The first of many [bali]. - Living in Another Language

Bali. Its hard to put it in one blog post, so I’m not going to. We had a fantastic trip, and it went way too fast. There are so many, many things to do in Bali, one week is just not enough. We didn’t even tap into the temples, water gardens, surfing…sigh. Then we decided…we’ll just have to go again! I’m going to divide our trip up in sections: the all inclusive resort, the water sports, taso elephant park, monkey forest, etc. You’ll just have to be patient with me. That’s a lot of pictures to go through! As always, I over did it. I came back with over 700 pictures. That’s 100 pictures a day! But it was worth it…I feel as if I captured what I wanted to. And as normal, some of these pictures are from my DSLR, the others are from my iphone.

Today I want to take time and reflect on Bali as a whole. The thing I appreciate most about traveling is the sense of culture and genuinely to each place we come to. Every country (haha, like we’ve been to a lot) has it’s own ‘essence.’ After living in Korea, full of fast paced, over scheduled, smart phone addicted, well educated people, I embraced the slow-paced life of the Balinese. It shocked me for once I didnt have to dodge people on the sidewalk that were too absorbed in watching t.v. on their smartphone then they were looking where they were going. People were enjoying life not technology. How could you not living in such a place as Bali?

It’s not an easy life though. The adult life of a balinese (man) is filled with working a full day, and only expecting a $10 paycheck per day. If even that. Talking to one of the taxi drivers we hired, he mentioned that he was no longer able to do things such as going surfing, because he has to work for his family. He works seven days a week, trying to provide his children a regular education. You see, unlike America, public schooling costs money. It’s not cheap, and unfortunately not everyone can even provide their children the simplest education.

The Balinese by any means are not uneducated. They excel in artistry and craftsmanship. I have never seen so many beautiful paintings (and they sold them for $50 dollars each!!!), wood and stone carvings, and jewelry. They’re also quite good at music. We went to three music gigs, and all three blew our socks off. Coming from a place (S. Korea) where paintings or anything artistic really, is hard to find, we appreciated it that much more!

As far as the scenery goes, you cant beat it. You’ve got beaches (black and white sand), corals, volcanos, ancient temples, water gardens, rice patties…and about everything in between. Oh, and you CANNOT beat Bali sunsets. I knew they were going to be good, I just didnt know HOW good. I’ll post some pics below.

Our overall trip was great. It was quite long. We left Friday night and took an overnight bus up to Seoul (5hours) and took off from the Incheon (Seoul) airport headed four our layover in Hong Kong at 10:00am. We arrived in Hong Kong at about 1:30pmish…after a smooth flight. The problem? There had been a typhoon plaguing the Hong Kong area over the past few days. We ended up having a 24 hour layover in Hong Kong, but with it raining so much, we didnt really feel like walking around out in a foreign city completely soaked. We got the brilliant idea to ask if there was an earlier flight to Bali out of Hong Kong. By george we got lucky, and there was! We were put on standby after hearing the flight was completely booked. We waited around in the most boring terminal for 6 hours…and eventually heard the good news. We got on!!!

We arrived in Bali at about 2:00 am local time. We werent supposed to check into our all-inclusive until the following afternoon, but the resort so graciously picked us up from the airport anyway.

Fast forward a week. We didnt want to leave. We did SOOO many things! I frankly doubted that I was going to be able to do half of them…but I DID!!! And, I had an absolute blast. By Friday we felt like we were just getting started with our vacation, and it was over. :(

Bali truly is an enchanted place. We cant wait to go back. Please enjoy a few pictures that I feel embraced the overall essence of Bali. As well as a few travel pictures…

Derik and our good friend Harriet on the subway.

Bus time!

Burger at 7:00am? YES. In Korea, this is a great idea. (Although my stomach didn’t think so)

Yummy Chinese pork and noodles in Hong Kong! Favorite!

Ok. So we thought traffic/driving was bad in SK. Bali? It’s INSANE. This is one lane. Yes, ONE lane.

The sunsets here are breathtaking!

The waves on the west side of the island! Gorgeous! I could have watched this for hours.

Bikes…everywhere.

Bali smells amazing. They burn an insane amount of incense everywhere. Every doorway has one of these little baskets filled with assorted trinkets, food, and flowers. And…of course burning incense.