Indonesia, Bali: Paradise Lost Amongst the Monkeys

KUTA BEACH - Paradise, Really?!?!

After a night's stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we caught a flight to Bali, Indonesia on Air Asia. We both laughed out loud when we saw that our plane was completely decked out in Manchester United team colours and included the team's emblem as well as some of the players' pictures on the side of the plane. We expected a wonderful trip to Bali, as we headed to a tropical island paradise most people dream of visiting. Well, it turns out the tropical paradise was nowhere to be found and this is mostly due to the struggling tourist industry which has yet to recover fully since the bombs of 2002 and 2005. Around 200 people were killed in the blasts in 2002 and 16 people killed in 2005. These devastating tragedies have deterred many people from travelling to the once-sought Bali, but luckily there was nothing of the sort when we visited the island.

We had no idea at the time that there were around 300 monkeys there, and it was amazing to see so many of them in one place!

There are a couple of key reasons why we didn't think of Bali as a paradise destination. The first and foremost reason is due to the amount of harassment we, as tourists, had to endure pretty much the entire time we were on the island. From landing in the airport to leaving the airport five days later, we were constantly asked to fork over money to the Balinese. After paying our visa fees in the airport, we stepped out of the airport and were attacked by what we may refer to later in this journal as "vultures". What we mean here is a creature (person) who circles around waiting for roadkill (us, Kyle and Dan) to appear before swooping in to take whatever is possible from us. We aren't referring to pickpocketing or stealing from us, as we never felt under threat in that way. Instead, what we refer to is the constant bombardment of requests to spend our money immediately upon being seen by the Balinese. It all started with us trying to find our way to Kuta Beach from the airport...

After negotiating a fare to Kuta, we arrived at Bali Summer Hotel, where we were staying (please take our advice and don't stay in the Kuta area or in Bali Summer Hotel as you can find much nicer places in Legian Beach or Seminyak!). After we checked in and dropped our things off in the room, we went to check out the beach. It was a very long and wide beach, very crowded and full of vultures trying to sell us their goods. There were also bemo-loads and bemo-loads of school children on the beach. A "bemo", by the way, is a brightly decorated van which is used as a bus to transport people around the island. These kids were apparently on some kind of school trip where they were asked to find and interview foreigners to ask them what they think of Bali. Oh, gosh, was it a wrong time for us to be on the beach! The kids were sweet and nice, but they surrounded us and asked if they could have photos made with us. They also asked us several questions and asked for our addresses and signatures. We didn't think much at the time, but if you read further down this journal entry when we are leaving Kuta for Ubud, you will read about a scam which may have

originated from this innocent school activity.

Overall, we thought Kuta Beach was overrated and way too busy with too much harassment, so we left the schoolchildren and vultures in search of something else to do. We opted to visit a large shopping complex just outside Kuta called Bali Galleria, mostly in search of some good Indonesian food. We were rewarded with our journey there and we enjoyed a delicious meal of very fried and spicy chicken, the best spring rolls we ever had, and fried won tons. We were completely surprised to see Babel playing as one of the two films showing in the shopping complex when we were there, so we forked over a whopping $1 (60p) each to see it. Best $1 ever spent as we were pleasantly surprised watching this excellent film. After the movie, we walked 30 minutes back to Kuta to see what else was in store for the evening, which ended up being nothing as we were tired and hot from walking around so much.

One good point about the hotel we stayed in was that there was a pool, and after breakfast the next day we decided to chill out and relax in the sun for a bit. This was a much-needed bit of rest after two full-on weeks of jungle trekking. The weather in Bali, despite being the rainy season, was extremely hot with a cloudless blue sky. It was so hot that we only managed an hour and a bit in the sun before we gave up on our relaxation and decided to explore Kuta. Walking through Kuta we kept expecting to run into harassment-free areas but this didn't really happen until we reached Legian Beach (on the outskirts of Kuta). On our walk toward Legian Beach, we walked down Poppies I and Poppies II which are two streets full of stalls, batiks and other shops run by vultures. We would like to say that if you ever want a massage, Bali is a good place to go as nearly every person we passed asked us the question which would haunt us while sleeping at night, "Massage? You want massage? I give you good price". Kyle expected this as he has been in this part of the world before, but it was all new to Dan. What Kyle didn't expect was the women who blatantly offered "special" massages in their rooms upstairs. No thanks.

We took a break after walking for quite some time around Kuta. Luckily, we were in Legian at the time, and we stopped off in a nice restaurant called Nasi Bali. We enjoyed some fresh fruit juices here and spent quite some time reading. A bit later we decided to try some Bintang beers, which are Balinese lagers and very tasty. We had built up an appetite and agreed upon having a meal, whereby we both ordered chicken and tuna satay - delicious! And it would be a shame not to mention the huge pina coladas we ordered which were served in a coconut and decorated very amusingly - see our photo album and you will know what we mean.

