Ballin in Bali

For me, Bali has always been a place that conjures images of tropical paradise and mystic spirituality. My expectations were for a fisherman’s town rife with gurus and temples. I guess I could say I was about half right, but reality was that my expectations were so far from reality.

Let me try to explain. The first Bali that I found was a sun-seeking, surfing, partying town. Only later did I discover that it really has multiple sides. The first few days Ruen (my high school buddy who works in Iraq met me in Bali for 2 weeks) and I checked out the beach (not the prettiest) and pretty much got harassed/hustled everywhere we went. We did make some good deals and some really bad ones (Ruen with a few glasses of beer will absolutely buy anything for $5 or less!). The food was amazing and everything was dirt cheap. So let’s call this Side 1: Party Surf Town, which is basically Kuta and Legian.

Side 2: Cultural Beauty. We made a few road trips around the island of Bali and saw some amazing landscape including volcanoes, rolling green rice fields and farmlands. We entered a handful of Hindu temples (Bali is the only Hindu Indonesian island – the rest are Muslim of course) until we were “templed out.” The funniest part about the temples is that we were literally celebrities. Well, I won’t go that far, but all the Balinese visiting from rural areas wanted to take pictures with us. So I kid you not at some point we started avoiding camera-toting groups of screaming young ladies eager to pose with us. I now know how it would feel to be a celeb…for 15 minutes. We also stayed a few days in Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali and from here we saw a traditional Balinese dance (so not worth it!) and made a 2 hour trek to the top of an active volcano. I also went with friends to see the Guru made famous from the “Eat Pray Love” book for a palm reading (Kekut Lying) and what a disappointment! He gave the three of us the EXACT same reading and then tried to charge us $25USD. What a joke. Fortunately the guy was very positive and despite being 95 years old still had his wits, but I would definitely not recommend getting your fortune read by him…actually just give me the $25 and I’ll tell you exactly what he will tell you (“You berry berry lucky. You have many success. Very rich and handsome/pretty. You will live long…100 years and have 2 children.”).

Side 3: Beach Paradise. Ahhhh, now we’re talking – a 1.5 hour speed boat ride to Lombok island and the “Gilis” took us to an absolute paradise where there was much less hustle and much prettier beaches. I ended up renting a scooter in Lombok (Ruen was too scared…and rightfully so since I did wipe out when another scooter cut in front of me) and met a nice local kid who showed me around his village. The people were so welcoming and despite the language barriers we shared a ton of smiles and laughs. Gili Trawangan was our next stop and it is a small island (we walked the whole thing in 1.5 hours) with no motorized transport and no police. The island is super-safe, relaxing, fun, cheap and the closest place to paradise I have ever been.

Side 4: Bling Bling Bali. We met up friends that I had made in Singapore at a bar called Ku De Ta and all of sudden a whole other part of Bali opened up. This new area called Seminyak was filled with high-end boutiques, cool bars and top restaurants, spas and hotels. Of course I spent my last few days here and had some amazing spa treatments (for only $6USD you get a 1-hour full body massage!) and did yoga to complete my Bali experience.

Given the current status of the demonstrations in Bangkok I decided to forgo spending time there and just changed my flight to arrive in Phomn Phen, Cambodia just in time for cinco de mayo! I’ll work my way across Cambodia and then down Thailand to end my world-wide journey in Phuket, Thailand on May 25th. I look forward to being back and catching up with my family and friends live.