Travel Travails - Quattro

So our early morn flight from Siem Reap to KL, was then followed by a late afternoon flight from KL to Bali. Stupid bitch at the Air Asia counter in KL refused to make allowance for one… repeat ONE measly extra kilo on our bags. As the Madman would quite eloquently put it, “Saali ****, AIDS ho jaye tujhe!!”
Denpasar airport was quite chaotic when we got in. It seemed like there was several flights that came in at the same time and there was a long ass line for Immigration.

Ahead of us, was this newly-married Gujju couple from Baroda that were on their honeymoon.
Kaycee had whispered to me when we were in the line that we Indians almost refuse to acknowledge the presence of our country-men when we’re abroad and this was not cool.
So she initiated some small talk and I think our sheltered Gujju couple were mildly perturbed to see K and I traveling together. I believe certain assumptions were made in their mind about our “relationship” despite the fact that we told them we were just friends who were traveling together. We were giggling about it as we headed to collect our bags.

The giggling abruptly stopped as we got outside and realized there was no pickup from the hotel waiting for us. A few phone calls later, we were told that there was a miscommunication from their end and after profuse apologies, the lady said she would have a car there in 15 minutes.
We headed shortly to Febri’s which is where we were to spend the following three days.
Unfortunately we were so knackered with our journey, we eventually decided to spend the evening in the hotel itself having a few drinks and a peaceful dinner.

We were staying in Kuta which is the party area of Bali with lots of restaurants and clubs. Kuta is in fact where the bombings of ’02 took place. While the ’02 and the subsequent ’05 blasts have taken their toll on the tourist influx to the island, people are still coming in to soak in the stunning beauty of this island paradise. The largest number of victims in the ’02 bombings were Aussie tourists specifically a whole lot of surfers. But it hasn’t really stopped them any. We saw tons of the typical blond surfer types carrying their boards while we were in the airport as well as in the city.

We lost the following day to the weather. It had started raining late the previous night and kept up right thru the next day. So our final day in Bali was going to be a jam packed affair with us trying to squeeze in as many of the sites as we could.
The day started with us catching the famous Barong dance depicting scenes from the Ramayana at one of the local cultural centres. We followed that with a visit to the local Batik shop.
Our next stop was a place called Ubud. If Kuta is where you wanna go to party, the Ubud is the area where you can stay for the peace and quiet.
On the way to Ubud, we passed through several villages which were famous for different types of artifacts. So there were stone carving shops, wood carving shops, gold and silver jewellery shops as well as shops selling paintings and crafts.
We stopped at one of the wood carving shops. Man these people are obsessed with phalluses. We saw everything from tables to ashtrays to chairs to key-chains which had phallic attachments to them. I mean there was just so much dick in that shop that even neutral me got a wee bit homophobic.
We finally reach Ubud and the must-visit place there is the Sacred Monkey Forest. Since these monkeys are so used to human contact, they pretty much do as they please. So you are duly warned about keeping your sunglasses, cameras etc on a tight leash coz given a chance these lil buggers will even start rummaging your bags for something to nibble on.
As you can see in the pic, one of the simians got extra friendly and rode with me for a bit. Kaycee of course who’s not a big fan of the Vanars, kept freaking right thru the time my long tailed friend hitching a ride on me lol

We then grabbed some lunch before we headed to the Uluwatu temple. I cannot even begin to describe the beauty of this place. I’m putting up pictures of the views from the cliff top and the sunset that we went to catch. If you think the pictures look good, trust me, the real thing is a 1000 times better.

We stayed at Uluwatu for about an hour and just took it all in as much as we could. I don’t think I could ever get tired of that splendid view, the blue water, the waves crashing on the rocks below and the wonderful orange-pink glow that came with the sunset.

We ended our trip with dinner at one of the many seafood restaurants on Jimbaran beach. The sea breeze blowing, the soft sand between our toes, a few drinks, fresh catch cooked for you and of course music on request by the band that went from table to table. Those guys would ask you where you were from and then play a song in your local language. We of course didn’t encourage any Hindi songs but they did do some GnR and Beatles for us. All in all a satisfactory end to the trip.
Bali was a wonderful experience in more ways than one. I will definitely visit this place again and stay there longer. You need atleast a week here to truly enjoy and have a chilled out time.

That I thought pretty much ended the great SEA trip but there was one last destination in store…