Island hopping

This post was meant to be sent last week, but with connectivity issues were not able to send it. The Kanawa experience will be posted in next few days. 

Im afraid this entry will be shorter than normal, as our boat for Kanawa island is shortly departing. It is our final destination before coming back to Bali for a few final days, and there is no electricity there. It is a small island close to Flores and Komodo Island. Can you guess what animal lives in Komodo?  If your guess was beasts of fantasy and legends then you are correct. From Kanawa we want to take a day trip and see the legendary Komodo dragon in its natural habitat! AWESOME.  But how did we get this far from Bali? 

Well, a few days after our last days volunteering, we did a night climb of Mt. Batur and were able to catch the sunrise. We climbed with a gent from ze France, and had fun speaking ze French avec il. We were also surprised to meet a family of monkeys living at the top of the mountain, well I guess a more accurate description would be active volcano. Steam came out of many holes and the most recent eruption occurred in 2004! We received nourishment at the top and were stoked because we were told we would get an egg and banana bread once we reached the summit. I guess we got just that because along with the hardboiled egg, was banana slices stuck between two pieces of wonder bread… I ate mine, Emily passed on hers:)

                A few days later we went to the legendary party island off the coast of Lombok; Gili Trawangan.  Now, despite being in that party atmosphere with bars lining the beaches and locals asking if we want this or that, we were too busy getting certified to independently SCUBA dive anywhere in the world! So over 4 days, we were able to take 4 dives and see some incredible things! Turtles, octopi, eels, and sharks, not to mention the myriad other fish we saw enjoying the coral reef surrounding the island. Im afraid we have no pictures of things SCUBA related yet, but hopefully we will get a dive or two in on Kanawa and take some pics then. Other noteworthy things is that locals like the saying "why not" as a response to many questions. Ex) At a restaurant, asking the waiter for a drink he responds "why not" (made me giggle). Also many many cats are here, and no dogs like the many in Bali.

                Our trip to the Flores area is worth mentioning, if only for the fact that it took 31 hours to get there over 3 ferries, 2 busses, a van, a taxi, and a horse driven cart. We were told on Gili that it would take about half that time and all be on 1 boat by our lovely travel agent. The good part was that we were experiencing areas very few foreigners go through, in fact after we got to Lombok from Gili T, we were the only white people! We were famous, and many people took pictures of us regardless of if we cared or not. These girls were probably the cutest example of this. The bad part is that it was terrible. Em and I both took an oath not to complain on the ride there, but now that it is over prepare for a mini rant. Bus drivers don’t care about you because they blast (bad)  indo music at you til 11pm, then start it up again at 430am. The company doesn’t care about you because they cram more luggage in the bus than space and shove it in the aisles, then cram more people than seats and put those people on the luggage. And the people spread out and spill stuff on you and stick their feet in my seat area, while due to bad maintenance air conditioning fluid leaks on me from the ceiling. Even MORE people come on at some stops and try to sell you stuff. Em cant sleep for a bit because a cockroach ran by her arm and later had ants all over her bag. Since we don’t speak Indonesian and no one spoke English, we were never entirely sure we were going to end up where we wanted. We did end up where we wanted however, and are now taking a short breather in a nice hotel with this view.  So now that we are all clean and rested, it is time to undertake 4 days paradise in a private island.

In Labuanbajo, this is the view from the hotel.

 We will fly back to Bali.

Our Favorite Things

One of my favorite things about Bali is that you get to make your own rules. In Canada, there are always signs telling us what we can and cannot do; don't touch, don't climb, no entry... You can't even climb on the fake mountains in the prehistoric park at the zoo. In Bali, if you decide to go to the Water Gardens and you see a random staircase leading down to an unknown area and you go down because there is no sign saying not to and you see a bunch of crazy masks and you try them on because they aren't locked up so why not, you end up with something like this: --->






