Dive pix...

We have not been near a decent internet location with sufficient upload bandwidth to let me upload the dive pix within a reasonable time, but I will do it as soon as I can. There are sea horses and an octopus and all kinds of colorful fish so the wait will be worth it.

We are back in Ubud for two days to gather up the stuff we want to ship home and then we're off to Lovina, a town on the north coast of Bali. There is supposed to be good diving and the place is famous for the dolphins that inhabit the area. Maybe I'll get some dolphin pix.

We've only got 11 days before our visa ends and we have to fly to our next destination, Vietnam via Bangkok, there is no direct flight from Bali to Vietnam so we have to overnight in Thailand. That should be an interesting contrast the Bali, maybe it will prepare us for Hanoi a little bit.

Things that are different, part 2

In Bali there seems to be no shortage of craftsmen that can create beautiful carvings and statues and paintings but for some reason they can't figure out how to install door latches in the hotel rooms.  More often than not they are installed backwards; from the inside you have to turn the handle to close the door and then the door can be opened from the outside by the wind or just pushing on it. You have to lock it from the inside to keep it closed. I have been tempted to take the latch out and re-install it correctly, but then maybe it is their artistic license?

In the non-food catagory of different/weird is a spa treatment where you sit next to a fish tank and put your feet in and little fishes nibble at your skin. These things are even at shopping malls.

It's tough to make a living here, high unemployment and difficult farm labor in the hot sun. Today I saw some poor guy wearing a huge Milo drink (some kind of flavored milk?) box walking around the grocery store. I could see his eyes behind the vision grill; he looked sad. Probably lo worse than the sign wavers on the corners in America.

When a hotel advertises that it has hot water it means: 1) they only have hot water, not hot and cold, 2) the hot water is only hot during the day when the sun heats the water.

I have discovered some more chip flavors that you will not find anywhere else: Spicy Chicken Paprika, Lobster, Octopus (seriously?) and Salmon Teriyaki. I thought the last one might be fun to try; I like teriyaki and I like samon, but the flavoring on all the chips is so subtle that it these chips barely registered a salmon flavor and not at all a teriyaki flavor. I also found casava chips (?) that are cheesberger flavored. These chips aren't from some local little manufacturere, they are made by Lays. I never see the Balinese buying or eating these things; who are the audience for them (besides me and I'm only curious)?.

Renting motorscooters is so casual here it is hard to believe. First it is pretty cheap, typically about 50,000 Rp./day or about $6. Sometimes they want you to pay one day up front and other cases you pay when you're done. No need for license or even indicating that you can drive a motorscooter (although it is very easy; it is driving in traffic or on the beat up roads that are the challenge). There is no insurance, if you wreck it you pay for it. If you damage it, you pay for the repair except they never repair the damage. On the islands you don't even sign a contract, just take the keys and drive off.

One last thing, you can tell that a country is poor when there is paper currency that is worth less than 12 cents (1,000 rupiah notes).

