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Bali (Wed 18th Feb - Sun 22nd Feb)
We have spent 5 days of relative luxury in our 4 star Mandira Hotel in the resort of Legian. Arrived in Bali after a 3.5 hr. Jetstar flight from Perth. Bali is a very popular holiday resort for Australians - probably their equivalent of Brits going to Spain. There were plenty of brochures at the airport detailing the wide variety of tours and activities that are available. They were all written by someone who hasn't yet mastered the English language. I can never understand why these brochures are not proof-read by an English speaker before being published. How long would it take ?10 minutes? In fact I would be happy to do it for a free flight and a very small fee.
To be honest we did not see much of the island. Most of the time we stayed in the very pleasant hotel compound either sunbathing, reading or pampering ourselves with massages. There was an excellent Spa in the hotel and we treated ourselves to a couple of sessions including aromatheraphy and something called Ayurveda Yoga massage. Gwen celebrated her birthday on Friday with a massage followed by a pedicure/manicure by the hotel pool. All wonderfully relaxing and fairly cheap by UK standards. One evening we attended a very touristy Bali evening - reistafel dinner and some Bali dancing accompanied by some excruciating gamelan music. Fortunately it was over fairly quickly.
We did venture out of the hotel a couple of times.We did consider for 30 seconds hiring a car for the day and touring the island but the roads are so busy and the drivers so crazy that we would have got lost or had an accident. Instead we hired a car and hotel driver who took us to the town of Ubud (described as the heart of the island), the nearby Monkey Forest (monkeys jump on your head and steal anything you have), a rice plantation (they are all over the island)and views of the volcano. Not particularly exciting but at least we did see how the rest of the world live. The other trip was White Water Rafting. This was our third attempt after cancellations in Cusco and Cairns. This involved a one hour bus trip and then a 500 step climb down to the river. Not good for Gwen's knees and at this stage she would rather have stayed by the pool. We rafted for 90 minutes about 11 kilometres down the river. It was good fun if all a bit tame.
According to Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray, Love" - (you must have read it ! ) unless you are posh there are only four first names that you give your children - boy or girl !! The names are Wayan (first born), Made (Mah-day) - second born, Nyoman (third born) and Ketut (fourth born). After that you just start again. Not sure how true this is but all I can say is that our driver was called Made, our White Water Rafting guide was called Ketut and we bought a picture from a guy called Nyoman. Don't think I met any Wayans.
Bali's economy is based on tourism. It is still a relatively poor country and relies on tourism to survive. About half the population of over 3 million work in that industry. It seems to have recovered from the bombings in 2002 and there are now more tourists than ever mainly from Australia and Japan. Some people we met had holidayed on the island more than once. One woman from Perth had been 19 times and some dutch tourists we met were staying on the island for 2 months. The people are very friendly and welcoming but apart from that I'm not sure what the great attraction is and after 5 days we had seen enough and were ready to move on.
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