As many of you know, I travel for work - usually one or two weeks a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. One of the perks of being on the road, though, is that I earn "rewards" for being loyal to various airlines and hotels. So, when our two year wedding anniversary was getting close I started looking at my options.
I found some cheap award fares to Tahiti (hello - STILL dying to go to Bora Bora or Moorea or both). Unfortunately, the hotel program where most of my points are collected doesn't have any hotels in that area. Besides, I'm hellbent on staying in one of the over the water huts where I can just lift off a lid and feed the fish beneath the hut. They are a bit on the expensive side, though, so I had to pass on that trip this time around. So, then I considered Fiji...until I came across information about their political situation at the moment and decided I would prefer spending time somewhere I wouldn't feel unsafe. So, casting around a little more I came up with Bali.
Aaaahhhh....Bali. Jen has been there a couple of times and loves it. And it pretty much fit my criterion: 1) not in the US 2) tropical 3) cheap - at least once you get there. After a few weeks of not-so-patiently calling the airline to see if I could snag award tickets for Todd and I, I finally came across an agent who worked some magic and secured us round trip business class tickets. A few keystrokes later I had our hotel reserved and voila! A vacation that's about as close to free (at least for hotel and airfare) as you can get.
We departed on May 3rd. Our intial flight was to Tokyo and it took 13 hours. 13 very loooong hours. Sure, we had movies, magazines, books, iPods, etc - but 13 hours on an airplane is a very long time. Especially when you consider we had a 3-hour layover and then had another flight of roughly 7-8 hours. The idea was that we were supposed to keep ourselves awake on the flight from Tokyo to Bali. I failed miserably and probably slept a good 4 or 5 hours. It worked out, though - we landed at 10:30 pm in Denpasar and after we got to the hotel I still managed to sleep through the night. Of course, we were awake pretty early.
We spent our first day mostly piddling around. We laid out by the pool and looked through various touristy brochures and tried to plan the rest of our week. There were lots of water sports activities available - the only one we ended up trying (guess I'll save parasailing for another trip) was jetskiing on the open ocean which was a lot of fun - other than Todd almost breaking his toe, which is typical. Wouldn't be a vacation without him getting injured at some point. But that's okay. I managed to get bit by a spider so we called it even. That night we went to Seminyak for dinner and ate at a neat open air place facing the beach. It was a nice romantic atmosphere - lots of trees with lights wrapped around and the sound of waves breaking. The food was interesting considering it was supposed to be Italian. I'm not certain what I would have called it, but Italian was not what came to mind when I looked at their menu. I ordered a frozen drink and after drinking about half of it remembered I shouldn't be having anything with ice in it unless I was at the hotel. So then I spent the remainder a little worried about potential side effects. Not that it stopped me from finishing my drink. I made the next drink a glass of wine, though.
The next day, we went into Kuta intent on wandering through the various shops. I quickly determined that I wasn't a bit fan of the "hard sell" in Kuta. Vendors are everywhere and they will follow you trying to sell you something even after you tell them no. I tend to be a bit on the reserved side so I wasn't thrilled at their invasion of my personal space. It didn't matter, though, because after we had been walking about 15 minutes we got suckered into going to listen to a "60 minute" timeshare presentation. I blame Todd. I rely on him to be the hardass and this time he got sucked in - we were supposed to be getting a prize which could be anything from $1000 to a camcorder to local discount coupons. (Guess which one we got.) Our 60 minute presentation turned into 3 hours - partly because I talk a lot when given the opportunity and partly because we apparently fit the salesman's target market and he really didn't want to let us go. We were treated to a free lunch, though, and after we turned them down they put us in a taxi back to Kuta. I think we managed to walk around another 30 minutes before ducking into a bar to cool off and debate our next move - which was back to the hotel.
Day 3 we went on a day-long tour which included stops at a butterfly farm, a temple near the top of one of the mountains, visits to a silver-jewelry-making artist colony and a store where we could see how batik fabric is made. This included lunch at a tourist trap buffet where *gasp* there was no western food to be found. I'm not particularly adventurous when it comes to food - my idea of adventure was trying grilled bacon instead of fried at breakfast. So I was a bit dismayed to find myself faced with an assortment of spring rolls and shishkabob fish. I loaded my plate with fried rice and rolls and started thinking about dinner. Our guide during this trip was a wealth of information about the island. Despite his incredibly youthful appearance it turned out he was actually in his late 30s - this was true of many of the people we encountered.
We asked him about everything from the swastika that we noticed all over the island - we knew that it had an original use/meaning that had nothing to do with Hitler's use of it in the Nazi party, but we didn't really know WHAT that meaning was. Turns out it is very common in the form of Hinduism found in Bali and is for good luck. Although Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, over 90% of the Balinese population is Hindu. Everywhere we went there were signs of their religion with the most easily distinguishable being the daily offerings of flowers and food. You could find these everywhere from taxi dashboards to road intersections.
