Bali

It’s been a while since I posted – I’m so far behind, but it’s only because I’ve been so busy! It’s probably true that the quality and frequency of my blog posts is inversely proportional to the fun I’m having…

So – we left off at Singapore… I decided Bali was a good in-between point between Australia and Singapore, and I wasn’t ready to leave Asia yet 🙂

My primary goal after leaving Thailand was to get some more scuba diving in, and earn my PADI Advanced certificate, so I could dive deeper. Indonesia is still relatively cheap, so I thought Bali would be a good place to do it.  So I looked up a town in Bali that had the most scuba shops and booked a few nights there in a town called Sanur to check it out.

I had this idea in my head of what (I thought) Bali was: white sand beaches, with reefs off the coast to snorkel at, and inland places to visit gushing waterfalls and an easy-going island culture.  I guess a lot of this turned out to be pretty close to true, but Bali as an island is busy. The popular towns like Kuta are very touristy, and most everyone speaks English.  The roads are crazy – getting from A to B is pretty much a free-for-all – I think worse (or better, depending on how you look at it) than Thailand and Malaysia. I caught a taxi to my homestay after landing, and the driver was weaving the entire way there between cars, going as fast as he could. Still though, not a lot of road rage – people just accept it if they are cut off, and find an alternate route around the mob of vehicles to the front.  Scooters are the desired form of transport, as it allows you around all the vehicles, ride on the shoulder and up to the front of traffic lights.  Don’t get me wrong though, the beaches are great – the water is so warm and the food is cheap – pretty livable place if you’re comfortable on a scooter.

I looked around the next day at all the local dive shops and after talking to a few I decided on one called Blue Season Bali to do my advanced course.  The course was great – I dove 5 dives which consisted of: drift dive, wreck dive, navigation dive, deep dive and a peak performance buoyancy dive.  They were all helpful, and it was cool to see the Liberty Wreck in Tulamben, a USAT ship which was hit by a Japanese torpedo and limped back to where it rests today.

 

After my first day of diving, some of the dive staff were going into town for a buffet dinner and dancing at Skygarden, and asked last minute if I wanted to join.  Yes was the obvious answer, and so I hopped on back of a scooter with my instructor, Yoshi, who proceeded to give me the craziest scooter ride I’ve ever had, weaving in and out of the cars. We made it there unscathed, thankfully, just in time to get the free beer at the buffet.  3 huge plates of buffet and a few beers later, we were on the dance floor watching Yoshi bust-a-move like no other Japanese I’d seen.

The ride back was just as exciting, only clipping my toe once on a license plate! 🙂

After getting my dive certificate, the next day I went off to explore Bali itself.  One of the girls I met that worked/interned at the dive shop offered to let me borrow her scooter while she was at work, so I went off to Uluwatu to explore the massive cliffs and top surfing spot, trying my best to drive like the locals.

Uluwatu is a somewhat sacred place, with a temple at the top of  the cliffs.  Even the monkeys there looked all Zen like:

I kept walking along the cliffs until there was no paved path and decided to walk a bit further to see what was around the bend.  The dirt path turned into not-really-a-path and I started seeing some strange stuff – like a skull of a… cow?

and then some large dropping from something…

I was half expecting something to jump out at me, until I came upon these guys, just some cows:

Not much was beyond that, so I made my way back and headed to the Uluwatu surfers beach to have lunch atop the hill and watch the surfers do their thing.

The next day Sarah – the girl I did my Advanced with – and I decided we’d do some fun diving with Blue Season Bali (BSB) – we saw a turtle and a shark!

 

 

 

The next day Sarah and I went on a day trip to Ubud, an artsy/hippie-ish town made popular by the book “Eat Pray Love.” We went through the town and stopped at the Monkey Forest, which is exactly what it sounds like. The monkeys were pretty aggressive to get your bananas, but most my pictures would make you think otherwise:

Then we fed them some bananas by making them walk up our arms:

Then we made a crazy decision to drive all the way across the island to see some more magnificent temples atop peninsula cliffs of Tanah Lot.

We were completely sunburnt by then and had a nearly involuntary nap (heat stroke?) 🙂 before heading back home.  It was a fun trip though, good to see all the countryside of Bali!

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BSB is a career development center – so they are constantly spitting out new dive masters, and for each one that “graduates,” you have to take one last test called a “snorkel test.” This involves the graduate sticking a “masked” scuba mask on, with a snorkel attached to a funnel.  Then a random concoction is poured down the “snorkel” – and by random I mean anything you can think of: alcohol, ketchup, rice, oats, spices etc.  Once all the liquid is in, you’re allowed to start chugging.  So basically you have to hold your breath the entire time and hold back the pressure.  They throw a party about once a week for these kinds of occasions, and invite some of their customers too.  Didn’t look fun, but was entertaining to watch – Yoshi ended up doing it since it was his birthday that day:

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Diana, the girl who lent me her scooter, had a free weekend so we ended up going on a trip together up to the North end of Bali by scooter.  Since she’d lived there a couple months already, she picked out a great itinerary of things to do, some she’d already seen and some she hadn’t.  It was a great 2 day trip, with so much packed into it!  First we went to one of the biggest rice plantations on the island, which was an amazing sight. The pictures don’t even do it justice with how green it was:

I had bought an “emergency” long sleeve shirt from a local mall there, since I had learned my lesson from the day before with Sarah getting burnt from long scooter rides. It was bright green, and asian sized, so barely fit me.  So I tried to blend in with the rice paddies – can you find me?

We went up some mountains and it started pouring down rain, which forced us to stop for lunch to dry off. After it passed we were on our way to a great waterfall, where you could get in and swim:

Then we made it to the town of Lovina, where we stayed for the night in an all too warm hotel room, but we saw a great sunset and walked the volcanic black sand beach.

The next morning we went to the Holy Hot Springs and bathed there before it got too warm:

After a bit of an awkward situation seeing all the girls there going in the water fully clothed and Diana only having a swimming suit on her, we swam quickly and left in search of another waterfall… which turned out to be not much of a waterfall that time of year 🙁 But I was wearing by green shirt and newly acquired “sun-protection” pants, feeling silly as ever!

On the way home we started getting poured on in an intense rainstorm, which had the streets running rivers down them. We stopped for lunch but then had to carry on, dressed as warmly as possible for the long scooter ride home:

After that it was another relaxing day or two in Sanur, enjoying my favorite warung (cheap local restaurant) which you could just point at what you wanted in the buffet and at the end they would tell you how much it was – for my big meals it was never more than $1.50!

I went shopping at their local “mall” and found this shirt… made me feel closer to home

Definitely a design copied from a Seattleite and turned into an asian sized t-shirt.

The Balinese have an impressively consistent ritual of creating offerings built of a palm leaf and flowers, trinkets, etc. They will create a bunch of these each morning, and place them everywhere – on their counters, doorsteps, sidewalks, streets… I think the ritual/offering is to show their thankfulness and devotion to their religion – just putting in the time of creating so many of these, placing them early in the morning and late in the afternoon, and then cleaning them up at the end/beginning of the day shows their commitment and gratitude.

I booked a ticket to the Gili islands, just to the East of Bali, off of the northwest coast of Lombok. These islands are dots of sand with coral reefs all around them.  They are small enough that you can walk around the outside of them in under a couple hours, and no cars are allowed on the island.  This is really what I pictured when I thought of Bali, so I’m glad I found it!  I think that the Gilis deserve a post of their own though, so more to come on that in a bit!

Pictures for Bali can be found here