Bali - Indonesia's Most Famous Island

  Udud, Indonesia
Thursday, November 9, 2006

      Next stop Bali, one of Indonesia's jewels & somewhere I knew little about until I started to read on the plane! I got chatting to an Ozzie guy on the plane, & we ended up getting a lift with some friends he had just met & we all stayed at the same hotel. We all went out on a bar crawl in the rather horrible Kuta, a fun evening but slightly spoiled by the sex tourism we often saw, with older western guys buying pretty young things for the night... The next morning we paid a visit to the sobering memorial to the 202 people who died in the 2002 Bali bombing by Islamic extremists - tourists & travellers just like us, out drinking just feet away from where we had been the night before.
 
           Tourism in Bali was decimated overnight by that bomb, esp as the Australians stayed away, & that was followed by SARS & bird flu worries. It still hasn't recovered, which is a huge shame, as it is a magical place & the people have a real warmth. I left bustling Kuta  within 12 hrs & got a bus to gorgeously chilled Ubud in the center of the island. I scored well with my choice of the myriad of little hotels, with a huge room set in gorgeous tropical gardens on the edge of a little river with waterfall, falling asleep to the sound of running water , taking b'fast on my patio & swimming in the large pool in the day, all for under £5  ! I planned on 2 nights & stayed for 5!
            
            Within 3 hrs of arriving, I had been invited to a Hindu wedding the following day by a local man I met, discovered all the delicious tropical fruits for sale in the market & booked my 1st massage... Ubud has a unique blend of tourism & traditional Balinese culture, with open-air music/dance shows every night, shops overflowing with crafts like wood carvings, paintings &  custom-made clothes, ornate temples both Hindu & Buddhist jostling for your attention with the modern additions of persistent taxi & motorbike drivers, agencies selling tours & western-standard restaurants serving gourmet food. Many locals wear traditional clothes & everyone, whatever age, seems to be whizzing around on 2 wheels!
 
            I was privileged to attend the Hindu wedding whose celebrations lasted all day. There were some other tourists there, but we were treated like members of the family, sampling the delights of the wedding feast surrounded by the waft of incense. The bride was stunningly beautiful & men & women were dressed up in their best sarongs. It was all wonderfully serene & photogenic  with everyone proud to be photographed. The actual ceremony seemed to last hours, with an elderly priest chanting while a charismatic old woman supervised & administered the holy water & flowers sprinkled over the couple.