Bali, Indonesia

Bali

I'll start off by saying that this blog, like many, is long overdue. I have been extremely slack in writing and therefore this blog was written over a a combination of about 4 attempts. Therefore, in parts, I am writing in the present tense while in others I'm writing in the past. I apologize for this and hopefully it doesn't confuse you too much (as I am far too lazy to re-write it). Anyways, here it is...our entire 2+ weeks in Bali...I promise our next blog re Vietnam will be up shortly!

 We have been looking forward to going to Bali since the day we decided that we wanted to stop over. We booked a one way ticket and decided to try and figure out later how long we wanted to stay. I ended up booking flights out of Bali to Singapore in the Changi Airport (Singapore Airport) on January 8th, which means we had two and a half weeks here! Bali, for those of you that don't know, is located only a 3.5 hour flight from Perth (the very north of Australia) and a 2.5 hour flight south west of Singapore. So we did back track a little to get to Bali but so far it has been well worth it! 

We arrived around 9:30pm at that airport and right away you could feel the heat! Trying to get our visas and go through customs was interesting as there were numerous men who would come up and say "if you give me $25 US dollars you can skip the line".'Jordan had no idea what the guy was trying to say but I have been to Cuba numerous times and realized right away he was trying to make a quick buck and said no thank you. One no thank you wasn't enough and as we later found out once we got to Sanur, that's how the rest of the trip was going to go. While it can be slightly irritating to be followed and constantly asked to buy something, you can't fault the Balinese as they are just trying to make a living-it's the culture! 

Trying to get a cab out of the airport was hectic to say the least. The second you left the building you were hounded by at least 50 men all asking to drive you. It reminded me a lot of Costa Rica-this time I was thankful it wasn't just myself and so when. I said no and Jordan followed up with a no... they didn't hassle AS much. We decided to head into the convenience store to ask the ladies at the counter what company we should use and how much we should pay. There were lots of shady looking drivers and I didn't want to hop in a car with some unregistered taxi. The ladies nicely told us to go with Blue Bird Taxi and not to pay more than $5-$7 dollars for the 35 min cab ride. We ended up getting into a cab with the driver speaking little to no English. He turned the meter on and off we went. Right away we realized this was not Canadian or Australian driving. They were insane! There was barely any lanes and our driver acted as though he was driving a motorcycle and would just swerve in between cars and bikes. It was an interesting and sometimes an "oh-shit-handle" kind of ride but we managed to get there and pay only $7! 

We checked into our beautiful hotel (we weren't entirely sure how nice it would be as it only was costing us $40 a night). Turns out it was quite nice. Although it was 1130 pm, we were sticky as and decided to make use of the inviting pool! We slept like babies that night...with ac too! 

The next am we were excited to get up and do....nothing! After a hectic five days in Singapore, we just wanted a day or two to chill out and not go too far. We spent almost the entire day in the pool and enjoyed a Bintang (Bali beer) or three. The next am we were right back in the pool and had made friends with two Retired English couples. The one couple comes to Bali for 3 months every year while the other couple lived in Jawa (pronounced Java) for 5 years where she was a teacher. They would come to Bali for a couple for weeks each year. These lovely people turned out to be great assets and ending up giving us all sorts of ideas as to where to go on our stay in Bali and how much we should pay for everything. Their rule of thumb was to start bartering at 1/3 of the price and usually not pay more than half of what they are asking. Jan and Graham, one of the couples, also told us about the Gili Islands- a group of three islands just off the coast of Lombok (another larger island next to the island of Bali). They said there was great snorkelling and diving off of this island and that it would be great to spend a couple of days there. We took their advice and booked three nights on the island after booking a hotel and arranging a driver and fast boat to take us there. We had booked in at our hotel, Ari Putri, until the 26th but decided to stay another night so we could Skype our families on their xmas day. So our gili trip was set to start on the 27th of December. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the town and checking out the beach which was just across the road. The ocean was incredibly warm...almost hot. I think one of the couples said it was 30 degrees...ridiculously warm and didn't really cool you off at all. We ate lunch at a place on the beach called Jack Fish (the owner called it this because he likes Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and fish is apparently Jack's favourite food)! And holy crap, this was the best fish I or Jordan have ever had....absolutely delicious. I had a whole (skin, eyes and tail...although I just ate the meat haha) snapper, cooked on the grill and Jordan had a fillet of Mahi Mahi.

