oh, bali! ....from singapore

oh bali!
land of beauty, culture and cuisine! a place that finally lived up to ALL the hype! or maybe we were just that happy to leave java! Bali was absolutely awesome. While the beaches were simply great(not the best ever), the culture, awesome food, people and inland sights more than made up for it. In fact, the inland, stepped terrace farms, temples and awesome tropical forrests were in many ways the highlight of the island. Our days on a scooter, getting lost driving around in monsoon level storms were even magical(although i couldnt have been wetter if i had jumped in a pool.) the times we drove around, stopping to admire the steep hillsides covered in rice farms, surrounded by palm trees and other foliage straight out of the jurassic period were a mind altering experience.
The real world of bali is filled with fancy hotels, infiniti pools, tons of traffic, overdone tourist temples and millions of tiny warungs(local food stall/restaurants) that all combine to make an authentic Indonesian attraction. Yes, Tanah Lot was a huge disappointment, but our scooter ride afterwards up into the highlands to see a more remote temple more than made up for it! After Tanah Lot we were tempted to just call it a trip, head back to our hotel in Ubud and relax for another day or so before heading out, but then we decided to take off in to the mountains, see some of the famed farmland, jungles and a lesser known temple(name to come.) That might have beeen the best idea we had in bali. Our drive up the hills and farther in to farmland was awesome, and then our scooter ride back down the hills was awesome for different reasons. The whole way it sprinkled rain, but on the way back the skies opened up and it began pouring!!!! within moments i was totally soaked. we pulled in to a small metal barn/garage of a farmers, but realized it could be hours before the rain stopped! So, i gave jin my raincoat, which luckily was big enough to fit over her, and the backpack, and I braved the water to get absolutely drenched! We made it back to Denpasar after a while of driving through a straight up monsoon! When we got to Denpasar, our scooter even ran out of gas! Luckily, one of the liquor bottle gas stations was right around the corner, so the ordeal only lasted at most 10 minutes! these are the classic asian gas stations, where people sell you 3/4 of a liter of gas for 25 cents more than the price of liter.... all out of a liquor bottle and supplied at random from most any streetside store more than a couple kilometers from a gas station!

Overall, Padang Bai was a relaxing and chill place to spend a 6 or 7 days(spread out over two visits,) Ubud was a nice upscale tourist spot(although a bit too upscale and touristy for me and jin), and Kuta was a great tourist laden party town, best for only one night! We had a great time in Bali, but were ultimately happy to leave.

Now, we have been in Singapore for a week. We are leaving to head back to Phuket, Thailand tonight, and have found another free place to stay on couchsurfing.org. More to come on SG soon, but it won't be near the misty eyed, magical memories that Bali left behind.

Bali

Even being a famous tourist destination, Balinese are still keeping their way of life, have really beautiful rice terraces.

Bali has its own kind of Hindu pagodas.

We were lucky to join one Balinese ceremony. People brought offerings to the temple. That was the first time we saw famous Balinese baked baby pig.

Around noon, there were small dancing for the ceremony.

At night it had more organized little girls' dancing.

All those performance had gamelan and other Indonesia instruments accompanying them.

We had to ware sarong to go in the temple.

The mythical lion, symbol of good.

Bali to Lombok to Gili and Back

hi mom!
hows it going? sorry for being out of touch, we have been busy relaxing, while also trying to see and do lots of things. plus jin was sick for a few days so we didnt do a whole lot(she is fine now.) about a week ago, we went to Lombok. We took a shared minivan(bus, called bemo) to a town on the beach called Sengigi. It was really pretty, but not a whole lot to see or do. Lombok is really pretty, but its culture is sorely lacking compared to bali, and it is filled with thousands of absolute asshole punk kids who are about as rude and obnoxious as any idiots in the world. We rented a scooter one day and drove around to a bunch of really pretty secluded beaches and saw a bunch of tiny towns and indigenous villages that barely any tourists make it to. travel on lombok is very very difficult without your own transport as most bemos only go between towns about 15 or 20 miles apart, so if you want to go somewhere far, you have to pay for a hired car, which is very expensive(30 plus bucks a day) or argue with bemo drivers every half an hour as they try to charge you 10x more than the local price, 5 dollars each instead of 50 cents. we enjoyed our time on lombok, but were happy to leave. after that, we hopped a boat to gili trawangan, a tiny island off the west side of lombok. it only has about 2k people and no cars, roads or anything besides bars, restaurants, tourist stuff, and hotels..... its really nice and is supposed to be the next big thing in indonesia. the fast boat back to bali from there is like 35 dollars a person, so we hopped the slow ferry back to lombok for 1 dollar each, then argued with some more bemo drivers to get us to mataram, then lembar(?) where the ferry leaves back to bali, which is 4 hours and 3 dollars. on the ferry more punk kids harassed us telling us that the seats were for VIPs and we had to pay 2 dollars to sit there. after arguing with them, asking for ID, asking for a VIP ticket, none of which they had, i told them to go get the police, and obviously they never came back! woo hoo, very minor victory. By this time, jin was kinda sick, so when we got back to bali and padang bai, we chilled for the night, then the whole next day. Yesterday, Jin was feeling better, so we took another bemo to Ubud, the cultural capital of bali. we relaxed all last night, mostly cause it was raining. today we decided to be lazy, and rented a scooter for 4 dollars to drive around to all the museums and stuff in town. We went to the house of Antonio Blanco(the blanco renaissance museum), and the museum puri lukisan(fine arts museum), where we saw tons of awesome balinese art from the "young artist" collective that came after WWII. today, we also went to the Monkey forest sanctuary, which holds a couple of moss covered hindu temples surrounded by a jungle like forrest, complete with rivers, springs, and of course, tons of monkeys. Tomorrow, we are planning on takin the scooter to Tanah Lot, one of the most famous temples in bali, and maybe seeing another temple or just exploring some small towns before we come back to Ubud for the night.

