Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

A couple of days ago we arrived in Ubud, which is a small town in Bali, Indonesia.  Ubud is a very touristy place, particularly since a bestselling book came out called 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Ubud is a smaller version of the whole of Bali.  The population of Bali is 3.3 million, but that's just the locals and doesn't include other Indonesians or foreigners.  Many people come to Bali to start small businesses or guest houses because it's so beautiful, and so there are a lot of villas.  The scenery in Bali is lovely.  There are flat, lush green rice terraces up to massive volcanoes several thousand feet high.  A large part of Indonesia was started by volcanic activity and on many of the islands you can see many volcanoes that are alive and extinct.  One of the holiest volcanoes Mount Agung, exploded in the 1830's wiping out all of the forests of Bali and many people.  All of Bali, especially Ubud is known for being incredibly artistic, making wood and stone carvings and paintings.  Children learn when they are very young age and most people get some income from their art.  Bali has it's own art forms, for example batik painting which uses beeswax on cloth to make outlines of the pattern and then dying it afterwards.  Also, kite flying is a very popular activity and every year there is a kite festival when thousands of kites are launched into the sky.  Some of them are as big as cars and painted in very bright colors.  The kites can soar up to 1000 feet high flashing bright lights at night.

View of the rice terrace outside our villa.

Bali is a very traditional society, it is mainly hindu where most other Indonesian islands are muslim.  Most families live in a compound of houses surrounded by a carved wall.  Within this compound is a private family temple used for daily worship which is beautifully decorated.  Most art forms, including wood and stone carving, were originally done to decorate these temples.  But tourism has given the artists another reason to create this beautiful art - money.  Each village has a larger communal temple for special occasions and festivities.  There is usually a ceremony at the temple every 6 months.

This is a temple part of the "Holy Springs"

Yesterday we drove to Sanur a seaside town on Bali. So far Sanur seems to also have quite a few tourists especially visiting the beach but the part of town we're staying in seems to have less guesthouses than in Ubud. The town also seems easier to navigate and much more comprehensively designed although it is still puzzling. The beach and ocean seems nicer than we expected and looks like their is a big reef of shore. Apparently you can spearfish hear so I am very excited to try that out. The seafood at the restaurant we visited last night was very fresh and tasty which is what we hope all seafood will be like here. We also saw one man selling large snappers for very cheap prices so we might buy some to eat at home sometime.

Every seaside place we visit has a different preferred local style of boat and Bali is no different. Here locals like to have pontoons on either side of their boats made out of bamboo I do not know exactly what these are for but their is a good chance they are used fore stability in large waves. Unlike Thailand, the Balinese people do not use longtail boats but seem to prefer simple low power outboard motors. The sea seems quite tame here but today we hope to find out.

A couple days ago, we also found a wooden model of Tin Tin which we are shipping back to the U.S. The largest item the post office will ship is one meter tall so we had to get Tin Tin into two parts pictures below. I don't need captions here you get the general idea.

Phuket, Thailand

A couple of days ago we flew into Phuket, Thailand.  We weren't expecting anything fantastic, and our expectations were not to be disappointed.  Phuket is a very tourist infested island in Thailand that has taken just about as much wear and tear as possible.  In it's prime day, it would have been very beautiful.  It still is now, except the water is dirtier and has trash in it.  The government is trying to control it from breaking down by moving illegal beach shacks including restaurants so that the beach is pristine again.  The scenery south of Phuket in the gulf of Thailand is unbelievable, with towering limestone pillars covered in thick vegetation.  These pillars can be up to 300ft high extending above the water.  I'm not exactly sure how they were created.  Maybe there were some volcanoes in that area long, long ago, but the pillars are relatively scattered in the ocean.

This is Maya beach where the movie "The Beach" was filmed.

Koh Phi Phi, an island south of Phuket, is a very large destination for tourists.  There are not many hotels on the island so you must take a day trip from Phuket to get there or you must rent a sailboat for several days.  We rented a catamaran for 5 nights and were able to sail between the islands.  You look above water around you and it looks like this would be a great place for coral reefs, but this is not so.  The reefs are very badly damaged by people trying to anchor on them and the array of fish is very disappointing, although we did see one baby sea snake - black and white striped - which I have never seen before.  Ten years ago a tsunami passed through Phuket and the Phi Phi islands which may also have caused destruction to a lot of the coral.

Luckily we were able to go on our boat during the low season, but this is also the rainy season so we experienced several thunderstorms throughout our excursion.  This made it a lot more interesting, especially when the winds picked up and we could really get moving on our catamaran.

