Ahhh... all of us EAPSI participants have been so excited about this one - we planned it WELL in advance!
Bali is an island that is part of Indonesia, and it's actually quite larger than Singapore. The weather there reminded me of California - in the mid to high-twenties (C of course), no humidity. A bit of clouds here and there.
Me and several others were taking a 9pm flight there which got pushed back until 11:30pm (this is what you get with budget airlines!), getting us to our hotel in Kuta in the wee hours of the morning. I don't know about you guys, but no matter how many hours (or days) I've been without sleep, coming to a new and exciting place always wakes me up. Or at least puts the sleepiness off, when it culminates, days later, in a massive and glorious night of sleep. Needless to say, I was up only a few hours later, checking out our hotel, drinking coffee (a must in such situations) and booking a car for the day for touring around.
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| Passing the time at the airport. There was also a POOL at the airport which we hung around. |
Around 10am about 8 of us, split between two cars, were off! We basically "rented" guides/drivers for about 12 hours. They took us around the island to a few crafty places (Ubud is an "artisan" city in the middle of Bali. It was nice just riding around, as there was awesome architecture EVERYWHERE.
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| Drive-by picture taking :) |
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| I think this was at a silversmith |
We also went to a monkey forest with temples. There were SOOO many monkeys there. And they were not afraid of coming up to everyone and looking for food in your backpack. A lot of them were fat, too, because of the overfeeding tourists. It was very cool, but towards the end, after seeing so many monkeys jump on people, I saw them more as obstacles than as things to come up to.
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Walking to the monkey forest.
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A trip to Indonesia wouldn't be complete without having some
Kopi Luwak, or Civet Coffee. It's basically the world's most expensive coffee because it's made of beans that have been eaten by civets and then basically excreted whole. They are then cleaned thoroughly and made into coffee, which is quite delicious and lacking in bitterness. Definitely worth the 5 bucks. As we were at the exact place where they make it, it wasn't as expensive as it'd be somewhere much farther. The view from our table was beautiful as well.
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Civet coffee, cocoa beans from the tree, and an assortment of other delicious drinks
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At the end of the night we went to Amed, which was roughly a 3 hour drive to the east coast of Bali. Our rooms there were awesome! Right by the beach too, and the restaurant on the premises was great. Amed is definitely quieter than Kuta beach, and mostly a local or quiet-seeking tourist spot.
Sunday we spent the day snorkeling (BEAUTIFUL and just meters from the shore!), getting cheap amazing massages, hiking, eating delicious food, and just spending the time by the beach in general.
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| Restaurant by the shore |
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| Amed beach |
Me and a few others had an uber-early flight back on Monday morning, so we went back to Kuta (which is 15 minutes from the airport) on Sunday night. Kuta is definitely more tourist-ey, with lots of people trying to get you to buy stuff (I was getting a little tired of that by this point).
The Bali airport is definitely not on par with Singapore's and there was a ton of walking around the terminals, but we got home safe and sound :)
