What a difference a day makes

Bali Blog update... full day 1, day 2-5 Notes... more to come at some point. Merry Christmas to everyone! Much Love,

Ethan

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday, Rachel and I were frantically packing to get ready for our trip, I was playing in my last game of the first half of the season in Australia (9-1, get some) and were in an English speaking country.

Today, we woke up as the plane touched down in Bali, the first stop on our SE Asia odyssey. Before getting here, I was told that this place was something special, and it has certainly lived up to those expectations and then some.

Our first thrill was the cab ride from Denpasar airport to Ubud, at 5 am. Traffic was already making for some close calls as we drove away from the coast and towards our first stop. No sidewalks and a disregard for any sort of lanes means that men, women, and infants are walking, biking, crawling, driving, or scootering (sometimes with up to 5 people on a scooter) in the street, narrowly avoiding each other. Amidst all this chaos, everyone is calm. Business as usual in Bali. A natural calm is in the air and this place seems special.

For brekky, we dine at Green Field, our hotel for the next two nights. For only $28/night, we have a room with a/c looking out onto rice fields, a beautiful swimming pool, a porch, and it includes free breakfast which you can take at your room or at the restaurant. I dive into some noodles, loving every bite. Pretty exhausted from the late flight, Rach and I decide to take a cat nap before we start the day. After waking up, we spend no time monkeying around and head for the Sacred Monkey Forest, located a short stroll from our hotel. The forest and temples within are the home to some several hundred macaws (spelled horribly wrong). They are certainly not scared of humans and go about their business. You can feed them bananas, but one of the first monkeys that we saw was chillin’ out on a tree eating an ice cream cone. Somewhere close by, I’m sure there was a small child crying, scarred for life by the monkey would stole his ice cream. What monkey wants, monkey gets… which I found out the hard way a little later.

After strolling through the forest, admiring age old temples and the surroundings, witnessing monkeys grooming each others testicles and babies jumping around like a tether ball as their mothers held their tails, we had our first up close and personal encounter. We came across a couple that had monkeys crawling all over them. We walked up to snap a picture and see what was going on. Before I knew it, the guy asked me if I wanted to have one on me and without a chance to answer, I had a monkey on my back. I didn’t really know what to do, but it was a pretty cool experience. Rachel had a go, but the monkeys liked her too much and started to get a little frisky.

After putting the monkeys down, I took out the hand sanitizer so that we could try to get rid of the plague that was probably now all over us. Bad idea. One of the more aggressive monkeys shot up my leg, onto my back, biting my hand and shoulder in an attempt to steal the hand sanitizer. I didn’t know what it was after, and when I realized it I quickly relinquished the bottle. I was free from the attacking monkey, but our hand sanitizer was definitely not out of the clear. As the monkey chewed up the bottle, we got one of the workers. “Don’t worry, monkey knows what to eat and what not to eat,” he said. He threw a sling shot at the monkey, who released the bottle and ran away yelling. We got the hell out of the forest, delighted with the monkey business that we had encountered, but scared of another attack.

After the forest, we walked around Ubud, checking out the main drag and downtown market. A few hours into our touring, we decided it was time for a bit of luxury. We stopped into one of the many spas, signing up for hour-long full body massages. Does life get any better? Yes. The massage and post massage shower cost the equivalent of $5. I think I have found my paradise. I think I can hear all my friends who I constantly pester for massages taking a collective sigh of relief. With the massage over, it was now time to eat. We found a small hole in the wall join on a side street and ate some delicious food. I had a chicken dish that tasted like it had a sweet caramel in the sauce, and Rachel enjoyed a tuna curry.

Next was our first attempt at bartering at a market stand. Fail. Turns out that being a hard ass is a little bit harder than it seems. Overwhelmed and a bit confused by how it worked, Rachel made some old woman’s day with an overpriced purchase of two sarongs. No worries. Since then we have gotten a better feel for how the haggling goes down. I guess the Oregon Trail computer game fomr elementary school didn’t prepare me for an Indonesian Market.

The night wrapped up with a delicious dinner at a chill restaurant. A few notables from our first day… there are offerings everywhere here. Little bamboo baskets with flowers, rice and other goodies being offered to presumably some God or ancestors. Even the motorcycles and cars have them on the front or the hood. The people in Ubud are extremely friendly. Although there are a fair share of tourists around, it is certainly not swarming with tourists and aside from someone on every corner asking if we need a taxi, really doesn’t feel touristy at all. A good start to the trip. Day 1 in the books.

More on the rest of the days…. Here are some notes:
Day 2: Bali Belly 

Today we signed up for a Cultural Biking tour of some of Ubud’s surrounding villages, breakfast, coffee, rice fields, temples, traditional home and caste system, biking in rain, villages with everyone busy, arrange to travel to padang padang or elsewhere and share cab with dutchies
Met Dutch travelling buddies, ate at dewa warung, met William and friends, local joint, got food poisoning, tough night

Day 3: Got well enough to make car ride to Chocky’s or Nyo Man, get to bingin beach parking lot, dirt lot, labrynth to get there on little muddy alleys, get there, right on beach but not suitable for dutchies… booked up at leggies, walked to dreamland beach, more of a disaster, nice walk along ridge to get back, saw python, hung out at leggies, played yahtzee, listened to music, planned to go surfing the next day. Massage ladies

Day 4: Got up, went surfing with ketut, caught some waves… ate lunch, tried to plan where to go, ended up taking a cab to leggian, more insane scooter action, got to leegian, kuta by night, legian by night….

Day 5: Legian by day, bus ride to padang bai met interesting characters on bus, walked to blue lagoon, and hotel,