sarah. on the run.

Bali... Hi Again!

We sailed back to Padang Bai, Bali, after a couple weeks exploring the neighboring island of Lombok. At this point we'd put in quite a few hours on buses and crowded ferries across the Bali Strait, so it only seemed fair to stay there for a couple days, doing absolutely nothing.

After doing absolutely nothing for a couple days, we got bored. Isn't life cruel that way? Anyway, in order to get excited again, we decided to hike to the top of Gunung Batur, one of Bali's two volcanoes (Gunung Agung is actually the larger of the two, but it was closed to tourists because of some major Hindu festival, or so they told us).

So there I was, scrambling up the side of Gunung Batur with a cheap little flashlight in the pitch-dark at 3 a.m. in order to reach the crater rim by sunrise. I remember thinking, "This is truly the worst idea I've ever had. I hate hiking in the middle of the night and I will never, ever do anything like this again." But I honestly took it all back once we reached the top and the sun started to rise over the neighboring peaks. It's amazing what a little light and an awesome view does for a crabby little camper! A group of photogenic monkeys sharing the moment with us didn't hurt, either. I'm starting to really love monkeys. They're like little furry people!

After sufficiently appreciating the sunrise, our guide led us along an extended tour of Gunung Batur's crater rim. I felt like we were on the moon. It's still an active volcano emitting sulfurous gas, and the footprints from the last big eruption are really quite ominous, but amazingly, people still live right in the lava path.

By late morning we'd descended safely and had thoroughly enjoyed our volcano adventure. However, since it was dark when I started hiking, I didn't get a chance to read the rules until it was too late. Oopsie...sorry, Hinduism!

Later in the day, our driver took us  to Pura Besakih, Bali's largest temple complex and #1 sacred place for Balinese people. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Hindu temples aren't really doing it for me. They're fascinating in a rambling sort of way, but they're too all over the place for my tastes (and I'm perfect, so I can make these kinds of observations). Perhaps beginning a strenuous hike up a volcano at 3 a.m. killed my midday temple enthusiam. I did get a pretty good look at Bali's other volcano, Gunung Agung, from the temple hill, so all was not lost.

Brendan and I had about one more week in Bali before flying back to Chicago, and we didn't want to spend it doing anything stressful. Feeling travel-weary and out of ideas, we caught a bus to Kuta, Bali's most famous beach resort and gigantic tourist trap. Never go to Kuta unless you like shopping for tacky crap and dodging motorbikes all day long. The beach is pretty, but overcrowded (though watching the surfers at sunset was kinda fun). I think we were both so excited to get back onto American soil that we just gave up altogether. I hung out in the internet cafe, B finished his novel, and we both did a lot of this during our final week in Asia.

Coming up next.. Sarah goes to India and hilarity ensues! Don't change the channel.. we'll be right back!

Lazing on Lombok

So there we were on the tiny island of Gili Trawangan, off the coast of the larger Indonesian island of Lombok. It was a very strange place. Here's a breakdown of our week there:

- The water is exceptionally beautiful, shallow, and warm. Swimming is safe outside of a few gentle breaks, and the snorkeling is divine. Seriously, I used to think snorkeling was kind of cumbersome and boring, but now I realize you just have to find the right coral reef. On that note, Brendan has become a champion snorkeler. 

- The island itself is fairly scrubby with no real architecture or places of interest beyond a handful of restaurant/bar shacks and the odd sarong/jewelry vendor. You have to want to lay on the sand by day and chill out watching bootleg DVDs by night, or this is not the place for you. I hear that the party scene gets pretty rowdy in high season, but the bars were virtually empty during our low-season stay. A bored bartender did try to sell us two tabs of ecstasy, though. We declined.

- Gili Trawangan's inhabitants are Muslims with identity crises from hosting so many bikini-clad Western drinkers over the years. I don't really blame them. A large majority of the local men aged 16-30 sport dreadlocks and multiple tattoos, strum guitars, and seem to be very interested in bedding white women. I came to dread (LOL at my funny pun!) walking past a group of them alone. And if Brendan was with me, they'd ignore me and attempt to sell him weed.

- This is a random note, but a very important one. If I ever hear Bob Marley's "Legend" album again, I'm going to freak out and kill someone. I'm not kidding. The guy put out a lot of albums, people. Try harder.

- As usual, we were the only Americans as far as the eye could see. Locals would try to guess our country of origin by going through a list (usually in the following order: Australia, England, Scotland, New Zealand), give up, and then be genuinely surprised when we explained that we were actually from the greatest country in the world.

(We didn't really say "the greatest country in the world" out loud, but we thought it.)

Overall, I enjoyed Gili Trawangan, but I probably wouldn't return. Even though the beaches are amazing and the sunsets are phenomenal, the Gilis are kind of a hassle to get to, and in no way "undiscovered".

When it was time to pick a new destination, we figured we ought to give mainland Lombok a try, and chose the southern village of Kuta (not to be confused with Bali's Kuta Beach, a major tourist resort). It took two annoying days of travel to get down to Kuta, but we're used to that by now. Plus, it gave us a chance to see the countryside.

