Trail blazin' to Toya Bungkah to climb Mount Batur

Where to start, where to start?  I’ve been bad about keeping things current, so first a little update.  Tomorrow, June 2^nd I fly from Bali after a wonderful 30 days to Darwin, Australia.  Katy will meet me there a day later, and we’re going to couch surf for about a week, at which point we’re going to fly to Melbourne and start looking for work.  We both recently acquired our work-holiday visas for a year in Australia.  Who knows if we’ll stay the whole time, but we have the option should we want decide to stay.  The visa is meant to allow you to find work to supplement your travelling in Australia, so you’re not allowed to hold a job with one employer for more than six months.  But before we worry about that, Katy and I are focusing on finding jobs in general.  Please be kind Melbourne, I’d love to find a nice little job as a barista or something similar in a café to get my feet wet in the café business. 

Now for the backdated blogging, I last updated my interwebz audience (which most likely consists of no more than my immediate family and Katy’s Mom, hi Mom!) up to our visit to Ubud.  When we left Ubud, we caught a van to Toya Bungkah, where we planned to trek up Mount Batur and catch the sun rising over the the ridges of Mount Agung and look down on the whole island of Bali.  On the way there our driver convinced us to stop off at this tiny orchard, which specialized in growing coffee beans amongst a few other crops.  We sampled 8 different types of Bali coffees and teas, and if you know how much I love my coffee, you know I thoroughly enjoyed.  They had this weird specialty coffee that sells for insane prices anywhere else in the world that is made out of a coffee bean that has been digested by a weasel and then retrieved from its poop.  Some acid in its stomach does something to the bean during the process of digestion and turns their shit to pure gold.  I spend $50,000 rupiah (about $5 or $6 USD, which is unheard of) to try this weasel poop coffee.  It was good, but just different, not great by any means in my mind.  My suggestion, don't spend the $50-$100 on a bag of weasel poop coffee beans.  

They also had this giant fruit bat that you could feed coffee beans

My weasel poop coffee, Marcelle looks less than envious

After that little detour, we drove through the winding mountain roads, down to the beautiful lakeside bungalows of Toya Bungkah where we ate gado-gado and organized our trek up Mount Batur for the following morning. 

The view from the van

Kids at Toya Bungkah

Sunrise at the summit of Mount Batur

Breakfast was a steamed eggs and a steamed banana sandwich

wild monkeys on the ridge

"skiing" down the black sand ridge

our guide

silly photos, a great idea by our guide

A little bit more Bali: Kuta and Ubud

We left the chill atmosphere of Amed after about four nights and headed back to the madness and excitement of the big city, Kuta. My main goal there, outside of avoiding the hawkers and not getting run off the road by a motorbike, was to learn to surf…and surf I did. It took three separate lessons to be able to stand up consistently and with any amount of confidence, but I finally did it with the help of my awesome surf instructor, Agung. He insisted on giving me the second lesson for free because he wanted to make sure I could stand up properly. After those few days surfing, I usually hung around Agung’s umbrella with a few other folks, just chatting and occasionally having a yummy Nasi Goreng from the beach vendors and of course, renting a board for a few hours at a time and practicing what I had learned. One afternoon Katy and I went down to the beach with all intentions of renting some boards and trying our luck with the surf that day, but instead we ended up getting sucked into an awesome beach party separating Linda’s birthday (an awesome Indo girl trying to start her modeling career in Kuta). My good friends Jim Beam and Bintang came along…oh my, what a fantastic afternoon. One guitar, a few drinks, multiple sing alongs, good company, and drunk surfing at dusk…what more could you ask for?

Beach party clan, Agung is the one with the guitar (he played as beautifully as he sang)

I am trying to upload a video of an Indo girl (I forget her name, thanks a lot Jim) who has a power house voice and sings with some real soul. Anyway, moral of the story is that the video won't upload, so use your imagination and I'll try another time or I'll just show you when I get back if you're interested enough to ask me.

Moving on...


After Kuta, we headed to Ubud, which is the artistic center of Bali, not to mention a yoga and meditation sanctuary (you could call it the Eat, Pray, Love city, they actually sold little Eat, Pray, Love statuettes haha). It was a nice place, kind of ritzy and overpriced, but nice nonetheless. There was one café that I loved in particular, it’s called Kafe and it totally sent my café senses haywire. Marcelle and Katy were always laughing about how happy I got over a really good cappuccino or the fact that I needed to take pictures of everyone’s dishes because they were so delicious looking and well presented. I definitely snagged a few good café ideas from this place to add to my mental Rolodex of my one-day café.

Ubud is a barrage of beautiful store fronts and works of art

Pinky out when you're eating street food. I should have taken a picture carrying a huge basket full of different types of food on her head.

