Bali - July 21-27, 2008

I really am behind on posting my trips. I mean, I went to Bali last summer! :S However, even posted late, a tale of my trip to the Indonesian island of Bali is certainly worth one's time.

When I first arrived in Bali, processing through immigration took FOREVER. About an hour after I got off the plane, I was finally able to leave the airport. I felt a lot like I did when I first came to Korea. It was my first trip alone. Thailand had been my second. I managed to find a taxi driver to take me out of Denpansar to Ubud. Aaron had warned me that most of the "drink late and party like I'm still in my home country" tourists stayed by the airport and in Kuta beach. Ubud is more of an artist hub and a culture tourist location.

I found Aaron's suggested hotel, the Pande Permai (he'd been in Bali two years before), and it was kind of expensive, $25 a night for the cheap room with a fan. It wasn't hot enough out that I needed air conditioning. My room had it's own entrance and there wasn't glass in the windows, just screens. The whole place was covered in flowers and palm trees. There were a couple small geckos in my room, chicha. I bet the locals are indifferent to them, but, lizards in my room? Cool!

I was nervous not knowing anyone or how anything worked. I was also really nervous about traveling alone. Not that I felt I'd be in danger, but there was no one there to talk to. I was lonely. It was only around 8:00, but it was dark and almost everything was closed. There were still a number of people, mostly Balinese men, milling about asking if I needed a ride anywhere. I politely declined a million times. I found a place to check my email and eat, and, after I contemplated whether my name really WAS, "Taxi? Transport?" I walked back to my hotel to sleep.

The next day, and for most of my trip, it was sunny with slight overcast. I don't think it ever got to be that scorching. Ubud is higher up in the mountains, so it doesn't have the same difficulties with heat as the coasts. I had breakfast ast the hotel, and tried to talk to the staff there as much as I could. Thankfully people know quite a lot of English.

I went to the Sacred Monkey Forest at the end of the road. It's a gorgeous little plot of jungle where a pack of wild monkeys live. You can feed them little bananas.
I met some local youth hanging out in there and we talked for a bit. Everyone was really friendly.
I went crazy buying pretty bead stuff at one store near the Monkey Forest, and the worker there offered to take me to her village! She lived about 15 minutes away on a motorbike. I was really happy. I also found a quaint artists alley and bought a painting from a nice man, Dewa. I talked with another younger guy, Kadek, and he told me that he could help me see different parts of Bali, because he had a motorcycle rental business.

At night, I went to a Fire Dance show, where they did some kechek chanting and I watched a story of good versus evil, of love, and the good white monkey versus the evil red monkey. Beautiful costumes. After the monkey story, a man ran through burning coconuts barefoot. I met a really nice girl there, Julia, from Germany. She was also traveling alone, and had spent a year working in Australia. We went to dinner together with a friend of hers.
She told me about her hotel, which was only $6 a night! Whoo! I quickly changed over to that place the next day. It was not as fancy inside, but it still came with a garden walkway and breakfast.

Julia was actually going on a motorbike tour with a woman she had just met, so I took over her hotel room and offered to watch her backpack while she was away. I had been in contact with my friend Alex who was in Indonesia at the time, and we were going to meet up soon also. It dawned on me how very little being alone I was by traveling alone.

I tasted local food: satay, nasi goreng, and other freshly prepared spicy foods. I went to a couple night markets with different people.
One time I went with Kadek, and another with the girl, Made (pronounced Mah-day) from the bead store when she took me to her village. Local food didn't bother me, and it was nice that I didn't have to go easy on the spices like a baby. A more traditional Balanese style of restaurant is where you pick from a buffet of foods. Food ranged in price from $.80 to $4. The expensive stuff was only when I was being a pig at a foreigner restaurant. :P

When people die in Bali, they are buried for a short time, but then their families create huge towers to cremate them. I unfortunately just missed a cremation ceremony, but I did get to see some of the artwork in the burned remains of the towers. A lot of work that goes up in smoke.

Everywhere I went I could hear a CD of Balinese flute and marimba music. I liked it. The painter I met offered to take me to his home town village, Sakawati, to the "cheaper" market. He gave me a number of tips on how to bargain. "Ah, but miss! Good morning price!" I really enjoyed the beautiful silver jewelry, wood carvings, and clothing. Dewa also took me to see the black sand beach near the town.
Sometimes at night, I'd go to the artist alley and hang out with the people who owned shops there. They would talk and play music and sing. They let me have some arak, or palm tree liquor. It's nicknamed petrol for a reason.


Another advantage to being alone was that it was easy for people to give me rides on their motorbikes. I was on a motorbike almost every day I was in Bali. On like Wednesday, Kadek took me to a hot springs in the northern part of Bali. It was actually pretty cold when we were going up high in the mountains. We later went to a bar in Ubud that was playing live regge music. Bob Marley is huge in Bali.

My friend Alex came on maybe Thursday it was. We rented a bike and took a tour to the north to see the coffee plantations. I was getting the coffee for Aaron, and I was frustrated with how long and what lengths Alex and I had gone to get them. I was feeling all this negativity, blah blah blah, right up to the point I first sipped my own cup of coffee at the plantation. Oh my God! It was heaven.
At that point I joined the Bali coffee club, and happily enjoyed it and the sunset.
Then we found an awesome villa to stay at that, including breakfast, and open air shower, and a gorgeous view of the valley, totalled to $25. The next day we checked out a waterfall and the beaches in Lovina.

Seeing everything from the back of a motorbike is really amazing. Everything in the open air: the lush vegetation, the calm rice padies and the lovely Balinese houses and different temples. There's over a thousand temples on the tiny island of only 3 million people. We stopped at the water temple Danu Bratan, on the way back to Ubud. It was perhaps the most tourists I'd seen outside of Ubud since I'd arrived. Lovely place. An interesting mixture of Buddhist and Hindu, with a mosque giving the call to prayer across the street.

When Alex and I arrived back in Ubud, we cleaned up and I packed up my bags. I visited my painter friend one last time before I had to leave. Alex stayed on in Ubud to take a course in Rekki training.

Happy and tired, I took a last look at my tropical paradise, and, with my driver, I made my way back home to Korea.

In my picture blog, my photos from Bali are posted from July 18 to August 27, 2008.