Career Break Central

Feb 11-13

After Bali, Singapore was like returning to a North American city, with its glitzy high-rises, ultra-clean streets and expensive shopping malls. We arrived just one week before Chinese New Year and the city, especially Chinatown, was all dressed up for the party. Prices in Singapore were more in line with North America, as well, and, after Bali’s bargain prices, I was sickened to be paying $100 a night for a very mediocre hotel. We were glad that we had only three days to spend (literally) in the Southeast Asia’s wealthiest city, and most expensive, city. Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 6-10

On our last morning in Amed, I went for a couple of dives on the USAT Liberty, an American ship that had been sunk in WWII, and it turned out to be the best diving of the trip thus far. I had my own divemaster, Yoman, a local who knew the waters well. The ship had turned into a coral reef and the colourful hard and soft corals and the multitudes of tropical fish were breathtaking. On my second dive, we were able to swim right inside the hull of the ship, which was a little bit eerie but very interesting. After my dives, we continued around the coast to Padangbai, a tiny village on the south coast which is gaining popularity for its secluded white sand beaches.
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Feb 3-5

Bali is one of the only islands in Indonesia that is predominantly Hindu while the rest of the country is largely Muslim and this is evidenced by the fact that you see “offerings” everywhere you go. The Balinese people are very devout and most family compounds have their own small temple where, two to three times a day, they present offerings consisting of tiny palm frond baskets containing rice, fruit, flowers, incense and even candy to their various gods in order to obtain good luck. The offerings are not limited to temples, however, and appear everywhere from windowsills to sidewalks and we had to be very careful not to step on them when walking down the street. It seemed like everywhere we went, the women were constantly preparing the offerings and would often take time out to show Alexa and Simon how to weave the palm fronds into baskets. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 28-Feb 1

After Kuta’s craziness, we decided to soak up some arts and culture in Ubud, the cultural centre of Bali. Rather than risk the lunacy of driving ourselves, we hired a driver who showed us the beautiful countryside along the way and pointed out the various art villages on the outskirts of Ubud. Each village specializes in a different type of art – woodcarving, painting and weaving to name a few. The techniques are perfected and passed down through generations, creating very talented craftspeople that produce high quality products for very low prices (by Western standards). Our driver waited patiently while we checked out the various accommodation options in Ubud, which is home to some of the priciest hotels on the island. Our intention was to stay in a losmen, which is a very cheap option where you sleep in a room in a family compound for under $10 Cdn per night. However, Claude found Gayatri II Bungalows with its beautiful gardens, infinity pool and rooms overlooking the rice paddies and we couldn’t resist. It was splurge at 350,000 rupiah ($45Cdn)/night (incl breakfast), but we definitely got our money’s worth – the place was like a bloody palace! Just check out the photos!

The best part was that it was located two minutes walk from the main street and we didn’t need to pay for any taxis to get around. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 26-28

After spending the last five months in fairly Westernized countries, we felt like we’d been on an extended summer vacation and were anxious to challenge our travel skills in a new culture. We were excited to be heading to Southeast Asia and had been told that Bali would be a great introduction to the culture and we weren’t disappointed. Since the terrorist bombings against tourists in 2002 and 2005, the tourist industry in Bali has been devastated and has yet to recover and we were amazed at the quality for money that we got when we were there. At first, however, things didn’t seem to go so well. Our first experience with corrupt officials occurred when the immigration officer in Bali asked Claude for a tip while he had his stamp poised over Claude’s passport. Cool as a cucumber, Claude replied, “I’m sorry, we don’t do that where I come from.” I guess the guy was just fishing, because he just shrugged and stamped his passport anyway. Since our flight from Darwin arrived around midnight, our first view of Kuta, the tourist capital of Bali, was the taxi ride to our hotel, the Balisani Padma (booked online). The streets of Kuta were clogged with motorcycles and partygoers and we were soon hopelessly disoriented in a maze of narrow streets and alleys. Finally, our taxi came to a halt in the middle of a narrow alley and could go no further, thanks to a huge pile of dirt that was blocking the way (street repair). The taxi driver leaned back and said, “Your hotel is about 100 metres that way and around the corner – you can’t miss it.” I looked at my sleeping kids and the thought of humping them and our backpacks around this dark, strange city at midnight did not appeal to me. “No way!” I insisted, “There’s got to be another way to the hotel – find it!” Our driver gave me dirty look and rolled his eyes before reversing out of the alley. We spent another ten minutes winding our way through one way streets before he finally deposited us on the doorstep of the Balisani Padma. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 19-25

