Bali, Thursday, July 5, 2007

Greetings for the last time from Bali! After 16 glorious days here we are on our way on Saturday. I swear in the past two weeks we have been to every market stall this end of Bali! Our hotel has been superb and since we got a family room, it is very spacious. I think I have gotten my fair share of the sun while Brian & Aislyn have been diligently staying out of the direct sun. Aislyn was right in her blog about all the honking that is done. The driving here (and everywhere we have been) seems very erratic - with mjotor scooters the primary mode of transportation for the locals. The scooters will daringly drive in front of the taxis and weave in and out to gain some ground. The honking is done by them and the taxis to indicate they are moving over or want to get in front of you. There are many one way streets here and it is not unusual for a scooter to go the wrong way until it can get over into the other lane to go with the traffic. They don't wear helmets here and often times you will see a family of four on a small 150cc scooter! They are very religious here - primarily Hindu - and they all put pieces of rice on their foreheads each morning. Also, there are shrines about every 10 feet or so and there is always a small basket woven out of leaves with their daily offering in them - rice, flowers, crackers, grass etc. They are very close as families and adore their children. One of our taxi drivers had a 3 month old son and said that they have celebrated his birth for the whole three months! It is very expensive for them since most people here are poor with the average annual salary being about $1.00/day! One thing we noticed when we went on our sunset cruise is that there is one price for foreign tourists and another for locals or Indonesian tourists - often times the prices are half what we have to pay! They think we are all very rich so it is sometimes difficult to bargain down too low since you realize the poverty. I think the most a taxi has cost us is 25,000 Rupiahs which is not even $3.00 and that would be for about a 20 - 25 minute ride! Life certainly is different over here and there is alot to say about the simpler life they lead but we are too ingrained with the way we have been brought up to really understand it all. You have to learn very early on how to say no and mean it. You cannot walk 2 feet without someone either asking you for "transport" or to buy something at their stall. I easily could have bought 50 sarongs so far (but haven't purchased any!), the same with sandals and sunglasses and of course - watches. Brian has only bought 3 so has done very well! We look forward to our return and I promise to get my pictures on this blog very shortly (unlike our Europe ones!). Hope everyone had a good Canada Day and wish everyone well. Happy Birthday to you Len - we are sorry we will miss the celebration but I'm sure Logan will give you much to remember.

Bali, Saturday, June 30, 2007

We are staying the night at a sister hotel in downtown Kuta. Still a very nice place - but right in the middle of all the action - restaurants, clubs, stores etc. Kind of nice for a change since our resort is quite quiet. We go back there for the last 6 days of our stay here! Aislyn has signed up for 3 days of surfing lessons and we hope to go watch her the last day - hope she does well, but I'm sure she will enjoy it! We have been pretty sluggish this last week and don't really intend on doing too much for the next one. It is just nice to take it easy and eat and maybe do a bit of shopping. I would like to maybe go on another cruise - for a whole day to snorkel - we'll see. Brian has gone back to the room and us girls have decided to walk around a bit. Always looking for bargains. Aislyn got the bright idea of going into the department store to price certain items so then she goes out to the street vendors and gets them below the fixed price in the store. I should have been using those tactics myself but don't think I'm doing too badly! Hello to everyone, hope all is well with you all and we look forward to seeing you all soon!

Bali, Tuesday, June 16, 2007

Hello to all! We have justreturned from a sunset dinner cruise around the main harbour - Benoa - in Kuta - about 20 minutes from where we are staying. The food and entertainment were good - even Brian is starting to enjoy the noodles. Our day trip yesterday was great. We had our own driver from 9:00 until 6:00 an we drove into an interior town - Ubu - to o some shopping and lunch. Along the way we went to a bird park, reptile park, monkey park, Batik factory and silver & gold factory. My bargaining skills are being finely hone, but I still get caught! Aislyn, on the other hand, is an expert and saves us alot! Brian is feeling quite a bit better, but is still having lots of problems with the heat. Aislyn is currently signing up for a 3 day surfing course as the waves here are awesome. Maybe her snowboarding ability will help. Our evenings end early and I think because of the heat we tire more easily. While we are loving it here, I am looking forward to coming home and relaxing! Talk to you all again soon!

