A land without water fountains

One of the few luxuries that I am looking forward to upon returning home is drinkable tap water. There is none in Bali. They do not have any sort of water purification system or treatment facilities. You simply cannot drink the water straight from the tap. There are several ways to go about this: 1) boil your water, 2) buy bottled water, or 3) treat the water yourself. For the most part, we went with option #3. Rather than using iodine tablets or things like that which they often sell in camping stores, we opted for non-chemical treatment and bought ourselves a “Steripen”. The steripen uses UV light to kill all the bacteria and bad things in the water. Apparently this is how some municipalities in the USA treat their water anyway, so we figured it was good enough for our purposes. The steripen is made for travelers and treats 1 liter of water at a time and takes about 90 seconds per batch. We had a morning routine in Bali in which we would start each day by treating about 4-6 liters of water.
    
The amount of money that we paid for the steripen ended up being about the same (maybe slightly more) than what it would have cost to buy bottled water for a month. But we both feel better about refilling our own water bottles and not creating a whole bunch of extra trash by dumping several plastic water bottles a day. Also, the steripen worked great. Yes, it was a bit fussy at times, but never once did we get sick from the water. I call that a win.

The first stop in our many legged journey back to Philadelphia was the Singapore airport. For the first time in a month, there were water fountains! As far as I can tell, there is not a single water fountain anywhere in Bali (why would they have them when the water isn’t drinkable?). In many towns in Bali I think that running water itself is still very rare (hot water is even rarer) but we were in Ubud and other towns where there is some amount of tourism infrastructure and money. When we were in more rural areas, we definitely saw people bathing and washing clothes in the streams. In any case, water fountains were a welcome sight! I think I will appreciate our drinkable tap water in the USA more than I ever really thought about before. The steripen came in very handy, but now it can be put to rest until our next travel adventure.

Nusa Dua day 1; The relaxining

We arrived in Nusa Dua on Saturday at about 11 am and got right to relaxing.  Nusa Dua is the resort town in the south of Bali.  It is drastically different then the rest of Bali we saw.  There are nicely manicured lawns everywhere, and immaculate sidewalks. The sidewalks were what caught our attention.  In Ubud the sidewalks were tiles that could be removed to access little streams that were overflow from the streets, and possibly sewage.  It was not uncommon for tiles to be missing, broken etc.  So nicely maintained sidewalks were a bit of a shock.  Especially since no one walks in Nusa Dua.  Everyone takes a taxi, or drives.  It looked like Florida, but with more statues like the one to the right.  It’s hard to see but that is a squirreel of some kind, attached to a garbage can.  Except the quirreell has a vert strange expression on his face.  Like he is rabbid.  There are massive resorts everywhere, with small armies for staff, who all speak English very well.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of resorts, this was our room.  In case you can’t tell, our room opened right on to the pool.  We could open our sliding doors, and jump right in!  We took a lot of pictures of the room, so we might make a separate post just about the room.  After dropping off our stuff, we got right to relaxing!  We went out to the beach, and found a little hut, and sat down.  We were brought cold bottles of water, cold wash clothes (to put on our necks) and a little mister bottle to spray ourselves down.  It’s pretty hard to not be relaxed in a place like that. 

 

 

 

 

 

We started getting hungry, so we walked down the main road to find some cheap food.  Along the beach it is entirely resorts, and the restaurants are all very expensive.  They are not just expensive by Indonesian prices, they were expensive for places in the USA!  So we walked out to the road, and the difference was night and day.  The beach felt like any beach resort town in the USA, but the road felt like Indonesia again!  Stores selling the same touristy junk, little to no sidewalk (our resort was not in Nusa Dua proper, but the next town north called Tanjung Benoa)  We found a road side stand that sold us two meals, dessert, and filled up our water bottle for $5!  And the food was delicious!  For dinner we went to a small warung where a few of the employees from our hotel were eating.  That’s how we knew we were eating in the right place.

 

After some more relaxing at the beach, we went back to our room to take a bath.  Our room came with a bath set which had some mineral salts, candle, and flower petals.  It was VERY relaxing.  We soaked for a while enjoying the flickering candle as the last of the day light faded.  It was incredibly romantic, which is not something we do often, so it was a nice change of pace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After feeling fully relaxed we went to one of the Hotel’s restaurants (It had 3) to see some Balinese dancing(left), and have some dessert.  Dessert was delicious (if a little expensive) and the dancing was mediocre.  The picture of the dancers didn’t come out so well, but the picture of the stage did!.  It was a beautiful night, and we could see a bunch of stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our goal was to come ot Nusa Dua to relax, and on our first day we had done a terrific job!

Om Swastiastu!

