Bali, Indonesia

We left Singapore during Chinese New Year to spend the holiday in Bali Indonesia. We skipped the touristy areas around the beaches and town of Kota. Instead, we gravitated to the interior of the island, to the village of Ubud.

Ubud Village

The internet informs me that Ubud is not really a single town, but 14 villages that merged into each other as they grew. Much of that growth appears to be centered around the main road of Jalan Raya Ubud, where it crosses Monkey Forest Road.

Bali is not a large island, so Ubud is not far from the International Airport, nor really any of the perimeter of Bali's beaches. But it is still isolated by the long, slow drive along old village roads, frequently narrow and pot-holed from the abundant rain. It took us more than an hour to make the 22 mile drive from the airport.

We stayed in the center of Ubud, on Monkey Forest Road at the Ubud Village Hotel. But even here, in the center of town, surrounded by incessant growth, you can still see terraced rice paddy fields if you leave the main streets and explore behind the hotels. The villagers go about their businesses, intermingling with the tourists here and there, but mostly tending to their own private affairs. We were able to find abundant traditional shops and crafts amidst the mass-produced baubles and trinkets.

Monkey Forest Sanctuary

From our hotel was a short walk to the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, one of the area's biggest attractions for me. The signs warn you not to touch or tease the monkeys. But you are allowed to feed them, as long as you do so carefully. They even have monkey experts and helpful signs to advise you.

"If there is no monkey expert nearby, please toss the food to the monkeys from a safe distance. Do not hide food. The monkey will find it even if it is in your pocket or bag. If a monkey gets on you, drop all your food and walk away slowly."

This little guy jumped on my back and tried to grab my camera while I was taking photos:



I returned to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary several times. Early in the morning, I found the monkeys out in larger numbers, and more playful than in the afternoon. But I also found the mosquitoes in larger numbers. I suspect the monkeys were questioning why I was so stupid to stand around giving blood to the mosquitoes just to watch them scratch themselves and play with their food.

Rice Paddy Fields

On our second day in Ubud, we rented bicycles and left the center village to explore the surrounding rice paddy fields. We didn't have a map; we just followed different roads out of town.

Along one road, after a long climb, we left the road and turned into the fields at random to follow a narrow path along the rice paddies.

After winding through the fields, the path came to an end. To our surprise, we found an Australian woman walking towards us. Our first thought was to apologize, but she was inviting us to join her.

Rhonda invited us into her garden for a glass of cool water. After brief introductions, we were sitting in a beautiful villa on a raised open-air pavilion covered by a thatched roof. Rhonda was from Australia. She and her husband were restoring the villa, and they had plans to rent it out when completed.

As we sat there however, their plan was delayed with low crashing sound and the appearance of a team of workers looking hesitantly down an incline - their foreman holding his head in his hands.

The crash also produced two of Rhonda's guests, Phil and Elsha, curious about the noise and activity. We joined the construction crew looking down at a scattered pile of large concrete blocks and wet cement. It was all collecting in a pile of mud and water flowing out of the hill that was no longer retained by the wall that was no longer standing.

Rhonda left to assess the damage and negotiate with the construction company.

Phil and Elsha returned with us to the pavilion. They were building their own villa outside the town, and were staying with Rhonda until their construction was done.

As we talked with them, the sky threatened with thunder, and it started raining. We spent the next few hours protected from the rain under Rhonda's thatched roof, talking with Phil and Elsha about politics, philosophy, and the economics of building, owning, and renting out villas. When the rain finally stopped, they joined us back at the main road to continue our conversation over an early dinner at a local restaurant.

Cycling Kintamani and Mt. Batur

After a day of unmapped and unstructured biking through rice paddies, the next day we signed up for an organized bike tour of the Kintamani and Mt Batur areas, and then down through the back roads of Bali to the village of Pejeng.

The easiest part of the tour was the climb to Kintamani - they toted us to the top by van.

On the way up, we stopped at a coffee plantation for Lewak coffee. Not being a coffee connoisseur (or even a coffee drinker), I didn't know what that meant. It turns out there is a little animal the locals call the Lewak that lives in the trees and eats the coffee berries. They cannot digest the coffee beans, which allegedly ferment in the lewak's stomach and digestive tract. This supposedly imparts a richer, heavier flavor.

The lewaks poop these things out like Baby Ruths in Caddyshack, which the locals then collect, clean, and roast like any other coffee bean.

I wish I had learned the full story before I cavalierly ate a few whole beans out of the roasting pan.



After coffee and some local fruit (presumably not processed the same as the coffee), we continued up the mountain for breakfast overlooking Mt Batur and Lake Batur.

Mt. Batur is an active volcano and we could see the still-black scars and burnt trees along its sides. Lake Batur is the largest lake on the island of Bali.

From here we began the real bike trip: an easy descent, as the van already did the hard work bringing us to the top. The ride was incredible, making it easy to overlook a few mishaps due to lackadaisical bike maintenance.

On the way down we followed little back roads, where we met local villagers going about their daily routines. We rode through rice fields and farmland. We passed innumerable Hindu temples and traditional Balinese family compounds. We watched the landscape and villages change as we descended from the cooler mountain air into the warmer wetlands.

We finished the day, riding into the village of Pejeng, where we enjoyed a traditional Indonesian meal, before returning to our hotel for warm showers and lazy swim in the hotel pool.

Day Trip to Indonesia

We went to Indonesia twice in the last two weeks.

One of the great things about living in Singapore is being in a great jumping-off point to explore South East Asia. If you want to get to the closest islands in Indonesia, you can take any one of about a dozen jet-boat ferries operating every day. One week ago we went to the developed resort region on the north side of Bintan Island. This week we went to the relatively undeveloped east coast of Bintan.

The ferry to the north of Bintan is less than an hour trip. As US citizens, we have to get visas to enter Indonesia, but the Bintan entry allows us to get a “visa-on-arrival” at the immigration office at the Bintan ferry terminal. The fee is US $20. And they actually collect the fee in US dollars. If you don’t have US dollars, you can pay in Singapore dollars, but they charge you a hefty premium.

Sometimes its hard to know what currency you are supposed to use in Bintan. The official currency in Indonesia is the Rupiah. Its about 9,000 Rupiahs to the US Dollar. The exchange rate makes it fun to carry around a wad of nearly a million Rupiahs (worth about $110). But the Indonesia immigration office only wants US dollars. And to make it a bit more confusing, the hotels and businesses in the resort areas want only Singapore dollars. So your million Rupiahs don’t get you very far in Bintan.

The north resort area is developed by Singapore companies catering to Singaporean tourists (which is why they take Singapore dollars). Since the ferry ride is less than an hour, we decided to make our first trip only a one-day trip. We planned to use the time to scout out places for our second, longer trip. After leaving the ferry terminal, we bought day passes on the resort bus, which took us around the resort area, stopping at each resort along the way. We checked out several resorts, and hung out at one resort for a while. We walked along the beach and ate in the hotel restaurant - typical stuff. We wanted to take some pictures to post online, but we only took a few.

We would have taken more pictures, but immediately after taking this picture on the right, we dropped our camera in the ocean. It fell pretty much exactly where I’m standing in the photo. The camera filled with water and got jammed up with sand. And never took another photo.

After looking around the resort area, we decided not to stay there. The hotels were nice, but they were pretty much the same typical resort hotels you can find anywhere in the world. Instead, we talked to the locals, and collected brochures and advice from the shuttle drivers about where to stay in the undeveloped east coast, where we returned the next week, and we'll write about in the next day or so.