We arrived in Darwin and checked into our hostel, Frogshollow Backpackers, at 4:30 on Friday afternoon and Claude went straight to a used car dealer to get a quote for our car. The guy gave him a lowball offer of $1500 (yikes!) but was then nice enough to tell Claude that he’d probably have better luck selling it privately by putting an ad in the Saturday paper (the office closed at 5PM). So he raced to the newspaper office and got his ad in at 4:55PM; the clerk was not impressed that she had to type it in manually since he’d missed the deadline. Our phone started ringing at 7AM the next morning and by noon we had gotten about 15 calls and had two buyers bidding against each other. In the end, we were able to sell the car to a nice Filipino couple for $3100 and only lost $1000. This meant that our car only cost us $15/day while we were in Australia – not too shabby! Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 15-19

Once again, no pictures, just visit our web album.

My only regret as we left Uluru was that the weather had been cloudy and rainy while we were there and, while that made for slightly more tolerable temperatures, we weren’t able to enjoy watching the famous rock change colours as the sun rose or set. The rain continued on and off throughout our drive to Alice Springs where we stayed for a few days before commencing our final run up the middle to Darwin. The further north we went, the more it rained, at times in torrents that blinded us and forced us to slow to a crawl as the baked clay refused to absorb the deluge which instead formed small rivers across the highway and threatened to swallow our car. We stopped for lunch at Wycliffe Well, a tiny outpost that is famous for its well-documented UFO sightings. The walls of the diner were plastered with newspaper and magazine articles detailing the many flashing lights and floating objects that had been spotted in the sky and there was a journal in which travelers cold document their own personal sightings. The kids were delighted with the tacky life-size aliens and spaceship that adorned the parking lot and Alexa begged to stay at the campground so we could watch for UFO’s in the night sky. Unfortunately, we still had miles to go before nightfall and had to hit the road, which was still very much under water. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 13-15

In the interests of time (I’ve got a lot of catching up to do) I’m not posting any photos in this blog and you can view all of our Outback photos at our web album:

Adelaide to Darwin

Time zones in Australia are the most bizarre I have ever seen and can result in some very confused travelers. Queensland doesn’t subscribe to Daylight Savings and New South Wales does. Different states switch from Standard to Daylight Savings at different times and many border towns have the option of following whichever state they choose. There is only a half hour time difference between Victoria and South Australia and another hour change when crossing into the Northern Territory (don’t ask me why, but I think it has something to do with Daylight Savings again). I heard of one backpacker who almost got into a fist fight at a library in Victoria border town over an internet terminal he had booked for 2:30pm; turns out that the border town in question was on South Australia time and it was only 2pm. Something similar happened to us when we stopped for the night in Erldunda at the turn-off to Kings Canyon and Uluru (aka Ayers Rock). Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 8-12

After leaving Adelaide, our first stop was Rawnsley Park Station, a working sheep farm that was one of the original settlements in the Flinders Ranges north of Adelaide. Over the years, the Station had attracted tourists and had eventually added a campground on the property which is also home to several species of wild kangaroos, wallabies and emus.
This was our first taste of the Outback and it didn’t disappoint. Even though we were only a few hours from Adelaide, we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing but mountains and desolate plains for as far as the eye could see. Kangaroos were a dime a dozen and even hopped lazily around the campground without paying any attention to us. It was bloody hot! The mercury hit 37 degrees Celsius when we arrived and we were very happy to see that there was a pool. Even with the air conditioner going full blast in our cabin all night long, the temperature was barely tolerable. Read the rest of this entry »

January 2-8

Now that the holidays were over, it was time for a headlong dash to Darwin where we were scheduled to fly to Bali on January 18th. That gave us very limited time to enjoy everything in between so we made the decision to extend our stay in Australia by a week. Since we had a Quantas flight, we thought this would be simple, but were told by the airline that the change was free but had to be initiated by the agent who booked the ticket. Even when I begged, the agent on the phone told me there was no way for him to access the reservation to make the change. I then had to contact our agent at Airtreks who informed me that we would be charged US$50 per ticket to request the change. I reminded her of all the business we had given them and that we still had to book the tickets for the remaining half of our trip but she wouldn’t budge and said it was Airtreks policy. We ended up going directly to a Quantas office in Melbourne and Claude convinced the agent to make to change for us for only AUS$25 per ticket (he says I just didn’t ask the right way the first time). Needless to say, we won’t be giving Airtreks any more of our business and I’ll let Claude do the negotiating from now on. Read the rest of this entry »