That afternoon we headed straight back to the pool and couldn't get in fast enough. Bali is soooooo hot! As we were swimming around Jordan made a comment about how green my hair looked. I brushed it off as a joke but then he was like "no babe, really your hair is so green!". I realized then that he wasn't kidding around...and holy shit was it ever green! Grinch green. Really really green. I, of course, started freaking out a little and started researching ASAP what the hell I should do. Being in the middle of no where, there wasn't much in the way of hair product that I could buy so I looked at home remedies..baking soda, vinegar and ketchup were some that were mentioned. I asked around for baking soda but nobody had any. We then headed to the grocery store and bought a big bottle of ketchup. After 3 ketchup shampoos consisting of an enormous amount of ketchup doused on my head under a shower cap for 20 minutes at a time, the green came out....THANK GOD! Turns out my hair went green because of the reaction of chlorine and cooper minerals in the pool. Note to those who have a pool and do not want their hair to go green....check your chlorine and cooper levels!! 

Christmas in Bali, or rather not at home, was an interesting one. Both Jordan and I have never been in the heat for Christmas so it was hard to wrap your head around. While we were, and still are, absolutely loving Bali, it was weird not being home for Christmas and surrounded by family. We were able to Skype both of our families on their Christmas Day (we are 14 hours ahead here) and it was nice to be able to be apart of their day, even just a little bit! We spent our Christmas Eve getting wonderful hour and a half long Balinese massages (mine included a body scrub and flower bath) for only $20 for both of us! It is a Cameron van Amelsvoort tradition that we eat seafood on Xmas eve so I was determined to have seafood! Luckily, the Balinese love seafood so there was plenty to choose from. Jordan had chicken satay (damn good satay too) and I had crab and rice. The crab is a full miniature crab and so the meat was much different from what I am used to but it was still good! 

The next am, Christmas morning for us, we enjoyed a nice breakfast (included in our room rate) on the porch and decided to Skype my family on their Christmas Eve! It was weird not being there but at the same time I knew that if I had gone home for the holidays, I would have wanted to fly back here right away (and obviously because we are broke as, that would never have happened)!

Our next adventure in Bali was the Gili Islands (actually part of Lombak, not Bali). We took the most frightening car ride of our lives to the port and took a 2 hour boat ride over to Gili Trawagan, the biggest of the three Gili Islands. Right away it was a completely different feel. The average age was around 24 I'd say and there were so many people. There are no cars at all, just horse drawn 'carriages' and bikes. Our 'hotel' wasn't far from the harbour so we set off on foot. The hotel was more of a guesthouse with four bungalow style bedrooms. You had to walk down this shady little alley way to get there and because it had just down poured, a lot of mud. This guesthouse was not one that I would recommended. While we are trying to rough it on this trip, this room was just not going to cut it. We had booked for three but ended up getting out after only one and booked another cabin for $30 a night (fairly cheap in Bali). The cabin was quite cute and had a giant king sized bed with a huge mosquito net around it (there were tonnes of mosquitoes)! The outdoor bathroom was open to the elements and so it made using the loo a bit challenging when it rained (everyday, all night). The water was what they call half and half (half fresh and half salt water). We seem to think it was more like 90/10 freshwater because it was salty as hell! It's very expensive for hotels to bring fresh water over from the mainland and so essentially it's just the $100+ a night ones that get free range of it. But, for $30 a night, you can't complain right? 

While Gili Trawangan was more of a party island,we still really enjoyed it and the beautiful sunsets it had to offer! We were also able to do a dive around this old shipwreck. Since Jordan isn't certified, he had to do an hour course in the pool first and then could only dive down to 12 metres. We wanted to do a dive together and so I was restricted to the 12 metres as well, but you could still see everything! We saw tonnes of beautiful fish and even a couple of freaky looking moray eels. 

After three days on the island, we had arranged for a driver, Frankie, to pick us up and drive us to Ubud, in the centre of the island. Frankie took us to a lovely Oceanside restaurant (which wasn't expensive at all!) and then took us to see the Justice Palace and the Elephant Caves. While both beautiful, we only spent maybe 30-45 minutes in each just looking at the scenery. He dropped us off at our gorgeous hotel in Ubud where we stayed for 5 nights. Ubud, as some of you may know, is were part of the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" was filmed and let me tell you, it is a gorgeous little town! The town itself is actually made up of 15 smaller communities that all have their own talents, ie painting, wood carving etc. it is located in the rainforest and amongst numerous rice paddies. 

