15-Dec-2008: Bali

Our last 5 days in Indonesia were spent in Bali. Jesse's uncle in Jakarta teed us up with some free accommodation there - a beautiful private villa with our own private pool!

For $5 aud a day we hired a scooter to get around. Some would call us brave! The pollution in the traffic made it a little difficult to handle - after riding around in shorts and t-shirts for a few hours, we could understand why the locals get around in long pants and jackets even in over 30 degree heat. It was nice to get out of the bustle of the city and ride out to Ubud.

In Ubud, did an 10km walk through the surrounding villages starting at the Monkey Forest park. The monkeys were very tame and not afraid of humans - they may have looked cute and cuddly but something about them, maybe the look in their eyes, that made me quite scared of them!


We walked through the green and endless sawahs and stopped along the way at some the workshops of some local artists, many who paint the sawah landscapes in their works. There are many many artists in Bali and particularly in Ubud, where it seemed anything constructed was made aesthically pleasing - from elaborate temples to simple pieces of furniture.

Walking down the street in Ubud, we had one of those chance meetings that spun us out completely. We ran into Glen, one of Jesse's ex-work colleagues from London, who was travelling through south east Asia for a few months after getting a redundancy payout. Glen originally wasn't even planning on travelling to Indonesia, but Jesse put the idea in Glen's head to try and get there at some stage. And so with a few weeks to spare, Glen last minute decided to head there - but what were the chances that he'd run into Jesse there - freaky!!

We checked out the surf beaches on the southern peninsula, although there wasn't enough of a swell to entice Jesse to hire a board and head out. We watched the sunset over Uluwatu beach and it was one of the most beautiful I have seen. Afterwards, we headed out to Jimbaran for a huge seafood feast on the beach. Many of the tables at the restaurants there were empty, which was sad to see. There weren't many tourists around in Bali while we were there, and we could definitely see that the community is still suffering from the bombings who are so dependent on tourism.


We were horrified at the state of Kuta beach first thing in the morning - more rubbish than sand! We weren't sure if it is like this every morning in the wet season but it sure was an eye opener.