Bali Bound and Back

So Bali has come and gone. This was one trip where I just had to sit and relax. Because of my broken arm, there was no surfing, no scuba diving, no shark wrangling. Poor me. All I had to do was just sit next to the pool, drink cocktails, and read my book. You know, sometimes life can be really unfair.

I did actually manage to get out and do a few things. Kat and I saw a few temples, namely the Elephant Cave and the Mother Temple. The Elephant Cave got its name because the first person to find the cave, after it fell into ruin, thought the cave was really big-- so big in fact that the only thing he could compare it to was an elephant and the foolish name stuck. That's like running around and calling everything with two eyes a chicken. The Mother Temple was named because it looked like someone's mother. Kidding, bad joke. Still the temples were wondrous sights and I got to learn a lot about Hinduism, most of which I have forgotten by now.

Kat and I also went to a Mt. Batur and Lake Batur (a volcano and a crater respectively, last eruption in 1997). This part of the island was much more quiet and quaint. We even procured a hotel room that was cow adjacent. The bovine had the uncanny ability of mooing every 30 seconds kind of like a metronome on really low batteries. There was also a rooster that went off at five o'clock A.M. One night of that pastoral wonderland was enough for us.

On another day Kat and I went to the bird sanctuary, the reptile farm, and bribed monkeys with fruit on the side of the road. At the reptile farm we learned that Bali was home to the spitting cobra, and that after a bite from this creature you have two hours to get to a hospital or it's lights out. Fun!

But most of the days were committed to laying on the beach or by the pool and reading. My book of choice this vacation was The Best Crime Reporting of 2007. It's a great read; check it out. At night we'd go to one of the hundreds of restaurants in the Sanur area and eat our fill. I hate to admit this but I never tried any of the Indonesian food. I know, I'm a fraud, a fake; I'm one of those people who pretends to be an intrepid traveler and then eats only hamburgers and fries in exotic countries. The thing is foreign food, good foreign food can be hard to find in Korea and when it is done right it can cost a pretty penny. The food in Bali was delicious and cheap. The first restaurant Kat and stopped by had steaks on the menu, and we couldn't figure out if they were $40 or $4. They were $4 and cooked to perfection. That's one thing about Bali, it can be expensive to fly there but it's cheap once you are there.

Still, not everything is perfect in paradise. One of the drawbacks is the hassling that goes on. Drivers are always hitting you up to go somewhere (anywhere is fine with them) and merchants are always bothering you to look in their shops. This I don't mind, but once you look in shop and realize there's nothing you want, the owners make it next to impossible to leave, following you down the street imploring you to buy something. This is a tough situation. I understand that people have to make money, but I have a strict policy against buying crap I don't need. How do you communicate that?

Overall though people were genuinely nice and I would not hesitate to go back. Hopefully next time I can test the waves and chase some sharks, but I would not mind just to sit on the beach again, drink a beer, read a book, watch Kat swim, and wait for the sun to go down.