Kuta, Lombok, is a picturesque oasis in the middle of nowhere. Almost too much so. The "town" is basically a small group of seaweed, salt, and tobacco farming families who are just starting to get used to seeing tourists in their villages. There aren't a lot of places to eat or hang out, which really gets to be a pain when you're forced to find food three times a day (I'm really starting to miss my old kitchen, tell you what).

B and I stayed at a guesthouse called the "Surfer's Inn", which, true to its name, was filled with a bunch of surfers who'd come to Lombok for the good waves. The majority of the surfers were tanned, sinewy Brazilians who spent their downtime strutting around the hotel complex in low-slung board shorts and talking very loudly amongst themselves. B disliked them all immediately.

What Kuta does have to offer is some truly unspoiled, magnificent coastline (I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but there are only so many adjectives I have to work with here). If you're intent on getting away from it all, you can't do much better than Kuta. Brendan and I rented a motorbike one afternoon to check out more of the greater area surrounding Kuta and we were amazed at how sparsely populated this part of the world is. Tons of cute kids, though. I think I could just take pictures of cute kids in Lombok for the rest of my life and be content.

In reality, we were kind of itching to get back to civilization after eating in our guesthouse three nights in a row, so back to Bali we went.

Oh, and here's your next billboard image, Coca-Cola. You're welcome. Please Paypal me my millions ASAP.

Love,
Sarah

Bali... Hi!

We spent one night in Bangkok. It was enough. I know it's a huge city with a million things to see and do, but we made the mistake of spending our one night on Khao San Road, Bangkok's supposedly famous "backpacker haven". It was pretty lame. Not a whole lot to see besides hordes of  pot-smoking western tourists roaming around acting foolish and vendors selling corny t-shirts with slogans like "Don't be fooled, I just pretend to care". I'm sure I would have a lot more impressed ten years ago. It also rained so hard that we were stuck in our hotel room for half the evening, but I did manage to document the stormy sky right before it started dumping. At least we got to see a tiny bit of Bangkok, but honestly, it would have been a lot cheaper to spend the night in the airport. Lesson learned.

Early the next morning, after Brendan got into a fight with the girl at the reception desk (sorry chick, but you deserved it), we made our way back to the airport and caught our flight out of Thailand and into Bali, Indonesia.

Why Bali? Well, when I was in college, I lived with three surfer dudes who were the kind of surfers that didn't really do anything besides surf, talk about surfing, hang out with other surfers, watch surf videos, and drink beer. Those were fun years. Anyway, I guess after sitting through my twelfth "Indo Surf Trip Slide Show Night" something sunk in, because ever since then I've always wanted to see Indonesia for myself. Since sadly neither B nor I are surfers, we chose the island of Bali, which caters to all sorts of travelers looking for tropical paradise.

Our first stop was the town of Ubud, known for its thriving art scene. Right away I knew that I was going to love it and Brendan was going to barely tolerate it. The place is stuffed, absolutely stuffed with galleries, upscale restaurants (some with wi-fi!), day spas, and expensive clothing shops. Ubud is the Indonesian Santa Barbara. It's ridiculously touristy, but fun and easy to get lost in for a few days. Well, fun for me anyway. We also killed some time non-strenuously hiking and museum-surfing, but the hands-down highlight of those few days was getting serenaded by a Balinese cover band at dinner on my 30th birthday.

Bali was also our first taste of Hinduism. From a purely aesthetic point of view, I think I prefer Buddhist wats to Hindu temples, but, as always, it was interesting to get a taste of a new religious culture. And the Balinese know how to put on a fabulous dance performance!

After Ubud's commercialism started to wear us down, we decided to get a little crazy and take a ferry to Lombok, Bali's neighbor to the immediate east. The plan was to head for the Gili Islands off Lombok's northwestern coast, which have good reputations for their idyllic beaches and laid-back scenes. So early in the morning, we boarded a ferry from Bali's eastern port of Padang Bai for a four-hour journey across the Bali Strait, one of the deepest, and sometimes the most dangerous, stretches of water in the world. The ride got a little choppy in places, which really didn't ease my mind, but we made it to Lombok's shores safely.

And that's when the problems started.

Like the majority of Indonesia, Lombok is a Muslim island. We were arriving in Lombok at the tail-end of Ramadan, so suffice it to say everybody was pretty hungry. So hungry, in fact, that the transportation company's ship captain who was scheduled to take us to the Gili Islands was too tired to make the afternoon trip. Now I'm all for fasting if that's what your faith calls for, but, you know, you're also running a business here guys. Don't sell us tickets to a destination if you're not up for the journey. Because now we're stuck for the night in some random town and have no choice but to drink lots of Bintang.

(It actually wasn't that bad. We had dinner with Collum and Jenny, a lovely Scottish couple, and turned in at a reasonable hour in a fairly nice guesthouse. But still.)

In the morning, the boat was ready and so were we. Of the three Gili islands to choose from, we picked Gili Trawangan, the largest, the farthest from the mainland, and supposedly also the liveliest. Since we were technically in the off-season, we figured it was the safest bet: not too crowded, but not so dead that we couldn't go out and get lunch.

I think we made the right choice, don't you?

:)
s

S- Just watched Ang Lee's "Hulk" on the Star Movie channel as I wrote this blog entry. Wasn't so bad. Wonder why it didn't do well at the box office?