Bali

Arriving in Bali was about the most relaxed border experience we've had yet. The Visa guys flirted with us, and the xray guy was writting a text message on his phone as my bag (and 2 pounds of Hash...kidding) went thru the machine. Although it would have been that easy. I handed the last guy at the door my customs card, not really giving him a chance to look at it and walked out...not that he would have bothered asking any questions anyway. I though to myself, Bali is so relaxed, this is what I need....and then I arrived in Kuta.

Kuta Beach is insane, filled to the brim with holiday travellers, 90% under 23 years old, and the beach filed with amatuer surfers. We found a guest house off PoppiesII , an alley off an alley. We spent most of our nights with the rest of the inhabitants chilling on the GOYA steps drinking 8,000 rupiah (1$) beer:Bintang. When the party shifted to the clubs...well we tried to join...but it didn't quite fit. The bars are so cheesy, we started at Raggea bar for little dancing and 1L "tropical" drinks, meaning we have no idea what was in it. Then on to Bounty which starts off as a kareoke club and then you enter a giant makeshift ship, where the staff is all dressed as sailors, and the dancefloor is packed with Aussi teens on vacation. It goes on and on. the worst part is, these clubs I found out the next night either don't allow locals in, or they charge the locals a huge cover and let the tourists in for free! Now how does that make sense? Everyone comes to Kuta to blow cash and so why not make us pay (ok, not us, the backpackers, but us, the package tours). That pissed me off a tad and after trying to get one of our local friends in thinking they must bend the rules a bit to make the tourists happy, and it failed, we went back to our favorite haunt, The Secret Garden for cheap Balinese wine...love it!

So after four days of debauchery and attempting to drag our hung-over asses down to the beach everyday before sunset, so sad, we left for Ubud and here we are now.

Ubud is north and located in the interior of Bali. It is surounded by gorgeous ricefields and mountains and exudes culture. The religion here encompases every aspect of daily life and is so colorful and inviting. We went to the Kecak and Fire Dance two nights ago. Which is composed of a chorus of about 100 men seated in a circle around a large candelabra chanting various rythms of song and "chukit, chukit", with coresponding arm flailing and such. As the kidnapping scene from the Ramayana is played out through song and dance in the middle of the circle around the fire. The dancing is so beautiful, so ornate and specific, using eye and small finger gestures as moves. Then there was the trance dance where two young girls performed a long dance in unison with their eyes closed to a chorus of men and women signing with a bowl of insense burning to bring the Gods down to the earth. Then another man in a trance dances around on a wooden horse walking through and kicking burning coconuts in bare feet. It was amazing. After they are finished they are brought out of their trance by being blessed by a priest.

Yesterday we rented bikes and toured the city. Visiting the Elephant cave, and Royal Palace, and watched young girls practice their dancing in the square, so adorable. The Palace was quite different. It is all open air, with few closed rooms. All are simply raised and under roofs with stone pillars, kind of like gazebos with garden in between. I will try to post pictures to better explain. We finished the day by watching a full moon ceremony in the temple on our street where all the women in the neighborhood brought large offerings of fruit and incence in large baskets they cary on their heads then place on an alter. There was singing and music and it was all really inviting. And today we attempted to take a tour of some temples in the mountains, although got rained out and the mist was too thick to see the view. Gorgeous landscape none the less. The architecture is very different here compared to the rest of Asia so far. All the homes have inner courtyards and their own mini temples. We are staying with a family, as here it is more a homestay syle, versus hotels and guest houses. It's very nice.

So tomorrow we are moving on to Kintamani to hopefully climb a volcanoe, weather permitting...we'll let you know how it goes.

-R

Southern Malaysia

After our wonderful Jungle Adventure, Carla and I decided to hold up in a more developed part of the country for a while and spend a week in Kuala Lumpur. The city was quite drab, even being the capitol, and had not much to offer in night life, or culture for that matter. But we ended up at a fantastic guesthouse, Wheelers, where we met loads of cool travellers and staff. We spent our evenings on the roof top bar or hallway bench drinking bottles of whiskeywith our Canadian friends Shane and Cody and dancing to Kelly Clarkson...that was when the footy wasn't on. And our days roaming the streets and the Chinatown market for great deals on "brand name" items. What the city lacked in ambiance it definitely made up in bargain shopping. It was so hard to resist. I have never seen better fakes in my life...or tour of Asia I guess.

We did venture out one day with the lovely Irish duo of Owen and Wally to see the "park". We were planning on seeing deer and birds and buterflies at this so-called oasis in the middle of the city. Well it turned out the park was being built, or renovated in many places and all the "animal parks" were closed, although not due to renovation, due to death actually. Turns out all the deer died. Oh well they were imported from Holland anyways, and so not much of a Malay flavor there. And the buterfly park was like 5$ to get in, and so we toured the gift shop and figured we got the same thing except the butterflies weren't exactly moving, persay. Anyhow, a good day anyways, and of course finished off with yet another bottle of quality whiskey. Malaysia is a very Muslim country and so alcohol is kind of hard to come by, for our standars and really expensive in the bars to boot. About 8 Rm(2.50$) a glass of beer, and that's happy-hour. Crazy!

So after putting off packing up our stuff again for a couple days and becoming the un-official KL/ Malaysia tourguides for all the new Wheelers guests we left for Palau Tioman, to join a few of our friends, Paul(England) and Jenny and Johnny(Scotland) on the duty-free island. We also grabbed a fellow Canadian, Marie-Helen(Quebec), to pass the days in our hammoks enjoying the sun. The evenings we spent at the little bar on the beach with all the local boys....too many actually. Seemed to me there was a shortage of young women on the island. Leading to many locals I nick-named Chester for reasons you could all probably guess. After running away a few times, they kinda got the hint and stayed away...kinda. All in all great time. The local drunken chef made us Poutine for Canada Day and the boys built us a bonfire. We recruited another Quebecois and sang the National Anthem on the beach, after spending the day snorkelling and drinking beer of course. We represented and then took off for Singapore a couple days later....the end.

-R

Singapore: Asia-lite

Hello Everyone,

Carla and I are in Singapore at the moment experiencing Asia-lite. It is so clean and organised. the buses are never late, the metro runs on time and everything is a fixed price, pretty much. Very different from the rest of Asia. Oh ya, and did I mention it was expensive! Well at least according to my newly adjusted standards. But the shopping is amazing girls, and I have been really good and only buying those few "necessities". We've been here for about four nights now, and fly out to Bali (yay!) tomorrow...on a real plane and all. Who knew travel wasn't always by bus?

Anyhow, Singapore is pretty good for a country where it costs you 1000$ fine if you don't flush the toilet. We visited the Zoo, which was amazing, as you will all pick up on when I send out the hundreds of photos I took there! I had to change memory cards in the middle of the Orangutang feeding...but have no fear, I still got plenty of photos of the Zebras and Giraffes. Animals rock! We also went to the night safari, also pretty cool, yet a bit creepy to be walking around in the dark with giant cats and such. We also went to the Aquarium, slightly less exciting seeing as at this point we're all cocky like "I've swam with bigger sharks than that" But there were still some pretty cool sting rays and a 4 meter spider-crab from Japan.

Sentosa island is like a kind of fantasy-island created by the tourism board, pretty much symbolising the lack of history Singapore has, and its desire to become one of the world's "shopping destinations". The whole thing is quite the show, and features a giant Merlion: the symbol of Singapore/its mascott (half lion half fish), designed by the tourism board and errected in a 500 foot statue covered in lights with laser beam eyes, that you can pay 10$ to take the lift into its mouth and look over the enormous shipping harbour. Too bad we missed that one. Although we did see the spectacular "water show", which Carla misinterpreted as "magic show", and we watched a water fountain dance to "walking on sunshine" and such other lovely tunes...need i say more.

So today we slept in a bit missing our free breakfast at the guesthouse of self bbq'd eggs and toast. And then wandered around getting our flight to Bali (yay!) for tomorrow, and to little India where a parrot "read Carla's fortune" and we got henna tattoos and also sampled all the great Indian food we could possibly fit into a day. So good. So that's it tomorrow we're off to Indonesia, and back to the beach....see you in the sun. R