Bali, Indonesia II

I'm not sure where to start. There are so many things that I would like to write about. Okay, let me start from when I arrived at the airport in Bali.

When I arrived in Bali, I wanted to get some cash. There were no ATMs around, so I walked up to exchange service counter. There were about 5 of them lined up next to each other. As soon as clerks see me walking towards them everybody starts screaming “come here come here!!” what a competition. I thought exchange counters are more like banks. Yeah, they are competitive, but they don’t really show it. Besides, usually there is only one exchange service at one location or at least you don see them side by side. I picked the counter where the lady approached me first because I realized that they all have the same exchange rate. I felt guilty for the rest of them. What a competitive place.

The second day, I took a day tour. I was expecting a bunch of people waiting for the same tour guide at the hotel lobby. It turned out that I got a dedicated guide for myself, but not only that, I also got my own driver! When we, the guide, the driver and me, got in the car, I was a bit reluctant to be honest thinking “they could just drive off not bringing me back to the hotel.” As soon as I saw other tourists having their own guides at sightseeing locations, I felt relieved. It seems it is not so common to have a tour group with a bus, but rather having a private guide with a private driver with a regular car, in my case, Civic.

My first destination was the second biggest temple in Bali called Taman Ayun built in 17th century. The picture above is the gate of the temple, and the picture on the left is inside the palace. Those buildings are called Meru, shrines. They were so beautiful standing right up in the blue sky! According to the tour guide, mountains are admired as holly or God by Balinese, so Meru shrines have a shape of cones because they symbolize mountains.

Tourists cannot go inside the palace because it is holly, but there is a path going around the temple palace to see what’s inside.

	People were getting ready for a big celebration that happens once every fifty years. Lots of people, both women and men, were working together.
	Another group of women were preparing lunch for the workers. These are made out of rice. I would call them rice balls, but they are not balls. Remember, scones symbolize mountains, so rice balls for workers also shape like scones!

The second location was called Tanah Lot, a temple in the ocean. This was pretty cool. You can walk to the temple during the day (low tide) if you are ready to wet your butt (just kidding but close to that). This was pretty cool to see it right there, but also from the cliff where I took this picture from.

The opposite from where I was standing, there was more shrines. These shrines are even more beautiful during the sunset. Imagine their figures shaped clearly in black of the orange background!

The good thing about having your own tour guide and driver is that you get to decide what you want to see. Another location with the tour package was to go to something called “Monkey Forest.” Okay, I’ve seen lots of monkeys in Japan, and they even attack you if you have food. I’m not a big fan of that. I asked the tour guide if Balinese enjoy something like that. He said no, but tourists like it. So I asked him to take me to somewhere else. Then, he brought me to very tourist beach called Kuta. It was beautiful with lots of surfers both tourists and locals. They are really tanned to black almost. Amazing! This is the place the bombing happened in 2002 at a very popular night club. Kuta is really different from any other Bali areas I think. It’s like Miami; there are lots of shops and restaurants on a street. You can’t tell you are in third world country. That part of the island is something else. It was good to see the place, but I will stick with Nusa Dua where I stayed. (I think the tour guide said it means “two islands”)

Indonesian lunch at the end of the tour.

I was supposed to come back around 4pm, but somehow, I was back to the hotel at 2:30. So I got extra time to go down to the beach! After going into the water for a few minutes, I was laying down at the beach relaxing. It was very relaxing. I needed it!

By the way, about the tour guide, I think I kinda got ripped off. He was very nice and all that, but at each location, he tells me about the place in three sentences or so, and then says “take pictures”. After I take pictures, we walk to the next location where he again says “this is a great location to take pictures. Go ahead” and he waits. I wanted to know more history or culture about the place. I think 70$ was too much for that guide. Does this sound like I got ripped off?