Kuta - Indonesia
4/25/05
To leave Sukamade we had no choice but to jump on the back of a truck. One of the great ironies of Indonesia is that farm animals ride in buses and people ride on the back of farm trucks.
The truck had a load of bamboo, two spare tires for the truck, two other pick-up tires, bananas, chickens and another 20 people. Four people were riding seating on the top of the cabin. It was a pity that our camera was out of battery.
It took three hours to get to Sarongan. On the way we had a flat tire and also stopped in a factory to unload the bamboos. At the factory we had a break and were offered cold tea and 'pisang goreng', thin slices of banana fried like chips. From Sarongan we took a minibus to Jagjag which was only 45 min away. In Jagjag we caught a big bus that goes all the way to Denpasar, Bali. The last leg took 6h. So you can see that it was another day on the road.
The trip to Denpasar was a never-ending Parade of Indonesian life. We had an uncountable number of sellers, singers and odds. The singers come in several flavors, some alone with a guitar, some in couple and some are a complete band, with two guitars, drums and keyboard, it is just amazing.
One guy jumped in the bus with a speaker box hanging on his neck. The box also had the ability to play k-7 tapes and he had microphone in his hands. So there was playback music while he was singing surprisingly well.
At first we thought he had an innovative portable karaoke neck-hanging machine, but when he finished his show and started to ask around for money we noticed that he was not actually singing, he was dubbing. !!! He didn't stop the tape and the music and vocals kept playing while he ran up and down the bus to collect his tips. At least we have to admit that he has an original idea.
When we got to the bus station in Denpasar things were quite different from Java. Bali is another place where the tourist has no peace. The cab drivers are extremely insistent and they propose 3 times the regular price.
After some hassling we got to Kuta beach by bus and found a hotel around Poppy's Lane.
This area is very busy, with hundreds of shops selling the same junk, t-shirts, cheap fake glasses, souvenirs, pirate cds and dvds, there are also many restaurants and bars.
4/26/05
We walked around in Kuta in the morning and went to check the beach. There weren't many people but the majority were surfers. A tourism flyer described Kuta beach as a Mecca for surfers, but I can't really judge since I'm not a surfer. Somebody stopped us on the street to play in a sweepstake for a hotel and guess what? We won a prize, got to visit the peninsula for free and two T-shirts.
At the end of the day we went to the airport to pick-up Flavien and his dad, Christian. They came to spend two weeks with us in Indonesia. Christian lived in Medan 30 years ago and it was a good occasion to visit again the country.
At night we hired a tour for the next morning.
4/27/05
This was a quite busy day. We left right after breakfast for the tour and stayed the whole day out.
The first stop was the Royal palace in Taman Ayuh in
Bedugul.
Then we went to see the Temple on the lake Bratan, named Pura Ulun Danu.
The botanical garden holds a good collection of orchids but they weren't there for our visit, the garden was ‘orchidless’, but the whole place was still very nice. Throughout Bali many there are nice statues decorating the island, this one lies at the Botanical Garden and it is huge, around 6m high.
From there we went to the Monkey forest that has many monkeys of course, but also huge bats.
The last stop of the day was Tanah Lot temple for sunset. Balinese Hindus gather here for the sunset with offerings for the Gods. They cross the beach in a long line, the women carrying the fruits and flower in baskets on their heads, then pour holy water on their head and finally head up in the temple for a ceremony from which tourists are kept away.
Back to Bali we had dinner and hired a service to take us to Ubud on the next morning.
4/28/05.
We left right after breakfast for Ubud.
Before leaving Kuta we stopped in a travel agency to buy flight tickets to Sumatra and Singapore. That wasn’t a trivial task. We had already tried the night before in several small agencies around Kuta but with no success. The system was down or the reservation system was already shutdown or it would take 3 days for them to issue the tickets. In other cases they only worked with one company which did not have any matching flights. An agent advised us to go to a big computerized travel agency and even there it did not turn out to be a simple task. Luckily we knew the names of the cheap airlines serving Indonesia, because the travel agent only proposed us the most expensive ticket from the national airline. We asked to look for each different company until we finally found a good deal matching with our schedule. Issuing the tickets took more than an hour because they issued half of it with the computer and the other half manually. After spending more than 2 hours in the agency we finally headed to Ubud.
Ubud
In Ubud we had lunch in a warung, and then rented bikes to go around the hilly region.
The roads waving through the rice fields are stunning. The small villages we crossed count innumerable numbers of handcraft shops selling wonderful bamboo furniture, wooden-carved masks and statues.
Temples are also all over Bali. We biked for three hours under a killing sun, but everybody survived.
Kedisan
Back in Ubud we left for Kedisan, to climb Batur, another active volcano which cannot be climbed alone anymore. In Kedisan we had a funny negotiation for what they call 'trek'. One and a half hour walk up to the top that was initially priced at $40 per person and came out at $50 for the whole group of four people. Angie and Christian did really good on these one. :D
To leave Sukamade we had no choice but to jump on the back of a truck. One of the great ironies of Indonesia is that farm animals ride in buses and people ride on the back of farm trucks.
