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December 2023
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One month in Bali
I'm
in Bali. More specifically, I rented an apartment inside the Jayakarta
Bali Beach Resort & Spa, located in the Kuta District in Bali, which
is one of the Sunda Islands and part of Indonesia. I just have to cross
the street from where I live to be stepping on soft white sand and
watching a delightful sea. (If you look at the map, it feels like that
would be the Indian Ocean, but technically it can be considered the end
of the Pacific Ocean - in any case, it's in the transition between the
two oceans and it's beautiful.).
While the beaches are charming, the city is quite the opposite. The
conurbation formed by Denpasar (Bali's capital), Kuta, Legian, and
Seminyak, looks like a giant shanty town. The narrow streets are filled
with disjointed shop after disjointed shop, all selling the same fake
Louis Vuitton bags and the same fake Nike shirts, interspaced with
suspicious massage parlors and substandard convenience stores. And
everyone is on a mission to sell you something, anything. "Hey, boss!
Taxi?" (They don't mean a real car with a license to carry passengers,
they're talking about the crappy motorbikes that swarm the streets at
high speed and put everyone's lives at risk.) "Boss, cold drink?" (And
they point to cans of beer floating in water that may have once been
ice.) "Boss, sunglasses? Tattoo? Hat? Massage?" The nice houses (luxury
villas) are hidden from view and can only be accessed through a
labyrinth of back alleys. That interior circuit became my usual route to
the market or to a restaurant, escaping the noise and the harassment
from vendors.
My main goal here was to relax, so after exploring the surroundings for a
few days I settled on a simple routine. Wake up early, listening to the
birds. Breakfast at home. Hang out at the swimming pool (yes, I swim
with the elegance of a drunken penguin) while listening to live rindik
(it's a local percussion instrument made out of bamboo). Shower. Lunch.
Work until close to sunset. Walk on the beach and watch the sun
disappear. Dinner. Get ready to do it all over again the next day. It's a
tough life.
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The beach in front of my apartment.
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Any side trips?
I'm
staying by the beach, but I took a look at some places in the interior
of the island too. In Ubud, I visited the Puri Saren Agung, an 18th
century palace which was the residence of the last ruling monarch of
Ubud, into the 20th century. It has an open style and looks almost like a
temple.
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Puri Saren Agung
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In the nearby village of Padangtegal, I
visited the famous Ubud Monkey Forest, a sanctuary for over 1200
Balinese long-tailed macaques. They are not trained or domesticated,
they are just smart enough to stay around humans who will feed them.
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Ubud Monkey Forest
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In the village of Tegallalang, I stopped to see the famous cascading rice fields.
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Tegallalang
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In the village of Tampaksiring, I visited
the Pura Tirta Empul, the Temple of the Holy Spring, where the Balinese
Hindus have been going for a ritual of water purification since around
the year 962.
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Pura Tirta Empul
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Also in Tampaksiring, I went for an infusion
tasting. It included Bali coffee, coconut coffee, vanilla coffee,
ginger coffee, ginseng coffee, mangosteen tea, ginger tea, lemon grass
tea, Bali cocoa, Bali mocaccino, rosella tea, durian coffee, and the
famous luwak coffee. It's a coffee made of partially digested coffee
beans, which have been eaten and defecated by a feline called Asian palm
civet. Apparently, it was the idea of Dutch colonizers to make coffee
out of pooped beans. To me, it tastes just like normal coffee, it's just
more expensive.
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What about the food?
The
most common dish around here is nasi goreng, the Southeast Asian fried
rice. Unfortunately, the oil they use in most places (palm oil, I
believe) leaves a taste that I don't like. So I've been ordering steamed
rice instead.
The two best things I ate here were bebek tepi sawah (traditional
grilled duck with Balinese vegetables and steamed rice) and iga bakar
babi (grilled marinated pork ribs with steamed rice and sauteed
vegetables).
Also, I've been avoiding alcoholic drinks during my stay in Bali, due to
many reports about bootleg liquors causing methanol poisoning. I
decided not to take risks, so my drinks of choice here are watermelon
juice and mango juice.
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Next destination?
In the beginning of January, I will move to Bangkok, capital of Thailand. And that will be a story for later.
Happy new year!
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Bali Sunset
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