While Chris and Rob were busy diving Karen and Bill did several day trips out of Cairns, including some snorkeling and diving of their own. The crew met up on March 20 and headed out to the many local bars for one last night of partying in Cairns, which included stops at the Paranha Bar, the Woolshed and the Sportsbar. Rob outlasted everyone that night and was last seen by Bill and Karen at a local pizza shop at 4am as they left for the airport so Karen could catch her early flight back to San Francisco. Chris was down for the count a good hour or so earlier. After making it back to their beds, the next thing Chris and Rob realize is the cleaning lady in their room at 8:30 am apologizing for waking them up – they had slept through 2 alarms and had less than an hour to catch their international flight to Bali, Indonesia (usually requiring a 2 hour checkin). They made it to the airport with little time to spare, and were laughed at by Bill, who had started to believe he would be making the trip to Bali on his own.
Although we all had an incredible time in Australia we were anxious to move on and experience a change in culture. Soon after landing in Bali we realized that we had gotten our wish. Indonesia is by far the cheapest country we have been in yet, the people and customs are different and the weather is quite hot. Most of the hotels are around $1 to $2 US dollars per night, but due to the extremely hot weather the guys decided to splurge a bit. They spent their three nights in Bali at the Masa Inn for approximately $6 US a night, which included two beautiful inground pools and most importantly, air conditioning. Unfortunately we missed the ½ hour free massage that comes with every 5th night at the hotel. The food in Indonesia is also dirt cheap and is some of the better food we’ve had. Each meal is about $1 US, so we usually end up getting a couple of meals each – and the beers are back to Tanzanian prices at about $.75 for each very large bottle.
Our first full day in Bali we walked around town and took in the Indonesian culture. Similar to Egypt, the locals were astonished at the size of Rob, but instead of saying “basketball, basketball?” like in Egypt, the most popular comment so far has been “Ah…big….like giraffe!” Walking around town we soon noticed trucks full of colorfully dressed men, women and children. We figured something cool must be going on, so we stood around to watch, and soon got to see a large Hindu parade that began in town and proceeded out to the beach. Apparently it was one of their important celebrations that occurs once a year in which they take the water from the temple out to the ocean.
We spent our second day in Bali checking out some of the countryside towns, including the woodshops, silvershops, religious temples and monkeytemples. Yes, monkeytemples… We ended our afternoon in the town of Ubud at the popular monkeytemple in which hundreds of monkeys run and swing freely around the forest area as visitors walk around. Upon entering we were handed a pamphlet instucting us on how to deal with the monkeys in the park.
#1) Do not feed the monkeys (This rule was violated by nearly half of the park patrons.)
#2) Do not taunt the monkeys (One little girl actually threw a cocnut shell at a monkey nearly causing it to attack her)
#3) If the monkey takes food or other item, do not attempt to retreive it. (A brave German man had a t-shirt swipped from his bag and proceeded to tug on it with the culpret monkey. Both human and monkey were hissing back and forth at each other over a $2 counterfit t-shirt......a very interesting site.)
Today we awoke bright and early at 5 am and caught a flight to the Indonesian island of Java. Although Java is not highly recommended as a US tourist destination by the US government due to recent strife, we figured “Who would go to Indonesia and not see the country's largest Hindhu temple and world’s largest Buddhist temple?”. So we arrived at 6am, hired a driver for $25 US dollars to be our chouffer for the day, and were off to see the Prambanan Temple and Borobudor Temple. Both temples date back to the 8th century, were covered by vegetation and volcanic ash for many centuries, and were excavated and restored during the late 1800s. Seeing both temples in person was an amazing experience and well worth the flight to Java. The highlight of the day was getting to interact with the locals. Apparantly very few Western tourists visit these sights, so person after person (mostly teenage girls) would come up to us and ask to have their pictures taken with them and ask for our email addresses. We even had a couple of families take pictures of us with them. Now, if we could only figure out how to have this effect on women back in the states….
We’re currently finishing our 24 hour stay in Yogakarta, Java, and will be catching a morning flight to the island of Lombok where we will spend a couple of days and then continue onto the Gili Islands. Both islands are supposed to be beautiful and considerably less touristy, so we’re looking forward to spending the upcoming week relaxing on the beaches, an activity that we have mastered at this point in our journey, and seeing some of scenic Indonesia.
Karen made it safely back to San Francisco and is currently in the middle of a 4 night shift at the hospital, saving up her money for her next travels.
That’s the news and we are out of here….for now!
The Crew
