Bali, Indonesia

Bali

We went to Bali in November to visit a friend and explore this beautiful island of Indonesia. Bali is absolutely gorgeous with its green lush vegetation and tons of azaleas. The temperature was really nice, warm and sunny and it rained only once.

Rice Fields

There are many fields of rice and because Bali has mountainous terrain, they tier the rice fields to maximize the agriculture. Within a year they sow and reap three crops.

Temples

Bali has numerous temples; we visited a few of them. Tampak Siring (Holy Spring Temple) is where people go to pray and “purify” themselves with the water that is coming out of a spring source underground. Below you can see someone praying under the water fountain.

The Besakih temple is said to be the most important, largest and holiest temple of Hindu religion in Bali. Besakih is a complex of twenty-two temples. It has stepped terraces and flights of stairs which ascend to a number of courtyards and brick gateways that in turn lead up to the main sanctuary structure, which is called Pura Penataran Agung. All this is aligned along a single axis and designed to lead the spiritual person upward and closer to the mountain which is considered sacred.

Water Palace of Tirtagangga

Tirtagangga is a former royal palace and its name means water of the Ganges, Hinduism's holy river. The water palace has fountains, gardens, and stone sculptures of mythical creatures spouting water into bathing pools. Here are some pictures of the water palace.

The round stones above are actually stepping stones so you can walk "around" in the pool. If you look in the water near the fountain, there are some big Koi fishes.

Ujung Water Palace

Ujung is another water palace and it was built at the beginning of the 19^th century. On the first picture you can see the ocean in the background.

The Beach

No trip would be complete without a stop at the beach. Bali has several beaches, and we made Nusa Dua beach our home while we were on the island. Alain even made a couple of friends!

Food

Balinese food is not very spicy and the selection of traditional dishes  is not very extensive, but what we had was very good.

My favorite discovery while in Bali was the snake fruit. At first Alain was kind of put off by the peel’s texture, it really feels and looks like a snake skin…not too appetizing. The fruit itself is composed of big cloves (like garlic cloves but bigger) with pits inside the big cloves. The flesh is white and tastes similar to a very, very crunchy strawberry. So cool and sooooo good, totally loved that fruit!

If I have been quiet in my posts lately it is because I was in the snow with you (in Canada). My mother had a heart surgery and I came back to help. She is now in good shape and her recovery is very quick. Alain and I are going back to Thailand, the southern part of the country this time. More beaches...oh yeah, bring it on! 

More on Laos

Vat Sisaket
In the capital of Laos, Vientiane, there is the Vat Sisaket temple. Built in the in the early 1800s; it contains over 6800 Buddha statues and figures. According to the local traditions this is where the Lao lords and nobles came to swear allegiance to the king. Pictures inside the temple were prohibited, but below are some of the 6800 Buddha statues that surround the temple.

Pak Ou Caves 
We took a cruise on the Mekong river to go visit the Pak Ou Caves. Below are a few of snapshots of the scenery.

The Pak Ou Caves are revered throughout Laos and a very popular place for pilgrims. In the caves there are some 4000 statues and statuettes of Buddha. 

At this point we are deeper in one of the caves and we have torchlight to help us see what is around us.

Mulberries Silk Farm
During our stay in Laos we visited a silk farm where they “raise” silkworms and make different products out of the silk.

The silkworm cocoons are boiled and small filaments are taken from the cocoons to form a thread. You can see the thread accumulating in the basket next to the Laos lady. On a sad note, the silkworms are still in the cocoon at that stage; not what I had in mind at all! I had conflicting feelings about buying something from the farm. My reasoning being that if I buy a scarf, I am directly preventing many little worms to transform into winged critters. Also, on top of having contributed to their death, I am wearing what used to be their blanky!!! But if I buy something, I am contributing to the local economy and livelihood of many people.

The treads are dyed at the farm with only natural ingredients coming from plants, fruits and the soil. This is a pot of dye currently boiling

Weaving at the farm is done manually and can take up to a couple of months for a scarf depending on how intricate the pattern is. 

Laos

Laos is a beautiful country with green everywhere and almost untouched by humans. Agriculture is still the major source of income of Laos people and the main crop being rice.

When travelling from one part of the country to another, one can see absolutely stunning landscapes. There are mountains after mountains of green lush foliage with clouds hanging out at the top of the mountains. 

Laos cities are still fairly small (Laos population is under 6.5 M) and usually everything (restaurants, bars, etc.) are closed by 11:30pm. In some smaller towns it is even earlier than that – so better not feel like a midnight snack because ain’t gonna happen!

Roosters
Laotian have roosters and chickens everywhere and chances are that you will have at least one living next to your hotel – we did in each city we visited. The roosters start a conversation with their pal a few kilometers away and chit chat back and forth for hours. I witnessed a conversation starting as early as 3:30am by the rooster living next to our hotel, but I didn’t get why because it was still dark. The neighbor rooster had the decency to ignore “our” rooster until at least 4:00am. Pheww, thank god for this courtesy for the human sleepers; a well brought up rooster! 

However, Alain was getting seriously annoyed with them and kept wondered how come none of the Laotian restaurants had roosters on their menu. Lucky for any of the roosters that Alain never caught one because it would definitely have been BBQ’d; I’m sure Alain was secretly...well let's be honest here, openly dreaming about it!

Traveling
When we went to Laos it was during the rainy season, and while attempting to travel by minivan from one city to the next, we got stopped because of a landslide. A landslide, how cool right? Well it was quite something at the beginning but after waiting for at least five hours for a “backo” to show up and clear it up, I was quite ready to leave the sight. We still had 4-5 hours of driving left to do and had not eaten since six O’clock in the morning and it was 4:00pm by the time we started moving again. The leaving was a real capharnaum as both sides wanted to go at the same time but only one side of the road was cleared and there were vehicles in both lanes on each side of the mudslides! Really smart, and no authorities in sight to direct the traffic!! Hahaha!

 

A few vehicles have tempted their luck to cross the mud, all except maybe one or two got stuck and needed substantial help and digging to get unstuck.

Food
The food in Laos was good, lots of meat everywhere though, but I managed to find vegetarian options. The first dish below was something totally different than what I ever had before in Asia, typical Laotian food apparently. It was a fried mixture of cashews, garlic, chilies and other leaves; very flavorful and crunchy (and no, there were no insects in it I guarantee it).

Money

The money used in Laos is the Laotian Kip (LAK), and $1 CAD = $8,150 LAK, so you can imagine that in no time you end up working with hundred of thousands and millions of LAK when purchasing certain things. Since in Canada we are so rich and we deal with millions all the time, needless to say that we had to pay extra attention the number of zeros in the numbers to do the conversion in Canadian dollars. Ohh, and it felt good and scary at the same time to be withdrawing millions out of your account from the ATM.

Construction

And if you need structural support while constructing something, leave it to the good old bamboo stick to come to the rescue!