Friday, 24. November – „Welcome To Bali!“
Sorry – due to poor internet connection and lack of time during our round trip, we are currently unable to provide the english version in time. We come back later.
The map shows the 5 hour flight from Adelaide to Denpasar. Jet Star, the cheap subsidiary of Quantas, brought us soundly but with really low standard to our destination – were down seats, very narrow – nothing you want to have for a longer time.
Unfortunately, there was a thunderstorm around Denpasar. First, an air pocket, then the plane had to turn around and do an extra tour before it landed sound and rather hard.
A tour of 1 1/2 hours by hotel taxi brought us through the rain to our accomodation in Ubud.
We already stayed in „Nick’s Pension“ in 2013. The nice facility is built around a still existing rice field – the different buildings have 1-3 rooms with seperate terraces.
Unfortunately, our room only has a bath tube, no shower. So we move in the morning to another room a bit down the hill near the river.
After breakfast and moving shopping is on the program.
Ubud has, like a lot of tourist towns in the world, a huge amount of shops, stalls and markets that sell mainly the same: woodcarvings, cloths (sarongs), bags, braided articles (baskets…) and clothes.
We buy several things. Annette tries to find Frangipani-essence in a shop where she bought it 4 years ago – but not available any more and difficult to find elsewhere. Wendelin had to wait for his next coffee…
Well, o.k., this is beer – but it was already past 4 p.m. Coming back from the main road where we bought a Balinese SIM card we were supprised by heavy rain that pours down within minutes in torrents. We save ourselves from it by running into the next clothes shop which we shortly afterwards leave with two new T shirts for Annette to enter a beer boutique next door.
As it doesn’t stop, we buy two of the standard plastic ponchos for 1 EURO each and leave, as our next appointment is at a massage parlour where we booked a Balinese back and shoulder massage for 1 hour each.
After 60 minutes of „kneading“ back pain and rain stopped.
We go back to our room crossing the creek over very slippery steps (and Annette slipped a bit – with the result that she from now on walks on steps feeling like a wet noodle). Afterwards we go back the same way to a stylish restaurant which offers however quite an authentic Balinese kitchen. Not cheap but very good.
The highlight of the evening are two Orange-Arak, which we order at a pub with live musik: the cover band made the present young people (not referring to us) happy by playing classic songs of the pop-culture like „Hey Joe“ from Jimmy, „Blowin‘ in the wind“ and as highlight „The House of the Rising Sun“ …
Saturday, 25. November – Walk through the rice fields and another broken camera
This saturday morning we want to take advantage of the sun and walk through the rice fields to a nice restaurant called „Sari Organik“, which we have visited four years ago, too. The path leads out of town to the north. Today, a lot a new building, pensions, parlours, restaurants have been built along the way into the rice fields.
A bit later, it got more adventuresome. We meet a women from Germany, Kirchheim unter Teck, who lost her way to the organic place and who joins us. The way leads through construction sites and along a valley that drops down some 15-20 m. Unfortunately, today the rains decides to start a lot earlier and we have to walk through the rain for quite a while before we reach our destination.
In 2013, there were only one or two houses in the surrounding or the Sari Organik – now we have problems finding it as some similar ones spread up that call themselves also something with „organik“ – obviously the Sari Organik was successful.
We finally find our place and the drinks and lunch we have are still excellent.
And the view into the rice fields is still nice. But for how much longer?
We start our way back – and then it happened:
This must be the evil camera ghost. And we didn’t make offerings.
And so, the following picture is the last one which we can do with the second-hand Sony camera from Melbourne:
When taking the next picture, there is an audible noise, the camara gets hot – first diagnosis: short circuit due to humidity.
It’s gone. Impossible to switch it on…
Fortunately we have only 6 days remaining to take pictures with our mobile phones. And – more fortunately – soon comes Christmas Eve…
And here come the maps for Ubud:
