Wednesday October 19 - Bali

Blaise Says . . .

I am consolidating the sea days with Bali mainly because there just wasn’t enough excitement worthy of the pen or in this case computer.  Gives a whole new meaning to the quip, “the computer is mightier than the sword”, oh well all things eventually give way to technology, the same holds for the pen and the printed page I suppose.  On with the story…

I spent much of the two sea days leading up to the excitement that is/was Bali by either reading Lords of Finance as well as catching up on the “On Demand” movies, so I was thinking that Whiskey Tango Foxtrot would be a pretty good movie, to the extent that I was really looking forward to seeing it, I was wrong, it sucked on every level, Tina Fey produced it as well as starred in it, glad it was her money that she lost.  There was only one memorable quote, which I pride myself on collecting, quips like “I’ll bend her over a barrel and show her the fifty states”, what’s that from, it’s new so it shouldn’t be a toughy?  Anyway, Billy Bob Thornton tells Tina Fey that there’s a 4-10-4 phenomenon in a war zone, which means a woman would be a 4 at home, then a 10 in a war zone, then a 4 when she returned home; Fey’s retort was, “You think I’m a 4?”, no response.  The only saving grace of this movie was Margot Robie, which I had forgotten was in this stinker, is always easy on the eyes; btw there is a scene where Fey and Robie discuss Fey being a 9.5 to which Fey asks Robie so what are you a 15?  Her very casual response was “yea”, I laughed out loud. 

Additionally the other movie was really pretty good, Dark Horse was a well done documentary about a bunch of lower middle class folks in Wales raising there own race horse from a foal to win the Welsh Derby.  Very well done from my perspective.

Bali was extremely exciting for me, just under the koala experience in the manner in which I was excited to see first hand, just because it had been lauded as the experience of a lifetime; it was that the experience of a lifetime.  We booked an excursion to Uluwatu, I’m sure AJ told you that it means head of the limestone which is quite appropriate.  We made the rounds to shopping and then a World Heritage Site, what isn’t these days, and then to Uluwatu.  Bali is 8 degrees from the equator, it was 87 on the day we visited, mind you it’s Spring; 87 with humidity of 1000%, it was like 108 at home, and to my amazement it is totally impoverished.  It reminded me of all the Caribbean islands that we’ve visited, the haves and the have nots, mostly have nots.  I was sooooooo disappointed; but I am glad I had the opportunity to experience it with my “besty”, what’s that from? I wouldn’t have had it any other way, it’s always very enjoyable to just spend time holding hands and enjoying making each other laugh.

This will probably be our final posts, the entirety of the rest of this adventure will be getting home, and switching airports in Japan with the tightest of margins without missing our DFW connection but I’ll deliver that one in person at the Christmas Party.  I will part with the ongoing discussion we’ve been having about a new bed, I know, I know, as BTD would say, “these are first world problems”.  We have had an ongoing discussion/disagreement about moving from a queen size to a king size for the past 10 years, I want the king so it stays cooler against the skin but AJ says that we will lose the ability to touch/snuggle/spoon each other at night, and is afraid that we will not be as close if we move up.  I don’t personally think that the size of the bed has any effect on how closely you sleep to one another but for now we’ll continue with our tried and true queen, she has served us well thus far.  So the question I pose, king or queen?

Get out there and travel, enjoy the cultural nuances and above all else remember that when you travel, you don’t represent yourself, you represent all Americans in the eyes of wherever you are, represent us well.  Be kind, patient, and compassionate, remember before you were a highly sought after lawyer, CPA, or Director you could have certainly used that extra 5 euros when you were waiting table or mowing lawns in college; don’t forget to pay it forward!!!

Here’s to seeing reading about your exploits, until we get home cheers!!

Ami Says . . .

It is the morning of Thursday, October 20 and as we sit in the Sky Lounge in the front of the ship, it is raining, the first rain we have seen on the trip.