After filling up on food and drinks, we walked along Legian Beach while the sun was setting, and we decided to walk back to Kuta along the beach, to avoid the vultures. It was actually quite beautiful on the beach whilst the sun was setting, and we were able to momentarily displace the negativity built up during the day in Kuta. We actually enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, but this could have been attributed to the beers and pina coladas we had just consumed.

Walking in the Indian Ocean at Kuta Beach was like stepping into a warm bath. It was one of the few things Kyle remembered about Bali from his trip in 2000, and it was good to see that this had not changed. The tide was out as the sun was setting and therefore there was ample room on the beach. Also, as it was getting dark, there were not as many people and the beach was very quiet and calm. We spent a good 30 minutes looking at and playing with the small crabs along the beach and Dan had the luxury of holding one which you can see in the

photo album for this journal. Along the walk down the beach, we conversed with a fisherman setting his net out for the evening, and from a distance, we watched a mum and daughter from a distance collecting very small clams. There was an amazing change in colour whilst the sun was setting and for a moment, we could glimpse the "paradise" of which Bali is known.

After our daily beach holiday routine (yes, we already established this after a day in the sun) of having breakfast, we relaxed in the sun again by the pool. When it was too hot to bear again, we went looking for a post office to send a couple of packages. Off the beaten path in Kuta, we actually were not harassed by the local shopkeepers and the hawkers selling food on the sides of the streets. The post office was not easy to find and didn't seem to be used very often, so upon arrival we opted not to use it, and made our way back to the main part of Kuta. When back, we found a nice little Indian restaurant that was full of drunk and happy Indian businessmen, on a Balinese holiday to celebrate some big business win or something like that. They were extremely pissed (that means drunk for the Americans reading this) at about 14:00 in the afternoon and dancing all around the restaurant with the waitresses. This quite amusing sight kept us entertained while waiting for our tasty South Indian dishes, some of which neither of us had ever tried before.

After lunch, we reluctantly went back to the Poppies II area in order to use an internet cafe to back up more photos onto CDs, and also to write the Brunei blogs. During this time, Dan ventured across the way to get a couple of drinks on this very hot day. After 20 minutes, Dan finally came back - not only with a couple of drinks, but also with a small leather bracelet tied on his wrist and cleanly manicured toenails and fingernails. Apparently, a group of three women and a couple of kids surrounded Dan when he entered the shop and they told him to sit on a stool which was conveniently planted behind him. Being worn out from the hot sun, Dan didn't reject the idea of a short break and he sat down on the stool.

While seated on the stool, Dan was completely surrounded by the vultures. They offered him a leather bracelet which they were tying around his wrist at the same time it was being offered. Dan said he didn't want to buy the bracelet and one of the women said for him not to worry because it was free. As she tied the bracelet on his wrist, she looked at his hand and fingernails and said that she wanted to quickly clean the fingernails up for him. Dan reluctantly agreed as it didn't seem like it would take that long. Of course, he didn't realise she wanted to give him a full-blown manicure! While one woman was "cleaning up" his right hand, another women jumped in to do the same to his other hand. They then moved to his feet and toenails without asking him, and before he knew it, he had received a pedicure as well. The third woman, who had a crucial part in this story as well, was behind Dan massaging his shoulders and distracting him by asking him questions and giving him the story about Bali after the bombs and the

fact that no tourists visit there anymore. Basically, the vulture was helping to set Dan up for the kill.

After Dan's sprucing up was complete, one of the women asked Dan to pay her a good price for the services. Dan knew this was coming but didn't think he was going to have to pay for anything since he was told the services were free. However, in the true sense of the Balinese people, they would not give up before Dan paid them some of his money. They first asked for 50,000 Rupiah (equivalent to about $5 USD or £3) but this was way too much for the services provided. Since Dan didn't go into the shop to buy a bracelet, manicure and pedicure, he decided to just toss a 5,000 Rupiah (50 US cents or 30p) note at

them and fleeing the store. Rest assured, though, as Dan did pay full price for the two drinks he bought!

It was quite late when we left the internet cafe and we decided to walk along the beach road back to our hotel. We were harassed the entire way, with "Taxi? Transport?", "Massage, you want massage?" and "I give you good price", which caused our frustration and anger at Kuta Bali to grow again. We wanted to get some food and the only thing open as late as it was in the area was McDonald's. Unfortunately we made the (bad) choice to eat there, and the two burgers that we ordered smelled and tasted funky. Whatever we learned by watching "Fast Food Nation" in Singapore clearly didn't stick with us, and we must really work on our fast-food eating habits.

