indonesia is HUGE and bali is a tiny island that pert and i visited after leaving the philippines. we arrived and headed directly to ubud where liz gilbert lived for a bit if you read the book eat, pray, love. bali was the 'love' part of her journey ;)
after kuta, i headed off to the gili islands which i've been told are amazing!! i ended up extending my time in bali and removing it from singapore while pert forged ahead to meet up with friends and family there. i'm so glad i went to the gilis! these islands are paradise! they are quieter and smaller--they don't have cars on the islands, just horse drawn carts. i was a beach bum the entire time i was there but i didn't mind. who can really complain when you're in such a wonderful environment?? i walked around gili trawangan (the only one i visited, there are two others--gili air and gili meno) which only took two hours and checked out the sunset. i also got to watch the fighter while i was there because this one restaurant shows two movies every night (black market dvds of course--but they assured us they were 'dvd quality') and chilled on comfortable couches on the ground while being served food. awesome. i also loved that every restaurant had beach-front dining that we took advantage of.
ubud is a wonderful town in the countryside where you can get your cultural fix. we did a tour the first day and went to the local monkey forest (where we saw monkeys just chilling in the street) before heading to more sights. I think one of my favorites were the rice terraces. they were just so unique and different from what i've seen before. now i know why bryan kept pushing the rice terraces on me in the philippines!
i also went to my first hindu temple which was really neat. it happened to be a holiday that day so everyone was there and i got to see the practice in action. everything from starting off from praying to the holy bath to praying some more. the architecture of the temple was really neat too. i've seen a lot of temples in my day and i must say that hindu temples might be my favorite.
we also went to a coffee plantation and learned that 'kopi luwak' is a specialty there. what makes this coffee special, is that this animal eats the coffee berries, digests it, some chemical reaction happens, it poops it out, and then they collect the ish and roast the beans after they clean it. (you can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak). pert and i tried it. it was ok. i prefer starbucks!
aside from that we also drove up and saw the view from a volcano which was nice but nothing that spectacular.
the next day i went and met up with toby in kuta, a friend that we met in vietnam who happened to also be traveling to bali. kuta is known as a party/beach town so we decided to check it out. the beach was nice, but more geared towards surfers. we still had a fun time going out and meeting new people.
after kuta, i headed off to the gili islands which i've been told are amazing!! i ended up extending my time in bali and removing it from singapore while pert forged ahead to meet up with friends and family there. i'm so glad i went to the gilis! these islands are paradise! they are quieter and smaller--they don't have cars on the islands, just horse drawn carts. i was a beach bum the entire time i was there but i didn't mind. who can really complain when you're in such a wonderful environment?? i walked around gili trawangan (the only one i visited, there are two others--gili air and gili meno) which only took two hours and checked out the sunset. i also got to watch the fighter while i was there because this one restaurant shows two movies every night (black market dvds of course--but they assured us they were 'dvd quality') and chilled on comfortable couches on the ground while being served food. awesome. i also loved that every restaurant had beach-front dining that we took advantage of.
just off in the distance was lombok island, another big island in indonesia that has a great hike up a mountain and surfing. with only 6 days, i spent it around bali, but will definitely need to make a trip back in the future to see more of indonesia!
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