Final days in Bali

We have not been able to blog for a while now because we have been having internet problems but it appears we have gotten them fixed. We have done a lot since our last post which include some great restaurants, some more surfing, a hired driver that took us around bali for 10 hours and also we are now in Phuket, Thailand.

Leilani and her roommate Michaela came down again and hung out at the beach in front of our house. I am from Huntington Beach, California and yet shockingly have never even so much as attempted surfing in my life. The three of them went surfing and convinced me to give it a go. I had no idea what to expect but was able to stand up on the very first wave I caught. In fact I didn't fall off the surfboard until about my fifth wave when I got a little cocky and tried to take a wave way too big for me. Here is a picture of Drew, Leilani and myself surfing next to each other.

One of the best things we did so far in Bali was rent a driver for 40 dollars that picked us up at 830 AM. We had an itinerary and he didn't like what we had planned but we stuck to our guns and made him drive us around. He said we wouldn't have time but we actually finished the day with about an hour to spare. It happened to be a Muslim holiday (Bali is mainly hindu, but they took advantage of the holiday so no one really worked on this day). This worked in our advantage because traffic wasn't nearly as bad as it normally is. Our first stop was a temple that is famous for it's healing powers. The source of the healing is water that comes from the ground and the temple was built around it. As you can see from the photos, thousands of people flock (especially on a holiday) to cleanse their bodies in these pools. Here are some photos of Tirta Empul Temple.

on a side note, you can not enter the temple without a sarong so we were forced to wear these anytime we went in. The sarongs do not breath and it was very hot, so most of these photos we will be sweating in.

You also cannot enter any temple if you are a female while you are menstruating because you are considered "unclean" and in case you forget, there are signs to remind you. What is also funny is at all of these holy temples, they try to sell you beers, shirts, paintings, key chains etc, which to me in itself seems unholy.

Our next stop was actually by accident, the driver misunderstood us and took us to a temple. We spent all of two minutes in this temple because it looked just like the other one and was not what we were planning on seeing. It was a temple, with a koi pond, no people and a badminton court. The name was Gunung Kawi (but was not the Gunung Kawi we wanted as there are two)

After this temple we got back on track and headed to the REAL Gunung Kawi. You have to hike down to this temple and there is a running river and some rice fields and it is very pretty. The main attractions are some stones carvings cut out of the cliffs.

My favorite part of the day came right after this when we headed to the Tegalalang Rice Fields. These are the rice fields we had been hoping to see as they are terraced and when we were there were a mix of yellow and green so we tried to get artistic with our photos and turn on the color filter. We had lunch at this location over looking the fields and this is where having a driver came in handy. He took us to a great place with no tourists around. We thought we had just gotten lucky to have no one around, but he after we were done with lunch and viewing the fields he took us about two minutes up the road where we saw all of the other millions of tourist and we were so grateful to not have to be a part of this.

Our last stop of the day was Tanoh Lot temple which is a temple in the sea. Our favorite part of this Temple was the surround cliffs and rocks that you could walk out onto which were covered in green algae. The temple, depending on the tide, can actually be surrounded by water on all sides.

We ended the day at our favorite restaurant Poppies. I do not have any photos of that restaurant from this trip, but I do have them from when we were in Bali 3 years ago. Like I said before, we apologize for not blogging sooner and sorry for the long post of everything we have been doing in the past week since we blogged last. Drew will be updating about our place in Thailand. We are so happy to be in Thailand and as much as we loved Bali, Phuket is even better. The water is clearer, the city is cleaner and the temperature is a lot more bearable. I leave you with some random photos from Bali.

This picture is taken by me on the back of a scooter driving down a two lane road. This is two lanes for both cars and bikes which doesn't seem possible seeing as the car takes up the entire road, but occasionally cars would come at us as well.

A picture from the street we live on.

A large lizard we named Wilbur. He lived downstairs in our apartment and occasionally came out to play. We were grossed out by him but everyone told us that they are considered good luck.

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Scoot Scootin`

We have been hanging out in our area since we got back from Ubud. Our place is in Seminyak and then Legian Beach and Kuta Beach are both within scootin` distance away and that is where we have been hanging out. Our mode of transportation is a Honda Scoopy, yes a scooter. I have been elected as the driver...not sure how as I nearly ran into a wall the first time riding it. Let's just say I have come a long way since then and I'm pretty much a local now on this thing. There are about 8 scooters wide on a 2 lane road with cars coming frequently. It was pretty intimidating at the beginning but the more you do it, the more comfortable it becomes. We just go slow and let everyone pass us. Below is our vehicle for two, for the locals it's a vehicle 5+.

We have been heading to the beach everyday around 12-1 and then we try and stay through sunset at 6:15. 2 days this week we went to Legian beach and I decided to try surfing. Clearly I need someone to coach me as I can catch every wave but my feet are clearly not in the right place when I stand up. The 1st day was a little rough but the 2nd day got a lot better and it was more fun. Let's just say I won't be entering any surfing competitions anytime soon.

