Bali Hai

 

Click here for photos of Bali 

It's school holidays again, which means it's time for the Fradleys to vacate the country. For our 2 week holiday we decided to visit the islands of Bali and Lombok in Indonesia. We started in Bali on a laid back part of the South coast called Petitenget. A short distance along the coast is the resort of Kuta, which is where you hang out if you're young, drunk and Australian. A bit like an Antipodean Benidorm. So we didn't go there. We did visit the island temple of Tanah Lot and honed our skills in not buying many identical souvenirs - well we were in Indonesia!!

After the coast we headed inland to the town of Ubud. Ubud itself is mostly tourists and locals trying to make a living with the entertaining call of, "Taxi sir? No? Well how about tomorrow?" However, not much effort leads you out into paddy fields and we spent a lovely evening watching the sun go down over lush, green fields of rice with a large glass of Bintang beer in front of us. It also made the walk back into town in the dark more interesting! A highlight of inland Bali was a cycle tour of 25km - all downhill! It starts up near the slopes of one of the Balinese volcanoes - Mount Batur. It is still sporadically active and the sharp line delineating the burnt ground from the untouched ground from the last eruption is startlingly clear. On our journey we passed through small villages in which the children would run out to High Five us as we cycled along. We got to visit the compound of a Balinese family (temple in the NE corner, pig in a sty, Iron Maiden poster on one of the houses!), help to plant rice in a paddy field (presumably any self-respecting farmer would dig it all up and start again after we'd gone?), watch coffee being roasted and the highlight of the tour - a cremation party who were on the way to dig up someone who'd been dead for 5 years so that they could then burn them! Some people get no rest...