Photo Post #2: Bali, Indonesia

OK, here is part two of the holiday photos, showcasing our time in Bali. Well, sort of anyway. I was a bit ambivalent about Bali, in the true sense of the word. We stayed in Nusa Dua in a giant resort. It was not the type of place we'd have ever stayed in before, and to be truthful I felt a little out of my depth and like I didn't belong in there. And, lovely as it was inside the resort, it was very isolated from the rest of the island and island life. In a way, I wondered how much we were missing out on by being all the way down there, out of the action.


However, that said, I did enjoy the doughnuts every day at breakfast. Best. Doughnuts. Ever. My waistline enjoyed them too... there were scales in every bathroom! Talk about putting a bit of a dampener on the holiday eating! Surely that kind of unpleasant surprise should be reserved for when you get home? It didn't stop me from eating those lovely doughnuts though...


The Balinese, like most people in South East Asia, have a very open and obvious spirituality. It affects every moment of their day to day lives. It's almost embarrassing to be a Godless westerner, such as I am ('what religion are you?' Ermmm... ).


Despite this, I was very taken with the offerings placed on every footpath, on stairs and steps, on pedestals and alters, tucked into plant pots and motorbike number plates. I couldn't seem to stop taking photos of them, and when we got home I had dozens upon dozens of offering-photos to sort through.


Like good little tourists, we visited a number of temples.


They were always flooded in sunshine and hard to photograph, so I tended to aim for the shady places;


In places like this, I like peeking in hidden corners and finding tucked-away pavilions and seeing the things that people have left behind for a later date or time, like their lunchboxes;

like bottles with ornately carved wooden stoppers and metal teapots;



and the essentials for a life spent day to day with your Gods.



We also spent a little bit of time in the irrepressible Kuta. I had expected the worst, but to a girl who has spent too much time at Bangkok's Khao San road in the past, and who has been to Phuket and Vang Vieng (Laos), and who was so harrassed by touts in Hanoi (Vietnam) that she turned around and screamed at someone to 'just f*ck off', Kuta really wasn't that bad! I expect it's seedier at night, but during the day it was just a place with lots and lots of little tourist shops and a fairly mediocre beach with some nice shade from the scalding sunlight. We even managed to get a little lost on some backstreets and there wasn't a person in sight - local or tourist - to point us in a different direction.


We also spent a little bit of time in and around Ubud. I had a bee in my bonnet (love that saying!) about visiting Gunung Kawi because I particularly like looking at old sites. It was not the most interesting place like that we have ever been to, I got the distinct impression that all the interesting parts had been 'removed' (IE stolen) at some time in the past, a feeling akin to the intense disappointment you feel around some of the Cambodian temples when you find there is not a single statue with it's head intact. However, despite this, Gunung Kawi was quiet and shady and beautiful. There was a little river running through the centre of the site as well as loads of gorgeous big trees. I think it was probably one of the nicest places we went, not least because there was hardly anyone there!


And all around Gunung Kawi? Rice terraces! Oh, I do love a good rice terrace!



I don't think there is anything else in the world so Green and cooling as rice.


Have you noticed I mention being hot a lot? Bali is hot. You'd think that would be self evident, being the tropics and all, but Bali is also quite grey, there is an awful lot of concrete and carved stone surfaces, reflecting all that tropical heat right back at you. A shady spot with an ocean breeze is sheer bliss. We could have sat on these Tanah Lot stairs for hours.


But when the sun went down every day it was just warm and still and glorious. Most evenings we left our resort for one of the dozens of cafes nearby where we spent the time eating and drinking and trying to keep the toddlers occupied (it was our first real 'family' holiday, we travelled not just Chef D, SP and I, but also with D's mum, his two sisters, one sister's husband and small child).


In the end, I don't think I really 'got' Bali. I felt like I'd seen a lot of it before, in other places. The roadsides lined with shops reminded me a lot of some places in Vietnam, the tourists - mostly Australian - made me think of Phuket, and the rice fields and the beaches could have been anywhere in South East Asia. Kuta was tidier and better maintained than I expected, but I was shocked by how shabby some parts of the supposedly 'superior' Nusa Dua were. Clearly, the tourist dollar is not spread very evenly. Nothing about that is new, but I thought that at least in the more touristed parts of Bali it would have been. Still, it was interesting and nice to see somewhere new. The food was good and we didn't get sick, and I am seeking a recipe for something called 'Pepinchak Udang' which is this kind of fabulously delicious coconutty prawn curry (Google is not helping me out this time).

So... this is my Bali, I think: life and death on the small scale, gory and gritty and grim and beautiful, with a backdrop of hot pink and chrome.

