When I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” a couple months before leaving on this trip, it wasn’t hard for me to find some parallels between her adventures and what mine were hopefully going to become. Some of the more obvious ones include that we both would go to Indonesia and Italy, and I planned [...]
Street traffic is heavier than usual and people are cleanly dressed in their sarongs all heading in the same direction. I ask the obvious question and learn there is a Hindu ceremony taking place at a nearby temple. I ask the next obvious question and they said it was worth a try. I follow the [...]
Farming in Bali Learning about many crops Coffee, tea and fruit Taste teas and coffee Ginseng, ginger, and lemon, Coco, coffee too. – Luwah coffee nice Costly, rare and delicate From poop of Luwah. – Lemon grass oil A bottle I did purchase No more mosquitoes
Bali is not short on wildlife as I’ve now had a chance to witness it in water and on land. In a country so focused on growing its tourism industry and so rich in animal life, I sometimes worry how one affects the other. Two stops I made while staying in Ubud were the Monkey [...]
2:00am. I wake up, jump in the shower because I went to bed shvitzing the night before from the humidity, pack my camera, some water, and a snack, and go outside to wait for the shuttle. 3:00am. The shuttle leaves Sania’s Bungalows in Ubud and is en route to Batur Volcano. 4:15am. Arrive at Batur [...]
I came to Ubud because it is touted as a Balinese cultural hub, and not just because it received such positive reviews from Elizabeth Gilbert. Bali is such a culture-filled destination because as the Hindu states fell all around Bali, many of the intelligentsia fled here along with artists, dancers, musicians, and actors. As the [...]
I still remember on several of my family trips when breakfast conversation would include my dad’s explanation why that day was a lucky day—maybe the numbers made a palindrome, or summing the numbers in the date equaled someone’s age, or one number was overrepresented like on September 9, 1999. In a slightly more rigorous fashion, [...]
After a week in Bali, I’ve both ridden in a car and on the back of a motorbike. (The down payment on one of these motorbikes is about $30 USD.) Most roads have one lane going in each direction, and sometimes not even that. Everyone drives at whatever speed they feel most comfortable, and therefore, [...]
After 1 pool dive, 6 ocean dives, 4 quizzes, 1 exam, and numerous breaths underwater, I received my PADI Open Water Scuba Certification, and was ready for my next adventure. I wasn’t expecting the next adventure to come in the afternoon following my last dive. This was the afternoon that I hopped on the back [...]
Tulamben is a small town in Bali built around a “major” highway, and the town extends about one kilometer. The air is quiet and still and yet there is still an excitement in the town for scuba diving. People come here from all over, and especially Australia, to dive. While in Tulamben, I learned to [...]