The truck had a load of bamboo, two spare tires for the truck, two other pick-up tires, bananas, chickens and another 20 people. Four people were riding seating on the top of the cabin. It was a pity that our camera was out of battery.
It took three hours to get to Sarongan. On the way we had a flat tire and also stopped in a factory to unload the bamboos. At the factory we had a break and were offered cold tea and 'pisang goreng', thin slices of banana fried like chips. From Sarongan we took a minibus to Jagjag which was only 45 min away. In Jagjag we caught a big bus that goes all the way to Denpasar, Bali. The last leg took 6h. So you can see that it was another day on the road.
The trip to Denpasar was a never-ending Parade of Indonesian life. We had an uncountable number of sellers, singers and odds. The singers come in several flavors, some alone with a guitar, some in couple and some are a complete band, with two guitars, drums and keyboard, it is just amazing.
One guy jumped in the bus with a speaker box hanging on his neck. The box also had the ability to play k-7 tapes and he had microphone in his hands. So there was playback music while he was singing surprisingly well.
At first we thought he had an innovative portable karaoke neck-hanging machine, but when he finished his show and started to ask around for money we noticed that he was not actually singing, he was dubbing. !!! He didn't stop the tape and the music and vocals kept playing while he ran up and down the bus to collect his tips. At least we have to admit that he has an original idea.
When we got to the bus station in Denpasar things were quite different from Java. Bali is another place where the tourist has no peace. The cab drivers are extremely insistent and they propose 3 times the regular price.
After some hassling we got to Kuta beach by bus and found a hotel around Poppy's Lane.
This area is very busy, with hundreds of shops selling the same junk, t-shirts, cheap fake glasses, souvenirs, pirate cds and dvds, there are also many restaurants and bars.
4/26/05
We walked around in Kuta in the morning and went to check the beach. There weren't many people but the majority were surfers. A tourism flyer described Kuta beach as a Mecca for surfers, but I can't really judge since I'm not a surfer. Somebody stopped us on the street to play in a sweepstake for a hotel and guess what? We won a prize, got to visit the peninsula for free and two T-shirts.
At the end of the day we went to the airport to pick-up Flavien and his dad, Christian. They came to spend two weeks with us in Indonesia. Christian lived in Medan 30 years ago and it was a good occasion to visit again the country.
At night we hired a tour for the next morning.
4/27/05
This was a quite busy day. We left right after breakfast for the tour and stayed the whole day out.
The first stop was the Royal palace in Taman Ayuh in
Bedugul.
Then we went to see the Temple on the lake Bratan, named Pura Ulun Danu.
The botanical garden holds a good collection of orchids but they weren't there for our visit, the garden was ‘orchidless’, but the whole place was still very nice. Throughout Bali many there are nice statues decorating the island, this one lies at the Botanical Garden and it is huge, around 6m high.
From there we went to the Monkey forest that has many monkeys of course, but also huge bats.
The last stop of the day was Tanah Lot temple for sunset. Balinese Hindus gather here for the sunset with offerings for the Gods. They cross the beach in a long line, the women carrying the fruits and flower in baskets on their heads, then pour holy water on their head and finally head up in the temple for a ceremony from which tourists are kept away.
Back to Bali we had dinner and hired a service to take us to Ubud on the next morning.
4/28/05.
We left right after breakfast for Ubud.
Before leaving Kuta we stopped in a travel agency to buy flight tickets to Sumatra and Singapore. That wasn’t a trivial task. We had already tried the night before in several small agencies around Kuta but with no success. The system was down or the reservation system was already shutdown or it would take 3 days for them to issue the tickets. In other cases they only worked with one company which did not have any matching flights. An agent advised us to go to a big computerized travel agency and even there it did not turn out to be a simple task. Luckily we knew the names of the cheap airlines serving Indonesia, because the travel agent only proposed us the most expensive ticket from the national airline. We asked to look for each different company until we finally found a good deal matching with our schedule. Issuing the tickets took more than an hour because they issued half of it with the computer and the other half manually. After spending more than 2 hours in the agency we finally headed to Ubud.
Ubud
In Ubud we had lunch in a warung, and then rented bikes to go around the hilly region.
The roads waving through the rice fields are stunning. The small villages we crossed count innumerable numbers of handcraft shops selling wonderful bamboo furniture, wooden-carved masks and statues.
Temples are also all over Bali. We biked for three hours under a killing sun, but everybody survived.
Kedisan
Back in Ubud we left for Kedisan, to climb Batur, another active volcano which cannot be climbed alone anymore. In Kedisan we had a funny negotiation for what they call 'trek'. One and a half hour walk up to the top that was initially priced at $40 per person and came out at $50 for the whole group of four people. Angie and Christian did really good on these one. :D
posted by Adriano and Angie | 1:54 AM
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