Indonesia Part 1 - Bali

The long awaited vacation is upon us, and after 3 flights totaling 16 hours, we arrived safely in Bali. The flights were mostly uneventful, although the stopover in Jakarta was a mess. We waited in a painfully slow customs line to enter the county, switched airports with a 30 minute bus ride, waited in a line to enter the second airport, waited in a line to pay the transfer fee, moved to the correct line for the transfer fee, and went through security. The moral of the story: avoid Lion Air's cheap option from Singapore to Bali.

We both managed to get roughly a full night of sleep between all the layovers and flights, so we weren't terribly tired, just physically exhausted. We rewarded ourselves promptly with massages and beer. That night my love-at-first-taste affair with Bintang, Indonesia's local beer, began. I'd be sure to have two or more large bottles a day from there on out.

We spent two nights in Sanur, a sleepy, charming town away from the crazy tourist parties of Kuta and Legion. On day two, we rented mopeds and drove 45 minutes to Seminyak, which is the upscale tourist destination. We found everything to be 2-3x more expensive than Sanur and decided we had made the right decision. We popped into the famed Ku De Ta to browse the menu... $12 a drink sent us in search of other options.

Strolling the beach, we heard a Gamelon orchestra performing a play with Balinese dancers. At the entrance, it indicated you had to be a guest to proceed. We strolled in looking like we belonged, ordered a few drinks at the bar, and took some front row seats for the final few acts of the play. Gamelon is pretty cool music, percussive and lyrical at the same time. It makes me wish i had joined the Gamelon Orchestra at CU when i was there. I didn't take many photos during the first few days, but this was an experience i wanted to capture.



The monkey king was Therese's favorite, but his monkey's will probably be present in all my nightmares for the foreseeable future, what with the distorted faces and unnatural movements and all.




On the third day, we caught an early boat to the Gili Islands and began the process of loving island life. Here's a preview, walking Gili Air's perimeter at sunset.
~Kev