The Island Of Bali
Bali is a very small island in the very large country of Indonesia.
Indonesia, according to Wikipedia, is the world's 4th most populous country with over 260 million people - most of whom are muslims. The majority of people on Bali, however, are Hindus.
Below, all the areas outlined in red are part of Indonesia. The red arrow points at Bali and the blob at the bottom is Australia which is where we are headed after three days on Bali.
Many of the people who come to Bali come for the beaches which are very beautiful. A couple shots below that I scooped from the internet.
This was not our intention though, we've done enough beach holidays - we wanted to see the interior of the island.
The red dot below is the town of Ubud which is where we stayed for three days.
Our travel agent suggested a few hotels in the town of Ubud and we chose one called Como Uma Ubud. A pretty nice place with a nice pool. It turned out to be the most reasonably priced and we were very happy with our decision.
A nice pool area..
a decent bedroom ... the netting was for ambience... there were no mosquitos
a private pool that we never used once ...
and a nice lounging area ... again ... not used.
On the way from the airport to the hotel I saw something huge in the distance. I thought it was Godzilla attacking. It was so far away and so freaking huge.
Here it is full zoom...
So anyways after some investigation it turns out to be a huge freaking statue of the Garuda. A 121 meter (397 feet) tall statue. This statue is 30 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty...freaking huge. I'm glad it wasn't Godzilla!
One night at the hotel they offered a typical Balinese menu and also had a performance of Balinese music and dancers. The music is strange and you're not likely to hear it on your local radio anytime soon.
A short video of the dancers and the funky music.
The interior of the island is very green. Lots of rice is grown as well as a variety of other crops.
Harvesting rice is still done by hand.
A wee vid showing how it works.
Our hotel offered guided tours for a very reasonable cost. The guy in the pic below worked for the hotel and took us in two excursions.
His name was Made. Pronounced Mah Day. He told us in Bali many boys are named Made - it means "first born" in the Balinese language. Weird. On the ship , on the next segment of this trip, we met a server in one of the restaurants who was Balinese and his name was Igade - Igga Day - which means second born. He said there are also names for third, fourth and fifth born, etc but most Balinese families now only have two kids so you don't hear these names much any more.
The one excursion was by car to visit a few different places. One was a coffee plantation. Balinese coffee is famous worldwide apparently. They also have a very strange, and very expensive, coffee called Luwak coffee.
I've pasted a description below from a website I found.
Coffee Luwak has a whole different process than the normal Bali Coffee. The fruits are eaten by a civet, a wild animal that looks like a cat, because of the pulp that is inside of the fruits. The fun fact is that the coffee beans will stay intact during the digestion process. The enzymes in the stomach of the civet take away the bitterness of the bean, which gives it a smooth and mild taste. When the beans leave the body of the civet, the farmers collect them. Originally they took the beans from the wild civet, that’s why the price is so high (a pound can cost you easily $250,- or more) because the whole process can take a while. The civet only eats the ripest coffee cherries.
So after reading the above description anyone might ask "Why would anyone pick coffee beans out of cat shit and then make coffee with them?".
Apparently this was discovered years ago by the people working the plantations who were too poor to be able to afford the regular coffee which sold at a very high price. They discovered the coffee beans in the cat poo and as the plantation owners wanted nothing to do with the beans they were free to keep them and do as they wished with them.
As noted above the civets used to be wild but they are now kept in cages and fed the coffee fruits and the beans collected and processed in due course.
This is the cage. The civet is sleeping in the top right hand corner. The un-eaten coffee fruit is in the pan at the bottom of the cage.
The shot below shows the furry bugger sleeping in his cage. Not a good shot. The guide said after six months they are released into the wild once again.
And below is a plate of the special beans that have been shat out by the civet.
A civet in a bigger cage and awake.
At the coffee plantation we got to try a variety of different coffees and teas. And we also got to try the special Luwak coffee - we had to pay extra for it too. It's the cup beside the plate of cookies below and it was a couple bucks.
Our guide said instead of calling it Cappuccino they call it cat-poop-chino. hahahah
Anyways it wasn't great, I sure wouldn't pay extra for it.
Last shot from the coffee plantation.
The same day as the coffee plantation we visited some religious sites. As noted earlier most Balinese are hindus. In order for us to visit these temples and shrines we both had to cover up our disgusting, sinful knees. Our guide had brought along a couple dresses for us to wear.
And check out the sign below. These guys are still in the dark ages in some respects.
I really don't know what Hindus believe but it must be goofy. The three lumps below, wrapped in towels, are thought to be hindu gods.
A closer shot...I think I can see know why you might think these were divine beings..
Some more shots from the temple.
Thay have a bunch of pools that you can bathe in. Each one has some magical power. The one below wipes away your sins (or something like that...don't remember exactly) or maybe makes you super attractive to the opposite sex.
This one does something else...maybe helps you stop drinking..maybe that's why it's empty.
More Hindu gods and demons.
After the temple we visited a monkey forrest. We saw old monkeys..
and brand new monkeys.
We also visited a fantastic rice growing operation.
While most of what we saw on Bali was very beautiful there were some sad and ugly aspects. These poor pigs live their lives in very small pens.
Hardly enough room to turn around and they have to lay in their own waste.
Same thing with cows. We never saw any pasture land. It's all for growing vegetables. The poor cow just stays tied up until it's time to go to the slaughterhouse. It just about turns you into a vegetarian.
And the sidewalks are something to behold. Apparently nothing gets fixed. They were so bad and there were no street lights in the town where we stayed that we never went out on the street at night fearing a broken leg at the very start of our holiday. Luckily our hotel had a very good, reasonably priced restaurants.
This is a gas station for cars.
And this is a gas station for motorcycles and scooters. The vodka bottles are full of gasoline and you buy one litre at a time.
And, as just about everywhere we've, been they make a pretty good beer in Bali,
So that's about it for Bali....next we catch our ship and go to Komodo Island.