The End

Soooo after Sunshine Coast we had enough of wandering around for a while. We decided to settle at Gold Coast. This means the travelling part is done and after a transition phase, day to day life takes over. The transition phase is full of applying for visa and finding jobs and boring things like that. Things that I don't want to go through, much less write about them afterwards. So the interesting stuff is no more. It ceased to be. It is expired and gone to meet its maker. Ahem!

Thus it is time to say goodbye to this weblog. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it ... most of the time. Thank you for accompanying us on our journey. Till we meet again, in whatever country it may be!

Base 31 - Sunshine Coast

We reached number 31. In my head they are far fewer than that even though I can still remember every one of them. Perhaps having written about them is the reason I remember them so clearly. I often asked myself if it is even interesting or meaningful to write about them but in the end of the day, they are part of the trip and I write a bit more about the experience that that goes beyond the houses themselves. And since we didn't go to hotels, it is interesting to see how people live.

Desk \o/

This one had a very small bedroom but on the upside it had a desk which made me very happy. This is the second house that had some kind of sound system, so the sound I didn't have to endure the sound coming from the TV speakers. It was a soundbar and a subwoofer but that was more than sufficient. Our host was a make-up artist and she offered small samples of everything you could image when it comes to bathroom necessities. I didn't use any but they were appreciated. She and her husband were generous in every other way too.

Airport.

The house was next to an airport - literally. I mean their backyard and the airport were divided by their fence. It wasn't as bad as I assumed though. I only conciously took notice of the airplanes perhaps two or three times a day and you only heard the airplanes for a couple of seconds which was surprising.

This way please!

One of the best things of our stay was the beach. You could reach it on foot in a matter of minutes, the weather was good but not too hot. The sand was good enough so I went jogging a couple of times. After the first jog, I went into the water and was alone even though it was the weekend. The lifeguard (who looked like 55) asked me:

- Hey mate, did you enjoy your swim?
- It was great. Did I go too far?
- No, you were perfect. I was watching you the whole time.
- Thanks!

Jogging route.

The second time was the most difficult because I had to run on stepped on, softer sand which gave in and so every step was three times as tiring as the first time I did it. On the way back I hated jogging, I hated myself, the world and you. Diving in felt like freedom. I asked the lifeguard how far the next lifeguard is, to find out how much I jogged and he said I did around 4,5 km which is a km above my record.

Third time was low tide with harder sand and it was so easy, it felt like cheating.

On our last day, our hosts took us out to dinner at a fish and chips place that had fresh fish fished locally. Fish! It was nice. No, it was awesome! Perfect! I have to think like an Australian here.

Sunshine Coast

By the time we were leaving Bali, we had enough of travelling and wanted to settle somewhere (meaning Gold Coast) but after a bit of a debate, we decided to go to the Sunshine Coast first because I was curious and it was close enough. I expected something like the Gold Coast but smaller but it felt completely different. Like one of our many smaller stops between Sydney and Gold Coast.

Noosa. The most popular place.

It was touristy all right but less for twenty somethings and more for families. We lived in the most "unimportant" place between Noosa with its shops and beaches and its national park and Maroochydore (I am not even going to look it up) which is the biggest town complete with a shopping mall.

Sand castle.

There was nothing to complain about, everything was nice but it seemed to me to be lacking something spectacular or having its own character. I don't know what I expected. The national park was nice. The shopping mall was good and had an interesting twist in that it was divided in two by a river. The salsa party we went to was dissapointing. This was balanced out by Diana finding a Zumba trainer which became one of her favorites.

Viewing point at the edge of the national park.

We stayed for a week there and that was OK. Now we know what the Sunshine Coast is all about and will go to live there once we are old and retired.

An impossibly wide tree.

Base 30 - Penestanan

Once there were cocks. Literal ones. And they woke us up every morning at 6. Then came the chickens. They joined in in a sometimes synchronized choir or sleeplessness. Then came the builders who built a small house next to us with a speed that put my game-building to shame.

There were two houses being built. This was the one farther away.

Our room was beautiful with a generous balcony, a small but useful kitchen, a big, confy bed and an open air bathroom. Our hosts knew almost no English at all but they were friendly. We dealt mostly with an older woman who was apparently the owner, her sister who carried our 25kg luggage on her head, and her two daughters. Although both daughters were in school age, they never seemed to go to school. They were busy cleaning up and working. That's probably how it works there but still I found it sad.

Ze bed.

Ze view

Ze kitchen

Ze open air bathroom

We stayed there for four weeks and after a short while they figured us out. We ate nasi goreng for breakfast and one day Diana asked for more vegetables. A few days after that, every time I got my breakfast it was "SPECIAL, VERY BIG BIG". I also had to laugh every time and thanked them.

