Tanah Lot in Pics

Here is our trip to the most scenic temples in Bali - Tanah Lot and Pura Batu Balong. This time hype was all worth it - place was as its best on the sunset time.

No Pain, No Gain

This is a story about our adventure Down Under via South East Asia.

I guess it serves well as a collection of lessons learned about traveling - How plans change, they transform in terms of content and time frame. And what you might learn about life, Asian countries and dealing with changes when you encounter them.

It's now been a month after we left, and it's literally the first time we've had enough time to sit down, take a breath and to summarize what has happened so far. Some of you might've heard bits and pieces, but this is probably the right time to start opening up the experience in more detail.

It's now easier, as we have time now - a lot of time.

Well Hello, Bali

Paradise - that is what Bali with her green rice fields felt like after the quick visit to the crowded Jakarta.

We stayed the first few nights in Umalas (Kerobokan), which is less than 10 km from Kuta beach. This is a quiet place, which isn't actually that close to anything, but a good place to begin the Bali part of the adventure, to regroup and start writing this blog.

It seems like handicraft and interior design shops are everywhere in Bali. Most of them are package with beautiful things made out of wood, stone and ceramics for sale. Here's a cool one we found nearby in Umalas - Mind blowing Dali style glass bowls in tree trunks - an instant favourite!

To our detriment, we also had an overdose of maybe the best ice cream in the whole trip.

No spinach for this Popeye!

After a couple of visits to local medical centre, we got a permission to clean the wounds by ourselves. Most of the rash had already dried out, but M got a chance to try his nursing skills.

Combat medics Bali

Unfortunately, with the wounds still deep and infection risk high we couldn't enjoy the main activities of the island - no swimming, surfing or long strolls on the beaches. Great thing in Bali is that there is a lot to see and adventure about even if water's out of the question. Here's some pics from along the way:

Kuta beach

          

Gado Gado (tofu with peanut sauce), Bintang and the Magic triple-coin      

Kuta back alleys

Architecture and ... Angry chicken??? :)

Nice doors & colors - solid import / export business any day with those babies 

And local mystery grub - secret meats, meatballs and crackers with noodles? Hmmm..

Next Destination

We found a dirty cheap flights to Jakarta and so we decided to take an extempore excursion to the capital of Indonesia. Why not, beaches of Bali could wait anyway.

Some background - it's quite mind-blowing to think about Indonesia as a country - it sounds like some small patch of islands in the middle of an ocean somewhere far away. This couldn't be far from the truth - Indonesia is actually the 4th largest country in the world (in terms of population), with some 250 million people inhabitants - Jakarta, the capital being the home to 20+ million people. To put this into context - there are over 10 times more people within a square km than in Helsinki.

Arriving to Jakarta after spending time in Thailand reveals the shocking differences between the culture, norms and way of life. Jakarta is extremely heavily muslim (vs. mainly buddhist thais), dirty (vs. thais being known for their virtue of cleanliness), and more domestic tourist-oriented.

It was pretty devastating to see the river right next to our hotel getting more and more floating junk every day. Someone clearly had attempted to burn the garbage away (indian style), but wet stuff doesn't burn off that easily (as one might expect).

Maybe the taxis understand scuba hand signs?

Also, frequent visits to the local international hospital set the tempo for the daily agenda - it's not too easy to get around Jakarta :

Due to the high population / car density in jakarta, traffic is a total mess. Just to give an idea about what it's like, our return trip from medical centre less than 10 km away from our hotel took about 1,5 hours. On an amusing note - It's quite fun to pay almost 100 000 for a taxi trip :) Love the denomination.

Overall, there aren't that many stories to be told about this detour, as we mostly hanged out in our hotel/shopping mall combo, watched some movies and got a short introduction to the local food culture.

>> More than happy to move on to Indonesians tourist paradise, Bali!

Healing the Wounds

The situation became more clear the morning after the accident - we survived a pretty harsh car crash with just minor wounds, bruises and a sore hand. We had a dash of bad luck, but heaps of the other kind as well.

No surprise that we missed the early morning bus to Bangkok (J's butt couldn't take the 10 hour ride), and so we headed to the airport in the morning to try our luck and find a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. All the flights for the next few days were fully booked and there was no way we could have reached the pre-booked Bangkok-Bali flight. We decided not to worry and to stay in Chiang Mai for a couple of days more.

We booked tree nights from a bit out of the town hotel, Chiang Mai Eco Resort, which turned out to be rather nice place to stay. Clean and tidy, calm, and the nearest hospital just 500 meter away.

Daily wound dressings were such a pain, but necessary as the infection risk was quite high in the humid climate and risk of getting known to alien bugs is also pretty high in the tropics. The first dressing time was probably the worst (even though, you'll never get used to the pain). Saline, betadine (ouch), grease net and gauze - what a lovely combo to memorize. This time M got also antibiotics, and last bits of the remaining asphalt and dirt were removed out of his wounds with a peroxide bath.

By the way, if you ever need to deal with local authorities, remember to take a English speaking local with you to do the talking / bargaining thing. Thai law enforcement (including the worst of them all - the tourist police) is one of the most corrupt in the world - with their low salaries, they are not really nothing but con artists trying to blackmail tourists for money. Just a friendly warning. 

At least the officer gave as a lift back to our resort in a late rainy evening - but our room key was left to the policeman at the police office... What a day.

Otherwise, our time was mostly spent recuperating - with a bit of exploring around (but less so than earlier). Eco resort had a brekkie to die for + a neat food stall street pretty close by :)

Breakfast with love

Do it yourself - dinners, collected fresh from local street vendors

And off to the next country - interesting to see, what's on the tab next :)