Our first trip to the Southern Hemisphere - Bali!

Bali has been on our bucket list for awhile and we finally made it over Chinese New Year.  It did not disappoint.   Bali is in Indonesia, in the string of islands east of Java,  roughly 5 hours by plane due south of Hong Kong.   That it was mostly south and not much west was a surprise at least to me (Paul).  I guess that's why it is a haven for Australians.

This trip was our longest to date - 5 nights. That gave us enough lazy time to mix with our sightseeing.  We spent the first full day relaxing at the pool and the beach. We stayed at a ritzy hotel in the village of Sanur, right off the beach.    Here's a picture of us enjoying breakfast:

Lunch by the Infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Happy hour!  Mom and Dad were downing cocktails while the staff was entertaining Paul Eli and Esme.

 More cute pics of the kids swimming in the beautiful pools.

Esme really made progress with her swimming on this trip.   Here's a short video of her swimming on her own.

OK,  no more hotels and kid pictures,  I promise.  Bali stands out as a vacation destination because it has both beach/weather and culture in significant measures.  Driving up to Ubud,  which is the cultural center of Bali,  you see lots of artisans working on their respective crafts.  Here are the stone sculptors.

I thought it would be cool to send home a super-heavy stone sculpture but we decided against it.

Here is some wood working.

This the impressive grounds of an art museum and gallery.  I would have taken more pictures of the artwork and painters but the host/salesman was all up in my grill trying to get me to buy something.  It must have been my camera that tipped him off that we were big money.

Another cultural highlight in Bali is their version of good vs. evil dance - the Barong keris dance.   Like most things in Bali there was a feeling that all of this performance was done for the tourists,  but we still really enjoyed it.

More poses with Asian women and Esme.   The background is the local community theatre located in "suburban" Ubud (Batubulan).

Accompanying the dance was the local orchestra.   Our guidebook provided some interesting facts about the musicianship.  The recorder (called a Suling) in the lower right is played continuously using circular breathing.   The xylophone type things are actually tuned to be mildly dissonant,  at least by western ears.

This is the Barong.  He is the good guy,  representing order and harmony.

These women danced synchronously.   Their makeup and dancing style was quite interesting.

Paul Eli was pouting because he had had enough culture.   But they jumped into the stands for some audience interaction and it got a smile out of him.

 Our next big stop was the Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a bit of a respite for the children.

The park was set up to protect three varieties of long-tailed monkeys.   They certainly act like they own the place.

 The park was quite nice.   They had other temples within the grounds.

This statue is right next to a beautiful spring at the bottom of a long set of stairs.   This kind of flair is seen everywhere in Bali.

We spent awhile trying to get a monkey to eat a banana out of Paul Eli's hand.   Third take,  we got it but it's kind of underwhelming:

Near Ubud,  we had lunch at a beautiful building overlooking the Wos river valley:

 I didn't take pictures of the food but it was quite nice.  The owner was one of the Big celebrity chefs for local Balinese cuisine.   Of course she was Australian.

On the way back to our hotel we stopped off at a picturesque bridge built by the Dutch oppressors that spanned the river valley.  Unfortunately I didn't get any really nice pictures looking down from the bridge - it looks similar to the view from the restaurant.

 Our last important artisan stop was a teak furniture store to buy some outdoor furniture.   We were kind of flying in the dark - we couldn't get any good recommendations from the hotel or interwebs and the first place we tried wasn't a store at all,  maybe the owner's house?   We finally decided to drive down the main road towards the capital and have the cabbie drop us off when it looked promising.    We like to live dangerously,  but it worked out well...look at all that furniture!

Next post:  a bike tour through a Balinese village and rice fields.