Laos

Yesterday we arrived in Laos at about 7pm.  The moment you reach the country you enter a whole new atmosphere.  Vietnam was very built up with large cities and much more production, while Laos is pretty much the opposite.  Flying into Luang Prabang, you look out the window and see barely any lights even though it is considered the second most important city in Laos.  Luang Prabang only has a population of 50,000 and the main town is very small.  The town is very quaint and small and there are many guesthouses lining the riverbanks.  In many ways it is a very tourist geared place, there are money exchanges and bike rental centers everywhere.  Tomorrow night is the annual Festival of Lights to celebrate the end of the monsoon.  Most households will build a bamboo boat with candles and decoration all over and will carry them in procession down to the river and then set them in the water.  People prepare many days in advance because everywhere lights are strung over the streets and people are hammering away at bamboo strips for the boats.  

Luang Prabang sits at the merger of two large rivers, one of which is the Mekong.  The surrounding area is fairly hilly and is very jungle like.  Tomorrow we are planning to take motorbikes towards some nearby waterfalls and today we discovered the town by bicycle.

Me at Kuang Si waterfalls.

A sub swimming hole near to the bottom.

Last night our family decided to go a dinner cruise up the Mekong River. We were very fortunate that it was only us four on a boat that could hold forty guests. The landscape around Luang Probang is very similar to Myanmar. It is fairly hilly and jungly with a river at the very heart of it. There were several very rural villages lining the riverbank. The Mekong River is one of the most powerful in the world. It is very wide and 20 feet. This depth can vary on a day to day basis by up to 3 feet. Surprisingly, the banks didn't seem too eroded considering how fast the water was moving, although the river is incredibly silty. 

On the boat we got to see some Laotian dancers. This is very different from a Burmese dance. In Burma the dances were a lot more active with people utilizing the whole stage and louder music.  These dancers in a more slow and precise way with quieter and slower music. In Laotian dancing it is most important to learn to use the hands and feet and you are considered more elegant if you can bend your fingers back in an arc shape. 

The Laotian dancers.

Monks on their way to the monastery.

A lovely sunset on the Mekong.

Luang Probang and the Festival Of Lights

Two nights go, I went to see Luang Probang's main celebration of the year, the festival of lights, which is the celebration of the end of the monsoon season. It is truly an amazing experience and the whole town comes out. The main event is a parade down the main street of all the families and surrounding a huge variety of home made river boats made from bamboo and colorful paper.

The boats look skeleton like and as though they could tip over in the water.  That is because they use bamboo rafts to float them in the water. The boats can range in size from pillow length to truck length. They are covered in colorful tissue paper and have candles all over them.  They proceed down the main street towards the Mekong river. Up to this point they were carried on wheeled carts but then they are transferred down a steep long flight of steps to the river. Once at the water the families ease their boats in and set them on the bamboo rafts.  These boats do not have a motor and so another small vessel, like a long tail river canoe, maneuvers the boat into the current.

Here is only one of the many boats.

Many people from the town drop small offerings which are essentially wax cake shaped objects covered with flowers and banana leaves into the river. Also on them are candles and sticks of incense that people will light before they float away.  Gradually there are hundreds floating past you at any given time. Since it is very dark, all you see is a beautiful stream of specs of light floating down the river.

At the same time as the boats are set off, another popular activity for the locals (and tourists) is to send floating lanterns into the sky. These lanterns are light weight paper bags with waxed cardboard rings on a little wire frame at the bottom of the bat. When you light the cardboard the flame creates enough hot air to lift the bags off the ground. The bags are fairly large, about three feet high.  These bags can reach a height of several thousand feet before the flame runs out of fuel. At the beginning of the evening there were only a couple of lanterns, but as time went by more and more went up until the sky was filled with different colored lights floating above. Just for fun, we lit two of these lanterns as well and added to the festival from our backyard.

We were very lucky to witness this one night after a lunar eclipse.  This festival happens only once a year.

Some lanterns made by monks (these do not fly)

Viet!

Good morning Vietnam!

We arrived in Chau Doc, Vietnam by speedboat from Phnom Penh Cambodia two days ago.  It took four hours, five including immigration stops (as we exited Cambodia and Entered Vietnam).  They checked a few of our bags through an x-ray machine and the customs man didn’t know what my contact lenses were.  He kept on turning the bag over and over trying to figure out what they were.  Luckily, our boat driver was able to explain, by gesticulating that they went in my eyes.  It was highly enjoyable to watch.  My Mom had some Cambodian money that she changed there for Vietnamese Dong.  She got 46 dong from the lady, which is about  ___ cents or of a cent.  One dollar is 21,000 dong which is an absurd currency exchange.  My mom and sister went out to dinner, had two drinks and two main courses and it cost them 434,000 dong.  That is $6.23 cents!

