Our hotel was so nice, and for only $3.50 a night!
They set up this jungle in the courtyard with beautiful tropical trees and flowers everywhere, as well as a temple and Hindu architecture.
It certainly was beautiful, but I was surprised when we arrived to learn that we had only a cold water shower, which was literally just a shower-head sticking out of the wall in the bathroom. The lock to my room was broken so we had to pretend to lock it and take all our valuables with us. When I decided to take a shower after a humid, sweaty day, I found that there were hundreds of ants infested in there. But only for $3.50! haha, oh and free banana pancakes and fruit in the morning too.
This shows the average scene of what shops in Kuta look like on the street. The vendors sit there all day waiting for tourists to come in and show interest. All of Kuta seems to run on the industry of tourism and that's it. So if they can't get you to buy 2 Bintang shirts, they may not have enough money to eat that day. *Bintang is Indonesian beer that they pride themselves on and actually is pretty good. They sell the shirts EVERYWHERE for tourists,* Sometimes I'd walk into a shop and a child or woman or whoever would just be lying on the floor, sometimes sleeping. I thought this was weird, and then realized that it's because the whole family stays at the shop all day, and some seem to maybe live in their shops. They're open from early in the morning to early in the morning when people are coming back from the disco-techs, still just sitting there waiting. Americans could never work in that industry-every time someone would walk by we'd be so antsy to get them in our store, and sitting in front of a shop for the entire day would be crazy. But Balinese do it, every day.
Graffiti and motorbikes everywhere!
This was the coolest "Transport!" but we didn't get to use it. These pictures are right in front of Kuta beach at sunset.
My friend's hand got in the way of the picture, but it actually looks like he's opening the door to heaven or something, with the sun so bright right there.
This is just a pretty Temple on one of the main roads in Kuta. Temples and Palaces are everywhere and the Hindu religion dictates the Balinese's lives. 90% of Bali is Hindu, 10% Buddhist even though the majority of Indonesia is Buddhist.
Offerings to the gods in the streets.
Kite's for sale. We were talking to someone and they said that they have those Kite Competitions like in the book/movie "The Kite Runner" and I thought that was so cool! I bought one that I have yet to fly, but it's a colorful dragon and I think it'll be the first decoration in my room in my apartment at school!
This is a frequent scene all over Bali. This woman is leaving an offering to the gods. They do this multiple times a day, I noticed it in the morning, at noontime, and in the evening, but some do it even more frequently than that. I thought the offerings were beautiful. They would make them out of only natural things like thick leaves, flowers, etc. and would leave a little piece of food on top too (usually a cracker). They'd put them anywhere- in front of their shop, in the street, on top of a statue, on a ledge in their shop, on the beach, etc. I thought it was interesting too that they don't care if you step on the offering or kick it by accident or anything. It's a process where they put out more and more every day, and you can see the progression with the old, dried up offerings in the middle of the road or by a curb, shriveled up, with fresh offerings right near it.
Kuta was great fun, but definitely crazy and not a relaxing place. We explored, did some shopping, surfed for a whole day, went to a disco-tech, and swam in two hotel pools (one of which wasn't ours) but it was really pretty cool with fountains and an under water bar (like when we had our family vacation to Jamaica). It was crazy fun, but a place where you either love it or hate it because it's so busy. I had a good time, but didn't love it and was ready to leave when we did.
Our next stop was my favorite place we visited, Ubud. It is the cultural and arts center of Bali, where everyone is a skilled craftsman or a performer.
This is a huge lizard statue that was right outside our accommodations, the Dewa Bungalows. There were actually a lot of huge lizard statues in Ubud, most in front of or inside of temples/palaces.
This is a beautiful offering that was inside our hotel/bungalow place.
The sunset was beautiful and I was looking for a place to really see it. I ended up standing on a pool chair and trying to get a good picture at least, failing. A man who worked there saw me and brought me up to this secret little window where the view was absolutely amazing. It was so nice to be there by myself and just be able to stand there and realize how lucky I am that I could be there in that totally different place and culture and look at an amazing sunset. Here are some pictures I took up there before I showed my friends:
I'd heard that Balinese dances were really cool and wanted to see one called the Kecak Dance. We bought tickets and walked right down the road to a temple it was being performed at.
It was crazy the way the women moved their hands, it made hands look like such beautiful things.
The performance started with all these men sitting in a circle and singing in a very chanting-like way. It sounded pretty cool-unlike anything I'd heard before.
The dance told a story of the gods, one that was intricate and hard to follow, especially since it was told in Balinese.
It looks like they're about to bow or something like we do in Western nations when a performance is over, but they're just in that formation singing/chanting while two little girls in front of them danced in sequence.
Watching the dance made me really tired, along with all of my friends as well we noticed. I think it's because the music was so hypnotic and the chanting kind of put you into a trans (along with a long day of surfing and getting beat up by the ocean!).
The last part of the show was this guy wearing a horse costume who walked on fire coals, dancing...
