Tag Archives: Bali

A journey to Southern hemisphere.

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Bali, or as also referred to by the name “The Island of the Gods” is one heck of a paradise! I was so happy to be able to make it to the Southern hemisphere at last.

The majesty of the nature in Indonesia is grandiose, from rain forests to furious volcanoes and to the infinity of your vision rice paddies and terraces. Traveling on the road from Kuta to Ubud, we had the chance to team up with other travelers on this rough ride through the jungles of Bali. Transport in Bali is not top notch, I would say, Indonesia after all is a bit isolated and having such a huge population makes things hard to be organized. Bali though gets the biggest part of the pie being renowned as the major tourist destination.

The trip to Ubud gave us an overview on one of the most fierce volcanoes in there, we crossed the area of Mt. Batur and its caldera lake, and see how harsh nature can be sometimes, and how small we are in the face of our planet. The volcano was resting at the moment though it’s still active and attracts many tourists to watch it. It erupted the last time in 2000. You can read more about it here. Not to forget to mention the beautiful rice fields that gave us an outlook on how hard it is to do that kind of jobs, it requires time and patience and lots of energy to be able to get the final stage of the rice. The rice terraces we visited were so green and lush and dipped in water as if it was grass growing out of a river.

Ubud, the cultural center of Bali was one of the most relaxing place in our stay. Religious Hindus are living in harmony there and religion sounded as an important daily task. In Hindu tradition, they put a leaf basket full of rice, flowers and a burning scent daily in front of each house and each shop, so streets are full of these small offerings every day. Someone put that every morning in front of our door in our home stay accommodation, a place called Brata 1. The accommodation itself, was a small heaven, small cottages with lovely Hindu designs surrounding a family temple. They used to be a family house where the whole wide family would live next to each other but times have changed, families moved and now some houses are rented for tourists.

Staying in Ubud, made us discover a totally new culture to both of us. Maiku has been to India and Nepal, but Hinduism in there was totally different she said. We saw lots of art and even had the chance to see an event where all scooter drivers from all over Indonesia met to hang out, that was the most hippie scooters we ever seen. They were like straight away from a Mad Max movie.

The visit to the popular attraction called Sacred Monkey Forest was a must, even though Maiku’s love to monkeys is as much as my love to snakes: we are not best friends. She thinks they are dirty thieves (fact is that they are tricky nasty little devils). The forest has a few small Hindu temples, and we had the occasion to be visiting on the same date when a holy ceremony was taking place, once every six months. Ladies were all dressed up in their batik outfits on their best, carrying a food basket for the Gods on top of their heads, and walking in groups of family members, friends and neighbors. It was impressive how the colors mixed with the surroundings of the jungle. It was just magnificent!

Leaving Ubud was really sad, we found peace and harmony there (no wonder that has been a hot spot of hippies since 60′s) and good food and cheap accommodation and nicest people ever. We left on our bus trip to Lovina, the so-called dolphin heaven, but unfortunately after taking the morning boat for 2 hours in a lovely ride, sunny but windy, I didn’t have a chance to see any dolphins. Lovina was our New Year’s destination. We spent the event teaming up with other travelers in the pool. Literally IN the pool. That was coolest ever, swimming in a pool drinking gin and tonic. What more could you do in The Island of the Gods!

The trip of course, had to continue. The packing has to be done, and it’s always due to our little budget that land transport as our main choice. So we took a bus to Java island, the most populated island of Indonesia and the center of it all. Our destination was Yogyakarta, a student city located nearby the Borobudur Buddhist temple and Prambanan Hindu temple, where we did a day trip to see the majestic holy sites of two biggest religions in Asia.

On the way we saw the other fierce volcano, the mighty Merapi. Puffs of smoke circled over its top, when the monster was snoring in its sleep. The sleep can be easily disturbed, though, and we had a bit shivery feeling of that. I can’t understand how people live so close to these live volcanos and don’t give a damn.

Yogyakarta was awesome. Our accommodation was a hostel where all the rooms had a painting of a different color, pictures of animals and mostly the popular Gekko lizards. We also teamed up again with our new friends after a few days separation. They brought with them greetings from our lovely new young friend Afrika. She missed me so much she emailed a drawing of me. I think its quite alike, especially the hair.

Sasi by Afrika

Sasi by Afrika

Sasi

Snakes in the paradise

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One night in Kuta Sasi came back in the hostel his eyes size of dinner plates. On the way to a supermarket, he had been offered to buy “very young girls” from a guy whispering from the shadows. And as it ended up, it wasn’t the last of these offers. One chap tried to offer “young girls, boys, anything you want”. All the time he went out alone, there was someone offering him sex, drugs and rock n’ roll (pirate CDs/DVDs). When we went out together, it was just the latter, and occasionally drugs.

Indonesia, unfortunately, has become THE place for child sex tourists. It is the third in the world after Brazil and Vietnam, says the statistics. According to a local newspaper, there has been 47 cases of under-aged victims of molesting in 9 months in Bali only. These are the reported cases, so how many there is in the reality is not known. And majority of the harassment is done by foreign tourists.

