I got to Incheon Airport super early and THANK GOD I did
because my flight was delayed so I would miss my connection. They put me on an earlier flight, which
seemed a bit like fate. Waiting for the
transfer bus in Shanghai it was just one other guy from my Seoul flight and
me. We got to talking and found out we
lived three subway stops apart in Korea.
Then he told me he was from Oregon, Portland, Jesuit! His dad works with Mike. Crazy coincidences.
We were also sitting together on the flight to Bali, so we
decided to just travel together for the first few days, until I moved to a new
city or his girlfriend arrived from Korea.
We had bunk beds in a very run down hostel our first night and then moved
on to a nicer hotel (same price- gotta love SE Asia) the next morning. Got burned with some unfortunate tan lines,
but whatever. We met a German guy named
Mario on the beach and ended up hanging out with him. He was forty-two, but looked in his
mid-thirties with longish hair. He was a
happy-go-lucky, slightly strange guy but he was fun. That night we went to all you can eat tacos
and enchiladas ($4) and then free drinks until 11. I got pretty drunk, spoke Spanish with some
cute Chileans, met an Irish guy named Paddy because of course he was, sliced my
foot open demonstrating a proper pitch when someone made fun of softball, danced
on a bar, and still went home pretty early.
Wednesday I kind of regret because I wasted it feeling like terrible
from lack of sleep. I went to the beach
alone, but couldn’t leave the shade due to a headache and the previous day’s
burn. Brian (from the flight) was
booking stuff for his girlfriend’s arrival.
I went back to the hotel and took a short nap. After, I felt better so I went to find Brian
on the beach. He was with Mario, who
he’d run into. We hung out a bit, then
went back to the same buffet for wings night. Then we went out again to the same free drinks
place. We met another solo traveler who
was cool. His name was Tice and he was
Dutch. He was tall, skinny, awkward, but
nice once you got past that. We all
shared a hookah and watched Mario crawl around on the floor trying to get a
closer look at a prostitute’s shoes.
Honestly.
Thursday I got up early and packed up, booked a bus to Ubud
and took off with a few nineteen year old British girls (Natalie, nice brunette,
gave in to traveler chic, Georgie, tan, blonde, quiet, Abby, blonde wanna-be
fashionista type, sunburned, and Jo who was super obnoxious “I quit that
job. A the end of the day I was so tired
of riding their horses that I didn’t even want to ride my own horse.” Shut up,
Jo).
We went to the Sacred Monkey Temple when we got there, after
finding a nice hotel. The monkeys kept
trying to hide in and climb up my long, white skirt. Then we did nothing until around seven when
we ventured out in the rain to get dinner.
The weather had been beautiful up until then.
Friday was the busiest day of the trip so far. I got up early to finish planning and then
hired a taxi to take me around a bit.
For $15 he took me around for 2.5 hours, to Goa Gajah (the elephant
cave) and Gunung Kawi (the rocky temple).
Goa Gajah was cool, but OH MY GOD Gunung Kawi was incredible. Goa Gajah has lots of little waterfalls and
holy water fountains. There was the
small cave with Buddhist carvings inside.
There was a waterfall down some stairs that had huge, carved stones in
its pool, the remnants of ancient pillars.
That was about it. Gunung Kawi
was down a ton of steps, but partway down the venders stopped, the jungle
opened up, and spectacular rice terraces were right there in front of me. I saw the one on the left first, just above
the river, which was rushing at the bottom of the hill. There were palm trees along the edge of the
terrace, and at the bottom, around the river, it gave way to pure jungle. I wasn’t expecting that view at all, so I unthinkingly
said “Holy fucking shit.” An old
Balinese woman nearby making handicrafts chuckled, stood up next to me looking
down and said, “Yes. Holy fucking
shit.” Then I laughed and we shook or
awkwardly held hands for a moment before I moved on. To the right the terraces were more extensive
and organized because the hill didn’t give way as sharply. Still beautiful but in a more obviously
artificial way. I continued down the
hill to the bottom, where I crossed a bridge that went over a river. It said entrance to the right, but a lot of
it was under construction. When I got
through the stone structures (some carved right out of the hillside). I came to a huge stone wall that came right
out of the hillside, with carvings in the middle. It was stunning. There was another across the river, just to
the right of the path I’d been walking down, at the base of the rice
terraces. The walk back up sucked a little
bit, but it was still worth it. I went
back to Ubud and got lunch. It was some
delicious spicy-ish chicken, tasty yellow rice, and traditional green
vegetables. Very yummy. Then I went back to the hotel, changed, and
headed out to the Campuhan Ridge Walk (2 km through hills of lush jungle with a
steep drop on each side leading down to two rivers). Then on to the Saraswati temple, a Hindu
temple dedicated to the goddess of literature, art, and learning. Two beautiful lily pad covered ponds with a path
between them lead up to the temple. Inside
the temple there were a lot of beautiful plants and old grey temple structures,
with statues sprinkled in here and there.
It was very quiet, peaceful, and beautiful considering it was in the
middle of the city, right next to Starbucks.
That night I went to the Ubud palace to watch a performance
of traditional Balinese dance. There
were three dances: the Legong Kraton dance, the Bapang dance, and the Telek.
The Legong Kraton dance is performed by three women in
bright, colorful costumes. It is about
an arrogant kid who wants a princess who has no interest in him. He plans to slay her father so that he can be
with her, but ends up dying in battle instead.
