One month in Bali — Letters from the Road

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.

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.

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.

In the village of Tegallalang, I stopped to see the famous cascading rice fields.

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.

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.

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.

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!