Also, you could set out one day to find the ever-evasive Elephant Caves and then spend about two minutes in the actual cave because you first got distracted by this awesome little fallen Buddha oasis. You have to climb down into it and hop over a little river to get there. In Bali, both men and women must wear a Sarong if they want to visit the temples (women who are menstruating are expressly forbidden entry :0) Ryan is actually quite taken with his sarong and wears it often :) What ended up being even more awesome on the misleadingly titled `Elephant Cave Day` was our stumbling upon a tiny little dirt path leading to... well, we didn`t know where. But because it`s Bali and we do what we want we decided to go on an adventure. We passed some caves which we kind of explored until we disturbed a bunch of bats in one of them. Little did we know we would wind up going on a jungle trek in our flip- flops (mine were totally treacherous and liked to fall apart every few minutes) and wind up in this river which USED to have a bridge leading to some underwater caves. Turns out the bridge had collapsed only a few days before (according to the lady selling drinks in the middle of the jungle who also miraculously and very kindly fixed one of my shoes for me). You think that stopped us?THINK AGAIN!!






Yes that's right.






We river trekked like true adventuring champions. I'm talking holding my bag over my head to protect it from the water trekking. Ryan is heading towards some of the caves in this picture, and I am soaking wet up to my chest in the other one. It was an awesome accidental adventure. We saw some gorgeous views and I only got slightly eaten alive by the mosquito population on our walk back through the jungle.

Walking through rivers is not the only way to get a good view of the jungle though. Our host Denton and his girlfriend Emily recently moved in to this beautiful house on the edge of a ravine. They invited us over for drinks and the sunset which we witnessed from their top balcony. Best seats in the house. Can you imagine THAT being the view from your balcony?



Today was our last day of school. Ryan and I are both really sad about it. The kids are just so interesting. We got completely schooled by a 6 year old today about dinosaurs. This little boy was brilliant, using terms that we had never even heard of. With the help of the gym teacher, Pak Widi, we managed to get most of the kids gathered together at snack so we could take a picture. They are all most definitely as hilarious as they look.

Final exclamation of the day is holy KITTENS! Cats are essential in a Bali house because they scare away rodents and reptiles. Our previous little hunter cat moved when the couple in the room next to us left because this cat was best friends with their four adopted dogs and no one wanted to separate them. But it's okay because look how adorable her replacements are :)

The Swing of it

We're nearing the end of our third week of adventuring, and Ry and I are starting to get into the swing of things. This was our first week volunteering at the International Pilangi school here in Bali. Ryan has led a sporting revolution, ousting the previous reigning tyrant (the dreaded dodge ball; an all day / every day activity) and replacing it with the more awesome games we all know and love. I am, much to my original dismay and embarrassment, RE-learning 6th grade mathematics and grammar. I ask you, who here remembers how to use long division for dividing decimals?? But we're both enjoying the experience and learning a little something ourselves :)

Invaluable to us is Ryan's total badass bravery on the scooter. This is me attempting to upload a videos... so here's hoping it works out. But this is tip of the iceberg, even just from a passenger perspective, the driving here is crazy with every man, woman, child and baby (often all on the same bike together) for themselves.

Having said that, it is an awesome, way too much fun way to get around. And theres something to be said for being able to keep moving forward so long as somewhere on the street is a tiny gap big enough to fit your bike through. I barely even fear for my life anymore... :)

One activity which has pretty much become a Bali weekly special is a trip to the beach. The first beach we went to was the uber busy party time beach called Kudo Beach. The second could not have been more different, with a little trek through the wilderness before coming out on this beautiful, isolated white sand beach. King of the beach was very clearly this tiny little puppy who I snapped a picture of in his ONLY moment of semi stillness all day.

The other thus far weekly staple is a trip to the spa. We honestly can't help ourselves. With an 80 minute massage costing us the equivalent of 10 Canadian dollars... we would be fools to say no. Ever. I have rarely felt so very pampered in my entire life; I have even made a spa convert out of Ryan :)

The last thing I'll talk about this time was our viewing of a "Traditional Indonesian Fire Dance". 100 topless Balinese men provided an on-going musical narration with their voices; a rhythm that was stuck in our heads for days after. They were joined by a small cast of dancers and together they told a story I recognized about Rahma and Rhavannah. If you've seen A Little Princess then you know what I'm talking about. The woman in this picture was our leading lady, and you can see a small chunk of the many singing men who surrounded the dancers behind her.

