Bali Indonesia

Bali has it all.

World class surfing and scuba diving. Mountains to climb and rivers to raft. Smoldering volcanoes and smoldering jungles (full of menacing monkeys)! It even has one of the most interesting cultures we have seen (see the photo of traditional Balinese dancing above). Bali is a Hindu island in the midst of the largely Islamic country, Indonesia.

Bali is one of many islands in the archipalego (string of islands) which makes up the country of Indonesia. Indonesia's enormous amounts of land (over 3X that of France) are spread out over an even more enormous area of ocean, and are highly populated (some estimate 300,000,000 people). Not surprisingly, the culture of each island is dramatically different from the rest.

Kelsi first visited Bali several years ago. Since that time, the best-selling travel/spiritual book, "Eat, Pray, Love," featuring Bali came into our hands. In the book, the author spends several months with a traditional Balinese medicine man named Ketut Lyer. Although we had no thought to look him up, by strange fortune, we happened to meet a man who took us to Ketut for a palm reading. Ketut was a delight! As part of the palm reading, he inspected our palms, backs, arms, legs, and heads. After looking us over, he pronounced with a huge, toothless grin that we were "very good boys and girls!" Among other things, he let us know that Rusty's lips were sweet like sugar, whereas Kelsi's were sweet like honey. He told Kelsi to slow down while driving and Rusty to work on a patient heart. Definitely worth the visit...


In addition to visiting with Ketut the medicine man and painter, we paid a visit to the famous monkey forest in Ubud. It was confirmation that Kelsi was indeed sweet like honey; the monkeys wouldn't stop bothering her!

Rusty seemed to get along alright. They must have thought he was one of their own!



In addition to our time enjoying Balinese culture, we decided to try our hand/feet at surfing. Before we rented boards on our own, we hired an instructor at a local surf school to get us started out. Although he was able to get us both up and riding pretty well, as you can see, he couldn't get Kelsi to quit plugging her nose. Her nose-plugging style is a little unorthodox, but she managed to take a few rides.



Bali is really a great place for anyone and everyone: great shopping, five star accommodations (not that we stayed in one), reasonably safe (if you stay away from the night clubs), and it's affordable on our budget.