What's not to love about Bali? We got here a week and a half ago and it's been one happy, silly adventure thus far; upon arriving, we met up with J's friend Claude and his friends Vic and Caroline, two sublime Singaporean sisters he had been traveling with in weeks prior. They went home and we took Claude, and together the three of us have been rolling along our Indonesian odyssey in the highest of spirits. It's a little more fun with three, I think-- more stories, more laughs, more fart sounds, etc. Claude is funny and interesting, so it's been extra nice traveling with him and hearing his take on the whole lot.
Bali is... Amazing! We rented someone's car for a week and we've been cruising all over the island-- to the southern coast, rife with obnoxious Australian tourists and surfer-dude culture; to lush and leafy Ubud, where vicious monkeys beg for bananas and beautiful Balinese women peddle handicrafts and suckling pig; to the mountains, to the dry and rocky western coast, where the mountains loom over the ocean and the scuba diving is world-class... We went everywhere and got lost everywhere and it was all a gas. The landscape changed so drastically along our course, especially for such a small island. One minute we were up along the green edge of a volcanic crater, looking out and over endless slopes of idyllic rice paddies and stretches of jungle.. And then half an hour later, all the trees disappeared and there were kilometers of arid grassland and burning piles of leaves and black volcanic rock. J taught Claude how to drive stickshift on the left side of the road (just like he taught me in the land down under!) and even that was fun, until Claude got behind the wheel, when it became a death ride in this poor random guy's personal vehicle (I can just hear J now: "It's okay! If we lose the car, we lose the car!") Practice makes perfect, Cloudy!
We put our new AOW scuba licenses to good use in Tulemban, and saw every single amazing sea creature in the Java Sea-- rays, turtles, sharks, big bumphead parrotfish and cute little box fish and funny little shrimps that cleaned your cuticles and climbed into your mouth and cleaned your teeth if you let them. What a strange delight! We dove at night in the USS Liberty shipwreck (originally beached after WWII, but sunk officially to sea in the great eruption of 1963) which was eerie and bad ass in every way.
What else may be said? They call Bali the "island of the gods" and they're not far off their mark. People here are so warm and friendly and quick to smile, and the women and girls are all beautiful and radiant with their natural allure. Nudity's not a big deal here (the rest of Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, and naturally nude=lewd) so we've had the pleasure of seeing lots of brown bodies in all their glory. Old ladies walk down the road with baskets of fruit on their heads and wrinkly bare breasts to their navals, all skin and toothless grins... We went rafting down a winding river, and around every corner there were nude men and women just bathing and splashing and having fun. Near the end, our boat was ambushed by a large group of maybe 15 nude little boys who scrambled aboard and nearly overthrew our guide-- probably somebody's big brother. Hearing their peals of laughter, seeing their joyous leaps into the water and watching them climb over the stone walls and scamper around with their little wieners bouncing like cashew fruits against their sleek brown bodies... It was a sight to behold, hysterically funny and heart warming in every way.
Bali has been a major highlight of our big trip, and I feel so lucky to have seen so much of it, to have found Claude along the way, to have had such an easy and happy go of it here... We're figuring out our next move this week, and it looks like we're going to join Claude and the Sisters Woon on a journey to Borneo, Malaysia. I'd like to spend more time exploring other parts of Indonesia, but that requires a more expensive visa and besides that, Borneo has some of the most dense and colorfully populated rainforests in the world, and the boys really want to spend time with some orangutans. Can you blame them?
6:42PM
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Bali is... Amazing! We rented someone's car for a week and we've been cruising all over the island-- to the southern coast, rife with obnoxious Australian tourists and surfer-dude culture; to lush and leafy Ubud, where vicious monkeys beg for bananas and beautiful Balinese women peddle handicrafts and suckling pig; to the mountains, to the dry and rocky western coast, where the mountains loom over the ocean and the scuba diving is world-class... We went everywhere and got lost everywhere and it was all a gas. The landscape changed so drastically along our course, especially for such a small island. One minute we were up along the green edge of a volcanic crater, looking out and over endless slopes of idyllic rice paddies and stretches of jungle.. And then half an hour later, all the trees disappeared and there were kilometers of arid grassland and burning piles of leaves and black volcanic rock. J taught Claude how to drive stickshift on the left side of the road (just like he taught me in the land down under!) and even that was fun, until Claude got behind the wheel, when it became a death ride in this poor random guy's personal vehicle (I can just hear J now: "It's okay! If we lose the car, we lose the car!") Practice makes perfect, Cloudy!
We put our new AOW scuba licenses to good use in Tulemban, and saw every single amazing sea creature in the Java Sea-- rays, turtles, sharks, big bumphead parrotfish and cute little box fish and funny little shrimps that cleaned your cuticles and climbed into your mouth and cleaned your teeth if you let them. What a strange delight! We dove at night in the USS Liberty shipwreck (originally beached after WWII, but sunk officially to sea in the great eruption of 1963) which was eerie and bad ass in every way.
What else may be said? They call Bali the "island of the gods" and they're not far off their mark. People here are so warm and friendly and quick to smile, and the women and girls are all beautiful and radiant with their natural allure. Nudity's not a big deal here (the rest of Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, and naturally nude=lewd) so we've had the pleasure of seeing lots of brown bodies in all their glory. Old ladies walk down the road with baskets of fruit on their heads and wrinkly bare breasts to their navals, all skin and toothless grins... We went rafting down a winding river, and around every corner there were nude men and women just bathing and splashing and having fun. Near the end, our boat was ambushed by a large group of maybe 15 nude little boys who scrambled aboard and nearly overthrew our guide-- probably somebody's big brother. Hearing their peals of laughter, seeing their joyous leaps into the water and watching them climb over the stone walls and scamper around with their little wieners bouncing like cashew fruits against their sleek brown bodies... It was a sight to behold, hysterically funny and heart warming in every way.
Bali has been a major highlight of our big trip, and I feel so lucky to have seen so much of it, to have found Claude along the way, to have had such an easy and happy go of it here... We're figuring out our next move this week, and it looks like we're going to join Claude and the Sisters Woon on a journey to Borneo, Malaysia. I'd like to spend more time exploring other parts of Indonesia, but that requires a more expensive visa and besides that, Borneo has some of the most dense and colorfully populated rainforests in the world, and the boys really want to spend time with some orangutans. Can you blame them?
6:42PM
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
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