BALI!!!

(Sunrise in Pemuteran)

Okay to begin with I am going to have to do this in chunks, because it was a long...wonderful, adventurous trip and unfortunately I could only put in some of the really awesome pics, but I thought these best portrayed the overall experience.


The Flight Over
It was interesting from the beginning. First off my flight to LA was delayed while my Mom's was still on time to San Francisco, which meant I would miss my connecting flight to LA...so in 20 minutes I managed to switch flights with a very awesome Delta personnel named Maria to My mom's, needless to say I was the last one on the plane and my mom was very surprised to see me. But while this was great, it meant my luggage was sent on without me and I would have to catch up with it...

The 19 hour flight to Singapore ended up going really pretty smoothly, unfortunately my Mom forgot her knitting though :( BTW if you ever get a chance to visit Singapore Airport I would highly recommend it, it is AMAZING!! It is so beyond what any other airport is with free movies playing 24 hours a day in the terminals as well as all kinds of shops and food, not to mention free gaming centers and internet, extremely open space, windows, gardens and hotels/spas, here are a few pics.

Bathroom in Singapore Airport

But alas, the peace and perfect flight was not too last, we landed in Balikpapan, which, when I went to find my luggage was informed by a really nice man who spoke a little English that Balikpapan was not Bali!!! It is part of an island just north of Bali, to make a very very long story short, we took two flights, one to Surbaya, (on Java) and then one the next night at 10 PM to Bali, which was an hour late and then Bali is an hour ahead of Java.

We were very lucky to meet Adi, because it got us tickets, walked us right through security, waited with us, bought my mom some stones for a necklace, then walked us out to the plane and told us we would be able to get tickets for that night to Bali, unfortunately we missed them by two minutes. In Surbaya, we met some very nice people who helped the only two white people, not to mention blonde American women in the joint get tickets, one is below, Mr. Kucandi (cush-nadi), who asked for my phone number when we left and he walked us through security. BonBong who did all they calling and arranged for the cab fares was awesome as well. This part of the trip kind of freaked me out and to hear more about it, I would have to tell you in person.

Me and Mr. Kucandi, practicing English/Indonesian

Finally, Waka Ganga...aka BALI

So we finally made it at 12 am to Bali!! (at this point my luggage was no where to be found and our new friends we met from Australia thought that I wouldn't see my luggage again, but to check back in the morning) A wonderful man from Waka Ganga waited for us and took us back to the hotel, which I cannot even describe the moon hitting the water as you could hear the waves crashing on the black sand beach...did I mention they served us fresh fruit juice, no concentrate and let me just say now that the food throughout the trip was incredible. The next day I got a hold of the airlines and it appeared that my luggage had been sent all over the place, I believe the woman on the phone even mentioned FRANCE, if you can believe it, either way they miraculously got it on to a plane at 6:30 that night and I got my luggage!!
Each place that we stayed (there were three) were not long enough we never wanted to leave where we were.
In front of our room looking out to the ocean, can also light a candle and sit by on the bench at night

Looking out of our bungalow, which was all glass!

This was the bathroom, with an outside SHOWER, OH YEAH!

On the black sand beaches at Waka Ganga

Great Waterfall
Okay anyone who knows me knows I love the feet shots
Hello Paradise
The pool at Waka Ganga

In the Restaurant at Waka Ganga

Me and My Mom with "Debbie and Harry" from Hong Kong who spoke a little bit of English

On the way to Pemuteran, we stopped at a famous temple, the island is primarily Hindu and there are a lot of smaller temples throughout Bali. In the temples we had to wear these cool Sarongs thingys which made it very hot in the high humidity that day. Also, we shared the transport car from Pemuteran with "Debbie and Harry" from Hong Kong.

Pemuteran

Pemuteran was awesome, it was set back into very rural Bali, again right on the beaches, we did several fun things like snorkel on a nearby island that we had to take by boat and had a guide show us around, woke up to incredible sunrises, had two-hour body massages, great food, and frequent gecko guests that hung out in our bungalows and even freaked my mom out. I think they could feel that she was not fond of them, which is why they pooped on her shirt. We spent the majority of the time here and it was paradise, with the slight breezes and the sound of the waves, with colors on the water that changed from the orangey-red sunrises to the deep blue in the afternoons to the light blues at night and ending with the deep midnight blue at night. Also, each night they would turn lights on for us and light an incense for us before we would return from dinner. We had more outside garden showers!!Night time in Pemuteran at our Bungalow
Our Dutch snorkeling friends and our guide Haki on the boat

Afternoon Deep blue sea
Morning sunrise, looks awful doesn't it
Okay, just one more
The first bungalow, the gecko suite (the next one, the frog was also great and was closer to the beach)

The only bad part about Pemuteran was that I got my first bout with diarrhea, not fun, but we did meet a really cool doctor (we just happened to run into) who gave me some immodium, which made me feel much better.

The Arts: Ubud: Painting, Carving, Jewelery

We went to the villages surround Ubud (Central Bali), which is the cultural center of Bali and we saw some of the shops in which the artists reside. We each got some incredible carvings at some great prices, some jewelry, which we saw how it was made before hand and then I bought a really cool painting. In Bali, it is common to barter for good deals on stuff, so that was kind of fun to go back and forth until a price could be reached.

This was our driver Yeman, he was really great, as were most people in Bali, who were usually always smiling and more than happy to help you.
Mom at the top of a mountain overlooking two awesome lakes
The Grey monkeys hanging out on the side of the road

Legong Keratin Beach Hotel
We didn't expect this last hotel to be as nice as the first two, but I must say it was truly amazing! It was a bit more westernized, but it still had an awesome beach and a great pool which was right outside our bungalow door! It was a great last place to be before heading home.

The awesome pool!

Me watching a beautiful sunset
The Beautiful Sunset

Walking along the beach
The pool getting rained on briefly
Mom walking along the beach

Traveling Back
Well, all I can say is that each time we dealt with airplanes on this trip, we were guaranteed stress, it was like God was watching us and would say "lets push this button and watch what they do this time, it will be fun." Which meant that the morning we left our taxi was really late and when we called him he said he had forgot and would be there in five minutes, which was more like ten and then when he was rushing along, he hit a pothole and got a flat tire; at this point another taxi was driving by at that exact moment (very early in the morning) and he stopped, backed up and took us the rest of the way.

Two volcanoes as we hit a quick stop before going back to Balikpapan
Hanging out in Balikpapan Airport...again before heading out

Sunset flying into Singapore

Then we were in Singapore for 14 hours, which , really if you are going to be stuck in an airport for that long Singapore is the place to be. When we finally left and landed, got off the plane and then got back on in Tokyo, we had to wait for an hour for it to stop raining, in which it spontaneously decided to do (again, I think God was having fun with us). When we landed in LA (an hour late), it took a long time for our bags to finally come around to us and then to go through customs...which at this point we were moving very quickly to Delta to get our tickets home. When we got there the flight had been closed and we couldn't print out our tickets, so another great ticketing agent, (Chinese guy with a Broklyn accent) got into the system and got our boarding passes and then ran with us (literally) through the LA airport, in which we just made our flight and our luggage actually made it! Well, all but one, which we had to wait in SLC to get, but really not a big deal.

Singapore Airport

One of the movie theatres in Singapore Airport, spent a lot of time here