Bali

Today is my last day in Bali. I am rather sad about it and can hardly wait to get back here. For the past 2 weeks, my friend AB and I have managed to do almost everything Bali has to offer and still not get too bored.

We started our journey in Sanur and stayed there for 2 nights (the room rates got cheaper and cheaper as we traveled...as the first night cost us $35 total...and by the time we left for Java (more on that later) we had gotten the total cost for a room (with brekkie) down to $5 (that's 2.50 each!!!!)....In Sanur we found lovely beaches and fabulous shopping...but since it was the beginning of our journey we decided to hold the shopping off til later (which is what I will be doing as soon as I finish this entry.) and headed up to Ubud (the cultural center of Bali)....there we saw Kecak dancing (it's pretty interesting as there are about 75 men all sitting on the ground, behaving as if they are all in a trance...then people do differnt dances thru the group....at the end a guy walks over burning coconut shells), took Batik classes, wandered rice paddies (even had a guy offer to climb a coconut tree for us to get us some fresh fruit for juice!) and of course did a bit of shopping. The highlight of our time there was a sunrise hike (ohmigod it started at 3am I thought I was going to die!!) up Mount Batur...which is one of Bali's semi-active volcanos (it last erupted a few years ago)...the view was pretty awesome (as was the sunrise.) But I believe the highlight of that trip was feeding breakfast to the wild baby monkeys that lived up there....in fact one of them was so sweet and trusting that he held my hand for awhile....I love the monkeys. We also cooked some food in the volcanic steam that is seeping from the ground just about everywhere you step...we opted for steamed bananas over the cooked egg...but judging by all of the eggshells on the ground, most tourists must opt for eggs for breakfast.

After Ubud we headed to Lovinia (which is in Northern Bali). There isn't much to say about Lovina except that it is very quiet now and the tourist season is definatly over. We were pretty stoked to get out of there after a night....but didn't really think about our escape route.

I think both AB and I agreed that after Lovina we needed an adventure...so we boarded a local's bus to Yogyakarta Java....which meant 19 hours on a bus (not the 12 hours that was originally proclaimed)...on the plus side we got to see Java...on the negative side...we got to really see Java. Not much to say about Java, except that it is dirty, gross, unfriendly...and well it isn't the indonesian paradise that Bali is.

We stayed in Yogya (as the locals call it...pronouced Jogja) for 2 nights. At one point a local explained to me that Yogya was to Indonesia what Kyoto was to Japan...ummm,no...not even a remotely close comparison. The highlight of Yogya is Borobudor ... which we saw and thought was cool (albeit a bit commercialized compared to all the other Unesco sites I had been to over the past few weeks...they had a train ride to take you around the manicured park to the site...must be a US sponsored Unesco site) but after we finished with Borobudor, we found the dilemna of not having the slightest idea of what to do next...so we began our search for Javanese beads (there weren't any good ones) and coffee (turns out Java is actually a misnomer)...

I think both of us were never so happy as we were the moment we boarded a flight back to Denpasar....then headed to Kuta.

Kuta is gross..it is a tourist trap and literally the hell that resides in paradise...this is where the Bali bombings took place a few years ago (and unknowingly to us, we actually walked by the sights a couple of times before going to one of the clubs that had been rebuilt)...Both of us were pretty happy to leave there, as the whole thing is a bit like Spring Break....plus the day after we left the Bali paper had a front page article about how a fake bomb had been found in one of the Kuta hotels...and that the Indonesian President was basically putting the whole of Indonesia on alert (do other countries have Orange Alerts?)..this also explains the sudden appearance of a mass of police officers!!!

After Kuta, we went back to Sanur...where we will finish our days in Bali. Not much more to report...unless you want to hear about my regular manis/pedis/massages...etc. I have a facial scheduled in a few hours...then drinks and shopping. Life in Bali certainly isn't bad.

Tomorrow I head to Bangkok...I'll be finished traveling and in Colorado on Friday.