Bali Hai!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Greetings from another tropical country – this time Indonesia … more precisely Bali!
After the big city life, which is a little overrated and very expensive, it was very nice to get back to the cheaper beach life. The added bonus is … well the beach! We arrived in Denpasar late on the 8th and got a taxi to Legian, next to Kuta. Legian is slightly quieter than Kuta but still only a couple minutes walk away so it was prefect for us. We spent the first day exploring what the area had to offer and were very pleased. On our second day we ventured to the beach and tried our hand at boogie boarding and lounging on deck chairs. After that it was time to get a little more adventurous and I spent the third day on the north eastern side of Bali wreck diving. The USAT Liberty is a superb wreck and an awesome dive site. We had a great dive master and logged almost 2 hours gliding around the 130 meter vessel, inside and outside. During the first dive I even got to see my first shark (a 1,5 meter white tip) and a 1,8 meter giant barracuda. The next day it was time to get back in the water again, this time for surfing. Now surfing is a tricky little thing. It looks really easy but it's bloody hard! Micki got the hang of it and was standing up on her second attempt but I did not fare quite as well. 2 hours worth of face-plants and various wipe-outs kinda took its toll on me. The good thing is that Micki now has a hobby so she can surf while I dive... all in all we should both get to see lots of sharks (just kidding :D).
After 5 days in Kuta it was time to get lost again. Traveling is like a box of chocolates, and if Kuta was a praline then we were about to get one of the horrible orange liquor ones not even dogs will touch. We took some advice from a couple of Swedish guys and headed out to Nusa Lembongan which is a small island off the southern coast of Bali. It was promised to be paradise but that was not the case, at least at first glance. We had to climb onto a rickety boat at high tide with all our gear on which resulted in a wet wallet and a drenched mobile phone... we quickly poured drinking water over the phone (vast experience from summer parties in the Finnish archipelago) much to the enjoyment of the locals. The ride out was uncomfortable and bumpy but we got there in the end. Out on the island we somehow let our entire guard down and ended up with bad lodging at a worse price and 2 motorbikes to boot (at twice the market price for them as well) after we had sworn we would never touch them again. While trying to ride around the island to Dream Beach we got lost, Micki fell off her scooter and ripped a big hole in her toe and we managed to knock over both the bikes so that they got big scratches. We gave up and once again swore, this time aloud to never, ever, ever ride motorbikes again... even if they are automatic and the local 6 year olds ride them around all day. We gave up and were on our way away from the island all together but decided to give it another chance which turned out to be a good choice. We did get to see Dream Beach (which was OK), I got to do two drift dives which was also OK and we met some really nice people and had a great fish BBQ with them which was really nice. Next stop: Ubud, which is a small town inland that resembles Chiang Mai in Thailand.
Ubud is basically an artsy and cultural tourist retreat in southern Bali. During our first day we visited the monkey sanctuary and got up close with the marsupials. Some of the tourists even got a little more than they bargained for: That's what you get when you hide food in your bag! We also took a long stroll into the country side and enjoyed the rice paddies and rain forest. During our 4 days here it was also the local festival of Galungan, which is a Hindu festival celebrating the victory of light against dark. Basically it means people put magnificent decorated bamboo poles outside their houses, everyone is dressed in traditional dress and there are several groups of kids wandering around banging drums with 2 of the kids dressed up like a Chinese new year's dragon. The atmosphere was great for the first few days but on the third day it got a little irritating :)
So now Bali is done as is South East Asia and tonight we are off to Australia. We have a great flight leaving at 11pm and arriving in Darwin at 3am. Then it's a super 5 hour layover with a flight leaving at 8am and arriving in Sydney around 3pm... Hooray!
Till next time!
Robbe & Micki
p.s: We will upload photos when we got to Australia... Balinese interwebs is really slow!!!
Posted byRobbe at 09:45
Låter mycket najs, akta hajarna i aussina.
Hälsningar från Ischgl.
-jocce o gabban