Nothing too exciting happened yesterday. We went to a very expensive restaurant for dinner. Just riding around, I think I enjoy the feel of Seminyak better than Ubud. Not sure what it is, but an energetic feel. Or maybe less concentration of people. Still a lot of tourists either way. Maybe it’s just the beaches.
Today we went to see Tanah Lot which is an island temple. It was beautiful, but you can’t go across to the temple. But with the waves crashing on the rocks, it makes for some wonderful pictures. After that we spent some time on the beach and fun beach bar after. It reminded me a lot of beach bars in Florida. Overall, the day was nice, but I am very ready to move on to Singapore tomorrow.
Got up early today, checked out of the hotel in Ubud and drove back to Sanur. I had booked diving on Nusa Lembogan, an island nearby. Our instructions were to drive to the parking lot of a big resort and then someone would meet us there and we would take a fast boat to the island. That’s almost as vague as the directions I’ve gotten in Thailand for getting a bus. Ok, it works out in Thailand, it will work out here. We had a bit of trouble at the gate to the resort. They kept asking where I was going and I kept telling them the name of the resort and they asked again. It was really annoying. Finally, they got to the point that they wanted to charge me to park there. Fine. Why didn’t you just say so 5 minutes ago? The parking lot was big and had lots of vans, busses, cars and motorbikes coming and going. This was obviously the place people parked to get the boats. We were early so instead of waiting for someone to come find us we followed the throng of people down a tiny alley barely big enough for two people to pass each other. It put us on the beach board walk I liked so much when I was in Sanur last week. There were a bunch of boat companies. We found the one that was on my email and checked in. They had our reservation and gave us wristbands to get on the boat. When we got to the island there was a guy waiting with my name on a sheet of paper. See, it all worked out, even though it seemed quite vague to begin with.
Diving was good. We went to the same two dive spots I did before. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but they were still good. Carly had trouble on the first dive, Crystal Bay, so it took a while to start the dive. She got it all the equipment bugs worked out and we were able to do the dive. But because it took a while we didn’t do the wall and the point I had done before. So, it was a new dive in a way. I got to see crabs and cuttle fish amongst other things. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen cuttle fish before so that was great. The next dive was Manta Point. We saw so many manta. I couldn’t even count. On the boat, I had told the dive master I saw 3 octopus when I did this dive a couple weeks ago. We joked that he needed to find 4 and he said he’d find more. After watching the manta for half the dive we set out to see other things. We were almost done with the dive when the dive master pointed off in the distance. I knew it had to be an octopus, but I couldn’t see him. They are masterful at camouflage. We swam closer and then I saw him. We watched him change colors and move from one spot to the next. They the dive master looked at me and held up one finger to count one octopus. We didn’t see any others.
I sat down with the dive shop manager after diving and we talked about the dive master program. I got a similar story as the last one. It’s not impossible to make a living as a dive master, but it will be difficult, especially in Asia. I’d have to be an instructor to make any money and even then, it won’t be much. It’s a lifestyle decision, not a monetary decision. And if I want to make a career of it, it will be difficult. I don’t want to make a career of it so I more or less have to decide if I want to do it for a year or so just to do it. The decision isn’t made yet, but it’s not a slam dunk decision either.
We stayed at bungalows next to the dive shop. The island is pretty small so there wasn’t a ton to do that night, but they did have an outdoor movie theatre. The movie is free, you just buy food and drink. So we had dinner there and sat on big bean bag chairs and watched The Beach. I hadn’t seen a movie since I left Colorado. I loved the theatre idea.
I am not a videographer and I’m using my phone and I’m on a boat so the videos are not great, but you’ll get the idea.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Fast Boat and a lot of people
Party flotilla
Nusa LemboganLooking at Bali off in the distanceBungalowsBungalow EntranceNew FriendHappy Hour3 for 2Bali off in the distance
More touristy stuff today. We drove to see the Elephant Cave Temple. There are no elephants there, but the entrance to the cave is supposed to look like and elephant. Some pool time in the afternoon. It’s so hot here. I’m really not sure how people live here. I’m not sure how I’m going to survive the summer in Thailand. I don’t understand why people love the heat. Maybe I need to move.
