Bali | Round the world

Additionally on Bali there are green rice fields, the blue-turquoise sea, black and “white” beaches, vulcanos and an astonishingly large number of motor bikes.

Tirtagangga Water Palace

We never heard so many roosters do their cockadoodledoo: when one starts, 5 more go along. When they are done it all starts over. We assume that this is mainly due to the way the fighting cocks are “stored”, they are placed separately in upside-down baskets along the road. That probably makes them go nuts. We’ve got a recording of the whole procedure, if anyone’s interested.

Regarding transportation there are about 5 motor bikes per car on Bali. If you also count the number of people that are being transported that way the ratio would be even higher. A small family easily fits on a bike (child stands in the front, father and mother on the seat), but also 4 to 5 people are not uncommon. Also palettes of eggs (which are layered up to 1 meter in height) seem to be perfectly suitable for transport via motor bike.

There are as many dogs on Bali as there are people. Rumor has it that most of them are not stray dogs but belong to someone. We doubt that. They lay at front porches, on the street, sleep or dose in the sun, or are on their way to meet other dogs only to stroll down the beach or to ?URoerescue?UR? a rooster from his basket in order to play with him a little. Or they feed on the offerings that are layed on the front porch of each shop or house.

A typical sidewalk in Ubud

We practically live in a rice field

Hanging up our mosquito net has become a well-trained stunt for the circus, but apart from that we don’t do much sport besides swimming and snorkeling. Except that we did an Eco Cycling Tour from Ubud where we mostly went downhill except the last half-hour uphill. Especially impressive was the start of the tour up on the rim of the crater of the vulcano Gunung Batur (though we were brought up by bus ;)). After that we went to a coffee plantation where we were able to taste the most expensive coffee in the world for 60.000 IDR (ca. 5 Euro). However we determined for ourselves that the difference in taste by the bean going through the intestines of the animal Luwak is hardly recognizable.

At the crator rim

After Ubud we went to Amed for two days, on the north-east coast of Bali. We rented a very nice and small bungalow right on the beach, equipped with a very impressive view of the highest and holiest vulcano/mountain on Bali: Gunung Agung. Amed is quite nice for snorkelling, although the beach is not really well for sun bathing but nice to look at: the sand comes from lava and is therefore black. This made us think of the good pastry at home with poppy.

On the left our Mini-Bungalow, on the right Gunung Agung

From Amed we also did a small trip that we “organized” on the go: we started our way toa Japanese ship wreck 9 kilometers east in our optimistic way by foot, then we took a ride sitting on some oxygen bottles on a lorry, and finally used a bemo to get there. On our way back we first walked and then rode on the passenger seat of another small lorry. By that we proved our travel guide wrong that insisted that you need your own car or taxi to get from A to B on the coast of Amed.

The last three days we went back to Candidasa to relax, have good food and stay in a nice room before our busy schedule in Australia commences.

Yesterday and the day before we went on a motor bike (yes, for 3 Euro a day I through made an exception to my principles) to White Sand Beach, 9 kilometers north of Candidasa. Amazing beach and very good for snorkeling. The only downside was that my fear of waves which I developed on the beach of Krk (?) was proved right. You don’t want to see my scratches on the skin.

We enjoyed our two weeks on Bali very much. Originally we wanted to spend only 12 days but changed that to 14 when it showed that all reasonably priced accomodation in Darwin was already booked because of their Darwin festival (the Hilton was not an option). So now we almost change directly from plane to camper 🙂

After Kuala Lumpur (where we found the sunset and the view of the Petronas Towers from the Skybar of the Trader’s Hotel quite spectacular) and the previous main port of Malaysia in Melaka (the Dutch* succeeded after an initial bloom to mismanage the city quite badly and the British concentrated more on Georgetown and Singapore later on), we flew on to Bali on Saturday.

From the Low Cost Carrier Terminal in Kuala Lumpur. An extraordinary experience. Starting with the bus ride there, including 15 minutes of refuelling one kilometer ahead of our destination. Then we were brought to the further away KLIA, only to realize that nobody wanted to go there. Or at least didn’t know at the time. Three Chinese women in the first row (and honestly you can’t really blame them) didn’t get the weird system of this airport with its two large terminals that are a 20 minutes drive apart from each other. It was also interesting to walk 800 meters along and onto the runway, without really knowing if we were walking to the right plane at all. Low cost at its best.

By new we are sitting very relaxed at the pool at Hotel Genggong (thanks to Lux & Kathrin for the tip) and just do nothing 🙂

*Apropos Dutch: we Austrians tend to come across our Northern neighbors (=Germans) a lot while on vacaction but this time the amount of Dutch we came across was almost frightening. Who would have thought that after so many years of colonization that people still want to go there so much. On the other hand we had no explanation for the great number of French.