Afterwards he just sat down with his burnt feet facing the crowd, cooling and calming down.
Most of us decided we wanted to wake up early and see the sunrise. The clouds weren't exactly cooperating. We realized that my pictures were coming out better than how the sunrise actually looked since my camera is so nice! ha
In the morning, after waking up naturally and being brought free breakfast to our front door once we woke up, we decided to go to the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary down the road. This is a place where they have temples along with seriously aggressive monkeys who aren't afraid to climb all over your body looking for food.
We bought some bananas to feed them and began our trek through the path in the thick jungle. Monkeys were everywhere, just waiting for tourists to pass by with monkeys or nuts in their hands. The really mean ones waited by the entrance so they could attack you right away. It was kind of scary because you couldn't deny them and they kind of had this power over you since we weren't allowed to touch them but they were allowed to jump all over us.
This is one example with my friend Tess! I had a monkey climb up my legs and grab my chest waiting for me to give him a few bananas. Yikes!
Mother and baby <3
The wet ones looked so ugly, like Gollum from Lord of the Rings!
We came up to this pool where the monkeys could swim and jump into from branches. They were all play fighting with each other and it was really fun to watch! This one looks angry!
The temple was so beautiful, with monkeys crawling everywhere and in the middle of beautiful, lush green forestry.
This is my friend Kevin, trying to avoid being attacked by the monkeys!
This one was picking bugs off the other one and eating them. Reminded me of Dad actually, haha!
This is a picture of the monkeys fighting again. It looks like this one is about to bite the other one's tail! ...but actually that monkey won the fight.
View of temple wall.
This monkey was just lounging on the temple wall, sleeping in the sun.
I thought this statue was really cool, but I still don't know what the significance of the long tongue means. It seems to show up in a lot of statues and icons and stuff.
The group of us!
Cute baby monkey.
An offering on the ground outside the temple.
And we were off on our mopeds to the next temple!
Riding on the mopeds was so fun, like a dream or a movie or something. You really get to see the city like the locals do and its so much more beautiful that way than through a taxi window.
Our next stop was Elephant Cave, which required us (as all temples do) to 'dress appropriately.' Therefore we had to wear sarongs over our clothes to go inside. This is my friend Keith struggling with tying it on, I had to get help too.
These beautiful flowers I had never seen before.
This used to be a bathing area, where women and men were split into two different baths. The fountains are said to be great luck for seven years if you wash your face and hands in them, so we all did. Something a little later in the day proved that this fountain didn't work on us though...
This is the face of Elephant Cave. It's only called that because it's so large, not because elephants were ever in the area. Inside it was dark and there were little holes in the wall where people would sit and meditate. Offerings were put there multiple times a day.
This whole temple area was once hit very hard by an earthquake, so everything is very fragile and there are pieces of the old temple that are broken everywhere. You can tell how huge the pieces were in comparison to my friend Kevin there.
This was a Balinese guy who was inside the temple and just showed us deeper into the stream the pieces of the temple from the earthquake. He was so happy to show us, but didn't speak almost any English. He helped me walk from rock to rock and posed for pictures for my friends and I!
For lunch we rode our mopeds around until we found this beautiful little place that was actually pretty close to our Bungalows. There were beautiful flowers, a fountain and a rice field with huts right in view.
It's nice that in Bali even poor college students can live like they're rich!
This Cashew Chicken was mine, Indonesian food, and sooo delicious. I didn't leave any on my plate.
This is Ivan and I on our scooter, right before the accident.
It wasn't me that got in the accident, but Kevin and Keith were riding together and Kevin pressed the gas instead of the break and hit a tree. They both went flying off and Keith landed on his feet while Kevin ended up scraping off an entire layer of his heel. I didn't see this happen because Ivan and I were leading the group and when we came back a few minutes later to see where they'd gone, they were already being helped.
My friends told us that right when it happened, all of the Balinese people in their shops and restaurants and taxis and people driving by stopped, carried Kevin out of the street, gave him care and used all of their medical supplies, water, and after it was disinfected and bandaged, let them follow them to the nearest Doctor. We couldn't all go so Tess and I went back to the Bungalows and waited for them to return, worried of course. Thank God he didn't get injured worse though, it was good luck almost that he only scraped his heel. After about two hours they returned and we all relaxed and watched the sunset with some Bintangs.
in the morning they brought out our free breakfast to us after we'd awoke and ordered. It was so tasty!
The pool was right in front of our room!
On our last day in Ubud, the group split and a few of us went to Ubud Palace. It was beautiful of course. I learned that the difference between a palace and a temple is that in a palace, kings and people of religious importance live there, while a temple is just somewhere people go to pray and meditate, etc.
There were magnificent flowers everywhere that didn't look real almost.
Our next stop, just a three minute walk up the road, was Saraswati, a Water Palace. It was breathtaking as you can see.
The Lotus flowers in the water were huge and beautiful. Their centers looked strange, like small shower heads, and they lit up the water garden amazingly.
This is an offering in the palace.
This yellow butterfly was fluttering around the flowers in the temple.