The Bapang dance is an overture to the Telek. It consists of a monster called the Barong,
who is controlled by two different men.
The Barong looked a bit like a very fluffy, hairy dog who had bred with
a dragon. There was another dancer
dressed as a monkey, who teased the Barong with a banana.
Then came the final Barong dance, called the Telek. It started with a dance between virtue and
vice, represented by dancer wearing beautiful masks and others wearing ugly
masks. They leave a four women enter,
students who study under a witch and are performing a strange magic rite. They are chased away by the king’s spiritual
leader, a white magic guru. The guru
asks the witch to stop doing evil magic, but she refuses. They fight to see whose magic is stronger and
he wins. Enraged, she turns herself into
a monster. To fight her once more, the
guru changes himself into Barong, the dog dragon creature from the Bapang
dance. Her evil power is gone, and it
goes into the villagers who were helping Barong. They feel the evil and kill themselves rather
than give in. Their lives are restored.
The dance itself was bright and beautiful, and a welcome
respite from the pouring rain that seems to come every night in Ubud. The women were all very beautiful, and the
dancers’ movements were very precise and elegant. Their hands and fingers bent in ways I hadn’t
realized were possible without force.
All in all, I was very glad I went, even if I did have to walk home
barefoot (having ripped open four gaping blisters per foot during the course of
the day’s activities) through puddles up to my ankles while the rain continued
to pour. That’s what adventure is all
about- not knowing what will happen next and rolling with the punches, so to
speak.
Saturday I woke up at two in the morning and got on a
van. We picked up some other people at
another hotel. Then we went to a small
parking lot and sat on a platform.
Another van pulled up and the two drivers made us breakfast and gave us
tea and coffee. They made banana
pancakes and gave us mango. Then we
continued on, with me in the other van so that we were split four people in
each. We drove to a volcano toward the
north of the island. At around
three-thirty the two Finnish girls from my van and I started to climb.
It wasn’t the hardest hike I’ve ever done, but it was far from
the easiest. Some parts required both
hands and legs to pull and push yourself up to the next platform, and the
ground was covered in scree the entire way up, making it difficult to keep your
footing. The point of going so early was
to reach the top before sunrise, which I managed to do in spite of the fact
that it was pouring rain once again and there was a thunderstorm over the top
of the lake at the base of the volcano.
We reached the top, waiting twenty minutes for the sunrise. Unfortunately, the cloud cover never
dispersed and the sunrise was completely obscured. We climbed back down quickly, though the
Norwegians who ran straight down the side of the mountain, completely forgoing
the path, go to the bottom much faster than we did.
After a short nap, I returned to the street outside and
found another taxi driver to take me to the Western side of the island. I went to the water palace, called Tirta
Gangga, which was a beautiful garden filled with ponds and fountains. It was drizzling slightly, but it was still
gorgeous. There were small creeks from
one pond to another, with dragon bridges that spanned the barely moving
water. One of the ponds, right next to
the largest fountain, had stone steps throughout so you could walk on the water
to get closer to the fountain.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a rice terrace on
the side of the road and ate lunch. My
driver was really nice and he spoke great English. He bought me some soup at a roadside
hut. It was a kind of soup that I used
to eat in Thailand sometimes, with fish cakes, dumplings, chicken, and sprouts
in a super tasty broth. I never knew
what it was called in Thailand, and he didn’t tell me there either. He also bought me some crackers and
jackfruit. Don’t feel too bad for the
driver paying for my meal- for both of us to eat only cost him $1. It’s hard to hate those Southeast Asian
prices.
That afternoon I took the last bus back to Kuta beach, the
main tourist beach where I had started my vacation. I went back to the same hotel and went to the
same dinner. Then I went down to the
beach and tried to catch the sunset, but it was a little bit overcast (story of
my trip). One the way back I saw a
Damian Lillard jersey and bought it for $20, which is considerably more reasonable
than the $80 it costs in the states.
The next day I had a while to hang out because my flight
wasn’t until that night at midnight. I
packed up and left all my stuff at the concierge, then went to find a
motorcycle taxi. I found a guy just
outside my hotel, and he drove me down the coast to Uluwatu temple, which was a
Buddhist temple on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. It was absolutely gorgeous, but all the
stairs kind of killed my quads after yesterday’s volcano climb. On the way back to Kuta, he stopped at three
different surfer beaches. One was so
steep that the beach was invisible. There
were little restaurants all down the hill so I ate lunch and watched surfers
tackling the huge waves below. Then we
stopped at another beach where I laid out for a short while and read.
My motorcycle driver was a young guy, and he loved to talk
about all sorts of things. He talked the
entire time he drove, and sat and talked to me at all the stops, too. He was
talking about music and told me how much he loved Snoop Dog. I asked if he had ever been to a concert, and
he said that Snoop was coming the following week, but tickets were too
expensive. I asked him how much, and he
said even the worst seats were at least $200.
Seriously Snoop? You’re going to
come to a developing nation where the majority of the population has little to
no disposable income and charge those kinds of prices? Be realistic.
That night I sat out at the hotel and hung out with a few of
the other guests, drinking beer while it poured down rain. I was waiting for my van to the airport, and
they were just starting the night out easy, planning to go out to bars and
clubs after I left.
The flight back to Korea was easy, and all I did the next
day was close my bank account and pick up my cat. And now, back to the states! Goodbye, Asia, it’s been real. Stay sweet.
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