Yeah i'm shockingly behind on my holiday posts. I think revisiting them by way of blog just goes to reinforce the fact that i'm back here and not there still, so its quite a deterrent.
But... one of the main reasons I blog (aside from satisfying my millions...and millions.. of fans.) is so that the experience and the occasion is etched somewhere, tangibly, in case all else including my poor wee memory is lost.
So. Bali - i'll make this as short as I can since my last post took an AGE. (Update: Ok, i cant make this short. Its impossible.) And also because its been a while and I can't quite remember what happened, except for that dodgy 'taxi' ride where we ended up paying off the driver halfway and hiding in a supermarket.
It was pretty hit and miss whether both myself and EK would be able to make it to Bali - I had since recovered from that food poisoning incident but EK was still a bit weak. Fortunately, dozens of charcoal pills later, we hopped onto the plane, dozed the whole way and landed at Denpasar pretty damn excited. Oh wait that was just me, EK was still half conscious and feeling the effects of Vietnamese street cuisine.
Well, we arrived pretty early so we had arranged to get a driver to show us the Bali hotspots so we could get the bloody tourist thing over and done with. The chap was short and stout and seemed nice enough but in the end he bloody ripped us off so he shall therefore be known as the Idiot.
First stop was Uluwatu temple, which had gorgeous views and was stuffed full of holy monkeys, as well as loads of tourists like us. Everyone had to wear sashes and cover up to some extent of modesty, though in my mind those sashes didnt say ' i am being respectful' so much as ' i am a gullible tourist come and rip me off'. The Idiot had obviously been around the block a few times and he ushered us into several points of interest where he would snap a pic for us including the one below.
The monkeys there were quite cool. Happily living amongst monks and tourists. My experience was however marred by a particular incident where I got a bit too close for comfort.
Left - Monkeys. Evil sons of b*tches.
Ok, so theres a sign at the front that says 'please remove any spectacles/earrings/necklaces'. I was rather alarmed as I am pretty much blind as a bat, but Idiot told me it would be fine so i happily went on in. Anyway, about halway through our temple trekking, i encountered a monkey happily chomping on a banana and thought i'd lean in for a kodak moment. In a ridiculous blur of a moment, said monkey had leapt onto my face, grabbed my specs and leapt up onto a nearby ledge, ominously holding the specs in its grimey little hands in a 'i'll smash em if you dont bribe me' moment. I sort of just stood there a moment of surprise/shock, whilst nearby monks rushed towards the monkey in some sort of stand-off, tossing pineapple chunks its way. It seemed to work, as after a few chunks the monkey dropped the specs to the ground and made off with its goods. Specs were returned to me, dusty, wonky and a bit broken. After some very sincere thanking, it turned out I had to pay for the pineapple chunks. Pah.
Now that I could tick off ' get assaulted by a monkey' off my to-do list, our next stop was the famous Jimbaran Bay. Really, Jimbaran Bay is just a nice stretch of beach with clean sand and blue water. Since i didn't particularly feel like drowning today, we casually turned down the offers of water skiing, paragliding and the like and just took a stroll along the beach since it was so blazingly hot and hey it was Jimbaran Bay. Seafood was what it was famous for but unfortunately it wasn't something we managed to fit into the schedule.
We had come to Bali without booking a place to stay for the first night - our intention was to rough it somewhere and save some cash and then we had a pretty nice place booked for the 2nd/3rd nights cos no one does Bali without staying in a bloody nice villa. So after our three-hour drive around, Idiot dropped us off in Ubud centre and charged us a five hour fee and we weren't really in a great position to refuse him. @sshole. We had a wander around this interesting village cum tourist trap which was full of souvenir, homestay, moped hire and fake brand name clothing shops to check out our potential digs of choice. We got cornered by some local on a moped who flipped us through a photo album of his home stay, and after some very passive nodding by myself and EK we hopped on the back o
f his moped and whizzed to his digs. That was fun. The place itself was pretty nice - an enclosed property with a little fountain and buddha statues around the place. Our room was spacious, albeit no hot water and a padlock for safety on the door.