The final morning in Kuta, Kyle was awakened at 8:00am by a telephone call. Some English guy on the phone started giving this pitch about a daily competition whereby tourists who go through Immigration and Customs in the airport are eligible and entered into a daily prize draw. The guy stated that we had won a daily prize worth $1500 (£900), and that we could claim the prize after confirming some personal details. Kyle quickly decided a scam was in action, and when he started probing and asking questions about the prize and competition, the guy on the phone would not relinquish any further details before Kyle confirmed his personal details. Kyle kept pushing and finally the guy on the phone hung up. There was no way anyone would know what room number we were staying in at the hotel, and therefore we came to the conclusion that the hotel played some part in the scam. When Kyle confronted the hotel desk clerk, the woman acted like she didn't know anything about the call or who it came from, and when Kyle asked for the hotel manager, who was clearly sitting in the office behind the clerk (and listening to our conversation), she said that he wasn't available and didn't speak English. The funny thing is that we had a 5-minute conversation with the hotel manager a couple of days previously.

As you can imagine, we were both very happy to be leaving that day, and were looking forward to getting out of Kuta and exploring more of the island. Our trip to Ubud was to consist of a tour around the island before arriving in the small town.

UBUD - Monkey See, Monkey Do

It was like we were in a different world when we left Kuta. It was great to tour around the island. We had a driver to ourselves for the day, Mr. Kadek, and he took us on a whirlwind tour of the island including stops at Celuk, Goa Gajah, Mount Kintamani, Besakih and Tegalalang. Obviously, with your curiosity peaked, you will want to know what these places are. So, we'll tell you.

At Celuk, you will find gold and silver smiths, and we were able to see them in action making silver jewelry. There were a few people following us around but they were fairly harmless country vultures. Our next stop was Goa Gajah, or "Elephant Cave Temple". We were requested to don some extremely trendy clothes to cover up our bare white legs and avoid upsetting the gods - see photo album. Goa Gajah has many holy vultures lurking about, i.e. guides who want to take you around the temple for money. If you go on a tour around Bali, be prepared with lots of Rupiah as everything you do costs money. We even were stopped on the road in the middle of nowhere to pay entrance fee to see a volcano in the distance!

After Goa Gajah, we arrived at a coffee and tea rest stop. We had some interesting samples of various Balinese coffees and teas which we didn't have to pay for amazingly. We then went to Mount Kintamani, a large volcano surrounded by a lake and valley with rice paddy fields. The views were spectacular but the 60,000 Rupiah lunch (cost per person) was extortionate. We tried explaining to Mr. Kadek that we were travelling on a budget and prefer a 5,000 - 10,000 Rupiah lunch somewhere, and he knew just where to take us, our next destination Besakih. Besakih is where you will find Bali's Mother Temple, and we donned our trousers before arriving at Besakih, in order to avoid wearing another sarong. At Besakih, there were several large Balinese shrines in this

area, set upon a hilltop. There were also MANY stalls with people selling goods and therefore we were pressured quite a bit walking to the temples. The holy vultures at Besakih said that we could not enter the temple areas without a paid guide, but as our Lonely Planet said otherwise, we called them on their bluffs and entered the temple on our own. We explored the temples for about half an hour and the views of the surrounding valley were quite picturesque.

Our driver came through for lunch. We enjoyed tasty mee goreng noodles and bottled water for the low price of 15,000 Rupiah total ($1.50 or 90p) for the both of us! After Besakih, our day tour around the island was nearly complete, with one last stop to go before arriving in Ubud. Mr. Kadek drove us to Tegalalang, which is an area with exotic rice terraces set in a hillside. The view was spectacular and after a couple of minutes and couple of photos, we were on our way to Ubud. Ubud is a very nice, quaint town in Bali which is surrounded by rice paddy fields and has been built up to meet the needs of people wanting to escape from the tawdriness of Kuta. We had booked accommodation over the internet at a place called Nick's Pension. The place was really nice with a pool and it was set in the middle of some rice paddies. The bungalows were conveniently located just off Monkey Forest Road, which is one of the main streets in Ubud.