Next time: Thaton.

Promised photo post #1: Singapore

Even though Singapore and Thailand are only a small fraction of the photos that I took - Bali getting the Lion's share - I've decided to separate the photo posts out by country. I was going to do it all in one but figure it would just be too big and it's almost midnight so probably best not to push on at this point. To be honest, I wasn't really feeling the love with my camera on this trip, but there are still a few photos which are nice enough to share (pics are very small for copyright protection purposes, I get iffy about the snaps I take on holiday). There are more pictures on another card somewhere, but I haven't been able to get them organised just yet. Oh, and I'm not in any of these pictures because, in my unbiased opinion, I am much better behind the camera than in front of it...

Anyway, enjoy!

First, we went to Singapore for four nights. On one of our days there we toddled off to Sentosa Island to visit the aquarium - we seem to make time for aquariums whenever there is one. This aquarium is one of the smaller ones we have visited, but SP was fascinated at every corner.



Personally, I was taken with the octopi, beautiful creatures (and this is one of my favourite trip photos, too).


Afterwards, we had a cold drink at a certain giant multinational coffee shop.



I don't know where these two find their energy sometimes...


Of course, while in Singapore we made sure to try some chili crab at at night hawker centre (where we went with my cousin, who lives in this city of glass).


TBC...

Next post: Bali

Antics

The other night, as we lay in our enormous bed in our luxurious resort, just as I was dozing off to sleep, the Earth quivered and trembled beneath us, and I thought, as I lay there rigid with fear and my heart pounding in my ribs, no amount of luxury will save us if this gets serious. On Saturday we flew from Denpasar to Bangkok, where we stayed the night in a hotel ringed with sandbags, a precaution against the flooding which has swept through the city this year, the worst in decades. Then I sat in an airport and looked out the window where the smog was so thick that I couldn't see clearly across the tarmac. I can't help but think our Earth is reproaching us: What are you doing to me with your mines and your oil palm plantations and your deforestation and your pollution? And she shakes in outrage and weeps floods of tears of despair.

Anyway, that aside, we have made it back to our second home high in hills in Chiang Mai Province, where I always start to desire a simple life and daydream about moving here one day to live in the hut in the lychee grove. Susan and Yuki are the same as ever. Shu is the only boy still here. Boy? Shu is a man now (19 or thereabouts), and recently married to a girl in the village (and she - her name is something like Ju-Lee - was married off at 13 to a man who was 'useless,' according to Susan, and had a child with him who is now three years old, and then divorced him for a cost of 700 Baht and then married Shu. Apparently she's quite 'together,' for a village girl.) There are several more monkeys that we don't know. Sadly, Pinky died some months ago. We'll be here for a week or so, enjoying our other life, and plotting how to take some of feeling home with us.

No idea or what who I'm talking about? Try here for previous posts on Thaton.

Bali Hai

It's a whole new world. An oasis of frangipani trees, pink and apricot bouganvilleas, and red hibiscus; of enormous white towels, smooth sheets, and mountainous beds; of paths lined with fluttering flags, stone lanterns, and votive candles in the evenings; of breakfasts of noodles, cereal, rice, tofu, miso, doughnuts, pancakes, eggs, bacon, and a rainbow of cut fruits. There are a pair of gold-dressed dancers and a gamelan in the lobby each evening, greeting the guests as they arrive back from a hard day's touristing, snap-shotting, t-shirt buying and hair-braiding. It's quite nice, I must admit, but not what we are used to. As Chef-D said, it's the kind of place we normally scurry past and feel dirty.
Outside our resort, our enclave, we enter...I don't know... not quite the Bali I expected, but what must pass as Bali for many visitors here. Not a paradise, that is for sure. Oh, there are palm trees and beaches, mangroves and sunny skies and sea breezes. But the streets are much scruffier than I had expected, mostly from the dust and stone and chaos of endless construction, the mangroves nearby are full of plastic detritus, and the blue sky at the resort fogs up at dusk with an insecticidal smoke that my inner-ecologist cringes at ('For your comfort...')
We have not been far afield yet, we've had a brief glimpse of some rice fields full of whirlygigs and flags flapping to scare birds from the ripening crops, while in other fields sickles flash in the withering midday heat as people gather the grains. We've been to see one holy site so far (Tanah Lot) where we sizzled on the concrete paths like damp sponges on hotplates. Mostly we have just hung out by the pool, which is actually a novel holiday experience for us, so why not?
Today's photo is of the view from our lovely large balcony (after our last room in Singapore, this place is not just spacious, it's practically palatial.)