Another popular topic was traffic. The biggest road in Bali is a four lane - but since lanes tend to be "optional" it was possible to be 6 deep across the road. Most folks drive mopeds or something similar - the majority of the full size vehicles on the road were taxis or shuttles for tourists. And let me tell you, I always thought two bodies was the maximum of what could possibly fit on a moped (or anything else with two wheels). I stand corrected. At highest count we saw four people squeezed onto a moped. A child on the driver's lap, with another child turned backwards on the 2nd rider's lap. And do you think you need a car or truck to haul something? Nope. I saw mopeds with tires piled on them so you couldn't even see the driver - don't ask me how it was done. I have no clue. I saw mopeds with the 2nd passenger riding "side-saddle" and holding onto piles of wooden birdhouses so big they wouldn't have fit in my old sports car. Talk about ingenuity and a can-do spirit.
That night dinner was spent on the beach at Jimbaran Bay watching the sunset. Todd had a grilled lobster and I (of course) had fish and chips. Everyone has made fun of me for traveling to the other side of the world and ordering fish and chips. But you know what? Other than my Great Aunt Bonnie's fried catfish, that was probably the best fish I've ever had. What can I say? I am from McCurtain County, ya'll.
The next day was spent "doing nothing". We hung out around the pool of the hotel, and then walked the beach to find lunch at another one of the resorts down the way. I also played my very first game of chess - and it was using a life-size set on the grounds of the hotel. It was easier to learn than I expected (although I realize there are more rules/strategy to it then I'm aware of - will have to do some research) and one of our purchases while we were there was a hand made wooden chess set. We bought it as an afterthought at a market stall just down the road from our hotel. It isn't as nice as some of the other sets we had seen, but I venture to say that we couldn't buy a plastic set here for what we gave for that one.
On Friday, we hired a driver and made our way to Ubud. The driver had a few suggestions for us, which included watching a local Balinese dance performance. It truly was very interesting, although I found the way the female dancers used their eyes a bit...disturbing. They widen their eyes and tilt their heads and then look from the corner of their eyes - it makes them appear a bit psychotic. But still fascinating and very beautiful. In Ubud, we HAD to go to the monkey forest and I of course forced Todd to get a bunch of bananas for me so I could feed the monkeys. Before you go in, there is a list of warnings about the monkeys and how you should respond to any advances from them. Suffice it to say that I was on full alert, fearful I would be attacked at any moment by a roaming hoard of wild monkeys. Which is not what happened. The closest I got to "being attacked" was when a little monkey ran up and grabbed ahold of my pants - before he could get any bright ideas like oh, using my body as a tree, I simply tossed a banana down for him. Don't get me wrong, I know people have been bitten and scratched while there but if you are cautious you can avoid MOST of that (recalling Jen's tale of a monkey landing on her...).
We also wandered around the market in Ubud and ended up purchasing a beautiful painting in one of the stalls.It still boggles my mind how inexpensive everything is in Bali. I know that poverty is incredibly high there, but it doesn't come across as it has in other impoverished areas I have visited. In general, the people are so warm and friendly and they work hard for what they have. I don't need to state here what we paid, but we left the vendor very happy - and we will end up paying more to have it restretched onto a frame than we paid for the canvas itself.
As part of our trip, we also had lunch on the crater edge of a volcano. It was very pretty - but I was faced with yet another tourist trap buffet. This time they did have a few made to order items and I got a club sandwich. It wasn't like any other club sandwich I ever had, but I ate it regardless.
Saturday was more lounging around the hotel pool followed by dinner in Kuta at the Hard Rock Cafe. I determined that it would probably be safe to have ice there and proceeded to happily down a few frozen concoctions. Sadly, we were both too pooped to stay until the live music came on and we headed back to our hotel and a really decent hour. (We were supposed to be staying up late since our flight the following night was at midnight.)
Sunday was our final day. It consisted of more lounging, followed by a hot game of chess. I haven't managed to win yet, but hey, I'm still learning. Following a late lunch, we wandered down to a local market and visited some grocery stores in search of Cherry Ripe bars for Jen. We walked the beach back to the hotel and had drinks in the club. We determined that we wanted to be freshly showered for our long flights home so we splurged on treatments in the hotel spa (you can get a massage outside of the hotel for literally $6 - so paying a little bit more at the hotel is indeed a splurge). Todd opted for reflexology while I indulged in a facial in the hopes that it would suck all the sunblock out of my pores. Then it was off to the airport and back home.
Of course, there was a lot more to it then that - I have well over 200 pictures to prove it. Would I go back? Yes, absolutely. Will I go back? Well, that's a question mark. The world is a pretty big place and I'm interested in seeing most of it. But who knows, maybe one of these years will see us making a return trip.