Monday and Tuesday were sea days and yesterday we spent the day in Bali, Indonesia. Not much to say about the sea days, thus we decided not to post anything until after Bali.

Monday we spent sailing the Timor Sea.  This is probably the calmest sea we have ever been in. The ocean was nearly like glass and the only ship we saw was way on the horizon, barely discernable with the naked eye.

Tuesday, we entered the Indian Ocean which was a little rockier than the day before but not too bad at all.  No boats/ships to see that day either.

While on these sea days, we had to complete the customs cards for Indonesia and Singapore both of which had on their customs documents in big all-cap letters:

“WARNING

DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICERS

UNDER [INDONESIA/SINGAPORE] LAW”

I’m thinking they are serious about this.  Not sure I would want to violate the law in either location – don’t want to end up on an episode of Locked Up Abroad.  Not too fun.

Yesterday we arrived in Bali, one of our most anticipated ports of call.  I think Blaise was a bit disappointed in it but I found it fascinating.  Bali is eight decrees south of the equator.  It is spring in this part of the world and it is HOT!  Not sure I’ve ever sweated so much just standing around in my life as I did yesterday.  Not that we spent much time just standing around. In spite of the heat, it was a fascinating day.

We learned a great deal about Bali.  Until this trip, I’m not sure I really knew it is part of Indonesia.  I thought it was its own country, but it is not.  Although the whole of Indonesia is 75% Muslim, Bali is 90% Hindu. Indonesia owns very little of the land in Bali as most land is owned by families and passed down from generation to generation. Every home has its own temple and if you are a practicing Hindu, you MUST have a family temple.  As a result, you see Hindu temples everywhere.

We took an excursion to visit a very prominent Hindu temple at the top of a mountain – absolutely amazing views.  We also made another stop at a religious site that wasn’t really a temple but seemed to be in the process of still being built.  Both sites had the following directive as you entered the site:

“Ladies who are menstruating are not allowed to enter the holy area.”

Not kidding.  Although this exact sentence was duplicated in both locations, there was also the following cryptic warning in the first holy stop (the one that was not the temple)

“Please do not enter for ladies during getting on period.”

This was the first sign of this nature we saw and surmised the meaning was hey, if you have your period, don’t go in.  It was confirmed later by the more decisive, former warning.

The temple we went to was Uluwatu, ulu meaning “head” and watu meaning “limestone” and was built in the 11^th century.  The whole island of Bali is limestone.  Blaise and I both had to wear a sarong at the temple.  As tourists, we were not allowed to enter the temple itself.  We were concerned about this because we thought we wouldn’t be able to see much of it, but that wasn’t the case at all – the temple is all open air so although we couldn’t enter it, we were still able to see the whole of it and take pictures.  The temple is still used today for important Hindu ceremonies.

Lots of monkeys around the temple; menacing, taking shiny objects and sunglasses from visitors.  My two main concerns were their taking Blaise’s prescription glasses and pulling my cheapo sunglasses off my nose and hurting my broken nose, causing me pain since my nose, cheek, and forehead cut hurt to the touch still.  So I removed my sunglasses and just dealt with the brightness.

We returned to the ship wringing wet.  We were an hour late leaving the port that evening.  Not sure why but we did get to watch the tender boats hoisted back on the ship, something we had never witnessed before.

We have two more days at sea before we arrive in Singapore where we hear the Celebrity Solstice, the ship we are on, will be in dry dock for 14 days before reversing our itinerary back to Sydney, Australia.  We are not spending any extra days in Singapore as neither Blaise nor I felt we could miss much more work.  We are taking an excursion that hits the highlights of Singapore and then drops us off at the airport.  I suspect we will have to return to Singapore someday. We will have a great deal of time at the airport.  I think the excursion drops us off at 2 or 3 PM but our flight to Tokyo doesn’t leave until 9:50 PM.  We then have about 5 hours to transfer airports in Tokyo.

We probably won’t post anything else until we get to the airport Saturday since we will spend the next two days relaxing and reading on the high seas.