Things that are different here in Bali

I am kind of a snack food afficianado so I like to notice what snacks and candies are available in places when we travel and like to try them if they don't seem too weird.
A popular snack food brand is named 'oops'
There are lots of cookies in small snack packs, but except for Oreo's they are almost all some kind of wafer.
Strawberry is a very popular flavor for many candies and cookies.
The flavorings for snacks and chips is very subdued from western standards. You can barely tell that a barberque flavored chip is not plain.
Some popular chip flavors are seaweed, roasted chicken and chili plus the barbeque I mentioned.
They grow peanuts here so there are lots of peanuts based snacks. 
Some bread that we are served is like cake.
That's it for snacks, the following is general things that are different.
There must be 30 different brands of laundry soap.
I have been trying to find a lightweight shirt, but it has so far been impossible. For one thing the clothing is not lighweight. I can buy denim and long sleeve shirts or thick teeshirts, but not a simple linen white shirt. Also, in clothing sections of stores men's and women's clothes are not sold in obviously separate sections or areas. A rack of shirts will also have blouses, men's shoes will be next to women's, etc.
In general food is pretty cheap, but because we have to go out for every meal it can still take a big bite out of our budget (pun intended). Drinks are the most expensive part of a dinner. Most drinks cost more than the entrés. A simple glass of white house wine (Yes, Bali actually has a pretty decent local wine.) costs about $8, a mixed drink like a Marguarita is $9, local beer (Bintang, reminds me of Corona) is cheaper, but still about $5, imported beer is as much as a mixed drink. but almost any entré is less than $6. Without drinks a very nice meal with salad, soup (tomato for me, of course), excellent entré and dessert for two would be less than $30, but with drinks it can end up around $45-$50.
    One curious thing is that although cigarettes are available everywhere, there are no pipes or loose tobacco or rolling papers and no smoke shops either.
Although there are gas stations they are not so common that you can count on finding one so almost every roadside store sells gasoline by the liter from old plastic water bottles. I guess that isn't dangerous?
Regarding driving, in Bali there are no rules. Do whatever is convenient; drive on the wrong side of the road, park anywhere, go at any speed (slowly), don't use your lights, pass the vehicle in front of you (on either side) even if there are other vehicles coming, run red lights, put the whole family on the motorscooter, don't have a license or insurance. Somehow it works as I haven't seen an accident. Everyone just knows what to do and it all goes smoothly with no one seeming to get upset. And somehow I manged to drive in this chaos too.
One really good and different thing in Bali is that cell phones are cheap, service is cheap and best of all they work everywhere; the city, the jungle, the beach, little islands, everywhere. Very convenient for traveling the way we are as we can easily arrange for a hotel or a driver or just to call each other. Come on America, catch up!
The following might be too geeky for some readers:
As an amateur myrmecologist I am interested in and casually look for what kind of ants live in the places we travel. (It is not as crazy as it might seem as I discovered rather poisonous ones in the trees and fire ants in Panama thus we avoiding nasty stings while hiking and which we might not have noticed otherwise.). In Bali there appears to be three kinds of ants, all harmless. There are large (1/4 inch) solitary black ants that roam around looking for who knows what and are similar to ones in the Sierra's, squads of dainty little red ants with long legs racing over the hot rocks and packs of tiny little black ants no bigger than a speck of pepper dashing helter-skelter everywhere and most often on the fruit in the offerings that are left on the ground and roads. None of them seem to care about the other.
In the evening there are geckos on the walls of every restaurant. There seem to be three kinds, but they might just be different ages or male and female destinctions. There are white ones and green ones and spotted ones. Thay all interact with each other. For amusement we watch them battle for space, chase each other, catch bugs and make the sound from which their name comes; they actually say "gecko!"

Tomorrow we have an authentic breakfast at our driver's home and then head off for Sanur and the fast boat to Nusa Lembongan, a little island off the east coast of Bali for a couple of days of snorkeling and diving where they claim we will see large manta rays.

Amed and diving

  We have been in Amed for six days and so far it has been our favorite place of the entire trip. Our hotel (Puri Wirata) is the nicest we've stayed in with an ocean view, two pools, dive shop and good restaurant and only $48 per night. The climate in Amed, being on the ocean is pleasant with comfortable humidity and nice cool evenings. It is also very quiet by comparison to Ubud. There are nice restaurants and best of all the snorkeling and diving is fabulous (check out the dive pix at "http://gallery.me/jamesodba/100228"). There is only one two lane road through the town with very little traffic (90% motorscooter) and makes for a beautiful and cool afternoon motorscooter ride along the beaches and high cliffs past little villages and jungle and fields and the occasional chickens, dogs, cows, goats, pigs and kids waving and yelling "hallow!" as we pass.

We signed up for a scuba dive and because this is the low season we were the only ones so we had our own private dive and dive master. Lily really wants to see sea horses and makes a point to ask every dive shop if there are any and where they might be, but there aren't any or they don't know. However, this time the dive master said that he knew where one was!
We started the dive off the beach behind the Diver's Cafe and unlike most of the other beaches it was sandy and not all rocky. We had just started and were in less than ten feet of water, the bottom was still sandy with a few rocks here and there when the dive master signaled to look at something. OMG! A small seahorse about three inches long just sitting on the bottom! I gently picked it up and let it rest on Lily's hand; she was in heaven! It slowly started moving away and we let it get back to whatever seahorses do and continued on. As the bottom gradually dropped away there were large coral clusters with lots of schools of colorful fish moving around and solitary big fish just feeding and munching on the coral or just hanging out. An artificial reef had been made by dropping large concrete blocks in the water and over time they become covered with coral and the home to many varied creatures. The dive master knows the area very well and pointed out the inhabitants of each nook and cranny. There was large lion fishes with their poisonous feathery fins, stone fishes that are so well camouflaged that they look like coral with eyes.
As we continued we came to a large sea fan type of coral white with black marks and the dive master pointed to what seemed to be a little floating black piece of the the fan coral but as I got neared it started moving away. It was another type of seahorse that disguises itself as the coral it lives in. It looked like a little piece of black seaweed.
  The most amazing thing I saw was when the diver pointed out a section of coral. I couldn't see anything except the coral and then the dive master moved his pointer closer and like a magic trick; instantly the big lump of mottled coral turned into a large black octopus! It hesitated for a while and then with it's tentacles curled it jetted away. Unfortunately the camera battery had died minutes before, so you'll just have to take my word on this.
On Friday we left Amed for Candidasa that is along the east coast and has good snorkeling.

