Beijing Reflections

Our time in Beijing was very short-- just four days fit in between Bali and heading home to reality.

For me, the eternal optimist and finder of the bright side, it gave me the hardest experience of being in a culture completely distinct from my own. 

Before coming, I had done a lot of research (far more than Singapore or Indonesia!), reading a book on present day China and the current culture. Here I will be honest: I have always felt a great deal of guilty feelings toward a possible trip to China. Truth... I never really wanted to come! I had heard many stories from friends and family ranging from "you'll learn a lot, but you won't exactly enjoy it" to "absolutely awful and disgusting... NEVER will I go back again."

But close mindedness to a country with over a billion people is absolutely against everything I stand for, so when Stacen found a deal that would give us a four day layover in Beijing, I took it as a perfect way to break every bad stereotype, and see magical China.

Here I will be honest again... These days sadly did no succeed in changing a lot of the negatives.

Because  both the physical and human landscape is so removed from what I know, often i found myself WANTING to enjoy it, more than naturally enjoying it (except for our last perfect day, which was truly wonderful!)

Beijing is smoggy and gray. The language barrier is absolutely immense. People spit all the time-- in the streets, in the bathroom, (and to Kacie's horror!), even in restaurants. Nice ones. 

People also push, shove, and cut lines.

Smiles don't seem to come naturally, and sadly we had a lot of experiences where no one was willing to help, but instead yelled at us. Restaurants have very stark lighting, and generally a meal is expected to last about 20 minutes. Max.

Growing up the Latino/American way, I have to be honest... Beijing was tough.

Latinos are happy, colorful, and generally believe that if your meal took less than two  hours, you really rushed things.

Americans are friendly, helpful-- and so fantastically clean!!!

I am still uncomfortable with not having enjoyed my time here more, but I wanted to give you an honest take. We saw some amazing things, and had a great time-- because we as a group are happy people who really wanted to enjoy it.

There is of course much beauty here. The Great Wall. The palaces. Tea. Peking duck. Beautiful morning dancing in the Temple of Heaven.

But the divide between cultures and what is valued to me -- at least for now-- is still too uncomfortably big.

Outside the Forbidden City wall

Delicious breakfast dumplings!!

Bicycles!!

Sunny morning in the city

Enjoying durian ( a fruit that smells like a lovely mixture of trash and throw up!) at a night market. 

Our DELICIOUS Peking Duck experience. 

....

We are now on our way to DC, and will be putting some more stories and thoughts on our trip soon!!

Arigato, Narita!

With an 8-hour layover at hand between Singapore and New York today, I had enough time to enter actual Japan and do some sight-seeing.  

The extremely friendly tourist counter ladies told me how to get to Narita City, the town next to Tokyo's main airport.  My one goal in this trip was to eat real ramen in real Japan, and I succeeded.  

Feast your eyes on the soy-sauce base ramen and gyoza:

I also saw a Buddhist temple, wandered around a park, an successfully navigated Japanese-only train ticket machines, but food is obviously the most exciting and important. 

It's 4:45 pm right now in Tokyo.  I'm about to board my flight to Newark, leaving at 5:30, which gets me in at 4:45 EST.  Time travel, anyone?

Singapore, Take Two

Us lucky ducks had another day in Singapore before parting ways at Changi Airport this evening.  Recent forest fires in Sumatra and Malaysia have been covering the city in smog (something we didn't know about until yesterday), so we were worried that we would have to wear surgical masks.  

Luckily, the smog on the ground proved to be less threatening than it looked from the plane from Bali, and we had a delightfully sunny day to explore Singapore's riverfront and the Asian Civilizations Museum.  I don't have many pictures, but the best of the lot are here:

Looking toward the CBD (central business district) from the Queen Elizabeth Walk.  

The oldest bridge in Singapore and its delightful sign.

Old and new Singapore: shophouses converted into pubs and the nearby high rises.

Abstract, crocheted Buddhas at the Asian Civilizations Museum.

