Chapter 28 'Bali with side trips' year 3 (2014)

Chapter 28 Bali with side trips (2014)
Bangkok, Bali, Darwin, Gili T

-Shut down Bangkok

-Kuta and cheap and cheerful hotels

-good place to retire

-Secret Beach

-Hindu temples

-Need a bigger suitcase

-Ubud monkeys

-Darwin welcomes us

-Crocodile on the Adelaide River

-Chinese New Year birthday

-good and bad parking

-Lovina’s dolphins

-Gede is a good driver

-fast boat to Gili T

-avoiding the jellyfish

-food poisoning while you travel can be expensive

-more learning how to teach 

Transcript

Travels with John Smith 

Chapter 28 year 3, (2014)

Bangkok, Bali, Darwin and Gili T 

We take the train and then the skytrain from the airport to the overground station,’ Nana’. As I mentioned in the last Chapter, before we left China, everyone told us we should avoid Thailand. They said everyone here would be gearing up for a huge protest that would shut down Bangkok. That it would already be in process and we wouldn’t be able to cross the city. They made it sound like we could get caught in the midst of a crowd and be trampled in a bloody fight or thrown in jail if we went anywhere near it. 

The people of Thailand are protesting the corruption in their Electoral practice. The people who board the train after a day of protest, with whistles and T-Shirts that say ‘Shut down Bangkok!’ and a few banners are smiling, gentle and not really any more excited than the people arriving from a day at the county fair. In fact, John says he has seen way rowdier people after a football game. We arrive at our hotel and go out that night without any problems. 

It’s the next morning and we are awakened by the sound of a helicopter outside our window. We follow the loudspeakers we can hear to people camping out under the subway overpass and we buy ‘Shut down Bangkok!’ T-shirts ourselves. Every Thai person we meet, smiles brightly when they see us with the shirts on. 

We travel across the city to meet my niece Delaney and her friends who have just arrived. We go to their hostel, eat some Thai street food near by and take them on a boat trip down The Chao Phraya River towards our part of town. We show them around a little and take them to the area where the protestors are camping so they too can buy the T-shirts and help a guy carry a 400 square foot Thai Flag.

We arrive in Bali, a little nervous about the hotel we booked online because one of our fellow teachers called the Kuta area ‘The armpit of Bali’. 

We booked it because it was very cheap (20 Canadian bucks a night!) and we thought we could go on trips and leave everything there and even if we really didn’t like it, we could go somewhere else and stay. 

Kuta is a little crazy. We arrive late, find the hotel and the room isn’t bad. It looks clean and has dark wooden furniture and a balcony overlooking a lovely garden and swimming pool. 

It is early morning and we are walking down the beach which is a 5 min walk from the hotel. The part of the beach close to our hotel is very quiet as there are a few fishing boats but no real beach chairs or umbrellas or utilities. Further down there is a lot of garbage that has washed up on the shore and as it is early, no one has cleared it away yet. 

Even further down where there are lots of people selling their wares in a very annoying and aggressive manner, there are small bulldozers in the process of taking the garbage and piling it (presumably to haul it away later). 

 We find out that at this time of year (low season), the beaches on this side of the island are plagued by the garbage washing in from the ocean. We settle into some beach chairs and are set upon by what seems like every seller on the beach. 

Some ladies come up and ask if we want a massage, and while we are laying on our stomachs, people are coming up and shoving their wares in our faces, oblivious that we are trying to rest, insisting we should buy something, even when we are saying, “No, Thank you. I don’t like what you are selling” or “Please leave us alone!”. It is unbelievable. We decide we will find the nice beaches, hoping there will be less aggressive sellers there or hang around the pool at the hotel.

The hotel has a swimming pool and a pool side bar where the stools for the bar are in the water of the pool which are often occupied by one big Dutch fellow whose white back gets very burnt by the Equator sun. 