Life In Amed

Blog #6: Yesterday we arrived in Amed after a four hour bus ride through picturesque fields, past grand temples and towns of one size or another eventually along a winding coastal road stopping at our hotel: Life In Amed Cottages, located on a black sand fishing village beach. The grounds are beautiful with two story cottages and a pool. The owner who lives in Ubud happened to be staying here and we had a nice afternoon tea and chat about life in Bali. Coincidentally, she also lives in San Francisco and owns a gift shop in the Haight.  What are the odds?
We had visited Amed 17 years ago and it was very quiet then and although more developed now is still a quiet set of fishing villages. The main tourist draw seems to be diving with many dive shops to choose from. Amed is not really a town like Ubud, it is much smaller and really just hotels and restaurants and the occasional grocery/gas by the liter stand on either side of the narrow road along the northeast coast of Bali.

  Although our hotel has a nice restaurant it turned out that the manager the restaurant we had heard about was staying at our hotel and told us that tonight there would be a live Reggae band. He was leaving for the restaurant and said he would lead us to it. So we followed/chased his van on our scooter flying over the winding, pot-holed and unlit coastal road passing many other inviting restaurants for about five miles and finally stopped at "Pashta". It looked new, even had parking! The layout was open with a high thatched roof and a band area on one side and Japanese style low tables and cushions in booths surrounding it. The menu was typical including tomato soup and a mix of fish, chicken and "Fork" (pork), but no pastas or pizza. Of course I ordered the tomato soup (I am starting a mental catalog of all variations of this soup and there are many from wonderful types including creamy versions to a more of a minced tomato, onions, garlic and herbs, usually all delicious) and we both ordered the grilled chicken in orange sauce. When our main course finally arrived it was coated in a mess of some kind of thick sauce and chopped onions and garlic. I scrapped the goop off to try and find the meat and concluded that this chicken appeared to have died of starvation. It was not a boneless breast as I had imagined, but back and leg or something. I've seen scraps left by street dogs with more meat on them. So I ate the rice. Lily's dinner was the same. We called this the Malaysian Diet Plan Balinese Style after the un-eatable food we were constantly served and could not eat when we were in Malaysia.  We paid our bill and left.
The live Reggae Band? They were coming from Denpasar by motor bikes and unfortunately there was an accident and a band member was hurt so we got a local pick up band to fill in. They attempted to play 70's folk and Bob Marley Reggae tunes. They tried, but were as bad at music as the chef was at cooking.
  However the evening was not over. What could be more romantic than riding together on a motor scooter on a winding, deserted  coastal road through the soft warm evening air under a moonless, star-lite night accompanied by the sound of the surf beside us? It is just another evening in Bali.   

Life in Ubud

Blog #5: We've been in Ubud for over ten days and when it wasn't raining like crazy or I was sick (more later) we had a bunch of fun. Going back in time from yesterday we signed up for a bike ride at 8:30am beginning at a 1,000 year old village high on a ridge near the top of Mt.  Agun.  We rode down through small villages on trails in rice paddies and little roads. The guide pointed out cinnamon trees and gave us a piece of the bark to try and it tastes like cinnamon! And a clove tree, but the cloves were not ripe yet. And a cocoa tree with huge pods. We stopped in a small village where they grow coffee (in Bali coffee is the number two export after rice) and saw the plants and tasted the beans and saw a primitive roasting set up they use. The coffee roasters in this village get about $2/lb for their coffee. We continued on for another few miles through fields and villages and finally ended up at the Elephant Safari Park!  OMG! Real elephants just walking around. There was an elephant show and you could ride them and feed them and pet them. There was a very nice upscale hotel at the park, too. We had lunch at a fabulous buffet at the park restaurant, too. This was a really beautiful big park and I recommend visiting it to anyone coming to Bali.