We have finally went to some dinners that were really good here which is a change to the ones that were just average. We have less than a week left here in Bali which is a bummer but we are super excited for Thailand. We have a couple more sites we want to see here before we take off so we will be heading to those this week. Below is a photo from one of the good dinners we had on "Eat Street" in Seminyak at the restaurant called The Junction.

Until next time!

-Drew

Dreamland, Ubud and Seminyak Beach

We have been missing in action on our blog the past few days because we went on day trips back to Dreamland and Uluwatu as well as a trip up to Ubud, the spiritual capital of Bali. Below are some photos of our second trip to the beautiful Dreamland Beach.

The day after our trip back to Dreamland we decided to head up to Ubud because everyone that has ever been to Bali has told us that our trip would not be complete without going there. We had a driver pick us up (Drew, Leilani and myself) early in the morning and we started to make the trek up. We hadn't decided if we were going just for the day or if we wanted to stay the night so we packed a bag just in case we decided to get a hotel. The drive was about an hour and we had the driver drop us off first at the monkey forest. When we arrived I was shocked at how many monkeys were in the streets outside of the entrance. We were told not to bring any food in so we started arranging our bags to hide Leilani's crackers in her backpack but before we were able to get the bags in a Monkey charged her and she was forced to throw her lunch snack at them. Once in the Monkey forest we couldn't walk without stepping on a monkey. They were everywhere! We learned that they have vaccinated most of the monkeys from rabies and that as long as you don't have food or do anything stupid they will not attack you. Apparently, wild animals love us as geckos are always landing on me and a monkey crawled up drew's leg while he was not looking and needless to say Drew was quite frightened which made the locals in the forest laugh. We spent a few hours in the forest and took thousands of photos of monkeys, some of which are below.

After the forest we walked around Ubud for a while and stopped and went in search of a well known restaurant that serves Babi Guling (pork over rice). We found the restaurant and it was delicious and in a great setting over looking the forest. The only complaint I have about the food which is a first world problem is that everything is still served with the fat and bones which I cannot seem to get used to. After lunch we were rejuvenated and went and checked out the Bali Market. We were a little disappointed by the market as it looks like every other market in Bali and sells the same crap that the locals on the beach try to sell. I had heard at some point the market would be life changing but I think it lost a lot of its luster so we spent only a little time there and decided to go check out the local rice fields which unlike the market were better than expected. A local walked us through his rice fields that were owned by his family for 300 years. He sold us a coconut which we didn't want but it was only a dollar and he (Wyan) was nice enough to show us his fields and how it works and when they harvest. He was also a thin guy that told us he and his family eat rice three times a day, 365 days a year so I figured we could part with a dollar. The rice fields were peaceful and after Wyan pointed us on our way the only people we came across were some local lost boys fishing in the ponds near the fields. It took us an hour to walk through the rice fields which once we completed we treated ourselves to some ice cream. (On a side note, two eventful things did happen on our walk: 1. Leiliani fell into a rice field and started to sink in it like quicksand and 2. I almost walked into a spider web and the spider was about the size of my face and could have wrapped me in his web and eaten me for lunch.

After spending about 8 hours walking through the city of Ubud we decided not to spend money on a hotel and decided to cab back to our place as we had seen everything we came to see. Ubud was my favorite part of Bali so far but I am a beach kid at heart and couldn't wait to jump in the Bali Sea/Indian Ocean to rinse off all the sweat from lugging around my backpack all day that I didn't need to bring. For now I will leave you with photos of us doing back flips at sunset in the water. Our next trip is to Tanoh Lot and Drew will post photos in a few days and we still have not decided if we are going to go to the Gili Islands or not but if we do those will be in our next photos as well. Until then....

Villa Living

Here are some photos of our villa in Seminyak, Bali. Up the stairs is the bedroom that is closed in and a/c. The rest of the place is indoor/outdoor living. We really like the setup. With our house being partially outdoors, you do see Geckos (and yes they do make a sound that sounds like "gecko") on the ceiling and yesterday I was lucky enough to see one try to commit suicide but instead of hitting the ground he landed on ATG. I'm pretty sure I've never seen ATG move that fast.

Bali is great but there are a couple things I could live without:

-Smells: you will be walking down the street when all of a sudden you get a whiff of something that could only be described as old eggs and dog poo.
-Water: I hate not being able to get a glass of water out of the sink. You probably could but you would end up with "Bali Belly".
-Holes: These go hand in hand with the smells. Whenever you see a hole on the sidewalk, sometimes as large as 2' x 2', you know that there will be a smell as the stench comes from the sewage water running under ground. I start gawking around and have come quite close to stepping into one of these holes which would end quite terribly.

That's about it, besides that, Bali is great. The people are extremely friendly here and they always have a smile on their face. It's such a laid back lifestyle (until you are on a scooter or in a car). The food has been pretty good and I have learned to look right before left when crossing the street. I started to go through the camera and noticed that all of our pictures were from sunsets. I will work on getting some other pictures taken this week. We are headed back down to Uluwatu to stay with Leilani again on Sunday so we will take the camera.

Until next time!

-Drew