Bali Hai

Bali is a small Indonesian island lying between Java and Lombok and is one of the countries 33 provinces. It has a population of about 3.5 million people which are mostly Hindu so Kung Foo would probably help here too; whereas the rest of Indonesia is mainly Muslim. I believe that they really try hard to keep the Hindu traditions over here which I suppose is the same the world over when a small religious population separates from their majority. Keeping traditions becomes important so as their identity doesn’t get lost in the new land. The rest of India moves on with the times but not the small island populations. One aspect of Hinduism Caste is observed here but less strictly than in India.

Bali is known as, “The Island of the God’s”. They believe that every element of nature possesses its own power, which reflects the power of the Gods. A rock, tree, dagger, or woven cloth is a potential home for spirits whose energy can be directed for good or evil. There are quite a lot of Chinese immigrants here on Bali, and once again, they are all connected with the food industry. People have been living here for a very long time; they have found stone tools believed to date back to the late 19^th century. No seriously, the next island is Java where they found the “Java Man” (Pithecanthropus erectus which means upright ape-man in Greek, very upright by the sound of it in English) which is one of the first known specimens of Homo sapiens around 250,000 years old.

Bali is one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world and is only 8 degrees south of the equator. The highest point is Mount Agung, an active volcano just over 3000m high which last

erupted in 1963. They say it erupts roughly every 40 years so it’s now overdue. Good job Claire and I don’t like climbing. One of the other mountains called Mount Batur, in the same range, is also

active and when it erupted 30,000 years ago was one of the largest known volcanic events in the history of the Earth.

The place to be if your young and don’t have kids is Kutu as this is where all the action is. If you are young and do have kids then Legian is the town to be; not quite the action of Kutu but getting there. These towns are situated on the South West coast. If you are old and don’t have kids with you then you stay where we are staying in Sanur on the south East coast, just out of range of the party noise, next to the quiet beaches and hopefully, far enough away from all those volcanoes. The ferries to Lombok leave from Sanur and I’m hoping that we get time to visit it. There are no train lines on Bali and consequently no trains so you have to travel around by road which are very

busy. On the up side, there are no train spotters on Bali; or if there are, they are much unfulfilled train spotters. I am also hoping that we can hire a motor bike during our stay so we are able to get around the island and see most of it while we are here. If you want to hire a bike or car on Bali, you will need an international driving license which I bought back in England. They are only about £7.50 and you can get the forms in some post offices. Strangely, the massive Milton Keynes Post Office doesn’t have them but the tiny Northampton one does. You can find a list of PO that has them at the AA website http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/overseas/apply-for-an-idp-at-a-post-office.html .

The currency in Bali is the Rupiah and there are about 15700 to the £. Or to work it out quickly 100,000IDR is worth about £6.35 and you can’t work it out quickly so take a calculator with you. If you ignore or forget the last 1000 then 100 is worth about two thirds divided by 10. Mak

e sure you have deep pockets when you are travelling around this area or preferably a saddle bag. Why don’t they get rid of a few zero’s like they did in Turkey a few years ago? Once you get a note that has more than four zero’s its hard to tell the difference between 5 or 6 zeros and easy to make mistakes which I very nearly did when paying for our taxi at the airport.

We got to our hotel about 5pm but it was still very hot and humid without a trace of a breeze but they had switched our aircon on so the room was ice cold. Ours is a garden room where there are 4 in a block and we have a pool behind us and one in front. The main pool is by the beach and looks lovely; its one of those where you can sit in the pool by the bar. We dropped our stuff off in the room and headed for the bar to unwind. Mind you we had already been unwinding on the plane with the free drinks; wonderful seats with plenty of leg room and films on demand that you could pause and rewind at will. It was probably the best flight I had ever had and for me was a little too short as I didn’t get chance to watch the end of my second film “Moon”.

We then had a short walk outside to suss out Sanur but the hawkers got the better of us after we had found a chemist and bought sun cream and mosquito spray and stocked up with water for the fridge. We found a little bar called “JJ’s” across the road a way and had another drink. The local brew is called Bintang and comes in a 1 litre bottle; this seems like my sort of place. The other one is Bali Hai which is a more appropriate name but doesn’t taste so good. We talked to the bar staff who were friendly and decided to stay for dinner as the entertainment started at 7.30pm and got a table in front of the stage. It was those weird funny men in masks and the long fingernails like we saw when travelling through Kerrala in south India. I like the “ping pong, ding dong” music that accompanies the dance. Claire had a steak and chips while I tried the recommended fish and king prawns steamed inside a coconut leaf with rice. It looked great but wish I had gone for the steak now.

We headed back to our hotel but decided to have one last one by the pool and guess what? They had entertainment on there too; it was three guys that go around the tables taking requests and sing for you. They reminded me of the group they always have at the Fusion in Majorda, Goa; exactly the same so we new what songs they would know and like. We chose “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude”; the old ones are the best and everyone knows the Beatles. We gave them a real good tip and they went off happy and so did we, but not before Claire had a little dance before bedtime. What a great start to Bali, feels like three days in one; can’t wait for tomorrow!