Vietnam has many rivers and canals, especially in the southern area near Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).  Many people live and work on their boats selling fruits and vegetables or transporting goods like rice.  One job, is fish farming.  People on the Mekong river have a very interesting way of catching fish.  They will put an entire house on top of an underwater frame covered in mesh which will hold 50,000 fish.  Most people have three frames, which in total contain 150,000 fish (which is also 200 tones).  It cost $10 per kilo, 50 fish per kilo.  It takes three months to grow the fish up and they do this three times a year.  Gross sales are about $50,000 plus per harvest.  The fish are fed three meals a day, just like us, and there are so many in a cage that you can put your hand into the water while they’re excited from eating, and scoop them up three at a time.  They also nibble your hands which tickles.  When the fish are fully grown, a boat will use a pump and pipe to suck out all the fish and transport them to fish factories.  Transport boats are wooden and bulbous, but the interesting feature is that there are small holes, covered in screens, on both sides of the boat where water can flow in and out for the fish to survive until they reach the factory.  Most people, if they have a large enough boat, will live on that boat in a small shack overhanging the water at the back of the boat.  All possessions are kept very neat and organized because theres limited space.  Most people sleep in hammocks and laundry is hung at the back of the boat to dry.  Some of the boats even have potted plants to create a little garden on the roof.  Large boats shuttle sand, gravel and rice between different locations on the river.  People with smaller boats usually have a shack on the side of the river with a little dock where they can tie up their boat.  These boats usually sell food like coconuts, bananas, sweet potatoes etc.

These are how thick the fish become when fed!

This is a fish cage frame from a distance.

Near the bank there is a floating market where boats will sell one product and other smaller boats can come around and buy it.  These boats will display what they sell by putting up a bamboo pole high above their vessel, and tie on their goods as an advertisement.

 This is an overweight vessel carrying some rice husks.

 This is a ferry carrying vehicles across the river.

 This is our beloved vietnamese toothless (and rather insane) guide Mr. Lang.

This is somebody's house boat.

A Very Strange Country - and there is a reason for that

Quick trip to Cambodia

Unfortunately we were only able to make a quick stop in Cambodia - we were there for three nights.  But surprisingly, we didn’t really need more than that.  So far most of the Asian countries have had lots of temples and monuments which after a while get old.  Cambodia wasn’t much different.  We visited Angkor Wat which is the main temple complex in Siem Reap which is in the north of the country.  It is the second largest city in Cambodia.  Angkor Wat is build similarly to the Mayan temples and the Peruvian temples, almost like Macchu Picchu.  It is about 1000 years old.  Back in that time the country was ruled by kings.  Each king wanted to make a more grand and spectacular temple than the last, so they kept adding to Angkor Wat until the monarchy fell.  Angkor Wat is built on an island surrounded by a moat and the whole complex is surrounded by jungle.  Only the nearby area is a small field with a lake.  Angkor Wat is amazing because 1000 years ago everything had to be made with manpower.  The temples are quite tall and every single stone had to be lifted using pulleys or ramps.  

Cambodia has a terrible history.  It had a despotic ruler names Pol Pot.  He was so much worse than a dictatorship and definitely worse than Hitler or any other world dictators.  He had the idea that everyone in the country should be equal, and no certain person should be smarter richer than anyone else except for the leaders.  Unfortunately, he had a very violent way of doing this.  In just a few hours, he cleared out the whole capital city of Phnom Penh and forced everyone to work in the fields for up to 16 hours a day.  It didn’t matter if you were a child or an old person or disabled.  But, if you wore glasses they assumed that you were an intellectual, and therefore a threat, and you would be killed.  Now everybody, look down at your hands right now.  Are they soft, pink or squishy?  You would be killed, because that meant that you lived off the work of others.  Even if you did work in the fields, you had a high chance of dying anyway through starvation, disease or exhaustion from overwork.  You would only receive two small meals of rice every day, because the government sold 80% of it’s rice to other countries and gave only 20% to the people.  In a period of three years and eight months, one third of the population was wiped out.  But the even more amazing thing, was that this happened in our parents lifetime from 1975 to 1979.  And yet, the whole world didn’t know about it.  

Today when you visit Cambodia, the majority of people are easily confused and lacking in confidence.  Most of the population is young - 20 to 40 years old, because most of their parents were killed and they were born in the middle of it.

 Angkor Wat from the outside.

 This is me in the center of the main complex overlooking the outer ring.

 A funny sign directing tourists were to go.

 Gazing up at the temple.

A magnificent view of the whole complex from the outside.