There are a few deck chairs, some umbrellas and the hotel restaurant crew  are lovely friendly people who have worked here for approx. 20 years each. 

They are always ready to make watermelon smoothies and practice some basic Balinese or Indonesian with us (mostly John, as he is the one with the good memory). We are surrounded by green tropical gardens and the hotel has great Wi-Fi so I am able to upload pictures while we relax by the pool. 

The hotel is just on the outskirts but walking distance to Kuta which is pretty touristy and in parts not very nice, especially if you compare it to the rest of Bali but it’s full of restaurants to choose from and there is shopping everywhere. We are happy we aren’t right in the middle of the craziness but it is convenient to be close. We buy a travel guitar and a cheap ukulele and either play music or watch movies on the little flat screen TV in our room or read books after dinner most nights. 

One wing of the hotel is occupied by some older Dutch people who are all retired so they spend the 4 winter months in Bali, while Holland is a little chilly. We see most of them for breakfast and John and I are the youngest of the lot but feels like some kind of rehearsal for a retirement home.  We have some conversations with a few of them and it sounds like they have a nice life. In the spring and fall, they travel around Europe in luxury camper homes and in the summer stay in Holland. 

There are a few younger people in the hotel too; some Japanese, some Chinese, some Indonesian 2 Brits (who are teachers like us, living in China) and a few Aussies, including 2 wonderful couples who are from Queensland who we will definitely keep in touch with. 

We go for a day trip to Denpasar (the capital) to see a wonderful museum that used to be a Palace and our guide explains some of the history, including how the Balinese people got away from the Dutch when they were occupied by them. He also tells us some of the customs regarding their religion , which is Hindu. We visit a huge market there, where we buy some art and beautifully carved picture frames that will be too big for our suitcases. 

We do some research and try out a couple of beaches that are a 1/2 hour taxi ride away from the hotel. They are all better than Kuta’s beach but our favourite is one that a local taxi driver takes us to. Pandawa (Secret beach) is breathtaking. We take an unusual route to get there, through what seems to be a farmer’s field. After 20 minutes of an extremely bumpy ride, we drive through tall limestone cliffs that surround and protect the beach and carved into the cliffs are large but shallow entrances that house giant sculptures of the legendary 5 knights from Hindu legend. The beach below is a strip of clean white sand and gorgeous turquoise blue water. 

There are sun loungers with umbrellas along the beach and warungs which are little open shacks serving food and drink-usually some kind of barbecued food and fruit smoothies. There seem to be mostly locals on this beautiful beach which suits us just fine so we spend a couple of days here, enjoying the swimming, the sand, and the breeze. 

We find a wonderful driver named Gede who is very informative, intelligent and a great driver. He takes us to a temple which we are able to go into the inside of-most do not let non-Hindu people inside where people are worshipping. Gede tells us we must wear a sarong to cover our knees so we both wear them. The temple consists of a large courtyard with separate buildings that have gorgeous carvings on them. There are some amazing Xylophone like instruments inside one of the buildings that we are allowed to play.

Driving along the roads in Bali is beautiful no matter where you go, as every house has its own temple and there are tropical plants and flowers everywhere. Most of the temples are made of beautiful stone carvings but even the people who have no money have constructed simple small alters of wood or leaves. There are offerings of rice and flowers and fruit everywhere too as people leave something out for their deities every morning and evening.

We are on our way to Ubud, where the Hippy chic ‘Artists’ are and we stop at a factory where they were making silver jewelry. We walk among the people soldering, filing, etc. silver pieces which will sell in the large shop attached to the factory. We do not buy anything here (I know, that is a miracle)but our eyes are filled with the beauty and craftsmanship of the pieces we see here and especially the building , which is covered in giant brass dragonflies and graceful figures that appeared to be doing Balinese dances. 