We did get to the dance show tonight. It was interesting. I love the music (small example video attached). There are several types of traditional Balinese Dance. The one we went to see was Legong. I got some pictures and video of the dancing, but they came out awful. The most fascinating part for me was how eye movements are part of the dance. It’s creepy, but you can’t look away. As with Thai dancing, the program tells you the story of the dance, but there’s no way you can tell that is the story. The hands and feet are highly involved in the dance, like Thai. The facial expressions and eye movements are quite unique to Balinese dancing though. I found this video on you tube that is much better than mine. It was taken at the same place so just pretend I took it.
Today we went to the Monkey Forest. It was a park you had to pay to get in, but it had some temples and lots of monkeys. Then in the afternoon we went to Jungle Fish. This was a little outside of where we were staying so I had to drive the POS. It was a resort in the jungle with a wonderful pool and restaurant. You have to pay 150,000 rupiah ($12) in food and drink and you get to hang out at the pool as long as you want. Deal. This evening we got massages and facials. The people working at the spa were wonderful. They kept trying to fix me up with one of the guys at the spa. They were laughing and joking with each other. It’s so delightful to see people loving each other’s company and the work they do. I have found most Bali people to be genuine and when they smile it’s real. In Thailand, the smile is not always real. This is a nice change in that respect. We were going to see a traditional dance show, but got there too late.
I finally found out when I have to be back at school. I have two more weeks instead of one. I decided to extend my stay in Bali by four days instead of sitting on a beach in Thailand or trying to go to another country. Then I’m going to go to Singapore for a few days and back to Thailand. I’ll probably go back to Chaing Mai in Thailand since it’s easy to get to by plane and fairly easy to get to Sam Ngao from there. A 8-12 hour bus ride from Bangkok again sounds horrible.
I stayed out too late last night. The alarm was hard to take this morning. But, I managed to get up and get breakfast. I had signed up for a silver smithing class. I’ve done a couple of college level courses in metal smithing and the guide book talked about Bali jewelry as if it is unique to this part of the world. I thought it would be fun to learn some new skills and who doesn’t want some new jewelry? The class wasn’t that great. They barely let me do any of the work and the “teacher” kept trying to redesign my work. The examples of types of things we could make didn’t look unique. I’ve seen similar jewelry everywhere. I decided to do a wire work piece since I never did wire work in other classes. The class cost around $30 which is not a bad deal for a new ring and necklace even if I didn’t learn a life changing new skill.
I went to lunch after the class. One of the things I like about Ubud is you can get a salad! There are a lot of healthy restaurants here. Ubud is like a bunch of people from Boulder created a town in Bali. There are yoga places, vegetarian restaurants and art shops. There are more guesthouses than tourists even though it’s a town of tourists and expats. Most of the restaurants have communal tables that are low to the ground and you sit on cushions around them. I love these. I sat at one of those and met a couple expats that are just hanging out in Ubud. How do people afford to just move to another country for a year or two without having to work? Obviously, I’m doing it wrong. Then it started to rain. I didn’t have my computer or book so I didn’t want to hang out and wait for the rain to stop. I debated how long to wait and gave up and just started walking in the downpour. At some point, a nice man gave me his extra umbrella. I saw a spa and gave him his umbrella back and ducked in for a foot massage. Massages here are almost as cheap as in Thailand, but not quite as good. This was a pretty good massage and a great way to wait out the rain.
My hotel here is awesome. It has two pools, beautiful gardens and the people are nice. After a little pool time, my friend picked me up and we went to an ashram a little outside of town for a yoga class that a friend of hers recommended. I haven’t done yoga in years. One cool thing that happened is when we were sitting the instructor had us lean forward and hold our toes. My initial thought was, I can’t reach my toes. My hamstrings are always to tight and after not working out for over 7 months, there’s no way. I could reach my toes. I have this feeling that losing so much muscle weight lately is actually like a reset. I’m thinking that a lot of the stuff I’ve been holding in my muscles just left with the weight loss. Now I can touch my toes. I have no idea what I was holding in my hamstrings before, but it doesn’t matter, it’s gone.
The yoga class was in an open air pavilion. At some point it got so hot that I thought I might die. Then a minute later it rained and I felt a huge relief. I hadn’t realized I was feeling the humidity build to the breaking point. Once it started raining, the humidity in the pavilion went down to something more tolerable. I’ve been thinking I might want to live in Bali next, but I’m not sure I like humidity enough to be able to live here. It’s so hot and humid. We had to ride motorbikes in the rain to dinner and back to Ubud.
Rraine Drops 