Om swastiastu is a formal Balinese greeting which can be roughly translated in Hebrew as "Shalom" or in English as, "Have peace and safety". Technically this is a Sanskrit phrase and along with Hinduism, it originated in India and was brought to Bali later on. Anyhow, the corresponding symbol is also quite popular here. It is associated with well-being and luck and it's pretty common to see this symbol on houses, gates, and jewelry.




At first it is a little strange to see this symbol displayed so prominently, since we usually associate it with something else entirely. The first few times we saw it around it threw us off guard a bit. But once you get to know the people here and a little bit about the culture, it becomes just an an ordinary sighting in Bali. The people here are among the friendliest and most welcoming that I have ever met. They are very accepting of the numerous tourists who visit their island, no matter where you are from or what your background. They might look at you funny if you are doing something that doesn't make sense in their culture, but that is about the extent of their cultural insensitivity. Considering how friendly and helpful everyone has been, I really stopped noticing the symbol on houses except when I was looking for it. Around here we were able to stop thinking of the symbol as "something bad" every time we caught a glimpse of it on someone's house. However, I think if I were to see this symbol in most other parts of the world I would be far more uneasy.

This one was on a sign pointing to our hotel in Nusa Lembongan.

And this one is on Ganesha's hand in our home-stay in Ubud.

Leaving Ubud

Today we are leaving Ubud :(  We are going to Nusa Dua for our last weekend.  Nusa Dua is the fancy beach resort town, and we are looking forward to relaxing in the sun on the beach before getting back on the plane to head home.

We will miss you Ubud!

Klungkung. Not just a sound your pipes make!

Yesterday was our last full day in Ubud.

We woke up early to go on a nice bike ride up north.  Most of the bike ride looked like this.  Beautiful rice patties, with a back drop of palm trees.  On occasion we would get glimpses of Mount Agung, which is a giant volcano towards the middle of the Island.  This mountain is very important in Balinese culture.  Each town has a temple of death, and normally the temple is on the Moutn Agung side of the town.  Also when giving directions, Balinese do not use north and south.  They have a word which means toward the mountain and away from the mountain.  Obviously this direction changes depending on which side of the mountain you are on.

During this bike ride we went in to a store and took this picture.  Thats a lot of cats.  CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS.
















After the bike ride we decided to get Balinese massages.  This was a GREAT idea.  They were about 7 dollars each, for an hour of relaxing soothing massaging.

We had to go to the Bumi Sehat office to get our volunteer t-shirts, and used this as an excuse to go through monkey forest one last time.  And this is what we saw.  There were a bunch of monkeys swimming in a small ravine trying to cool off.  It was incredibly cute.  We watched them frolic in the water for a while, and then said our final goodbyes to the monkeys

Once we got over our jealousy of the monkeys for being able to go for a swim,  we got a taxi to Klungkung, which was the old central kingdom of Bali, until they were slaughtered by the Dutch around 1908 (Jerks).  We went to the hall of Justice (what a great name).  This was the supreme court of the Klungkun kingdom.  There were two main huts, one for the supreme court, and one for the king.  They both had ornate illustrations on the ceilings, telling traditional Balinese stories.  We tried to take some pictures, but the pictures do not really convey how crazy these buildings are.

There was also a small museum which talked about the Dutch conquering Klungkun, and how the Dutch won easily since they had guns, and the Balinese had spears and daggers.  The whole complex was quite beautiful, and was well worth the visit.  And we also took this picture.

After Klungkun we went to Petulu.  This area is noteworthy since every evening thousands of white herons return from finding food during the day.  Every where you look you see these white herons.  They roost in the trees, and litter the road below with their feces.  We were even lucky enough to see some baby white herons.  It was hard to take a picture of them without a zoom lens, since they often roosted quite high in the trees.  Every morning they leave, and then come back in the evening.  The birds just started roosting there in the late 60s.  Legend says that these birds are reincarnations of thousands of Balinese that were slaughtered during the Indonesian communist regime in the 60s.  These birds are considered holy by the Balinese.

By the time we got done with all of this, we were quite tired, so we went home to rest up, and have dinner with the volunteers who will be replacing us.  The highlight of the night was dessert, when we went to a Cuban themed restaurant.  I had Tres Leche cake.  It was DELICIOUS!  They also had a very good Latin music band comprised entirely of Indonesians.  We were VERY impressed.  There was also salsa dancing, which we are terrible at, but we gave it a try anyway.  There were some very good dancers though, so that was fun to watch while we ate.  Then we headed home for sleep.

Now we are packing to leave Ubud, which we are very sad about.  We are off to the beach to spend a few days in the sand and sun before getting on a plane for 36 hours of travel home.