We stop again, this time in a place where some locals are carving the most magnificent people sized dragons and Gods and Komodo dragons and…Each piece is again more beautiful than the last and we begin wishing we had not a suitcase but a container to ship some of these pieces back with us. As I mentioned before, we did arrive in Bali with 2 small carry on suitcases and 2 small backpacks (the size of a school bag) but we have already bought a large suitcase to carry some of our purchases back to China! 

We eventually get to Ubud, where we have a wonderful lunch at the Havana Café where John actually has the traditionally famous Cuban Sandwich (2 kinds of pig meat – ham and roast pork). We visit the Monkey Forest, where one ever watchful little critter sees me put my hand protectively on my bag (my Iphone is in there so I am nervous as I hear they snatch up anything that is not attached). He jumps on the back of my leg and starts to crawl up towards my bag. I scream and run and he jumps off. 

There are hundreds of monkeys everywhere so I wonder if I really want to go any further. A guy sitting watching tells me that if your hands are not open-if they can’t see the palms of your hands-they assume you have food. I give John the bag to carry and I walked with my palms open and don’t have a problem after that. Some people are feeding the monkeys and letting them jump in their hair, etc. but as I also see the monkeys picking lice from one another’s heads, I let go of that photo opportunity.

“So you live in China, but you left your luggage in Bali and you are only in Australia for 4 days, travelling with these little backpacks? Why do you want to come to Darwin?” 

“It’s always been my husband’s dream to come to Darwin”

“Could you step into this back room please.” 

We undergo more questioning in depth from another officer who is friendly, has more of a sense of humour than the 1st guy and he decides we are not criminals. 

 It is late and the receptionist at our hotel in Darwin, doesn’t know if anything is open but we find a bar that is hopping with some interesting drunken locals and thankfully a live band. The band is pretty good and suddenly it really feels like we are in the West.  We dance a little and go back to the hotel, which is more like a nice motel with a swimming pool and a barbecue right outside our room.

Darwin has a population of about 120, 000 people so it doesn’t take long to go anywhere. John loves it here as it is like being in a tropical Saskatoon. It is small enough that everyone is friendly and proud of their city; that it survived the Japanese bombings in WW2, Hurricane Tracy in 1974 and being geographically cut off from most of the rest of Australia. It is probably the closest we could get to being in the outback, without actually being there. 

We check out the centre of town, go swimming and visit the local museum which is pretty rich in the culture of the surroundings and has a room where you can experience what it would be like to be in a hurricane. 

We dine in the wonderful ‘Seafood on Cullen’ restaurant and feast on an all you can eat seafood buffet and watch the sunset. We walk along the shore of the beautiful Cullen Bay, and see signs advising against swimming due to the many box jellyfish (they are the ones that will kill you).

We see his eyes and nostrils just above the water and he is swiftly moving towards the boat. There is no thick glass window between him and us. He is a wild animal and we are in his territory, on the Adelaide River. He approaches the boat with the kind of speed you could never out swim, if you were to fall in the water. One of our guides holds a fishing rod with a big chunk of buffalo meat on the end of the hook and he can smell it. Our guide says he can hear our heart beats. She says this is like the ice cream truck and we are the ice cream for him. They tell us several times to keep our arms inside the boat. He is about 5 to 6 metres long and has a yellow marking on part of his head and nose. The guide says he is one of the oldest and biggest crocodiles on the river.  That it is rare to see a crocodile with this kind of colouring as the mother crocodiles usually eat any of their own babies with what they see as a deformity. He jumps out of the river to try and grab the piece of meat but she keeps it just out of his reach. We see his entire body from his lower legs up as his strong tail propels him out of the water and his huge jaws snap at the fishing line. I am sitting right beside the guide with the fishing hook so he is only about a metre and 1/2 away and I wonder if he could jump into the boat if he got frustrated with not getting the buffalo meat, which we are told is his favourite. 

