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Actor/Dancers in a beautiful Balinese dance performance we
watched one night at dinner. The dancing was exquisite and
the costumes were gorgeous. |
We went to a traditional Balinese dance performance one evening with dinner. It was quite interesting. Two or three people stand to the side and put voices to the characters, and the dancers dance. This one seemed to be a standard tale of the young lady who is being pressured to marry one person, but wants another. It involves a chicken man, a monkey king and several monkeys, and a lot of dancers doing really beautiful moves. It was all in Balinese, so I am making all this up about the story. :-)
Hard to believe we've been here a month. Initially, it seemed like it was going to be way too long, but I've gradually become accustomed to things that really challenged me at first.
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| Offering bowl seen outside a spa one day |
The sidewalks, where they do exist, can be death traps. It’s important to keep your eyes on the ground - there are gaping holes that can be 2 - 3 feet across. If you fall through, it can be 2 - 8 feet down, and you’ll either land in a pile of garbage or in one of the many sewer streams that run through town. The sidewalks are often crumpled in such a way that there are many tripping hazards. They are often paved with hand-made tiles in 2' x 3' slabs - these can rock as you walk on them, or be perfectly stable. I guess water and mud cause upheavals in the ground. The safest flat surface to walk on is the road, which is ridiculously full of traffic!
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Unusual - there's a grate here instead of a hole. Where it's broken,
someone has 'repair' it with a bit of a palm leaf knot! |
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This hole is covered over by a slab of cement
and some plants. Move onto the road . . . |
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This section is full of pieces of sidewalk that
rock back and forth when you step on them.
Tread carefully |
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| Ummm, maintenance? |
Dogs run loose here, and there is no evidence of ‘poop bags’ anywhere. So it’s important to keep an eye out for the little land mines they leave behind.
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This little guy on our street was unusual - he has very
short legs compared to the typical 'Bali dog' |
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| Most Bali dogs are like this - same build, just varying colours. |
Construction is interesting here. Bamboo and brick seem to be the main building materials. Paving of driveways is done by hand for the most part, and the workers mix the pavement as they are going.
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The red sign indicates this place is now for rent. Looks a long
way off from that! Note the bamboo poles holding everything up. |
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A very large villa under construction at the end of our road. We
always have a little conversation with the guys working here. It goes
"Hello!" (us). "Hello! Where are you going?" (them) "Ubud" (us)
"Walking?" (them) "Yes!" (us). "Wow" (them) Bye! Bye! |
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These guys are paving the driveway area in front of a new business.
The cement is mixed in the wheelbarrows |
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| Preparing cement at a new villa construction |
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Taking off the old thatched roof to prepare for
new thatching. |
The standard greeting in Bali is "Hello! Where are you going?" At first we felt it important to tell them where we were going, but Wayan told us it's more like "Hi, how are you?" You can just say hi back and carry on.
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I have no idea what this is all about, but we saw variations of it
around town several times. These are emptied egg shells stuck
on the ends of this plant. Odd decorations. |
Today is Sunday - coconut day for all the residents of the Villas Kakul. The night watchman climbs a palm tree and cuts down a coconut for each of us. They are delivered to the door by Kadek, with the tops cut open and a straw for drinking. A very sweet custom and a delicious treat!
We had thought we would rent a car and do a lot of travelling around the country - that's our usual way of doing things. However, it was apparent to us on day one that neither one of us had the stomach to drive here - absolute insane chaos is the best way to describe Balinese traffic. We did a couple of trips with Wayan - one to Sanur Beach and one to the rice paddies, the volcano and the temple at Tanah Lot. Sanur was a dirty beach. Lots of dogs and dog droppings, a continuous boardwalk of restaurants and shops, and a bit of sand. We didn't stay long.
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| Colourful boats on the beach |
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| Lots of boats anchored on the beach |
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| Offerings . . . even on the beach! |
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| One restaurant after another all along the beach |
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Interesting little 'beach huts' where you can relax on a platform
under the roof to get away from the sun |
The rice paddies were very beautiful to see, but the volcano was a bust as it was shrouded in mist and the views were non-existent. Tanah Lot was quite interesting . . . but you have to pay to walk down to the waters edge to see it, and they make sure you walk through a bustling marketplace to get there. Kind of like IKEA. My pictures of Tanah Lot were lost in the computer crash. Essentially it's a temple built on a tiny piece of land. It's accessible by land at low tide, and by boat at high tide. We were there at high tide, so couldn't get over to it.
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| Beautiful rice paddy terraces on a hillside. |
We ate at a little roadside stand that Wayan likes. The food was tasty, but it was likely a mistake as we both came down with Bali Belly shortly afterwards. Thank goodness for the pills we brought with us from home :-) Those pictures were lost in my computer crash as well.
And so our time here was spent walking the lanes of our village, the next village of Mas (where the woodcarvers hang out), and the town of Ubud. Ubud is full of craftspeople and many, many shops. Walking the road to Ubud takes about 20 minutes and at first it was scary as we were sure we'd be hit by a car or scooter. We quickly realized that they all just drive around any obstructions, pedestrians are considered just another vehicle to avoid.
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An old taxi parked by the side of the road. If you zoom in, you
can see the 'price menu'. This is not a typical taxi - they are
all really nice and modern. This just caught my eye.
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| Scooters. Everywhere. And no rules of the road to speak of! |
Mostly we liked to walk to Ubud through the rice paddies - it was like watching a different version of the same movie every day. Always something new happening out there. It's the most peaceful place to walk - too bad the end of the trail was a bit of a garbage pit.
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| Glen showing this worker the photo he just took |
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They bring their own bridge - two pieces of wood laid across the stream.
