Bali

We have been back from Bali for a few days already but so far no time to sit down and write it all down in peace and quiet. Now a lazy Sunday afternoon - Robert in the gym, Raoul napping, Beatrice and Karl at the playground, so I'd better take the chance.

It was a great trip and I am happy about the way we put it together - using recommendations of two very different neighbor families. Stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Nusa Dua (South Bali) for the first two nights - a huge luxury resort of 600 + rooms, like a town in itself with 5 or 6 restaurants and pools and a long sandy beach. There was a spa, night market, shops etc. In the room Raoul discovered a "sauna" - a walk in closet with a bamboo suitcase shelf! We just relaxed and enjoyed the facilities there, mostly the water slide and river-like pool with an occasional plunge into the "penguin pool" with 12-14 C water when the nordic genes kicked in! In spite of the resort being huge apart from breakfast we never saw lots of people. Kids spent an hour in the kids club and were the only ones there while we had the huge nice gym just to ourselves at the same time. No idea where everyone else was (probably still digesting their buffet breakfast). In the evening headed for Jimbaran beach for a famous seafood dinner with sunset. Great food and views and dance performances.

Then the next day we travelled to other parts of Bali to see the real life. Like anywhere in SE Asia traveling time is long even for small distances - to get the 50 km to Ubud, the art capital, took us nearly 2 hours. So had to start canceling other potential stops! Roads are busy or very narrow and curvy. Lucky we had hired a car with a driver. If self driving we would still be lost somewhere. Ubud is very famous as an artists colony. There are palaces and temples and museums. All colorful and pretty. We had lunch at the Lotus cafe that is next to a pond (full of lotus plants) and a temple. Very pretty setting. All in all though I found it a bit too touristy with lots of selling and pushing going on. Couldn't take two steps without offers for taxi rides or something to buy. 

We headed further east for what seemed like hours passing pretty sights and landscapes and more temples and stopped at an original balinese village at Tenganan. Apparently a lot of people who live on Bali today are actually from Java, so just a few areas of the "natives". That was more rural and quiet. Just a few visitors although the village these days seems to make a living of tourists - selling the cloth that they weave there and more souvenirs. Their Ikat cloth patterns are quite interesting - reminded us actually of finno-ugric patterns. One cloth that I looked at had white snowflakes on blue background! The shop lady could not understand when I tried to explain that it looks like snow. Obviously. Quite sobering after 5 star luxury to see how real balinese live - cattle and chickens and dogs all around. We saw a lot of colorful cocks in cages waiting for their turn in fights and saw an actual cock fight as well. Some of them have dyed feathers - pretty in pink. Kids ran after chick, made friends with a puppy and a monkey. Then after another long drive through more rural areas and dramatic landscapes with roads winding up the hillsides with hundreds of meters of steap drops, rice paddies, sea views we finally reached the east coast and Amed already in darkness. 

To be continued ...