Ubud was both of our favourite parts of our trip in Bali...that is until THE monkey bite. On our last day in Ubud, before Frankie was going to pick us up again, we headed to the famous Monkey Forest where there are hundreds of free roaming monkeys. This place is packed with both tourists and monkeys and it is not uncommon for monkeys to come up to you and take a look around. We had been warned before going to make sure we weren't wearing any sort of earrings, sunglasses, had phones, cameras etc...essentially anything that the monkeys can come and steal. We also heard that if a monkey comes up to you, don't panic, just let him come up and take a look around. If you have anything in your pockets, including bananas, just let them take it! So well warned and very cautious, we set off into the monkey forest. Maybe 10 minutes in to our adventure, we had steered pretty clear of the monkeys getting only within a few feet of them. This girl was feeding these two little monkeys bananas and so I had walked up and was just watching (still 3 feet away). The girl left and because I didn't have any bananas (I'm assuming) the little monkey barked at me. I started walking away and then saw this big monkey coming closer. He looked a bit aggressive so (remembering to not panic and run away according to the board before we entered) I stayed put. All of the sudden, this damn ape is leaping at my thigh and is holding on for dear life. I am scared out of my mind (and feeling the pain) at this point and start walking away...fast. This stupid monkey decides he is going to start stalking me and starts chasing after me. I'm trying to hide behind anything I can find, including Jordan and finally after some dodging, we manage to sneak away. At this point I am pretty much just in shock but Jordan is trying to get me to show him my leg. I'm still in shock I think and just kept walking...quickly. Finally, we stop and take a look and as it turns out, the monkey latched on really good and ended up breaking the skin and drawing blood. My first thought was holy shit. My second thought was holy shit. My third thought was holy god this hurts. We went straight to a clinic because I knew there was a chance of rabies, especially since blood was drawn. We went to this 'clinic' which consisted of a doctors office the size of a small walk in closet. It was attached to a spa and one of the spa girls actually had to call the doctor to get her to come to the office. After waiting 10 or so minutes, the doc arrived, saw my bite and told me to go wash it with soap and water for 10 minutes in the spa washroom. That was an experience in itself...dirty dirty dirty. But I kept on washing  it for 10 minutes and then had to wait almost an hour for the doctor to return from getting the rabies vaccine. She told me that because rabies is so high in Bali, they do two shots at once instead of just one. This, I later found out from my mom and Jordan's mom, was incorrect. Two shots at once does nothing. The correct dosage is actually one shot on day 0, day 3, day 7, day 14 and day 28. So skip forward to Vietnam, I headed straight to the International SOS clinic where my mom and Gerry took Lukie when he was sick with pneumonia. 

After giving the doc the paperwork that showed what the bali doc gave me, she had a little freak out. She had no idea what to do as I was given two shots instead of one and was missing the all important immunoglobulin. I'm still not completely sure what the immunoglobulin does but, the doctor told me that it is vital in the protection against rabies and can only be administered within 7 days of being bitten-I had gone to see her on the 6th (the day after we landed in Vietnam). Thankfully, I was there just in the nic of time. She kept saying we will have to discuss the price of the immunoglobulin and I was thinking in my head, okay it's probably a couple hundred dollars. Wrong-o. The money spent on this shot could have fed a small country. But luckily, my travellers insurance will hopefully cover it all once I get home. I was also thinking that this immunoglobulin was only going to be one shot. Wrong-o again. I was the lucky recipient of 13 shots around my wound, and one in the butt. I'm not that huge of a wimp when it comes to needles (nobody likes them!) but usually I'm pretty good with them. These needles however went straight into my thigh muscle and holy mother did it ever hurt. The first six or so weren't so bad but then they started killing and I actually cried out in pain. Jordan told me later that the male nurse that was administering the shots actually dropped the needle while it was in my thigh! The one in the buttocks didn't hurt at all compared to the thigh...but that's because this girls got a badonkadonk! Hehe

After the immunoglobulin shots, I had to get my second (but really third) rabies shot. This was a piece of cake! I was to stay in the clinic for 45 minutes so they could make sure I didn't have an adverse reaction to either shot and then was free to go. I had to keep the wound dry for 2 days with a big bandage on it to keep from getting an infection either through the wound itself or the 13 puncture holes in my leg. Fast forward a week to today when I received my third rabies shot-one more to go and I'm home free! Moral of the story kids-stay away from monkeys! Even now I find myself getting very anxious when I'm around even dogs (and I am usually NEVER scared around dogs). The whole situation just shook me up a little I guess but I'm hoping that once I'm out of countries that have high rates of rabid animals, I won't be overly anxious around animals anymore! 

Back to Bali, on our third day in Ubud, we decided to do a cooking class. I decided that i wanted to do a cooking class in every country that we were going to, starting with Bali. So we booked a class in which started off with a tour of the local market. We were able to try all sorts of new (to us) fruit such as jackfruit, lychee  (which Jordan had never had), and snake fruit. Since that day, we have eaten so much delicious tropical fruit and I think we are spoiling ourselves for when we come back home and this fruit is non existent if not extremely pricey. The cooking class was absolutely fabulous and I would highly recommended it to anyone! We were able to cook 7 different dishes and were sent home with typed copies of all recipes including substitute ingredients (that we may not be able to get at home!). The cooking class was probably both of our favourite part about our time in Ubud.  

