Our 2-day Bali getaway within Bali, Indonesia. A quick itinerary with our limited time on the island.
After traveling through New Zealand and Australia, we were now onto the Asia portion of our trip. While we had traveled New Zealand and Australia before, this was our first time in Asia.
Bali, Indonesia
In addition to New Zealand and Australia, we visited a lot of Asian countries. We did this by sea and sailed on the Silversea Nova for over two months. (We added two weeks in Japan on a Celebrity ship.) Our other destinations were Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietman, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Cruising made traveling Asia very easy.
Our first stop was in Bali, Indonesia which we had only heard good things about prior to going there.
We were mislead and given old information.
We were in Bali for two days. We had a ship cuisine tour the first day and the second day was a planned excursion from our travel agent.
The first day went off as planned. We were shuttled in to Kuta to a small side street and ushered up some suspect stairs (with handrails – thank goodness!) to an open floor plan restaurant for authentic Balinese cooking class.
From the fresh ingredients to make pastes to wrapping our food in banana leaves, this six hour cooking class ended with a dozen Indonesian (Bali specific) dishes – more than we could not possibly finish!
The class was a bit long as around hour four most of us in the class were “done.” Fortunately, three people, including Hubby, were more than willing to pick up the slack.
Hubby sliced, he diced, he slathered, mixed and stir fried. His mortar and pestle paste was outstanding, his pan fried rice was delicious, and no one from the cooking “school” ever took over for him.
My contributions were slicing some onions and garlic, making a minced chicken “purse” using a banana leaf and stringing chicken satay.
For some reason I got stuck shaping most of the fish on the lemon grass stalks. People had issues with that one (including Hubby!) This was my only real contribution to the class. Mostly I sat, observed, drank beer, and ate the finished products.
At the end of the day our class of eight sat down and tried to do justice to all that had been cooked, but there was simply too much food!
This was a very enjoyable experience for Hubby, I was ok with it, and it was unique to the area. We were both glad we participated.
The next day our tour provided by our travel agent was to Ubud. the first stop was to a John Hardy Jewelry Store, the Sacred Monkey Forest, on to the elephant cave and a lunch.
I decided the monkey walk was probably not prudent for me and the tour operator told us there were a lot of uneven stairs to the cave. (We talked to them after the tour and we definitely made the right decision.)
So, we bailed.
I did miss the jewelry store visit, however. One of our shipmates made a special trip there and came back with a gorgeous bracelet (among other things).
Hubby didn’t miss the jewelry store at all.
Hubby and I went into Kuta ourselves, and that was eye opening.
We caught an Uber into town. The price of a taxi was steep, at least four times the Uber cost. Sure, we had to walk a little way away from the port down a dirt road filled with little scorpions (not kidding), but to Hubby it was well worth it.
We went to the “market” which was a line of stalls facing the street. The sidewalk was under two feet wide in many areas and there was constant traffic driving on the roadwayc so you couldn’t hop off the sidewalk into the street. We also could not take any fruits or vegetables back to the boat, so it was a bust.
On our way to the art market we stumbled across a much nicer street to walk down. The jewelry store was tempting, but instead we entered a wood and paper art store where the artist was making content while we shopped. I ended up buying a lovely framed paper cut-out at the wood and paper store for $18 US.
We had lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we spent a whooping $20 for lunch (two beer, two lunches, only $20 total!) and then we made our way to the art market which was a total bust.
We did buy some Indonesian coffee (but not from Java) which was the most expensive purchase we made in Bali. $18 for 200 grams. We have used it since have been home, and wow was it good!
Our morning started off well as it was overcast and about 85°. It eventually rained and then the sun came out and it got steamy and sweaty.
We ended up cutting our day at around the four hour mark, and even though I wore 50SPF + 50 SPF clothing and a WIDE brimmed hat, my face ended up sunburned. Poop. It was good we did not stay out longer. That sun was strong!
I would like to purchase an even wider brimmed hat in Singapore as we still have several weeks left in Southeast Asia. (Update: it did not happen.)
Our Uber ride back to the ship was adventurous. Nothing like the driver pulling over to the side of a road and not telling you why. (He loaded some money on the card to enter the port, and it ended up not working at the port (even though they could see he loaded the money on the card) so we sat there for a while while the port authority tried to make his card work. Fun times.) The little scorpions were all gone when we got back to the dirt road, so that was a positive.
Would I go back to Bali? Nope. We are not beach people so we didn’t go that route, but from everyone we spoke to from my mother (who loved it) to people on the cruise ship who had been there 25 years ago, we have gathered that Bali has changed tremendously. It is inexpensive, and that is about all it had going for it for us.
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