Weekend Gathering

We had our coworkers over for the first time this weekend. They were each impressed with how big our apartment was. Perhaps it's because we haven't seen any other regular HK apartments that we think it's so small.

We taught them to play Settlers ....

And we went downstairs to play ping pong. We only discovered this ping pong table in the last month ... by walking 5 meters beyond the entrance to our building. Perhaps we haven't explored enough ...

BALI

We arrived late at night at our guest house in Bali after what seemed like a long flight and a busy transfer in the Jakarta airport. We had all day Friday to hit the beach, do some shopping and get used to our new surroundings in this area before heading to the east coast to our resort for the week. We woke up to this fabulous breakfast and started our day.

This is the beach in Kuta. We spent most of the day here.

There were people roaming the beach selling souvenirs and other things. Here Jill is haggling over the price of some sarongs.

We stuck around until sunset. It was a good one.

The guesthouse was a little ways from the beach. The surrounding area was a little undeveloped so we could see some small farms. This lady was tending to her field.

The main religion in Bali is Hindu. Everywhere we went we saw these little offerings, usually at small shrines or in front of businesses. They would make the tray out of leaves then fill it with some food or in this case a cigarette.

There were also a lot of little statuettes everywhere, I photoshopped this one a bit.

Saturday we departed for Candidasa and to our resort. It was a 4.5 star resort but probably wasn't as nice as a 4.5 in the Caribbean. It was still a pleasant place to stay.

Here is our room.

The view from the balcony.

The view from our lounge chairs.

The pool and restaurant in the background.

Me, reading, listening to music and just relaxing.....ahhh

There wasn't much of a beach but this was what we had. We used it to go snorkeling on a small reef about 20m out.

The town was quite small with a few restaurants and shops, no supermarket. There was a small pond in the center with fish, lily pads and lotus flowers.

Our night out was spent meeting some locals. This is Gusti, the owner of a restaurant. There was live music and cheap food.

Monday we hired a driver for the day (for about $25) and toured the East coast. The tour lasted about 6 hours.

We went to a local market in Amlapura not far from Candidasa. We requested this stop because we needed some fruit. It was similar to other asian markets.

We also went to the floating palace. This was used as a holiday palace for the royal family when Indonesia still had a monarch.

A view of the palace from above

After the floating palace we went to the King's residence. We actually saw one of the king's sons here. He was very old.

We were worried about the weather. The forecast called for thunder storms the first few days but we really did have great weather. It rained twice but only for a short time. There were lot's of nice flowers around. Here are some of them:

This one is a lotus flower

Still part of our tour, we went to the Holy Spring Water Temple.

This small offering of rice was placed on the head of a statue.

This large fountain was in the center of the temple. The royal family would come here when they wanted to relax. It was very peaceful and was a lot nicer than the other palaces we went to.

These stepping stones wound their way throughout this pond, you could choose your path.

This statue seemed to attract the birds.....perhaps there was some rice on it.

The country side was littered with rice fields and smaller fields for other crops. They grow crops year round, harvesting every 3 months.

Their tier system of aquaducts is very efficient and ensures that all of the farmers get an equal amount of water.

The last stop on our tour was to a traditional "Aga" village. These are the original Balinese people and had a very interesting way of living. They use their own calendar with 400 days a year. While they do enjoy some of the modern comforts (tv, electricity, scooters etc...) they were also self sufficient, growing all of their own food for the village. Also if an Aga member married outside of the village then they would be forced to leave.

Jill and our guide.

Some of the houses

Here is a statue at the gate of one house.

Our biggest expense was definitely food. While we could eat for about $2 per meal, we ended up eating at our resort and a few of the nicer places in town. We could justify the splurge because we were kind of on a diet before coming. Now I say splurge but the most expensive meal was still under $10 each.

This was an Indonesian sate from our hotel with coconut soup and grilled fish.

Another meal in Kuta

Prawns and grilled fish. This one was really good.