He is not the only one in the water. These are salt water crocodiles that make their way into the rivers from the sea for better meals, I guess. The guides say we are lucky as we have seen many different sizes of crocodiles today. Some of the smaller ones are jumping so high we see their entire bodies with their strong tails supporting them out of the water. It is exciting to see them this close.

We are now in a famous pub called Humpty Doo. There are some real characters in here and we are told it is the closest to an outback pub we would get. We are drinking our usual soft drinks and the regulars all look like hardcore versions of Crocodile Dundee so they do their best to shock us with some stories about tangling with wildlife but they are also pretty friendly.

January 31st. Today it is my birthday. It is also Chinese New Year; we are back in Bali after a wonderful ‘Western fix’ in Darwin. Tonight we are in a hotel that offers a Chinese Buffet and Party to celebrate New Year’s. So I get a birthday party without having to plan anything. There is a live acoustic act, a dance show, some people in dragon costumes and the food is really good Chinese food. They bring me a cake (ordered by John) and some Chinese people that are here sing Happy Birthday so I shouted back. “Xing Nian Kuai Le!” (Happy New Year). They look surprised and happy that a non-Chinese person would know this. 

We are on our way to Lovina, which is on the north side of the island of Bali. We stop to see a typical Balinese show; There is dancing and elaborate costumes and the story is basically the fight between good and evil. Gede explains that neither can win and if I understand correctly, it seems to be a thread which is picked up over and over again in the stories we hear about the Hindu religion. I guess it’s the idea that we all have good and evil (or the light and the dark) in us. That one cannot exist without the other so we need them both to keep ourselves in balance.

 We come out of the show and get back to where Gede parked the car, on a sidewalk, alongside all the other drivers who had dropped their passengers off at the show. We get in the car, he starts the engine and we feel the back end of the car drop down on one side. We are not sure what is happening, thinking he might have a flat tire. We carefully get out of the other side of the car, walk around to see that the sidewalk has collapsed and the car has fallen into a huge hole! We have joked about this happening while we are walking in China so many times so it is a shock to see it could. Luckily, Gede has a few mates that join in to help and with John and I, we managed to push it out without any real damage and we carry on our way.

We  pass some stunningly beautiful rice fields on tiered levels, as far as the eye can see and then have lunch overlooking a semi active volcano and a beautiful lake. Bali’s landscapes change with frequency and each one is more beautiful than the last. 

We arrive in Lovina and stay in a beautiful hotel with an infinity pool, right on the ocean. On one side of the hotel are rice paddies and the other, deserted beaches with gorgeous volcanic black sand that is soft between our toes. The hotel is really a succession of large huts with very tall ceilings with thatched roofs.  The bathroom has 2 showers, one inside and one outdoors, with tall stone walls surrounding it. 

The main reason we came up North was to see the Dolphins in the wild. There are boats that go out on to the ocean around 5 am and it is almost guaranteed that you will see them.  

We wake up to a phone call that tells us the seas are too rough to go out to the Dolphins so we are disappointed but happy we got to see so many amazing things on our way.

Gede takes us to an outdoor hot springs pool called Holy Hot springs, where we swim with mostly locals, then on to a Buddhist temple. 

Now we are on our way back from Lovina, and it is raining so hard, we cannot see the front of Gede’s 4 X4. We are travelling up a mountain road, on our way to the biggest temple in Bali. 

There is a lot of traffic on the road and every few minutes, Gede tries to pass the person in front of us and as we are passing, a large bus or truck is suddenly in front of us. He honks and forces his way back into the long cue of cars travelling up this road and we guess it’s normal as it seems others are doing the same but it’s a little scary. We are now wondering why we need to see another temple.

We are climbing down many stairs carved into and through a narrow passage in the rock of a cliff. At the top there is a small temple and we can hear the wild monkeys along the way and down below, trying to steal food from the Warungs set up on the beach. It’s fairly early in the morning and there are people raking the garbage into huge piles and lighting it on fire. We are on the beach from the movie, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. It’s smaller than it looked in the movie and there are already lots of people here. It’s a pretty little cove and there are many surfers here ready to go out and catch the waves which are pretty big. 