The big event in this town, Ubud that everyone was talking about for the last couple of weeks was the "Cremation". Several months ago one of the kings of this province who was quite revered and had done many progressive things died and so a huge and ceremonious cremation was necessary. It was scheduled for Tuesday and the town was busier and more crowded than usual. The ceremonies started on the previous Friday with the building of the huge "movable" (just barely) pyre consisting of a huge and beautifully done white wooden and paper mâché bull about ten feet high in which the coffin resided. This was on a decorated platform that was also about ten feet high. The whole thing was to be moved on Tuesday to the cremation grounds at the main temple in Ubud about 3/4 mile away. We tried to go to the building ceremony on Friday, but couldn't get within a block of the place. On Tuesday we did manage to get to the starting point of the precession along with thousands of others; it was hot and humid and super crowded and we actually got to where we could see it and take some pictures, but we nearly died in the heat so we had to come back to recuperate in the hotel pool. We would go to the actual cremation later at 5-ish.
At 5pm we headed to the cremation temple and the roads and sidewalks were crowded to where you could barely drive or walk, but most people seemed to be coming back. Did we get the time wrong, did we miss it? We decided let's just go anyway and see what is left. Turns out we didn't miss the cremation, the huge pyre had arrived and they were setting it up for the cremation. I guess the other people who were leaving had only wanted to see the procession or most likely gave up waiting in the heat.
The temple grounds at the cremation site were full of thousands of people in all manner of dress from dignified to casual patiently sitting and standing and fending off people selling everything from overpriced water, odd snack foods to unnecessary sarongs. We found a shady, comfortable spot with a good view about a hundred feet from the pyre and watched the preparation and waited. And waited. Finally, after about an hour and just before sunset at 6:15 and surprisingly without any fanfare or warning they set the pyre on fire with big gas torches! Slowly the huge bull lit up with flames leaping in the air and the crowd just watching quietly and the fire trucks dowsed the flames here and there to control the burning. After about a half hour the bull and the coffin and it's contents were embers and that was that and everyone started leaving. That's Bali; burn up a dead revered king, no big deal.

On Saturday before the cremation we went for a motorcycle ride to see the rice paddies and whatever else, but I had to come back early because I felt so exhausted. I wasn't hungry for lunch or dinner. I even had to lay down and rest after laund-r-aobics that night. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what. Later that night around 2am I started getting a fever. The kind where you hallucinate and pant and then have the chills and then feel better than you don't, repeat until morning. I thought I might have gotten malaria or something. We called the hotel front desk and they called the local clinic doctor. (in third world countries doctors make house calls.) They, a female doctor and a male nurse took my temperature (102 degrees, no wonder I was hallucinating!) and a blood sample. They returned later and told me the blood test showed that I did not have malaria or dengue fever, but that I probably had some kind of water born bacterial infection and I would be better in a couple of days. They gave me some fever and anti-biotic pills and left. Total cost: $156. Following another day of off and on fever and chills and some minor GI issues by the evening of Monday I felt about 90% and declared myself cured and by Tuesday morning I felt totally fine.
Whatever that was I don't want to go through that again, but it could happen again. We have been careful about what we eat and drink, but I guess eventually you'll get something. We figure the reason Lily didn't also get sick was that she was taking anti-biotics for here head cut and it probably killed the little guys before they could infect her. I think I would have preferred the gash on the head.

Tomorrow we are taking the bus to Amed on the north coast. It is quietier, drier and has beach right at the resort. I'm sort of done with Ubud and the traffic and heat.          

Lily's turn to blog!

Oct. 30
Yesterday we took a ride on the motorbike to a neighboring town, Tegalalang, which was lined with shops selling crafts, primarily mosaics, but also woodworking, stonework and more.  There were so many shops, it is almost overwhelming.  We did find one that had a unique style and we ended up buying a couple of very beautiful glass mosaic plates.  They were so cheap!  We only paid around $9 for both!
We had lunch at a cafe/gallery overlooking the rice paddies.  Jim was not feeling well so we headed back to our hotel for a swim and some rest.  The heat and humidity are quite debilitating.  We had dinner at a lovely restaurant.  Ubud is so chic now, with so many restaurants to chose from, with a wide variety of cuisines.
Alas today Jim is down with a fever!  So we will rest in our beautiful room in the treetops with a view over the vast garden, listening to the songs and chatter of the many birds and creatures surrounding us.

Oct 31
Wow.  Jim has been really sick with a fever and chills.  Luckily for us, the doctor from the local Ubud clinic came over to examine him and take blood.  (The same clinic and doctor who treated me for my head injury!)
The diagnosis was a bacterial infection, so they gave Jim antibiotics and anti-fever medication and electrolytes.  He had a bad night but finally today seems to be perking up!
Last night I attended a performance of one of the traditional dances in the Balinese repertoire - the Kekak and Fire dance.  It was quite amazing.  It is performed without music, but instead there is a human chorus of around 70 men who chant creating a cacophony of sound - kekak, kekak, kekak.  The story is from the Ramayana, their ancient Hindu text.  It includes a number of colorfully dressed characters, with amazing masks and costumes.  For the fire dance part, a large pile of coconut husks are dumped on the ground in the center of the stage area and set on fire.  Then a man with a sort of horse costume comes galloping out and through the fire and kicks it  - sending sparkling, crackling husks flying all over the place.  Two men come out and sweep it back together and the horse gallops back through kicking it all apart again.  It is quite spectacular.
There are different dances performed every night, most with a gamelan orchestra.  The Balinese costumes and masks are quite spectacular and the music is quite distinctive. The Balinese culture is an amazing thing to experience!