Monkeys and chickens and margaritas, oh my!
Well, Christmas in Bali came and went.
We arrived late Friday night, pretty much just in time to check into our cute little Kuta hotel and go to bed. Saturday we relaxed, hung out by the pool and did a little wandering through the shops.
Saturday evening we drove to Uluwatu, a cliffside Hindu temple that features a nightly kecak dance, a traditional performance telling the story of the Ramayana. When we arrived at the entrance, I was told to remove my earrings and sunglasses.
“Monyetnya nakal!” (The monkeys are naughty!)
Indeed they were. Uluwatu’s grounds are home to a band of brazen, grabby little monkeys who aren’t the least bit subtle about demanding food, and are known to be kleptomaniacs. We purchased a few little bags of fruit at the entrance, but those didn’t last long. One monkey grabbed a piece of fruit from me, nibbled it, gave me a dirty look, put the fruit in one of his feet and grabbed another piece. Then he repeated the process until he had one piece in each hand and one in each foot. Another monkey took a piece of fruit, tossed it over his shoulder and grabbed the entire bag before scampering off. Monyetnya nakal, indeed.
The show was wonderful, but it did get a bit scary toward the end when a largeish wad of kerosene-soaked, flaming straw accidentally got kicked into the audience and landed on the lap of a girl sitting directly in front of us. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it was alarming nonetheless.
After the kecak performance, we drove back to Kuta and went to Un’s, a fabulous little restaurant we liked so much we visited twice when we were in Bali with Mark, Kim and Kristin. It had been a year and a half since we’d been there, but the instant we walked into the restaurant, a waiter approached us and greeted us by name. He asked how our friends were, and even remembered their names. Amazing. The food at Un’s was pretty amazing, too. The tortellini I had was so good it was almost an emotional experience. Travis’s chicken dish was equally fantastic. Un’s is also famous for its house specialty-citrus-y frozen margaritas. When you are seated, you are given a damp, chilled handkerchief to cool off with and a little shot glass-sized sample of the margarita. I’m definitely always up for a margarita, so I ordered a big one to go with dinner. Lovely.
We arrived in Amed on the 24th and were delighted to find that everyone at the sleepy, gorgeous little resort still remembered us. We arranged for a Christmas morning sunrise boat ride, hung out in the pool a bit and relaxed. By dinner time, though, I was feeling miserable. My sinuses, it seemed, had decided to try to kill me.
I hardly slept that night, but forced myself to get up for the sunrise boat ride. We set out in the little wooden outrigger boat, which is really more like a canoe. There were rain clouds out over the water and the actual sunrise was barely visible. As we went further out to sea, into the solid dim grayness, I started getting a little panicky. What if it started pouring? I can’t swim really well! I have no lifejacket! What if there are sharks? I don’t want to die on Christmas Day!
Suddenly there was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. I freaked out.
“I don’t want to die! It’s Christmas! I’m only 26! I have a cat and a dog that NEED me!”
Luckily the boat’s owner, along with all of the other boats out at sea nearby, decided to turn back. It didn’t take long to reach the shore, but by the time we did it had been pouring rain solidly for about five minutes. The fishermen were whooping and cheering—apparently it hadn’t rained in months and people were getting worried. It made for a memorable, exciting experience but it didn’t do a lot for my sinus issues.
I spent the rest of our time in Amed in bed, miserable. So much for Christmas in paradise. We did have some fun, though. There was a mother hen with a brood of about seven half-grown chicks who roamed the resort grounds. After our very wet boat ride, we waited until the restaurant opened and staggered in for breakfast. We were sitting right by the edge of the open-air pavilion, enjoying coffee and juice while waiting for our toast and eggs when mama hen and her babies showed up.
They perched at the edge of the restaurant and eyed us closely.
“Travis…I think they want food,” I said.
