Sightseeing & Friends

Trip Start Nov 25, 2011

Trip End Dec 26, 2011

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Where I stayed

Hotel Puri Bambu Jimbaran

Flag of Indonesia Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia
Saturday, December 17, 2011

We decided to go visit the Kuta Beach area and see how much it had changed from the nine years before when we'd been here. The dramatic increase in traffic, shops and restaurants was overwhelming. The only thing of note we managed to see was the memorial erected to the folks who died in the Bali bombing in October of 2002 -- just a couple weeks after we'd left the area back then. Other than that, it felt like several hours of our life we won't get back, fighting all the tourists and touts selling timeshares. And to add insult to injury, later that night I would end up with the revenge of NanXiang Restaurant, which served subpar food, and came back to haunt me around 11:00 p.m. that night, and for several days following. <sigh>

Back at the hotel, the plan was to meet a triathlete friend of mine,Yanti, who moved back to Indonesia to be with her parents. We taxied to the Ulu Watu temple in south Jimbaran. Besides its seaside beauty, there are troops of monkeys everywhere that will steal everything from hair clips to sunglasses and the flipflops off your feet, all in hopes of bribing the owner for food in exchange for maybe returning the stolen goods. We saw several instances of this during our visit! After walking around the temple, we then went to see a marvelous Kecak dance, which contains part of the epic Hindu story of of Ramayana. Learn more here.

Afterwards, Yanti took us to a local spot to eat and back to her place, where I got a brief dog cuddle to cure my missing Max, and it was back to the hotel for a peaceful night's sleep.

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