Ubud is really very interesting. Not europe interesting, where everything is lovely but each city is a variation of another - sort of completely different from what i'm used to interesting. I'm not usually so critical of tourist friendly cities - as i'm pretty useless at navigation it helps me if there are signs in english and a half decent transport system. However, with Ubud it really seemed to taint what obviously used to be a rural and tranquil haven. Every 100m you hear someone shouting 'taxi for you?' or 'come see show tonight' . In any case, we did a couple of notable things in Ubud, which was catch one of the Balinese night dance shows and try the Bebek Bengil (roast duck) at the famous and very cool Dirty Duck Diner. (i dont know why its called a diner but actually it looks like this and this). The duck itself was a bit dry but I was more than satisfied with my Nasi Campur and cocktails. Pictures, sans unnecessary explanations, below:
Left - Yum. Om nom nom. In that order.
I liked the dance. I liked it even more knowing we got in for a fraction of the price cos we caught the last ten minutes (in EK's ever insightful musings - 'we got to see the best bit anyway').
It was sort of surreal/eerie whilst the two kiddies were dancing with their eyes closed whilst locals sat cross legged at the back chanting and providing 'the beat'. It got a bit crazy when they lit a bonfire and a guy riding a broomstick with a horse's head stuck on the front (i truly did not know if it was genuine) started kicking the embers (ominously towards the tourists in the front row), rode 
around in a frenzy whilst sweepers swept up the debris back into the fire, and then kicked them again and again. I think it was a sort of 'i feel no pain because I am possessed' sort of thing.
That was pretty much the highlights of Ubud - a beautiful place with an very interesting culture but really quite corrupted by tourism.
It turns out I have many more Bali pics and its far too late to blog them here now , so they'll neatly fit into my Balinese villa/Kuta musings.
I leave with you my last impression of Ubud before I boarded a very dodgy taxi to Kuta.
Phalluses (Phalli? Phallix? Ding Dongs?) and lots of them.
We had come to Bali without booking a place to stay for the first night - our intention was to rough it somewhere and save some cash and then we had a pretty nice place booked for the 2nd/3rd nights cos no one does Bali without staying in a bloody nice villa. So after our three-hour drive around, Idiot dropped us off in Ubud centre and charged us a five hour fee and we weren't really in a great position to refuse him. @sshole. We had a wander around this interesting village cum tourist trap which was full of souvenir, homestay, moped hire and fake brand name clothing shops to check out our potential digs of choice. We got cornered by some local on a moped who flipped us through a photo album of his home stay, and after some very passive nodding by myself and EK we hopped on the back o
f his moped and whizzed to his digs. That was fun. The place itself was pretty nice - an enclosed property with a little fountain and buddha statues around the place. Our room was spacious, albeit no hot water and a padlock for safety on the door.Ubud is really very interesting. Not europe interesting, where everything is lovely but each city is a variation of another - sort of completely different from what i'm used to interesting. I'm not usually so critical of tourist friendly cities - as i'm pretty useless at navigation it helps me if there are signs in english and a half decent transport system. However, with Ubud it really seemed to taint what obviously used to be a rural and tranquil haven. Every 100m you hear someone shouting 'taxi for you?' or 'come see show tonight' . In any case, we did a couple of notable things in Ubud, which was catch one of the Balinese night dance shows and try the Bebek Bengil (roast duck) at the famous and very cool Dirty Duck Diner. (i dont know why its called a diner but actually it looks like this and this). The duck itself was a bit dry but I was more than satisfied with my Nasi Campur and cocktails. Pictures, sans unnecessary explanations, below:
Left - Yum. Om nom nom. In that order.
I liked the dance. I liked it even more knowing we got in for a fraction of the price cos we caught the last ten minutes (in EK's ever insightful musings - 'we got to see the best bit anyway').
It was sort of surreal/eerie whilst the two kiddies were dancing with their eyes closed whilst locals sat cross legged at the back chanting and providing 'the beat'. It got a bit crazy when they lit a bonfire and a guy riding a broomstick with a horse's head stuck on the front (i truly did not know if it was genuine) started kicking the embers (ominously towards the tourists in the front row), rode 
around in a frenzy whilst sweepers swept up the debris back into the fire, and then kicked them again and again. I think it was a sort of 'i feel no pain because I am possessed' sort of thing.That was pretty much the highlights of Ubud - a beautiful place with an very interesting culture but really quite corrupted by tourism.
It turns out I have many more Bali pics and its far too late to blog them here now , so they'll neatly fit into my Balinese villa/Kuta musings.
I leave with you my last impression of Ubud before I boarded a very dodgy taxi to Kuta.
Phalluses (Phalli? Phallix? Ding Dongs?) and lots of them.
