was a short cab ride away with a beautiful bamboo building overlooking a rice field lit up with lanterns, fresh seafood and delicious cocktails. Yes please.
While we were in Seminyak we took a trip to Kuta to see what all the horrified fuss is about. Certainly the Australian accents multiplied, but they were already very abundant in Seminyak. And yes, there were loads of tacky shops, including a prolific chain of shops selling very professional, and relatively expensive, fake watches, and of course the usual tourist rubbish of Bintang branded everything (12 pack of Bintang beer coolers anyone?) and offensive t-shirts. My favourite t-shirt slogan: "Go to Bunnings, buy some cement and harden the f*ck up." It's the Bunnings reference - hilarious. (No, I'm not really afraid of swearing but my mum reads this blog and I don't want to drag the tone down. Hi mum!) Maybe it's because we were there in the afternoon rather than the wee drunk hours of the morning, but it just wasn't the big terrible pile of skeeze I was expecting. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to hang around, or stay there, or ever return, but it wasn't SO terrible!
After two days in Seminyak we left for Gili Trawangan, one of a group of three Gili islands near Lombok. This involved being driven to a harbour to catch the 'fast boat'. Except our boat wasn't all that fast (no fair! that one has 4 engines, we only have 3!) and wasn't in motion at all for the first 45 minutes while one of the engines was being fixed. Once we got going things were ok. Oh, except for the rain coming in through the roof and the really big waves and several hours of feeling on the verge of throwing up. Oh boo hoo! We had an un-fun trip to paradise. Don't worry, I'm telling myself to shut up.
Gili T (as some, but not me, like to call it) has quite an unusual form of transport. Not cars or motorbikes, but cidomo. Or horse-drawn carriage if you want to be less fancy. Our hotel was about a 25 minute walk from the main part of town so the cidomo were very necessary at times, and especially with our luggage. It turns out that horse-drawn carriages are fairly uncomfortable on bumpy roads and occaisonally feel like they might tip over. Did you know that? I didn't. Here is the view from our first cidomo journey.
And here is one of the hard working horsies having a bath at the beach.
The other local form of transport is bicycle. We rented some from our hotel and rode around the island. It took about 45 minutes, but would have taken 30 if there was actually a path the whole way round and not all those sections of track made out of soft sand that force you to get off and push your bike. Still it taught me not to laugh at everyone else in the same situation. How it works is that you see the sandy bit coming and pedal faster to see if you can somehow make it through and then inevitably your bike will do some kind of gnarly fishtail manoeuvre and you'll fall off. And then you'll push. Good times. But our bikes were not nearly as cool as this one.
Our hotel was right on the beach in front of a great snorkeling spot, so you could just swim out from the beach and straight into a tropical aquarium. We also had a trip to the other Gili islands (Air and Meno) and did some more snorkeling. And saw turtles!! Much bigger than these ones.
After four days of high quality relaxation on Gili we headed back to Bali to stay in Ubud. In case you're wondering, the boat trip back was fast and comfortable. Yes, we were relieved too.
First impressions of Ubud: green, jungly, humid. This photo of a temple we discovered in our wanderings sums it up for me. Everything is covered in moss and vines and seems to be decomposing before your eyes. Love it!
We got down to business in Ubud. I finally did some shopping (a huge pile of DVD's and a few pairs of earrings) and had a massage. The Fella watched some rugby league. We went to the monkey forest and managed to escape relatively unmolested. Life was good, my friends.
And then suddenly it was time to go home. But since that was only a 3ish hour flight away with a public holiday the following day it really wasn't too traumatic.
In closing, it wouldn't be a trip to South East Asia if I didn't come home with at least one photo of a cat. I have broken all records of restraint this time and come home with only TWO photos of cats. Here is one of them. Hello little puss!
And then suddenly it was time to go home. But since that was only a 3ish hour flight away with a public holiday the following day it really wasn't too traumatic.
In closing, it wouldn't be a trip to South East Asia if I didn't come home with at least one photo of a cat. I have broken all records of restraint this time and come home with only TWO photos of cats. Here is one of them. Hello little puss!