After spending 5 days in Ubud we took off to Mount Batur with our driver, that we hired earlier. Little did we know that the town where Mount Batur is, is what one would call a dump. There was NOTHING in this town and we got so many looks from the locals ('they've got to be off their rockers to be here on their own'). We spent the night in a terrible hotel (setup by our driver-note to self...arrange own accommodation). We are 99% sure that the sheets weren't clean and that there were bed bugs...I had so many nasty bites in the am. However, we were in this town to do the sunset hike up the 2000m high mountain. We woke up at 3:15am and started the hike at 4 am. This was probably the most challenging hike we've ever done. First reason being that it was pitch black and Jordan and I had to share a flashlight. Second reason being that it was nearly vertical in spots...and sharing one flashlight while climbing in a single file, did I mention that yet? After climbing for almost two hours, we were so looking forward to the sunrise once we reached the top! However, what the tour guides left out (until we reached the summit), is that during the rainy season you cannot see the sunrise. They kept saying oh so sorry, we can never tell what the weather is going to be like. Then I asked, how often is it cloudy like this? He replied, it's like this for 2-3 months (during the rainy season). Jordan and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Of course. Oh well, it's own own stupidity for not realizing it would be overcast I guess! We did get a few breaks in the clouds to see the view and I was immediately thankful that we could not see on the way up because I probably would have turned around it was so steep! After a 2 hour decent and very shaky knees, we returned to our hotel for showers and breakfast and set off to our next destination. 

We had discussed that no matter what, we were going to arrange our own accommodation and so we asked our driver to take us to the coast to a place called Soka.  We stayed at this fairly nice hotel which had the best view, looking right out onto the ocean! The next morning we drove to Tanah Lot which is in the western coast of Bali and is a little miniature island that is dedicated to a temple. 92% of the Balinese are Hindus and are extremely religious. Their temples are very sacred to them, and they give daily offerings wherever they are. The island temple was very beautiful but was littered with hundreds of tourists, majority being the Balinese themselves. We then got dropped off at a hotel that I had booked online in the same town we stayed at when we first arrived, Sanur. As soon as we got to the hotel we both just had this yearning to instead go back to our old hotel, The Ari Putri. We wanted something familiar I think and also our friends that we met (the two retired couples haha) were still there-we had been exchanging emails. Go ahead, laugh but we are old souls and enjoy the company of experienced travellers more so then young, rowdy, pups. Yes, I know...we are 90 year olds! Anyways, we decided to try and get a room at the Ari Putri and luckily they had a few left. We immediately went and met our friends as the pool and told them all about our travels (they had given us all the recommendations). I showed them my bite and it was like my parents or grandparents we worried about me. It was the sweetest thing. They asked all about it and wanted to make sure I was getting the correct treatment. One retired couple talked to another and to another and finally random old retirees were coming up to me and asking if I was okay and wanted to hear what happened. It was the sweetest thing!

 We had one final day in Bali and had decided that after 2 weeks we had worked up enough courage to hop on a 'motorcycle' aka scooter and try to manage our way through the craziness of all the traffic. The drivers, whether in a car, truck or scooter are insane and do not follow road rules at all. They weave in and out of the 'lanes' and the bikes even drive up on the sidewalks! But, we decided we could handle it and rented a bike for $8 for the day. We quickly got the hang of it and fit right in (except for all the looks and laughs we got from passer-bys)!! We drove to Nusa Dua, the upper class resort area and to Uluwatu, a giant set of cliffs. However, once we got to uluwatu, they warned us right away of the monkeys and immediately we both decided it wasn't a good idea. I had already gotten bite and we both weren't willing to risk it. We spent the day just riding around the southern coast and had so much fun! 

This little tidbit is not known to Jordan's mom but, I figure she'll eventually find out so here it goes...We were 2 minutes away from the hotel and got pulled over by cops running a ride check. They were only pulling over people on bikes. I had been driving and when asked for my licence I realized that stupidly I didn't have it on me-we only had Jordan's. They also asked for my international drivers licence...I don't have one. They took us down this side street and started writing out a ticket. I was not a happy camper at all because I kept saying I have my licence, it's just down the street...I can go and get it. They of course would have none of it and continued writing out the ticket for not having my licence on me. I had thought that the ticket was for $240 (so I really wasn't happy) but then realized it was only $24 US and that he was not going to issue a ticket for not having an international drivers licence..so we payed it on the spot (which I'm 100% sure just went right into his personal pocket) and went on our way!  It was an experience for sure!

The next am we headed to the airport around 6 am and took off to Singapore for a four hour layover and then a hour and fifty minute flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).