Gardening is a lot easier with an army of children, and Balinese Cake Lady

Yesterday was not very exciting.  We hired a driver to take us to the Jewlery town.  Most of the places he took us to were HUGE stores, with air conditioning, and prices in american dollars.  These were not the stores we were interested in.  Our favorite one was an artists co-operative  with 49 jewelers.  It wasn't crowded at all.  In fact, when we arrived, they opened up the store for us, and turned on the lights.  Nothing about these other stores was picture worthy, except for how ridiculous they were.

There was no class scheduled for Thursday, so we went to the garden in the afternoon.  To our surprise there were 15-20 kids waiting there.  We thought they might be there for an english lesson, but when we got there they all went over to the garden!  They were so excited about working in the garden!  There were so many of them, that Ilana and I barely had to do any work.

To make things even better, Balinese Cake Lady showed up!  Ilana and I both got one, as did our little helper (pictured on the far right).










After the garden, we went out to dinner with the other volunteers in honor of our "last day" (which it isn't.  We are still in Ubud till Saturday).

I am going to take this time to talk about the Bumi Sehat Youth Center for which we are volunteering.  It is part of the Bumi Sehat organization, which was founded as a health clinic.  The founder of Bumi Sehat is Robin Lim, who was recently awarded Here of The Year by CNN.  The youth center provides free English and computer courses to the youth of the Ubud area.

Volunteering for the youth center has been an incredible experience.  We have been teaching English, and working in the garden with the kids.  Teaching English in this setting is not like a classroom setting at all.  Kids are there voluntarily, and are generally enthusiastic about learning.  Only one time did we have a problem with trouble makers, and it was easily solved, as the trouble maker got up and left.  We don't teach in a class room as most would think of it.  We teach in a small hut that can fit about 12 people comfortably, and there are no walls, so anyone can see in.  This results in other children in the neighborhood seeing us teaching English, and standing next to the hut during class, and some have even joined the class.  Sometimes it feels like we are the entertainment ("Look at the funny westerners!").

Working in the garden with the children has been a joy.  They are super enthusiastic about doing the work, and as soon as you show them how to do something, they will continue to do it, until you tell them to stop.  I have never seen kids so ecstatic about working in a garden!

Bumi Sehat is an amazing organization, and if anyone is looking for a volunteer opportunity, we highly recommend this one!

A bike ride, and some fun pictures

Uncharacteristically, we slept in yesterday.  We didn't get moving until 11 am or so.  We decided to go for a short bike ride before we had class at 3 pm.  About 15 minutes in to our bike ride we found these, and Ilana insisted on getting a picture on one of them.

I am pretty sure this was in front of someone's house.  Some day, I want giant elephant statues at the gate to my house!

After anouther 30 minutes of biking, we stopped to take a picture of this nice view

As we were getting ready to get back on our backs, a Balinese woman motioned to us to come towards her, using her hands and grunts.  It was obvious she didn't know english, and we didn't know why she wanted us to come towards her, but we did;  She gave us sarongs to put on, and took us in to the temple across the street, that we had not even noticed.  It wasn't an especially nice temple, but the woman seemed very insistent that we walk around and take pictures.  This was all inferred by more hand motions, and grunts.  Finally she pantomimes holding a baby, and points to Ilana.  After some confusion, we realize she is asking if we have any kids.  We say no, and shake our heads, and she is appalled!  She can't understand why we don't have kids!  She pantomimes smoking, and points to Ilana.  We shake our heads.  She pantomimes drinking, and points to Ilana.  We shake our heads.  She pantomimes lifting weights, and points to Ilana.   We shake our heads.  She pantomimes running, and points to Ilana, and we nod our heads yes.  This is very upsetting to our new fertility coach.  She pantomimes animatedly that she should not run, not lift, not drink, not smoke, and not bike, so that she can have a baby.  She then makes a small circle with her hands, and pretends to eat out of that circle with an invisible spoon.  This totally confuses us.  After she
repeats all of this advice, including the eating out of the circle, she insists we take a picture with her and Ilana.

As we are leaving the temple, she points at a coconut and makes the circle motion with her hands, and eats out of that circle with an invisible spoon.  She was telling Ilana to eat lots of coconut, in order to have a baby.

After all that, we taught our last lesson at the youth center.  It seems like we just got started!  Along with teaching, we have been working very hard on a garden, which is doing quite well.  The kids that we teach seem to really enjoy working in the garden, which is kind of awesome.

After dinner, we could see a lot of stars, which is unusual here at this time of year.  Since it is the rainy season, it is almost always cloudy here, especially at night.  We decided to trek a little bit out of town in an attempt to see more stars.  We got to a spot on top of a hill which we though might be better, but ended up being the same as down in Ubud.  But we started playing with the camera and long exposure times. 

 This was my first attempt at light writing ever, and it was the best of all the ones we tried last night.

This one we tried a couple of times, but could never get it quite right.  This was our best attempt












And this was one we just thought looked cool.  Those little points of light are stars!