Bali trip!

As I began to write this, I sat on the beach of the Indian Ocean drinking wine out of a bottle and looking out toward Australia. I asked myself: why do I ever work?

 Then I remembered, oh yeah, because I couldn't f-ing afford this.

We arrived late Saturday night ... actually technically it was Sunday morning, around 1AM. Our hotel did not follow through on their end for an airport pickup so we negotiated a $15 cab ride to get there (starting at $30! For five minutes!). You have to be careful with airport cabs. Always avoid the independent guys badgering you and go with the official airport cab line or arrange it with the hotel. 

Our first hotel had the most comfortable bed I've slept in for a long time, since we've been sleeping in Korean beds for the past eight months which are notoriously firm (read: terrible). We woke up, had a complimentary breakfast, then headed to downtown Denpasar for some "traditional market" shopping. I had read mixed reviews of Denpasar, and here I figured out why. Seth and I felt like we were crashing a party to which we had not be been invited. As a tourist, I usually feel more comfortable when there are at least a few more tourists around me. On Sunday, there were none. Only lonely Indonesian women trying to sell me their spices and material. They were aggressive, too. One woman kept asking us questions about where we're from and telling us how close her spice shop was. A second woman literally followed us around the entire market, asking every 15 feet or so if we liked something. For thirty minutes. Seth and I commented guiltily on how great it would be to be able to change the color of our skin in order to blend into these markets, but on the other hand we aren't completely in the dark as to why people are trying to push their goods on us: we ARE white, and white people in their country generally have more money, and they need money to live, etc. etc. Anyway the woman with the spices sold me a pack of vanilla beans eventually (her perseverance must have paid off. That and I also really like vanilla). The art market was a 3-story building with hundreds of little individual sellers with thousands of beautiful colorful materials and dresses and food for sale. As we walked through, creeper Indonesian woman in tow, we peeked around corners with more and more things for sale. We really couldn't handle this woman behind us anymore though so finally we got out of the market and walked down the historic street eyeing dresses, before heading back to the hotel.

By the way, traditional Balinese dresses are BEAUTIFUL. I want to model my wedding gown after something like them.

I took this picture and then never found these dresses for sale again, of course.

We got to our retreat on Sunday afternoon and decided to take the day to relax on Monday. "It will be a beach day," we said. "We can relax on the beach!" 

Except we couldn't.

The timeshare is in a beautiful, extremely remote area of the island. So remote in fact, that it took at least two hours to go anywhere of interest. But the 10 people who lived nearby whose houses we passed on our way to the beach didn't try to sell us anything and let us play with their dogs, as long as the dogs weren't trying to kill us, so it was a nice are. The beach was an enormous, completely deserted black sand section of the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately we could not have a beach day on Monday, since there was nowhere for Seth to seek shelter from the "evil skin-torching angry sun" -- his words. So the pool it was. At night, Balinese dancing and yummy yet overpriced food again. 

So Tuesday we began adventuring. We woke up early to do a tour arranged by the hotel. A man named I Wayan Budi (pronounced "booty") picked us up at 8AM and took us straight to a place where they make silver and gold jewelry, but the factory part was closed because it's still Ramadan (Bali is an interesting mix of Muslim, Hindu and Buddhism, making for an extremely colorful community!). Naturally though we still got to go into the shop, where we were followed around by a very nice Indonesian man trying to make sure we bought something. Well it worked because I bought a silver turtle pendant with a lavender stone for $36 -- pretty much the cheapest thing I could find that I figured I'd wear. If you're lucky, you can also buy a several-hundreds-of-dollars-worth silver and/or gold thingies.

Is it a necklace? A beautiful weapon? Only the artist knows.

 Next was a batik factory where we watched women weave on big ol' weaving machines and do other forms of art like painting on white silk sarongs. First they draw the pattern, then they line the pattern with wax, then they paint it. The sarongs were beautiful. If I had bought one, I would have been very happy with it. Again though, this was not really on our list of places we really wanted to go and had been arranged by the hotel into our 1-day package. 

Then we stopped by a famous temple outside of Ubud. I can't tell you much about this temple except that which our cab driver (a Hindu) told us: each house has their own temple, each community (banjar) has their own temple and 3 or 4 banjars combine to form a village temple, which is where we were. This temple was beautiful. I've seen it in pictures of Bali but I'm not positive it's the exact same one because I feel like I've seen the same one about 20 times now. They all have very similar designs: two pillars framing the front, then a big one in the middle after the entrance.

Also featuring Seth's right shoulder.

After another suspiciously expensive lunch, we finally made our way to Ubud. There, we got to go to the monkey forest, where one monkey stole all three of my bananas and bared his fangs when I tried to get some back. Also a cuddly monkey stood on Seth's shoulder. This always seems to happen when Seth is around monkeys. I think maybe his height reminds them of the trees.

Well that's all the pictures I appear to be able to post. To be continued in the next one.