Bali, Saturday, June 23, 2007

Hello everyone! We have been here for 2 days and it is beautiful! Quite a nice change from the tiny island on Lake Toba, where, by the way the second hotel we stayed in - which was the #1 rated hotel on the island , cost us a grand total of 866,000 Indonesian Rupiah with exchange being about $121.00Cad for 1,000,000 IR!!! It was a lovely spot and we were able to get a look at the more primitive side on Indonesia.
Our 2 days in Jakarta were not all that great. Brian has had a cold since last weekend and it was just getting worse each day. We took him to the Dr. on Thursday, the 21st where he got some antibiotics. You all must know what men are like as patients. He was quite ready to head home but I convinced him after a couple of days he would feel fine and sure enough, he is much better - not perfect though!
Air Asia is definitely the way to travel between destinations here - none of our 3 flights here have cost us more that $140. total for all 3 of us and they ranged in duration from 1 - 2.25 hrs. each.
Tonight there is a BBQ at the hotel with Balinese entertainment - looking forward to that! There are tons of excurions here - boat trips, snorkeling, SCUBA, day trips to other villages etc. I think we all want to do some snorkeling and we will rent an a/c van with a criver for a full day to Ubud where there is a monkey park and a birk park and some shopping markets.
We haven't bought much yet - everything is pretty well the same everywhere and to tell the truth, I am somewhat tired of bargaining but have become quite good at it. I would like to mail everything home instead of carrying it with us but will see how it goes.
Aislyn & I are out shopping a bit now while Brian reads by the pool. I will join him shortly for Happy Hour. By the way - to all our pub friends - we were in an authentic Irish pub last night - Friday - and thought of you all. Not quite 12:15am for going home time though!

Jakarta, Wednesday, June 20th 2007

We arrived about 1:30am last night after an entire day of travelling from Lake Toba. Our hotel is beautiful, not quite the accommodations we had in Lake Toba, but here we do have a TV. We are right next to the 2nd biggest mall in the city so we have had something to do all day! Brian developed a colabout 4-5 days ago andI am afraid it might have turned into pneumonia so he has slept all day and we will take him to the Candian Embassy recommendedhospital forsome attention and hopefully some antibiotics to get him on the mend. It has really affected his ability to walk around and his desire - obviously - to do anything. There is not too much to do here so I am not too sure how we will spend the day tomorrow until our flight tomorrow night to Bali. We booked abeautiful looking resort - Rama Beach Hotel & Spa in Kuta, Balifor 9 nights so will get lots of R & R there. I'm sure with some medicine and sun Brian will feel better soon. This internet is not working too well, so will sign off for now and I promise I will getAislyn to help me with pictures soon!

Lake Toba, Indonesia, Sunday, Father's Day, June 17, 2007

Happy Father's Day to both Charles & James and to all our father friends. We are on the island of Sumatera, indonesia on the far North end ion a small island - Samosir - that is a caldera formed from a gigantic volcano eruption 75,000 years ago. We arrived here on Friday after spenind another couple days in KL basically doing a bit of shopping and continuing to bargain with taxis to get them to turn on their meter! Quite an accomplishment when it happens. Because of the heat in the city we had to take it pretty slowly so it seemed to take a long time to get anything accomplished. Aislyn walks twice as fast as we do and Brian generally lags a little behind - he is really feeling the heat so we have to stop often for rests. Got a great flight out Thursday night on Air Asia to Medan, Indonesia. $210.00 for the three of us - total. Very much like Ryanair in Europe. Efficient and cheap! Medan is the third largest city in this country and is filthy and overcorwded so we were thankful we only stayed the night before heading up to this somewhat mountainous region. We took a "tourist" bus to Parapet which took us 4.5 hours with no A/C and a loaded minivan!!!! Arrived unscathed but hungry so while waiting for the ferry had a bite, experienced the local (non-western) squatting toilets! What an experience for a woman. At the ferry station we had about 1.5 hours to wait so were approached by young men who were hunting for customers to stay at their hotels ?!? on the island. We did stay at one of them since once we arrived at 7:00pm it was dark, there is only 1 road around the island and we didn't have a clue where we were. We got a couple of rooms and today changed to another spot which is double the price but at least the matress is soft and has sheets on it! nOur total stay for the 2 nights with all our meals for the 3 of us came to a whopping $55.00. I still can't get over the prices but they all seem very happy here and don't seem to care too much about money. When we walked to this new spot they even drove us back to the first place so we could pack up and check out - all for free! Brian doesn't do too well with lots of walking even though it is quite cool here and there is no a/c anywhere. It rained all day yesterday and I mean almost 24 hours solid so caught up on lots of reading and talking. This new place is very nice, has a bit of a beach and seems to be a weekend getaway for alot of the locals. We will be here until Tuesday morning when we will reverse our last trip and then fly from Medan to Jakarta for a couple of days. Talk again soon!

Kuala Lumpur, Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Another great day here in this lovely city. Yesterday we went to the Petronal Twin Towers and it is free to go up to the skywalk. when we got there at 1:00pm we found out that all tickets for the day were gone, but if we showed up in the morning at 7:00am we would get tickets for the next day. Needless to say we aren't up at that time so no skywalk for us. The shopping at the Suria Centre there is amazing in that it is all designer shops. Brian had broken his glasses on the train so we got those fixed there and treated ourselves to an Ice Mocha at the Hagen Daz store - delicious and refreshing! Came back to the hotel for a nap and in the evening we took the local bus to the Central Market where there is every possible thing available to buy with some bargaining - looked at a bone necklace for myself but wasn't quite in the mood for buying so we took a cab home and tried to get a good nights rest. I woke up at 1:30am to go and wait for Aislyn in the lobby - expecting her around 2:00. She finally arrived at 3:30am so got back up to the room and crashed for thee night - or what was left of it. Great to have Aislyn with us and look forward to spending some time with her on a not too busy schedule.