Being A Tourist in Bali!

I spent the first week in Bali on the coast attempting to surf (see previous post).  But eventually I hung a camera around my neck, and buckled up my hip pack (I cannot call it a fanny pack anymore, in every other English speaking country that just doesn't mean the same thing...) and headed inland to get my tourist on.  Not really knowing where to go or what to do (I had planned on surfing the whole time) I ended up in a place called Ubud.  Apparently I wasn't too far off the beaten path, this place was just as tourist strewn as the beaches.  But Strawberry Fanta was easier to find here so I didn't mind one bit.  I still can't believe how small all the roads are, getting here was fun!  I'm sure there is a really good 'threading the needle' comparison I could make for my experiences driving through this country, but that wouldn't come close to describing the utter chaos that motor vehicle transportation is here.  Maybe...threading hundreds of needles per minute, whilst having grenades thrown at you.  Yeah, that's about right.  It is a beautiful place though.  When the urban sprawl finally gives way it's tropical paradise and rice paddy bliss.

View from my room.

Street my Home Stay was on in Ubud

Entrance to the market in Ubud

Random street.

 By this point I had gotten pretty used to basic self sustainment in Indonesia.  Drive super aggressively, only drink it if it's out of a bottle, tell everyone I'm Canadian(most common replies when I admit my true nationality: "What's up dude!" chuckles, and "Barak Obama!" thumbs up), don't tell anyone where I'm staying,  and count the zeros on the bills very carefully.  The Indonesian currency is called a Rupiah.  One Australian dollar (what I was using) is 10,400 Rupiah.  It took a few days to get used to paying 4,000 for a bottle of water.  (not even 50 cents)  But what really got me was trying to figure out how much I was actually paying.  No commas separate the zeros on the bills.  So without careful zero counting, 100000 and 10000 are easy to mix up.  Luckily, I think I dealt with mostly honest people, who would tell me I was paying them too much.  I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a few days to realize each denomination was a different color.  It became easier after that...

Though, the 100,000 and the 10,000 are still quite similar.

After a brief scan of 10 year old tourist brochures, and a few recommendations from Raquel, (I should have done this with you guys last year!) I had decided what I wanted to do.  First up: wake up at 230 am to hike straight up the side of a still steaming volcano!  I would say in the end the near vertical hike in the dark was worth it.  This volcano was a very large cone, inside of a much larger crater.  Several holes along the way emitted very hot steam.  Our guide cooked our eggs in one.  We watched the sun rise and hiked, or rather gracefully fell back down.  It was really cool.  I stayed in pretty much the rest of that day though...

Mount Agung, and Lombok in the background as viewed from Mt. Batur.

Sunrise over Lombok as viewed from Mount Batur

The route and mountain as viewed in Google Earth

 

Volcano monkeys!

1842 lava flow

Straight down!

Next was off to my now annual monkey adventure.  The sacred monkey forest.  As a seasoned monkey veteran.  I was prepared this time.  All sunglasses, watches, necklaces, etc. were all safely packed away in the backpack and the zippers were locked.  It was still hilarious watching obvious first time monkey watching tourists struggle to retain their possessions.  I think one monkey and a local were in cahoots.  The monkey would steal something from some innocent unsuspecting tourist.  Then this little old lady would bribe the monkey with treats until it dropped the contraband.  At which time the tourist would thank and pay the old lady for the treats she had given the monkey.  I sat there for almost an hour watching this happen over and over.  It was hilarious, all the while...I had a new friend!

Sat there and ate that banana for ten minutes!

Then started eating my hat!

The monkeys here were actually far less aggressive than the ones I could not remove from myself in Lopburi.  Which made for an overall more pleasurable experience here.  Still though, 90% of the dirt on my backpack, is from dirty little monkey feet!

Entrance to the monkey forest.

 

Sometimes you gotta let it all hang out

They don't always cooperate for photos

Baby monkey!

Ladies, you need to time your visit appropriately

Monkey on a monkey

Simply because I had once seen a photo of a beautiful rice paddy when googling Bali, I wanted to find one.  So I told the lady at my home stay that I wanted to see one, and she offered to drive me to one on the back of her moped.  I would have preferred to just rent a moped, but recent experiences led me to accept the offer instead of getting myself hopelessly lost by myself.  Other than looking hilarious with a 85 pound old lady driving around a man a full foot and half taller than her, it was a good idea.

 

I have always had a hard time understanding Balinese English, but on the back of this moped with helmets on I literally didn't understand a word she said to me.  So I just kept saying ok.  Turns out that I agreed to do a little more than just go to a rice paddy.  Our first stop was some ancient Hindu temple.  At other temples I'd been to they offered free sarongs to wrap up in to be appropriately dressed for entering the temples.  Here I was quickly accosted by several locals.  One of them quite aggressively put a sarong on me.  At first I assumed this was just the free one that I gave back before I leave.  Soon though, I was forking out more money than I had spent on any object this whole trip.  I'm horrible at that bartering thing, pushover is an understatement.  The temple was cool though, and now I can give my mom something...

 

 

 

The next spot I inadvertently agreed to go to was weird.  I had no idea what this place was.  I actually thought this was supposed to be the rice paddy we were heading to.  It started with a short guided tour of the grounds.  I learned all about coffee.  This particular coffee is made by first being eaten by some small cat/badger/weasel type creature.  Then after it's pooped out being collected and cleaned, cooked, ground, and eventually made into coffee.  The tour taught me about all the steps of this process.  Interesting...  Then I was sat down on a table with a great view, and in front of me was placed several small glasses of coffee samples of different flavors.  Ummmm, ok...  Had no idea what to do here.  As I don't drink coffee, it was a little awkward.  I tried telling them that, and no one understood what I was saying.  Which makes sense, why would I be at a coffee tasting joint if I don't drink coffee?  I took very small samples of each, so as to not be too rude.  Then I was ushered off to a small shop to buy all the coffee I had just sampled.  I didn't.  They didn't like me much.

 

 

Finally, we made it to a pretty spectacular rice paddy.  It wasn't the one I saw on google.  But still pretty and cool nonetheless.  All these rice paddies are pretty spectacular feats of agricultural engineering.  The biggest problem with this place...too many tourists.  Still worth the sore backside caused by the moped ride to get there!

 

 

 

I only spent a few days in the Bali interior.  It was a nice break to get away from the urbanized coastlines I had been at previously.  Everything was very beautiful, and I really liked being a tourist in Bali!  It was then time for a new island though!