Bali

We got in to Bali around 4AM so we went straight to bed, woke up for our free breakfast at the hotel – more fried rice and eggs, then went right back to sleep.  When we finally got up, we asked for directions to a grocery store and on the way we found a place where we could get a 90 minute couple’s massage for $10 each.  We went for it!  Nothing could beat the $2 massage in Banaue but was quite good and ended with a much needed neck adjustment and delicious ginger tea.  After that we were ready for a sunset stroll on Kuta beach to dip our toes in the warm western shores of the Pacific.

The following morning we met Leanne and Andy at breakfast, a nice British couple from a spillover town (suburb) of London.  After a nice chat they agreed to join us in renting mopeds (shh, don’t tell our mothers) to drive up to Tanah Lot Temple even though neither had ever driven a moped before.  Rachel rode on the back of mine which was a life saver since she was free to read directions and look for street signs (when they were available) while I navigated traffic and got used to the idea of driving on the left side of the road.

Driving in Bali is a little tricky but didn’t seem nearly as chaotic as Manila.  While speed limits, lanes and sometimes even the direction of traffic was still relatively flexible, at least everyone stopped at red lights.  I generally tried to fall into a pack of mopeds or behind a car but the packs would split and weave through traffic and one time when I stopped behind a car at a red light a cop blew his whistle at me and waved me to pass the car  on the shoulder and move up to the front with the other bikes.  When in Rome…

To be fair, there’s a lot to be said for this kind of system.  Everyone is very attentive to their driving.  When you come up behind another driver to pass you give a quick beep of the horn to let them know you’re coming so they don’t pull in front of you.  The road is used very efficiently.  When there’s extra space on the road it’s always used.  It also makes it especially efficient to be a moped driver leading to more people in mopeds and fewer in cars.

On our way to Tanah Lot the three of us got pulled over among a pack of other bikers.  I’m happy I had my international drivers license and all the rest of my paperwork. Leanne and Andy only had copies of theirs and one cop insisted that they pay 500,000 IDR bribe (about $50 US) to make the ticket go away and get back their registration back. They didn’t have that much even if they’d wanted to pay it, so the cops kept the registration for their bikes.  Luckily when we got back, the rental place (that affirmed the copies should have sufficed) offered to drive to the capital to get it back for them for only 300,000 IDR.

Tanah Lot is an interesting temple.  It’s built about 75 feet off the coast so worshipers have to wade through waste deep water and large waves to get to it.  Tourists were not allowed out to the temple but there were some good places to get pictures and to watch the surfers ride in seemingly way too close to the rocks.

The following day our new British friends joined us on a tour of some Bali highlights.  We got the tour through Bina, a former classmate of our friend Willi.  Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out to have Bina do the tour but he sent us in the capable hands of Made, his tour guide.  We got to see people making silver jewelry by hand and saw their shop with the most intricate silver work I’ve ever seen.  We watched people batiking – adding a wax pattern evenly to both sides of the fabric then dipping in one color at a time and repeating until the pattern is complete and they boil off the wax leaving an incredible intricate multi colored design.

We continued on to have an Indonesian lunch buffet with a view of a volcano and to see the rice terraces, which weren’t as large and impressive as Banaue but still left me wondering how they held together since these didn’t even have stone to hold them.  The highlight though was the Coffee Luwak plantation.  Made walked us through the plantation, showing us huge ginger flowers and picking us fresh snake skin fruit (tart and somewhat astringent) before we finally ended at a gazebo where we tasted 6 different teas, a hot cocoa, a few flavored coffee and for an additional fee the famed Coffee Luwak.  We even got to help roast coffee beans over an open fire!

For those who are unfamiliar, Cofee Luwak is the most expensive beverage in the world.  An animal called the civet eats ripe coffee fruit but can’t digest the hard beans in the middle.  The beans malt and ferment in their belly and are then passed on to the forrest floor where workers collect, clean and roast the beans.  The workers refer to it as “cat-poo-chino”.  Rachel wasn’t fond of it but Colin thought it was especially smooth and had quite a nice complex flavor.  Not quite nice enough to spend $1/gram but very good none the less.  After an exciting day we were ready for bed.

The following day Rachel and I rented mopeds again to drive up to the artsy enclave of Ubud.  We stayed 2 nights in a beautiful little bungalow that was just a block off the main drag but once you walked down their steps it was like you’d stepped into the jungle.  The family running the place couldn’t have been more thoughtful.  After learning Rachel liked her coffee sweeter than Colin, the next day when we ordered iced tea, they sweetened Rachel’s a little more.  After learning it was our honeymoon, they swapped out our plain sheets for fancy ones and the next breakfast the banana’s on our amazing stuffed banana waffles were cut into hearts.  A lovely place to stay!

While we were in Ubud we met up with Dave and Janice, a great couple from Oregon we’d met the previous day on our tour.  Dave had promised to show us his favorite spice dealer if we could get to Ubud and he didn’t disappoint.  He took us to the basement of the Ubud market and introduced us to Wayanne who had a wide selection of spices at incredible prices. We wished we had more room in our bags!

On Valentines day we took a silver making class.  Each of us had chosen a design that the teacher advised against since it seemed too complicated for a beginner but both came out great!  The most interesting part was when we needed a small sphere for the design.  I looked around for the spheres but there were none.  The teacher simply cut off a small chunk of silver sheet and melted it under the welding torch at which point it pulled itself together into a sphere.  Amazing.

While in Ubud we couldn’t miss the Sacred Monkey Forest.  This is a wooded park in Ubud with 3 temples in it along with, you guessed it, a TON of wild monkeys.  The monkeys were very curious and were not at all shy.  We had been warned in advance to not buy the bananas at the gate unless you wanted to be swarmed but I assure you that you need no bananas for that.  We were in the forest for less than 5 minutes before the first one climbed on Colin’s back and tried to get into his pack.  Fortunately we’d thought ahead and locked the bag.  When the monkey couldn’t get in, it decided to groom him, initially trying to pull off the mole on the back of his neck but fortunately giving up and trying to find any lice or ticks in his hair before hopping off to find a tastier visitor.  At one point there were 3 monkeys on Colin and 4 on Rachel.  It was certainly a wild and crazy day.

On the moped drive back we were hit with a massive rain storm but kept on trucking all the way home.  It was quite a lot of excitement.  For more on what we did the following few days see the Bali Belly post below.  Hope you’re all having a fun February!  Stay warm; we sure are!