Bali, Indonesia

Today is Sunday, February 25.  Yesterday we were in Bali, Indonesia from noon until 9:30 p.m.  I always imaged Bali to be an exotic place, and undoubtedly it is if one can get out into the countryside and away from the congestion of its more populous parts.  While Indonesia as a whole has a population exceeding 265 million (making it the 4th most populated country in the world), Bali, which is an island city and a province of Indonesia, has a population of 4.2 million.

As we cruised our way into the port of Benoa, chaos seemed to prevail all around us.  So far on this trip, all port arrivals have been quiet and calm, but not so this time.  Whether because it was a Saturday, and thus the weekend, or it is simply like this all the time, there were water craft of all sorts flying in all directions and doing all kinds of things in close proximity of one another.  (Remember, you can enlarge any photo and separate it from the others by clicking on it.)

          

Some of the boats seemed particularly outrageous, like this one with no fewer than nine outboard motors propelling it.



As soon as we were able to, we disembarked the ship with another couple with whom we had made arrangements to do our own thing by hiring a car and driver.  Our goal was to visit two particular shrines, a famous beach, a market somewhere and to have dinner and view a beautiful sunset from the outside deck of a nice beach restaurant.  We accomplished some of that, but not all.  Of course, upon disembarkation, we were first treated to a Balinese welcome port side.

Our first destination was the Tanah Lot shrine, the most famous one in the area.  The trick here was to get there at low tide because as the tide comes in the land on which the shrine sits becomes an inaccessible island.  The traffic getting out of the city center is dense, to put it mildly, and it seemed to take forever to get there.  There were scenic views along the way, including of rice fields like this one.

The Tanah Lot shrine itself is in an area that seems like a contained compound or village.  There are endless stalls and shops with merchants selling everything under the sun.  Here are some photos of the area except for the shrine itself which I will feature separately.

    

Well, as for the shrine itself, we didn't get there before the tide began to rise and, so, were unable to visit it other than from this distance.

We next headed to our second shrine but soon gave up on it because of the amount of time we were losing to traffic.  So our next stop turned out to be a Luwak coffee plantation.  If you're curious about what Luwak coffee is, I suggest you Google it.

  

After that, we headed to the Kuta Beach area.  The friends we were with had to stop at the Hard Rock Cafe there to pick up a few souvenirs as they do at every Hard Rock Cafe wherever they travel.

Kuta Beach is Bali's most famous beach.  It faces west and usually features incredible sunsets, but not yesterday.  Even though we got there late afternoon and it had become quite cloudy, the beach itself was still packed.  What a sight!















The surf at the beach was dramatic.  And several people were still out there surfing.


After that visit we headed to another part of Bali where we had planned to have dinner on the beach.  But that didn't happen for two reasons.  Remember the traffic?  Well, it was as intense as ever by late afternoon.  Cars and motor scooters everywhere in droves.  Whole families, including very young children and babies, riding on a single scooter, often without helmets on.  These vehicles seemed to come within a hair's breadth of one another.

So traffic was the first reason we never got to have that dinner out.  The second was it started to rain, and rain hard.  So we asked our driver to take us back to the ship, which is where we had dinner.  Not the end of the world.

Our day ended by watching a live performance on the pool deck of Balinese music and dancing by a very talented local troupe.  By then the rain had stopped, the moon was out and the pool deck roof was in its open position.  As soon as the show ended and the performers left the ship, the gangway was winched up and we were on our way out of Bali.

      

Today we are cruising the Java Sea on our way to -- you guessed it -- Java.  We are scheduled to arrive at 6 in the morning.  Janis and I are signed up for a nine hour excursion to the Borobudur Temple which departs at 6:15 a.m.  I'll blog about that when we return.