For some magical reason, our credit card points earned us a business
class flight from Bangkok to Indonesia. We spent the entire travel day gorging
ourselves on free food and drinks, relaxing in our plush seats, curled up under
our freshly sterilized blankets. Ah, a taste of the good life (: To boot, we
also saw the most incredible sunset while coming into Bali. You can see our
pictures of the sunset, but of course they don’t remotely do it justice.
At this point we had been travelling for five months and we
had become a lot more laid back about lodging and itineraries. We had some
strong recommendations from friends and fellow travelers to go to Ubud and
avoid Kuta which was “full of drunken Australians”, but other than this, we had
no plan or ideas for what we were going to do. We spent our first night in Kuta
anyway, not to go boozing with the Aussies but because of its close proximity
to the airport. The next day we headed to Ubud. Although Ubud is not costal, it
is a very scenic town set amongst beautiful rice patties and rolling green
hills. It is centered around a community focused on art and the culture of Bali.
People come to Ubud to paint, dance, sculpt, and do yoga. We spent most of our
time relaxing in our lovely homestay and roaming the streets lined with
shrines, open-air temples, art galleries, and eclectic shops.
Bali has a special Hindu culture. Everywhere you turn there
are beautiful offerings lying about, found not only in the various shrines as
one might expect, but practically anywhere. You have to remain completely
present and aware of your footing to prevent accidentally stepping on the
occasional pile of flowers, not to mention spraining your ankle on sidewalks so
uneven and cracked it seems like you’re walking on newfound earthquake
devastation. The offerings usually consist of flowers, rice, and incense that
are then wrapped elaborately in a banana leaf or palm leaf. The Balinese women offer
with intention three times a day. The content of the offering, color of the
flowers and direction in which they are placed are all symbolic and indicate
which deity, spirit, demon, or ancestor the offering is meant for. The entire
ritual of offerings is an amazing act of self-sacrifice, faith, and commitment. 
While in Ubud we visited the Pura Tirta Empul, a Hindu
temple which has been a significant holy site for over a thousand years. The
temple was built around a freshwater spring believed to be created by the god
Indra. The spring feeds 12 fountains which empty into a long rectangular stone
pool containing large koi swimming among the many offerings afloat. Every year Hindus come to the temple to bathe
in the water, purifying themselves with the holy water which is believed to
have healing properties. 
We also had the wonderful experience of seeing various
Balinese dance performances. The Kecak Fire and Dance performance consisted of
a large number of men (maybe 70?) in a trance-like state of chanting around a
fire, depicting the Hindu story of Ramayana. The performance was interesting,
but the Legong dance was truly beautiful. It involves young women with vivid
makeup and costumes performing intricate finger movements, facial expressions,
and complicated steps to depict various Hindu stories. The dance is set to the
beautiful sound of gamelan music. We also witnessed a short Barong dance in
which the dancers wore elaborate costumes, and depicted a Hindu story about the
battle between good and evil.
After Ubud we headed to Lomboc where we were disappointed to
find out that we couldn’t hike Mount Rinjani, the famous volcano on the island.
The trail had been closed due to landslides. We spent a day visiting the
waterfall and one of the villages. When our driver kept falling asleep at the
wheel we jumped ship and found a ride with two friendly Australians and their
driver. Lomboc was one of the few places we had been on our travels that we
weren’t very excited about. Everywhere we went people seemed to be dishonest
with us, and the beaches weren’t very nice. We left after only one day on the
island and headed for Gili Meno.
We took a local boat from Lomboc to Gili Meno.
We sat around for several hours while we waited for the boat to fill up. We
were told that legally, the boat would hold 32 people. When the time finally
arrived for us to leave, the boat was filled with a load of bricks, bags of fish,
produce, and then by at least 32 passengers. The boat ride started rough and
kept getting rougher. We were nearly horizontal at several points (not
exaggerating) and at other times we were pounding over waves several meters
tall, leaving us holding on for dear life and drenched. There was a Muslim
woman across from us holding on; screaming out what must have been prayers to
Allah, in much the same way that a loud Baptist from the South may do in such a
circumstance. Looking around the boat, everyone seemed terrified or about to
vomit, except for the driver who Tony said was trying to suppress a smile the
entire time (I was too busy watching what was coming in front of us to notice).
We were obviously relieved (and nauseated) when we made it
to Gili Meno, the most remote of the three Gili Islands. There were hotels and
restaurants, but no cars and the entire island experiences very frequent power
outages. We stayed in a quaint little bungalow that actually had air
conditioning when the power was working. The entire island can be walked in 90
minutes and the only transportation available was by horse-drawn carriage. Gili
Meno is primarily Muslim, unlike their Hindu neighbors in Bali. The Mosque can
be heard throughout the entire island, but was particularly close to our
accommodation so we were woken every morning around 4:15 AM by the eerily
beautiful singing sound of the call to prayer.
There was amazing snorkeling on the island. We were able to
swim with sea turtles ten time the size of the turtles we had seen in Thailand.
The turtles allowed you to touch them and swim right beside them for quite some
time before they would finally swim away. We also didn’t have stinging jelly
fish to contend with, but it was the rainy season and the water was a bit
cloudy at times. A local islander told us that Gili Islands are very special in
that sea turtles from all over the world migrate to the area.