Japanese ice cream (green tea for me, and chocolate for my friend Nick, our guide to Singapore) to top the day off.

I'm at the airport waiting for my flight to Tokyo while Nicole, Stacen and Kacie are in another terminal gearing up for their four days in Beijing.  Many adventures still ahead.  Bersolong, travel partners!!

The Way to Do Lunch

After a morning of souvenir-shopping and wandering, the four of us met at the bottom of a road to make our way to lunch.  We'd heard that there was a fantastic local-food farm and cafe in the middle of rice paddies to the northwest of Ubud, and we wanted in.

The (very small!) sign pointing the way to the restaurant.

The road quickly became a motorbike track about 3.5 feet wide.  We had to dodge bikes through a narrow walled section, but after three minutes of walking, we turned a corner and were rewarded by realizing that we were in the middle of a rice-growing ridge.  

The motorbike track (apologies to my fellow travelers for possibly unflattering photographs!)

Rice paddies ready for new plantings.

We walked about a kilometer down the track, past a few enticing cafes and restaurants tucked into the fields.  Just as we were about to turn back, we found our place: the cafe and organic farm of Sari Organik.  The views were sensational.

Looking southwest from our table.  We are on a porch about 20 feet from the ground.  

Looking northwest from our table.  

The food could have been secondary - except for the fact that it was delicious.  

I rarely do this, but I took a picture of my food because it was so lovely.  This is Balinese nasi campur with a drink concoction called the Paddie Sunset.  I have a feeling that sunsets at Sari Organik are lovely.  

We're leaving Bali early tomorrow morning for a day in Singapore. I know I'm not quite ready to leave yet, but planes aren't quite as flexible as we'd like.

Ubud, Bali: aka Tropical Brooklyn

It's pretty perfect here! Below are some favorite snapshots...

Having successfully located a Pertamina (Indonesian government-controlled gas station), we sat outside our new Suzuki Karimun and discovered roads in Bali don't have names (?!?!?). When you turn onto a road, it just tells you which towns you will encounter.

View from the porch. PS: apparently there is an eel (!!) living in this particular patty, which we have been invited to hunt and eat tomorrow night!

Standard. Rice patties, villas, and scooters.

Nicole majestically navigates the trail up from the river. I can truthfully say this is the steepest trail I have ever seen.

Possibly the coolest road ever. 

Goldfish! PS: it's impossible to take a picture that doesn't have a temple in the background.

The Balinese build temples at curves in the road.

These doors are beautiful. They are everywhere.

Appears to be rice patties being overtaken by the jungle.

Standard.

Portion of the Campuan Ridge hike. Rare sight of a hill with no terraces, villas, or jungle. In the morning, this hike is majestic. In the late afternoon...this is where Balinese teenagers come to smoke cigarettes and make out (hooligans).

Lastly, I must share that every morning I wake up, step outside, and say to myself, "just another day in Paradise".

A Day at a Bali Beach

After waking this morning (and feeling so, so much better than I did yesterday) we all decided to make today a day at the beach! We hopped in the car and drove to Sanûr Beach, a feat which we were proud to accomplish in an hour (it took us 2 1/2 hours when we first arrived and were trying to navigate our way to Ubud). It took us a little while to actually find our way to the actual beach, because everything seemed to be fancy resort compounds. We found parking at last (3,000rp for all day - 30 cents) and our beach day began.

We found a spot right next to the stretch of beach reserved for Bali Hyatt guests, and even though we could not use the lounge chairs or get served fancy cocktails on the beach, it was still lovely. 

We quickly discovered that this Bali beach was in no way a match for the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The beach had a very steep slope down to the water, with trash at the ocean's edge and sea grass literally everywhere in the water. The only up was that the water temperature was very nice and refreshing. 

