Beautiful Bali

Our last minute decision to come to Bali, Indonesia was a great one. It was the perfect way to end our southeast Asia tour, as Bali contains many of the things we love - tropical air, great food, beaches, volcanoes, surfing, nice people, and of course........an abundance of wild monkeys.

We stayed at a Bali styled villa with four bedrooms which came referred to us from our friends Sammy and Annabel (Dreamcatchers). We realized that we didn't really know which island in Indonesia was Bali or where exactly it was located. All we knew is that we were south of Malaysia and Singapore and near the equator. We did find a map of southeast Asia while here and were excited to see just how far south we had flown. Bali is actually 7 degrees south of the equator, directly above Australia. In fact, it is only an hour flight to Derby, Australia. I pointed out to the kids that for the first time in our lives, the sun was actually slightly north of us. We also looked at the southern stars at night, as we knew these were constellations which couldn't be seen back in North America.

Bali is a place that would require months to explore. It has something like 5 or 6 different climates across the island. I met a local named Vicki at the neighborhood gym who said she and her husband have lived here for 4 years and still have not seen everything. They are originally from Australia, but love living in Bali. It is interesting to note that the average monthly temperature only varies by 2 Celsius degrees throughout the year. Because of this, we found most of the Bali style homes to be open with no walls. It took us a few days to get used to being in our living room, sitting on a couch, with a complete and open view of the palm trees and pool outside. We also enjoyed watching the frogs hop into our villa at night, look at us, and then hop back out.

Kristin and I slept in a detached round villa or bungalow with a thatched roof. We loved the outside bathroom which had a shower with no roof. You could watch and hear the exotic birds flying around while you lathered up your hair with some shampoo. Besides the birds, there was a tree nearby that had the brightest pink and purple flowers. I even took a hot shower one morning while it was raining really hard outside, which was an interesting thing to do. Isn't it true that rain water makes your hair softer? Bali was just ending their rainy season, so it only rained on us one night and one morning. It was fun to listen to the thunder outside because it was some of the loudest rolling thunder I have ever heard. It really shook the ground below our bungalow.

We spent a few days exploring some of the beaches. The first beach within walking distance had black sand. The sand was soft but was entirely black with shiny specks, making it beautiful. The beaches all had huge waves which made it great for swimming. These beaches always had a lot happening with dogs and even horses running down the beach. (No, the horses weren't wild and did have people riding them.) On our first day at the beach, we realized we were swimming in the Indian ocean. It's fun to see something that you once memorized in geography class.

We went to the other side of Bali and visited another beach, which had soft white sand and smaller waves. The large waves "broke" about a mile from shore from an outer coral reef which were great to watch. We located this beach as a referral from Vicki and quickly found ourselves in our beach chairs with umbrella about 20 feet from the water. We had so much fun swimming in the ocean and even found some rocks nearby which provided daytime shade.

The island is primarily inhabited by people belonging to the Hindu religion which Kristin and I knew little about. The Hindu's only have 4 options for first names, so you meet a lot of people with the same first name. It is determined by your birth order and it doesn't matter your gender. I asked someone what happens if you have five kids, and he said the 5th child would use the same name as the first born. The Hindu's also worship many gods. They believe in one primary god, but then there are many gods under the primary god. We often saw people placing straw bowls outside their homes and in the streets with food and flowers in them as an offering to the spirits. They believe you try to keep the good spirits happy and the bad spirits happy enough to leave you alone - very interesting. All of the Hindu people treated us great and we found them interesting to converse with. We even had the chance to see an ancient Hindu tribal monkey dance which was very dramatic with 50 men singing, dancing and walking through fire.

We hired a driver one day to take us to the middle of the island to a city called Ubud. The drive was awesome as we saw three distinct volcanoes in the background. We found a monkey sanctuary, which is basically a place where hundreds of monkeys live in the wild. The kids loved seeing and feeding the monkeys. You could see them living in families, swimming in ponds, climbing trees, eating, playing, and even some moms carrying their newborn babies. We realized that monkeys really are like people. There are good monkeys that are fun to play with and there are bad monkeys that growl and like to steal hats and sunglasses.

We decided to go surfing on our last full day in Indonesia. We negotiated with several people on the beach until we found two great instructors, five surfboards and two hours of lessons. Within 5 minutes, we were surprised to see Anna "standing up" on the board, riding a wave into shore. Lexi was was up a few minutes later and then Adam. Surprisingly, we were all up on our boards "catching a wave" within 20 minutes. We all joked about "catching a wave" or "riding the big kahuna" while we hummed the "Hawaii Five O" theme song. It was a blast to see the kids at the end of our lesson, riding their surfboards and doing tricks like jumping off their board and doing a "180" while surfing. Maybe snow and water sports in Utah helped us to pick it up faster. We all agreed it would be fun to come back to Bali in the future for a surfing vacation. The water was so warm and perfect waves came every 45 seconds. I guess that is why Bali is known as one of the surfing capitals of the world.

The morning we left, we had a chance to further visit with John Paul and Danielle who owned the villa. They lived next door in a very nice 2 story Bali style home complete with their own lily pad moat (around the house) and large swimming pool. We enjoyed spending some time with them and the chance to get to know them better. John Paul is a photographer by profession and Danielle runs a successful high end clothing business with several boutique stores. They are from France, but spend 9 months of the year living in Bali.

Bali was a difficult place to leave, especially as we knew our vacation was about over. We were so glad we decided to visit and to explore a small piece of Indonesia. I am glad I was able to share our trip with our friends and family and anyone else who received this blog address. I will try to make one more blog update over the next week with my final thoughts and perhaps a picture or two.

DEAL OF THE WEEK: No doubt about it, it was the surfing lessons. Bali offers some great surfing schools and you can pay $75 an hour....or more. We were able to negotiate lessons for five people, the expertise of two private instructors, and five surf boards for the total cost of $54 US. Our instructors were very patient, easy going, and a lot of fun. The total cost was less than the price of one ski pass to Snowbasin! Of course the food and massages and spa services were also very cheap in Indonesia as in other parts of Asia.

FUNNY STORY OF THE WEEK: It would have been easy to write about the monkey relieving itself on Lexi and Adam, or when I found myself riding a borrowed motorcycle into town dodging flying bats along the way. Instead, I thought I would mention our visit to the beautiful white sand beach on the east side of Bali. This was a private beach near a great restaurant and about a mile from the public beach. After Kristin and I rented our beach chairs (free if you ate lunch at the restaurant), we quickly sat down to rest in our chairs taking in the sun. The kids said they wanted to swim, so they ran into the water to cool down. After a few minutes, Kristin and I noticed that we were suddenly surrounded by Europeans also spending the day at the beach. Well, not sure how many people have ever swam with Europeans, but their culture dictates that it is NOT necessary for the women to wear the top half of their bathing suit. Europeans fully believe that women and men are very equal at the beach. Before we knew it, most of the kids, moms and "grandmas" were sunbathing in a manner that would fully prevent them from getting any tan or sunburn "lines". We told Adam to keep his eyes on the water. Kristin commented how interesting it was as they would continue to play with their kids, swim or eat lunch as if they were fully dressed. No big deal. The group next to us contained about 5 moms and about 12 kids playing the same way you would see a "play group" back home.......with only one exception as Kristin pointed out!