While on Gilli Meno we had the very special
experience of releasing three baby sea turtles into the ocean. The island has a
sea turtle conservation program where they take sea turtle eggs and raise the
turtles until they are six to nine months old at which point they are less
vulnerable to predators. We paid a meager sum in donation to the program in
order to be able to free all the turtles that were ready to be released. We
couldn’t stand to see them in their small enclosures looking like they longed
for the big blue ocean. It was a beautiful experience to watch them slowly
meander on the sand and finally make it to the sea. We even swam out with them
into the ocean, ensuring their safety for at least a few meters.
The boat ride leaving Gili Meno was not nearly as bad as it
was getting there. The sea was much calmer, and we didn’t even get splashed. We
took a flight from Lomboc to Sumatra, stopping in Jakarta along the way. While
in the airport, we learned that significant flooding was taking place and right
nearby, and people had been displaced from their homes and were wading through
knee-deep water.
Sumatra seemed like it was worlds away from Bali. It felt
much more remote and was much harder to navigate. We had to rely on word of
mouth to determine how best to get around. There were three different sizes of
public “buses,” the smallest of which was a van with wooden benches along the
back walls instead of seats and an open door. The buses were an adventure in
and of themselves. They were extremely overcrowded with people sitting on one
another’s laps and often an additional load of folks on top of the vehicles.
Much of the time they were filled with cigarette smoke and the seats had a nice
damp feeling from windows left open in the rain (so as not to suffocate people
from carbon monoxide with all the smoke and all). Does this make it sound like
we didn’t like Sumatra? We actually loved it. The people were incredibly nice
and so intrigued by us. They couldn’t have been more welcoming. Everyone we met
tried to have a conversation with us, despite the significant language barrier.
It was quite different than in Bali, where the people also are very nice, but
where the locals are much more accustomed to tourists.
Sumatra provided us with once-in-a-lifetime experiences; the
first of these being that we were able to observe an actively erupting volcano.
Mount Sinabung had erupted nearly thirty times in the past few months and we
decided to take a chance to see the volcano up close. We weren’t sure how to go
about this. It’s not like there are tour guides telling you how to get closer
to an actively erupting volcano. Through talking with a local we found out the
name of a town, Beristagi that was near the volcano and used local transport to
get there. Once in the town we met a local volcano enthusiast named Erwin
(pronounced something like Airween), who had been photographing and filming
video of the volcano erupting over weeks and months. He offered to take us to
some of his favorite viewing spots to see it erupt. We went within 2 kilometers
of the volcano. All of the villages had been evacuated within 10 kilometers,
but other people were in the area, seemingly for the same reason. Everything
was covered in layers of ash. It was a lot like walking through a black and
white movie with only little specs of color present from our clothes, the van
we were in, or the occasional piece of fruit that had been washed by the recent
rain. It was very sad to see the abandoned villages and farmland and to think
about all of the hard work that was wasted for this year’s crop, which was
buried in ash. Eventually the minerals from the eruption will make the soil
very fertile, and re-vegetation can start to take place in as little as one
year.
The day we ventured out we didn’t see much in the way of
volcanic activity, just some steam and small eruptions. The next day we were
just about to leave Beristagi we saw Sinabung erupting from the window at our
hotel. We decided to go with Erwin to see it a little closer, but we didn’t go
as close this time, as the eruptions were much bigger. It was an incredible
experience to be able to witness such an amazing force of nature.
We were saddened to learn that the day we left Indonesia 16
people died from large eruption that took place. The Indonesian government had
just authorized people to return to their villages because the volcanic
activity had seemed to be dying down. In retrospect, going so close to the
volcano probably wasn’t the smartest thing we did on this trip, however at the
time we really didn’t feel like we were in any immediate danger. We are rather confident that we were never in
the village in the path of the eruption.
After our first day our guide and porters prepared us some
of the best food we had in Indonesia and in the woods no less! It was a great
birthday dinner! They also sang happy birthday to me more times than I could
count. It was a very special birthday indeed! Through conversation I found out
that our guide Sunny didn’t know his birthday or even how old he was. He had 17
brothers and sisters and his mother could never keep track of all her
children’s birthdays. I offered to share my birthday with him but he didn’t
take me up on it.
After we left Sumatra we headed back to Bali for a little
rest and relaxation before heading onto New Zealand. We had a nice few days in
Amed, Bali lying on the beach, snorkeling, and eating good food. Tony speared a
beautiful yellow striped snapper on his first spearfishing outing and a woman
at our hotel prepared it for us with a delicious Indonesian sambal and
rice. On the night before we left the
country the locals were celebrating Siwa Ratri or night of god Siwa which we
were invited to attend. The Balinese fast throughout the day and stay up all
night with performances and dancing taking place throughout the evening. There
is also a purification ceremony which takes place with the people bathing in
the sea. The day is meant to ask forgiveness, contemplate sins, renounce
materialism, and come closer to God. It was a very special last night in Bali.
As always, you can click on a photo and scroll through larger versions than you see here.
You can read our other blog posts by clicking on the year/month links
to the right side of the page under "Blog Archive".
to the right side of the page under "Blog Archive".
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| Not a bad costume |
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| Birthday Jungle Princess |
