Sweet Bali Hai

Thailand is the mustard colored country, Indonesia is the Brown 
and Bali is one of the tiny islands toward the middle.

                Hello everyone! Terribly sorry for the slight delay in my vacation blog. I know I said I would post every day while on vacation but... I was on vacation! So it was much more tempting to put it off and explore. 


So, where were we? Oh yeah, Day 4. Winding down our time in Koh Phi Phi [pronounced P.P.]  and heading further down south to Phuket [Pronounced Poo-ket] Thailand's biggest island. We took a two hour ferry ride, and one very long overpriced taxi ride and we finally arrived in Phuket International Airport at around 9pm.

Thank You for flying Air Asia. 

 Our flight left for Bali, Indonesia early in the morning so rather than waste money on a hotel for a couple of hours we decided we would set up camp in the airport terminal. Especially since we had to watch college football and we were going to be up all night anyways. Well the boys at least... Jen and I had our own Gator -Vs- Noles Battle in our sleep.

On to day 5, we arrived in Bali, Indonesia.  First impressions: Clean air, Hot weather, darker Asians, beautiful flowers and many hidden fees. Just to go to Bali you have to basically pay a cover fee of 25 USD, however the Thai Baht price was about 30$. 

The exciting but frustrating thing to me about arriving in a new country is learning the way their money works. If there is one thing I can't stand is getting ripped off, but you are pretty much guaranteed to when leaving the Airport. People tend to take full advantage of the fact that you are a tourist and probably wont know how much a taxi should cost to get to your destination. We booked a beautiful hotel for the first night and ventured off to find a taxi. We read online  that there are metered taxies all over the island. Of course when we get to the airport there aren't any in site.  After a about 4 different taxies we were finally able to get a reasonable price. Luckily, the Balinese speak really good English (compared to Thailand) and made things a lot easier. 

We spent the rest of the day getting a bite to eat and checking out the closest beach. First order of business dip my toes into the Indian Ocean. I then laid out my towel on the sand, and drifted off to sleep ...only to be awoken by a large parade of Balinese dressed completely in white, walking towards the ocean. We were a bit confused but watched intently. We later learned that this is a Hindu ceremony they preformed two times a year!  It is meant to ward off the evil spirits, and keep the good ones. They light incense and bring offerings to the ocean, and pray to the gods. 

We sat and watched from the back and it was quite funny, really.. the women were on one side and the men were playing the music. Most were quite present while others were playing on their  blackberries and gossiping with each other. After about a half hour, they continued their parade through the city.  It was actually really cool, and we were so lucky to catch it! 

At this point we were running on empty, and decided it was time to go back to the hotel and crash! It sure did feel good sleeping on a comfortable bed! 

Until next time...

Cheers!

Photo Credit: Jen Cowan and Jon Watt