We are on a fast boat, on our way to Gili Trawangan Island, which is one of 3 islands off the coast of Lombok, which is a large island next to Bali. It took us 2 hours to drive from Kuta to the port, Padang Bai, where we got on this fast boat, which they say will only take an hour. A normal boat would take 5 hours so we are happy that we are saving time but it is travelling so fast, hitting the water hard, like a speed boat but when the waves are big, it feels scary, like a rollercoaster which is not my favourite sensation. 

Gili T is Muslim as are all of the other islands in Indonesia (except Bali). There are no cars here. Only little horse drawn carts and bicycles. There is a small bumpy road that runs along the beach that has restaurants and further down, beaches, on one side and hostels and hotels further down the other side. Our hotel is very nice. There is a pool with a waterfall, a private beach and the rooms are 2 story huts that have an outdoor living room in the front, a terrace with sunbeds on the front, a cosy bedroom with stairs leading down to a lovely but fully outdoor bathroom with tall walls around it.

 It is pretty cool to be taking a shower with the palm trees rustling and birds singing above you. The beach is beautiful and the snorkelling is meant to be pretty good so we try it. We see a few small tropical fish but it is no Great Barrier Reef (we have been spoiled). We give up and just relax in the sun. A German couple come back from snorkeling, saying they were stung many times by many small jelly fish that were lurking further out so I am happy that we quit while we were ahead! 

There are many young people on Gili T so there is some good food and live music here but after a couple days we are ready to come back to Bali.

Bali has many shops with people who will make you anything you want like much of South East Asia, so we each get cowboy boots and bags and clothes made to fill up the new suitcase. Our last day is in fact a little bit of a shopping frenzy.

It is almost the end of our vacation. We are back in Bangkok and I am making my way towards a pharmacy. Last night we stayed in Singapore and while we were there, we went to a ‘Hawker’ place and ate some giant prawns. John was violently ill all night but we had to travel from Singapore to Bangkok today. 

 I knew he was feeling like death as I have had food poisoning before but I convinced him he would feel better if we made it to the hotel in Bangkok as it would be very expensive and complicated to book extra flights, hotels etc. He told me later that he was convinced I hated him at that moment. I coaxed and carried the luggage that he usually carries and got him to the airport, then on the plane, then to the hotel in Bangkok (the hotel that now feels like home). We were upgraded to a lovely suite there (and they didn’t know he was sick) that had lots of light and warmth and comfort. He did thank me later but I felt like a terrible person for making him move.

We are back in China. We have been here for a couple weeks and have already had to work one Saturday. We arrived back here on Valentine’s Day so we went to our favourite buffet at the Grace Garden Hotel where all the food was in the shape of a heart and there was a lot of pink. There was a strawberry chocolate fountain, some amazing foods from all over the world.

School already feels exhausting. I have 4 classes; 3 grade 9 classes that are different levels so have to use 2 different books (which means 2 different plans) and I am teaching Media Literacy with Julie, who makes most of the plans up but I still have to get my head around a subject I have no idea how to teach. We have started using a new program at the school to enter marks, attendance and some interactive elements to our courses and I am feeling overwhelmed by the technology of it all.

The kids are lovely as usual so every time I feel like it’s too much, all I need is to see some of my former and present students pass me in the hallway smiling and saying hello and I think, “Ok, this is why I am still here”. John says I could do an online course next year and not teach if I want but I don’t really know what I would take so for now, I am planning on teaching next year. John is certain he will teach here next year.

Its my Mom’s birthday today and I send a message to my sister Wendy to Skype me so I can wish her a Happy Birthday. They call when I am teaching one of my favourite classes. I tell them it is my mother’s birthday so they sing Happy Birthday at the top of their lungs to her. So delightful.