Bali, Indonesia – March 8th to 16th, 2018

Our Air Asia flight from Penang to Kuala Lumpur did not leave till 2:30, so we took our time packing and having lunch.  When we arrived at the airport though, the departures board was flashing, “CLOSED”. What?  Crap!  We had the time wrong.  Bill, who is not very cool in these situations, hastily made his way past the customers waiting in line to the nearest check-in counter to get us and all our luggage on board.  That was a hard NO, so to the sales counter we were sent.  No big deal, they had another flight to Kuala Lumpur that would still leave in time to get us to our connecting flight to Bali.  No big deal till they gave us the price…$500US.  That was more than we paid for the original flights all the way through to Bali.  Apparently, they would not even allow us to use the second leg of our ticket since we missed the first leg.  Bill was not happy at all, this meant we were buying 3^rd and 4^th seats on the KL to Bali leg.  Plus, we paid for extra luggage and exit row seats, and none of it transferred as a credit.  Bill kept asking why we couldn’t use our seats on the next flight, arguing in as nice a way as he could, till she finally went off to ask a supervisor.  When she returned, they had moved us to the one hour later flight to KL, no charge.  We were instructed to go to the front of the line and check in quick.  Awesome!  Good job Bill!  (of course if I hadn’t screwed up on the original departure time then none of this would have been necessary).

In Bali, we were met at the gate by a rep from Wakatobi Dive Resort, even though we were not going there for another week.  Part of their service is assisting guests through customs.  Unfortunately, Air Asia lost my bag, was this punishment for the late arrival and switched flight?  We reported the missing bag and on the other side of customs, were met by Edy, our transportation to Mia Villa.  It was almost 10pm by the time we arrived, and got the tour of our accommodations.  Our AirBnB was a true Balinese style house.  Open air living, dining, and kitchen beside a large private pool and patio.  The bedrooms were in a separate two story building, and were the only air conditioned area.  Both included a large bathroom with giant tubs.  It looks romantic, but really it was not my cup of tea.  The kitchen area specifically was too grungy for me.  With the rain and humidity, everything is damp and sticky and cleanliness is not up to scratch.  The living area was fine when there was a nice breeze but some evenings we headed to the bedroom early for air conditioning (and to escape mosquitos).  At least the bed was more comfortable than we had been getting on our other stops. Funny story…One day, as I lounged beside the pool, we heard what sounded like some kind of yard equipment next door.  White clouds started billowing over the fence, and I thought it was probably dirt being kicked up, but it just kept coming and was so thick at one point we couldn’t even see the front door.  The pool cleaning guy happened to be at our unit as this was going on, and in broken English he explained it was for mosquitos.  WTF…we were breathing mosquito spray?  Another good example of the lack of safety standards in third world countries.

This is the first time I’ve ever had luggage go missing.  All my clothes, medicine, toiletries, even my jewelry, I know…I shouldn’t pack jewelry in checked luggage.  I just kept coming up with more expensive items that were in that bag, and I started making a list.  Luckily, they found it in Kuala Lumpur and it was delivered about 24 hours later, with everything intact.  Yea!!

We stayed in Seminyak, on the southwest side of Bali, about 10 minutes’ walk from the beach.  The sights in Bali are spread out in every direction, and while they are really not very far away, it takes a while to get to them due to the traffic and the crappy roads.  We hired Edy to drive us, our first time to hire a private car and driver (what we could have saved by just renting a car wasn’t worth the hassle of navigating, driving in the crazy traffic, looking for a gas station, …).  For $50US, he was ours for 10+ hours and drove us wherever we wanted to go, and out of that $50 he paid for his nice SUV, gas, tolls, and parking.  His English was good and he acted as our guide and escort and took pictures of us when we let him.

Our first trip was to the Ubud area, about 20 miles northeast, but it took us almost 90 minutes to drive there.  We stopped about half way to watch a Barong Dance.  It was actually more a play than a dance, but with limited dialog, none of it in English and all of it hard to hear over the music.