Balinese style duck

One of our restaurants had a show. This was a traditional Bali dance done by this young girl. Throughout the whole dance, her finger and eye movement was very meticulous and there were a lot of subtle movements. It was very impressing to see.

More daily offerings.

I had brought my paraglider so we decided to hike on of the hills in town to check out the conditions. Unfortunately there was not enough wind when we were free.

Here is the town of Candidasa

We were lucky to be able to snorkel a few times. Here are some clown fish and their anemone.

I saw this thing while snorkeling alone, I couldn't tell if it was a snake or an eel. Either way I was happy to leave it alone.

Our big splurge of the trip was diving. There was a dive center next door to our resort and we went for 2 dives.

We had a few options and decided on the USS Liberty wreck dive. The Liberty was a WWII ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese in 1942. It was about 30m off shore and was a beautiful location.

Unfortunately, we couldn't use our underwater camera for the dive because we were down 27m and it's only good for 3m. I did go snorkeling during our lunch break and snapped these pictures from the surface. You can see the top of the ship and some of the varieties of fish we saw.

On our first dive, we saw a small white tipped reef shark, a moray eel, some sting rays and so many other kinds of marine life. It was amazing how things can grow on a wreck and thrive in that environment.

On our second dive we were able to do 3 swim throughs where we actually went inside the wreck. I was very worried that it wouldn't live up to our other dives on the Great Barrier Reef but it was great. I think because it was so different it made it just as memorable.

There is a large school of Jack Fish that reside around the wreck, while snorkeling I dove down and swam among them for a bit. Here is the video:

Another day was spent at White Sandy Beach a few kilometers from Candidasa. We snorkeled a bit, got massages and had a great lunch.



Jill here now. Just want to add a few random bits of info that we don't have pictures of:


Stepping off the plane into the heat of Jakarta, the air had a heavy scent of incense.

We were told to pick up our luggage at the Jakarta airport for customs during our transit en route to Bali. It was a very stressful and chaotic experience. It was my first time to a Muslim country (while Bali is mainly Hindu, the rest of Indonesia is Muslim). People (mostly men) dressed in full Muslim garb were sitting everywhere around the luggage conveyor belts. It was very crowded. Also, there seemed to be a lot of big jugs of water everywhere ... coming off the conveyor belts as checked luggage. Very unique. Anyway, we couldn't see our luggage, nor was our flight listed on the monitors. We only had a short transit time as it was. We asked various people, but got various, contradictory answers. Finally, with 20 minutes before our departure (and the gate closing 10 minutes before departure), we gave up, hoped for the best, and went to our next plane. Thankfully, we got our luggage when we got to Bali (skipping customs as a result). As stressful as it was for us, we saw a lot of others on our second flight from our first flight who seemed much more troubled about the whole ordeal. I can't imagine going through that experience as an inexperienced traveller.

During our time in Bali, there were various (live) animals in restaurants watching us eat. These included 2 cats, a dog, 3 roosters, and a crab. Not sure if the crab escaped from the kitchen or whether he came off the rocks since the restaurant was near the shore.

Our scuba dive was at a very popular area. There were so many people diving around that shipwreck that we often had to stop to let "traffic" pass. During our 45 minute dive, Brian and I each used 3/4 of our tank of air. Our Balinese dive master who was guiding us used 1/4 of his during that time. I couldn't get over that.

If we made a reservation at a restaurant in the town near our resort (usually earlier in the day when we were out and about), they'd send a driver to pick us up and then return us to the resort afterward for free.

We got our resort cheaply, just 130US for the entire week. We got it at that price because our friend is a member of a time share club. On our first day in Bali, we were approached by someone trying to convince us to join this same club. We listened to an hour long presentation (after which we got a free gift). We weren't convinced to join however. When we got to our resort there was another representative who listened to our hesitations. He tailor made a package that was right for us (and about half the asking price of our first rep). So we are now proud members of a vacation club. We can get 5 star resorts anywhere in the world for $200 or less per week. And/or we can go back to that resort in Bali for 'free', one week per year for the next 25 years.