Meg's Big Bowl at Kafe. Om nom nom, it was just as yummy as it looks.

Aside from the obvious good eats, the other highlights of Ubud were the monkey temple forest and the white water rafting trip. The monkey forests is just as it sounds, a forest/park thing with a big temple and a shit ton of monkeys. There were big monkeys, baby monkeys, obese monkeys, monkeys sleeping and swimming and hugging, monkeys flying from trees, and stealing bags of bananas from out of your hands. It was a cool experience, to say the least.

Obese monkey (banana belly?)

This monkey just stole that bag of bananas from a full grown man

Just taking a little dip

Monkey on a shrine

A wet monkey eating a banana (you get the idea yet?).

Baby monkey dangles while Mama monkey gets her butt cleaned.  Isn't it just darling?

Monkeys hugging. It's amazing how the similarities shine through in moments like this.

Monkey shrine.

Intricate carvings.

Just monkeying around (a tired joke that had to be made)

Did I mention there were tons of monkeys?

I should have stopped there but this one is just adorable.

While monkeys are cool, nothing compared with white water rafting on the Ayung River through terraced rice paddies, under waterfalls and over four meter high drops off a damn. I was a bit to chicken to risk my camera's life during the actual rafting so here are a few before and after shots.

Free Bali coffee pre-rafting

Getting stoked

Looking down on the take-out on the Ayung River.

And here are a few pretty pictures of the rice paddies that are everywhere in Bali.

People are always carrying impressively heavy loads on their heads.

Motor bike is hands down the best way to get around Bali.

Katy looking pretty in the rice paddies as the sun falls low in the sky.

Some terraced paddies on the way to the Ayung River.

Bali Baybay

WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2011

So we've been in Bali for a little over two weeks.  I must say, Bali is one of, if not, my favorite place so far.  We arrived on the 4th, spent a night in Kuta, which is the beachside tourist enclave.  You'll walk down the streets being harassed with a few phrases, ultimately saying the same thing: Please spend your money here.  A few of my favorites: you buy? transport, transport? massage? cheap cheap (which sounds more like chip chip).  Anyway, after one wild night in Kuta and nearly escaping a night in a bed bug ridden room by the skin of our teeth, we headed out on the four hour ride to Amed through the tiny winding mountain roads framed by terraced rice paddies.

Katy, breaking it down in Kuta like only she can

The thing to do in Amed is chill, chill and chill some more.  Squeeze in a few awesome meals (gado-gado being my favorite), a game of chess or two, a cup of Bali coffee in the late afternoon and a long seaside walk if weather permits and you've got Amed all wrapped up.  There is also supposed to be really beautiful at a big wreck a short boat ride away, but the seas were too murky because of the rain the whole time we were there to do any diving.  No matter though, I still thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Amed, taking in the scenery, talking to locals and watching the sun move slowly across the sky.

Photo by Katy: Local kids flying kites in Amed

Marcelle and the rice paddies

Meet Gadi, a Berkley man who Marcelle and Katy met at some other point in the journey.  He spent a few days chilling with us in Amed.

Our little bungalow by the sea in Amed

Kids playing with water bottle boats in the black sands of Amed

Mama Warung, our home in Amed for a few days

One of the main industries in Amed is salt making.  These large structures are used in the salt making process.  Apparently, they need four consecutive days of sunshine to make salt, something that Amed hasn't had in 2 years.

Their other industry is fishing, which has also been affected by the consistent rain that Amed has seen for the past years. Sonny, the owner of our bungalow is a fisherman and salt maker by trade.  He says he hasn't been able to fish for at least a year because of the change in weather patterns.

Little hams, on their way to fly kites.  Tons of people would get together every day on the beach and fly kites for hours.  It was a lot of fun and harder than it looks.  I tried once and just kept nose diving my kite into the ground again and again.

Just a little porch chillin'

The family that owns Mama Warung flying some kites shoreside.

This was the walk we took to get from our bungalow the road.  That is the only road that runs through Amed.  It was really funny walking along the road because everyone would always ask you where you were going, and not in an attempt to sell you transport or get you to go to their place, they were genuinely interested in where you were off to 9 times out of 10.

Fishing boats framed by the sea and the volcano which is the highest point in Bali.  It's hard to see it because of the clouds, but you can just trust me that it's there and that it's huge.

Sonny breaking out the motor bikes for our little joy ride.

Strange fruit.

At one point, Marcelle stopped, turned off her bike, and then it wouldn't turn back on.  I had to wave a friendly moto rider off the road to help us start it after about ten minutes of failed attempts at starting the bike.

It was raining more times than not while we were in Amed, so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves indoors.    Oh, how I love Katy.

After a few days in Amed it was back to Kuta for us for a little hustle and bustle by the white sand beaches and big waves littered with surfers.