We had a late lunch at an amazing beachside cafe aptly named La Playa, where we enjoyed drinks at a much better price than in Ubud. Our food was wonderful, and was only tainted by the fact that there was some sort of animal in the tree above us eating the tree's fruit and then hurdling the leftovers down at us. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent either lounging on the beach or walking on the brick boardwalk that spanned the length of the beach. It was an interesting walk, because if you look to the right, you see normal beach an ocean. Look to the left, and everything is pools and resorts and real estate. It was very surreal. 

When the sun started to set, we decided to call it a day and try and navigate our way back. We made it, with only limited cursing on Stacen's part about how all Indonesian drivers must have death wishes. 

Lucy lounges in the sun.

The Hyatt guests right next to us.

Stacen takes a rest after our walk.

Awesome wind catching Lucy's sarong.

A Day of Trekking Around Ubud

When I researched Ubud this spring, one of the things I did was to literally type "Ubud, Bali" into Google image search and marvel at the photos - try it, it's nice escapism.  We've been here for three days already and hasn't quite yet seen anything to rival it, but I think that changed today.  

Nicole, Stacen and I set out this morning for a trek that would take us south and west of Ubud proper.  Kacie has been nursing a cold and decided to take a needed day of R&R ( which is great when the view outside your little porch is this:)

Looking at the rice paddy behind our hotel.

With the sun high in the sky and the rain at bay, we started in the Monkey Forest.  We went there yesterday and were treated to very greedy monkeys who are completely fearless.  They pretty much all look like this, except if you have food on you and they want it.  Nicole can tell you what the monkeys look like in that instance.  

We turned south and wandered through some expat villas that all command rice paddy views and have little swimming pools.  We were jealous.  Our path took us through little snatches of woods and back out to rice paddies, where we marveled at the various stages of rice production and irrigation.  

Rice drying on a tarp in the middle of the road.  I'm not sure what stage of production this is exactly, or what Indonesians cap it.  We did learn in Karimunjawa that there are actually four different words for rice in Bahasa Indonesian, the national standard language.  These correspond to the stage of production - for example, "nasi" is cooked rice.  We ate nasi goreng (fried rice) for breakfast for days before arriving in Bali, and finally got sick of it.

Nicole and Stacen lead the way through the rice paddies and villas.  

A little row of eco-cottages you can rent in the middle of rice fields.  We looked in - they each have a kitchenette, access to a pool, and are fantastically funky architecture (all bamboo).  How much is that going to set you back? About $21USD/night.    We slightly considered taking rooms there for a night as it was so tempting.

We wound through fields, past villa construction, and onto some forested tracks that would lead us closer to town.  Before we reached the road that could take us to Ubud proper, we went through a little artist's community.  We stopped in some galleries, which are chock-full of work of a dizzying array of styles.  Galleries are really just family compounds that sell the art that family members have created.  When you talk to someone in a gallery, you're guaranteed to hear that the piece you're looking at was created by their uncle.  Or brother.  Or aunt.  

We followed one gallery back and back and back, moving past the art (and the family's pet civet cat!) to find the cottages available for rent.  They're perched at the top of a hillside and have a lush series of terraces to overlook. 

Nicole plays the lady of the manor and displays the cottages and terraces.  I'm at the bottom of the hill.  

From here (not having found any art quite to our liking) we got back on the road, lunched (underwhelmingly), and headed to the next part of the trek.  The walk directions sent us to a hotel and said "take the narrow track down to a spot where you can swim in the river."  Dutifully, we located the Sayan Terrace Hotel, entered its grounds, and found a path.  The paved path ended, and a single-file track veered steeply down the hillside.  Stacen "Mountain Goat" Buchholz found this no obstacle, but Nicole and I found the pitch severe enough to cling to some weeds on our way down just in case we were to fall.  We were about to pack in and give up when Stacen reported from up ahead that it was well worth the effort.

We had found our picture-perfect moment.  

The river and its verdant rice paddies. The Four Seasons in Ubud is just to the left of where we were standing - but we got the view for free!

