To Bali and Back!

After Heena’s wedding, my extended family decided to prolong our vacation and take a trip to Bali, which is also located in Indoneisa but is its own island, about 1.5 hours away by plane. Bali is divided up into a few areas that people drive between, each with their own culture and specialties creating an endless list of things to do. This was my second time visiting Bali and I left still knowing that there is more to see for the next trip! The group I was with consisted of 15 people related to me and 2 of them were my second cousins that I had met for the first time EVER at the wedding. Our expansive group managed to make it to quite a number of Bali's different areas!

We first decided to visit an area called Ubud which is know for its rice patty fields. In Ubud, there is a temple located on a cliff above the ocean where we went to see a dance performance of the Ramayana epic. For myself, Arun, Jalesh and Kaajal this became way more than a performance. Since we were sitting right on performance level, we literally became a part of it. At one point, the flames they created as “part of the dance” got blown into our faces by a gust of wind. I was OBVIOUSLY freaking out because I did not want to burn my eyebrows off or set my hair on fire (again).

Not exaggerating - I was almost engulfed in these flames.

Arun - Basically part of the show

But I lived to see another (beautiful) sunset:

On Christmas night we went to an area called Jimabaran. There are a TON of sea food restos in this area and each of them sets up their chairs and tables along the length of the beach. You go to their fish tanks to choose your seafood and a few minutes later you eat the fish you just pointed at and it’s really really yummy and the beach is really pretty all lit up at night :)

Finally, we also took a trip to an area called Kuta on Chirag’s birthday. Kuta is the touristy area with all the nightlife and a really fun beach. We spent the day body surfing and playing soccer with some of the local Bali boys on the beach which was a lot of fun because I finally got the sunlight I needed to TAN. 

Kuta has all the clubs and bars and at night, as we walked down the street, many people openly offered us “magic mushrooms” on every corner. There were even signs posted that said “Magic Mushrooms This Way”. One guy gave Jalesh his card if he ever needed magic mushrooms on the go.  I was a little taken aback by how openly drugs were sold but the sheer number of people selling them made me laugh.

So funny story: My family was staying in some simple and nice villas and on the morning of Dec. 26^th, I was sitting on our balcony with Devesh and Arun when we heard a really loud siren go off followed by some woman announcing something in Bahasa Indonesian. Arun and I immediately looked at each other and worried that this was an alarm for something like a tsunami! We looked at Devesh who really did not share our fear. We looked down to my aunt who shrugged her shoulders and continued reading... we called out my cousin Chirag who did not care at all about the siren. I asked Arun why we were the only people who cared!! I went down to the restaurant to ask the Indonesian man what the siren meant. He literally shrugged and said it was a tsunami warning. So I was like “WHAT? A TSUNAMI? SHOULDNT WE GET TO HIGHER GROUND?”. Then he made the very important clarification that it was just a tsunami warning DRILL.  Just to be sure, Arun and I checked the tsunami warnings online and found out that the coast was clear (literally). Then we remembered that it was exactly 8 years ago that the tsunami hit Indonesia, and there we were, sitting on the coast of Indonesia enjoying our holiday. 

I also think that I need to start a blog completely dedicated to the traveling issues I run into because when we were trying to fly OUT of Indonesia to Singapore.... we had issues. My family did not realize that we each needed to pay the equivalent of 15 US dollars per person in taxes to leave Indonesia. When we realized this we had 2 adults in line (my aunt and uncle with da $$), and 7 “children” (with no money), and this was JUST after we tried to spend all our Indonesia dollars since we were leaving the country.  So as we stood in line, scrounging for the last Indonesian dollars we had, we definitely thought we would have to go all the way back out and change more US dollars when all of a sudden, my uncle pulled out 1,000,000 rupiah from his pocket (the equivalent of 100 US dollars). By the time we counted our last pennies, we found that we were only 10,000 rupiah short of getting through customs. That is ONE AMERICAN DOLLAR PEOPLE. ONE. DOLLAR. So we had to change money anywaysssssss.

ANYWAY. Bali was a lot of fun but it was another few days of late nights and early mornings so I was so happy to arrive back in Singapore and just take one whole day to SLEEP :)

Thanks to Aarti for her amazing pics! And just a personal update from me: After a week and a bit in Singapore, I am back in KL safe and sound and sorting out my apt and cell phone yaaaaaaay for taking care of business (doodoodoo).