Wanting to see all the fuss about the "Monkey Forest", we walked down Monkey Forest Road to check it out. The park had closed as it was just after 6pm, but we were in luck. There were a few monkeys outside the park and in the road. Actually, they were first in the rubbish bins, digging through the trash. A Balinese Ubudian woman stopped us and asked if we wanted to feed the monkeys. She had a bag of bananas, which we saw as quite funny, since earlier that day we asked each other whether or not monkeys actually eat bananas. After paying the nice vulture a few thousand Rupiah, we had a bag full of bananas and she helped us feed some of the monkeys. What a great first experience in Ubud! After feeding the monkeys, we developed an appetite ourselves and stopped at the first restaurant we saw. We made a good selection as the food was delicious, and our waitress was very nice. We ordered mixed Balinese dishes to try a variety of Indonesian food, and we tried Bali Hai beer, the competitor for Bintang beer. Survey says Bali Hai beer is equally as good as Bintang.

After dinner, we passed a really cool open-air bar which shows movies every other night or so. It was very quiet in Ubud when we were there - so quiet we couldn't believe that all the nice restaurants and places of accommodation could stay in business - and we thought to ask the bar owner if we could watch one of the DVDs Kyle bought very cheaply (under $2!) in Malaysia. Apparently a lot of the hostels in which we will be staying have common rooms with TVs and DVD players, so it is good to have a few movies at hand when one or both of us wants to chill out in the hostel for the evening.

The next morning, we had breakfast and sat out by the pool reading for a couple of hours. It was another gloriously hot day in Bali, and there was still no sign of the rain in this "rainy season". After laying out, we walked down Monkey Forest Road past all of the shops, bars, restaurants and hotels to visit The Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The monkeys that live in this holy place are Balinese macaques, which are similar to the long-tailed macaques we spotted in Borneo. Macaques, by the way, are the most successful and widespread of all primates, and they now seem to be popping up everywhere on our trip (be sure to read the Brunei Ulu Temburong and Kuala Lumpur blogs for more references). There are three large groups of macaques who live in the Monkey Forest and at times, you may hear or view disagreements between monkeys from different groups. We had the luxury of experiencing this first-hand as a few larger monkeys decided to

have a brawl right in front of us - this is not something we stuck around long for to watch!

There are about 300 macaques currently residing in the Monkey Forest. Whilst the males have facial hair resembling moustaches, the females tend to have long facial hair resembling beards. Therefore, our initial assumption of which monkeys were male, and which were female, was wrong! Check out our photos for this journal by clicking the "View more photos" link and see if you can guess whether the monkeys in the photos are male or female. There are three holy temples in Monkey Forest, and our journey to each of them resulted in seeing more and more monkeys. We had no idea at the time that there were around 300 monkeys there, and it was amazing to see so many of them in one place! If anyone reading this decides to visit Monkey Forest in Bali, and you have children, please take care in the park and do not touch the monkeys. They are wild and will react negatively if you touch or disturb them. If you feed them, please do not try to take back the fruit as it aggravates them. Also, you may witness sweet love-making between male and female monkeys, which we did, and this is a sight you may not want your children to see (or yourselves for that matter). If you do see this, however, it seems to be over in the matter of a few

seconds, and it should therefore not cause too much of a problem.

We viewed several of the macaques bathing and playing in a small fountain in the middle of the park, and other macaques cleaning each other's fur - most likely picking fleas and ants off each other. One of the young macaques went up to Kyle and picked at his sandal and leg. Dan had seen a large ant on Kyle's shin just before the monkey picked it off of him and ate it. So, we now know that these monkeys eat insects as well as fruit. In fact, we think they eat just about anything, as we saw a couple of smaller macaques tilting back Coke and 7-Up cans to drink the remains in the cans, and one of these monkeys also was eating cigarettes from a pack on the ground.

We would like to advise you not to walk around carrying items in your hand in Monkey Forest as the macaques will gladly relieve you of all your possessions. We experienced this when one of the monkeys decided he really wanted Dan's black plastic bag with a water bottle in it. Dan didn't want to start any more fights with macaques - he had enough of this in Borneo - and when he gave the black bag to the monkey, it seemed happy enough. It wasn't but about ten minutes later when a different monkey took the water bottle from Dan. Believe us, if you saw how large and long their canine teeth are, you would give them

whatever they want too!

After walking around Monkey Forest for about an hour, and taking some excellent photos and videos of these mischievous macaques in action, we decided to leave the forest to explore more of Ubud. We opted to have dinner in the bar where we watched a DVD the night before, and we took another DVD with us to watch, which the owner kindly put on the big screen for us. During the film, we had some great pizza for dinner as well as a vegetable coconut (and spicy!) curry. The food there was good but we can't remember the name of the place - sorry!

The next day we were due to go to the airport for a flight in the early afternoon back to Kuala Lumpur. We were very ready to leave Bali and get back to Malaysia, where the people are super-friendly and not pushy or harassing.