After seeing these palaces we went back and did some shopping before heading out to Sanur. We took taxis to Sanur, where we caught the speed ferry to the island Nusa Lembongan. I saw my first mountain! ...well actually we think it was a volcano, so I saw my first volcano!!!
This ship was sailing around and it looked just like a pirate ship, so it was a pretty cool sight.
Once we got off the boat we had a fairly long walk to our accomodations, so we really got to see the island. It was dirty. I've never been somewhere so impoverished, with garbage everywhere and people living in huts in the middle of everything with barely a roof over their head built of sticks and sleeping in the dirt. It was good for me to see a place like that, but it wasn't what I had in mind when I heard tropical island paradise. On the walk we ran into a cock fight. Yup. A cock fight. That's where they tie razor blades to two cock's feet, provoke them and make them angry at each other, and then let the fight until only one is still standing. There was a huge crowd around them and we could barely see (not that I wanted to). I felt like I should look just because it's something I'm never going to see again I don't think. I saw a little bit, but one of the cock's razors fell off or something so there was a delay and my friend Tess was really bothered so we left and didn't watch.
The entire trip in Bali was like this, it's like you see things that you'd see in movies or in pictures, but never that you'd walk by on the way to your hotel! It was a crazy new experience being on the island of Nusa Lembongan.
When we got to our "hotel" it really wasn't a nice place. I had the best room, a working fan, cold water shower, and our toilet flushed by pulling a stick. No sheets, no sink, no toilet paper (this is true of anywhere you stay in Bali though) and definitely no hot water. I was disappointed to say the least that we came to this island, but I got over that quickly.
We went out to the water and it was so hot! Boiling! The waves crashed way way out there far from the shore so the water we were swimming in was stagnant and had been being heated by the sun all day.
**Fun fact: Bali is 8 degrees south of the Equator**
We swam in the hot tub feeling water and decided to watch the sun set out there. We had a beautiful view of the volcano and sunset, even if the beach was shitty and infested with sand flies. Four little Balinese children came and were swimming in the water right near us and ended up warming up and playing with us (mainly our guy friends, who they seemed to have crushes on). It really was a beautiful experience being there though.
The sunset was gorgeous. One of the best I've ever seen.
The next morning we went to breakfast at another hotel next to us on the beach. Some people were harvesting seaweed while we were sitting there. We had noticed it while we were swimming but didn't really think anything of it, but they actually harvest it and export it to Japan, where they take the bacteria out and eat it.
We rented mopeds again (don't worry, Kevin didn't drive) and explored the island a little bit. We scooted to a place called "Dream Beach" that was supposed to be beautiful, and how could it not be with that name? It was.
We stayed here most of the day, swimming in the cool ocean water and relaxing in hammocks in the sun. Dream Beach is right in front of the Dream Beach Hotel, and was heaps nicer than the rest of the island. After most of the day was spent, we hopped back on our mopeds and drove to Mushroom Beach.
These are some pictures I took driving through the island on our moped...
This is Mushroom Beach, where we got lunch before quickly heading back to the hotel and leaving the island. We decided to leave a day early because it really wasn't nice as I said before. We found that the beaches with nice hotels in front were very nice places, but the actual island and the place where we stayed was dirty and impoverished.
We returned to Kuta, to the same hotel we first stayed for our second to last night. We wanted to do more shopping, and the boys wanted to go surfing at Kuta beach again, since it's the perfect place for beginning surfers.
This is my friend Jess and I out at dinner.
On our final day we wanted to get out of the crazy Kuta and go somewhere more relaxing on a beach. We ended up at Balangan, which was the tiniest most uninhabited place we stayed. We were fairly sure that the three rooms they had available for us were usually the rooms of the family that owned the hotel and that we 'stole' their beds for the night and they slept outside. We felt bad, but that's the business they run and they can feed their family and live by doing that.
The beach was beautiful though. Very rocky, but great surfing waves out deeper. I didn't surf though. We all just settled in, went for a swim, ate at another hotel on that tiny stretch of the beach, and looked up at the stars. We counted more than six flying stars! and the sky wasn't even that free of light, since Denpasar, the city where the airport is was just a trip across the ocean in between. A few people fell asleep out there under the stars, but I wasn't as romantic and slept in my bed.
The next morning we woke up and I put my hair in the ocean because they didn't have a shower and I was due for one. We ate breakfast and headed to the airport. There were some surfers out in the waves when we woke up.
And it was back to Australia. "Back home" we all said ironically. But our home isn't a boring, unadventurous place. Bali was just such an absolutely amazing experience with such a beautiful and different culture, that it made Australia seem a little dull. That got knocked out quick though when we all realized we only would have two weeks before it all comes to an end and we're back in our real homes. It's strange because I've been on so many adventures here and met so many new, great people that I'm scared typical life back in the States will seem dull. But at the same time, I cannot wait to be home with all my family and friends and normal life again, living how I know. It's such an emotional roller-coaster, but I'm glad I'm on it.
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