Bye Bye Bali

We reluctantly departed the magical island of Bali, and have just completed a whirlwind day in Singapore.  We’re at a hostel in the heart of Chinatown, ready to ring in the Lunar New Year. But first to recap Bali…

We hired a driver to take us from Lovina in the north to Sanur in the south.  Unlike all other drivers in Bali, this guy was not named Putu (although he was recommended by his friend, Putu).  Not-Putu the driver’s seatbelt-less van had a Bob Marley sticker just above a Hindi swastika on the back windshield, a Vishnu air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and a large bobble-head dog on the dashboard.  After a week-plus in Bali, this interior design did not surprise us at all.  As we crossed the center of the island, we stopped at a historic temple hot spring (read: nasty lukewarm public pool), coffee plantation (read: lots of fried desserts and caffeine consumed because we didn’t want to leave the stunning mountain vista), and animal sanctuary (read: within seconds of leaving the car, the staff tried to drape a python, bat, muscat, and giant iguana on us – they succeed with me, but Holly’s ‘no’ was more emphatic).

We took a boat to Nusa Lembongan, and spent 48 relaxed hours reading, hiking, hitchhiking (for a fee, apparently), swimming, and being lazy on the island paradise.  For our final evening before heading off to the airport this morning, we disregarded every piece of advice from previous Bali visitors by staying in Kuta.  Despite the unanimous hatred of Kuta, we could see how some people would like it… and by some people, we mean only teenage boys hoping to lose their virginity at a massage parlor.

Bali is great – there’s definitely a reason it’s such a tourist hotspot.  We lived like royalty compared to our time in Australia – at a quarter of the price.  We’re blown away by the attention to detail, from the stone and wood carvings, to the floral decorations in fountains, to the daily prayer offerings.  There was a constant smell of incense and flowers, and one could always hear the mysterious sounds of rising scales in Gamelan music if one listened closely enough.  We’ve already written about how Balinese are so absurdly kind.  And we already miss our daily dose of banana pancakes, fried noodles, chicken satay, and Bintang beer. 

But we’ve said farewell to Indonesia, and already started a new love affair with Singapore.  In our eight hours in the city, we’ve already wandered Little India, smoked hookah at the corner of Baghdad and Arab St, feasted on four ice cream sandwiches (huge slabs of ice cream with tiny wafer sides), blindly ordered lunch – and were happily rewarded – at a Chinese hawker food court, and got lost in an endless night market in Chinatown as excitement builds for the New Year.  We’re only here for four days, but we’ve mapped out a week-plus of things-to-do. 

In the meantime, it’s been a great year of the tiger.  Gong Xi Fa Cai, and have a bouncy year of the rabbit.