We gingerly made our way farther down to the riverbank, where a Bali was farmer laughingly told us that we could not swim, after all.  I don't think we've ever been that sweaty or dirty, so it was a keen blow.  To top off insult with injury, she asked us for 150,000rp (about $15) to cross her land and continue the trail. A hotel employee had come down to the river by this point (he commutes by swimming across!) and he thought it was a laughable proposition, so we felt fine declining.  We trudged up the hillside, feeling a bit giddy with our accomplishments but still supremely sweaty and disheveled.

Nicole and Stacen; models of trekking achievement and strength.

Shortly after reaching the main road, Nicole and I decided to head back to the hotel for a shower and relaxing beverage, and Stacen continued on to do another section of hike (where he found all of Unud's delinquents!).  

We have two more days in Bali - hopefully we'll be able to fit in everything we want to do!

Some Thoughts on Technology and Culture

What would we do without our fabulous tech? I don't think we've mentioned it yet, but we're running this blog entirely from our phones.  

Kacie handles serious photography with her Nikon DSLR - Nicole has a nice camera too, and I have a serviceable point-and-shoot, but mostly Nicole and I juggle real-camera pics with our iPhones so we have blog-ready pics.  When we get access to a good computer, Kacie will get the opportunity to share her great photos.

Then it's off to the Blogger app, where we compose and edit.  It's made sharing our trip extremely easy, so we're happy with what tech can do for us.  

Kacie in a photographer's stance on Karimunjawa.

Our week away in Karimunjawa gave us a week of radio silence that was surprisingly easier than we had expected.  While we like being able to stay close to family and friends, it's nice to find somewhere you can truly be away, in all senses of the word.  

Now that we're in Bali, though, there's so much to share that I would feel guilty keeping it all to myself.  We've been thinking a lot about Elizabeth Gilbert's (of Eat, Pray, Love) travels through Bali.  If you're unfamiliar with her story, she visits Italy and India first for the eating and the praying.  I've realized that she could have skipped both: there is so much excellent food and so many opportunities for reflection here that a year of just Bali could make you an extremely well-fed, balanced, and happy person.  

Some of the things that make us happy here are below:

Fire-orange marigolds on our lunch table.

Local microbrews.

A new friend on the homestay compound's entry wall.

An offering to appease evil spirits that live in the ground on the corner of our porch. 

Amazing rooftops.

The entryway to a Balinese family's communal compound and temples.

We've been living large but on-budget, and we couldn't be happier to be ending out time in Indonesia in such a beautiful, friendly place.

Bali-- Land of Temples and Happiness

Calm. Peace. Temples. Flowers. Dresses!

Bali has brought nothing but wonderful since we landed yesterday morning. It is actually as beautiful as we have always dreamed of. We are actually all feeling at peace just being here. Stacen actually has been seen just... Sitting. 

It is known as the "Land of Temples," and you really can't walk more than a few feet before seeing a family shrine or temple. The Balinese are proud caretakers of their faith, placing offerings almost anywhere you look (we all have to be careful not to step on small bamboo boxes filled with flowers and food in the sidewalk!). They also live in beautiful compounds where the entire family shares a beautiful maze of interconnected buildings, rooms, and of course, temples. We are lucky enough to be staying in a family compound that overlooks the only remaking rice paddy in the town of Ubud (the town in Eat, Pray, Love!). The family that owns it had been in this very spot for over two hundred years, and in Bali for much more.

Today we spend much of our day indulging in delicious food, drink, shopping, and sneaking into compounds whenever we could. Although there are some very touristy parts of Bali (mostly in the south of the island where Australians go to party), we are for the large part blissfully removed from resorts. 

We just can't stop looking at each other enough to say-- we love Bali!!

View from our front porch-- rice paddy with ducks!!

Lucy enjoys our wonderful front porch, reading about the history and activities of Ubud

Inside a family compound. This is standard.

Another view from our hostel porch-- we wake up and this is what we see!!

Another typical family home; this is what the Balinese live in!!

Another picture of juice. We LOVE our juices!!!

Happy elephant idol that made Nicole particularly happy!!!