past Bali, into Lombok, and on to Gili Trawangan

Hey out there
sorry for the relative lack of posts. Me and Jin have been stuck in the world of expensive internet on Bali and now Lombok. Thus we have been busy relaxing, chilling, and soaking it all in... plus frantically searching couchsurfing.com for a free place to stay in singapore!!! we spent 5 nights in Bali, one by the Denpasar bus station(after we arrived at 11pm), and 4 more in paradise on the beach of Padang Bai. Padang Bai is an awesomely chill little backpacker town where the ferry to the next island east, Lombok, leaves from. We relaxed there for a few days in a beautiful little bungalow about 30m from the beach. The food there was great, the water nice, and the people cool. Best of all, the past few days are some of the holiest days of the year for the Hindhu people of Bali, so we got to hang out at their temple and watch the elaborate dances, and drumming at their ceremony.
The ceremony was awesome. A bunch of people played drums and the Gamelan, a big collection of drum like cymbals set up on a table like holder. Then, they had a sort of sunday or hebrew school like recital of little girls dancing in elaborate Balinese costumes. It was about the cutest thing ever, and it was so cool that we got to enter the temple grounds and watch! after the girls danced, we got to watch a sort of play like performance with giant dragon like things dancing around(2 guys in a giant costume playing the front and back legs.) and other performances too. It was super cool, and really underlined why people like Bali so much. Other than that, we didnt do too much in Bali, just ate some awesome cheap grilled and curried fish, and relaxed and read. 2 days ago, we hopped the ferry to Lumbok, and have been chilling in the beach town of Sengigi since then. It is pretty nice here, but we are really excited to get to Gili Trawangan, a tiny island, just a mile or so wide, with no cars, roads, or COPS!!! woo hoo! we are hopping a ferry tomorrow morning there!
anyways, we are taking off for the night... more updates to come!
ben and jin

Gunung Bromo

Before leave to Gunung Bromo

At Yogyakarta zoo we saw komodo dragon! Most of them were resting, sleeping. Only a young one was walking around trying to dig hole...

At there I saw kagozoo the first time, and we saw a giant tortoise, white tiger, huge crocodile. There were lots of weird big birds too.

Ben fed this deer with bread.

At Solo Ben found an amusing store.

Prambanan

Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple complex in Java.

Because of the earthquake in 2006, some parts of the temple are now fenced off.
But we can still see how intricate the temple is and how talented those artists were.

Prambanan is about 100 years younger than Borobudur, and it also has great carvings.
I love the carvings about everyday life.

We had a nice picture taken before leaving.

Borobudur--Mendut temple

Mendut temple is a Hindu temple by Borobudur.

This 3m-high Buddha is Mendut's original setting. The Buddha sits Western-style with both feet on the ground instead of the usual lotus position.

Mendut also has delicate carved relief panels on its outer wall.

Borobudur

On the way to Borobudur, we saw the sun rising behind Gunung Merapi. That was my first volcano.

The other day we rented a scooter and went to Kaliurang to have a closer view of Gunung Merapi.
We hung out there for an hour but it was too cloudy to see it. It was nice weather up there and it was the first time we felt cool for a long while.

Borobudur. It's amazing to think about it surviving under Merupi's ash flow, terrorist bombs and earthquakes.

We made it to the top first, and Merapi started to collect clouds.

The top

buddhas

the stone work here is very exquisite and it's from a similar time period as Angkor, but the story here is more interesting.
Angkor focuses more on royal life, country affairs, gods and devils. Borobudur has Javanese life 1000 years ago as well as Buddhist doctrines.
It was the first time I saw so many carvings about animals.

Yogyakarta

Kraton is not as fascinating as we expect. Also, during the Ramadan, all the cultural performances are cancelled.

It has lots of pavilions which made spacious hall for all the sultan family's events. Current sultan still resides.

We had this interesting lady as our tour guide (includ in the ticket price). She unconsciously repeated words in the beginning or the end of every sentence.

All the guys working in there had traditional dress on. This one was so into reading, we almost believed he was a statue.

Batic mesuem in the Kraton has more colorful batic.

We came and left Yogya by train. It was the fastest transpotation in Java.