Bali, Indonesia
Is it wrong to take a vacation from a vacation?!! This reminds me of the movie “About a Boy” starring Hugh Grant. You know what I’m talking about right? It may seem like I’m always on vacation but I’m not… really! It just so happens that spring break was only about a month away from another major Japanese national holiday or rather holiday(s). In Japan it’s called “Golden Week (GW).” I don’t know why it’s called that because it’s not even really a week of holidays. Maybe it’s a week of sunshine?! Okay, who’s laughing with me? Nobody? I don’t know what GW is like in previous years but this year, we get a Friday off but then the following Monday is a work day, and then holiday from Tuesday to Thursday and then work day again on Friday. That’s just stupid! I think it really screws up people’s travel plans and they have to use up a couple of their vacation days. Well I shouldn’t be one to complain since there are a lot of national holidays in Japan and a non working day is always a good thing!
Anyway, I wasn’t planning on sitting around for GW and despite the super high prices of airfare anywhere, I went on vacation with my two other JET buddies anyway to Bali, Indonesia. Ah….Bali, it was truly a vacation! I never thought I would actually go there. Both my friends and I have heard of Bali as a vacation destination but we all had no idea where the island was relative to United States or Japan. We were quite surprised when we checked our itinerary and found out it was a 7 hr. flight from Japan, yikes! Thanks to my travel agent friend, we were setup at a pretty cool hotel in Kuta, Bali. It has a unique design where all the rooms face the long rectangular swimming pool. Here’s a really pretty picture of it on their website: http://www.theoasis.info/kuta_thehotel.htm. The outside was really impressive and the rooms were ok in general. The bathroom needs improvement though. It’s no 5 star hotel but I would definitely recommend this place if you ever go to Bali. Our hotel definitely set the tone for the rest of our trip. Two words to describe Bali: Hot and Cheap! Weather was about 31 to 32 deg. Celsius (I’ve converted, bye bye Fahrenheit!) everyday and at night it was still warm enough to take a dip in the pool before going to sleep. It wouldn’t be paradise if it wasn’t hot right?! Talk about cheap, a bottle of water at a convenient store cost about 0.15 Cent U.S. dollar!! A bottle of the same size in Japan would cost a least a buck! A meal in Bali wouldn’t cost me over 5 U.S. Dollars. Speaking of American Dollars, I don’t know what’s up with the 1996 series of 100 dollar bills but they don’t’ accept that in Bali. That really bothered me and severely cut down my funds while I was there. Anyway, I was living like a king in Bali. Our hotel even offered a complimentary 30 mins. massage. It felt so good that on another day, I bought a full hour massage for only 15 bucks! I never had a massage before, it felt soooo good!
Anyway, besides lounging around we did a bunch of cool activities I’ve been waiting to do for a long time. I went parasailing, jet skiing, white water rafting, and something called banana boating for the first time! No, the boat didn’t look like a banana and it wasn’t yellow! I also got back on a surfboard after a 6 year hiatus (wow, it’s been too long since Hawai’i). This time I was actually successful but I’m still scared of waves breaking on me! We also took a day to go sightseeing. We hired a local to take us around the island for the day and it was only $20 U.S. dollars…for 5 people!! $5 bucks each! Cheap huh?! The most interesting place we went to was a place called monkey forest. There were lots of monkeys and they weren’t afraid of people. In fact, they’ll gather around you if they see that you have food. Oh yeah, local Balinese food was good but too spicy for me. If you know me, I am not good at all with spicy food. Anybody can attest to that? Overall expenses in Bali cost me about $200 dollars for only 6 days. I would like to go back to Bali again but I’m hoping my next destination will be Singapore or Malaysia! Indonesia = Country #13 on Tony’s list of countries visited! It wouldn’t be a travel blog if I didn’t go anywhere right?!
Pictures from Bali
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tonykao0627/album?.dir=f571&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
Tags: Travel
Tony