July 31st and August 1st: Beautiful, sunny Bali!

Susanni:

Saturday, the 31st was our travel day.  We left the Pineapple guesthouse (definitely was on the lower spectrum of places we stayed in) at 5:00 a.m. for the airport and flew from Phuket via Jakarta to Bali.  One thing that happened after I wrote the blog the night before was another bathroom flood. I was in the middle of writing the blog in my PJs on another floor to get a better wifi connection, when Chelsea came flying down the stairwell, saying that the bathroom was like ``old faithful``, exploding straight up to the ceiling. Not knowing the real story, I expected the worst as I pictured things spewing out of the actual toilet...wasn`t coming near that and grabbed onto my laptop to look busy....  Then Chelsea explained that it was actually the toilet hose....let me explain. Each toilet here (we are back to having toilets versus the holes in the ground we saw in most Cambodian places) has a hose attached to the side, almost like the ones that come out of sinks at home...I assume it is in case you want to ``spray your behind`` (I will leave it up to you to let your imagination wander...).  So they are always attached and obviously also have some kind of a water supply. Well, ours must have sprung a leak while Chelsea was in the bathroom.  The hostel management came up after Chelsea had to wake them and shut the water off, so all was good, but of course Michelle and I have been teasing Chelsea about what caused the breakage.  Bathroom story after bathroom story  :)

On a totally different point:  I have to say that it is starting to get difficult to keep track of all the different currencies which are accumulating in my wallet.  We always try to spend most of it and try to gauge how much we may need for a few days. Cambodia was easy that way as they actually dealt almost exclusively in US currency. Once in a while, you got Riel back as change is made available from US bills, but most menus etc and prices all showed in US dollars.

So far it`s been:
Thailand: Baht. About 30 to the US Dollar
Cambodia: Riel (they have no coins at all). about 4000 Riel to the US Dollar
Vietnam: Dong. About 20,000 to the US Dollar
Malaysia: Ringgit. 3 to 1
Indonesia: Rupiah. About 9000 to the US Dollar.

I have done more math in my head over the last 4 weeks than since grade school, I`m sure :)

One other thing I thought I would share with those knowing my passion for wine (and I know many of you are, as well) is that as a wine drinker, I have been on a bit of a forced drought as wine is very expensive here, so I thought I might as well try whatever beer is the national beer and have made that as my nightly drink along side dinner etc.  Michelle usually still splurges her $3-4 for her white glass of wine every night.

So for beer it`s like this: 
Thailand: Singha or Chang. good.
Cambodia: Angkor beer. Yum, my favorite so far.
Vietnam: Saigon. Not so good. A local bartender even said: order Tiger beer, it`s better (Singapore)
Malaysia: didn`t try one, too short a visit.
Indonesia: Bintang. Not bad.

Ok, back to where we are right now.
We got into Bali around suppertime and are staying in a very nice place for about $30/night. More on the expensive side as most of our places have been less at around $10 or so a night even with own room, AC etc.  they are all in hotel kinds of places, I guess.  Pineapple was more of a guest house and definitely a bit shady with no real front desk etc but clean. :)

We got settled into our new home for the next 3 days and starting walking toward the beach on our search for dinner. Michelle and I, both being sushi lovers, were quite excited to see a neat looking Japanese restaurant and the three of us had dinner there with shoes off, and sitting at low tables.  Chelsea got her edamame and veg tempura, so all was good.

We actually slept in a bit today until about 9 am (Sunday), had breakfast at the hotel here (most places have breakfast included) and walked down to the beach. Lots of little shops and stores on the way on our 20 minute walk to the end of our street basically.  The beach here is wide, with fine sand that is actually a bit darker than I thought.  Beautiful, though.  We got to the Beach at around 10:30 a.m., so it wasn't packed yet but certainly filled up during the day. There are a lot of people flying kites and lots of people learning how to surf which we are giving a hot tomorrow for about $30-40 each which provides lessons and a surfboard as long as we want it.  Just like the other beaches, you often have locals approaching you trying to sell fruit, jewelry, sarongs, dresses or little instruments or local art.  The water is amazing, even though it seems a bit cooler than in Thailand.  The airport is right on the water, so that you can see planes in the background.  We had an amazing flight in as you could fly low over the water and Chelsea and I were convinced that we saw some kind of big fish jumping or swimming close to the surface. Maybe dolphins, someone told us.  We also flew over a mountain range and saw what looked like the tops of volcanoes. When we saw a map of Bali, we saw 3-4 mountains in its Northwestern part, so that must have been what we saw. Really picturesque.  We should have bought shares in Air Asia, it is the cheapy cheapy airline here and we are getting accustomed to its red planes.  One other note (don`t be alarmed by the pic!):  When you first get on board, there must be something going on with the air temperature and A/C or something as there is always the mist or smokey stuff when we get on.  As mentioned, we are Air Asia pros now, so we don`t worry about it anymore, but we sure did the first time we saw it :)

The weather is different here, as well. A bit of a breeze, still hot but we don`t mind it as much as it isn't humid. Really nice heat and a dip into the water today every 45 minutes or so also helped. Of course, we all got burnt a bit but I guess being in Bali, that is to be expected.  We had a quick nap after getting back from the beach and went out for dinner, had some local Indonesian food. Very cheap and again, we paid more for our drinks than food, I think.  Now we are sitting planning our last few days of travel in China. 

Hard to believe it is August 1st and we head home on the 13th, still so much to see.  We are getting a glimpse of life here.  It seems impossible to see Southeast Asia and even only some of its countries in the short time we have. But it is nice to get this quick glance at the various countries, cultures and maybe an idea of which ones we may want to visit down the road for an extended period of time.