Bali

We LOVED Bali. Tourism is slowly recovering after the “Bali Bombings” in 2002 and 2005. It is such a friendly place that it is hard to imagine such bombings happening there but it is never far from the Balinese’s minds. It often came up in conversation with locals as the beginning of a new time clock: “Ever since the Bali Bombings…..”. We did see evidence of some ongoing concerns when we went to two places popular with westerners. When we went to visit a friend who was staying at the Bali Marina, the security guard checked under our taxi for bombs with one of those long handled mirrors. This also happened when we went to the Carrefour Supermarket. If ever there was a testament to the wealth of the west, Carrefour is it. You can buy all sorts western delicacies there including, my favorite, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese dinner for $2.50 a box.

Bali is the centre of Indonesian art, crafts, music and culture. We would have to stay a month to take it all in. We took a few day trips to Kuta to watch the surfers, Jimbaran for the famous fish market, Sanur for the famous Kecak (Fire) Dance. The highlight was our trip to Ubud, the undisputed centre of arts and crafts, where we found beautiful hand crafted batik fabrics, gorgeous Balinese paintings and witnessed the colourful Legong Dance.

The dance was performed at the Ubud Palace where the royal family still lives. It is the most graceful of Balinese dances and is performed mostly by young girls wearing costumes made of gorgeous bright colored brocades. The music is hypnotic and the dancing is graceful yet quirky at the same time.

Ubud is surrounded by lush, green terraced rice fields. The drive was breathtaking. Unfortunately, when we stopped to take pictures, we were overwhelmed by hawkers trying to sell us stuff. They were the most aggressive that we had seen anywhere and we soon retreated to the refuge of our vehicle to get away from them. I would have loved to sit there for hours to take in the beauty of the scenery, but it was not to be.

The major religion in Bali is Hinduism. There are shrines and temples everywhere and three times a day, offerings are made to their god. These offerings can be seen EVERYWHERE… in front of temples, shrines, stores, homes and even on the dashboard of each taxi . These offerings are usually a small basket woven from palm fronds filled with colorful rice and flowers and nuts and natural things which give off a pleasant rice smell when beat upon by the hot Indonesian sun.

With less than two weeks remaining on our Indonesian Tourist Visa, we had to tear ourselves away from this fabulous place and make our way North towards Malaysia. For the first two days of our sail, I felt a bit queasy getting used to the unique swell of the Java Sea. For the next five days, Steve and I couldn’t believe how pleasant the sail was. We had nice winds, not too much motion and we were making good speed. We should have known it was too good to be true. On the morning of the 7th day, contrary to any weather reports, a squall came out of nowhere. We were going up the straight to Batam when the winds turned 180 Degrees and increased to 50 knots right on our nose. We had to take all our sails down and motor into it so we didn’t get blown onto the reefs on either side of the straight. For half an hour we made no head way as the rain pelted us horizontally. Eventually the winds reduced to 40 knots for another hour and then 30 knots and we arrived at Batam, our final destination in Indonesia, soaking wet and exhausted, looking like drowned rats.

Borneo

We arrived at the port of Kumai and chartered a small boat and a guide to take us 5 hours up the river into the jungle. The boat, which was about the length of Toboggan, had 4 staff: the guide, the cook, the assistant, and the captain (who also brought his 10 year old son since it was a holiday). The staff usually stuck to the lower deck which had only about 4 feet of head room (just enough to sit down). I felt bad for the cook because his galley was in the same room as the engine so it must have been over 40 degrees Celsius down there. He cooked us 3 meals a day of delicious traditional Indonesian food.

Even though it was the dry season, it rained a lot. The deck hand was constantly putting up the rain tarp and taking it down. Our clothes were soaked and we eventually stopped putting on dry clothes because they kept getting wet. The bathroom was at the stern of the boat which didn’t have a roof over it so we had to take an umbrella when we went to the bathroom.

At night, we tied up to some palms at the edge of the river and ate our dinner by candlelight on the top deck while the staff ate on the lower level. We had heard that the fireflies put on quite a show at night but we just couldn’t believe it. Thousands of them blinked at the edge of the water all night while we slept on the top deck under a mosquito net. .

The next day, we hiked into the jungle to get to the camp. It was only about half a kilometre but it was slow going because it was very muddy and slippery from the rain. At one point, the guide had stopped to show us a certain plant along the edge of the trail and when he turned back to step onto the path again, Steve grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him just in time to avoid stepping on a snake. The guide was extremely shaken. We were less that a metre from the snake as it continued slowly across the path and disappeared. The guide told us it was a Yellow Python and that he is particularly afraid of snakes since his Aunt was killed by a cobra and died a terrible death.

We reached camp Leakey which is used to reintroduce Orangutans into the wild. Over the years, many Orangutans have been captured and kept in small cages at zoos and hotels and private homes (as a symbol of wealth) and for the last 20 years there has been public pressure to release them. These captured orangutans have lost their skills to survive in the jungle so they need to be rehabilitated. The camp provides one feeding a day of bananas and milk so that the Orangutans can come if they are not getting enough food in the jungle. The camp rangers made a loud call, like Tarzan, then Orangutans started to appear swinging through the trees at the top of the jungle canopy. They dropped down to the platform where the rangers had dumped hundreds of bananas and poured a gallon of milk into a bucket. We could not approach the Orangutans or the platform (believe me, you don’t want to get between an Orangutan and a banana) but many of the Orangutans came quite close to us on their way to or from the platform.

The Orangutans were very interesting to watch. They displayed many human characteristics and distinct personalities. One behavior I found interesting was that they always had a hand on their escape vine even when they stood on the ground so that they could make a quick get-a-way when a more dominant Orangutan approached. The adult female Orangutans were quite intimidating but the males were downright scary. The babies, of course, were precious.