Relax like Buddha

In the end it was a very nice stay, tainted by the noise for the first half of the day. The neighborhood outstanding, the coconut juice was flowing... ah, those were the greatest times. But we had to go back "home" to Australia and the looming danger of the volcano didn't help.

Penestanan

I am not 100% sure if Penestanan is part of Ubud or not and if they grew together. I am also too lazy to look it up. The last time we were in Ubud, we visited because there was a hotel and a yoga school there that were recommended to Diana when she was in Thailand. The girl there told her that Yoga Barn was too commercial and the other school is better. It turns out that the Yoga Barn is too commercial and Intuitive Flow is smaller, more personal, more consistant in the quality of its tutors and they take more more often to correct you if you do something wrong.

Intuitive Flow.

The rooms at Yoga Barn were very nice but the one in Intuitive Flow were outstanding. I took part in two Yoga Classes. One of them were the kind of exercises you would expect, focusing on stretching, breathing and balance. The other was one where you lie down and gradually learn to sleep without losing your awareness. I fell asleep losing my awareness in a matter of minutes. Diana was laughing at me for days.

Light is always a major part in good photos.

While living in Penestanan Diana spent a lot of time in the yoga studio and I spent a lot of time programming my game and looking for jobs in Australia. We also went to the gym and Diana introduced me to Squash. In the beginning she let me win and later I let her win. But don't tell her that. I was making too many points in a row once and she wanted to give up. We probably never played a real game the whole time we were there. And we played a lot.

It looks like something out of Tomb Raider.

Other than that we explored a bit more of the restaurants in every direction, tried some new delicious food and went to walk on a trail where most of the photos were taken. Because our hotel was further away from everything, we also had to learn driving around on a scooter, constantly defying death. We also went to a place that most people seem to think is reduntant in Bali: a sauna. But it was nice there. They had a pool to cool down and of course other people from Germany.

The most vertical trees.

Our room and neighborhood was an adventure in itself. We will go into that next.

Base 29 - Canggu

OK, this is probably going to be one of the most content-free posts I have ever written. My hazy memory tells me that I did have some things to write about this place but my memory also fails to deliver. Bad memory!

Bed.

As is tradition in Bali there is no sidewalk at the side of the road. What made this neighborhood more dangerous than anywhere else is that often at the sides of the road there were no shops or whatever, just a wall or a drop to a rice field or some kind of open drain so you couldn't step sideways even for a bit.

Terrace.

Although the room was not bad, Diana hated it there because we had no privacy. There were other people walking in front of the room to get to their own rooms and so she didn't have anywhere to meditate about life and the universe as we know it. As soon as our German friends left for Germany we left for Ubud.

I added a blurry photo of the yoga place close by to make the whole thing a bit less boring.

Sorry!

Canggu

Back to Bali. But this time in the city in order to perhaps have a beach we could go swimming. Only we couldn't because most of the time they had big waves and red flags, which says that swimming is forbidden. We were told repeatedly that Canggu is beautiful but we didn't see it, presumably because we weren't in the center of it. I still managed to do some good photos.

The greenest green ever.

This post and the next one are going to be really boring. What should I write? Let me see ...

The cloudiest clouds or something?

There was a yoga school/retreat/restaurant nearby but everything except the yoga thing were luxurious but prohibitively expensive there. I went once to do a Ying Yoga class and because the trainer spoke with a heavy Spanish accent, I had to constantly think about sex during the whole duration.

I don't even know. Let me be!

I also had birthday while we were living there. Diana told me she made a reservation for McDonalds and she was so serious about it that I believed her for a while. In the end, we went to a Greek restaurant called "Nostimo" which had shockingly authentic Greek food, although they told me that they never had a Greek working there. It was like in an alternate reality.

I have a rule of not making photos of my food but I made an exception.

After our friends from the Germanies left us, we left Canggu as well.

That's all folks!

Base 28 - Gili Air

We had a bungalow and it was modern and nice.

The interesting thing happened when I lost the key. It was past midnight and we couldn't find the housekeeper or the owner, so after running around for an hour (covering half the island) trying to find the keys, Diana had the idea for us to steal borrow some yoga mats from the yoga place in order to sleep in the balcony. Which is what we did.

This bungalow had a bed

While we were taking the mats and cushions on our way out, I was surprised and loved how nonchalantly Diana went to another room and looked for some blankets with me standing around in the middle of the light with goods in my arms that were illegally taken. We brought everything back the next night without anyone noticing.

and a decent view.

Sleeping in the balcony was hard, but romantic, but even harder when the sermon started at four in the morning with a duration of two hours. The day after, the housekeeper told us that we had the only key. We went to look for them for another round, then went back, then the owner eventually woke up, climbed through the open-air bathroom ("I am Spider-Man") and opened the door from the inside. Then he changed the lock.

I bought a necklace made out of coconut shell from him.

Gili Air

The Gili islands which belong to Lombok and not Bali are lauded as some the most beautiful places you can visit. Gili Trawangan is the biggest one although they don't have much of a difference. It is the one attacting the most party people. Gili Meno is the smallest and most quiet. Gili Air is the middle one and the one we went to because it was supposed to have a decent yoga place. It also promised serenity due in part to the island not having any motorized vehicles. It was all donkeys, bicycles and some electric bikes.

No serenity for me!

Serenity on our first day.

It was all nice enough. We had some great walks, went to some nice bars and restaurants, ate some really tasty food. Sounds like everything you might want but my expectations were too high. I wasn't able to swim anywhere because the sea was very shallow and very full of corals and stones that were downright dangerous if you didn't take care. There were too many bars making lots of noise and most of the time they didn't have enough space between them to find some quiet spot. I don't understand why the need for loud house music or a band whose members count for as many people as the customers in your restaurant. And then you have some very loud bands in two restaurants adjacent to each other. Who the hell thinks this is OK?

No cars.

If all this wasn't enough, we soon found out that while Bali is an island whose style is mostly defined by Hinduism, the rest of Indonesia is ruled by Islam. This meant that every day at 4 o'clock in the morning, we would be woken up by an islamic sermon telling us through bad speakers how to live our life in a language we didn't understand. People who hate islamic countries should be forced to live in one for a couple of days and their hate will turn into compassion for their fellow human beings who have to endure this kind of shit every day for their whole life.

"Make a photo of the Devil" - Diana

Ahem! I sound mostly negative but our experience with Gili Air was mostly positive. The yoga school that Diana originally wanted to visit (H2O) proved itself dissapointing after the first visit. Luckily she found another one (Mandala Blue) that was very good. I wouldn't know. Apparently Fly Yoga is fun.

I'll try it next time we are there.

Bali Day Tour

On week three in Ubud we were visited by the dynamic duo, also known as Elvira and Felix. And because they are not as lazy as us, they booked a taxi driver for a day by the time they arrived from the airport. Actually they had booked three days but we only joined them for the first one. This is how it went.

Entry of the temple.

Center of the Temple of All Things Templish.

The first stop was the Taman Ayun temple. Yes, a temple. Which was very templish. With unidentifyable temple things. They were existing all around even though I didn't understand their purpose. Behind the temple was a park but we didn't spend time there because I assumed (and I was right in my assumption) that our time will not suffice to visit everything that was in our plan.

OoOOh spread your wings and fly, butterfly!

Our second stop was at the Bali Butterfly Park. They also had other bugs and some spiders in boxes but their main attraction was butterflies. I loved them (no homo)! I thought that the very colorful depictions of butterflies were the stuff of fantasy because all I have ever seen live was the brownish ones but these here were wild, beautiful, big, sometimes colossal to the point of being scary. Not hairy-spider-scary but still scary.

I have to look up what this is before it kills me.

This is some kind of bug and NOT a leaf.

Also not leaves.

I hadn't thought that the butterfly park would be interesting for me but it was.

Third stop were the Jatiluwih Rice Terraces which were impressive in their own, very different way. Nothing I could say about them that isn't explained better with pictures.

Rice fields.

Sky mostly.

Our fourth stop was supposed to be a bath in hot springs but time was running out and we went straight to Danau Bratan. I think that is its name because Google Maps has an alternative spelling. It is a temple in the water. This was more exciting than the first one because of the surroundings being more interesting and varied and there being a playing field for children. We rode a kind or round swing for two when you sit opposite of each other. Wheeeee!

Temple in the water.

That was supposed to be our last stop. What we didn't know was that our guide had another stop planned for us (not pictured).

What I liked in Bali compared to Thailand was that people seemed less inclined to relentlessly try to sell you things at overinflated tourist prices. This is true at least apart from the taxi drivers in Ubud. Those keep each others back like a wall of scam you can't penetrate. Our taxi driver for the day offered a price that was a significant pay day for him but wasn't more expensive than taking a taxi in Australia. Which brings us to our last stop.

Also close to the water temple just to break up the text a little.

Our driver asked us if we wanted to try Luwak coffee. We didn't. He asked if we want to do a coffee break and the friend who sat on the front naively said yes. We were brought to the most obvious and most deliberately evil tourist trap where got a tour of how they make their own coffee and let us taste different sorts of coffee and tea. Then they took us to their shop where we paid prices four times higher than what we found later in normal shops. I knew they were scamming us but agreed to buy something anyway because the price for the ride was pretty low, he was a good guide otherwise and I accepted that he gets a percentage of the things sold there.

