Bali diary, February 2003

    
On the 4th of February, a few days after CNY, we started our trip to Bali. We used the new KLIA express to go to the airport. After a flight of about 3 hours we landed in Denpasar, from where we took a taxi to Ubud.
We found a very nice homestay in Peliatan, south of Ubud. Extremely cheap: about 4 Euro, including breakfast for two!
The exchange rate for the Rupiah is, 1 Euro = 9400 Rupiah, so it is easy to be a millionaire in Bali.
The bungalow was nicely situated with a lotus pond in front of the bungalow and the paddy fields nearby.
There was a small stream next to our bungalow, where people were doing their laundry. Very peaceful.
The next day we went for a walk in the rice fields surrounding Ubud. We had rented bicycles. In the morning the weather was ok, but soon rain clouds were appearing. The sawahs were beautiful, have a look at the galleries for (many) more pictures.
In the afternoon there was heavy rain, we had to take shelter in a temple. It was good that we had taken umbrellas with us.
The next day started again sunny, here you see Aric in the gate of our homestay at the start of the trip.
Rice fields again. Our plan for this day was to find a Geocache, which was hidden in a small temple. To reach this place, we had to cross a gorge and a river, quite an expedition!
With the GPS the temple could be found easily. It turned out to be more difficult to find the cache, because this was a Micro Cache, not more than a small film container, hidden in the roof. But we found it and wrote down the number of the dollar bill inside as a proof that we had found it. See Ubud-Dollar for more information.
No rain this day, so in the afternoon we visited the Monkey Forest Temple. The many real monkeys in the temple grounds kan be quite unpleasant and agressive, but luckily we had no problem with them. The monkey(?) to the right is a naughty one, check the galleries, if you canot find out from the picture what he is doing.
Our rental of a motorbike the next day was not a success. The rain started very early, and after a quick look at Tampaksiring, we hurried home, very wet, especially driver Aric.
With a rented car we continued our trip. Beautiful ricefields and the water gardens of Tirttagangga, where we had lunch. Don't we look like sultans?
The next day we visited the waterfall of Gitgit and the Hot Baths of Banjar. Heavy rain during the bathing, a nice contrast with the hot water!
After the rain a nice sunset! On our way back to Ubud, the next day, we visited the famous temple of Tanah Lot.
Our last day. Rain. Yes, it is clear that on Bali the Rainy Saeson is really rainy! Still, we had a wonderful week and we will surely come back another time. In the right picture Aric is tasting on the return flight to KL his first (and last?) Campari.
For many more pictures, see the four Bali galleries