Derek: Up up and away! The US and Canada had been good to us over the last two months, but Asia had always been at the forefront of our minds in planning this trip. We had intended to spend several weeks in Japan, then South Korea, Taiwan, and continue south over the course of July to October and spend November in Indonesia. Now that it was time to put our feet on the ground we looked at the weather a bit more in depth and realized that mid to late July in Japan is about as hot and humid as it gets, and right now there’s an extreme heat warning in-place!
Meanwhile, Indonesia is actually at it’s yearly low for humidity, rain, and has the clearest skies. If we are going to go at any time of the year, we should go now even if it wasn’t actually better than Tokyo by much right now.
As a side note, I used to love WeatherSpark’s interactive graphs and deep data on weather back in ~2012. However it was all built using Flash and when web browsers dropped support it looked like the site had been killed. Happily it’s come back and is great to use! Here are the pages for Tokyo, Denpasar (Bali), and a comparison between the two.
We had already booked the flight from Seattle to Tokyo as well as our first hotel, but the hotel was easy to swap to the Narita Airport Rest Hotel and we booked an onward flight to Bali with a switch in Singapore. We took the airport bus from Haneda Airport to Narita Airport which gave us just a tiny dip into what being in Japan would be like. There’s definitely some payment and translation apps that we’ll have to figure out when we return for longer, very likely at the start of September. We bought some onigiri rice triangles with seaweed and pickled plum filling from some stalls in the airport and called it a night.
Delta was perfectly fine for the US to Japan leg, then Scoot Airlines (the budget airline of Singapore Airlines) was fine if a bit well worn. Our bags were too heavy for Scoot’s carry-on and they bill you for every additional bit of service, so we sprung for the “Scoot Plus” service as it wasn’t much more and included bags and meals, which turned out to be fairly luxurious on the scale of things. Essentially business class on a 747.
Singapore airport was a very short stop-over, but we did see a butterfly enclosure which was exposed to the outside air and got hit by our first wave of tropical humidity. From there the flight to Bali was smooth and we descended over Java just as the sun was getting low. The colors were surreal and in the background here you can see what I think is Mount Semeru erupting ash and smoke!
We landed in Bali right at sunset and noticed that it went from the golden hour to very dark in the time it took the plane to taxi from the runway to the gate. Immigration was quick as we’d completed our visa application online ahead of time. Unfortunately, the baggage pickup wasn’t as smooth and my main bag was a no-show. After waiting almost two hours for the last bag from our plane to come out we walked away with a lost-baggage form. Exiting the airport we ran a gauntlet of eager taxi drivers offering their service, but found the air-conditioned Grab Lounge and used the app to request a car. That worked wonderfully (though we tried to outsmart the driver and meet them as they drove up, and they came to find us in the lounge…). A short (and fast) drive delivered us to the city of Sanur on the south east side of the island.
We’d booked a room for two weeks at Casa Meena, a villa with eight studio apartment rooms surrounding a wonderful garden and pool. It is located a 20 minute walk from the ocean and in a residential area which we hoped would be a bit quieter than the main tourist track (this was definitely true).
Charis: Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to enjoy the lovely surroundings of Casa Meena for very long before falling victim to ‘Bali belly’ the very first morning, effectively knocking me out of commission for the next 2 days.
The first morning that I managed to convince myself out of bed and on a walk down to the beach, we happened across an interesting sight about 15 minutes walk away, 2 metres from the road and only about 10 metres from the biggest thoroughfare that passed through Sanur.
Yep, that’s a little ball of fluff. Seeing her eyes all crusted and that she was blowing big bubbles of snot out of her nose, we eventually managed to prise this little one out of her hiding hole to take a good look at her. She was very mucky, and looked about 8 weeks old, with no other nearby cats or kittens visible. I became a lost cause pretty rapidly, and, clutching her between my hat and my chest, brought her back to Casa Meena for a quick wipe down and a drink of water.
Despite her ragged appearance, she was incredibly chilled and happy to be receiving attention. We took her up to a local vet (Grab, the Uber-esque app here actually has a ‘+ Pet’ option, which is pretty convenient!) who said she likely had cat flu, was sporting a fever and, as she was unwell, there was no way that she could be vaccinated or spayed currently and would we be able to look after her for the next 3 weeks, give her antibiotics and vitamins and bring her back in please?(!).
Alas, whilst our lovely host here was very understanding, there was a no-pets-in-the-courtyard policy in place and as she had two rambunctious dogs in her own house, she was not in any position to take in a cat. So, we spent the next several hours trying to hide from the afternoon sun in a little courtyard next to our accommodation posting on every appropriate Facebook group we could find, contacting the only major cat sanctuary on Bali (who said they had 530 cats(!) at present and many currently in their hospital with infections and please could we find a foster!) and several smaller venues such as cat boarding places to see if there was anything they could offer and… nothing. Unfortunately Bali has many stray cats and dogs and it looked like, for newcomers to the area without any contacts, there wasn’t much to do.