The Barong is a classic story of good triumphing over evil.  The good spirit – Barong, is a large lion type creature, and Rangda, an evil witch with long fingernails and droopy breasts.  It was accompanied by a gamelan ensemble including drums, gongs, and metallophones (like a xylophone with metal bars and played with varying sizes of metal hammers).

From Ubud, we went white-water rafting down the Ayung River.  After gearing up, we all loaded into the back of a truck for our drive upriver.  From there we trooped across fields and went down 250 steps to the riverbank.  The steps down were big and I was under pressure to keep up with the group, so for the next two days I could barely walk after pounding down all those steps.  Of course, we had to climb back up them after the rafting.  It was probably only level 2 rapids, but still fun and pretty, with really tall banks.  They also had pit stops along the way, so in the Texas river rafting fashion, I drank a few Bintang beer along the way.

After showers and a late lunch, we headed to Pura Taman Ayun, the main temple of the Mengwi kingdom.  It has lovely lawns and gardens, in the front section leading to the royal water temple, built in 1634.  I think it is considered a water temple because it is surrounded by a moat.  Inside the moat are many alters, pools with lotus blossoms, and meru’s (multi-tiered thatched shrines).

Our final stop was Goa Gajah – The Elephant Cave.  Famous for the carved rock face, you enter the cave through the mouth of a demon.  Once inside the cave is small and T shaped, and we were choking on the incense.  The relics were very decayed, but they are supposed to be symbolic of the phallic symbol of the Hindu god Shiva, and his female counterpart the Yoni.  Outside the cave are two square bathing pools with waterspouts held by six female figures.  Historian believe they date back to the 11^th century.

We got back to the villa after 8pm.  It was a long day of sightseeing with about half of the time spent in the SUV getting from place to place.  Sitting in the car that long wasn’t great for my back so Bill was determined to get me a massage (rather than just give her a massage, I thought she needed professional help).  I am hesitant to go into a massage place that I don’t know so Bill agreed to get a massage as well.  I also insisted on checking reviews first.  The first place we chose had great reviews so we walked over after dinner.  However, when we got there, Bill noticed a sign that said they only had male masseuses, so he said he wouldn’t getting a massage but that I could still go if I wanted.  I think the guy at the ‘front desk’ was a little insulted by Bill’s reaction because he said his massage parlor was ‘not that kind of massage parlor’ (not sure what it might say about me but I’m not comfortable with a semi naked rub down from a guy.  Actually, I was not particularly happy with the idea of Dessa getting one either).  I decided I’d rather get the couples massage so we found the next best rated place in the neighborhood and headed over.  We got great 90-minute massages for about $10 each, and I went back by myself after that.

After a day off to relax and enjoy our pool, Edy picked us up to cover the northwest area.  Our primary destination was Tanah Lot Temple,

an ancient offshore Hindu temple perched on a rocky outcrop. Legend has it that the temple was established by a high priest, Nirantha, who shared his teachings with the villagers.  When the village chief tried to dispel Nirantha he resisted by shifting a large rock he meditated on out to sea, while transforming his sashes into sea snakes to guard at its base.  That convinced the chief to vow allegiance.  The snakes still dwell in crevices around a natural fresh water fountain spout that provides the holy water for all the temples in the area. Only Hindu’s are allowed to enter the temple.

Tanah Lot however, was not our first stop of the day.  Bill had sent Edy a list of things he wanted to see in the area.  One of which was a Lake Temple that was in the area of Tanah Lot.  However, something got lost in translation and Edy took us to THE Lake Temple – Ulun Danu Temple.  While Ulun Danu was something we initially thought of going to see it was too far away so Bill had found this other lake temple.  It took us over two hours to drive the 30 miles to get there and neither of us was particularly happy with the mix up (Tanah Lot was only 10 miles and 40 minutes from our Villa).  Ulun Danu was nice but not worth that long a drive.  Floating on a lake, surrounded by mountains are four thatched roof temples of varying sizes, surrounded by shrines, including a megalithic sarcophagus and stone tablet.  It was a stormy day with fog shrouding the mountain on the far side of the lake so a dramatic photo op.  The nice thing about temples out in the water is that at least they are not crawling with tourists messing up our pics J (the downside of this particular temple was that the locals had decided to try to make it a little more family friendly so they installed cartoonish statues around the grounds including frogs by the temples on the water and even Sponge Bob in the gardens).

