Happy Thanksgiving from Bali
Jim & I are celebrating Thanksgiving today even though there is, of course, nothing happening in regards to it here in Indonesia. Another lazy day for us here by the pool.
Tomorrow night we leave Bali for Singapore but it’s been great fun. We didn’t appreciate the beach scene quite as much as we would have had we simply come here for holiday since we just had 1month of great beaches in Australia. But, the Balinese are simply lovely people.
Lovina ended up keeping us there for 5 nights, longer than planned. There was very little to do except take walks along the beach into town (what there was of that), watch the sunset on the beach and try every one of the restaurants on our little street. As I had mentioned, this place, more than some in Bali, has been hit hard by the lack of tourists since the bombings and so we made a point of never purchasing more than one thing from any one person and never eating in the same restaurant twice so we “spread the wealth” a bit. The people of Lovina were wonderful lovely and we spent most dinners and parts of our day simply talking with them. Certainly, they were trying to sell us some things, but they also were truly interested in just practicing their english and hanging out with us. I’m sure many travelers here don’t take the time to actually converse with them about anything but the price of what they’re buying.
We were the only people who spent 5 nights at Suma Hotel. Most people, it seems, come up to Lovina just for 1 night in order to go out dolphin watching. We did go one morning as well and it was spectacular. There is a lot of reef offshore so the water is almost completely flat and we were out on it by 6am. The sun was coming up and it was actually a pleasant temperature and, to our great surprise, we actually saw dozens of dolphins! There were large pods of them that would circle around all of the boats of tourists, coming right up near us. After that we took an hour or so for some snorkeling. It’s so warm here that truly, the water is like lukewarm bathwater and it was surprisingly clear with a good variety of fish. Near shore the water always appeared rather murky but a short distance out was great visability.
After Lovina we just really weren’t sure we wanted any more beach time. We had planned on heading south to Candidasa or Padangbai but we decided in the end to head back to Kuta for our final 5 nights to do some of that exciting shopping for new toilitries, getting more pages in our passports, etc. One plus, even though Kuta is still really warm, it’s definitely cooler than Lovina!
We checked back into the Sorga Hotel, which after Sania House in Ubud and Suma House in Lovina now did not seem as nice. We did stay 2 nights and then decided to treat ourselves for Thanksgiving and moved to the Kuta Puri, more of a resorty type property. Our cottage is lovely with an ENOURMOUS bathroom with mood lighting and the whole bit! We did go to the US Consular offices but found out that they had to send our passports to Jakarta and it took a few days so we’ll just get more passport pages when we hit Bangkok. Our time here was spent lazing about mainly, lots of walking about, swimming, reading, etc. We’re feeling a bit like slugs but on Sunday when we hit Cambodia we’ll be very busy touring the ruins at Angkor and going to the Killing Fields and so on so it’s probably good we’re resting up now.
I had really not wanted to spend much time in Kuta. I’m not a nervous person but 5 bombs going off in a 2year period in the very area we’re staying isn’t particularly comforting either. It was certainly eye opening to get the locals perspective of what happened and the aftermath as opposed to just reading about it in the papers or on the internet. Fortunately, although there is always unrest in Jakarta all here has been quiet and peaceful.
Hope this finds you all healthy and happy. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Cheers – Jim & Rhonda
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