And I’d looked at most things. It’s illegal to take animals out of Bali as there is a high rabies risk on the island. There were pet-friendly AirBnBs but I’d have to commit to 3 weeks (when we weren’t even intending to stay in Sanur that long!) and spend a lot of money and spend the whole time looking after a kitten with thrice a day antibiotics and still maybe not have anywhere for her to go (if she was spayed she’d need post op care) and it all just looked too complicated for an otherwise friendly and not apparently hungry or dehydrated kitten and so after much debate, seeing as she had received an anti-fever injection, deworming and a vitamin injection, we ended up taking her back to the place she would at least be familiar with, and came home.
…and cried and cried and cried and felt awful and hated everything. ^^
AND THEN, I received a message back from the shelter saying they would try their best to find a space for her in their recovery unit the next day and could I bring her up in the morning?!
Gosh, talk about emotional rollercoaster. And we couldn’t just go back and get her, because we couldn’t keep her here overnight and it was getting quite late at this point so in the end we just had a bit of a fitful sleep and went back early the next morning…
To find her curled up in exactly the same spot we’d seen her in the previous morning. Thank goodness. One Grab+Pet later and she was up at the Villa Kitty Foundation in Ubud being checked over by their in-house vet, given further medication and whisked off to the recovery unit and I felt like my shoulders relaxed for the first time since I’d gotten here! They were giving their newcomers ‘C’ names this week, so she became Cora.
The Villa Kitty Foundation was pretty special. The founder came for a chat herself and invited us to lunch, as they have a weekly lunch on site for supporters (and there was even cake as it was her granddaughter’s birthday!). We got a tour around the sanctuary by one of the lovely staff which, whilst crowded, showed the cats were healthy and happy and keen to be made a fuss of. The lunch itself was incredible, with an array of very tasty vegan Indonesian food and we ended up meeting and chatting with some amazing people – a couple from Perth who have supported the sanctuary for years and come to Bali often, an American vet who was hoping to set up an exchange program involving the sanctuary for veterinary students and the founder herself, Elizabeth, who had set up the sanctuary in 2009 and been hands on ever since.
Our time there was an unexpected joy, I was very happy to make a donation and will, shamelessly, ask anyone else reading this who loves cats to please make a donation too if they can afford it. They do such amazing work!
Derek: Near the Villa Kitty Foundation is the Setia Darma House of Masks and Puppets. It houses over 1300 masks from Indonesia and Asia as well as a few from around the world, as well as over 5600 puppets! The collection is housed in several large traditional wooden buildings which themselves were interesting to see.
Each mask and puppet had a description next to it, but I’ll readily admit that it was like reading a one sentence description of the members of Greek mythology. It shouldn’t be surprising at all that the cultural and spiritual history of the islands spanning thousands of years has tremendous depth and nuance to it. Probably many of the names of the people the masks portray would be as familiar to a Balinese person as Hephaestus, Anubis, or Judas are to those of us in Europe and North America, but we were instantly overwhelmed. The artwork and style stands on it’s own though and we had a great time looking around.
The panther looking creature in the third photo is a Barong and would be worn by two people in a traditional dance. This predates the Hindu culture which now is the majority in Bali and we’ve seen the dance advertised heavily to tourists. We haven’t yet seen one, but hope to. Barong, and other Balianese masks, come in two categories. Many are made for sale as artwork, but the authentic ones used in the religious ceremonies have a ceremony of their own in which a spirit is invited to live in the mask or puppet.
The fourth photo is a set of shadow puppets. These are beautifully painted, but as far as we can tell you’d not actually see any color in a performance as they are held behind a white fabric screen and backlit with just shadows being projected. There are dozens to hundreds of fine holes punched and cut into each puppet so the image contains a great deal of detail.
We had been waking up early already thanks to jetlag and the heat and humidity of the day encouraged us to keep doing so. The crowded buildings and narrow streets were busy even before sunrise with locals flying by on scooters and small cars, seems we weren’t the only ones to think an early start was a good idea. About a ten minute walk from Casa Meena the buildings open up and we got into our first rice paddies. The rice plants are grown in fairly small areas which are flooded at different points in the growing cycle by a winding set of small canals. Many farmers will share the same set of canals and the water is managed communally in a system which is inexorably connected with the religious culture around water and life in Bali. UNESCO has recognized this system, called Subak, as an important part of the area’s culture.
One of the consequences of the water being managed communally is that fields are planted staggered in time, so the water can be focused to flood those where the plants need it and allow those later in their growth cycle to dry out somewhat. We passed fields with rice almost ready to harvest and others which had just been planted.