From Ulun Danu, we headed over to the Tegallalang Rice Terraces.  Another long drive but a visit to a rice terrace is a highly rated thing to do in Bali, so much so, that the locals had blocked off the roads into their farming community so that they could charge entry fees for tourists to drive by their fields.

Next, we finally made it to Tanah Lot which was impressive but we were both worn out from the driving so we didn’t even hike down to the temple (I know it sounds weird to be worn out from sitting in a car that someone else is driving but what can I tell yau).  The tide was coming in so we couldn’t have gotten that close even if we had hiked down and of course we wouldn’t have been able to enter the temple anyway.  Our last stop was the Tengenungan Waterfall.  It was pretty and normally we would have been up for a hike down and around the waterfall but again we settled for photos from the top.  What should have been an enjoyable half day trip turned into another 11-hour marathon that felt kind of like work.  This time we were probably in the car for almost 8 hours (if this is what it’s like to be a photo journalist, then we’ll stick to being amateurs – not that anyone is offering us jobs as photo journalists but still …)

After another off day to recover, we girded our loins and struck out for our final Bali trip to the Uluwatu area to see the cliff temple of the same name and the Kecak Fire Dance.  Along the way, Bill asked Edy to take us to the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park.  Trip Advisor gave the park 4.4 stars on over 7K reviews.  We have no idea why.  The highlight of the park is 3 large statues:  the first is a large statue of a Buddha; the second is the head of Guarda, a mythical bird, and the third is a half complete statue of the God Wisnu riding on Guarda.

They’ve been building the park for 20 years but with little to no progress for 16 of them due to lack of funds.  The Wisnu/Guarda statue will be 120 meters tall when (and if) it gets completed (the Empire State building is 93 meters tall).  We actually saw it at a distance when we were walking along the Seminyak beach which is about 11 miles away (it helps that this is a fairly flat part of the island and there is nothing else taller than a tree in the area).  Beyond the statues they offer some cultural shows, we sat through one for about 15 minutes before moving on and very little else.  Bill suggested that the reviewers were all locals being paid to provide good reviews so that the tourists would fund the remaining development.  Bottom line, the next time any of you are in Bali save the $10 US per head.

After some more driving we made it to Uluwatu Temple.  It’s cliff-side location coupled with iconic Bali sunsets make it a top photo op recommendation.  The temple itself is only a small meru and it is actually a bit of a challenge to get a good photo.  At the same complex they have an amphitheater where they perform the Kecak Fire Dance.  Again, this is more a play than a dance complete with gods, goddesses, witches, monkeys, and other strange characters battling good against evil.  The dance features human vocals in place of the gamelan instruments, with a troupe of several dozen bare chested male dancers on stage (Dessa especially hated that part), waving and shaking their arms while chanting “chak” choruses (hence the first part of the name and at one point in the performance they light a ring of dried grass on fire and then kick it out and onto the watchers in the first row, covering the second part).  It was quite enjoyable with an especially good performance by the white monkey and the advertised sunset was phenomenal (as you can see in our pictures).

Spending all that time riding around in the car was not my idea of fun and we definitely had temple burnout, even though the Balinese temples were different from what we had seen previously.  I am also a little drained from so much time in poorer countries.  I am weary of the lack of good food, and the general level of grime, pollution and litter.  This is probably going to make me sound bad, but I miss the conveniences and standards we all enjoy at home.  Bottom line, I would have to give Bali 2.5 stars, mainly because the sights took so much time to get to (In general, touring Bali felt a little like Gilligan’s Island.  It was supposed to be a ‘3-hour tour’ but instead lasted forever with brief moments of entertainment and long stretches of unpleasant boredom).

 

You can find all of our Bali photos Here  and our short video montage Here

Next Stop – Wakatobi and hopefully great diving.

 

Post Author: Dessa (with editorial comments by Bill in Italics)