It soon became clear that yes, the chickens were in fact expecting food. They weren’t exactly begging, per se; it was more like demanding. Mama hen stared us down until we quickly tossed bread crusts to her babies. Once they’d had their fill, they moved on to the next pair of diners. Later that day, Travis went to the restaurant to get me some hot tea to drink. When he came back, he ran breathlessly into the room and slammed the door behind him. I was about to ask what the deal was when I heard a chorus of angry peeping.
We both burst out laughing and peeked outside, where the mother hen and her babies were standing on our porch. Apparently they’d spotted Travis walking from the restaurant to the bungalow with something in his hands and, hoping it would perhaps be food he could be bullied into sharing, they chased him all the way back.
We returned to Kuta on the 26th, and I stayed in bed for most of that day, too. By the 27th, the day we had to leave, I finally felt well enough to wander a little and do a bit of shopping…just in time to get on a plane and fly home. Lucky me.
I’m feeling better now, but I do think that we’ll have to check out the possibility of another trip to Bali before we leave-perhaps a long weekend of part of our March break. I just didn’t feel like I got to say a proper goodbye to one of my favorite places in the world.
Well, it may be a while before I get to blog again. This one is posted courtesy of my good friend Dan, who offered to put it up for me if I’d send it to him over e-mail. An earthquake off the coast of Taiwan damaged an undersea telecommunications cable, disrupting internet, cable and telephone service to most of Asia a few days ago. Things are slowly getting back online, but it could be another two to four weeks before we are fully back to normal. We can’t currently access our blog site at all, and e-mail works maybe 60% of the time. Skype is semi-working, and we won’t be able to make international phone calls using our landline for another three days or so.
So…my apologies for not blogging much. I know some people get really antsy and irritated if we don’t update often enough for their liking-and they know who they are-but hopefully they’ll understand the circumstances. If they don’t, then…well, they can strap on a scuba mask and fix the cable themselves because there’s not a lot else anyone can do. Darn technology. It’s so wonderful to have but we’ve become so reliant on it that we suffer if we don’t have it. We rely on it so much to stay in touch with everyone back home, and we feel totally cut off if we can’t have that regular contact! Hopefully everything gets fixed soon.
Happy New Year!
We arrived late Friday night, pretty much just in time to check into our cute little Kuta hotel and go to bed. Saturday we relaxed, hung out by the pool and did a little wandering through the shops.
Saturday evening we drove to Uluwatu, a cliffside Hindu temple that features a nightly kecak dance, a traditional performance telling the story of the Ramayana. When we arrived at the entrance, I was told to remove my earrings and sunglasses.
“Monyetnya nakal!” (The monkeys are naughty!)
Indeed they were. Uluwatu’s grounds are home to a band of brazen, grabby little monkeys who aren’t the least bit subtle about demanding food, and are known to be kleptomaniacs. We purchased a few little bags of fruit at the entrance, but those didn’t last long. One monkey grabbed a piece of fruit from me, nibbled it, gave me a dirty look, put the fruit in one of his feet and grabbed another piece. Then he repeated the process until he had one piece in each hand and one in each foot. Another monkey took a piece of fruit, tossed it over his shoulder and grabbed the entire bag before scampering off. Monyetnya nakal, indeed.
The show was wonderful, but it did get a bit scary toward the end when a largeish wad of kerosene-soaked, flaming straw accidentally got kicked into the audience and landed on the lap of a girl sitting directly in front of us. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it was alarming nonetheless.
After the kecak performance, we drove back to Kuta and went to Un’s, a fabulous little restaurant we liked so much we visited twice when we were in Bali with Mark, Kim and Kristin. It had been a year and a half since we’d been there, but the instant we walked into the restaurant, a waiter approached us and greeted us by name. He asked how our friends were, and even remembered their names. Amazing. The food at Un’s was pretty amazing, too. The tortellini I had was so good it was almost an emotional experience. Travis’s chicken dish was equally fantastic. Un’s is also famous for its house specialty-citrus-y frozen margaritas. When you are seated, you are given a damp, chilled handkerchief to cool off with and a little shot glass-sized sample of the margarita. I’m definitely always up for a margarita, so I ordered a big one to go with dinner. Lovely.