According to official statistics, around 150 000 Indonesian children are exploited sexually and commercially every year. Estimation is that 80 % of them are lured into prostitution, mainly in tourist areas such as Kuta in Bali. Some of the professional sex workers are only 11 or 12 years old.

Even if this is a serious crime and really ugly face of tourism, there is no need for witch hunts though. In Lovina in the Norther coast of Bali, we saw heaps of older (read: in their 70′s) men with local girls. These girls were over 18, though, even if quite young for the men. And then there was this gray-haired panther in the pool playing with a young girl, aged about 8. Some of our travel buddies draw a bit hasty conclusions to think it was his sex toy. It was actually his daughter. So not ALL is bad, and in quite many of these old-young (mature, though) relationships there is love involved, as there was in Thailand, too.

Having said that, I don’t think there is anything so unforgivable than molesting a child. These disgusting animals should be in prison for the rest of their days, and may them be long and full of misery. I don’t believe to death penalty, I think its too easy way out. In Malaysia child molesters get whipped first before their long prison sentence. That’s more like it.

Maiku

Expressionistic sky

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Spectacular is the only word to describe sunsets in Bali. I have never seen anything like those in my life. Every night, hundreds if not thousands of people gather on the Kuta Beach, the famous surf beach of Bali, to enjoy the heavenly show which is far better than an average Hollywood movie. And in better technicolor!

The magnificent flaming colours are not only due to the tropical climate and humidity but also Indonesia’s high volcanic activity. Volcanic ashes in the sky reflect the light and make the colours so powerful. When Krakatoa exploded in 1883 the sunsets were screaming orange and blood red as far as in Europe for a year or two. I remembered this while watching the show, and remembered something else too. There was one painting in my mind all the time. This:

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

The Scream (all of its versions) has been painted about ten years after Krakatoa sunsets. I remember from my Art History classes from uni a heated debate about weather Munch painted the real sunsets of Krakatoa or not, a debate which has hottened art circles ever since the painting was fresh. Some claim Munch is an expressionist and wouldn’t have had painted anything realistic but express his inner feelings. True, yes, but in this case bullshit. I claim now after seeing the volcanic ash sunsets that this kind of powerful views ink to your mind so strongly that it will come out some day in some form, especially if you are an artist.

Munch writes to his diary himself in Nice in 22.01.1892 about the birth of The Scream: “I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

In Kuta Beach, late December 2008 the sunsets were as intense. Close to winter solstice, when the sun is close to its lowest point, a huge bright red-orange sun will approach the horizon of Kuta like a giant juicy blood orange, descending ever so slowly. The water reflects the gold and orange, the sky is painted first to more impressionistic flashes of honey, gold, rosy pink, malva and forget-me-not blue, then the colours intensify to expressionistic level: to burned sienna, flaming orange, blood and burgund, indigo and azure. Broken pieces of cotton clouds march across the sky like soft silk fabrics, and rays of the dying sun colour them with a thick brush.
When the sun has disappeared behind the horizon, the sky and the sand still reflects the colours for a long time.

The feeling was really strange, like sitting on the last beach of the world, or just minutes before the world’s end. We joked about that, and felt like living in a sci-fi movie setting. Always when the sun went down I held my breath for a moment for something bad to happen, but it never did. But the hold of the sun was like a magnet, and I understood well why the ancient people were sun worshipers. Well, in many temples in Bali they still have the special sunset rites and offerings even today, and the local people also came to beach to put a small, floating offering of flowers, incense sticks, fruits and snacks to the Gods.

Sunsets were definitely the best time in Kuta. When your eyes were fixed on the sky, you didn’t see all the trash which was floating all over the shallow water. Plastic bags, ice-cream papers, water bottles, used condoms, broken flip-flops, even dead fish. You name it. The colour of the water reminded of watery oatmeal, gray and more solid than water should be, and foul-smelling.

Water was so disgusting I had no intention to swim in it. I was planning to get some surf lessons, but after seeing the water (and smelling it!) I decided otherwise. An English couple we met in the hostel pool had had some lessons but cut them short when they discovered a dead, rotten fish size of their surfboard almost floating nearby. Locals say its only now on Western wind season, when the wind blows everything into the bay, and other times of the year beach is clean, but I don’t know. I have my doubts. Even the local hospital warned on its fliers not to swim on rainy season, especially near the street-water sawyers. So much for the famous surf beach, then, and we spend most of our time in the pool.

I will try to put some more photos from Bali to Flickr soon. When the connection here in Borneo allows…
Maiku

Happy New Year 2009!

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Dear friends and readers,

We wish you all a Happy New Year full of joy, luck and all what your heart and mind aim for in 2009.

We share with you this international experience we had here in Bali, Indonesia.

Best of wishes to all of you!

Maiku & Sasi.

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas to all our dear friends and family back home, we miss you so much! Happy Holidays also to our readers all over the world, where ever you are. Hope you enjoy this video greeting!