The vibrancy and profusion of flowers and plants is a huge part of the ambiance. Every house, wall, field, and restaurant seems on the verge of being overtaken by flowers and leaves.
When we were landing in Bali, at the Denpasar International Airport in the city of Kuta, we saw a huge structure in the sunset but could not see any detail. It stood far above all of the 1-2 story buildings and trees that we could see from the air. In the mornings when we walked to the beach in Sanur it was visible on the horizon and we had to know what it was.
The Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue shows the Hindu god Vishnu riding Garuda, a winged eagle-like demigod. Garuda’s mother had been enslaved and could be freed through a somewhat elaborate strategy requiring Amrita, the elixir of life. Garuda offered to serve Vishnu and be his mount in return for borrowing the Amrita.
The statue is the largest in Bali and one of the tallest in the world, over 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty and much wider. We visited the GWK cultural park which surrounds the statue and took a tour up into the statue to learn more about it. The design was started in 1990 and after several revisions and budget problems real construction started in 2013 and finished in 2018. There is still a lot of work happening to create a conference and events venue in the building the statue sits on and complete turning the surrounding space into an events and cultural center for south Bali.
If you look closely near Vishnu’s shoulder you can see two windows of the observation floor. Here’s the view looking out to the north, the airport is actually on that peninsula of land. There was a full size portion of Vishnu’s face from an earlier revision of the statue on the tour, you can get another bit of scale from it! The cultural park had several smaller, though still quite large, statues and a music amphitheater where we caught a few minutes of a show. The tour of the statue was great, we’d certainly recommend it, but be prepared for some pretty pushy sellers in the stores and entrance area.
Charis: After the GWK park, we headed to Nusa Dua on the south east coast to catch the Devdan Show – a dance show demonstrating many different traditional dances from the various islands in the Indonesian archipelago. The cast of dancers were very skilled and it was really interesting to see the different types of traditional garb also demonstrated in the dances.
It was good to learn a bit about the history too; many of the dances, like the masks above, are used to tell epic Hindu stories, such as the Ramayana saga.
Derek: We enjoyed our local area of Sanur quite a bit but the nearest beach faced south and didn’t have a great view of the sunrise. Getting up early one morning and heading to Sindhu beach in north eastern Sanur turned out to be well worth it. Many canoes with outriggers were anchored in the shallow water and Mount Agung was visible behind it. This active volcano is very holy in Bali and last erupted significantly in 2019, throwing ash 2 kilometers in the air. Quiet for now, we enjoyed the sunrise and the gorgeous beaches.
Charis: We also took advantage of our early morning walks to scope out a good place for massages, and found it at the Pure Bliss Spa, which we managed to frequent 3 times, trying out various different massages that they offered. It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it.
Derek: Bali is just slightly south of the equator and in addition to jungle has mangrove forests in several places. These have been badly affected by litter and deforestation in recent decades, despite being an important ecosystem for fishing and wildlife. Unsurprisingly there is verbal interest in conserving them, though from a quick outsiders perspective it seems to be more talk than action and mostly discussed when major political events and conferences come to Bali. There is a conservation center with a set of raised paths through the forest, but despite being freshened up for a large water management conference photo-shoot last month it was closed to the public when we tried to visit. We were still able to walk along a road though and see many thousands of small crabs hiding in the mud. It turns out they have fairly good eyesight for movement and it looked like a wave traveling across the mud as they all retreated from us!
Charis: A little bit of online research lead us to Toko Central, a huge sewing and crafting supplies shop in nearby Kuta. I bought some yarn and finally made myself a garment (Hot Mesh Top) that fit me! Due to the climate, there was no way I wanted to make something with a tight stitch, so this top was perfect and came together in 2 days. Having found a nice floaty skirt the day before, and feeling inspired by the red, white and black that are found everywhere in Bali (as representative of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), I opted for it in a nice burgundy.
We also enjoyed researching some of the best places to eat in the area. Being vegan hippie tourists appears to be quite common in Bali, so thankfully there were lots of options in most places, with quite a few fully vegan restaurants scattered around.
And when it comes to food, Malaika Secret has to be a highlight for our time in Sanur. Set in a home courtyard with mangroves growing out of the pool, this kitchen (and Malaika herself!) provided a 6 course vegan meal with some of the most incredible fermented products either of us had ever tried. This included a very tasty coconut feta cheese, a rich coconut coffee and the best gluten free bread I’ve had, which also happened to made with pumpkin. We were sat at a table with two other couples, one from Germany and one from India, so also had some excellent company and conversation throughout. Highly recommended!
That wraps up Sanur for us. We’re heading inland to Ubud, a large city in the foothills of the mountains, which is known for it’s rice terraces, crafts, monkeys, and shows. Catch you there!