August 9- New York, USA

We made it home safely, arriving at JFK late Monday night. We had a looooong flight home, but luckily everything was uneventful. We are planning on putting all of our pictures online for everyone to see, and we will update the blog and post some pictures that accompany the posts. We will let you know when you should check some of the archived posts for updates.

Anyways, after our last post, we spent a few more heavenly days in Candidasa reading on our day bed in the sun, eating on the day bed in the shade, and taking a dip in the pool every now and then. On Saturday, August 5, we had Putu pick us up in Candidasa on the east coast of Bali, and bring us to Seminyak, on the southwest coast. It was the beginning the long trek home. After a scenic ride through rice paddies, along the coast, and past Hindu cremation ceremonies. It was a lovely trip, and once in Seminyak, Putu helped negotiate for a good rate on a hotel room for us. We settled on a hotel that was back in the budget category- nothing like what we had gotten used to in Candidasa. This time there were clean sheets, and a cleanish, well, it had a bathroom.

Saturday afternoon we got lunch in a cafe along the beach and then headed out to explore the town of Seminyak. We had heard that it was a really nice and a popular place for tourists to visit. We found it just to be popular, but Ubud had set our standards high with the exceptional shopping and selection of cultural activities. The shopping in Seminyak was mediocre, which was quasi-OK with us, because we had absolutely no room left in our suitcases, and we had already bought two new ones. This too, was a town geared completely to tourists that had been hard hit by the drop-off in tourism after the terrorist attacks in the night clubs. We were the only customers in most of the stores that we visited, and the restaurants were equally as empty. We tried to look on the positive side of things, and we really soaked up the tranquility and relative calm before we were to return home.

After a weary day of shopping, our tootsies needed some loving. It was time for Ari's first pedicure and our last spa treatment in affordable Asia. The spa we chose boasted an all-male staff, the telltale sign of a high end spa in Bali. For 90 minutes we were massaged, filed, buffed like you wouldn't believe, snipped, and massaged again. Feeling completely relaxed (as if we had a lot of stress to release after a long week sitting oceanside in Candidasa) we went to dinner at a little warung near the spa. In Bali, the word warung describes a restaurant that is nice and clean, serves only local food, and is always cheap. We have had a lot of luck with these little eateries, and Jillian has sampled the gado-gado in many warungs across Bali. Warung Martha in Seminyak definitely made the cut for the list of great places for gado-gado. After dinner, we took a cab back to the beach by our hotel and sat in the sand under the stars. Even the light pollution from Seminyak was enough to drown out a few of them. It is no wonder that we did not see any stars while living in Brooklyn.

Sunday morning, we hired a car for the day, and headed to Pura Tanah Lot, a Balinese Hindu temple situated on the rocks just off the coast. It is a huge tourist destination, but only properly dressed Balinese Hindus are allowed to actually go onto the island and into the temple. Once we got there, we were totally fine with the restriction- to get to the temple, you had to wade through waist deep crashing wave for about 20 meters between the mainland and the small manmade island. Then you had to scrable straight up the side of a sheer cliff built from antique Chinese coins. The island was sort of natural, but a lot of the lime had eroded and people had built pillars out of Chinese coins to reinforce it. We snapped a few pictures from the shore and then it was back in the cab to head to the capital of Bali, Denpasar.

Denpasar is a city halfway between Ubud and Seminyak, located inland a few kilometers from both the east and west of the island (the island gets really narrow just above the southern Bukit peninsula. When the world gets to be a few degrees warmer, Bukit will become its own island). Denpasar is a city that is only frequented by locals, and does not have the tourist infrastructure of the rest of the island. Lonely Planet had told us about a few good markets for textiles and we wanted to load up with batik sarongs before we left Bali. The markets themselves did not seem to have anything worth schlepping home (the whole place smelled like dries fish, so we didn't look very hard), but the street across from the market was an absolute diamond mine for batiks! We found a bunch (the harder part was finding room in our suitcases for them) hailed a cab, and headed back to Seminyak for a late lunch.

We will tell you about our last night in Bali, the long long long plane ride home, and our FAVORITE things about Asia next time. We will also put some pictures up too.

Lots of love in the USA,
Jillian

August 1- Candidasa, Bali

Since we left Ubud, we have been very busy in Candidasa, but there is always time for a post. Saturday morning, we had arranged for a taxi to take us from Ubud to Candidasa. The taxis in Ubud are generally not official "taxis" belonging to a specific company or even displaying a sign denoting they are a taxi. Instead, the taxis are some local guy driving you around in his SUV or minivan. Well, Putu, our driver, showed up with his "taxi" promptly when we had arranged to meet him. He had a small SUV, and because we had done so much shopping in Ubud, our stuff was not going to fit inside. (In case you didn't see us when we left New York in late May, we each had a big backpack that was about 1/3 full, and a smaller backpack each that was 1/2 full. Now we have filled those backpacks, filled another big backpack, filled a huge wheelie suitcase, and filled two tote bags. Somehow we will make it home.) Anyways, Putu had to go swap cars with a friend so that we could fit with all of our stuff and make it to Candidasa safely. He didn't have too much trouble, and soon we were off to the beach.

We had looked at a bunch of hotels in our tour book and online, and decided to go to Lotus Bungalows, based on the author's recommendation in Lonely Planet. We debated a bit whether or not to find a less expensive place, or somewhere on another beach, but we stuck to our instincts, and they were right.

The pool here is just magnificent (there is a link to the picture because the internet connections are slightly less than magnificent, so we can't put up our own pictures).

picture of pool

Our schedule since we got here on Saturday is as follows:

Saturday: Arrive at Lotus. Check in. Drop bags off and promptly change into bathing suits. Nap on beach chairs. Move to day bed. Nap on day bed. Poolside lunch. Return to daybed for strenuous lounging. Read. Lounge. Read. Shower in outdoor shower under the moon and plumeria trees. Poolside dinner. Watch shooting stars over the ocean from daybed. Take the 22 step trek back to our bungalow. Sleep.

Sunday: Poolside breakfast. Retreat to beachside daybed. Read. Nap. Read. Play Nintendo. Swim. Move to poolside daybed. Poolside lunch. Read. Nap. Move to beach chairs. Notice single cloud in sky. Too bad. Lounge. Deep breaths before trek to bungalow. Big steps make it 17 paces away. Admire daily flower arrangement in room. Shower under plumeria tree. Poolside dinner. Return to beachside daybed. Drink Guinness. Watch stars. See shooting stars. Repeat last three steps as necessary.



Monday: Poolside breakfast in daybed. Arrange pillows on beachside daybed. Read. Lounge. Apply sunblock. Read. Nap. Swim. Poolside lunch. Nap. Retreat to shaded daybed. Read. Call home to confirm we're alive, dormant really. Shower. Poolside dinner. Return to beachside daybed. Drink Guinness. Watch stars. See shooting stars. Repeat last three steps as necessary.

Tuesday: Poolside breakfast in daybed. Read. Lounge. Nap. Swim. Poolside lunch. Fluff pillows. Internet post...

It's worth noting that we are the ONLY guests at the resort, and we have the entire staff of 20 at our disposal. They are very friendly, and we see them picking flowers that they arrange in our room (after cleaning it everyday for longer than we cleaned our apartment in Brooklyn in two years).



In case you are here looking for us, this is where you can find us until we fly back to New York on August 7.

picture of daybed

Lots of love,
Jillian and Ari