Just putting it in place to fit the wheel width here! |
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| Rice field worker sharpening his scythe |
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| Working some sort of machinery. |
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| Chicken coop in the middle of the rice paddies |
Our daily walks almost always involved some sort of shopping - too many deals and beautiful things for us two crows to resist. We'd often stop for a fresh-made juice ($2) and maybe something to eat. Usually the bill was about $15.
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Mango/Carrot/Papaya/GingerJuice on
a patio - pretty little decoration. $2 |
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| Papaya Chicken salad - delish! $3.50 |
The pool at our villa was a wonderful treat - Glen, who has probably been in about 3 pools since I met him 37 years ago, was in the water every day, usually more than once. I pretty much lived in it when we were home. The weather was consistently hot and humid - just the way I like it.
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Loved this pool - and the little water jets on the wall. Although when
they stopped three times a day, the quiet was kind of nice too! |
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| A pool, a 'beanbag' chair, towel and fresh coconut to sip on. Life is good. |
I decided to have a spa day with my English friends Avril and Sadie on New Years Day - we went for a 2 hour massage and 'flower bath' which cost a whopping $24, and then went for a nice healthy lunch at their favourite restaurant called Clear. The original Clear burned down a few months ago, so friends of the owner found a new location, organized furniture and equipment and he was back up and running within a month or so! Nice community here.
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1.75 hour massage, 15 minutes flower petal bath.
Includes biscuits and ginger tea: $24 |
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I've never had a flower petal bath before. It was
weird and nice all at the same time |
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Sadie's lunch at Clear. Vanilla almond healthy 'milkshake'
behind it - so delicious!
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| Colourful staircase up to the restaurant |
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At a different restaurant - pretty juice drink.
Freshly juiced. $2 |
We had dinner out at the Lodtunduh Sari with Avril and Sadie on our last night, and when we returned to our villas, we both were met with flower petals on our stairs, along the side of our pools and culminating in a beautiful petal 'heart' with little tea lights set beside it. This was the work of Kadek, our wonderful head of staff here. We're going to leave him a generous tip to help him on his way to university, as are Avril and Sadie.
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Looking back towards the Lodtunduh Sari over the infinity pool.
This was our favourite dinner spot |
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| Stepping stones in the pond beside one of the Lodtunduh Sari Villas |
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The boardwalk entrance to the villa,
beside our pool - scattered with flower petals |
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Nice work, Kadek! You made our night! What a thoughtful
farewell gift to us on our last night here. |
So after all this wonderful rest and relaxation, it was time to leave. We asked Wayan to pick us up at 5 pm - our flight was leaving at 9:10 pm, but traffic has been horrible and we wanted to make sure we weren't delayed. Thank goodness we did that. Traffic didn't hold us up, but the Balinese airport authority was another story . . .
When we got to the check-in desk, they wouldn't issue us a boarding pass for the flight because we couldn't produce exit tickets from New Zealand!!! How that had anything to do with Bali, I have no idea. So we were ushered to a different lineup to purchase tickets out of NZ. That lineup had ONE ticket agent who was maddeningly slow. I asked her to get me two tickets that were completely refundable . . . which took her about 45 minutes. We finally got back to the check-in desk and were given boarding passes. This whole process used up almost 2 hours.
We proceeded to the security line - it looked like it would take about an hour minimum to get through, and our plane was boarding in 20 minutes. We (nicely) pushed our way to the front of the line, but we weren't allowed through because we hadn't paid the 'exit fee' at the beginning of the line. So Glen went running back and paid the 400,000 rupiah (about $40), and we were allowed into the security screening.
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| One million Rupiah. Or $100 CDN |
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| 9000 Rupiah. Or ninety cents CDN. |
After thorough pat-downs (three times for me!), we were allowed to continue to another desk. We handed over our passports and the man got a big smile on his face and told us he would take us to see his 'friend'. We explained we were about to miss our boarding call - to no avail - and were led into a small office where we were informed that we had been in Bali for 31 days and we were only allowed 30 days. I had counted nights stayed as a day, but they see it differently . . .
We were told the fine was 300,000 rupiah (about $30). We could NOT pay in any other currency. So Glen went running out with a $50 US that he had to get it changed. Came back, handed them 300,000 rupiah and then the guy says 'each' - you owe us 600,000 rupiah. At which point I snapped and called them a name that does not reflect well on me. I think I was almost arrested on the spot - fortunately Glen's
US $50 had come to 600,010 rupiah - he handed over the extra 300,000, put a calming hand on my shoulder and assured the agent I had said 'clucking'. We got out of there - ran to our plane, where we were patted down again and our backpacks thoroughly searched.
At this point, I realized that the ticketing agent had changed our seats from D and F to E and F. I always book an aisle and a window because quite often we'll wind up with no-one between us - and neither one of us wanted to spend 6 hours on an overnight flight sitting in the middle seat. So I had a long 'discussion' with the fellow at the gate, and fortunately had my electronic confirmation showing our seats, so he eventually switched us back. He had thought initially that we could just 'switch' with the person who had been given our aisle seat. Mmmm, yeah, that could happen . . . in an alternate universe maybe. In the end, we did have an empty middle seat which gave us a bit more space, thank goodness. We sat down and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not the best way to leave the country, but the rest of the memories are all good.
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| Our daily backgammon challenge at happy hour |
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| Pool decor |
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I took a drawing / painting course while I was here. This is the result.
Never got around to colouring it - this is all pencil and ink |
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| Colourful paintings for sale in a roadside stand |
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| One of my favourite roadside murals on the way home from Ubud |
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The "end of the driveway" guys who meet every night to play
with their roosters and have a chat. "Where are you going?"
"Lodtunduh Sari". Ah. "Hahaha" Wave!
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