We arrived in Amed on the 24th and were delighted to find that everyone at the sleepy, gorgeous little resort still remembered us. We arranged for a Christmas morning sunrise boat ride, hung out in the pool a bit and relaxed. By dinner time, though, I was feeling miserable. My sinuses, it seemed, had decided to try to kill me.
I hardly slept that night, but forced myself to get up for the sunrise boat ride. We set out in the little wooden outrigger boat, which is really more like a canoe. There were rain clouds out over the water and the actual sunrise was barely visible. As we went further out to sea, into the solid dim grayness, I started getting a little panicky. What if it started pouring? I can’t swim really well! I have no lifejacket! What if there are sharks? I don’t want to die on Christmas Day!
Suddenly there was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. I freaked out.
“I don’t want to die! It’s Christmas! I’m only 26! I have a cat and a dog that NEED me!”
Luckily the boat’s owner, along with all of the other boats out at sea nearby, decided to turn back. It didn’t take long to reach the shore, but by the time we did it had been pouring rain solidly for about five minutes. The fishermen were whooping and cheering—apparently it hadn’t rained in months and people were getting worried. It made for a memorable, exciting experience but it didn’t do a lot for my sinus issues.
I spent the rest of our time in Amed in bed, miserable. So much for Christmas in paradise. We did have some fun, though. There was a mother hen with a brood of about seven half-grown chicks who roamed the resort grounds. After our very wet boat ride, we waited until the restaurant opened and staggered in for breakfast. We were sitting right by the edge of the open-air pavilion, enjoying coffee and juice while waiting for our toast and eggs when mama hen and her babies showed up.
They perched at the edge of the restaurant and eyed us closely.
“Travis…I think they want food,” I said.
It soon became clear that yes, the chickens were in fact expecting food. They weren’t exactly begging, per se; it was more like demanding. Mama hen stared us down until we quickly tossed bread crusts to her babies. Once they’d had their fill, they moved on to the next pair of diners. Later that day, Travis went to the restaurant to get me some hot tea to drink. When he came back, he ran breathlessly into the room and slammed the door behind him. I was about to ask what the deal was when I heard a chorus of angry peeping.
We both burst out laughing and peeked outside, where the mother hen and her babies were standing on our porch. Apparently they’d spotted Travis walking from the restaurant to the bungalow with something in his hands and, hoping it would perhaps be food he could be bullied into sharing, they chased him all the way back.
We returned to Kuta on the 26th, and I stayed in bed for most of that day, too. By the 27th, the day we had to leave, I finally felt well enough to wander a little and do a bit of shopping…just in time to get on a plane and fly home. Lucky me.
I’m feeling better now, but I do think that we’ll have to check out the possibility of another trip to Bali before we leave-perhaps a long weekend of part of our March break. I just didn’t feel like I got to say a proper goodbye to one of my favorite places in the world.
Well, it may be a while before I get to blog again. This one is posted courtesy of my good friend Dan, who offered to put it up for me if I’d send it to him over e-mail. An earthquake off the coast of Taiwan damaged an undersea telecommunications cable, disrupting internet, cable and telephone service to most of Asia a few days ago. Things are slowly getting back online, but it could be another two to four weeks before we are fully back to normal. We can’t currently access our blog site at all, and e-mail works maybe 60% of the time. Skype is semi-working, and we won’t be able to make international phone calls using our landline for another three days or so.
So…my apologies for not blogging much. I know some people get really antsy and irritated if we don’t update often enough for their liking-and they know who they are-but hopefully they’ll understand the circumstances. If they don’t, then…well, they can strap on a scuba mask and fix the cable themselves because there’s not a lot else anyone can do. Darn technology. It’s so wonderful to have but we’ve become so reliant on it that we suffer if we don’t have it. We rely on it so much to stay in touch with everyone back home, and we feel totally cut off if we can’t have that regular contact! Hopefully everything gets fixed soon.
Happy New Year!
Labels: Bali, beach, Christmas, holiday, monkeys, sunrise, vacation
posted by Erin @ 11:31 AM
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