We're in Bali! - Oct. 1, 2010

Senne's Summary: We love Bali so far. It is beautiful, the weather is warm, everything is dirt cheap, the food is good, and the people are always smiling, kind and gentle.

We have arrived in Bali and love it so far. I have so many random things to say that this might rate low on the fluency scale (not yet meeting expectations for all you teachers out there). Feel free to talk about my horrific writing behind my back 😉

We arrived in Bali in the evening and got our Visa with no glitches. ($25 US for the 30 day Visa). A bit of worry when Steve’s bag didn’t come out until about 20 minutes after mine, but it did show up, so all is good 😀

Our driver met us right outside the airport (with the approximately 500 other drivers holding signs), but we managed to find him right away. He was looking for three people: Lisa, Stephen and Marta. When I told him Marta was our last name he just giggled 😀

We had a nice SAFE (Senne it was perfectly safe!) ride on the left side of the road. That was a surprise, I didn’t realize they drove on the left here! Lots and lots of mopeds and motorbikes zipping in and out of traffic here. Steve and I are trying to see who can find the moped with the most people on it. So far we’ve only seen four (I even managed to get a photo of it!)

The current record is four!

We checked into our hotel, which is in the traditional Indonesian style. It has a bunch of villas surrounding the pool in the centre. The pool is lovely and warm and we’ve been in it several times already!

Our room has a nice porch off the front with a couple of chairs (the owner’s dog likes to nap under one of the chairs when I put a towel on it to make some shade for him).

Inside the main room is a king size bed, some cupboards a desk and a fridge stocked with sodas, water and beer. (Strawberry Fanta turns out to be just like the old pink cream soda from when we were kids! Yum!)

My favourite part is the bathroom. It is out towards the back of the villa. It has three walls, but no outside wall. The back of the room is open to the outside! I hope the pictures can capture how it looks. It also has a nice deep bath tub which I am going to try to take a bath in this week some time! An outside bath just like Heidi! (Heidi my friend, not the little Swiss girl from the book…). Anyway, the bathroom is super cool.

That night we basically just crashed after the long travel day. 25 hours on planes and in airports is a long time.

The next morning we woke up and went out to have our breakfast by the pool. (Breakfast is included). We both had a yummy banana pancake and some fruit and juice. There is quite a bit to choose from.

You won’t believe this, but we saw Spiderman by the pool this morning! This very cute little guy (about 4 years old I think) was swimming in the pool in his spiderman PJ’s. His mom was working cleaning the rooms, and he was just swimming while he waited for her. Some of the Aussies in the pool were teaching him to say "Good morning" which ended up being shortened to “morning!”. Sometimes he’d just say it four times in a row “Morning! Morning! Morning! Morning!” He was very adorable and I’m sad I didn’t get a picture of him because apparently his mom quit, so there will be no more Spiderman sightings by the pool 😦

“Morning!” seems to be the catch phrase here at the hotel now… the more the Aussie’s drank the more we could hear them calling out “morning!” to each other (deep into the night 😀)

Next we went for a walk to find a bank machine and some bug spray with Deet (Europe is sadly lacking in the bug spray department but we found “Off” with Deet right away in Bali.) Don’t worry Senne, no Dengue Fever for us!

As we were walking we saw many beautiful plants. Here is one of them:

As you walk down the street you need to watch out for these little offerings that are out on the sidewalk everywhere.

Stray puppies think the offerings are for them!

There are lots of bank machines here. The one we found was easy to use, but it only let us take out 1,000,000 Rupiahs (about $120) so I think we are either going to be going to the bank machine a lot or finding a bank machine that lets you have more money!

I’m having a bit of trouble with all the zeros when we’re converting. When we bought the bug spray and a diet coke it was 44000 Rupiahs. At first I thought he was charging me $44, but after a few seconds it clicked in that it was $4.40 😀 I told Steve I can’t do the divide by 8 rule until I sort out the zeros first!!!

With money and bug spray in hand we headed back to the hotel for a swim. It is humid here and we were both sweating (I know it’s not attractive, but we were S-W-E-A-T-Y!!!!). The pool is perfect for cooling off.

As we were swimming we started talking to some people who just checked in today. Guess where they’re from??? Duncan… seriously. And guess what else, they’re teachers on salary deferral. Weird, eh?!

We ate a little lunch at our hotel (delicious chicken pies!) and then went for a walk down the beach. The beach is quite nice and there are little shops, stands, hotels and restaurants all the way down the walkway. There are approximately 2 bajillion people who will sell you anything you want. “You want a shirt, a kite, a carving, a towel, a bag, a necklace? No, what do you want?” Seriously, I think if I said I wanted a copy of Frank Sinatra Jr’s CD, they would have pulled it out of their bag. One lady told Steve he was “breaking her heart” because he wouldn’t come in her shop 😀 We just kept saying no. I was afraid if I told them I had no room in my backpack that they would have offered to come help me pack, or tried to sell me another backpack!

Walking down the beach

When we turned up the road to walk back through the town we stopped at a little “spa” and each had an hour long foot massage for a grand total of 100,000 Rupiah including tip (about $12 Canadian). I have now turned Steve into a spa addict. He didn’t just want to go tomorrow he thought we could stop for another one when we got closer to home 😉

Look how happy our feet are!

We stopped in a little supermarket for some ice cream on the way back through town and I tried to buy some dental floss. No luck. No dental floss in Greece or Bali… is flossing a North American thing???? (I can see Nicki cringing right now!)

 You will see many beautiful doors as you walk along the streets...

There are so many interesting things to look at!

But don't get distracted! There are giant DEEP holes in the sidewalk! Watch were you are going!

When we got back to the hotel we had another swim and then went out for dinner. We ended up at a very fancy looking restaurant and had a terrific meal. We both had two sodas, an appetizer and an entrée and the bill came to 250,000. (about $30… and this was a fancy looking restaurant!)

Guess what we did after dinner? We came back to the hotel and went for a swim.

Steve and I are going to try to learn an Indonesian word every day. I’ll tell you what we’ve got so far.

Hi = Hi (okay maybe that’s cheating, but it’s a word we can use!)

Thank you = tiramacasi (sp?) We had trouble remembering until some Aussie’s helped us out. One guy says it’s like “Terry McCarthy” (if you say it with an Aussie accent it makes sense), and one girl told us it’s like “tear in my carseat” (also with an Aussie accent).

You’re welcome = samo samo (means same same)