Arguably even more entertaining, though somewhat less relevant as far as we could tell, was the man who came out after the dance was done. He was wearing a horse outfit made of straw and he.. well.. he just walked through the fire. That's all he did! He just walked back and forth through the fire in his bare feet several times. Weird... but totally impressive.

More to come! Thanks for reading.

Roosters, Elephants, and Monkeys

Villa Mantra has many many things going for it; the view, the atmosphere, nice people. The one thing, however, which tickled our annoying bones, was the schedule our neighbor roosters had for when they thought dawn supposedly is. Hey 5am is perfect, we get up around 6 anyway.. but this one particular cock starts his routine around 3am and doesn't finish til around.. well I don't think he stops until he gets killed and eaten, which I imagine frequently now. 

   We are mobile now! With a Honda moterbike rented for the rest of the trip, we can travel all around Bali if we want to. On the video camera we got a little clip of us going on our first trip with Emily on the back filming. We might get a clip on the Iphone and post it for all you people who cant wait. And it really still is a crazy experience. With just two lanes of traffic there can be up to six vehicles lined up at a stop light. Their are moterbikes and scooters everywhere so if there is free space somewhere, it is fair game to take it, and this includes opposing traffic lane. Ahh I'll just let you guys watch the clip next time:)

Just to the north of Ubud, we checked out the elephant park after a wrong turn sent us through some beautiful rice paddies (we just kept driving it was so cool!). Riding these guys looked awesome but was way too expensive. They were quite friendly though, and liked to explore around with their trunks a lot when humans were nearby, probably looking for food. So after the crazy show with painting, sitting up, soccer and basketball (with circus music of course) we fed some bamboo for a little up close and personal time with Tina (Eat the FOOD Tina!). The legendary Monkey Forest was super close to us, and the first time we went we got loads of videocamera footage of monkeys crawling all over Emily to get her bananas. I found this quite interesting that she was all right with this, yet freaks out when their are a few bugs on the ground. Matt, those things have fangs and are goddamn scary, and there is no way I am acting aggressive towards them just for a good photo. Em did get bit though and now she is in the hospital for rabies. Kidding! We did go back once again though with the phone, and lured some monkeys out of the park with bananas for some snaps for you folks.

 

Here, I saw the monkey too late, and right after it dove at me and tried to eat me.

Right after the failed attack from the monkeys, we decided to relax at the porno museum. This guy Blanco painted many naked women and the guidebook described it as such. It cost us 50,000 Rb to get in (about 5CAD) which was expensive compared to the Monkey forest (20,000) but we immediately got our moneys worth by seeing a tonne of birds of Paradise. They perched on us, look!

Stay warm up there! Beaches and driving next!

Getting over the pond

Hello Friends and Family!

Our trek over to Bali meant stopovers in San Fransisco, Tokyo, and Singapore, amounting to about 40 hours of travel time. We decided to skip the few days visiting in Singapore because our connection there was unavailable for hosting and we wanted to get all the travelling done at once.

Bathrooms turned out to be a highlight in the airports, as in Japan, Emily was able to check in and choose what meal she wanted from her bathroom console (not really). But just look at the controls from the picture she took! In Singapore, the urinals had little flys to aim at which is pretty cool too... maybe even cooler. Speaking of Singapore, that's where I got busted for carrying a butterfly knife in my luggage! Fun times getting detained and questioned at 2 in the morning. Good thing Em and I are awesome negatiators and managed to convince our Singaporean friends that we are in fact not butterfly knife wielding Canadian Gangsters, but travellers who didnt check the side compartment where my brother Matt stashed his camping knives. (We got to keep the fishing knife!)
Below is a picture of us still looking good before boarding our final flight.

So I am typing this in Ubud, a town in central Bali, which will be our base of operations for the most part. Our friends Denton and Megan live here, and it is also where we will volunteer at a local school. The place we are staying at is amazing. Called Villa Mantra, it is off the main road, has a kitchen and pool, and surrounded by coconut and banana trees. From our bathroom we can see many rice paddies and the farmers collecting from them. While watching them collect, I got a wave from one of them, and after covering up I waved back :))

Monkey Forest today!












Paddies!












Bugnet Bed!