I got a package with vanilla coffee for myself and Diana drank all of it.

Monkey Forest

While in Ubud, do like Ubud which means do the Monkey Forest ... or something.

Ubud is known for its monkeys and its hippie yogis which are almost the same thing. OK, they are nothing like each other at all. But perhaps the yogis can use their devine powers to communicate with the monkeys? If so, I have some use for them.

Criminals!

After our friends from the Germanies arrived, one of the first things we did was visit the monkey forest. I personally got a taste of the monkeys even before we got through the gate. Since I didn't have anything to eat, I bought two pieces of banana bread. When we were close to the forest and I was still naive, unsuspecting and therefore unprepared, I unpacked my banana bread, had a bite and then out of nowhere a monkey materialises before me, jumps and climbs on me and snaps the banana bread out of my hand. We laughed! But I was also angry.

Statues of criminals

If I found a yogi that can talk to the monkeys, I want her to tell the monkey that he owes me a banana bread and I want the monkey to buy it at the Coco Market because they have my favorite one. After that I was still hungry but weary. Before going through the entrance, I checked my surroundings, took out the second piece, saw another monkey coming at me and put everything in my mouth. The woman at the entrance told me not to bring any food with me and I agreed with her even though I am not sure she understood me because I talked with a very very full mouth.

No criminals in sight. Not that I know of.

The forest was nice to look at, the monkeys climbed on you, if you bought any bananas from the banana-stands there and it was funny if you were intentionally carrying food to feed them.

It was nice.

Base 27 - Ubud

August is peak season for tourists in Bali. This means that because we decided to go there a week prior, the choice of rooms was severely cut down. The first priority was to find something close to the Yoga Barn, so it was more difficult. I booked a room close by with a view to a rice field for three days. The plan was to look for something better for a longer stay when we arrive there.

We didn’t find anything.

Either the rooms were too far from the Yoga Barn, or they were too expensive or we had to switch rooms every one or two days if we picked the hotel. We also looked for some rooms in Penestanan close to another yoga place but every room we’ve seen there had an intense smell of mold. I don’t know if you can even fight mold in a place like that but it was a shame. I hurt to have accesss to the most beautiful houses for good prices but not being able to stand the smell.

Da masta bedroom.

So now, our room for three weeks. It was actually three rooms. The first three days was in a small room with a double bed. It was too small. The second one was way more roomy, on the second floor and with two single beds which we had to push together. It only half helped. Diana fell in love with this room and wants to stay there forever even though it‘s a bit shabby. Hot water was sometimes missing. The bathroom didn‘t have a window and was damp most of the time. Some corners had a bit of mold. But the feeling there with the view was freeing. It felt like vacation.

The lobby and restaurant were also flawed but lovable. We went there every day at the last possible moment to order breakfast, because normally none of us eats breakfast. So I ate fried rice with vegetables and banana pancake for three weeks straight. Is that wrong?

It‘s all good.

Da masta restaurant.

We also had a third room for two nights because our favorite room was booked but it was horrible and we best forget about it.

Bali Ubud

After Diana came back from Thailand to Australia (did I mention, she was in Thailand?) she wasn't happy. Her stint in Thailand was more work than relaxation and she wanted to do more yoga and drink out of coconuts.

So, Bali. It is supposed to be something like an Australian colony because it is the cheapest vacation Australians can do outside of the country. At least that was the reasoning I wanted to use for including it in the blog. It's all a lie. We have heard more Germans than Australians here.

Where The Streets Have No Numbers

OK, it is not a lie, we are just on the wrong spot. The partying Australians are just in different parts of Bali. When we arrived here, I shamefully didn't know anything about Bali or Ubud. We came here because Diana was told it has the best yoga places. I just found out yesterday that the whole of the tourism here is rooted in the book/film Eat, Pray, Love. The core of it are women in their 30s looking for spirituality, fitness, cleansing, health, whatever. That's me basically.

First meal in Ubud.

I like and I don't like the center of Ubud. It has lots of good restaurants (and shops if you like that kind of thing). The people are good natured. It is cheaper than Australia. I like the traditional architecture. Also the rooms they do yoga in are stunning in their beauty and I don't even care for that kind of thing. What I don't like is the endless traffic and constant loudness and the taxi drivers asking for prices beyond what you would pay in Australia.

Working place in our hotel.

If you go a bit outside of the centre of the village, it is a completely different feeling. Traffic becomes much less and you see a mixture of beautiful nature, small, neglected shops and traditional courtyards that house multiple generations of families with their own mini-temple. Next time we come here, we will get a room a bit outside of town.

Then we will see more of this.